User talk:Grace Note/Archive July-September 2005

My RfA
Thanks for taking the time for voting on a self-nom, even if you didn't support. Howabout1 Talk to me! 01:03, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

VfD
FYI Votes for deletion/Perverted-Justice.com SlimVirgin (talk) 01:12, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Logging on
We've noticed you're not logging on much. I hope things didn't discourage you. If you'd like to discuss anything, on- or off-line, feel free to ping my Talk page or drop me an email. You're welcome to vent, rant, or even call me names. The Choir sounds better when all voices sing....even if they sing different notes.--ghost 01:51, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

thank you for your opinion on my RfA
Hello, just a quick note to say thank you for voting, even though you were not convinced of my experience. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." (Luke 12:48, NIV) Never was a truer word spoken. I feel empowered, yes, but not in the "oooh cool delete button!" way I was kind of expecting. Already I feel the weight of the responsibility I have now been entrusted with, a weight that will no doubt reduce given time. Perhaps I am ready for it, or perhaps, as you say, I am not. I hope that in the coming weeks and months I can prove you wrong, but no matter what I thank you for giving your honest opinion, it is really important to me. Thank you. :)

Oh and if you ever feel like expanding upon the negative impression you have of me, please feel free to tell me about it. If it's something I did, if it's something I said, if it's something I could do or do better, I would be delighted to know what it is so I can avoid or remedy it in the future if at all possible. Thank you. :) GarrettTalk 11:05, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Howabout1's RfA (again)
Hi. I am copying this message to everyone who voted on my last RfA. By some strange twist of fate, I have been nominated (within 48 hours, it's probably a record). Please vote again. Howabout1 Talk to me! 21:05, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Shehzad Tanweer
Just wanted to thank you for not only offering opinions, but editing the page to make it NPOV and sticking around - appreciate not being alone in the field, the world's a scary place, wikipedia moreso =Þ Anyways, much thanks and good luck with all your endeavours :) Sherurcij 05:26, July 26, 2005 (UTC)


 * Just a note, because Shehzad Tanweer's become an issue on my RfA, I would appreciate your input, positive or negative, and honest criticism in ways you feel I could improve. Much thanks Sherurcij 07:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Acknowleging contributions to Quotes page; Disclaimer of adding quotes; Thanks and appreciation for help
The is from the Wikiquotes abortion talk page -with my reply: --GordonWattsDotCom 05:15, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

The return of the toccolours
See Template:Infobox Pope. 64.12.116.66 10:38, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

RfC Cberlet & Willmcw
This edit was yours, right? I'd like to know if you were referring to my usual passive aggressive bullshit in a general sense, characterizing me as a contributor, or just my usual on that RfC? Anyway, I disagree that I wrote any passive aggressive bullshit on that page, it certainly wasn't my intention. To begin with I was trying to comment civilly, and after Rangerdude's attacks on those comments I was trying to write aggressive bullshit. You must have a pretty high standard of "passive". Bishonen | talk 04:01, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Func's RfA :)
Grace Note, thank you for supporting my adminship! I'm glad that your conscience found no objection to me! :)

Please never hesitate to let me know if you have concerns with any administrative action I may make.

Func( t, c, e, ) 19:20, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Changing
A user has unilaterally been changing Template:Infobox Pope to his preferred version. Feel free to comment. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 00:43, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

"Crap articles are a bad thing but..."
"My view is, and always has been, that crap articles are a bad thing but good ones, even about the "non-notable", do no harm."

I pretty much mostly agree with you. It is what I personally think about articles about high schools, street intersections, "fancruft," etc. As long as a reasonable amount of work went into the article, as long as it is reasonably thorough, and not just written off the top of the head with unattributed "facts" that someone is pretty sure he read somewhere.


 * Well, if you allowed that the article in question could be short, if there's not much to be said about the subject, I'd agree entirely.

Someone wisely pointed out a long time ago that bad articles that nobody reads do no harm, and bad articles that many people read are likely to be improved.


 * That's more or less my approach. Bad, short articles that readers stumble on are also likely to be edited. They can be editor lures! It's how I started.

(But, again, where I part company with the inclusionists is I believe that bad articles should be deleted if there is no credible prospect that someone is going to improve them. I don't approve of leaving them to fester on the assumption that they will magically improve themselves.


 * Perhaps you could improve them instead of deleting them ;-)

Similarly, I think it is irresponsible to create a substub if one has no serious intention of coming back to do more work on it. The responsible thing is to put in an article request instead).


 * A substub yes, I agree. A well-written stub is a jewel though.

I part company a little bit in the case of articles that are promotional. The fact that anybody can insert material into Wikipedia makes it a tempting target of abuse for people trying to publicize things.


 * Yes, I agree with that. I'd be in favour of stronger approaches to advertising. Perhaps not deletion, but a page for alerts at least, and a coordinated effort to "de-ad" articles that are nothing but.

The go-getter boys quickly insert material about themselves, their health theories, their businesses, their soon-to-be-produced movies, etc. anywhere on the Net that permits it. A Wikipedia article is great way to boost a Google rank, and it often comes up in mirrors as "Encyclopedia article about..."


 * Yes, that's true, but we have policies to protect against these things. Okay, they don't always work but they exist. I don't think there's anything wrong in itself with writing about your own company (or yourself) but the content ought to meet the standards we set for any article. So if you write ad copy, you must expect to be heavily and summarily edited. If you resist it, then I think there should be scope for action.

I think that it does damage Wikipedia if we do not have a firm community consensus that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and that articles in it must be "encyclopedic," even if it is very, very hard to establish just where the borders lie.


 * I think you have to accept that views of what is "encyclopaedic" are going to vary a great deal. Some see Wikipedia as nothing more than a bigger Britannica. Others see it as something much grander. I'm in the latter camp. Working for Britannica doesn't enthuse me. Jimbo's vision does.

I also have a strong feeling that all articles must be written at least partially with the intention of serving some putative readership, not just satisfying the self-actualization needs of the contributor.


 * Yes, absolutely. I take the readers first view too. I also get very annoyed when people put less effort into an article than they do into their homework! But that's why we're here: to fix that and to make up for others' slackness. Okay, it's sometimes painful (and it's work that is not given much credit -- elsewhere today I read a snippy comment that I make "minor edits", when largely what I do is fix crap articles).

So, there's no bright line. Very obviously an article about Stephan Kinsella does not damage Wikipedia.


 * So long as Kinsella himself stays within the bounds of our policies. Frankly, I'd like to see the line drawn on the grounds of quality and informativeness, rather than notability. Write an article about your dad if you like, but you can only include what is notable about him. If he is a policeman, you could say that: "Joe Smith is a policeman in Chickpea, Illinois". End of article. I can't see that that harms. What harms is to continue to give details of his career, a list of arrests and so on.

However, allowing pitbull-tenacious self-promoters to use WIkipedia as a publicity medium does damage Wikipedia. I don't know if you were involved in the the Shawn Mikula business, but it was fairly ugly. This was a grad student at Johns Hopkins with no obvious notability who was just plain insisting on using Wikipedia for his vanity page, repeatedly re-creating it over and over, etc.


 * I think those cases would be a lot easier to approach though if you did not say "you must be notable" but said instead "you must only write what is notable about you", be it ever so little. Make the policy "no shit" rather than "be notable".

So, I'm fairly mellow about good articles on most topics, but I tend to be somewhat more picky about categories of articles that are intrinsically likely to be abused by self-promoters. That would include biographies. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:22, 13 August 2005 (UTC)


 * You know, we agree at least 95% on this subject and yet we draw such different conclusions! Still, it's a pleasure to chat about it without the usual heat of VfD. Grace Note 00:24, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

rfc against user:jayjg
I have launched a rfc against this user for his censorship of the condition Aposthia from wikipedia. I feel this user has finally gone too far in his pro-circumcision stance -- to the point of eliminating a medical condition? If you would like to endorse it, please sign at Requests for comment/Jayjg.


 * Wish I could sign this as I've been having problems with user:jayjg over on the Eustace Mullins page. You could say he's having some real problems maintaining NPOV when it comes to any topic relating to Jews (to put it mildly). Unfortunately, it appears that I would be breaking Wikipedia rules by signing this at the moment :-( Amalekite 12:28, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia:Savoir-faire
I wrote: Keep. Interesting portal. What harm is it actually doing? Grace Note 04:04, 20 July 2005 (UTC) You wrote: None, but we are supposed to "stick to our guns" as far as upholding our established rules are concerned, even if, as you say, there's no harm in it. We can't go making exceptions or they might set a precedent. GarrettTalk 12:17, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

The "rules" are just what we agree (barring the foundation guidelines set by Jimbo). If we change our minds, the "rules" change. Precedents are set all the time. I agree that they are often detrimental -- particularly when the arbcom invent new policy on the fly and then cite themselves as they use it to punish dissenters -- but wikis should have a bit of flexibility. Grace Note 01:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree with all that, but recent events have made me very cautious. I've recently had to help deal with the Wikiversity mess on Wikibooks. We've had some policy-breaking projects started on WB that seem to have been inspired by Wikiversity's rule-breaking, so precedents are a very real concern to me as I'm seeing bad examples of them. I'm afraid that things like this sometimes make me act unnecessarily cautious. :(
 * But thanks for replying and all, I'll try to be more optimistic... thanks for the reminder! :) GarrettTalk 03:11, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Aposthia
I see you voted to delete Aposthia in its recent VFD. I've now substantially rewritten the article, removing the dubious POV statements and (I think) sourcing everything. I had to wade through several pages of Googlecruft to get any decent information about it, but it is out there. The fact that so many of the top Google results are highly biased anticircumcision sites makes it all the more important that Wikipedia has an informative and neutral article on the subject. Hopefully you can be persuaded to change your vote! Thanking you, Soo 17:30, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you for this reference. Aposthia in Judaism isn't really any big deal; you still have to have a circumcision-like ceremony. I've noted this (with source) on the Aposthia page. I doubt, however, that Misdrashic literature would bother mentioning whether someone was born without a foreskin, as it is of dubious homilytical content -- I'd sooner expect to find such references to such cases in the Talmud as cases-in-point for the rulings on what to do in this situation. I'll research this and (hopefully) come back on it D&#39;n 03:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Well said

 * I think those cases would be a lot easier to approach though if you did not say "you must be notable" but said instead "you must only write what is notable about you", be it ever so little. Make the policy "no shit" rather than "be notable".

I don't think I've seen this point made before, and it's a very good one. And it focusses attention on the article's content, rather than the article's topic. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:43, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Ril
Thank you for your comments. Your point is valid. I believed that a block was in order because Ril was creating problems in many parts of the project and showed an unwillingness to change. Policy wise, I believe that there is a growing community consensus for a ban, at least until the AC is through with the case. Wikipedia, IMO, is far too indulgent of people who have no intention of working together with other editors. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:25, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Fun on VfD page
Thanks for getting back to me on that misunderstanding about the zero-population towns. It hadn't occurred to me that you were talking about Rambot...and I wholeheartedly agree. Things are taking up server space with little-used info that can easily be retrieved from other internet sites. Didn't mean to bite you. If I came off that way, it wasn't my intention and I offer a gazillion apologies. - Lucky 6.9 07:06, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Not called "bean curd" down under?
Google before you speak! ;)   Badagnani 07:31, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Do you live in Australia? It's funny, I play in one of the only North American "bush bands" (similar to Melbourne's Bushwhackers). I'm the fiddler/accordionist (and tofu eater!). Wish I could visit there too. We'd love to be invited to perform at Tamworth or some similar folk festival Down Under. http://www.riverbottombushwhackers.com/ Badagnani 05:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

All very nice of you to share. Yes, the air fare is the main problem but we've had a few fellow bush bands say they'd like to have us at their festivals. Woodford sounds nice--is that on what they call the Gold Coast? We've got a fair number of bands in your area on our links section. Also looks like Woodford QLD needs a Wikipedia article! :) Badagnani 06:11, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Mediation
I am greatful for your offer to mediate between me and EB. I've asked him to drop a note here if he is willing. Thanks again, Sam Spade 14:56, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


 * What exactly is "informal mediation"? Look, to put it bluntly I have no confidence that this exercise will accomplish anything in terms of improving relations between me and Sam, or in terms of changing Sam's approach to editing certain topics.  Why should I bother with this?  Exploding Boy 19:51, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I've answered this on EB's page. Grace Note 22:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Please have a look @ Requests_for_mediation. Thanks, Sam Spade 13:32, 15 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for stepping in to mediate on this one. Let me know if you need the page unprotected when the matter is resolved. --fvw *  20:59, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for your support of my RfA, which I have formally withdrawn. The full text of my withdrawal and statement of appreciation is on the RfA page. Best wishes, Leonard G. 03:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you
It looks like EB won't accept you as a mediator after all, but I appreciate your efforts. I'm not sure where we disagreed in the past (like you I don't keep an exacting list of names and my judgements of them), but you seem like a nice guy. Let me know if I can help you out sometime, or if you just want to talk. Cheers, Sam Spade 20:25, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, GN. (You seem to be getting a lot of that.)
Thanks for your supportive words and revert assists at Occupied Territories (Israeli). It's sad that Wikipedia has come to this. Do you know of any way to get Jayjg removed from the Arbitration committee he's on? I actually think he writes pretty well, and on matters on which he is neutral he seems to be pretty level headed. But on matters where he has a dog in the fight, he's basically a Stalinist. Anyway, thanks again. Marsden 18:04, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Response to long comments on my talk page
Hi. I meant to get back to you sooner, but I'm living without internet access at home right now (an awkward time for my RfA, to be sure), so I have limited time on the computer, and your comments take a while to read and respond to.

Where to begin? I think a good place to start is with the old "the sum of human knowledge" axiom. This is commonly referred to but what exactly it means is not without controversy. Taken in its broadest (and perhaps most literal) sense "the sum of human knowledge" can mean anything known by any human. This is alot of information. I could write hundreds upon hundreds of pages about myself and my immeidate surroundings. It's stuff I know, and I'm human, so arguably it's part of the sum of all human knowledge. More commonly, however, the phrase is used as a bit of a verbal shortcut, in this case the sum being less than its parts. More the end result of thousands of years of collected information, not what I had for breakfast this morning. the verifibility question, which is connected to this, is an important one. There are some who say Wikipedia should have information and everythign that is verifiable, and "notability" is not to be taken into account at all. I think people who take this apporach are somewhat fooling themselves. There are over 6 billion people on the planet, and finding a sentence or two of verifiable information on a huge proportion of them is likely possible. Should it be done? Should wikipedia have a billion articles, 99% on them on people like you and me? Keep in mind some sort of information on just about every business, street, building, and the like is verifiable. should all that be in an encyclopedia. To do so would go way beyond the bounds of what an encyclopedia (even one that is not paper) is. And that wikipedia is an encyclopedia is not negotiable. Pick up any local newspsper and you'll find verifiable information on a car accident, a minro fire in someone's house, marriage announcements, and other minutae that are fine for a local paper ona slow news day, but are not encyclopedic. That wikipedia's standards for verifiability are pretty low is another issue. Too often a mere google search is all that one needs to justify somethign as verifiable, even though any hack can start a web page and make any sort of claim there. There is no strong vetting process for such things.

Whether it is called "notability", "importance", "significance" or something else, there is something that explains why Albert Einstein has a wikiepdia article and I do not. For verifiability, I could write an article about myself saying "XXXX XXXXX was a contestant on Jeopardy! on December XX, 2004. He came in second place, which pays $2000." Verifiable, certainly, but do we really aim to have articlers on every person who has ever appeared on any game show, talk show, local news broadcast, etc? How many is that? Yes, wikipedia is not paper, but if we get 500,000 articles on average people like me (that's average in the sense of notability, I don't mean to disparage myself or others by labelling them as average) are we actually going to be able to police them all for truth and NPOV? Too often too much emphasis is placed on "verfiable" and not enough on "verified". One poor, incorrect article can affect the reputation of wikipedia more than 1000 good articles. People have standards from an encyclopedia, and aren't going to heap praise on one for giving some factual information on a topic, but they will disparage one which even has the perception of being incorrect or promotional. It is an issue. I got in an argument with Tony Sidaway a while ago about this issue, and he took an approach that I thought was quite naieve, basically stating that the verdict is in, the critics have been shot down, and everyone agrees that wikipedia is fantastic. Not true. The notion of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but will still be reliable, is a hard sell. Having articles on anything and everything is not going to help. And just think about the disambiguation pages and headers. Imagine seeing at the top of the Gerald Ford article for the person who won a recliner on Let's Make a Deal in 1978 see Gerald Ford (gameshow contestant). Would that do wikipedia any good at all? How about harm?

So at some point we have to decide who/what gets an article and what doesn't. Obviously this is not a black and white issue, and people will draw the lines in different places. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I'd like to think my stance should not be viewed as ridiculous either. If all there is to say of interest about some guy is that he was a candidate in an election, then maybe he should be redirected to the article on that election, probably the greater election (ie "2004 House of Representives Election" rather than "2004 House of Representives Election for Illinois 13th district"). Some people are under the impression that anyone in politics is automatically notable, and I don't see why this is. I think people are notable because they have some sort of impact on the world. Running for office rarely does this, while serving (depending on the office) more often does. I made a comment in a VfD about a guy who got less than 1% of the vote in a primary for a House of Representatives seat. in which i stated that the avergae grade school teacher has a greater impact on the world. Somehow this got lablled as a "personal attack", even though I was perfectly serious. Teachers, at least good teachers, can have great impact on hundreds or thousands of lives. Local politicians in minor offices, and people who run for slightly more significant offices, hardly do at all. Ask 50 random people to name 5 people who serve on their local town/city council or whatever, and then ask them to name their teachers in first through fifth grades (this is slightly skewed to Americans, but other countries have their equivalents). I bet you will get a much better response with the latter. Should we have articles for all teachers now? If yes, then what about other jobs?

You said on my talk page "those who want the broad coverage need to commit themselves to it." They do need to, and that's a problem. Someone may write 500 hundred articles on some minor people hardly anyone's heard of, but they may be generally factual and NPOV, and the author has them on his watchlist and can monitor them for detrimental changes. That's good, but what happens when that author stops writing for wikipedia? No one else is monitoring these articles and POV, vandalsim, and the like can probably go undetected for years. While I like the idea of a big wikipedia I do have concerns that it will become to big to manage, and entropy will prevail. Wikipedia got off to a good start because the proportions of good users, bad users, and total articles was largely positive. Now the number of articles is growing faster than the number of beneficial contribors, and the number of detrimental users is growing as well. People are treating "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" as "the encyclopedia that everyone should edit", and it's getting harder and harder to maintain quality. And the enormous issue of keeping articles updated is another factor. The principal of Flipperdipp Middle School is likely going to change every few years, will the article reflect this? How about the 500,000 principals of other schools? If not, then we have factually incorrect information, which we can all agree is a problem.

Well, I've said way too much. I tend to do that. I can't even keep track of which points of your's I've addressed and which I haven't; and I'm quite sure I went off on many tangents, but well, I felt some of this had to be said. I'm not asking you to change your vote or anything, but I think these are impoirtant issues that should be given some thought, if nothing else. If there is anything specific from your comments that you'd like me to address let me know, I'm sure I missed quite a bit. Well, back to work. -R. fiend 19:34, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Your view is requested
I am contacting logged-in users who have taken an interest in, or edited, Wikipedia_talk:Assume_good_faith, and asking them to respond to a question I have placed on that page which goes to the policy of WP:AGF.

Thanks in advance. paul klenk 23:46, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Complaint against Jayjg
Grace --

I've lodged a complaint against Jayjg for violating the terms of a request for arbitration at Requests for comment.

I guess -- the instructions are not entirely clear -- that this needs to be seconded. Would you mind?

I believe very much in trying to make rules work.

Marsden 14:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, could you please revert your own revert at Occupied Territories (Israeli)? I'm not sure, given your note, that you did not intend that this revert actually be made at Occupied Territories, but in any case, even if you are giving up on this matter, please at least do not aid the side you disagree with. Marsden 15:03, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Have you considered bailing?
Grace --

Wikipedia has jumped the shark. Any efforts you make to improve it will serve also to lend credibility to the POVs that it has come to promote.

-- Marsden 13:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * "It's like telling your girlfriend you can't have fucked her sister because look, you have some flowers for her."


 * Too funny! Do you suppose that Jay works for Dore Gold's organization, or something very similar?


 * I am bailing on Wiki, other than to warn other people against it. It probably was inevitable that once it became useful, its usefulness would be turned to some interested enterprise.  Tragedy of the commons, and all.


 * Marsden 16:54, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Grace --

I've decided that I'll occasionally participate in Wikipedia, but only for the purpose of countering the Hasbara Mafia. At least for as long as I consider their POV-pushing to be a major problem here.

-- Marsden 13:53, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Your 2¢ sought: Much positive feedback for Schiavo FA-nom
Your 2¢ sought: The Terri Schiavo  Featured Article nomination has made much progress and has received much positive feedback, including some from Mark (AKA  &rarr; Raul654 ), the FA-editor:  Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Terri_Schiavo. As one of the esteemed editors in that vein, I'd like you to review the FA-nom and throw in your 2¢-worth. Thx.-- GordonWatts 15:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Personal attacks
I wish you wouldn't encourage Marsden. You know he's out of order. There are other ways of expressing his POV, but he's focused only on attacking people and being provocative. I really have tried to engage him, but the attacks continue regardless. I hope you'll reconsider your support for him. SlimVirgin (talk) 11:22, 25 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't know why he's frustrated. He got his own way (so far as I know) over the occupied/disputed business, and the POV that he wanted at Daniel Pipes is now in the article. Seems to me that he wants people to roll over and play dead the minute he hits the talk page, and if they don't, they're working for the Mossad. He'd encounter exactly the same opposition if he went to Islam-related pages and tried to add criticism there. Opposition isn't always a bad thing, or necessarily a sign of evil intentions. SlimVirgin (talk) 11:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Hayle
Thanks for the note, I looked into this issue and found what probably happened. For starters it wasn't your version that was a violation but a version added in June that was a direct copy and paste from here. At some point someone came across it and slapped the copyright violation notice on it. As I'm sure you know, there's a huge backlog on WP:CP so I was helping out. Normally what I would do is to see if there was a "safe" version in history and revert to that and leave a note for an admin to finish it off by deleting the violations out of page history. Or do a rewrite on the temp page. Which is what happened, user:RadicalBender deleted the page and restored only those version that didn't have the copyright violations. Which is why you don't see them in the history....I'm not sure if you're an admin but if you are you can look and see them in the revision history. I've since become an admin so I went back and saw the violations that were deleted. So as it stands the violation is not in the page history.

Now, I'd much rather revert than to non-violation version so I can only assume that your version wasn't in the history anymore for some reason, but I could have missed it I suppose, if I had seen it I would have reverted to it...saving me a bunch or time rewriting it. In any case, neither the admin doing the deletion nor I saw your version in the page history. At the very worst it was just a matter of human error.

As far as making a "serious accusation of malfeasance against another editor" you can be sure it was nothing of the sort. Thanks for your time and WP:AGF Rx StrangeLove 02:59, 26 September 2005 (UTC)


 * What RxStrangelove says is pretty much what happened. Normally what happens with an article that is not new but which has copyvios is that I'd simply excise any copyvio material out of the article (since usually it has simply been slapped onto the end of an existing article. I did go through previous versions (as is standard practice), but the ones I saw all appeared to be copyvios (due to RadicalBender's deletions, presumably). It certainly wasn't your version that was the copyvio! Sorry for any problems caused. Grutness...  wha?  04:08, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
 * No problem - and no harm done my end. Sorry it pissed you off and you had the rewriting job, but the article probably ended up better as a result anyway! Peace, Grutness...  wha?  04:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Please take a look
at the the page; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Economy_of_Israel. Your thoughts about this would be apreciated. Thanks. Btw, I really appriciate your comments about some of the things/attitudes here on Wikipedia regarding the Middle East/Israel. A sane voice! I have not been contributing for long here (though I love the idea of wikipedia!) ...but I really wonder if it is worth it? Why should I improve/give greater credit to a forum wich appear, frankly, quite rotten when it comes to the Middle East? It really, really chocked me to see that the user Jayjg had been personally appointed to the Arbitration Committee by Jimmy Wales. I´m stunned. I had a "discussion" with Jayjg on Menachem Begins talk-page; uha. :-( And I see I´m not the only one who feels this way: take e.g. a look at User:Joseph_E._Saad. Sad, sad, sad. Regards, Huldra 19:58, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Occupied Territories (Israeli)
First, understand that on the principle, I agree with you - Occupied Territories is a much more accurate title, and really is the majority view. However, it's a battle we can't win. Jayjg et al were placing obstacles that made it impossible to have a page that: (1) had a reasonably coherent discussion of the reality on the ground; and (2) could be linked to, particularly from the Israel page. In my humble opinion, rather than banging our head against the wall on the title issue, there is much more to be gained by spending the time and energy on other areas, such as fixing the very awful Arab-Israeli conflict and History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict pages. Brian Tvedt 11:15, 28 September 2005 (UTC)