User talk:LibStar/Archive 1

"Appropriate warning"
Thank you for your obviously well-intentioned caveat "With regard to your comments on User:Michellecrisp: Please see Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy" but it is misplaced. It is quite unnecessary, I assure you, and I have entirely backed away from any interaction with Ms Crisp, who appears to be someone who enters combat mode rather readily. It is a pity that she took my queries amiss: I inquired as to what was the nature of her special interest in Regina, Saskatchewan, given that she is in Brisbane, Australia; I wondered if, given that she is in Brisbane, Australia, she is an aboriginal Australian and if this might account for her rather unusual manner of expressing herself in English. She apparently regards this as a racist attack and it is an odd notion of racism to characterise it as such. It is nothing of the kind: I have worked for the better part of 30 years with Papua New Guineans, aboriginal Canadians and aboriginal Australians as a teacher, colleague, employer, employee and friend. Ms Crisp's English is -- well, she bristles at its being characterised as non-native or substandard; but special, at any rate, and my entirely neutral inquiry was by way of a friendly attempt to account for it. Masalai 08:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for your support LibStar. I will only make one comment, the evidence is mounting of uncivil conduct. Michellecrisp 12:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Seriously defective english
I think it's completely beside the point if anyones english is, infact, poor or good. In MichelleCrisps case I'm of the opinion that her english is perfectly good -- certainly much better than mine.

But even if it wasn't, the tone would be completely inacceptible. (I don't mean *your* tone, Masalais) Fixing any concrete mistakes would be fine. Even posting concrete, constructive suggestions for improvements on the user-page would be fine. (I notice you tend to sometimes write "ligth" when you really mean "light", a good rule of thumb is .....")

"Your english sucks, you must be race/ethnic-group/nationality, please improve before contributing again, good luck on adapting to the 21st century." isn't. (that wasn't the wording, but it's how it came across in my ears)

There *is* no user-warning for "Your english is too poor, please stop contributing". For good reason if you ask me. :-) --Eivind Kjørstad 07:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I actively encourage people to pick on my english -- that'll help me improve afterall. But the thing is, it needs to be *constructive* picking. "Your english is substandard" is no help for me at all, and feels only like a personal attack. "I noticed that you sometimes write plaesant, the word is really 'pleasant'" is however constructive.


 * Oh well, there's some signs that this whole thing is calming down. I've not seen any evidence that Masalai acknowledges having been in any way rude or incivil, instead he has been telling everyone who thinks so that they must've misunderstood. Still, I won't push it, assuming he refrains from making more unacceptable comments in the future. It's possible to understand you behaved badly, but still be unwilling to actually admit it. And in this case I think it's enough. I've had a dig in the contributions, and it does not seem to be a persistent pattern of behaviour. --Eivind Kjørstad 08:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * "please give examples of Michelle's "defectiveness" through diffs": I certainly don't intend to draw out this unedifying discussion any further by providing examples of Ms C's solecisims. You can review her prose for yourself. I have attempted numerous times to draw away from it by refusing to engage with those who wish to wage war. I propose to continue to do so. Further engagement seems unlikely to be productive. Masalai 10:47, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Redfern
Would you like some objective data to demonstrate that Redfern is a socially deprived area? Or don't Liberals acknowledge that social deprivation exists in Australia? Intelligent Mr Toad 15:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've responded to Mr Toad on this one. cheers Michellecrisp 15:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

SI
Hi LibStar, The user in question is not actually "banned", the user is a "previously suspected" sockpuppet. You should probably change your submittal at Sockpuppet Investigations.Synchronism (talk) 07:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikiquette Alerts
This is a message to warn you that you've been reported to the Wikiquette alert board.--&#91;&#124;!*//MarshalN20\\*!&#124;&#93; (talk) 01:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)



Bilateral relations articles
Thanks for the comment on my talk page. I agree there needs to be a cleanup process for these articles and that will involve AfD. Those articles unable to demonstrate notability should be deleted. My concern is with the rather poor arguments made for deletion that have nothing to do with Wikipedia's actual deletion policy but merely reflect local biases and subjective opinion. Your arguments on my talk page are no more relevant than the ones made at AfD. That there are 40,000 combinations of bilateral relations is irrelevant. If they are notable, they should have articles; if not, they shouldn't. We don't delete articles on U.S. localities (let's say) just because there is a lot of them. Besides, 40,000 from 2,841,882 (to date) articles is not a lot. That the creator of the articles is currently blocked from editing is also irrelevant, provided that the articles were created before the editor was banned (not just blocked). Under WP:BAN it is acceptable to revert and remove content provided from banned editors after they were banned, not content created before a ban.

The whole process seems to be one of creating rather than combating Wikpedia's built-in systemic bias. WP:CSB explains systemic bias and works to eradicate it. I fear this current campaign against articles on bilateral relations will only reinforce Wiki's built in biases. -- Mattinbgn\talk 03:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Tajikistan
Hi, just a note, I noticed you were working on deletion; in case one wants to work on something more interesting than deleting, Ministry of Health, Tajikistan is a very spare new article. The main page http://www.health.tj/en/ has information including a lot of MoH companies and agencies, one is not sure how to successfully configure this material. Tajik doesn't seem to have a lot of its ministries up and running, vis a vis websites, main government pages are at http://www.mid.tj/index.php?lang=english and http://www.tjus.org/Government.htm. Cheers. --Mr Accountable (talk) 03:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Length in country articles
Hi, you should apply the length tag to the following articles that are over 100 kilobytes in size: Dominican Republic, Israel, South Africa, Sweden, Belgium, Argentina, and Germany.
 * Selecciones de la Vida (talk) 09:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: Foreign relations of Ethiopia template
Actually, both of the countries you removed from this template have very notable historical relations with Ethiopia. Under Haile Selassie, for example Belgium helped to train the Kebur Zabangna as well as other military assistance; this was part of Haile Selassie's strategy of reducing his dependence on the three European countries -- France, Italy & the UK -- which controlled neighboring territories. As for Austria, not only do they provide a significant share of foreign aid to Ethiopia, they also have a notable African Studies department at their major university. If you don't mind, I'd like to restore those two links. -- llywrch (talk) 15:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

NZ cats
I happened to have tagged the drug lord category for the process of tagging NZ categories - btw there are some about to try bots :) I personally would counsel against seeking empty or one entry categories without careful consideration of the category structures of wiki projects SatuSuro 15:10, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Bilateral relations
Thanks for continuing to do your best to get rid of these random country articles. I must say, I like your description of "the obsessive article creator" :-) Nyttend (talk) 14:27, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok so you could be considered the non random obsessive deletor then? - I am looking at some of your proposed deletions - and that seems your project - where is the point at where you will not put it up for afd? - is it you are seeking out only the low notability items (there is a hell of a lot of them out there) - where's your perception of the point of leaving some alone? what is the criteria for notable/leave alone? It would be useful to know - SatuSuro 00:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Forget it - I have just seen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Centralized_discussion/Bilateral_international_relations#Votes_on_whether_we_should_have_a_separate_notability_guideline_for_bilateral_relations so ok - you dont need to reply - sigh SatuSuro 00:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * obsessive deletor? shame I've created these articles recently. That accusation doesn't stick if you think I want to delete obsessively.

LibStar (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Cambodia-Japan_relations
 * Australia-Thailand_relations
 * Australia–South_Africa_relations
 * Australia-Philippines_relations
 * Australia-Brazil_relations

Apologies- there was meant to be a sense of humour in the comment there but clearly I didnt flag it as such - and you have responded to it defensively - the comment was made in the heat of trying to find a clear criteria guideline as to where the N line is drawn - the wikipedia community at times seems to be separated between those who seem to spend all their time deleting - and others who do otherwise - it is heartening that to see you are capable of both :) - SatuSuro 02:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Just curious, why the – for Australia/RSA, but the - for other relations? Nyttend (talk) 02:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * oops, didn't notice that. LibStar (talk) 02:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Indian Ocean bilateral articles
Hi, Australia-South Africa relations is a nice article; I read WP:DELT and also have awareness of articles relating to Piracy in Somalia and Piracy in the Malacca Strait, viz Category:Port authorities; Indian Ocean bilateral articles (like 'Maldives-Comoros relations') would perforce have something to do with security in the Greater Indian Ocean area - something to think about in re: attention to deletion. --Mr Accountable (talk) 03:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Re:Note
My pleasure (so to speak). I think this refusal to discuss on the merits is absurd (after all, the centralized discussion might drag on for weeks/months), and if there's any indication the "keep until the discussion is over" votes influenced closing administrators not to delete (where substantive comments all or nearly all called for deletion), then we should look at DRV or re-nomination. By the way, I think it's now safe to experiment with prodding some of the more absurd combinations, like I did here. - Biruitorul Talk 14:12, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

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Articles for deletion/Iceland–Switzerland relations
I happen to agree with you on the outcome for this one, but please be civil in your comments. Bearian (talk) 00:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * O.K. you have me there, but try to tone it down. Bearian (talk) 00:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Regarding Denmark–New Zealand relations, I think you removed some information that might help show notability. While most nations have some rivalry in sports, this particular one has garnerned coverage in reliable news outlets. Bearian (talk) 00:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I really don't think that commenting "the above cannot be considered a vote for keep, it does not assess the notability of relations" underneath every vote that does not happen to coincide with your viewpoint is productive. — Jake   Wartenberg  02:32, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Bilateral AfDs
Thanks for the heads up, i think you're right, though it seems to depend on the admin. I will try different tactics! FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:09, 1 May 2009 (UTC) After reading some more AfD comments that was definitely good advice :-) FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)