User talk:GTBacchus/Archive 12

Thank you
Just wanted to say "thank you" for your welcoming posts on the WP:ANI page, re: the Mikkalai discussion. Jonneroo (talk) 07:31, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * You're quite welcome. Thank you for WP:SOW/REAP (the acronym worked out way too easily - pretty awesome). As you get to know Wikipedia, please don't hesitate to contact me if I can help you with any questions or red-tape navigating. (We try to keep the stuff to a minimum, but there are thickets. (At least two of those particular thickets exist for good reasons.)) I notice by your userboxes that you're into math. Have you checked out WikiProject Mathematics? That page, and also Reference desk/Mathematics can be fun to have on one's watchlist. The latter is also quite useful for getting questions answered, and for practice in helping others. -GTBacchus(talk) 10:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * WP:SOW/REAP is totally cool, and I'm honored to have had a part in it.


 * Thanks for the suggestions re: math. I was a math major in college...30 years ago...and I am really rusty now. My family didn't have much money, and after only two years of college, I started working full-time, and I never graduated. I did have three semesters of calculus (making an A in all three, including scores of 100 on most of the Calculus III tests I took, as I recall), but nothing beyond that (no theory classes like Modern Algebra, no Differential Equations, no Statistics).


 * I read some of the posts at the reference desk, and while I understood some of them, the notation used in other posts was pretty foreign to me. I really need to brush up on my calculus. Fortunately I still have my college textbook somewhere. I'll check out the reference desk now and then and reacquaint myself a little bit.


 * Way back when, I had an interest in theory, and I actually developed a theory of my own. I'll have to try to locate my notes on it (if indeed I still have them; if not, I think I can come up with the theory again). I have a gut feeling that there is a real-world application for my theory, but if there is, I don't know what it might be. I had always kept my theory to myself, intending it to be the basis of a Master's thesis that never got written. There's no chance of me going back to school and getting my Master's degree now, so I suppose it's safe to share my theory with others. The reference desk might be a good starting place. I'll look into that.


 * Thanks again. Jonneroo (talk) 17:37, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Your essay
I think your essay needs more work before you tout it so. Average White Dork (talk) 21:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Before I "tout it so"? I wasn't aware of going over the top. Got any specific feedback? -GTBacchus(talk) 22:06, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

JzG RfC
A user conduct RfC involving the actions of in which you have been mentioned is about to go live and will be found at WP:RFC/U shortly. Viridae Talk 11:18, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

You said it (at talk:Iar)
AGF is "assume good faith because doing otherwise is blinkered, pointless and unproductive." -GTBacchus(talk) 00:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. Newbyguesses - Talk 01:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I hope that more people do so as well. I've been thinking for a while about the page WP:AGF and how it can be improved. If you'd like, I'll let you know when/if I try to do something about that. Way too many people are taking it as something to lawyer and to look for exceptions to. It should be stated more like the law of gravity. People don't try to find exceptions to that, at least not for long. -GTBacchus(talk) 21:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I would be interested. Do let me know. Newbyguesses - Talk 23:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm interested in that discussion too. I find your comment excellently wise, GTBacchus: .  I also very much liked this comment by you at WT:NPA:   --Coppertwig (talk) 03:33, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Speaking of things you said, GTBacchus: I had forgotten that it was you who had said it, but I wanted to thank the person who said the following because it contributed significantly to my shifting of perspective about Mikkalai: "Get to that place of understanding, and you'll find Mikkai already there.".  I found this comment baffling at first, but I pondered over it and now it makes sense.  I think I'm getting closer to that place of understanding.  Thank you for your wise words. --Coppertwig (talk) 16:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Provocation
Hi - I thought I'd reply to your comment from the RfC talk page here rather than clutter it further. Just by way of clarifying my remark on provocation, I was referring to Martinphi's commentary on the RfC page itself, particularly his description of Guy as The Most Abusive Admin Of All Time, trying to tweak Guy into defending himself when he's clearly made a decision not to , and suggesting that the death of Guy's father is not an excuse because it "occurred over a month ago" ). The last, in particular, I found deeply troubling, but I chose not to address it at the time since the RfC has generally been making very good progress and I didn't see a way to do so without derailing it substantially.

My point was that Martin has a long-standing dislike of Guy; he's shown up at a time when Guy is down and is making comments which I construe as attempts to provoke Guy; and he has a long history of being deliberately provocative. I've never been RfC'd, but I can imagine that it is a highly stressful experience at the best of times and that angry defensiveness would be most peoples' gut reaction. RfC shouldn't be about kicking someone you dislike while they're down - it should be about giving the subject a clear indication of how the community views their conduct and suggestions for improvement. Lest you think I'm just being sympathetic to Guy here, I believe I took the same tack about a year ago at Martinphi's RfC. Guy is provokable - that's never been in doubt - and it bothers me to see what I view as an attempt to do just that when the RfC has run along surprisingly constructive lines thus far. That's where my comment was coming from, though I obviously did a poor job of explaining it and perhaps it ought never to have been made in the first place.

I don't know that I have any particular influence over what Guy does, but I'd like to be more active in providing him with feedback and suggestions when he's nearing or crossing the line. That's certainly going to be part of helping him here. Another part of helping him, though, would be to have a word with people who have come just to poke him with a stick and see if he'll snap. Maybe I'm reading Martinphi's actions incorrectly, but as I was lamely alluding to, they're not occurring in a vacuum.

Anyhow, that turned out longer than I intended, but its purpose was to provide some context for my comments in a venue more appropriate than the RfC. I was serious when I agreed that my approach on that thread was on balance unconstructive, but I felt the need to explain a bit further. MastCell Talk 20:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Admin coaching
Hi GTBacchus, i noticed that your name was on the list of active coaches for admin coaching at Admin coaching/Status. The project as I understand can work where the coach finds the student or the other way around. And I was wanering if you would be interested (and had the time) to be my coach to help me become and administator. If you could that would be great! Thanks Hatmatbbat10 Talk to me 20:28, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, Hatmatbbat10. Thanks for dropping by, and for your vote of confidence in asking me to help you become an administrator. As I guess you can tell from the coaching page, I haven't been signed up there long, and you're the first to ask me for coaching. Being new to this, I'm not sure if there's a regular procedure to follow, but I'm probably more comfortable working without one anyway. If you're ok with that, then I'm happy enough to accept you as my first coachee. I've looked briefly over your contributions, and you seem to be a good editor, so why not see whether you can contribute as an administrator as well? I'd probably like to start by asking you some questions, to get a sense of what you want from the coaching experience, but first I think I should let you ask me any questions you may have about myself, or about my experience as a Wikipedian and as an admin. We could set up a separate page for communication, if you like, or I'd be happy using whichever talk pages seem convenient. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes I would like for you to be my coach. I was just hoping I could get somebody to help me and you sound like you could help me a lot. Right now I can't think of any questions to ask, I havn't really looked at your userpage to find out much about you yet. For a place to talk, I guess we could set up a subpage on either mine or yours for admin coaching. I'm looking foward to getting to work with you soon. Thanks again Hatmatbbat10 Talk to me 21:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh and by the way I think you need to go to the Admin coaching page and say that you've matched my request. Hatmatbbat10 Talk to me 21:07, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I've updated the page, and I've left you a couple of questions at User talk:Hatmatbbat10/Coaching. -GTBacchus(talk) 07:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

RE Coaching status page.
Yes, if he has accepted your offer and you are now his coach go ahead and delete the row.Balloonman (talk) 23:01, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Heh
Thanks for clarifying that, I knew we were on the same page! Dreadstar †  21:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

A POV-pushing situation
Per your kind offer at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/JzG2, I bought my response here so as not to get the RFC farther off track. SA is involved with these. Please forgive me if you are aware of this.

Atropa belladonna would be a good article to start with. There has been an issue with how much weight to give homeopathic usage of belladonna for about a month and a half or more starting about here. It could be longer as I came to the article after the start of the argument. One group believes a sentence or so from RS should be included about homeopathic usage, and another group none unless an RS can be found to state specifically how prominent homeopathy is in regard to use of the plant. The issue has been to RSN, NPOV/N, WikiProject Plants, , , and maybe other places I don't know about. This is one of many plant articles where the debate is happening, but the only one I have been involved with. It is a subset of the Homeopathy article debate (which I have very little interest in) where probation started, but that does not seem effective to me. It is, in turn, a partial subset of what has been termed by some SPOV vs NPOV, and there is going to be a debate by User:Martinphi and User:ScienceApologist concerning science-related articles on Wikipedia. Anyway, any help in resolving these issues would be appreciated (by myself anyway) as I see it causing a lot of extra drama and effort in an increasing number of affected articles. Thanks. Ward20 (talk) 04:10, 12 March 2008 (UTC)Ward20 (talk) 04:25, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll have a look. I can't guarantee it will be today or tomorrow, but as soon as I have some good wiki time, this is on my list. Thanks for the links and the briefing. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:33, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

You could drop in on EVP. If you decide to, leave me a message, ok? —— Martinphi    ☎ Ψ Φ —— 04:13, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Parsnips and butter
You may already know about the phrase, but just in case:. Dreadstar †  23:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

"Assertiveness" and "Professionalism" vs "Civility"
Perhaps the debate should focus on the words "assertiveness" and "professionalism" rather than "civility". It seems that many editors seem to confuse "civility" with "meekness" or "weakness", and that may be at the root of the disconnect here. Tell them to be civil and they think you're telling them to back off and give up.

Assertiveness does not imply weakness, and there's plenty of documentation on the relative merits of assertiveness vs aggressiveness (see, for example: ). Assertiveness is about getting your point across without aggression, and implies both strength and civility.

I also believe "professionalism" might be a better term to describe what you're advocating. Again, professionalism implies civility, but it's weightier so that people will not confuse it with weakness.

Perhaps an essay could clarify this? "Be Assertive, not Aggressive", or "Act like a Professional"? ATren (talk) 20:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've tried to couch the matter in terms of "professionalism" before, and that seems to work to an extent. I like the idea about distinguishing assertiveness from aggressiveness. It's certainly possible to be assertive without making personal remarks or displaying aggression. Thanks for the thoughts. -GTBacchus(talk) 21:17, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's a great suggestion. I'd love to see the sort of essay you could write along these lines. If you don't maybe I will. --John (talk) 21:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I hate to chime in a month late, but I'm reminded of the phrase sometimes seen on the shirts of security at rock concerts, "Polite But Firm" and think it quite apropos. --Dragon695 (talk) 09:32, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Suggestion, you might consider copying this whole section to Wikipedia talk:Call a spade a spade. Ward20 (talk) 04:04, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I guess we were talking past each other
So I guess I never really got the thread of what it was we were actually talking about from your perspective in regards to WP:SPADE. Perhaps I was talking more in term of theory, and you were talking more in terms of practicality. In truth, there's exactly one editor in the past year I've ever felt the need to be frank and honest about their tenacious editing habits -- and he's quite possibly become a better editor since I've last interacted with him. And I think you are right, based on a cursory reading of WP:CIV that as things stand my complaining about him -- name calling if you if will -- probably would not even now be a block-able offense. But it's still not a road I'd want to start down. I don't know User:Dreadstar at all, but when an editor uses an RFC on one talk page to ultimately change the contents of a different (and higher ranking) WP-space page, as Dreadstar has done with WP:CIV, and doesn't understand why that's not really kosher per WP:BURO, and then tries to start rewriting one of our communities long standing essays based on that RFC twice removed, I quickly get frustrated and wary. A few flakes working together can quickly cause an avalanche, as they say, so I've been overall disappointed in your contention that this push to limit certain kinds of user speech -- that I believe, again, is in the interest of the project as a whole, i.e. being free to WP:Call a spade a spade -- is simply a snowball rolling downhill, and somehow that's going to be the end of it. But then again, you are talking to someone who's favorite poem is First they came..., so I'm rather reactionary when it comes to throwing up the barricades. Exactly how quick things go from not being able to call a WP:TE editor as such, to not being able to suggest any likeness to a hypothetical TE editor's behavior, to not being able to give any meaningful caution to third parties or second hand criticism at all I believe is a very, very short path. Like you, I absolutely appreciate the civil nature of discourse on the project; having been online for twenty years now, it's rather refreshing. I participate on exactly one other internet forum, where the standard welcome for the typical new user making the typically brain-dead newbie post, is to express your wish that they might die a horrible death in a grease fire. Although, as this response is tiring to type out fully several times a day, in the past six months or so this is most often expressed in checkbox ([ ]/[x]) form. Only yesterday, as we were having our high minded discussion on Wikipedia civility, someone at Two Plus Two suggested that perhaps it might be worth designing a plug-in to express the sentiment, such that typing all that out would not even be necessary. So I appreciate the kind of "decompression chamber" the typical internet user needs to go through to become a good wikipedian. I don't think we should set our standards so high, we end up not giving new editors a fair shake. But, as of checking my snail mail this evening, wherein the Harvard Extension School informed me that (a) I've been officially accepted into the master's program, but that (b) I have all of 3 1/2 months to do a thesis from scratch before being thrown back out, my life just became one of those insane road trip movies. So, here I come. I just don't want the project to look too much like Nineteen Eighty-Four by the time I get back, taken over by bad oops, I mean, double plus ungood editors. I know internet culture is generally resilient over the long term so far, but based on the rest of the internet, we're quite far from that already in a good way. We need to strike some balance in between that and... well, let's not be the part of the internet to find out what the opposite of that is. There's too much at stake. Good luck! -- Kendrick7talk 05:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the message, and congratulations on your acceptance to the Harvard Extension School! I think we won't turn into an Orwellian nightmare so quickly. You can trust that there are at least a handful of sane people keeping an eye out for that. It turns out that, even in the current context, nobody is arguing for prohibitions on name-calling, enforced by blocks, while NPOV problems become harder and harder to talk about. I realize that's what some people seemed worried about, but I think that worry is based on misunderstanding the position being advanced. On both sides of the fence, what we want to be able to deal with problem editors effectively and efficiently. We're not going to hamstring or shackle anyone, and we're also going to teach better methods than the "Bad Doggy WHAP!" school of conflict resolution. The result will be stronger neutrality, verifiablity and non-originality policies, not weaker ones that have somehow been hobbled to make way for civility. We know not to push in that direction. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:20, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Aren't we really all worried about the same phenomenon? Some of our best admins being RFCed and RFAred for civility issues? Some think the admins in question should change their behaviour, and some think it shouldn't be so easy to bother them for superficial things. Perhaps these responses aren't mutually exclusive, after all. In any case congratulations, and happy writing! --Hans Adler (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry you are wrong
about homeopathy and in fact all alternative medicine areas and most WP:FRINGE areas. The system has decided that CIVIL is more important than all else, and disagreeing with the FRINGE is unCIVIL or even wanting an article to satisfy NPOV is unCIVIL. If you want to try to fix this, go ahead. It is suicidal, from what I have seen.--Filll (talk) 23:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What is "the system"? Have you been blocked for supposed incivility? What is "suicide" in this context? Why bother warning me? -GTBacchus(talk) 23:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: Admin training
Woops! How could I possibly miss that, of all states... my father grew up there. Thanks!

And yes, I appreciate your input too - I agree that we have to find better ways of combating these issues than frustrated vulgarity.

Perhaps we can work on gathering a group together to help educate administrators - as soon as they get their bit - on means of conflict resolution, calling for backup, attracting broader attention (and from the right people) to an issue, dealing with troublesome/difficult/impossible editors, when to consider something a true emergency and act appropriately (libel on a BLP) and when to step back, bring in help and other such issues.

Yes, yes, I know, technically admins aren't supposed to be more than regular users with a mop... but that mop is powerful. That mop has the power to righteously expunge attack trash, or to wrongly block a user who just made a slight mistake. It makes the person who has that mop a symbol of authority, whether we want to admit it or not. It will put that person in a position to help or hurt the encyclopedia far more than the average non-bitted user. It will make that person a target, if he or she uses that mop in the conflict-ridden parts of the encyclopedia.

It boggles me that we give these people the tools and don't tell them, beyond the most basic and obvious, how to and when to use them appropriately.

Administrator College or something.

Just my thoughts. FCYTravis (talk) 23:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You know, there's a happy bit of timing going on here. I've just been approached in the past week by researchers from a University who are studying Wikipedia, from a variety of angles. The person I met with so far is developing accessibility software, and he put me in touch with someone who's been studying conflict on Wikipedia. I should be meeting with him soon... I like your idea, WP:COLLEGE. Something like that. Or maybe different from that, who knows? I think it boils down to a few essential principles, and most problems can be solved, if not obviated completely, by sticking to a few rules of thumb. Writing down those thumbs could make it much easier to educate admins, and to refine the principles themselves, as we gain experience working with them explicitly. We could also be guided, to whatever extent we find helpful, by parallel academic research, which is apparently already in progress. How does one begin something like an admin college; in a sandbox somewhere? -GTBacchus(talk) 00:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think in Wikispace, we can just stick ideas up, put a "proposed" tag on it, and go. FCYTravis (talk) 00:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * If you want to do something like this, I think you need to stay clear of any admin elitism or otherwise closed structures. Perhaps a WikiProject like WP:ADCO, WP:KIND or WP:WPVS would make sense for this. Hans Adler (talk) 00:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I also note that Administrators' how-to guide and New admin school already exist. I don't reckon I'd ever heard of either. Can we use structures that are already in place, rather than starting from scratch? -GTBacchus(talk) 00:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I didn't know we had WP:NAS either. I reckon we can take NAS and run with it. Right now, it's "how to click the block button." We need "when to click the block button," "how to respond to POV warriors," "getting help resolving a conflict," etc. FCYTravis (talk) 00:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Heck yeah. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's elitism to say that this is directed at our administrator corps. The crux of the issue, to me, is that we give people admin bits and don't help them understand how to use them effectively and appropriately. We don't give them a support structure, we don't give them training, we don't give them the titanium-plated mindset to deal with trolls... and then we end up with administrators who burn out, who lash out, who do the right thing but in the wrong ways, like Guy. FCYTravis (talk) 00:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Aren't good admin conflict resolution skills also applicable by non-admins? Most conflict resolution doesn't involve much use of the buttons, does it? I like the idea of some kind of DR training program, which could be available for any user, recommended as a prerequisite for adminship, and maybe sometimes required by ArbCom as a part of some remedy. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we can recruit Zenwhat as a trainer? --Hans Adler (talk) 00:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I sense a double standard here. If it's elitist to direct something at administrators, how can it be appropriate to hold administrators to different standards than regular users?
 * The Wikipedia community has spoken - it wants its admins to adhere to higher standards than the rest of the community. That's fine. But I don't think that it's then elitist to aim a project at helping those admins uphold those higher standards.
 * I did not intend to say that this would only be open to administrators - only that it would be clearly aimed at helping admins - and those who wish to become admins - do their thing in an appropriate, effective manner. This is particularly relevant for those administrators - and we need more of them - who get involved in the conflict-ridden parts of the encyclopedia; stopping POV-pushers, patrolling BLPs, etc. FCYTravis (talk) 00:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it's not a double standard, just wildly varying opinions. Some feel that everybody who is unlikely to "abuse the tools" should get them. Some believe that you need to contribute to several featured articles, fight valiantly in the vandal wars and take a vow of chastity to become an admin. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I suspect we're in broad agreement. WP:NAS is already set up, and unless people think that it's elitist (Hans?), we can use it as is. If the name bothers people, then we'll get a new name for it. The point is that it's a place containing good advice on how to deal with difficult situations that admins often handle. Naturally, that advice is available to anyone, whether they be an admin, an admin candidate, a brand new user, or whoever. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * And I think we can emphasize the "admin candidate" aspect; I don't disagree that it would be a good thing to have a broader group of people using the tools, and if we encourage and help people do this, it might encourage more people to apply and more people to pass. Admin Candidate School? Or is that too... militaristic? :) FCYTravis (talk) 01:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * We've got Admin coaching already, as well as WikiProject on Adminship/Training. They're tagged to merge. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Let's see if we can figure out a structure that achieves these goals. Keep the "New Admin School" stuff as-is, essentially as the "how-to" guide for button-pushing. Open an "Admin Candidate School" page with the "when to" guide for button-pushing, and a "Dispute Resolution Academy" for skills which can broadly be applied not just to admins, but for all editors. Include Admin coaching under the umbrella. FCYTravis (talk) 01:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * We have to look at the encyclopedia as it is. Only a selected subset get the tools. We have to stop pretending there is no difference between administrators and regular editors. There is a difference. It exists. End of story. That doesn't mean admins are overlords, it means they have different - and much more powerful - tools than regular users. Regular editors get all sorts of chances to misuse and screw up editorial tools; one bad screwup by an admin with his/her tools can easily mean RfC, ArbCom, desysopping or worse. That's the way it is.
 * Admins are under a microscope these days, and I believe that's one of the reasons so few are willing to take on the really tough tasks. It's thankless, time-consuming, stressful, opens you to potential off-Wiki abuse and can deal with extremely sensitive issues. It's very easy to feel isolated doing this stuff, until/unless you get to know the other people who choose to dive in.
 * That's why I understand how Guy got to where he is. He has supported me, and I in turn supported him, on many of these issues. Sans the mutual support, you can very easily get to the breaking point. We need to help people find support. FCYTravis (talk) 00:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * (EC) Similar to my position about WP:SPADE, my position about the code of honour for admins is: Judge yourself by the highest standard, others by the lowest. I am not bothered about elitism, I just felt others might be. Starting at WP:NAS sounds like a good idea, it can always be renamed or split later. Good night! --Hans Adler (talk) 01:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

← (Sorry to butt in) Why not go with "Conflict resolution training", or something that's not admin-specific? After all, non-admins get into conflicts as often as admins, and the same skill set would presumably apply. The most challenging and frustrating conflicts I've been involved in all occurred before I became an admin. Undoubtedly there are some admin-specific wrinkles, and admins are and should be held to higher standard and would certainly benefit from these skills, but in the end they'd be much more widely applicable. I think part of the problem with homeopathy et al. is that both sides want "admins" to sort it out. If conflict resolution at all levels were more highly prized, then admins wouldn't always be in the position of playing referee or bouncer. MastCell Talk 21:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Research into conflict resolution on Wikipedia
Please see this homepage of a University of Washington researcher who is working on studying conflicts on Wikipedia. I've read one of his papers already, and we're scheduling a face-to-face meeting for later this week. I'm encouraged that certain dispute-resolution principles are already receiving empirical support as to their effectiveness, and I'm hoping to see more research in that direction. If we could show empirically that certain behaviors tend to lower or raise the temperature, we'll be in a very good position to design strategies for handling conflicts. -GTBacchus(talk) 23:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * WOW! That's very cool. Could you also post to WT:MEDCAB and keep that project updated on your progress? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, he should at least submit a paper to Wikimania 2008. Worst case he gets a free trip to Egypt? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:31, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll definitely pass that suggestion along. Oh, he's User:Leafman, too. Now I'm off to leave a note with MEDCAB... -GTBacchus(talk) 01:58, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you very much. --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Techniques
You might be interested in my draft of some techniques that seemed to have worked in a very contentious area. Unfortunately, these techniques are not working so well in other areas yet.--Filll (talk) 01:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Filll, I think that's a great start. I think you enunciate a lot of very useful principles there. What, do you think, is different about an area where you're not seeing the same method work? -GTBacchus(talk) 03:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Well I think there are some differences. First, alternative medicine is a profession for many who are here on Wikipedia as editors. And they are quite upset at NPOV and similar policies which I think they view as a personal attack and an attack on  their careers and livelihoods. Although there are people who make creationism a career,  there are fewer of them than alternative medicine practitioners, probably. And we have had fewer professional creationists on Wikipedia as editors than alternative medicine practitioners. Also, there is not the same sort of organized opposition to alternative medicine because they have not been trying to replace regular medicine with alternative medicine in schools. Also, many current practices in regular medicine were alternative medicine at one time, and studies of efficacy are not always so clear cut; it takes a very carefully done study to show a huge difference because of placebo effects etc. There is a history of allopathic medicine stomping out other forms of medicine, and this does not help with the atmosphere or attitudes. Although I have been slowly trying to encourage a suite of articles on homeopathy as we have in the evolution-creationism area, we are not very far along. Having more articles exploring different parts of the subject and controversy can diffuse and defuse the trouble a lot. I believe that in addition to the main homeopathy article we should:
 * have an article on the main homeopathic remedies (which I had restored) and a mutual agreement on how many of these we will give their own articles or their own sections in other articles. I have suggested about 50 on plants, 50 on minerals, 50 on remedies from animals, 50 on  chemicals. I have also suggested trying to limit by agreement the number of homeopathic "miniarticles" in biographies of people who tried homeopathy or who might have tried homeopathy. This will allow us to cover the subject, but control it. These offers to compromise so far have been soundly rejected, over and over and over.
 * a separate article on homeopathic prevalence around the world. This material clogs up the main article, is sort of boring, and could be more fleshed out in a subsiduary article. For example, homeopathic products form only 0.3% of the worldwide pharmaceutical market, but this is not addressed in the main article. If we have careful documentation for its FRINGE nature, we can answer this and put it to bed.
 * A more advanced article on homeopathic scales, giving careful comparisons to standard chemistry. I am working on such an article in a sandbox with Peter Morrell, a famous homeopathic scholar. This will clear up a lot of confusion about their scales and really nail down the dilutions and the language and at what point they dilute past having a single molecule of active substance left in the preparation.
 * An article that is focussed just on the scientific tests on both sides. Over the last 8 months or more, both sides have hit each other with a firestorm of hundreds of studies, many of them multiple times. We need to channel this energy and capture this information, organize it and present it. There is not room in the main article for more than a very simple summary.
 * In addition, homeopathy is under probation. As a result, we cannot be as aggressive as we were in the evolution and creationism area. I think removing repeated comments might get a person blocked for example. Also, I believe some admins are rooting for the underdog, the poor downtrodden alternative medicine group. And CIVIL is now a fairly useful weapon for them, which was not the case a year or two ago for the creationists. I am far more cautious and careful about even disagreeing with them since disagreeing has been viewed as unCIVIL. NPOV is not being enforced; a clear message to the malcontents is not being sent that we will have NPOV whether they like it or not. They believe that if they argue hard enough and long enough, the definition of NPOV will be changed, or they will get an exception from it.--Filll (talk) 14:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Another daughter article might be on connections of homeopathy with religion. Some view it as satanism and the work of the devil. Some view it as tapping into some sort of spiritualism. We could also have a subsiduary article exploring more of the details of the energy field, and connections to other "energy fields" or the ether.--Filll (talk) 14:19, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Other useful articles in the area that should be improved include placebo and clinical trial. As can be seen from the Raymond Arritt Expert Withdrawal pages, there is a group forming to rewrite and clean up placebo: . The placebo effect is one of the most interesting and mysterious factors here, and although homeopaths reject it, it really is intriguing. It is a way to encourage the body to heal itself. If we could find a way to reliably tap into this, it would be a huge advance. Hormesis, Nocebo and Arndt-Schulz rule could also be improved a bit. Other related articles like Water memory might also be improved.--Filll (talk) 15:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * There's a lot to think about there. One reply I can give you, is that people using the civility policy is a weapon is nothing to fear. That can be stopped in its tracks every time by applying the right strategy, so we do not have to tolerate any uncivil use of WP:CIVIL. Note how far that personal attack accusation on your talk page got - nobody believes it, because you didn't attack anybody. You can float right above such mudslinging, as long as you keep your own hands mud-free. I really like your ideas about splitting off daughter articles; let's work on that. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Please put this on the Talk:Homeopathy Page and mention it is posted by me
Dear Tony, Please put this on the Talk:Homeopathy Page and mention it is posted by me (or else the others may think I've bribed you); I'm not yet able to post there directly myself because the Page is semi-writeprotected. Here are some of the studies/clinical trials:-

 KEY: BT = Biomedical Therapy BM = Biologische Medizin FKM = Forschung Komplementär Medizin

Ramaanand (talk) 02:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)Dr.Jhingadé

Um... can you give me some context? I hardly know what you've just dropped on my talk page. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Does anybody know how to put the above table into a collapsible box thingy? I'd like to keep it here, but scrolling all the way past it is annoying. Thanks in advance if someone can make it zip up. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:45, 17 March 2008 (UTC
 * I think I did it. You can use hidden begin and hidden end to bookend it and it will collapse. Hope that's OK. MastCell Talk 21:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's brilliant; thank you very much. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't see the little "show" button (to uncollapse the text), for some reason - never had that happen before. Maybe it's my browser. MastCell Talk 23:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Works fine from this end. -GTBacchus(talk) 23:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy (1)
I see you've begun dabbling at Homeopathy. Just a friendly warning -- that way lies madness. I couldn't stand it any more and quit editing the article a couple of months ago, though I look in on it occasionally. Raymond Arritt (talk) 18:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm dabbling there in direct response to people at Requests for comment/JzG2. The claim has been made repeatedly that those arguing for greater civility aren't sufficiently aware of the conditions that drive other editors to incivility. The word seems to be "stop complaining and get down in the trenches, so I'm getting in. I hope to make an empirical case for what I believe to be effective dispute resolution techniques, and I'm hoping we can create some kind of structure to discover and write down good rules of thumb for handling such situations. See the above section: . Nevertheless, thanks for the warning, and I would certainly welcome any pointers you can give me for navigating what seems to be quite the minefield. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Looking more closely this might be a safe time to get involved in homeopathy. One of the worst offenders has begun a six-month topic ban and another has been inactive for a week or so (whether in response to the topic ban of his comrade, or for some other reason). If it goes pear-shaped again I'll book us a double room at the funny farm. Raymond Arritt (talk) 20:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * No, expect different results this time. It seems to me there are some tricks that haven't yet been tried. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I note that one of those who is upset on the homeopathy talk pages has just declared that he thinks the current article is awful and violates NPOV: . Of course, when we have tried, hundreds of times to describe what NPOV is, somehow they accidently or intentionally never absorb the definition. I have wondered if we should rewrite the documents that describe NPOV to make the policy more clear. Should there be exams of the concept? More examples? It just gets very very tiresome to explain it over and over and over to someone who has had it explained to them 300 times previously and still continues to ignore what they have been told.--Filll (talk) 02:40, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What helps me in such situations is to imagine working together with my grandmother on an article like same-sex marriage. The concept of NPOV is problematic because it is based on our experiences, and I am afraid neither side can solve the problem by "educating" the other. --Hans Adler (talk) 02:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What helps me (sometimes) is to think that anyone editing Wikipedia might be someone I know (family or close friends). Replace this with anything that fits for you. The point, of course, being to humanise the person behind the screen. Try and explain things to them as you would to anyone else, and to someone in the same room as you, not on the other side of the world (or the next street over, or whatever). Carcharoth (talk) 15:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately in my case, my parents both ridiculed homeopathy the entire time I grew up. They would take every opportunity to point out how ridiculous it was.--Filll (talk) 15:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps not a very wise thing to do, to spoil the placebo effect of provably harmless medicine for one's child… Having learned about your COI, here is mine: My mother is a nurse and very open-minded (i.e. not believing either way) about these things. Some years ago, when my GP prescribed me a homeopathic combination drug against hayfever, I thought it has a chance to help because I know that in my case there is a strong psychological component. And it did seem to work. My GP also had some funny "energy" apparatus which he said is surprisingly effective although he doesn't really believe in it. But that was too bogus for me. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * My mother is a nurse and a big believer in mainstream medicine. My father is an engineer, and a skeptic. I am willing to try herbal and nonstandard approaches, and have managed to convince my father to try some of those in recent years. I have tried homeopathic remedies without knowing they are homeopathic, because they are not always so clearly labelled in the United States, in all places. It is such a FRINGE belief in the US that few people even know what it is, and so packages of homeopathic remedies are not even necessarily prominently labeled as such.--Filll (talk) 18:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

A bit more information for you
I apologize if you read this before, since some of this is material that is in the homeopathy talk page archive. I believe the current weight to exposition and critical analysis is about right, give or take, and was the result of consensus previously of skeptics and homeopathy supporters. The translation of the French, German and Dutch LEADs show that all of these articles have a similar tone to our current article, if not more critical. I am told that the other European language homeopathy articles are of a similar nature by a friend who has a facility with them. This is relevant because these languages are associated with places where Homeopathy is supposedly far more popular and accepted than it is in the US and the UK. Also, homeopathy is definitely a FRINGE treatment by almost any measure:
 * the homeopathy share of world drug market is 0.3%
 * money spent per person on medical items in the US in 2004 is 5267$
 * money spent per person in the US on all herbals including homeopathy is 54$
 * there were 315 professional homeopaths in the US in 1993, but counting lay homeopaths (unlicensed), maybe over 1000 ( there were only 50-100 homeopaths in the US in the early 70s ) compared with 884,000 regular physicians in the US in 2006

Even in India, where about 15-20% of the medical professionals are homeopaths, homeopathy is 3rd or 4th behind regular medicine and ayurvedic medicine.

I have a request in to have the Hindi version of the homeopathy article translated into English so we can compare it. I also looked at the World Book and Funk and Wagnall's articles on homeopathy, and both of them were similar to ours, with about 1/3 or more quite skeptical and critical of homeopathy.--Filll (talk) 14:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I also have some references (I can get them for you) that show that in England, Germany, Switzerland, Holland and France, government health services are cutting back on support of homeopathy in the light of numerous repeated studies that showed it had minimal value. This has all erupted in the last handful of years, and might be driving some of the desperation we are witnessing on the talk page.--Filll (talk) 15:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I looked over the German and French versions. The French version has a completely unsourced Hahnemann quotation at the end, in incredibly poor French. I tried some obvious German search terms with Google and with a PDF version of the 6th edition "Organon", but couldn't locate the original German source for this, so I just gave up. To me this suggests that perhaps the French version is not the best one to base any changes on, although of course it provides some details that should be verifiable. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:14, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What I think we should draw from the German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish etc versions is the overall tone, rather than the details (like the lousy French translation of a German passage). The reason I decided to look at these was the claim that homeopathy is much more prominent in the countries represented by these versions, and more accepted. So I thought, let's see how they wrote their WP articles. And guess what? They were not written very differently than the English version, as far as I was able to tell. There is a substantial chunk of mainstream and critical material in each of these, contrary to the claims of our malcontents here.--Filll (talk) 17:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. As I have probably said several times I agree with the overall balance, and I think whatever we do we should keep it approximately at this level. However, I do hope that we can get the article into a state where everybody is content, if not happy, with it. Each POV seems to have accepted that the opposite one exists and needs to be represented in the article. It should be possible to represent each in such a way that its opponents aren't more offended than necessary. If this works, we won't have to refer to versions in other languages for justification.
 * Here are things that I really like about the other versions: The first sentence of the German lede is very elegant and summarises the most important point. The rest is outspoken but uses carefully neutral language, avoiding potentially problematic words such as "contend". And the French version mentions references to "homeopathic doses" in everyday language in a prominent way. I think we can use this in the lede. I will try to make a concrete suggestion later, and see what happens. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I would recommend
An "interview" on science and pseudoscience, enforcing CIVIL instead of NPOV and similar topics, to be published in the Signpost, is underway. You can watch some of the progress here.--Filll (talk) 18:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Very interesting; thank you! -GTBacchus(talk) 18:37, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Conflict resolution
I am really interested in the fact that you will dealing with and learning more about conflict resolution as you mentioned on the Expert withdrawal page. Although collaborative communities like Wikipedia are relatively new within the last 10 years or so.... conflict resolution is not, and my sense is that we don't have to reinvent the wheel here, and that there are multiple strategies for dealing with conflict .... although it will very interesting to hear what those who have studied Wikipedia specifically have to say. Anyway if there is a way for you to share this information here with other editors, I for one would be delighted. In my reading in the area of collaborative communities I find over and over the authors say that if a community can't become successfully collaborative in today's world they will fail, so this is an important step you are taking. Many thanks.(olive (talk) 15:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC))
 * Hi, Littleolive, thanks for dropping by. Your remark about not reinventing the wheel seems apt, but I've never studied conflict resolution formally, although I guess our article conflict resolution research is a start. I'm excited about learning more, and about applying whatever we can to disputes on Wikipedia. I'll be sure to bring this up with Leafman when we meet tomorrow; thanks again for the note. -GTBacchus(talk) 15:37, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

As I have suggested a few times, on the Expert Withdrawal pages and elsewhere, it would be nice to have some "permanent" pages, or project pages where we can share information and ideas, write reports and papers and have them available, organize research projects, be a point of contact for outside groups like that associated with Leafman, etc. Does anyone know how to start a project? And what should it be called? How about Wikipedia Institute? It would be nice to have a bland name and have different focus areas under it; conflict resolution is definitely one. Conflict and collaboration? I for one find that many ideas on Village Pump just disappear into the ether, much too quickly before anyone sees them. We could have membership as well where people who were interested could sign up. It would be a place to coordinate with those interested in statistics about WP as well. --Filll (talk) 16:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Seems pretty straightforward, really. If you have some specifics we can probably set something up, on- or off- wiki. A quick&dirty solution could be done in minutes. A more thoughtful solution might take a couple of days or longer, depending on what you see as the core task. --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Kim, would MEDCAB be a good structure under which to host a project on conflict resolution? -GTBacchus(talk) 06:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Although the MEDCAB might very well be suitable, I wonder if it might obscure its visibility to be attached to MEDCAB. This is especially true because I would like its purview to be broad enough to consider more than dispute resolution, although clearly dispute resolution is a very important part. I would like to have a place that encourages constant investigation into how we do things here, such as consideration of alternative and new methods and mechanisms for (1) sock puppet detection (2) RfAs (3) admin powers, vetting and certification of decisions, (4) content arbcomm and/or outside review (5)"finished" article locking (6) NPOV description clarification, training, etc (7) new admin and new editor training (8) guidelines or other ideas making it easier for admins to enforce NPOV, NOR,  RS, etc (8) evaluation of the proliferating noticeboards (9) collection of various statistics (10) a permanent version of the discussion at Raymond Arritt's Expert Withdrawal pages (11) interaction with outside research projects (12) assorted rankings and ratings of editors and admins (13) value estimation for admins and editors of various classes (14) documenting irrational or nonmainstream or FRINGE ideas and movements


 * The more ideas we can stimulate, the better. Most of the ideas will stink and be discarded of course, but some will bubble up and be judged worthy of further investment and testing. I would like to institutionalize the idea that we want to constantly be involved in process improvement.


 * Procedures that were fine when we were the 50th most popular website and had 100,000 or 500,000 articles are not as useful now as they were. When we had a community of editors that was a few thousand dedicated geeks things were very different than they are now. We are far larger and far more visible. And things will continue to evolve as we grow, and become more accepted and more visible. For example, assorted judicial systems in various countries have made pronouncements that WP is recommended as a suitable place to start legal research ! Can anyone imagine this happening 3 years ago?


 * Anyway, my preferred idea would be to give it some general name like Wikipedia Institute and have it as a project or something that appears semi-official. We can start out hosting this investigation of dispute resolution and controversial topic documentation. And hopefully add more interested editors and grow into all kinds of areas. Comments?--Filll (talk) 14:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It might be a good strategy to start with only a few aspects from your list, to get off the ground and avoid attracting too many wikilawyers. Your list makes sense, but it did remind me of a German word that is hard to translate. Maybe woolly laying dairy sow? --Hans Adler (talk) 15:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I just clicked that link, and downloaded that picture... whoo! :D Thank you, Hans. There's an expression in English about trying to be "all things to all people," (comes from the Bible) but that doesn't quite match what you're getting at. I think there is something, but it's not coming to me now. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I am glad you like the word. If you find a better translation that is actually idiomatic, you can submit it to dict.leo.org. Currently they suggest "all-in-one device suitable for every purpose". Google has more pictures, I like this one best. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Filll, it sounds as if you're talking about a kind of... wiki auditing project? A project that reviews various processes on Wikipedia and checks for effectiveness and efficiency? Is this what Kim's also talking about below, that could be hosted on, and study all the sister projects? -GTBacchus(talk) 20:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit of a lurker in these parts, having much respect for the conversations that go on (and yeah - being nosy too...!) - I've been plucking up the courage to ask you (GTB) if you might be interested in having a 'real world' conversation which anyone who wanted to could listen to - I've been supporting such initiatives over at NotTheWikipediaWeekly - and have piped up specifically at this point, because both your meeting, and these discussions are of great interest to me, and maybe others.... Filll has already signed up to take part in the project in general - but I wonder if I could persuade Kim and GTB to pop along to talk about some of this stuff? - I'll watch with interest regardless! best to all, Privatemusings (talk) 06:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the invitation, PM, that sounds like a cool project. It appears I'll have to acquire a microphone and a Skype account, but that doesn't sound prohibitively difficult. I'll work on it. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * A simple headset with microphone can be about 10 or 15 dollars. If you prefer just to listen and not talk, you can use your speakers (if you have speakers) and just send instant messages to the other participants. Skype of course is free.--Filll (talk) 20:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I'll talk with some people over time and see what I can come up with. I'm leaning towards a project on meta, and would like to point out that comparison between wikis (we have ~700) might be very enlightening. We also probably want to attract folks like User:Erik Zachte, for instance. --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok I will rely on your expertise. Meta might be the best place for it then. I am a neophyte in such things so I would not know the advantages and disadvantages of each option.--Filll (talk) 20:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Another useful thing about going with Meta is that different language Wikis have tried different approaches to some of these problems. For example, German Wikipedia (that we always seem to be comparing ourselves to), has much less tolerance for edit warring than we do, from what I understand.--Filll (talk) 20:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I wonder about dealing with anything, with this new project idea, that deals with judgment of any kind,  and so eventually hierarchy, rather than being a collecting place for information and discussion. New collaborative movements / environments tend to be non-hierarchical which has led to some interesting and powerful ideas and innovations. I know that Jimbo did not see Wikipedia as a hierarchical environment initially, although I don't know where he stands on this now, and saw admins as editors with tools, rather than an upper echelon of editor. I admire, and learn from many admins. whom I respect, I must admit, and most admins., I have had experience with are extremely knowledgeable. However, to deliberately begin to judge editors and admins., may create a highly subjective, artificial, and hierarchical situation that may be ant-evolutionary for a collaborative project like Wikipedia. Just a thought.(olive (talk) 22:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC))

As I said, most of those ideas are not worthwhile. And one should not expect otherwise. I would not want to do anything that could be used in a negative way. The idea is as you say; to be a repository for information and collaboration and brainstorming and as some sort of clearing house for connecting to the outside world. And I am glad to consider any input like what you are offering on any suggested or proposed activity or project.

However, suppose we find out that admins who never block anyone are 3 times more productive in terms of producing edits that are long term contributions, than those who block people? Suppose we find out that editors who are members of more than one language wiki are more productive than those who are members of only one? Suppose we find out that almost all anons from certain regions produce nothing but vandalism? I could think of literally thousands of potentially interesting and useful pieces of information we could get by studying WP editors and their patterns.

I would not used any of this information be used to create "classes of editors" or admins necessarily, however. I am on record as suggesting a Science Guild might be valuable, which is a sort of hierarchy I guess. All of the things I suggest are only suggested with an eye to improving the quality and efficiency of WP, and if they do not, they are not wanted.--Filll (talk) 22:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I guess that hierarchy could or would be created just with the accumulation of certain kinds of information. I actually wasn't suggesting that anyone would deliberately damage the 'pedia, but rather that once editors begin to be identified for particular attributes maybe the inevitable shift to hierarchy creeps in. Once its there I doubt it can be eradicated.  Probably more than anything its something to watch out for, and of course there other communities collaborative in nature that we can look at to see where their problems arose, and there is literature on the subject.(olive (talk) 23:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC))

I believe that the community is in some difficulty or danger now on a few fronts. And it might be valuable to understand them and study them and possible ways of resolving these difficulties, before it is overwhelmed and collapses. --Filll (talk) 23:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe growing pains... hopefully.... and understanding them can only make transitions easier and most productive.(olive (talk) 23:59, 20 March 2008 (UTC))

Ok, I just need to convince one person to help me out, so that there'll always be someone you can turn to for help, even if I'm busy. --Kim Bruning (talk) 12:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

... Getting there. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Kim has evil mind control powers, so I made a meta page to help explore these concepts: Dispute resolution analysis group. I hope to see you all there. Cheers! Vassyana (talk) 03:35, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

testing
Hello, I've been trying to post on the Talk:Homeopathy Page unsuccessfully. I read about the studies/clinical trials mentioned at the bottom of that Page (url:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Homeopathy/Selection_of_studies) which seem to be in favor of Homeopathy, but the main article says, "Claims for efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond the placebo effect are unsupported by scientific and clinical studies.[7][8][9][10] Meta-analyses of homeopathy, which compare the results of many studies, face difficulty in controlling for the combination of publication bias and the fact that most of these studies suffer from serious shortcomings in their methods.[11][12][13] The ideas behind homeopathy are scientifically implausible and directly opposed to fundamental principles of natural science and modern medicine.[14][15] The lack of convincing scientific evidence supporting its efficacy,[16] and its contradiction of basic scientific principles, have caused homeopathy to be regarded as pseudoscience[17] or quackery,[18][19][20] or in the words of a 1998 medical review, "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst."[21]." I think someone should correct the main article (url:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy), to read something like, 'There is scientific evidence that Homeopathy works......... Thank you, Jim


 * An interesting strategy. But I wonder if this is not more of the same?--Filll (talk) 16:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Huh? Um, Jim, what's keeping you from posting at Talk:Homeopathy? And Filll, could I get some feedback from you about those studies? Preferably at Talk:Homeopathy. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:41, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Talk:Homeopathy is semi-protected. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:58, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I see. Jim, can you get an account, or are you perhaps a banned user? You don't have to tell me if you are. I'm currently waiting to get feedback from more editors before I assume that those studies represent the consensus of mainstream science. Let's talk about the sources, and then we'll figure out what needs to be summarized and how. How does that sound? -GTBacchus(talk) 17:00, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well this is an example of what I would like to capture in a sandbox version of a potential fork, called something like Scientific investigation of homeopathy. I have watched similar things go on since at least last August, where hundreds of studies that supposedly prove or disprove homeopathy, or provide evidence for or against homeopathy are thrown around, repeatedly. And then many of the points claimed for these studies are discussed and dismissed as irrelevant. And then a week or two later, the same studies are bandied about again, with all the previous discussion forgotten. And this goes on over and over and over, with lots of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. There are many many megabytes of this in the talk archives of homeopathy. And I would like to harness some of this material and document it carefully, so we do not need to have the same discussions over and over, and continue to chase our tails around and around and around.--Filll (talk) 17:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. Why talk about the same studies over and over again? Let's make a page where that analysis lives permanently. Can you find places where the discussion has already happened, and copy them to somewhere central? -GTBacchus(talk) 17:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I was planning to start a draft article that others could then work on. I just have not done it yet. Anyone else would be welcome to start it, however.--Filll (talk) 17:45, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm not a banned user. Fill seems to be pretty well informed, so I'm going to leave everything to him and you. I hope you guys can change the main article at url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy, to something more neutral.Thanks,Jim —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.155.13 (talk) 16:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * That is a lie. This is indeed a banned user. . -- Fyslee / talk 04:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * We're working on it... -GTBacchus(talk) 16:06, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I see that you guys are working on the studies/clinical trials I posted about. I have collapsed it to the smallest size it could be collapsed to (besides correcting some mistakes in the earlier version):

Here are some of the studies/clinical trials:- STUDIES OF THE ACTIVITY OF HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINES  KEY: BT = Biomedical Therapy   BM = Biologische Medizin   FKM = Forschung Komplementär Medizin 


 * I would note that the material in the above collapsing box has been copied to Talk:Homeopathy/Selection of studies, which I believe is not protected. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:55, 23 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Be very careful. This is a banned user, and by helping him you are acting as the proxy of a banned user, a blockable offense. . -- Fyslee / talk 04:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't warn me. Block me, if you think it's a necessary preventative measure. Don't ever throw Wikipedia rules at me as if they're laws. -GTBacchus(talk) 10:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Question for self-improvement
Hey. I'm striving to make myself a better and more reasoned editor and admin, even when dealing with difficult situations. If you have just a few moments, could you look over my posts on Talk:Ashley Alexandra Dupré? Essentially, I stumbled on a situation with a Web site that isn't really a reliable source, and an SPA inserting and defending links to said Web site. My attempts to reason with the person went nowhere, so I posted a note on BLP/N and Guy's talk, went to sleep... woke up to an Godwin's Law ad-hominem attack from that user that Guy had already blocked for. Just want to see if you thought I could have done anything differently, so that I can improve if necessary.

Thanks much! FCYTravis (talk) 20:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi. This is a slightly weird time for me to be giving opinions on civility, as I suspect I didn't handle my recent conversation with the "expert withdrawal" people too well, but I'll give you my take on the situation, since you asked. For starters, I can see why you would object to the reliability of a source that runs a front page disclaimer that its management doesn't vouch for the accuracy of its contents (at that point, I think it's hardly rocket science). It's also pretty clear what's going on when suddenly they're bandying legal threats about, and talking about censorship, and there's the unmistakable smell of socks... (again, no advanced degrees required to see the lay of the land) I noticed in particular your comment here at AN: "The thing is, you have to have some word to describe a behavior which is inappropriate, and you have to use those words when calling attention to someone who may be engaging in that behavior." That's absolutely true. I find it helpful to make a distinction between describing the behavior, and applying any kind of label to the person. A user may be repeatedly adding links to non-reliable sources in violation of policy, but that can be said without using the word "spammer". The least respectful label I feel comfortable applying to someone here is "user"... even "editor" implies some level of productive contribution. If I can't call them an "editor" without feeling dishonest, I'll go with "user". It seems unlikely that such precautions would have somehow made the user in question into a productive editor, but it's not really any less efficient to just describe the behavior, which makes the reason for blocking pretty clear and uncontroversial. What we can still avoid, in such cases, is dealing with anyone's objection over possible incivility. We don't actually have to determine bad faith in order to block, we just have to identify disruption that's likely to continue if we don't block. This might be helpful: imagine your boss from work were drunk after a party or something, and you had to get them home. If not your boss, imagine a grandparent or parent or something. You might have to manage them, and even be forceful about certain things ("no, you may not drive"), but you would probably maintain a respectful and professional tone while doing it. You might be quite frustrated and upset, but not yet likely to call them a "drunk" or a "real pain in the ass", however accurate those labels might feel at the moment. It's a little bit like that. I dunno... does any of that make sense? -GTBacchus(talk) 02:50, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes... it does, and thanks for your thoughts. Something to chew on, and I'll probably have a more substantive response once I do that. FCYTravis (talk) 05:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: Chiropractic
I'll be honest here, I can't really talk much about this situation. It's not that I'm unwilling, but more that I've avoided Chiropractic-related articles like the plague, based on my initial impressions of them and what I've heard from others. I only have a vague idea of what the problems are, but I can talk to you about that, at least. Basically, the articles are heavily defended by chiropractors (seems to be a common problem, though here there are just too many of them). These chiropractors are extremely knowledgeable about Wikipedia and use this to get their way. I've heard more than a fair share of stories of inexperienced editors with an anti-Chiropractic POV who've been either driven off of Wikipedia, or at least those articles, as a result. You can see the state of the article for yourself. Despite the fact that Chiropractic is commonly considered quackery or pseudoscience and shows no evidence of efficacy beyond what physical therapy would give you (and that only in a couple of areas), the article reads like a promotional piece for it, with only a brief nod to the fact that it's controversial. --Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 21:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Just noting that I've just watchlisted Chiropractic myself to see how things are going there. If you want to try to work to improve the article, let me know and I'll do what I can to help out. --Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 17:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Here is what a section of the article was at the beginning of year. Now take a look at the same section. Seems something fishy is going on. And frankly, unless the Wikipedia community is prepared to make the changes that I think need to be made in order to transform Wikipedia into something that’s supportive of NPOV then things like this will continue. The scientific investigation section has been chopped into pieces because of consensus policy. Do you agree with consensus or NPOV? There seems to be a lot of civil POV pushing on Wikipedia.  Q ua ck Gu ru   22:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the links to the example, and for bumping this thread to the top of my attention. I'll have a look, and keep this article in mind as we develop tools for working on this type of problem. I'm not sure the intent of your question, whether I agree with consensus or NPOV. My answer is "yes, without question". -GTBacchus(talk) 22:32, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I do not understand your answer to the Consensus v. NPOV question. This is a perfect example of how consensus does = POV.  Q ua ck Gu ru   22:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Consensus is not supermajority. Consensus is defined as "all major concerns have been addressed". You clearly have major concerns which are not addressed, therefore there is no consensus. There is no conflict between actual consensus and NPOV. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * My concerns have been addressed at talk, and have been rejected. I am out now. And now we have consensus for POV. I am not going to continue going aounrd in circles. I have better things to do than reading wikilawyering nonsense at chiropractic talk. The current article is POV and has been POV for over 5 years. I do not see any reason why I should continue there.  Q ua ck Gu ru   22:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * What I'm saying is that's not consensus, and if people are passing it off as consensus, it's because there's not a large enough participation to reveal that it isn't really consensus. If you're not content with the way your concerns were addressed, then we have not yet found consensus. As for your not seeing why you should continue at Chiropractic, I won't presume to tell you where to direct your energy. Doing the same thing over and over is generally not recommended, so maybe another approach? In general, I think time spent arguing with one or two people would be better spent finding four or five more, uninvolved ones, but that's a very non-specific adage, and possibly not very helpful when you've already been on the case for so long. I'm quite hopeful about some discussion that's occurring about how to improve the way we handle articles on topics such as alternative medicine - I'll admit that, as a wiki and a community, we're not very good at it yet. I would also maintain that it's important for us to get good at it, and that it's with articles such as Chiropractic that we'll learn the most. I'm curious, you mentioned above some changes that you'd like to see made. What have you got in mind? -GTBacchus(talk) 22:54, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of changes. First, I want all the obsolete studies deleted. Second, I want to expand most of the article with the latest up to date scientific peer-reviewed sources. For example, I written original Wikipedian text, for a new cost-benefit section. I greatly expanded the movement toward science section. I improved numerous references using a formatted template. I expanded the lead of the scientiifc investigation section. I merged Effectiveness 1 and 2 together. Currently there is no effectiveness or cost-benefit section in the chiropractic article. If you want to review my changes, you would need to take a look at my deleted sandbox 4. You would have to go back to the history of my sandbox 4 and find the edit before I archived it. There are different versions I was working on. The current mainspace chiropractic article looks like a stub. My sandbox 4 chiropractic article was a mature version worthy of mainspace. Consensus runs afowl with my suggestions. I will not continue talking at chiro. Time to move on. Specifically as a first step towards NPOV, these sections are obsolete and newer studies exist. The Manga report and Workers' comp sections should be deleted ASAP. The lead for the scientific investigation should also be deleted ASAP. I have already written an expanded lead to the scientific investigation section and updated the movement towards science section which describes the Manga report in a historical way. The Manga report itself should be deleted. But some editors want to keep the obsolete Manga report and dated studies. Newer studies about the cost-effectiveness and risk-benefit of chiropractic exist and has been completed in my sandbox 4.  Q ua ck Gu ru   00:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * What is the root cause of disruption on Wikipedia? There are different forms of disruption. One type of disruption is deleting information from an article without a valid reason and ruleslawyering the talk page. If the text is restored, then it will be reverted as no consensus for no good reason. This kind of disruption happens everyday on Wikpedia. This disruption continues because no one is able to prevent it. Admins are unable to do anything about it. Thus, this type of disruption is encouraged because nothing is done to stop it. Do you have any suggestions on dealing with any of the NPOV problems inherent to Wikipedia. How can I improve an article and avoid getting reverted again.  Q ua ck Gu ru   08:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

NPOV parole template
I think it is about time for certain controversial articles to be under NPOV parole. Any editor making an NPOV violation edit can be identified and steps to can easily be taken to deal with the problem editors. Q ua ck Gu ru  23:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I would tend to support an article-based approach rather than an editor-based approach. Thus, I'm leery of a plan that talks about "identifying and dealing with problem editors". I tend to think that the best approach isn't based on identifying "bad guys", but I'm open to being shown wrong. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:49, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a draft of a proposal. The community can improve on my suggestion and hopefully start a new NPOV editing policy for problem articles to help work out differences and get uninvolved input.  Q ua ck Gu ru   19:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't tell whether or not you're responding to what I just said. I think an editor-based strategy is a mistake, but I'll be happy enough to see it tried in a real situation, while editors are paying close attention to what works and what doesn't. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I know we often fail to achieve NPOV, but why prohibit NPOV? o_O Very funny. Antelan talk  22:12, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure we're dealing with someone for whom English isn't a first language. I'll choose not to laugh at them, and if you're going to use my talk page to laugh at people for language mistakes, I'll thank you to leave. Constructive comments are always welcome; the other kind, never. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:15, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Given that QuackGuru and I have probably always been in agreement on any topic we've discussed, I thought my comment was obviously a gentle rub. I actually wrote an explanation of why I was chuckling, but then removed it because it would have killed the humor. Calm down and extend some good faith for a minute. Antelan talk  22:37, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * "Calm down and extend some good faith for a minute." Thanks for telling me what to do. Have you ever noticed how well that works, at de-escalating disputes? As for whether your comment was "obviously" a gentle rub, it "obviously" wasn't obvious to me. Do I know about your history with QuackGuru? No. So what's "obvious"? Thanks for the explanation, anyway. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:41, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, you're right; I should have said "I don't feel that you extended good faith to me." My wording, while expressing the same idea, was unhelpful. Antelan talk  22:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The template can be rewritten and improved. I encourage anyone to edit the template and propose a new NPOV policy.  Q ua ck Gu ru   01:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Please edit the article on Homeopathy
I think those studies/clinical trials are fine with you, so please edit the section in the article on Homeopathy which begins, "Claims for efficacy ...............quackery at worst" to, "There is scientific evidence that Homeopathy works                                         , but skeptics who haven't tried it, criticize it by saying that claims for efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond the placebo effect are scientifically implausible.
 * I was blocked for all the wrong reasons. Fyslee is repeatedly vandalizing your user talk page, so I think you should ban/block his I.P.


 * Don't lie to me. You're a banned user; don't say you're not. That's not how you get on someone's good side.
 * Don't tell me how to edit an article. I'm not going to make an article say what you want it to say unless I'm entirely convinced that such an edit is good. You insult me by assuming that I'm going to uncritically paste your suggested text into the article without discussing all available sources. Don't tell me how to edit.
 * Don't tell me to block someone. Don't misuse the word "vandalize". Anyone who believes that they're right thing is not vandalizing. That means you're not, and neither is Fyslee. I don't block people because some random person thinks I should. I would prefer that messages on my talk page not be removed by anyone, but I don't just block people; I talk with them.
 * Any questions? -GTBacchus(talk) 17:56, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry if my actions hurt you, but what do I do if I'm blocked for posting about the studies/clinical trials (agreed there were other things, but everyone pro-homeopathy on the Homeopathy page gets blocked easily, while on the Chiropractic page, everyone anti-Chiropractic gets blocked easily). Please discuss the accuracy/validity of the studies/clinical trials and come to a conclusion based on that, not what the skeptics who haven't even tried Homeopathy tell you (they're a majority there). Fyslee kept deleting things from your user talk page - I had to re-post things 3 times, so please talk to him. I again, humbly apologise for hurting you. I hope you can incorporate a mention of the studies/clinical trials in the main article and remove the allegation (made by a Nigerian journal) that Homeopathy is, "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst." Thank you.
 * I understand that it must be very frustrating to be blocked. We're discussing making a whole separate article for research related to homeopathy, so that might be a way to let people know about the research that's out there, without the need to summarize so much and give an unfair impression. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:15, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Bruning
I had a long talk last night with Kim Bruning. Bruning has clearly thought about these issues a huge amount, and has some information and links that are informative. He is working on setting up some sort of central location, or "Institute". I would love to start slowly collecting information on this issue and organizing and centralizing discussions there.--Filll (talk) 16:23, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds interesting. Could people keep me in the loop as well? Carcharoth (talk) 22:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Well as you might know from the stuff at Raymond Arritt's Expert Withdrawal pages, I am trying to see if I can get sufficient interest to organize a "Wikipedia Institute" where we could interact with outside investigators studying WP, host assorted whitepapers, have conversations about new ways to organize ourselves on WP, potential statistics collection projects, and experiments, etc. Of course, one of the first and most pressing areas to address is Conflict Resolution, and documentation of controversial topics. If you get a Skype account, it would be helpful (a headset costs about 10 or 15 dollars). --Filll (talk) 23:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Like Vassyana was saying in the previous section on this topic, he's just created Dispute resolution analysis group. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi. Sorry I've been out of the loop lately. Today was my 17th day in a row of work, and I haven't had as much time as I like for Wikipedia. I'm likely to meet with Leafman again soon, and I've gone ahead and signed up there on meta, but I won't really be back in the swing of things until next Tuesday. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC) Not that I should complain. I've met people who worked 17 thousand days in a row.
 * Oomf! Sounds like you need a day or two with some books and scotch (replace with your preferred downtime). No need for apologies if you're busy, there's no deadline and we'll all still be around next week (unless the zombie apocalypse happens first). :) Vassyana (talk) 05:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Proxy editing
Proxy editing for a blocked user isn't a good idea. I'm more than a little surprised that an admin would do that. Raymond Arritt (talk) 14:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Do you think I'm hurting Wikipedia, Raymond? I've noticed that you're rather critical of my words and actions lately. Are you unhappy with my involvement in the articles you edit? Do you think I'm doing something wrong, by trying to help work that situation towards resolution, or do you just disagree with how I'm doing that, or what? What's up? -GTBacchus(talk) 18:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, if that content is hurting Wikipedia, why haven't you deleted it? -GTBacchus(talk) 18:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * My impression is that proxy editing for blocked users is seen as undesirable, but maybe I'm wrong. Do you think it's OK to do so? Should we post a query at WP:AN to get broader input? I'd be interested in clarifying this point one way or the other. Raymond Arritt (talk) 18:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't think I'm proxy editing for a banned user. I'm not making edits for him to encyclopedia articles, and I explicitly told him above that I wouldn't make edits to the article on his say-so. Either way, I'm not really concerned with what a rule somewhere might or might not say, I'm concerned with whether or not the encyclopedia is improved (call it WP:IAR, if you like). Do you think my actions are hurting the encyclopedia? Are you willing to discuss putting an article together about research into homeopathy, or perhaps pointing out for the benefit of readers which studies refute those studies posted by the banned user? -GTBacchus(talk) 19:34, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It will be a lot of work. But I think that is the best way to capture all this energy people are wasting otherwise.--Filll (talk) 20:08, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * How do we start? Shall we begin by making a list of studies, and then start annotating it? What do you think? -GTBacchus(talk) 20:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure, start a list in a sandbox. There are just hundreds of these. I wanted to start with a sort of outline of text, but a list is fine too.--Filll (talk) 20:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Text is good. I'm just not in a position to write any until I'm a bit more familiar with the terrain. I am at work now, so I can't jump in with both feet until later today. When I start a page, I'll post a link here, or if you beat me to it, please do the same. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

← Just as an alternate perspective: sometimes an exhaustive list of primary-source journal articles is not the best starting point. For example, I could cite more than a dozen peer-reviewed, PubMed-indexed articles stating that HIV cannot possibly be the cause of AIDS. But it is. It's way too easy to mine primary sources like journal articles and arrive at a skewed impression of a topic. It might be more useful to start with reliable secondary sources, such as review articles, the Cochrane Library, position statements of major professional organizations (e.g. NIH/NCCAM), and so forth to get an overview of a topic. Just a suggestion - feel free to do with it what you wish. MastCell Talk 21:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * That sounds smart. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:05, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

G'day GTB (and other esteemed lurkers!)
I thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that the next recorded conversation in the NotTheWikipediaWeekly project is scheduled for tomorrow evening US time (00.00 UTC, March 26th) - and that any and all would be most welcome - do drop me a line if you'd like any technical help (although be prepared to be led by the blind!) - and it would be particularly interesting to hear all views both on the current practices (and success thereof) related to how the wiki deals with articles such as homeopathy - and also to hear any news of the developing 'conflict resolution' project mentioned above.... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 02:20, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Novak Djokovic
GTBacchus, I am a bit disturbed that you closed the move proposal at Talk:Novak Djokovic as move. Myself, I decided to participate instead of closing it because there was no consensus. The outcome of the discussion was 16 support, 12 oppose, I don't think there's much of an agreement there. I also don't agree with your rationale, I've also been working at WP:RM for a long time and if there's one thing there's no consensus is about the application (or not) of diacritics. Therefore, I believe that all related moves should only be approved when there's a clear consensus in the respective diacritical application. Not this case, in my opinion. Please review your closure, or perhaps contact a neutral administrator for a second opinion. Thank you. Regards, Hús  ö  nd  01:13, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for expressing your concern. I'll ask for review. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * See WP:AN. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I really appreciate your initiative for further feedback. Best regards, Hús  ö  nd  03:41, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

GTBacchus, what I see is that there was bigger majority in supporting use of diacritics in Wikipedia titles, than in moving this article. As an argument you say that "the community has been quite consistent about saying, when asked, that we follow established English usage". I would like to see some arguments for that. I was trying to find, but I found no proof for that. No other similar page was moved! Take a look at Kimi Räikkönen, Tomáš Berdych, Guillermo Cañas, Nông Đức Mạnh, etc. So I would say that neither of your arguments are not correct (community consistance and support in discussion). Or as a good will for this issue, as per your activity, you can request move for these pages also Dino Rađa, Srđan Lakić, Đakovo, Milko Đurovski, Duško Đurišić Regards, --Irić Igor -- Ирић Игор -- K♥S (talk) 07:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I can provide dozens of examples of page moves where we have consistently applied the rule of following the consensus of reliable sources. Please check back in a few hours when I've had the chance to find them, or you can look back through the history at WP:RM. Following the preponderance of sources is probably the most applied naming convention we deal with at requested moves. -GTBacchus(talk) 13:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Please note that initially the page was (in 2006) removed from Novak Djokovic to the Serbian version, without any discussion (see move history here). Hence, I think it is very peculiar that the burden of proof (i.e., gaining sufficient clear "majority") rests with those that actually want to keep the status quo of 2006. The current lack of consensus is, given the page's history, indeed an argument for keeping it at Novak Djokovic. There is no, and has never been, a consensus for moving it to "Novak Ðjoković" --HJensen, talk 17:01, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The lack of consensus is somewhat illusory, as we're only looking at a discussion involving a few people. There is actually a broad and long-standing consensus that, for our naming choices, we follow our sources' lead. Not everyone agrees with that, but it seems to be the most neutral solution to our naming questions. I'm still working on compiling statistics about past RMs where diacritics have been at issue. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:41, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Is there any progress on that list or statistics? Almost all pages about people in English Wikipedia I found either still use diacritics and non English name or move was never requested. I can bet that ratio between pages with diacritics and moved pages is more than 100:1! --Irić Igor -- Ирић Игор -- K♥S (talk) 16:52, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reminder. I've been very busy with work (soon to end as Spring break begins tomorrow, and then I'll be travelling until Tuesday). I've begun, though, by making a list of all the AfDs that I've personally closed: User:GTBacchus/RM closings. You're welcome to peruse that, but I still intend to compile some statistics regarding which naming convention was applied, how I closed, and whether it stuck. I'll work on that next week. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems that the last three moves I closed relating to diacritics in names were here, here and here. I'm working through the list slowly, which is actually very interesting. I'll probably put it all in a table and see what I can learn. I'm also checking with some other regular closers, to see whether community sentiment has been drifting away from the consensus I've learned about. If so, I'd like to know. -GTBacchus(talk) 09:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I have to say that I find this list of yours quite interesting.--Irić Igor -- Ирић Игор -- K♥S (talk) 10:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * How so? -GTBacchus(talk) 17:59, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I like systematic approaches to problems. First of all, your list showed me that there are pages that were also moved like Novak's. I asked couple of times, and I searched, but this is the first time I see that these pages exist. Secondly, I also started to create lists like you did. Take a look at User:Iricigor/diacritics. But as you can see my green list is much longer than red one. Plus at the end of green list is the list of lists. Just to sort those examples by "its weight", I divided them into categories. Its just that there are much, much more articles that do not follow "most common English name" guideline. I think that this is the area this discussion should go, not to repeat the same discussion on every article. Or at least involve some bigger group of editors, i.e. move some Spanish or Polish national hero's article. --Irić Igor -- Ирић Игор -- K♥S (talk) 17:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a very interesting page. I'm not sure you've established that there are many more articles not following WP:UE than following it. You've listed a few pages where diacritics are used in titles, and even fewer where they've been removed. There seem to be certain languages over which use of special letters has been especially contentious. One point to consider is that WP:UE does not say "don't use diacritics or non-English letters". It says use what most English sources use, and what most English speakers will most easily recognize. In some cases, that means to retain commonly used diacritics (e.g., Charlotte Brontë, Côte d'Ivoire), so casting the issue as pro-diacritics versus anti-diacritics isn't entirely accurate. I'm in favor of optimizing Wikipedia for general readers who speak English; that's very different from being against diacritics. I think your list shows that there are many instances where people have decided to ignore our naming conventions to keep a preferred version of a name. I don't see that the discussions you've linked to contain any reason for doing that other than preferring accuracy over other considerations. What I don't see is any critical discussion of why accuracy should be preferred over recognizability in these cases, when our naming convention policy explicitly says to prefer recognizability over accuracy, for explicit reasons. If that's not really our naming convention, then we should change what it says, and stop claiming to follow a rule we don't follow. I absolutely agree that we should bring the issue to a larger audience. Why don't we get a page of evidence in good shape, and then file a Request for comment? The discussion could be advertised at the Village pump and other appropriate places, and it could be hosted at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English) Does that sound like a good idea? -GTBacchus(talk) 20:41, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I have found another interesting example. São Paulo written without diacritics has 35.2 mil. English pages. On the other hand, with diacritics it is written only at 0.8 mil. pages (or 2%), according to Google search. Still, article has diacritics in title.

I absolutely agree that this topic should be moved to larger audience. I'll try to summarize ideas against and ideas pro, we can together evaluate it, and than ask correct question. I think most important topic at the moment is "what is the question"?

I am totaly against using local names when there are English. For example it should be Belgrade or Serbia. Also Communist Party, and not Parti communiste or Koministička partija (Serbian).

I am not absolutely sure that Wikipedia should use Novak Đoković. What I am sure is that most of the similar articles are written like that. Also, I see that it is written in guidelines (generally) that Wikipedia should not be written like that. Again also, I am not sure guidelines explained well this topic. But, I am sure that everyone can understand that São Paulo is Sao Paulo, Kimi Räikkönen is Kimi Raikkonen or Slobodan Milošević is Slobodan Milosevic. Anyway there should be redirection and opening line, for not to get confused. In this cases I would prefer to be accurate.

But what are the border cases? Can most of English readers recognize Đoković when they ask for Djokovic? Or if you ask for Nidhogg and get Níðhöggr?

Regards,--Irić Igor -- Ирић Игор -- K♥S (talk) 07:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Clearly stating the question sounds like a great idea, and I have to admit that it's not a trivial matter in this case. What occurs to me is that we wish to clarify our naming conventions regarding certain articles where a certain kind of dispute commonly arises. Simply stating the dispute involves talking a little bit about the Latin alphabet. English uses a certain version of the Latin alphabet, with 26 letters and very rare use of diacritics (the diaeresis being a notable exception, as in Charlotte Brontë). Many languages use versions of the Latin alphabet containing letters not found in the English alphabet, and many languages use diacritic marks that are not used in English. These two issues (non-English lettters and diacritics) are largely independent, but I think it's fair to say that we wish to address both. Our question is how we decide naming and usage when a subject's name is in a language that uses a Latin alphabet different from the one used in English. In particular, we're asking how to decide naming and usage when a subject's name contains non-English letters or diacritics, in a Latin alphabet. We specify that this issue arises with Latin alphabets, because in other cases, we have to use a Romanization anyway, so we just pick the one most commonly used in sources. It's the smaller differences among languages using slightly different Latin alphabets that gives rise to the controversies we see. We ask this question with our naming conventions in mind, considering whichever sections seem relevant. Naturally, we keep in mind that the conventions that exist are not set in stone, and that each decision is open to re-evaluation in the light of new examples or arguments. I think the relevant guidelines here are likely to be the ones most often cited. Certainly WP:UE and WP:COMMONNAME would make the list, and we ought to look at WP:NAME for general guidance. That last one is where we see the summary: "Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." Every one of our naming conventions is either an elucidation of that principle in some context, or it's an exception to that principle made for a good reason. Another principle often cited is the Principle of least astonishment. I suspect that what we're seeing in this case is that different people are astonished by different things. Someone unfamiliar with Novak Đoković's Serbian name might find unfamiliar letters and marks more astonishing if redirected to that page, while those familiar with his Serbian name might certainly find "Novak Djokovic" rather astonishing if redirected there. Anyway, does the above seem to contain a fair statement of the issue we're talking about? -GTBacchus(talk) 04:53, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Examples
The following five requests were made at once, citing WP:UE Now, all five parties were located at French names, but only three were actually moved to the English names, and everything was done in accordance with our naming conventions. We looked at sources in English, and found that those sources use the French names in two of the five cases, so those remained at the French names. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:58, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Parti communiste du Québec → Communist Party of Quebec
 * Nouveau Parti démocratique du Québec → New Democratic Party of Quebec
 * Parti rouge → Red Party (Canada)
 * Parti canadien → Canadian Party
 * Parti libéral du Québec → Quebec Liberal Party


 * Diacritics removed
 * Talk:Eoin MacNeill,
 * Talk:Malin Akerman
 * Talk:Iao Valley
 * Talk:Mexico State
 * Talk:Amer Delic
 * Talk:Reggaeton
 * Talk:Sara Ramírez (later moved back w/out discussion)
 * Talk:Fredi Bobic


 * Addition of diacritics failed
 * Talk:Vicente Fernandez (golfer)
 * Talk:Adelie Penguin


 * WP:UE cited successfully on non-diacritic issue
 * Talk:Johann van Beethoven


 * Examples of pages not using diacritics (from Administrators' noticeboard/Archive135)
 * Devanagari (not Devanāgarī)
 * Grossglockner (not Großglockner)
 * Michael Gross (not Michael Groß)
 * Namdaemun (not Sungnyemun)
 * Egyptian pound (not Egyptian gineih)
 * Marie Curie (not Marie Skłodowska-Curie)
 * Franz Josef Strauss (not Franz Josef Strauß)
 * Hisarlik (not Hisarlık)
 * Waikiki (not Waikīkī)
 * Duchy of Oels (not Duchy of Oleśnica)

Over the top enforcement of CIVIL
Against ScienceApologist and an RfC against Malleus. See here.--Filll (talk) 18:49, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm already there. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:50, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, I have to teach a class now. Back in an hour. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:51, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Circle Redirect
I suppose I ought to have done more research... my initial assumption was a plain old mistake when I noticed the Circle redirect, I hadn't realized it was an argument. I left a message on the Talk page of the english spelling to correct me if I picked the wrong one. Please feel free to repair my error. Good luck in the consensus. Matthew Glennon (talk) 20:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * No worries; thanks. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Quote
"The winner of an edit war is the one who stops reverting first." I liked this quote of yours. Enough to add it to my user page. Cheers. - Chardish (talk) 05:47, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. :) The sentiment is not original, but I'll accept authorship for that particular version of it. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:49, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I added it to my user page, too.  I now have four GTBacchus quotes – three more than the greatest number of quotes by any other individual on my user page. As a GTBacchus fan, I've watchlisted homeopathy so I can watch you try out dispute resolution techniques there. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 02:56, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks & a request for your help
Thanks for your level-headed contributions regarding Filll and me. Guy has started to respond constructively to the RfC, and explained the particular incident I highlighted. I am no longer interested in Filll or his comments, so please if you see me rising to him again could you drop me a line on my talk page reminding me to cool down and walk away, I would appreciate it! Thanks again, DuncanHill (talk) 00:22, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * If I see it, I'll do that. Happy editing. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if you saw this
Reference desk/Mathematics --Trovatore (talk) 23:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I think this is also abuse of CIVIL
--Filll (talk) 00:44, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's a not-getting-off-the-ground attempt to abuse CIVIL. If there's no effect, then there's no abuse. I see nobody buying that accusation, do you? I'm typing a comment there now. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:56, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

In the great edit summary department ...
I have to save this one somewhere. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:55, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. :) I hope I'm casting the idea in a language that makes more sense to the target audience. I'm not always good at that, and I've been fumbling for new tricks. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

3-4 day wikibreak
I hate to be in the middle of so many things and have to leave, but I'm still delighted to be headed off to the Olympic Peninsula til Tuesday. I'm sure Wikipedia will be here when I get back; remember not to smoke in bed or anything. Cheers! -GTBacchus(talk) 19:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Just talked to Ivan (User:leafman) about WikiDashboard
He told me that you use WikiDashboard. Would be interested in knowing how you feel about it and how it can be improved! Let us know. Thanks Edchi (talk) 23:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for dropping by. I've used it a few times, and there's no particular feedback that leaps to mind, but I'll certainly think about it and get in touch with you should anything come up... actually, one thing: it seems that when you look at an article, you see the history of contributions there, and when you look at a user's page, you see their contribution history, but I have been curious about the history of contributors to a user talk page. I don't know if it's possible now to see that. I'll let you know if I think of anything else. -GTBacchus(talk) 15:36, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Possible interview?
Would you consider appearing on ?It is easiest with a headset, or you can use a microphone and speakers. It is also possible to do it with a telephone in the US and Canada. I have done it twice so far and it was sort of fun. --Filll (talk) 14:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm interested; thanks for the note. I'm also back in town, and on spring break, so I have time to do things. (Before this past weekend, I had taught for 19 consecutive days - ouch.) I'll pick up a headset today, and post here when I've done it. -GTBacchus(talk) 15:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

The cheapest headsets are about 10-15 dollars. Fancier ones are progressively more expensive. I bought two cheap ones which promptly broke. Finally I bought an expensive one (about 60 dollars) which was on sale for 20 dollars and it has worked well ever since.--Filll (talk) 18:24, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That's good to know; thanks. I'll be headed out in an hour or so. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:36, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ...and I'm now the proud owner of a brand new Logitech USB headset! -GTBacchus(talk) 01:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok install skype then. And we can talk. --Filll (talk) 01:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Don't want to talk?--Filll (talk) 22:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it's not that, I've just been using my spring break time strategically, and have been keeping fairly busy with a couple of projects. I've installed skype, and just need to fire it up and add you as a contact. I'm not posting from home just now, but I'll give it a try later this evening. Are you in a time zone near mine (US Pacific Daylight Time)? -GTBacchus(talk) 00:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Three hours later, EDT.--Filll (talk) 01:00, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

fancy a chat?
I wonder if I can persuade you to consider a 'real world' chit chat at NotTheWikipediaWeekly? - I think we might look at a conversation next Monday 7th, at 22.30 UTC (early evening US time) - it'd be great to have you along! If you're interested, you can 'sign up' at the wiki page.... cheers! - Privatemusings (talk) 10:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I still have to install Skype; I guess that's my project for today. I'd be happy enough to talk before next Monday, while I'm still on spring break, but anytime is fine. Aiming for Seattle evening time is a good idea, if we're doing it next week. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, 22:30 UTC is too early for me; I'm still at work then most days. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * How does 02:30 UTC fit? - it certainly works better for me, but we may lose our friends in Europe at that point (it would be a lunch time chat for me in Sydney - and I think 7.30pm for Seattle based folk.....). I'm going to go ahead and suggest that as a time, and hope that you might be able to make it! - cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 01:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's see... 02:30 UTC is 7:30 here... we're still talking about Monday? I actually have a tutoring appointment just ending then, and it takes me another half hour to get home. That time would be great on a Tuesday, Thursday or Friday. Sorry to have a difficult schedule! :( -GTBacchus(talk) 01:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It's no worries about your schedule... I've gone ahead and suggested the time 24 hours later. If you think you can make it, could I ask you to pop over and maybe sign up as both an 'interested participant' - and also sign the time which works best for you... that way we'll get some momentum behind it! thanks heaps, and I look forward to chatting! best, Privatemusings (talk) 02:11, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Removing comments on wp:civ?
I'm going to remove my comments on wp:civ asking olive to move her comment; should I remove yours, too, when I do this? Antelan <sup style="color:#b00000;">talk 01:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sure, that seems fine. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:39, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Follow-up from RfC
Hi - I saw your comment at Guy's RfC requesting examples of some positive work Guy's done for Wikipedia. I prefer to respond here for a couple of reasons. The RfC is winding down and I want to encourage that, since I think it's achieved all the constructive purpose it can reasonably be expected to achieve. My sense is that the RfC commenters fall into a couple of categories. One group recognizes and has witnessed examples of Guy doing good work, but feels his manner is counterproductive and a hindrance to Wikipedia. This group is large, and has said their piece and moved on. A second group is made up of people with a fundamental dislike of Guy for a variety of largely personal reasons; this group is still active to some extent at the RfC, but I'm not convinced that the effort of digging up diffs is worthwhile if people have firmly and irrevocably made up their minds.

I may have already cited these, but I think a lot of the good work Guy has done has been in the area of OTRS and interfacing with people in the Real World who are mad about things written on Wikipedia. He led the (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to turn Jeffrey Vernon Merkey into a useful contributor. He took a lead role in dealing with the Don Murphy mess. He's been largely responsible for dealing with the disaster at Simon Wessely's article and preventing an off-wiki activist group from turning the page into an attack/coatrack piece. All of these actions have entailed some level of exposure to real-life unpleasantness, which is something most of us (including myself) assiduously try to avoid. More commonly, it's simpler stuff like this. That's where I see his best work - he's been a point person for dealing with some of these unfortunate situations. I can provide more diffs if that would be helpful, but that's a general outline. MastCell Talk 16:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I find it funny that you're replying here. You say that the RfC has achieved all the constructive purpose it can achieve, but the reason I asked there, is because I thought it would be constructive there to balance out some of the negative comments with positive ones, as it's likely that we would find there many people who are unaware of Guy's good contributions. With me, you're largely preaching to the choir, although I didn't know much in the way of specifics. I would hope that it wouldn't be inappropriate at a user RfC to detail some of the Good Work they've done, but that's your call. -GTBacchus(talk) 21:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject_Wikidemia
Is a wikiproject for academic studies of wikipedia. Several very capable people there! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy
Now on the suite of homeopathy articles things are heating up. And you might want to take a look at the talk page of Darwin's Black Box to try your magical techniques.--Filll (talk) 20:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * "Magical"? There's nothing magical about the fact that people respond well to being dignified. I'll have a look. -GTBacchus(talk) 23:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Seems to have played out for now here, but with frustration and accusations on both sides. This seems to be typical of many disputes. Maybe a copy of the dispute on a work page with a post mortem how more constructive strategies could have been applied would be helpful? Ward20 (talk) 21:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That doesn't sound bad. There's certainly no need for frustration or accusations over a simple matter of checking whether a source is reliable or not. The only question to ask is, is the source reliable for the article in question? In this case it's pretty clear that it has consensus support as a reliable source. That could have easily been established without any remarks such as "I invite you to continue down this path if you want to find out what biting is," but then we might start coming across as adults, at least on one side of such conflicts. That would be terrible, huh? -GTBacchus(talk) 22:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we could not leave the entire thing to you and have you show us how letting this person feel "dignified" would have worked better and still produced something encyclopedic at the end. This is particularly true when 10 or 11 editors disagreed with the fairly ludicrous claims of one malcontent. And the one malcontent resorted to cursing and attacking others. And no one was mean to him in return. We did caution him to avoid violating CIVIL etc. Of course, this irritated him beyond measure, because he wanted to use CIVIL as a weapon against others, and did not want anyone suggesting he was violating anything or warning him to be careful.--Filll (talk) 21:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Filll, are you suggesting that the approach of replying to his arguments rather than simply yelling at him is something different from what I've been suggesting all along? What the hell do you think I mean by "dignify"? Do you think I want to you to roll over for his arguments? I don't. I want you to be effective, while leaving out the juvenile shit. This is what I've been saying all along, consistently. You're an adult and I believe you can do it. You're big enough and man enough to eschew playground point-scoring behavior. Rise to it; I know you can. This situation was actually handled pretty well. Instead of simply continuing to argue with him, and letting it get personal, you had the good sense to go to the RS noticeboard and get wider input. Then he agreed to go along with consensus. What's wrong there? Your implication that I think anyone should "leave the entire thing" to some kind of content-free approach is quite frankly beneath you. You're easily smart enough to know I've never advocated anything that resembles that, and that your implication is therefore intellectually dishonest. Can you explain to me why you feel the need to make these contemptuous remarks to me so regularly? Please. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Well I think there is some misunderstanding here. We always answer editors' complaints. However, sometimes when a malcontent repeats the same incorrect comment or blatantly false statement 50, 100 or more times, sometimes for 1, 2, 3 weeks or longer,  ignoring all the comments and responses of others, and spewing assorted threats and nonsense, sometimes eventually someone lashes back. This should not be a particular surprise, frankly. And then the PC police step in to kick the stuffing out of the established editors over and over. Usually nothing happens to the malcontent. After all, we have to WP:AGF and not WP:BITE.

Except for established editors of course. They should know better right? Plus we have a zillion untested reasons why this is the right policy. It is politically correct, after all.

It is a very bad misreading of the situation to claim that people "just yell" at those with complaints. It just is not true. I cannot think of any time when this was ever true that I saw.

I also will point out that for the CIVILity police, your use of the "h word" and "s word" should lead to a nice juicy block for you. What is good forthe goose is good for the gander, right?

If you think he "agreed to go along with the consensus" you have not read this carefully enough. This was spread over 2 or more noticeboards and 2 or more talk pages. He spread a lot of it, trying to cause a large conflagration. We fought back the way we usually do, although we did not dig up the volume of evidence we would have if it had gone on for a week or two. At that point, instead of opposing 10 editors, he would have opposed 50. And we would have dredged up maybe 50 diffs and links or more. And we did not start to userfy his repeated nonsensical comments and tendentious arguments. But I notified him that I was in favor of it. His remarks would have been erased from the talk pages on sight. As we have done for years. After all, he has repeated the same silly argument over and over, and it has been refuted. We do not need to hear it again. And clog up the pages with needless repeated nonsense and provocation and fighting.

As for "going along" this is the message I get from the goody two shoes, proponents of political correctness and the wikilove advocates over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over: CIVIL is all that matters. Discard NPOV and NOR and RS and V; these are all nonsense since they are unfair and cruel. We are too mean to malcontents. We are too nasty. We are unfair since we do not include their ideas. It is wrong not to give in and do whatever they want. If they want to put in racist stuff, fine let's put in racist stuff. Let's say the KKK was just misunderstood and its agenda was a positive one that we should continue to follow. Let's block anyone who uses the term "racist". Let's let editors write in our articles that African Americans are inherently stupid and dirty and smell bad, since we cannot stop them; that would be unfair to stop them and unCIVIL. Same with Jews. Let's whitewash the Naziism articles. These were really a great bunch of guys; just misunderstood. If editors want to put in pro-pedophilia material, then we should not oppose them since that might be unCIVIL. We should always treat them with dignity and respect and help them make their desired edits and never censor them or revert their edits or call them names like "trolls" or "POV warriors" (let alone perverts), heaven forfend. That might be unCIVIL. We should never use the word "troll" or the word "vandalism" or the word disruptive or any one of a growing list of words, since we must always always always AGF. No matter what. That is the message the agents of wikilove are pushing, over and over.

Well, I think it might be counterproductive. I have no problem with CIVILity. But I think there is a limit to a good thing sometimes. And we might be starting to approach that limit in some cases.

I am preparing a set of exercises for people with assorted theoretical ideas about how to do things better and how vastly superior their techniques are to what we do now. However, most people who make these claims have no experience. So I am preparing some examples, suitably sanitized, for people to address and show us the "right" way to do things here. And why the rest of us are all boors and rude gross pigs who just yell at others and make bad decisions over and over. I am sure you will show us how to handle these situations with dignity and aplomb and show us all how easy these situations really are, with the right mindset.--Filll (talk) 22:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Filll, are you even reading what I type? Do you think that the following approximates any position I hold in any way, shape or form? "CIVIL is all that matters. Discard NPOV and NOR and RS and V; these are all nonsense since they are unfair and cruel. We are too mean to malcontents. We are too nasty. We are unfair since we do not include their ideas. It is wrong not to give in and do whatever they want. If they want to put in racist stuff, fine let's put in racist stuff. Let's say the KKK was just misunderstood and its agenda was a positive one that we should continue to follow. Let's block anyone who uses the term "racist". Let's let editors write in our articles that African Americans are inherently stupid and dirty and smell bad, since we cannot stop them; that would be unfair to stop them and unCIVIL. Same with Jews. Let's whitewash the Naziism articles. These were really a great bunch of guys; just misunderstood. If editors want to put in pro-pedophilia material, then we should not oppose them since that might be unCIVIL. We should always treat them with dignity and respect and help them make their desired edits and never censor them or revert their edits or call them names like "trolls" or "POV warriors" (let alone perverts), heaven forfend. That might be unCIVIL. We should never use the word "troll" or the word "vandalism" or the word disruptive or any one of a growing list of words, since we must always always always  AGF. No matter what. That is the message the agents of wikilove are pushing, over and over."


 * Have I ever taken a position like that? Yes or no. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

My point is, I don't agree with any of that, so if you're throwing into my face as if to refute it, who are you talking to? That's not what I think, I agree that it's absurd. What the hell has it got to do with what we're talking about here? -GTBacchus(talk) 03:43, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

No, you have not advocated those positions, or at least those exactly. However, it is not unrelated. (1) There are people in the "CIVIL is most important" camp who take positions not very far away from that (2) When CIVIL is extrapolated and extended and standards are lowered, this is where things head (3) Although CIVIL is clearly a good thing, one can have too much of a good thing (4) I am not the only person who notices that maybe things are in danger of getting out of balance with an overemphasis on CIVIL (5) One of the primary criticism of WP now on places like WR is that we are not CIVIL enough; these are exactly the kind of extreme positions that their comments lead to. They use CIVIL against us beause it is a potent weapon at the moment. (6) As you have remarked previously, you do not like it when I use the apagogical argument. I apologize if it offended you. But I will probably not change this longstanding habit to avoid offending you. As you have resorted to profanity here, probably as a result of a longstanding habit.--Filll (talk) 15:28, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, goody: a numbered list. (1) Either name them, or let's not talk about them. I can't speak for anyone other than myself, and I don't believe that any Wikipedian holds the caricatured position you've described. I think that's your own invention. (2) You may be correct about what would happen if the Civility policy were extrapolated and standards lowered, but since nobody I know is arguing to extrapolate WP:CIVIL or to lower standards, this is irrelevant. Let's talk about my actual position, not some fictitious one, eh? (3) One can not have too much good sense. One can not be too good of a communicator. One can not have too much skill in handling conflict. If you think that WP:CIVIL represents anything other than those, then you're mistaken. (4) You're not the only person who believes in some kind of "WP:CIVIL gone mad" theory. There are people here who believe all sorts of things; that doesn't make them true. There are far more people who believe that the Earth is round, that men landed on the moon, that Elvis really died, and that treating others with honest decency (not with caricatured kid gloves) is smart. (5) You state without evidence that "these are exactly the kind of extreme positions that their comments lead to." I don't believe you. I've never seen it, and until I see it, I'll continue to believe that there is a world of difference between saying "let's not be dicks to each other" and saying "let's ban the use of all four-letter words, and turn every good idea about interaction into an imperative, enforced w/ blocks and bans". You seem to want to equate those two, but they are very different. It seems that every time I state the former, you reply to the latter. Think about that. (6) Are you offended by my use of profanity? Yes or no? If you're not, then why do you mention it? Are you "scoring points" or engaging in honest dialogue? The two are mutually exclusive. Now, I'm not "offended" by your misuse of the apagogical argument, I'm just not convinced by it, because it's transparently spurious. If you say that one sheep is black, and I say, "He says all sheep are black, which is clearly false! Get him off the agriculture committee," then I'm not using the apagogical argument, I'm being absurd. If you want to argue that some particular policy is a slippery slope, you have to offer some kind of evidence that the slope is slippery. Not all slopes are automatically slippery, especially when it's trivially easy to monitor it. Your "apagogical argument" is that requesting basic decency will lead to a draconian enforcement of political correctness. This is unfounded, and you're not successfully making a case for it. To the point (if there is one to this thread) I'm not here to talk about some caricatured position, I'm here to talk about mine. Why are you here, on my talk page, arguing with me? What is your point right now? Didn't you come to tell me about some situation, and then when it basically worked out, to vaunt that I'm somehow wrong about something? What are you talking about, and who are you talking to? If you want to talk to me, about my approach to dispute resolution, then let's talk about that, and not about some nonsense you made up. Do you even have any idea what I've been suggesting, or have you been too busy extrapolating it to absurdity? -GTBacchus(talk) 16:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Your implication that the rationalist, pro-science editors treat others like DICKs typically is not really appreciated.--Filll (talk) 16:06, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Filll, I don't think that rationalist, pro-science editors necessarily treat others like dicks. I think it can happen that any editor might act like a dick when they're not using their best judgment. My above statement didn't imply that pro-science editors treat others like dicks typically. I didn't say a word about pro-science editors, because I see dickishness on both sides of pretty much every fence on the wiki. What I have said, consistently, is that we will do well to treat each other with respect, and not with contempt. You're right that it's not very helpful for me to characterize contemptuous treatment as "being a dick". I apologize for that unhelpful use of inflammatory language. I absolutely don't think that pro-science editors are typically dicks. I think that being pro or anti science, and behaving constructively or not in a dispute, are entirely unrelated. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, thinking about this further, I really don't know where you would get the idea that I think rationalists have got the market cornered on dickishness. That's just bizarre. I've taken people on both "sides" of this dispute to task for being unconstructive; if you cherry-pick for instances where I was talking to someone with a pro-science POV, then I guess you're happily inventing reality, and maybe I shouldn't bother you. However, out here in the world people actually live in, I've been very consistent saying that everyone would be smart to put down the ad hominem remarks, put down the personal labels, and talk about content rather than about each other. Maybe you'd like to twist that utterly reasonable position into some indefensible straw man, but you're not convincing anyone. My position is actually just that we can be professional, as opposed to hot-headed, unprofessional, and contemptuous. Do you honestly disagree with that? I doubt that you do. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:50, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Also purporting to lecture others from a presumed or assumed position of moral superiority and hypocrisy are not really working in your favor.--Filll (talk) 16:08, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * An assumed position of moral superiority? An assumed position of hypocrisy? I certainly don't assume any of that. I don't believe that moral valuations have meaning, so how can I assume moral superiority? I'm claiming that treating others respectfully is more effective than treating them disrespectfully. That's not a moral claim; it's a pragmatic one. I'm sorry if my tone upsets you. I'll try to adjust it, if I can understand what you're offended by. I assure you that I see you as morally flawless; infallible in fact. That has no bearing on specific practical skills that you may or may not have. If you were trying to solve an integral using substitution, and I were to suggest integration by parts as more effective, I would not be holding myself morally above you, and it would seem odd for you to take it that way. Again though, I'm sorry that you're offended, and I'll be very careful to eschew all language that would imply moral judgment. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Apagogical argument
Proposition: In a triangle with three unequal sides, there are three unequal angles.

Proof by contradiction (correctly applied): Suppose not, then some pair of angles must be equal. However, by the converse of Pons asinorum, this would imply that two sides are equal. Since we assumed that all sides were unequal, we have a contradiction, so it is false that two angles are equal. Thus, all angles are unequal, QED.

Proof by contradiction (incorrectly applied): Suppose not. If two angles are equal, then we might as well say that every angle in every triangle in the world is equal to everything else, whether or not there's any reason to think so. Also, we should shoot people who suggest otherwise. That's clearly absurd (not to mention draconian), so the angles must be unequal, QED.

You see, the reason it works, when it works, is because the absurd conclusion actually follows from the premise adopted. When it doesn't, this proof technique won't work. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:50, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Pseudo
Dude..... I was talking about way back before April 2007. I only started editing since about Oct 2006. I came right in to an extremely nasty environment on WP, and thought that as so often happens the policy was just something people liked to have out there- not something actually practiced, as I didn't see it being practiced -not CIV, not NPOV, not RS, not anything- but rather used to be mean to new users (me), and bludgeon each other. ScienceApologist and a couple others taught me what was ok by example. —— Martinphi    ☎ Ψ Φ —— 00:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry you thought there was an environment on Earth, or in the universe, where being something other than consistently excellent was a good idea. You're certainly not to be blamed for some mistaken notion you used to hold. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes. The fact was that I was excellent, both in sourcing my edits and being civil, and not POV pushing, else the ArbCom would have at least said something more than that I'd done a bit of edit warring.  Surely I'd have been reported at least once for actual incivility by now?  Anyway, that sounds about like my apology to Antelan.  If you've got me down as being trollish, I won't trouble you any more, but basically I have a lot of respect for you and the things you've been saying- and I'd have hoped you'd get a higher opinion of me than you seem to.  I do come into situations and basically reveal what I believe to be the basic underlying Zeitgeist and informational reality.  But I feel that this does not really produce negativity, but rather puts the conversation on an honest footing and thus promotes a harmonious solution if such is possible. —— Martinphi     ☎ Ψ Φ —— 23:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't have a low opinion of you. I criticize people whom I respect; otherwise, what's the point? If I don't respect you, I won't say anything. I consider you a valuable Wikipedian, and a fellow member of my species, therefore my brother (or sister). I assume you're here trying to make the world a little better, just like the rest of us. What higher opinion can there be than that? The concept of being "reported for incivility"; why do you think of it as a law? That so misses the point. If you must think of WP:CIVIL as a rule, apply it only to yourself, never to others, and never assert that you've been civil. I haven't "got anyone down" as being "trollish"; haven't I said enough that that should be obvious? Whether revealing what you believe to be the underlying zeitgeist of a situation might of might produce negativity, depending how you say it. There are a million ways to be honest. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I dunno. I guess absent a statement of basic philosophy, it's pretty hard to know where someone is really coming from.  There are so many configurations of ideas humans can have, and no guarantee that they will even be logically consistent.  Also, I'm used to being loathed, as probably most of the people who know me on WP would like to see me perm banned.  I'm also used to being judged rather harshly.  I came into WP with good intent, which was not returned at all.  So when I heard about "Wikilove" and such, that was pretty funny because I didn't see any of that, and the only thing that made me stay around is stubbornness relative to those I thought were being abusive.


 * "Reported for incivility"- well, it's a good measure of how civil I was being, as they were all out to get me by any means. SA started off his ArbCom against me by calling me a "particularly uncivil editor" lol.  (Someone may have reported me for CIV, didn't stick at all tho.)


 * There has been speculation, a long time before the current civility debate at Arritt's page, that the reason there aren't very many educated "paranormalists" is that they are too nice, and they don't want to come into WP because they are intuitive folks, and they don't like the atmosphere.  To stick with the paranormal, you have to have a bit of combative stubbornness in your nature, and a VERY thick skin, because you are going to be abused, and you are going to be made to climb that learning curve faster than any other area.  They started deleting the Parapsychology article just after I came, and requiring me to follow all the technical rules or get deleted.


 * So, thanks for the criticism (: To explain: to be excellent in the environment to which I came, I had to choose between getting out of that mean environment and applying every bit of wit and stubbornness I had to combat the barrage of false wiki lawyering and dislike which came at me.  And I got it for edits much like my recent ones to Remote viewing. —— Martinphi     ☎ Ψ Φ —— 05:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

a NotTheWikipediaWeekly message
Hi folks,

I've confirmed a time for the next conversation on Tuesday night, US time, (Wednesday, 02.30 UTC). Huge apologies that this isn't going to be good for Euro folk, and I know Anthony and Peter will likely be unable to attend therefore. It's possible we need a bit of a wiki effort at the project page to better organise and plan conversations - and I'd also like to encourage all interested folks to watchlist that page for updates / changes etc. which will probably be a smoother way of staying in touch than many talk page messages (though it's great that more people are expressing interest in participating...). With that in mind, if you'd like to reply to this message, please do so at my talk page, and I'll respond as soon as I can.

If you are able to attend at the given time, please do head over to NotTheWikipediaWeekly and sign up - this is a great help in making sure everyone is around. We generally chat for about 10 minutes before 'going live' and the whole process takes about an hour, and I very much look forward to chatting to all!

best, Privatemusings (talk) 00:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

if you're online...
and are interested in coming along to the 'real world' conversation at NotTheWikipediaWeekly, and would like a hand in 'getting online' - do drop a line here, or on my talk page (or add me as a skype contact - my ID is privatemusings) - I'm around to lend a technical hand if that'd be helpful! - cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 01:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Want to help?
Please have a word with this guy and explain to him that his colleagues aren't lying. I just blocked him for disruptive editing, so he probably wouldn't be receptive to advice from me. I'd like to observe your approach, to see if I can learn from it. Thanks - Raymond Arritt (talk) 01:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, Raymond. I am a bit busy at work this week, with quarter grades due, and I'm also helping my employer deal with a legal issue. Whenever I find some good wiki-time, I'll have a look, and see if I can speak with him. Thanks for the heads up, and I hope I have a chance to chime in before it's all blown over. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Now is your chance
. Obviously, he has burned just about all his bridges. And does not seem to realize what the goals of Wikipedia are, or that this situation is serious.--Filll (talk) 00:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've got half a day of work left before the weekend. If he can last that long, or not, I'll talk with him. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Requested move that needs an Admin to do it
Greetings GTB, I see that you somewhat work at the WP:RM department. At Talk:Persian_Mesopotamia, we have genereally agreed on the title of Achaemenid Assyria. Since that page already exist, we need an admin to go ahead with the move. Chaldean (talk) 23:35, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Please consider taking the AGF Challenge
I would like to invite you to consider taking part in the AGF Challenge which has been proposed for use in the RfA process by User: Kim Bruning. You can answer in multiple choice format, or using essay answers, or anonymously. You can of course skip any parts of the Challenge you find objectionable or inadvisable.--Filll (talk) 14:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I have begun my reply at User:GTBacchus/AGF Challenge Exercise Answers. I still don't know why it's called the "AGF challenge". -GTBacchus(talk) 22:32, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, I think it is an example of Doc's favorite new catch-phrase for chastising sophists. Associating AGF with a noun like challenge is a clear example of poisoning the well. It implies that to assume good faith is a difficult task, which is what some who might take issue with this policy might actually believe. Words like quiz or survey would be more neutral. --Dragon695 (talk) 15:32, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject Terrorism Newsletter
Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead) 05:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The twilight zone
GTBacchus, hi. I would like you to take a look at this essay The twilight zone and welcome your contributions to it. Thank you, Igor Berger (talk) 03:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Reggaeton Article
I say go ahead and move the article back to the version without the accent. It was a brand new contributor that made the move, obviously unaware of all the discussion that went on early last year. If someone wants the accented version used after you move it back, they should go through the motions of starting a new discussion on the talk page about it. 74.228.158.68 (talk) 22:25, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input. It seems that someone else agreed with us, and has moved the article back. -GTBacchus(talk) 21:35, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Abortion
Hi GTBacchus. I posted a message here at WikiProject Abortion. Please address if you are interested. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 00:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've replied there; thanks for the heads-up. -GTBacchus(talk) 21:34, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you
GTB I hope that my comments on "Civility" were not in any way construed as negative towards you. I felt that your statement to R. Arritt had to be clarified. I didn't think you were in anyway suggesting that I was dishonest. I respect your work here on Wikipedia tremendously, and thank you for all of the tough situations you are in, and always handle kindly and calmly- a truly civil editor.(olive (talk) 04:06, 19 April 2008 (UTC))
 * I wasn't sure exactly what you meant at the time, but I think we're pretty much on the same page. Thanks for stopping by to clarify, and also for the vote of confidence. I look forward to seeing you around the wiki. :) -GTBacchus(talk) 11:19, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

mentioned your rfc comments

 * Requests_for_arbitration Trav (talk) 02:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Man I worship you. I loved your RFC comments: Requests_for_comment/JzG2. I keep finding myself quoting your comments over and over and over. Have you thought of making these comments an essay? Inclusionist (talk) 06:55, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy again
I don't know if you are following the developments at the homeopathy article. I have the impression that there is a lot of meat puppeting going on there, with people taking turns to push an anti-homeopathy POV. I wouldn't be surprised if it was coordinated by a mailing list somewhere. There is also some pro-homeopathy POV pushing, but that's completely ineffective. Now it could be that I am completely wrong about this. Perhaps I am a pro-homeopathy POV pusher, after all? In any case it's likely that the way I am dealing with the situation can be improved.

I just wanted to let you know that if you are watching the situation, I would really appreciate your advice. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

email?
Heyo,

I've been trying to contact you via email, but haven't gotten a response. Just checking to make sure that you've been getting those emails, that they're not getting lost in the tubes. Cheers! Leafman (talk) 21:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hello! Wow, I am a space cadet, it seems. I got your email, but somehow didn't connect that today was today and what that meant. I feel very silly right now; please feel free to call or email and I'll apologize a couple of times and we can set something up. Sorry! -GTBacchus(talk) 02:17, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Your comment
About this:. I have seen statements that lead me to believe that many believe this, both inside and outside Wikipedia. Read articles in The Register for example. Read what they say on Wikipedia Review for example. Read what the banned users say. And so on.--Filll (talk) 00:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've yet to see it. I don't have time to read Wikipedia Review. I just read one Register article that didn't remotely approach the position you're claiming. I'd love to see (someday, when someone has time) one (1) link to somewhere that someone says that if we would just AGF more, then everything would be ok. I've never, ever seen that claim made. I would be very happy to see it, once. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:57, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If live examples do exist, why not link to one or more, when you say it's a charge that's "frequently leveled"? I have a hard time believing that. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe claims of biting were made here, and I have certainly seen it. But not that frequent in terms of claims. Since the editors generally go away and don't come back, as I would definitely have done if I were of a normal disposition, you don't hear much about it. In my own case, I was bitten through massive deletions of material I was trying to improve, and massive fact-tag bombing, followed by requests for exact page numbers when I provided said citations. Biting often happens through wikilawyering. —— Martinphi    ☎ Ψ Φ —— 02:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've just re-read all of the views posted on the recent RfC, and none of them approximates "too many established editors on Wikipedia are unfair, and are unCIVIL, and do too much BITEing and if they would just AGF more, everything would be ok." I mean, none of them even comes close to that. Am I just missing it? I see people saying, "You cannot just wikilove trolls to death," but I see nobody saying that you can. What am I missing? This charge is supposed to be "frequently leveled," but I've never seen anything close to it said. Can you show me one instance of one soul taking this position? I'm growing concerned that it is entirely fictional. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you're correct. I tend to AGF in my reading, that is, I tend to jump to the correct interpretation and take the language as only a hint.  But then I get what it should mean instead of what it says. So that makes twice in a couple of days just that you know of (: —— Martinphi     ☎ Ψ Φ —— 02:55, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't get it. You're asserting that if we would just AGF more, everything would be ok? Are you the "wikilove" guy Filll's been talking about? -GTBacchus(talk) 02:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, no, actually I'm not too sure if Filll associates me with wikilove, really. Here is what I mean: you're right about what you say, the statement doesn't occur much. —— Martinphi     ☎ Ψ Φ —— 03:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry for being dense. I never can keep track of who's on which "side" in these things. I think that maybe the best thing that could happen in this general dispute would be for people to find out what their opponents actually believe, rather than making that part up. I'm seeing it pile up at the Arb case, too. "So-and-so says that I think such-and-such, but I've never said that and I don't think it." That's all avoidable. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:18, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Well rest assured if I run across a statement in that general area, I will direct you to it. But as usual, I will not dig around to find statements that might fall under this rubric since I have other things to do.--Filll (talk)
 * Many thanks, and I certainly understand not wanting to dig. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I wonder, have you read any replies to your AGF challenge that take the Pollyanna perspective? -GTBacchus(talk) 03:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * What people say, and what people do, often have little overlap. I'll leave it at that. Raymond Arritt (talk) 03:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd rather you didn't leave it at that. I'm trying to learn here. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I have written over and over that people who argue for more leniency and less restrictions on editors and so on, are far more harsh when you ask them about examples like the AGF Challenge exercises. Particularly if it is not their own personal hot button issue. So "be more lenient on me, but crack down on everyone else" seems to be rule of thumb.--Filll (talk) 03:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Have a cigar. Raymond Arritt (talk) 03:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Have I argued for more leniency and less restrictions on editors? Either way, I'm interested, but I'm not sure I know what you're referring to there. Which restrictions? -GTBacchus(talk) 03:48, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * "Be more lenient on me, but crack down on everyone else" was the bit I was responding to. Also I didn't have you in mind. Raymond Arritt (talk) 03:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was asking that of Filll, more than of you. I'm trying to figure out who, or where, are these "wikilove people" with whom I've sometimes been associated. I'm still interested in hearing more of your thoughts too, on this issue, if you'll share them. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't we have Wikilove yet? Ooh. I see we do! Started on 11 May 2003 by User:Eloquence, otherwise known as Erik Möller, "...former member of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Foundations' current Deputy Director." I also note that "If you follow this advice, maybe you will experience the spirit of WikiLove today!" has, five years later, become "Happy editing and let WikiLove spread over the internet!". Carcharoth (talk) 04:32, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The way I actually read the meaning of it is that Filll is making a generalization on all the admins and others who don't want to crack down on people who aren't, or whom he thinks aren't scientific. The "uncivil established editors" are the ones on the Raymond Arritt expert concerning pseudoscience topics strike page. The text should actually read:

''Editors at the Raymond Arritt expert withdrawal believe that other editors percieve them as making bad decisions or acting in a rude and unethical fashion. It seems as if people think that these Wikipedia editors use the wrong approaches, and that they must change. ''

''In particular, it seems as if some editors think that RAEW editors are unfair, unCIVIL, and do too much BITEing and if they would just AGF more, everything would be ok, and the fringe POV pushers would become good Wikipedia editors. ''

That's what I think he means. —— Martinphi    ☎ Ψ Φ —— 04:33, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well allow me to disabuse you of some of those notions. Some points:


 * I do not believe that we need more BITEing and more unCIVIL behavior and less AGF. More would be nice
 * Wikipedia has become so high profile now that many unCIVIL behaviors and profanity are going to come under scrutiny, sooner or later and be a public relations disaster or a legal problem. Better to be pro-active.
 * I think that many of those arguing for more leniency and tolerance for letting any editor include whatever they want have not thought much about the consequences of that, or done much time in the trenches to experience what editing a controversial article is like.
 * Wikipedia has a large number of internal and external critics. However, a lot of the criticisms are not consistent and contradict each other, or could have unforseen consequences if corrected in the way suggested. Also, again many of those criticizing have a very limited amount of experience in controversial areas.
 * I have no problem with representing unscientific or FRINGE material or pseudoscience on Wikipedia; the question is how should it be done?
 * I think we have to be open to considering new sorts of approaches and new policies. I do not suggest these be implemented wholesale, however, but in some test cases.--Filll (talk) 13:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, Filll, I don't think anybody's suggesting that you're in favor of biting people, or against AGF. I certainly don't think that about you; never have. As for your point about "those arguing for more leniency and tolerance for letting any editor include whatever they want," I'm pretty sure nobody has argued for that, or anything closely approximating it. I've certainly never heard it said. Thirdly, nobody here has suggested that you have a problem with representing pseudoscience on Wikipedia, and I think we're all on the same page that the question is "how?". It sounds as if we're more or less in agreement, no? -GTBacchus(talk) 15:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, an observation. Your last post begins, "let me disabuse you of some of those notions," and then you don't disagree with anything he said. That's interesting. Of what notion were you disabusing Martin? One other question - what does "unCIVIL" mean, and how is it different from "uncivil"? -GTBacchus(talk) 16:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Huh? Martin mentioned some editors think that RAEW editors are unfair, unCIVIL, and do too much BITEing  etc. and Filll responded with comments about CIV and BITE etc. As for unCIVIL and uncivil, I should think it was obvious -- "unCIVIL" refers to violation of Wikipedia's policy on civility, and "uncivil" refers to conduct that is uncivil in the conventional meaning of the term. Raymond Arritt (talk) 16:53, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Right. Martin didn't say that Filll or anyone else was unfair, uncivil, biting, etc. He said that RAWE editors perceive others as accusing them of unfairness, incivility, biting, etc. I'm pretty sure Filll didn't disagree with that, and that's all that Martin asserted. Thus, of what notion was Filll "disabusing" Martin? As for "uncivil" versus "unCIVIL", I guess I do know the difference, but I was attempting to remind Filll of something I said earlier - don't grant your opponents the power to define the language. That is a defeatist strategy. Reclaim the word "civility" to mean what it really means, and join me in saying "there is not such thing as a 'CIVIL violation'. Our civility policy is not a law, and it's not susceptible of 'violation'". If we grant that there is such a thing as a "civility violation", which we do by using their language, then we grant too much. Let's reclaim the terms of the discussion, and stop using fiction words such as 'unCIVIL'. Don't even use the all-caps CIVIL. It means nothing, and if you allow it to mean something, you're giving your opponents power, hand over fist. Careful! -GTBacchus(talk) 18:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * "unCIVIL" hurts my eyes and I want it to stop for that reason, mostly. I think it is reasonable to draw a distinction between WP:CIVIL the policy, and civility as a general concept, but there must be a more aesthetically acceptable way to do so. MastCell Talk 18:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It hurts my eyes, too. What's worse than that is that, everytime Filll says it, he's acknowledging defeat, and I'm not ok with that, because I still think he can, and should, win. It's the pessimist's fallacy: granting your opponents the right to define the terms of discourse, and I'm not happy to see people who are essentially right committing that fallacy. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't see what Filll said as really responding to what I wrote. What I said was just how I really interpret the passage in question (the one on the AGF challenge). My interpretation comes out of my knowledge of where Fill has been doing a lot of discussion, and my knowledge of what they believe and how they see themselves. I would like to know who is " arguing for more leniency and tolerance for letting any editor include whatever they want..." because I've never met one of these people. Not one. Unless he means those who want to use, for example, any textbook as a source even if the textbook has not mentioned the subject. In other words, there was a push to do OR by some editors. But they weren't arguing it in those terms. —— Martinphi    ☎ Ψ Φ —— 03:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:DGF

 * {| style="background:#ddffdd; padding:2px 2px 2px 2px;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"


 * Well, an abbreviated version of WP:DGF seems to have assuaged the parties interested in reverting my edits to WP:AGF. The new version isn't quite as expressive as I'd have liked it to be but I'm going to avoid developing it further myself lest I spark more controversy, so since you've clearly done a good amount of thinking about this stuff I'd like to again invite you to edit it or add anything you believe fits with the spirit of WP:AGF.  I don't think edits from you or others would raise quite the negative reaction I did. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 15:16, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * }
 * }

The AGF Challenge, what do you think?
My reply is here, what do you think? In some essence we seem to agree. I'm just not as nice a person as you are, but I think that pragmatically, on the Wiki, pretending to be so, is the most effective strategy. Merzul (talk) 01:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

WikiPing
Hi GTBacchus, I had a great time at Yeshi's. Find me at Bestchai (talk) 04:26, 27 April 2008 (UTC)