User talk:SebastianHelm/archive2008

Requests for adminship/Elonka 3
Thank you for your support in my RfA. It was definitely a dramatic debate, that landed on WP:100! I paid close attention to everything that was said, and, where possible, I will try to incorporate the (constructive) criticism towards being a better administrator. I'm taking things slowly for now, partially because of the holidays and all the off-wiki distractions. :) I'm also working my way through the New admin school and double-checking the relevant policies, and will gradually phase into the use of the new tools.  My main goals are to help out with various backlogs, but I also fully intend to keep on writing articles, as there are several more that I definitely want to get to WP:FA status! Thanks again, and have a great new year, --Elonka 05:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Now that was indeed a spectacle! It's amazing what far fetched arguments some people brought up against you there! I'm glad sanity prevailed. &mdash; Sebastian 05:33, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

oldafdmulti
Hi! The change you made to oldafdmulti seems to have messed up the colors. I'm tempted to revert, but since it's used on so many pages, I didn't want to do anything rash. Is it something that can be fixed easily? Or should I go ahead and revert? -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 07:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for asking, and sorry about that! I'll look into it and see if I can find where I messed up. I didn't see anything, and I didn't notice anything wrong. Would you have an example, or can you be more specific? &mdash; Sebastian 08:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Never mind, I just undid it. I just realized that the changes didn't work out anyway, and that I found a good workaround using BannerShell, so they're not even needed. Thanks again for your polite request! &mdash; Sebastian 08:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah - glad that worked! I believe the issue was the order of the classes, which is what determines the collapsed/collapsible state thing.  Anyway, glad it worked!  And thanks for the rain check :) -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 15:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

"In the habit"
Actually, the IP address I'm posting this from is shared by more than one person who has contributed anonymously to Wikipedia, and if I see a message on the IP's talk page (other than a boilerplate notice) that apparently refers to something I posted, I normally reply to it on the sender's talk page. And I blank the shared IP page. --207.176.159.90 (talk) 22:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your nice reply. When I wrote my message on the talk page, I was not at my best. I noticed that you removed my earlier message, and felt a bit disappointed that I hadn't received a message. Anyway, thanks for not holding that against me! It would be nice if you could use a user name (you can even use something resembling this IP address), but that's of course your choice. Sebastian (talk) 06:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Conversation from WP meetup
Hi Sebastian,

I've really enjoyed meeting you at the WP meetup last week. I remembered your mentioning that you've read or were a part of a few interesting discussions on the topics of using emoticons for self expression and have noted a few funny user boxes. Let me know if you find the references for these, I'd love to take a look at these. Thanks! Bestchai (talk) 21:30, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Flame spread
A tag has been placed on Flame spread, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing no content to the reader. Please note that external links, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, interwiki link, rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article don't count as content. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, you can request that administrators wait a while for you to add contextual material. To do this, affix the template   to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That was a hasty edit, which created an edit conflict. When I submitted my change, I therefore decided to simply override it, rather than readding the tag (along with the tag another editor added). I also left a message on User talk:Beeswaxcandle. Sebastian (talk) 06:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you
..for the barnstar. Always good to be of service. :) ⋙–Berean–Hunter—►  ((⊕)) 18:09, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

List of energy abbreviations
Thank you for your commitment to that list! I now have one question: You changed some of the links to bold text; is this because these were redlinks? I understand that some people feel that redlinks are bad per se, but it's not the color that matters, it's the relevance. (See Only make links that are relevant to the context.) Most of these linked pages are only disambiguation pages, so they don't contain any relevant information other than that there are also other unrelated terms that use the same abbreviation. The only situation I can think of in which this would be relevant is if the other abbreviations are also related to Energy, and could get confused. But in that case, they can be listed in the same table anyway, so there's no need to refer to another page. Or am I overlooking something? &mdash; Sebastian 01:23, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I was following the practice of another list. Didn't give it much thought, but I can imagine that someone would be in the middle of some gov document with heaps of bureaucratese and acronyms that may or may not be directly related to energy.  If the meaning on the right column description didn't fit, they could check the acronym disambig page.  Really, I don't care much either way.  If you prefer it some other way, make a few edits demo-ing the format you prefer and I'll change it all to reflect that. -J JMesserly (talk) 02:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I see! This is indeed something I hadn't thought about. My gut reaction to this argument is: There are more than 10,000 of possible abbreviations. Assume our list contains 500 terms. So, when someone comes across a new abbreviation (one for which we don't have a suitable explanation), then the likelihood for the abbreviation not being in our list at all is more than 20 times higher than the likelihood for the abbreviation being duplicated. Therefore, in 95% of all cases, the reader would have to enter the abbreviation in the search box anyway. I don't think the remaining 5% justifies a duplication of the number of links. &mdash; Sebastian 05:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Okeydokey. -J JMesserly (talk) 21:01, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Energy in Physics
Dear Sebastian, Guten Tag! Thank you for the notification. In fact i created this category in Arabic as a user translated an article from English and left a red Category there. As for me i dont see any sense of saying "Energy in Physics". I will discuss the user in WP Ar, and remove the interwiki link in case the category was removed from there. Thank you for the notification. --Ciphers (talk) 08:17, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque
Hi,

I'm a new user to Wikipedia but not a new 'consumer'. So I'm not sure if you are the correct person to send this message - if not, apologies.

I noticed in the Torque page an animated gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Torque_animation.gif

This diagram is inconsistent for the given equations of torque. The diagram describes a rotational constraint in one plane only. The equations describe torqe without constraint. The sinθ term in τ = rFsinθ is incosistent with the diagram. Imagine a force acting parallel to the turning axis. Because of the constraint, there would be no resultant rotation although sinθ=1. Although the equation is correct it does not correctly explain the resultant motion in the diagram.

I suggest either losing the diagram, adding a caveat or asking the author to address.

Thanks! Quitequick (talk) 09:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Michael Hardy
I can point you to any number of threads started because an article was nominated for deletion, including those which were not deleted. If you monitor the deletion-based pages at all, I'll be surprised if you've not seen them. It is not a personal attack to talk about things that have actually happened. I do see, though, where the way I stated it could be considered unnecessary, so I'll change it around. Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This is your personal opinion about another editor, which has nothing to do with my proposal. The way you are insinuating that I wrote the whole proposal only because of some motives that you make out in an unrelated editor is unacceptable. &mdash; Sebastian 08:21, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Replied at User talk:Seraphimblade. &mdash; Sebastian 08:21, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletions
Next time you make blatant personal attacks like "adolescent spiteful reply", "no common sense", "he or she refuses to take the criteria seriously", "administrators of questionable maturity"... have the decency to notify the target of them. I thought an admin would know this basic rule, but apparently not. I'll reply to some of your other points on the CSD talk page. Fram (talk) 09:01, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * My apologies. Indeed, what I wrote here did end up like an attack to you. This was not my original intention. Rather, my intention was to write my concerns about the policy, not about a particular editor. During the course of writing this I felt that I needed to back up my claims about the policy with examples, so I used the situation you were involved in as an example. I now realize it would have been better if I had slept over it and written it in a more abstract way, along the lines of my reply to Seraphimblade here.
 * Please believe me: If I had wanted to sneakily attack you then I would not have written this just at the time when I go to bed and you get up, and I would not have chosen a location which you are likely to have on your watchlist. But I don't want to attack people anyway; I much prefer resolving conflicts by talking with problematic editors. &mdash; Sebastian 18:08, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * So, what can we do about WT:CSD? Right now I feel the best would be if I rewrote this in a way that's independent of you, but I also don't want to sneak out of a reply to your questions. I'll bring that up there. &mdash; Sebastian 18:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate your apology. I have been thinking about this situation as well, and how it went more or less out of hand (not in any extreme way, but still...)

Reconstructing the events, what happened in my opinion was this: I was (and am) going through all our biographies of living people, tagging those that are unsourced (a lot!): while doing this, I came across a number of truly dreadful articles, where the only claim to notability for a person was an unsourced negative characteristic like being a nazi camp guard or a gay porn star (nothing wrong with that last one, unless you are called a gay porn star without being one of course). I deleted these as G10 BLP violations. Working on (and now in a more systematical way, so that's why the recent deletions were all African politicians), I came across some equally dreadful articles about people accused of genocide, without information on the rest of their careers. I deleted those as well. In retrospect, I got caught in the flow of what I encountered, and started deleting all completely unsourced biographies of people accused of being involved with the genocide, no matter if they had significant other material or not.

Then, a user (not you) comes to my talk page, claiming that he is disappointed with my deletions and lecturling me that I should have sourced them instead, but it turns out that he had edited those articles two years ago already and did not take the effort to do anything about them. So with a feeling of 'it's allright for him to ignore our BLP policy for two years and to let such articles stay unsourced, but I should do it when I encounter them instead", I ignored him. But then another editor (i.e. you) comes along to complain about the same things. Looking back, you were polite (I don't think I claimed otherwise, but I do want to stress it) and certainly had a good point, but I was reacting like "here we go aghain, not another one, bugger off please". My reply was not intended as a "haha, I can delete these and you can't stop me" reply, but as a "oh please, I'm doing important stuff here, leave me alone and do something else". Not the best reply, of course, but while it probably looked different from your perspective, it was not intended as spiteful, more asa annoyed.

So, in conclusion: I started out correctly, and the unsourced negative BLPs are a serious problem, but I got caught up by my own logic and the flow of things, and I moved from rather clearcut G10 deletions to articles where stubifying would have been better. The problem I had (and still have) with stubifying articles like the two Rwandan ministers, is that I don't want to create whitewashed articles, only stating that they were a minister as if they have not been convicted for hideous crimes. (and for the record, even though it wasn't you who said it: I have no political bias in any of these actions).

Where next? First, I'll be more careful in my deletions, I'll continue the tagging of BLP articles but only delete the extreme cases and stubefy (or nominate for deletion) the other ones. Second, I'l try to be more patient in my talk page replies, and not let annoyance for one editor affect my response to a second editor.

Sorry for the long reply, and I hope that we can forget the bad start we had and continue to improve the encyclopedia (which we both had in mind in recent days, but sometimes expressed incorrectly :-) ). Fram (talk) 08:06, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the wonderful reply! It is really interesting how even people with the best intentions can end up getting caught in such escalations. I recently read Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely, which describes an experiment showing how people made completely changed their core values when they were aroused. I had thought “I’m different”, but this incident clearly proved the opposite. (In my case, it was that I felt I had to act quickly before more articles get deleted.) Virtue is not something we possess, but something we have to constantly practice – like breathing.


 * This incident also highlights Wikipedia’s maturing pains. I just looked at some of my first edits, and became nostalgic. When I started editing, it was perfectly normal to write from our knowledge. I made many unsourced edits, and it was fun. I would wish this to be possible for newbies nowadays. I think I would not have been drawn into Wikipedia if it had been as strict as it is now. &mdash; Sebastian 17:27, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * With regard to the porn bio: The page on Shaun Costello, and my impression that you might have just automatically reacted to the word "porn", is what brought me to your talk page in the first place. User:Shaun Costello asked about it on the help desk. Common sense told me that User:Shaun Costello was indeed the same as the subject of the article. The article was started by an active member on the corresponding WikiProject, who is presumably not opposed to pornography altogether. It was not a personal attack, but rather written too positive (from the point of view of someone who accepts porn). Now, if it meets notability criteria is of course a whole another question. &mdash; Sebastian 18:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The problem is of course that while a porn bio of a porn actor or director may be perfectly acceptable, a porn bio of a school teacher is not so nice. With an unsourced article, we have no easy way of knowing if this is the former or the latter, and BLP indicates that we should err on the side of caution. While most vandalistic biographies are easy to spot, I have seen some elaborate "pranks", hoaxes, as well, and these can be quite damaging to the people involved. But I have no problem with you or anyone restoring it if a reliable source is added. Fram (talk) 08:06, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, there are many such pranks on Wikipedia. But what I don't get is: Why in the world did you not simply google or yahoo for "Shaun Costello"? I got 15,900 hits for that name, and the first few - including such well-known sources as IMDB.com - already clearly state that he's a porn director. That's what I meant by "blitz". &mdash; Sebastian 08:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

But that's the nature of WP:BLP: it is the responsability of the people editing a page to source it. This particular page was tagged as unsourced since December 2006. To put the burden of evidence on the deleter is too easy: everyone interested in the article was aware of the problems, but didn't do anything about it. The people who want to keep a certain page should make the necessary efforts, and not stand by and wait for someone else to do so. Fram (talk) 09:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, we seem to have a different understanding of Wikipedia. I see it as a collaborative effort to create a reliable encyclopedia. Adding a reference to a reliable source contributes to that goal. Deleting an article about a notable person removes us from that goal. What you write sounds to me more like a court procedure with antagonistic parties. Sadly, many people here work this way, but these are usually the people who do not have the best of Wikipedia in mind, but their own POV pushing. I now believe you that that was not your intention, but please understand why you come across that way. &mdash; Sebastian 09:33, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that deleting an article about a notable person necessarily removes us from the goal of writing a reliable ecncyclopedia: it is better, in some cases, to have no article than to have an unsourced, potentially contentious article. I don't delete the thousands of unsourced articles on football players and so on, because no one really cares if you are incorrectly labeled a player of club X. As for the articles I do delete; we all have limited time to invest here, and set our priorities. The people who are interested in the article on Costello did, for some reason, not invest any time in providing the long requested sources. My interest is not in Costello, but in upholding the BLP policy: I have no idea, when I delete such article, if it easily sourceable, harder to find references, or completely unsourceable: I am not spending my limited time in checking each unsourced BLP to see if it has a kernel of truth in it. Doing this would increase the amount of time needed to track most unsourced BLPs enormously, and this problem area has been left alone for way too long already.

It's just a difference of priorities, I suppose, where I look more at the potential problems, and you look more at the potential benefits. Deleters have a responsability, but when our editors don't take their responsability in providing the requested sources, I don't think it is correct to put the blame on the person performing the radical solution per policy. Fram (talk) 10:51, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * This is not an easy discussion for both of us, and I appreciate your patience. It probably would be harder for me to make my point with the Shaun article because it may indeed not be notable. We deferred to the experts at WP:P*, and they are obviously not interested. Incidentally, it also worked in the way that fits your model, but before I get there, let me write something more fundamental.


 * When you wrote that you see problems and I see benefits, I realized something: What makes us feel that we need to act urgently is the sense that there is a problem. That’s why I started the long section about Blitz deletions. Then others came to the discussion and said “yes, there are problems, but also look at the benefits!”, and I realized that my problem-driven sense of urgency had blurred my judgment.


 * (still thinking about the rest of the reply.) &mdash; Sebastian 16:52, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * BTW, what do you make of WT:CSD? Now this is a case where I think I would have speedily deleted it. &mdash; Sebastian 17:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that there are situations when no article is better than a bad article. This is why I supported and contributed to CSD, when we started this policy. But that is a false dilemma at least for the two African articles. You could, with the investment of a minute, have solved the dilemma by just adding the reference. I’m not saying this to chastise you - you already acknowledged that that was a mistake, and you just forgave me for my own rushed mistake. I say this because I want to get to the root of what makes you feel you have to act so quickly. I felt rushed because I saw this specter of you (and other admins) deleting hundreds of articles overnight, if I don’t act immediately. What is it that makes it so urgent for you to delete an article that has been around for two years? &mdash; Sebastian 17:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, I think I got it! I just reread what you wrote above after "Reconstructing the events", and realized that we were motivated by different things. For you, it was not urgency - it was flow! Does the article match what you experienced? &mdash; Sebastian 18:53, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that is more or less what I meant. Another way to describe it would be: getting caught up in your own actions, your own logic, and then doing things that when considered separately are incorrect, but take on a logic when seen in the light of everything that went before. And indeed, I did not feel urgency in the sense of "this has to be deleted now before X sees it and the press condemns us and whatever else could happen", but more a sense of "it is obvious that waiting any longer for someone to fix this is useless, so why not delete it now and get it done with?". Fram (talk) 08:10, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, if you put it that way, then it describes very accurately what happened to me, too! ;-) - BTW, this just influenced my post at Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars/2008 report‎
 * Since you're mentioning logic, the one thing that's still open in our discussion is the logic behind speedy deletions. We seem to have two different underlying paradigms, which I called "collaboration" and "court" above. It seems you addressed this by stressing how important responsibilities are for you. While I agree that I would wish for people to act more according to responsibilities (see e.g. my recent plea at WT:CfD), I think it is unrealistic to expect that of newbies. They may not be participating at Wikipedia anymore. Also, what you're writing sounds a bit too much like "They get what they deserve!" to me. When we punish stub contributors by not improving, but deleting their stubs, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face. &mdash; Sebastian 10:23, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Kontroverse um die globale Erwärmung
Ok, ich editiere nicht mehr zurück, sondern bin in die Diskussion gegangen. Verstehen tu ich's aber nicht, was Du gemacht hast. --84.176.147.67 (talk) 01:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Ich habe gerade in diesem Artikel (auf deine Aufforderung, es dort zu diskutieren), geantwortet. &mdash; Sebastian 01:56, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Sichten
Auf Deine Frage auf meiner Diskseite ein ganz klares Nein. Wenn Du die Sichterrechte mal nicht mehr brauchst, sag einfach bescheid. gruss Rauenstein (talk) 03:29, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Ich habe auf deiner Diskussionsseite geantwortet. &mdash; Sebastian 21:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Revert in de:Raunheim
Hi, könntest du dich bitte informieren bevor du sinnlos und ohne Kommentar meinen Revert revertierst?! Danke! Ich habe meine Änderung begründet und zwar stichhaltig, siehe de:Diskussion:Raunheim! Falls du Einwände dagegen hast, wie man an deinem Revert sieht, begründe (!) das dort. Danke und schönen Abend noch. --84.177.92.72 (talk) 20:42, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, ich werde auf der deutschen Seite antworten. &mdash; Sebastian 06:56, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Rwandans
I restored all the deleted edits to the article history. There is no missing material. DS (talk) 06:11, 22 December 2008 (UTC)