User talk:Mnnlaxer/Archive 2

CIA branch articles
I started the CIA branch articles in 2008, because the main article is too long. The goal is to show actions and reactions over time at a fine-grained level in individual countries and regions, following the CIA breakdown of those regions, by placing sourced entries indexed by time or historical period in each article.

Many of these branches were redirected in February without adding value by someone who clearly is not interested in the topic. I have reverted much of this vandalism. The articles were intact for 6 years prior to that.

If you want to start a formal review of the articles and the redirection and the format and the topic, I am all for it. Erxnmedia (talk) 18:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Sure, I can take a look next week, but perhaps User:Volunteer Marek would like to start it now. In the meantime, I suggest leaving the articles intact, with notability tags which I'll add. Mnnlaxer (talk) 18:17, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Holy cow. That is a huge issue. I'll have to get help, so I'll post something on Notability noticeboard. Mnnlaxer (talk) 18:59, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * FYI, these are not content forks. In 2008, I was reading books like Ghost Wars and found a lot of individual country and region detail that didn't fit into the main article.  The main article hovers around 150K words and is close to unmanageable in size.  The CIA has a breakdown of their activities by region which I followed.  To the extent that I found sourceable tidbits of information about operations, intelligent assessments or other activities that occurred in a given place, I put them in the article for that place.  Wikipedia has many other branching organizations for complex topics such as individual items for each protein, for example SPRY2, so there is precedent for having articles with descending levels of detail.  Also, I wanted to have an article for a place but spanning over time.  Some of the redirects that have occurred for this set point the original branch to an article about a specific historical event, which was not the intent of this structure.  For example this happened with CIA activities in Albania getting redirected to Albanian Subversion by confirmed sockpuppet User:Igottheconch.  Igottheconch could have added a pointer to that article instead of a total redirect, because the CIA is an ongoing organization, Albania is an ongoing country, and presumably other CIA activities and assessments have happened before and after that time, whose details may have been published in Coll-type books.  Erxnmedia (talk) 20:04, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm currently setting up a discussion for notability/improvement/merge the small individual country articles into the regional articles. CIA activities in the Americas is currently a terrible article, but could be a good one. I certainly see some country articles as notable and did not tag them, which I'm going to retag with merger proposal linking to various discussions like Talk:CIA activities in the Americas. I'm open to any and all suggested ideas in this discussion. It's obviously a complicated one. Mnnlaxer (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2015 (UTC)


 * FYI, the original branching structure for CIA was designed by Howard Berkowitz. I extended that down to country level (which he didn't like, he thought regional was enough).  Howard did a huge amount of editing on military and intel matters.  He got frustrated by trolls (and me!) and moved onto Citizendium, where he eventually again got frustrated, and retired from both.  But, to give credit where it is due, the original impetus was his.  Erxnmedia (talk) 13:59, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

July 2015
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war&#32; according to the reverts you have made on Eliot Higgins. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement. Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states: If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.''As before. Attempting to "force through" edits is not the solution here.'' VQuakr (talk) 18:50, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
 * 2) Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.
 * You didn't put this on User talk:Green Cardamom's page, even though "Users are expected to collaborate with others" applies exclusively to him. All I can say is "ha!". And did you see the Barnstar I gave him? Mnnlaxer (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You are reverting multiple other editors. If this went to the EWN, the resulting decision might be to lock the article rather than block you, but it certainly would not be to block anyone else without also blocking you. Hence the warning, hoping to help you avoid a block. Not sure what you mean by the "exclusively" language above or why you think the barnstar is relevant. VQuakr (talk) 19:26, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Just making small talk. Also, made a proposed text for Ghouta. Mnnlaxer (talk) 19:30, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I saw your response on the BLPN. Re not knowing where to go, consider WP:DRN but I would suggest waiting until the RfC is closed first per WP:FORUMSHOP. VQuakr (talk) 21:24, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but DRN is an informal early stop and RfC closing isn't robust unless there is a clear consensus, which is impossible right now. RfC was clearly at an impasse after H's arguments made no impression on GreenC. So I went to BLP, which I don't think qualifies as shopping. I will add links to the two discussions, as suggested. What the situation needs is other people chiming in with arguments. So feel free to contribute. How anyone can think the added text is within a country mile of violating BLP or any other policy, guideline, essay or common sense is beyond me. Are intransigent people supposed to be rewarded for their behavior? Mnnlaxer (talk) 21:52, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Common sense
I'd like to thank for his very commonsensical application of WP:COMMONSENSE in the Barry Lando AfD. A quote:"The result was no consensus. This is a tough decision. WP:COMMONSENSE trumps all policy here at Wikipedia, and always has, and I'm leaning on it a bit here. ... The votes are leaning towards delete, but are tempered by the reasonable claim that it is virtually impossible for this person to not be notable. ... most everyone here agrees that it should be sourceable, maybe it is."Maybe it isn't. But maybe it is.-- Mnnlaxer (talk) 04:42, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

mediation comments
Since I am no longer part of this mediation, I would appreciate it if you didn't refer to me or my edits in that venue. It's sort of crappy to talk about someone in a place where they can't (well, can, but you know what I mean) respond. You can bring it up on the article talk page or even my own talk page (I don't think I've banned you from that).

As to the substance of your recent comment there, well, since I'm not in the mediation, I don't see any reason not to resume editing the article. Whatever you guys decide there is between you guys that are still there and is in no way binding on any other parties. It is completely ridiculous for the mediator to remove several editors from the mediation on the basis of what appears to be some crazy paranoia about us being employees of "intelligence services" and then expect that we - or at least I - will unconditionally respect the outcome. Conditionally, sure - if you guys work out something useful, fine, if not, then too bad. Or respect the process for that matter.Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:19, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I am missing something here? It isn't even a mediation right now because there is no mediator. You can chip in there as much or as little as you like, but the location is still a good one to continue to use. I know you are not bound by anything and I knew it was extremely unlikely that you would even participate at all in the mediation. But I was happy you did. And I want you to continue to participate in collaborative editing and discussions before making edits on this contentious topic. - Mnnlaxer &#124; talk &#124; stalk 21:29, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * If that is the case then I'd be happy to participate.Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:33, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Great. As a show of good faith, can you self-revert your recent edits and instead propose them in a new section on the talk page? - Mnnlaxer &#124; talk  &#124; stalk 13:51, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I asked you to self-revert your recent deletion of a large part of the Ghouta chemical attack article and join in the ongoing discussion on the talk page. Please do not make contentious edits without proposing them on the talk page first. We can work this out if you are willing to collaborate in order to achieve consensus. - Mnnlaxer &#124;  talk  &#124; stalk 16:10, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you point me to where Andrevan removed you and other editors from the mediation? It would be extremely good for both future discussions and the article itself if you could respect the process of gaining consensus. - Mnnlaxer &#124; talk &#124; stalk 21:29, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I can. It is here. He also pointed out that all existing parties must agree before additional parties can be a part of a mediation. Ref. diff. He later told My very best wishes to stop participating in the mediation. Ref. diff. Presumably due to the fact that My very best wishes already had withdrawn and probably because I requested a clarification on that issue. Or maybe it was because I pointed out that he wasn't a part of the mediation in a couple of edit summaries. Erlbaeko (talk) 08:11, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks, Erlbaeko. I will change my direction and try to wrap things up on the mediation page and move to the article itself and its talk page. - Mnnlaxer &#124; talk  &#124; stalk 14:01, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Decision needed on mediation
Last week I asked a question about closing the mediation here. Apparently my attempt to ping participants didn't work. Would you be able to respond? Sunray (talk) 06:14, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My great apologies. I did comment on the mediation page. Thanks for your work. - Mnnlaxer &#124; talk  &#124; stalk 13:49, 14 September 2015 (UTC)