User talk:Rudyfink

Rudy:

You have fewer than 10 edits on Wikipedia, and they are almost all the same thing. Why are you so interested in undoing that example from the Pigments page? It is a common device for writers to use examples from fiction and literature. I see you are new. Let's talk about this here on your Talk page.

You don't have anything on your user page. Who are you? How old are you? What do you read? What have you written? Why are you so interested in pigments? Do you know something about them? Do you have a better way of illustrating this aspect of history?

A thread that runs through the entire article is the scarcity of the color blue, until the Industrial Revolution. Do you have another way to illustrate it?

Did you know that artists and colormakers before modern times treated their techniques as trade secrets, and never wrote about them? There is almost nothing written about color by the artists themselves, which is why an imaginative and well-researched novel like the one by Tracy Chevalier is so helpful. The protagonist actually becomes Vermeer's colormaker. The novel contains a great deal of accurate information about pigments, and it would be helpful to anyone trying to learn something about the general history.

Since you are new here, I hope you have come to make constructive contributions. If you are so serious about your beliefs that examples from fiction or literature should not be used, let's see you write something.

There is Wikipedia rule called the "three reverts rule" which says that you cannot do or undo the same change more than three times. If you change those paragraphs again, that will be your third time. I will undo your deletion once again, and that will be my third time. After that either my version stays, or you take the matter to arbitration. In arbitration, a couple of experienced wikipedia hands who are on the arbitration panel decide. I have never been involved in a Wikipedia arbitration, after well over a thousand edits, and something like 50 articles. Frankly, I can't imagine why you are so wound up about this thing. The fact that you have made only eight edits on Wikipedia ever, and that seven of them are about this, makes we wonder.

Now if you feel strongly about something ... especially if you want to undo something that someone else has worked on, then a better approach is to write about it on the Talk page for the article and get some other opinions or ideas. I am certainly open to that. But I want to see an example from you that would maintain the unity and flow of that section. --Metzenberg 06:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

response
Metzenberg:

I assume you have a watch setup so I'll put this up here.

First, I am glad to talk with you about why I felt the changes were improvements. I realize you spent a good amount of time on the article and would consider it yours. I had originally looked for a way to directly email you before I made them to go over it with you first. I would have done that to find a consensus and also to avoid the back-and-forth edit which can make working on wikipedia so critically unpleasant.

Second, I find it a bit concerning that you appear, in your comments here, to be arguing against the edits I made partially by "putting down" me or my person. Does it matter, really, if I were a 27 or 127 years old, if I'd never read anything or I'd read thousands books, if this were my first and only edit in my life ever to wikipedia or if it were one of hundreds of anonymous edits, if I knew nothing about pigment or if I worked with optics and chemistry daily, if I knew nothing about history or if it were my hobby and I studied it in college, or anything else? If you are interested for personal curiosity, I apologize. If you are interested because it is intended to further some aspect of the argument, I do not think falling into these fallacies will serve us and will instead just make us seem less mature to an outside party.

Third, I feel our debate is absolutely not about any concrete thing. It is a question of style and value.

Honestly, I think it may be best to just move this to arbitration. I'll post my thoughts but your comments, especially your comment that "If you change those paragraphs again, that will be your third time. I will undo your deletion once again, and that will be my third time." makes me feel that I have little hope of finding common ground. Please let me know if you would prefer this otherwise I will continue to debate.

--Later edit Going right into arbitration does not appear to be an option. The page suggests other avenues to pursue first, so instead of directly to arbitration we could go to those if you wish. --

I understand there is a thread of color/pigment scarcity mixed into the article. I also understand the value of illustrative references to use of color. I understand what you were going for with these aspects.

I am interested in how you feel the movie/novel references further those points?

I felt and feel they read like attempts to inject a favorite book into an article. I feel the references more distract/muddle than educate about the subject. I realize you disagree from this point but please try and see it from my point of view. I ask you to step back and see it as you would an article that you did not compose.

In the first case, there is a good build up about the rarity of blue and then the link to Vermeer. Then there is the following. "Girl with a Pearl Earring, a novel by Tracy Chevalier, is a fictional account of one of Vermeer's most famous paintings. In Chevalier's novel, and in the film based upon it, the artist uses lapis to paint the headscarf on a young servant girl. Vermeer (played by Colin Firth in the film version) admonishes the servant girl Griet (played by Scarlett Johansson) to keep this secret from his wife, knowing that his wife will be jealous.[6]"

The main idea (pertinent to the subject of the article on pigment) we are supposed to get is that lapis was rare or valuable? I felt this was conveyed by, "While Carmine was popular in Europe, blue remained an exclusive color, associated with wealth and status. The 17th century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer often made lavish use of lapis lazuli."

To me the ~80 additional words only served to convey that a book was made about a Vermeer panting, a person named Tracy Chevalier made it up, a movie was then made of that book, in the fictional story Vermeer paints a scarf, Colin Firth plays the guy in the movie that does that, he tells a girl to keep his painting it a secret, Scarlet Johansson plays the girl in the movie. I didn't feel any of this substantively added anything about pigments or Vermeer other than that they were both used in stories.

I felt the unnecessary insertion was especially true in the "cow piss" comment. It just juts out of an otherwise cogent history of a form of yellow pigment. The only thing we learn is that people might have referred to it as "cow piss". Otherwise we learn a fact about a fictional work. It adds nothing other than a reference to a fictional work and a questionable fact.

Howard's response
Hi Rudy,

Thanks for the answer. You have some very good points. I appreciate now knowing a bit more about you. You have to understand that there are a lot of what we unaffectionately call "trolls" hanging around wikipedia, people who just want to pick a fight. There is a whole vocabulary to describe them. When somebody who has never worked on wikipedia before suddenly shows up and starts making changes without explaining them, we want to know why.

Now you see that there are talk pages where we talk about things, collaborate on things, announce changes we want to make (if somebody is actively working on the material, as I obviously am). There are also standard customs for how you leave comments. For example, you leave them below the last comment. Take a look around and see how the regular editors do it.

On many pages, somebody has added a section (near the bottom usually) showing how a subject has been treated in film, literature, popular culture, etc. Maybe that's a better way to handle this. It is an encyclopedia, and integrating all the world's knowledge is its purpose, so linking works of fiction about pigments to pigments is just as important as linking anything else. I pointed out to you that there is actually a dearth of firsthand accounts from artists before the 19th century about how they used color. It was a trade secret for them.

When I asked who you are, I was basically asking if you are a troll. Can you see why it looked that way to me? But part of my point is that what you edit and contribute to on wikipedia tells a lot about who you are, even if you leave your User page blank. Since you had (for all practical purposes) never edited or contributed before, I think I had a right to ask.

I make you a deal. Leave the article alone for a few weeks, and I'll work in some material I have about Rembrandt to replace it. I'll do what you want and remove the Chevalier example to a "fiction and film" section at the bottom of the article. Or, alternatively, I could just comment on the fact that Vermeer depicts a milkmaid wearing the colors of royalty ... he obviously wasn't trying to show a realistic picture of a milkmaid. That wasn't the point of "realism" in the 17th century.

Your part of the deal. Go out and make 100 edits, comments, etc. on Wikipedia. You don't have to edit. You can just write on the Talk page for the article. That way, everybody here will know something about you, and you will get to know the customs of wikipedia. --Metzenberg 12:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)