User talk:Horologium/October 2008

Orlando people
Thank you :)

I may re-add some more people once I get citations. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Palinism: Delete and salt perhaps not best course
Posted this to Wikipedia talk:Requested articles/Social sciences and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics --

On 26 September I added a request to Requested articles/Social sciences for Palinism, "nominally, the philosophy of candidate Sarah Palin - 7,000+ Google hits on 25 Sept 2008." (Has 9,000+ ghits today, 3 October). On 28 September 2008 User:Horologium deleted this with the comment "Removed salted topic." If you click on Palinism you see the note/rationale "deleted "Palinism" (G10: Attack page or negative unsourced BLP: Neologism). Perhaps some existing article Palinism had problems, but IMHO that's not justification for salting it -- just fix it. At Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Politics I suggested that Palinism should just redirect to the existing, non-salted article Political positions of Sarah Palin. This seems perfectly reasonable to me. -- I'd certainly be interested in hearing if there's some reasoning I'm missing here - perhaps best to discuss at Wikipedia talk:Requested articles/Social sciences?? -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 06:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem was not so much with your suggestion, but rather what was there when I speedy deleted it; it was not a discussion of Palin's beliefs, but rather an attack on Palin's speaking style, with a link to Bushism, and similar text. I discovered your link in the requested articles section hours later, and removed it because the term had been salted. I salted it because anything other than a protected redirect is likely to turn into another version of the article I deleted, and because there is no currency for the term outside of blogs and other opinion sites. A Google news search a moment ago returned 28 hits, most of which were op/ed columns or blogs. Someone who is interested in Sarah Palin's political views will more likely search Sarah Palin (which has a handy link to the political views page) than Palinism. "Palinism" is likely to remain confined to bloggers, which are not reliable sources and cannot be used to establish notability or substantiate statements made in Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and that includes using it to support or oppose a candidate for office. Horologium  (talk) 12:21, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response. I assumed that something like this was the case.
 * (FYI, one reason why I'm going on about this is because I'm trying to educate myself about "How Wikipedia works" -- everything is not covered in the policies and guidelines. :-) )
 * It seems to me that a link to Political positions of Sarah Palin could hardly be harmful. (I'm not familiar with "protected redirects", but it seems to me that a case like this would be appropriate use of such a thing.)
 * You wrote: ""Palinism" is likely to remain confined to bloggers, which are not reliable sources and cannot be used to establish notability or substantiate statements made in Wikipedia articles."
 * I understand what you mean here, however, making Palinism a redirect to Political positions of Sarah Palin would not be so using blogs/bloggers. (Political positions of Sarah Palin already has good sources, or if not, then that discussion is being handled there.) IMHO, regardless of the reliability or unreliability of the people using a term, if it's being used (and especially if it's a neologism), then people are going to look to Wikipedia to find information about it, and we should accommodate that. (For comparison, many slang terms from the drug culture are redirects on Wikipedia -- the people using these terms are often the most unreliable that one could imagine, but if somebody's wondering "Zoofies?? What does zoofies mean?", it behooves us to help them out.)
 * However, as you point out, apparently this term was of limited and temporary interest, and it also seems not to be of any great interest to Wikipedia community. (Not generating any discussion.) Therefore, barring any further developments, I am dropping this. :-)
 * - Incidentally, you made a point of noting at Wikipedia talk:Requested articles/Social sciences: "this discussion has been forum-shopped to several different locations." Was that merely to inform others, or is forum-shopping considered bad form on Wikipedia? Is there a policy or guideline page on this? (Can reply at my Talk page, if desired.)
 * Thanks for your attention. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 22:25, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * In response to your last point, Wikipedia's guidelines on canvassing specifically discourage bringing up a topic in multiple places. As the topic was addressed in three different locations (here, Requested articles/Social sciences, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics), there could have been three different threads on the same topic running concurrently. It's better to pick a single location and work there, although notifying an editor who is the subject of a discussion (as you did in this case) is always a good idea. It's much easier to follow a discussion if it's all in one location (which is why I replied here, rather than on your talk page). Horologium  (talk) 22:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * (Adding a little more) This article came to my attention after a mention of it was made at the Administrators' noticeboard, and someone had already initiated a discussion at Articles for Deletion when I speedily deleted it (just in case you were wondering how I found it). When I later did a check for links back to the (now-deleted) article, I noticed your post on the Requested articles list, and removed it there as well, since I had salted it to prevent recreation. Horologium  (talk) 22:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Date linking is deprecated?
Greetings,

A few pointers:

1. The original push to "deprecate" date-linking concerned date-linking for the purpose of computer formatting. That has little to do with the reasons many dates are linked.

2. Tony, who is doing a lot of the delinking, also is the one who pushed for the "guideline" change...a conflict of interest.

3. A link to an historical date makes sense in an historical context. For example, "Fort Lauderdale was founded in 1911". It would make sense there to link to 1911.

Sincerely, Ryoung122 13:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Uh-oh
Administrators' noticeboard

You may want to register your take on this; unfortunately, there was an extremely short-fused discussion before he was unblocked. Horologium  (talk) 20:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Stunned. - jc37 21:36, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Extension revisited
It's still going on. - jc37 04:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * mw:User_talk:MinuteElectron
 * User_talk:Horologium/September_2008

Please Rollback this
This vandal has made two consecutive vandal-edits. Please rollback them, as I can only undo them. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_House_of_the_Scorpion&diff=246530778&oldid=246530478

Cheers. ImperatorExercitus (talk) 17:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)


 * ✅ Horologium  (talk) 17:23, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Ted Stevens
Is semi-protection necessary? I see about 4 vandalism edits in the last 4 hours. At one an hour that's not too serious a rate. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:47, 27 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Three of the edits were in the last hour. Once this hits the blogs (and it will), there will be a horde of axe-grinders on both sides of the aisle gunning for this article. Horologium  (talk) 22:54, 27 October 2008 (UTC)