User talk:FloNight/Archive Oct 2007

Wikimaina Atlanta meeting
We will be holding a meeting tonight at 9:30pm EDT in #wikimania-atlanta on irc.freenode.org. For more information about IRC see Wikimania_2008/Bids/Atlanta/IRC. Please try to be at this meeting as it is one of the last ones before bidding ends and we still have lots that need to be discussed. --Cspurrier 19:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

MCOTW
JFW | T@lk  11:31, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

USRD Inactivity check and news report
Hello, FloNight. We had a few urgent matters to communicate to you:
 * 1) Please update your information at WikiProject U.S. Roads/Participants, our new centralized participant list. Those who have not done so by October 20th will be removed.
 * 2) There are important discussions taking place at WT:USRD relating to whether WP:USRD, WP:HWY, or the state projects should hold the "power" in the roads projects.

Regards, Rschen7754 (T C) 23:18, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Opposition to "No Special Protections" in AttackSites Arbcom
FloNight, hope it's not inappropriate to comment here-- the talk pages are sufficently active that I wouldn't expect this message to find its way to you promptly if I posted it there.

I was confused by your opposition to the principle that editors and non-editors have equal protection. I think, if I may, that Paul's proposal was intended to apply only to wikipedia ARTICLES-- essentially restating NPOV. On the other hand, by your objections, I think you you're interpreting it to be applying to all on-wiki related behavior. Do you agree that Wikipedia editors shouldn't have any special protection when it comes to articles? --Alecmconroy 17:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Alecmconroy, :) Comments are always welcome.


 * It is proper for us to establish stricter policies for user conduct than what might be considered real world harassment. Our policy on WP:NPA is to promote collaborative editing so we can have well written articles. Per this policy, our threshold for what is an attack that is harassment is lower than what would be considered real world harassment. If an editor researches another editor and adds content to articles with the intent to intimidate or retaliate it should be promptly removed because it breaches our NPA policy. This includes external links. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 18:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I'm not sure how much you want to have this discussion with me, since I'm sure there are parallel discussions going on with more important persons than me.  But, insofar as you have the interest--    it's true that we wouldn't want people to edit article content to harass other editors-- but would it be okay to edit article content for the purpose of harassing non-editors??  I'm just having a hard time reconciling a "Neutral Point of View" and any article-related policies that treat information about editors and information about non-editors differently.  Behavior regulation, I can understand.  Talk/Project page I can understand, but articles I don't really get how your objection works.
 * It will be interestint to see how the vote on this goes. If your object ultimately carries the majority, I will have to re-read NPOV very closely and try to figure out how my conception of it is flawed. --Alecmconroy 18:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Be clear, I do not think it is ever acceptable to add material to articles to harass someone. Around this time last year I was spending a large chunk of my editing time removing articles or content about notable people created by a banned user to harass these people. Often, I had to spend a good bit of time explaining my action to uninvolved editors. A few of them never accepted my explanation and left our encounter believing I was wrong since I was removing sourced, well written content. As long as the content was well sourced, they had no problem with it, irrespective of the fact that this banned user was using it to taunt his victims by email.


 * Also, I consistently vote in Afd discussions to delete articles of non public people where we can not write a well balanced article because the only verifiable reliable sources discuss a narrow aspect of a persons life. I feel quite strongly about it when the content is about a narrow NEGATIVE aspect of a person's life or if it primarily includes content about people that are only notable because of their relationship with a more famous family member.


 * I feel that my prior actions well support the removal of content that harms people. My votes in this case elevates the standard even higher about content that is intended to intimidate or retaliate against our editors. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 19:29, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * But that statement, "I do not think it is ever acceptable to add material to articles to harass someone", means you don't differ between editors and non-editors in that regard. Do you? You're voting as if you think it is more OK to harass non-editors, in opposition to your stated belief. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it means that my threshold for what constitutes harassment is lower for conduct aimed at our editors based on our NPA policy. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 20:03, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) That's really worrisome, then. John Smith writes to an arbitrator, saying that article X is harassing him. The arbitrator writes back, saying no, that's actually within our threshold, since he's not one of us, but if he joins us, we'll lower that threshold? --AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:23, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * AnonMouse, you are misinterpreting my statement. All people should be protected from harassment at the level established in real world laws. Wikipedia editors are additionally protected from personal attacks and other user conduct that attempts to intimidate them into leaving the project. This is because we need our articles to not be written by just bullies but anyone that will work collaboratively. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 20:35, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

RfArb
If you guys really think the case is necessary, then ok, but given how infrequent I even cross paths with Cat I'm really confused as to how it even got proposed as an arbcom case. The only thing listed as an attempt to settle the dispute was an RfC on myself, and that did resolve at least part of the issue. I still don't believe I crossed the line in listing an article for deletion (but I did cross the line in being down right rude to him), and it's already apparent that the evaluation of any given admin regarding Cat and I, is enough to block either of us. Aside from a finding like "Ned and Cat should try to stay away from each other" I fail to see what starting up an entire arbcom case is going to achieve. As I said in my statement on the request page, I also think this will fuel the drama more than it would help. I'm open to mediation of some kind, and hearing how others suggest we handle such situations (although I already know what went wrong this last time). There are many other ways to resolve this dispute, lessen the drama, and take up a lot less of our time. -- Ned Scott 01:01, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

ArbCom
Hello. I lost my admin rights in May, I think, following my Arbitration case. In the ruling of ArbCom it was stated I could gain these rights back through the Arbitration Committee. How can I do that and do you think it is the right time to ask for it again? Thank you. - Darwinek 09:50, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Alternative solution to the Dalmatia issue
My first impulse upon seeing the proposed decision by the Arbitration Committee, was to protest by saying it is unfair to simplify matters thusly and equate User:Giovanni Giove with myself (because of my being on the "defensive" in the edit-warring, because of my numerous attempts at dicussion). I realised, though, that that kind of stuff is probably often heard in such situations, and that my protests will be disregarded (due to my obvious personal interest). This is why I tried a different approach. User:Giovanni Giove and I have reached an agreement that should do the trick to first stop, and then finally "dismantle" the conflict (see Giovanni Giove's talkpage). Such attempts at discussion have been made before and have proven effective in resolving several issues with Users PIO and Brunodam (on the Albania Veneta, Istrian exodus and Foibe massacres articles, for example). Even though our previous record may lead someone to question the credibility of this effort, one must remeber that thanks to the Arbitration, we now face a very real possibility of severe restrictions lasting an entire year. This finally changed the overall situation in a way that finally lead to a lasting agreement. The question, of course, is would you support such a solution to the problem at hand? I, for one, truly hope so, since the proposed restriction would effectively put an end to my work on Wiki, something I'll do my best to prevent. DIREKTOR ( TALK ) 18:10, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

USRD Newsletter - Issue 14

 * Want to help on next month's newsletter? Don't want to receive these in future? Don't want it subst'd next time? – It's all here. —O bot  (t • c) 01:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Science Collaboration of the month
NCurse work 06:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Pictures
I'm glad someone has noticed my efforts as well. It's a strange balance I'm trying to strike since I mostly edit articles that very few people read, but then I try to get them noticed! Anyway, you can probably tell that most of my recent work has been on governors of Kentucky, so any pictures of graves, homeplaces, or monuments are likely to be helpful. I notice you've done a few of these already, including GA and recent FT component George W. Johnson. Thanks for the reciprocal compliment. Perhaps we can eventually breathe some more life into WikiProject Kentucky; seems it's pretty inactive right now. Acdixon (talk • contribs • count) 13:39, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I will try to remember to inform you about the fair-use images.
 * Do you happen to have a shot of the grave of Luke P. Blackburn? Apparently, there is a unique bas relief of the Good Samaritan on the grave that would make a pretty cool addition to his article. I'd also like to get one of the Kentucky State Penitentiary for his article, since he was the one who secured funding for it, but that's closer to me than you. With those two images and a bit of cleanup on the sources, I think I might get that one from GA to FA.
 * I'll also check out your shots from Harrodsburg. I've got a pretty good article going on James Harrod, but apparently there are no portraits of him. If you've got anything you think would work as an alternate, let me know. Thanks again. Acdixon (talk • contribs • count) 15:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * While the Blackburn Correctional Complex will be good to have, and is named for Governor Blackburn, I was referring to the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Kentucky, for which Blackburn secured funding. It's over by Kentucky Lake, so hopefully I can get over there sometime soon. Thanks for getting the grave photo. Acdixon (talk • contribs • count) 17:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

My Arbcom
You stated in this edit that there is / was plenty of evidence to support a CU. Which of the 5 Checkusers do you feel had plenty of evidence? Your response was kind of vague. --SevenOfDiamonds 14:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * What I think it means is that there was enough circumstantial evidence that you could be someone's sock to justify taking a look at the logs, as opposed to saying, "SevenofDiamonds is a pain in my neck so let's look at the IP data and hope something actionable turns up." Obviously, once checked, the logs failed to support any particular conclusion. Thatcher131 15:26, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, there was enough evidence to warrant doing a CU. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 16:02, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Biography Newsletter 5
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Accusations
Perhaps you may be able to assist with my request to settle this issue once and for all. I am being accused of trolling and vandalism by Wikipedians who I suspect are not abiding by their own policy of "no personal attacks". Settling this by arbitration is just fine by me. The process of submitting a request is quite complex. Can you help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.188.22.40 (talk) 00:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Advice from a BLP hardliner needed. :-)
Hi, Flo. I'm coming to you for lots of inobvious reasons, including the fact that I have rarely or never been able to convince you of anything (so if we agree on this, it must be right. :-)) and for some more obvious reasons, such as your being an arbitrator, and listing yourself as being especially concerned with BLP issues on WikiProject Biography/Members/Admin members, but finally, of course, that I respect your opinions.

Anyway, Verifiability says "Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP." The latter says "Material from self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article (see below)."

That doesn't seem to make any exception for non-controversial information, or even for experts writing non-controversial information. Should it?

There are quite a few examples from Featured articles:
 * KaDee Strickland uses an interview with the subject published on the interviewer's 2-person site to reference 4 non-controversial points. ^ a b c d Davies Brown, Phil. "KaDee Strickland Interview". Horror Asylum. November 12, 2004. Retrieved June 13, 2005.
 * Miranda Otto writes a film criticism referenced by the critic's personal site: Anderson, Jeffrey M. (April 2002), "To Err Is 'Human'", combustiblecelluloid.com. Retrieved April 11, 2007.
 * Nellie Kim uses a b Whatever Happened to Nelli Kim?. GymnasticGreats.com. Retrieved on April 13, 2006.
 * Jackie Chan uses several fan sites for non-controversial information
 * ^ Biography of Jackie Chan. Biography. Hong Kong Film.net. Retrieved on June 6, 2007.
 * ^ Jackie Chan. Biography. Ng Kwong Loong (JackieChanMovie.com). Retrieved on July 9, 2007.
 * ^ a b c Jackie Chan profile. Biography. JackieChanMovie.com. Retrieved on June 7, 2007.
 * ^ Armour of God. jackiechanmovie.com (2006). Retrieved on August 20, 2007.
 * Austin Nichols cites a film review ^ Swietek, Frank. Day After Tomorrow, The. oneguysopinion.com. Retrieved November 11, 2006.

and so forth, I'm sure there are others, I didn't look very hard. Should self-published third party sources be allowed as references for non-controversial information? How about expert s-p3ps? --AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:46, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello? --AnonEMouse (squeak) 14:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking :) FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 14:55, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for bothering you, but you are one of the few influential BLP hardliners who is actually civil to editors. (It's like that O'Henry story about how any man who is kind to dogs is always cruel to women.) A other BLP hardliners had came to mind, but I was afraid one would have deleted my question and called me fifteen kinds of British swear words, and another would have banned me indefinitely and redirected my user page to Clown. :-) ... --AnonEMouse (squeak) 13:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi AnonEMouse :) I think it needs to be decided on a case by case basis with the general rule being that the information needs to be verifiable. So for example, content that can be found (but maybe with difficulty and expense) would be alright. If the information can not be verified, then I think we need to use a better source. It is sometimes hard to know what is going to end up being controversial for a particular subject, so we need to be careful to be careful about what we call controversial. Hope that helps (Sorry, I was slow but I wanted to think about it before I replied because I did not want my words to come back to haunt me. :-) Take care, FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 18:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Your thoroughness is appreciated. When you write "can be found", and "can not be verified" do you mean that it needs to be likely available from another source, or that we need to actually find it from another source (in which case we wouldn't need to use the self-published sources after all)? --AnonEMouse (squeak) 13:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * By "can be found" I mean that under normal circumstances the information can be found in another way. This is where it gets tricky. Sometimes the sources where we might verify it would not be published by our usual meaning of the term. For example, background information about a subject (like spouse, high school or college, hometown) can be verified for most people and might be done if needed by a journalist or a researcher but usually they look at a CV that is provided by the subject. If they were going to verify it, they would most likely look in data bases. For our purposes, data bases or a CV are often not seen as appropriate because it starts to veer into the area of original research. And we do need to be careful about including information that no one mainstream media has published because I think that there is benefit to us using them as a screening tool for what is relevant related to our subject. But there can be times when encyclopedic content related to a subject is not found in mainstream media sources. In these cases, taking it on a case by case basis seems alright to me. So, sometimes I do not have a problem with us using a high quality self published source for this type of encyclopedic content because under normal circumstances it can be verified through a data base or through in depth research. Hope that helped make my meaning more clear. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 14:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It does, thank you! --AnonEMouse (squeak) 14:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm making a "non-controversial" proposal. :-) Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons If you can phrase it better, that would be appreciated. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey there
Long time no see. I've been watching several articles regarding accumulating trivia, and there's one, Uroboros, that seems to have people insistently readding trivia (under the guise of mentions in "popular culture"). I don't mind a few things, and policy does allow for some stuff, but this article seems to attract lots and lots of junk. At times the trivia list gets longer than the article itself if not watched. I was thinking about removing the section altogether, but don't know if I would be justified in doing that. Anyway there is another user who keeps readding stuff. Again, it wouldn't matter so much except some of these articles are magnets for crap, and it makes no sense to mention things that should link to that article, yet when mentioned add nothing but clutter to the article in question.

I've not been really active at Wikipedia but have been watching a few articles for a long time (e.g. God is Dead, Oedipus Complex, Uroboros) that tend to accumulate trivia. I want to avoid a revert war with the current other who is readding the material. Can you advise? --DanielCD 13:58, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks like policy says trivia is generally ok, but it seems that obviously non-notable stuff is subject to removal. --DanielCD 14:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

As usual, I've answered most of my questions and solved most of my problem shortly after asking for help. I even found WikiProject Trivia Cleanup. It's a pain to keep up with policy changes sometimes when you don't edit so often. I've gotten a job at the school I'm at that might help me get back in the game a little tho. --DanielCD 15:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Daniel :) Great to hear from you. I would love to catch you with what is going on re: school and such. I think of you often when I sign into Flickr since your images are marked as favs there. I've been meaning to write you for ages so glad that you got in touch. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 17:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)


 * This semester I'm mostly working on mastering test administration (psychometrics): WAIS, WISC and the MMPI. --DanielCD 18:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

THF's problematic edits
Can you please identify specifically which edits you consider to be "problems"? The evidence cited in 4B is weak and flawed. Smb's evidence is almost exclusively links to talk page debate. Will Beback's evidence is from February - THF's first month on the project (literally, 6000 edits ago). The Sicko edits that triggered this case were largely confined to the talk page - and in fact, RFCs seemed to support at least some of THF's arguments. So this seems to be a ruling that punishes THF for either: (a) his newbie edits from 8 months ago, or (b) recent edits in which he engaged in spirited talk page debate. I don't think either is worthy of a sanction, but especially not (b). It's a very dangerous precedent for Wikipedia to sanction opinionated people like THF for engaging in discussion and debate - even if that debate was heated at times. ATren 13:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikimania 2008/Conference of the Americas
Hello, As you may or may not know, Alexandria, Egypt was selected to host Wikimania 2008. So as to prevent the hard work of the many Wikimedians involved in the Atlanta bid from going to waste, we have decided to host a conference for the Americas. This is in no way an attempt to compete with Wikimania or make a statement against Wikimania.

As one of the people signed up to help with the Wikimania Atlanta bid, we hope you will join us at the Wikimedia Conference of the Americas. We will be having a meeting tonight in IRC tonight (Oct 15) at 9:30PM in #cota-atlanta on irc.freenode.org to discuss the conference. For more information about IRC see.

For more information about the Wikimedia Conference of the Americas see http://www.cota-atlanta.org and our wiki http://www.cota-atlanta.org/wiki.

If you do not wish to receive further notices about the COTA please remove your name from our notify list. --Cspurrier 20:58, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

"Disregarded WP:COI"
Can you explain to me how I "disregarded WP:COI" (as your proposed 7.1 states), when I repeatedly sought guidance from WP:COI/N, repeatedly asked adminstrators and an arbitrator for guidance on compliance, and participated in WT:COI discussions on how best to phrase the rule? Many thanks, THF 23:32, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Snarly?
You are the one who made the snarly comment about "carrying the torch". There is no evidence of that, it is completely untrue, and I would appreciate it if you would retract it. ATren 16:47, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The comment was NOT directed at any one person, truly. I was trying to give "friendly advise" to users editing the talk and workshop pages of that case. Please, let it drop, okay? FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 16:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, if it wasn't directed at me, I will drop it. You were directly responding to my words, so I assumed it was. ATren 17:32, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem. :) FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 17:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)