User talk:Parlirules/Archives/2008-04

Sarsaparilla
In brief, here's his history: It's true that he's never actually been disruptive in parliamentary procedure articles, at least to my knowledge. I don't care; he's clearly here primarily to disrupt, and the project needs him gone. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 23:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * He was involved in proposing (with Abd) something called Delegable Proxy. I wasn't involved in that, but I gather that his contributions were perceived as disruptive and he was blocked indefinitely.
 * He used sockpuppets to evade this block.
 * Eventually, his block was lifted, and he resumed editing openly as User:Obuibo Mbstpo.
 * Many of his edits with this account were perceived as very annoying - he opposed all deletion, for example, and would make significant changes to policy pages without advance discussion, citing WP:BOLD and WP:BRD). He also proposed new policies that could only be described as "bizarre", for example allowing people to treat Wikipedia like Myspace if they agreed to put Google ads on their user pages.  Some people wanted to re-block him for this; I continually argued against doing so.
 * He created Obuibo Mbstpo, a hoax article about a fictitious Nigerian parliamentarian. When confronted about this, he fabricated a source to defend the article.  He was blocked again.
 * He used sockpuppets to evade this ban.
 * He eventually took responsibility for the hoax article and fabricating the source. Once he did this, I advocated - eventually successfully - for his unblock.
 * Once unblocked, he created an article on the Easter bunny hotline a phone number which, while existent, was clearly non-notable. He was blocked again as a result.  I stated that I considered this block unjustified, but that I wasn't going to exert any energy to get him unblocked, since I was pretty sure he'd created the Easter bunny article in bad faith.
 * He used socks to evade his blocks.
 * He expressed an interest in appealing his case to Arb Comm. I told him that if he agreed to edit only the arbitration pages, I would unblock him to do so.  Moreover, I stated that I would advocate for a partial unbanning under those circumstances.  He responded to this by declining my offer and continuing to sockpuppet.
 * This indefinite block stuff seems like a relatively new phenomenon on Wikipedia. It used to be that people would just block for 24 hours, and for longer if you persisted in disruption. Now, they drop the indefinite-block hammer on you for doing next-to-nothing. That's not to say disruption is a good thing to engage in, but the block-evading is a direct result of the indefinite block, which is an absurd thing to impose on someone with a contribution history like mine. Of course, the jumping around from one account to another obscured some of that, and some people just didn't care; they didn't like my ideas, wanted me gone, and were looking for an excuse to show me the door. They are probably itching for Abd to give them an excuse too, but he's a bit less impulsive (and more mature) than I. 129.174.73.242 (talk) 00:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * He's correct, by the way, both as to his personal history and what has happened on Wikipedia, but he has also asked me not to defend him, at least not on-wiki, so if you would like to know more of the history, you can email me. It's all been laid out here, but it would also take you a long time to go over the actual history.--Abd (talk) 02:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:BOLD
Hey Parlirules - I suggest you give the above link a read. I appreciate your desire to make sure you're acting in accordance with consensus, but I'd suggest that rather than tagging things with and making lengthy talk page arguments, you just go ahead and do what you think would improve the article. If somebody else doesn't like it, they can revert, and then you can discuss it. It's less work that way than it is to fully explain yourself in advance, just in case somebody doesn't like what you're up to. Great work, by the way. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 03:36, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I suggest it both because you clearly know what you're doing in this field and because it's got to be pretty frustrating to type out long arguments and proposals and not receive any response to them. I could go through everything you've typed and add to the end of each of them "Sounds good to me," but let's just cut out the middle man: everything you're doing has my support, and if I don't like something you're doing, I'll let you know and then we can discuss it. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 04:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Please make a Portal from your User page!
I got a mail from Sarsaparilla suggesting this:

''Also, I think we should create a parliamentary procedure portal. I.e., create a new page, Portal:Parliamentary procedure. It will take about two minutes to do, because all you need to do is take the text of User:Parlirules, get rid of his welcome message, and there you have a perfectly good portal. He probably doesn't know about portals, and therefore is using his userpage as one.''

Instead of doing this, since this was your content, I'm suggesting that you do it. Or ask me to do it, I will. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 14:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. My user page is constructed as a personal portal. I saw his suggestion earlier about making a PP portal but that task was further down my list of things to do. I'll look again at the Portal template, but now that it has been suggested, it might be more efficient to start with a simple copy of my user page. ~ Parlirules 15:16, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: Nuclear option
As for the page, categories do not exist solely to support Wikiprojects. While Wikiprojects do use them, categories primarily exist to group articles that have a similar theme together. This article relates to parliamentary procedure &mdash; hence the category. Whether the Wikiproject wants it under their purview or not is not particularly relevant to its inclusion in the category. seresin ( ¡? ) 01:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Categories are mainly used to browse through similar articles. (from here). Doesn't match exactly what I said, but the gist is the same. Again, please amend your signature. seresin ( ¡? ) 04:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I have yet to see an instance where "accepted wiki behavior" requires discussion with Wikiprojects. Wikiprojects do not have any sort of authority over content. If an article belongs in a category of articles because it has the theme that the category groups, then it should be in the category. Wikiprojects do not play into it. seresin ( ¡? ) 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)