User talk:Smatprt/Archive 2

Vanessa controversy.
Hey, I see you reverted it and added it back. I'm totally for that. And I first wanted to say that. Then I wanted to tell you it was because of a discussion on the talk page. --JpGrB 05:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems like it'll always be us vs. the anons. Lol.  --HELLØ    ŦHERE 13:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Wrong Identification
I'd like you to stop calling me by another name. I don't have to identify myself and if this is a ruse to induce me to reveal my true identity then it won't work! ProsperoX (talk) 13:59, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

re. your message.
Sorry, I'm not an admin. Thedarxide (talk) 19:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: Attacked again
Hi Smatprt,

When he popped up again under a new username (and announced who he was no less) I filed a report atSuspected Sockpuppets. You can see the report at Suspected sock puppets/Barryispuzzled. Looking at the user talk page for his new account it appears he's been blocked indefinitely, requested to be unblocked, and had the request denied. --Xover (talk) 21:19, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: Did you?
Ah, so that is what that “You have new messages” notice was about. I didn't see it up there among the old messages and just figured it was Wikipedia having a hiccup. :-)

Sorry. Things have been so chaotic on here lately I'm starting to lose track. --Xover(talk) 06:19, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: can you intervene?
I have no particular powers to intervene, but I was going to try their talk page one more time, and if that didn't work, ask for advice on WP:AN or WP:ANI or somesuch. --Xover (talk) 09:08, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok.
But I must warn you though, I don't have much to add. TheBlazikenMaster(talk) 02:22, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

"Oxfordian theory" images
I've responded separately on the article's talk page, but these are off-topic there: Thanks for your patience in reading this far in my obnoxiously detailed prose, and i hope our interaction will on balance and in the long run turn out well. --Jerzy•t 07:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) I wanna try and say this in a way that makes clear i wouldn't think less of you if (even supposing i knew about it) your reaction should be, say, laughter at how presumptuous and totally clueless i am in offering this suggestion. And i'm probably guilty of some credulity in crediting as much as i do, on too little evidence (and perhaps being influenced by) the stereotype of WS-authorship investigators as obsessed eccentrics. I searched the last 50 edits on the article, and found 1/3 were yours, tho (1) i didn't look into whether your count of edits reflects failure to preview enuf or to do multiple fixes in a single edit when feasible & (2) i think drawing conclusions from such a statistic would in any case be nonsense. I also looked at your 15 or 25 most frequently edited articles, and have the opinion that the tight clustering among them might have some effect of isolating you from equally and more experienced colleagues, and might help explain your strong tho uninformed confidence in your opinion about captions. Consider periodically clicking "Random article", and doing some editing related to wherever you land; also read WP:OWN a few times, with mulling time between. If you like. And of course this is presumptuous and (to make a fine distinction) none of my business.
 * 2) You did a complete reversion of my good-faith edit, on the basis of your stated confidence that i was wrong about captions; so far so good. But, as my summary indicates (and as you should have learned by examining the diffs, even if i hadn't), i did in the same edit two other classes of fix that you failed to even mention, and could (in the smart-quotes case) easily have verified as sound, and (in the auto-refs case) you should have noticed comply with the overwhelmingly dominant mode of the now 100-note article. That was misuse of reversion; if you wanted the captions restored, you had two options, each best accomplished by displaying the diffs corresponding to my edit, and using them as a guide for either (according to your convenience in light of the particular edit's diffs) restoring the caption-related changes to my revision, or adding each of my non-caption changes to the revision that preceded mine. I think, BTW, (tho this is IMO much less serious) that you are also required to modify the undo-tool canned summary, except in cases of vandalism.
 * 3) I am counter-reverting your reversion, as an out-of-process reversion; note that this without prejudice to whatever you decide to do next about the captions: just don't undo the refs tags or put back the smart quotes.
 * 4) If this were a formal warning, 2nd level would be too low to match the offense, bcz you have enuf edits under your belt that you should know better. My sense is that a formal warning (if i could make up my mind how to accomplish one without ignoring WP:DTTR!) would be silly, and i put it as i do only to help quantify the importance of doing it right. Without my previous sense of presumptuousness, i recommend you increase your frequency of consulting Wikipedia-namespace pages, perhaps viaCommunity portal (which i just found again via the Main page, and which i resolve to spend some quality time with!) and/or the "Overview · Editing · Questions · Help" lks just above "Today's featured article".

3RR
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Note that the three-revert ruleprohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains aconsensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution.

I'll comment at the talk page. AndyJones (talk) 06:58, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry
Hey there, sorry about that edit to High School Musical, I didn't mean to do it, U changed it exntensively so didn't think it was wrong.... Is that understandable? Please answer on my page,Stealth (talk) 01:39, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Also.... I wanted to say I hope you wll keep that cahracter list..... That was not wrong and was completely correct.... Anyway, please talk to me :). Stealth (talk) 01:46, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Romeo and Juliet is at FAC
Click here. Wrad (talk) 21:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: R&J
Well, I must admit i exaggerated slightly for effect when I called it "long and rambling". If I've understood you correctly, I think our reasons are probably pretty much the same. The two parts of a Shakespeare play article most likely to be looked up by a high school student, or a random play goer, or someone who's watched a Baz Luhrman flick, or… are the Synopsis and the character list. The analysis, interpretations, sources, and dating of the play are all important, but they're more likely to be read by history nerds like us, and not a general audience. Thus, leaving out either of the Synopsis or the Character List would actually violate criterion 1(b) of the featured article criteria. And to emphasise this point: Karanacs' comment at FAC expresses personal preference, which is valuable feedback and should be taken seriously (and eagerly; it's good feedback), but a FAC reviewer's mere personal preference is not valid grounds for an oppose and will be ignored when deciding whether to pass the article as FA.

However, I was about to post a message on the FAC page saying the above—and suggesting that either a prose version of the list, or a trimmed down version of it that only listed characters that are sufficiently important to be mentioned in the Synopsis, be included—when I went to look at Hamletagain to see how it actually worked in practice. And I actually found that the link to Characters in Hamlet made sense to me. That is, when considered in the abstract, I think the character list is an absolute requirement; but in practice (when you start taking into account practical tradeoffs such as article length and readability), having this information in a separate article, prominently linked at the top of the Synopsis, is an acceptable alternative. Not the least reason for which is that the play article barely even discusses Romeo, Juliet, and Mercutio as characters, and there's just no way to squeeze that information into the current article. By having a separate Characters in Romeo and Juliet article, there's room to give the characters the space they deserve.

But at that point I'd only got to where I was ambivalent. What finally cinched it for me was this: it's more important, to me, that WP:BARD develop a standard for this so that all the Shakespeare play articles are internally consistent, than the specific choice on the character list. For the purposes of the current FAC, since a reviewer brought it up—and we didn't have the good sense to simply respectfully decline to do anything about it—I think we should actually make Romeo and Juliet consistent withHamlet, and then bring the character list question up again on WP:BARD's project talk page. The character list can be added back in after the FAC (its inclusion is not grounds for an actionable oppose, so a later reassessment is extremely unlikely to delist the article for this reason) as part of a standardization of all the play articles in our scope.

In any case, I hope that explains my position as it used to be; how and why it changed; or at the very least, provided you with ammo for your fight against its removal. :-)

Cheers, --Xover (talk) 09:16, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Heh. I see you took my quip about ammo a bit more literally than I had in mind. :-)
 * Good idea to try out the prose alternative. I think that's the best way to persuade the dissenters; or at the very least to demonstrate that a viable compromise exists. The corollary of which is, you should probably cool it a little at the FAC; you're coming on a little strong, and that's more likely to make people dig in their heels than to try to reach a compromise. Anyways, best of luck on the prose character section. I'll try to chip in where I can, but I fear this is a lost cause. While you could probably block the FA by reference to criterion 1(b), I suspect the majority of editors and FAC reviewers won't be swayed; and it would be a real shame if the article failed FAC over this one point. If worse comes to worse I would strongly urge you to fight this particular battle on the WP:BARD project talk page—it seems clear we need to go another round on a project standard for the play articles—rather then on this FAC. --Xover (talk) 19:55, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Character list
Thanks for letting me know but I don't really have time to get involved right now. Good luck!Broadweighbabe (talk) 01:05, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Edward de Vere
The rule for categorization on Wikipedia is that if somebody is already in Category:English writers, we don't also add them directly to Category:Writers. If they're already inCategory:English poets, we don't also add them directly to Category:Poets. And on and so forth. Bearcat (talk) 09:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Shakespeare notice
There is currently a discussion going on regarding the project's policy on how information on characters should be represented in articles on Shakespeare's plays. Please take part by clicking Talk:Romeo and Juliet. Further context, if needed, can be found by scanning the two previous talk sections on the page as well. Sent by §hepBot  ( Disable )  at 04:20, 11 November 2008 (UTC) per request ofWrad (talk)

WP:CANVAS
Some of the postings you've placed at WP:THEATER and the Elizabethan theater project are biased and need to be made more neutral. Per WP:CANVAS: "messages that are written to influence the outcome rather than to improve the quality of a discussion compromise the consensus building process and may be considered disruptive." Please amend the bias so that people who come into the discussion will not have an inherent bias. Thanks. Wrad (talk) 23:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

A Newsletter?
Hey.

What do you think about something like this? Work in progress, obviously, and I'm hoping someone will step up and replace the lorem ipsum. :-) --Xover (talk) 08:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Re: Dating The Tempest
Funny you should mention that; I've actually just been reading the Kositsky/Stritmatter paper, as well as Kathman's 1996 reply and Vaughn's comprehensive 2008 refutation (which is really good, by the way). This is fascinating stuff all around. For instance, did you know that Edmond Malone wrote a separate paper in 1808 (with a 20 page appendix in 1809) solely on the dating of The Tempest? E.K. Chambers isn't as verbose, but he's tersely thorough in going through various German and Italian sources looking for the inspiration for the principal characters and plots (he doesn't find any obvious sources, but the comparisons are fascinating).

Anyways, thanks for the tip; even though I'd seen it in this instance, I always appreciate good suggestions for relevant sources. --Xover (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The Vaughn paper is: As mentioned it's well worth reading if you have the time. --Xover (talk) 16:41, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Format
Mind if I reformat Oxfordian theory to conform to normal Wikipedia style, for much more ease of reading? The current use of myriad so-called "pull-quotes" (also called "outtakes" in editing jargon) with the giant quotation-mark art, is not only discouraged by Wikipedia [they are also not even listed in the Wikipedia style guide to quotes], it makes the article very unwieldy to read, skim, or scroll through. In fact, I haven't even read the article because I find it so off-putting, between that and the double-spaced poems which also take up way too much vertical space.

People read articles that are user-friendly and can be scrolled through quickly to find relevant information; they give up on articles that look like endless rambles with too much white space. Those so-called "pull-quotes" are useful only once in a great while as affected and ornate diversions, used once, in an article that is none too scholarly and more informal in tone. These rampant pull-quotes in this article thus also make it look non-professional.

Anyway, I've done the re-formatting on my talk page here: Reformatting. The article is much easier to read and much easier to zip through and find something. Let me know if is OK for me to incorporate these changes into the article itself. Thanks.Softlavender (talk) 04:25, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Baconian theory Talk comment
Ok, let me take a guess. Unless this is a conspiratorial trick (and I'm not convinced it is) then judging by the hostility on these pages, there's obviously some battle that has been going on here recently that you User:Xover and User:Wrad have been involved with, very likely assisting each other, and I remind you of one of your adversaries. Sorry, but this isn't my issue and I can't be expected to stop posting just because people here enjoy fighting each other. Sad for me because I thought you and I had resolved this. I'm now thinking that this place is so heavily charged with resentment that it's not possible to resolve anything here. Isnotwen (talk) 23:07, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry - not interested in playing this game anymore.Smatprt (talk) 23:50, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a relief because I'd prefer you not to involve me in one. Isnotwen (talk) 00:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: Uneasy
While I certainly agree that there are a lot of factors suggesting some connection between the referenced editors and the whole Barry situation, and I may privately have some suspicions in that regard, Wikipedia's Assume Good Faith policy pretty much dictates that unless the relevant accounts begin to disrupt the encyclopedia (or, as was the case with Barry's main account, making threats against other editors) we all assume that these are mere coincidences and that the accounts represent separate people who are acting in good faith.

One reason the whole Barry situation was so tragic is that Wikipedia can only function when editors act in good faith and can trust that others do the same; Barry's antics poisoned the well there, leaving everyone subjected to it that much more suspicious and cynical. Of course, the most tragic thing of all is that there was no need for him to do what he did to achieve his aims; there were several editors who tried very hard (me among them) to help defuse the situation and improve the article: if he'd just been willing to assume good faith, and at least entertain the idea of some compromise here and there, he could have achieved his aims of a great article on Baconian theory and even had help doing so. My sincere hope is that we can manage to take the religious wars (metaphorically speaking) out of the various Authorship related articles and show, by example, that even these often controversial topics can be well written and neutral, and be examples of Wikipedia's very best content. An absolute prerequisite for that is the assumption of good faith and a willingness to compromise and seek consensus, which only works in an environment of mutual trust.

Anyways, hopefully you've not let this latest outbreak of Wikidrama put a dampener on your holidays. Happy holidays and the very best of wishes to you and yours in the new year! --Xover(talk) 15:27, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Your Oxfordian agenda
You have been warned time after time about pushing your Oxfordian agenda (at least three independent editors claim this). I have reverted your latest attempt in the Baconian theory article []. For me, you are not a person with whom I can assume "good faith". If you continue to abuse the Baconian theory article I will spend the rest of my days trying to remove you by legal means from Wikipedia. (I'd respect you more if you'd confess it.)TerryFried (talk) 20:13, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Letters
cf. this edit. That's actually slightly inaccurate. We do have one letter to him: from Richard Quiney—Thomas Quiney's father who was a bailiff in Stratford-upon-Avon—asking to borrow some money. There is also a letter mentioning Shakespeare in the context of asking him to take a stand on a proposed enclosure of land in Stratford. So while it's not incorrect to say we have none of Shakespeare's correspondance, the new phrasing of your edit above is in effect a bit misleading. --Xover (talk) 04:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * How about something like: “… doubters cite the fact that there are large gaps in the historical record of Shakespeare's life and no surviving letter, written to or by him, is known to exist none of his correspondance survives.”? It tells the reader that we don't have any letters written by him, or his collection of received letters (as has some times been found for others), without implying thatno letters exist. --Xover (talk) 09:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * No letter written by him is known to exist ... that's a fact. The Richard Quiney letter was written to him but never sent to him. So how about "no surviving letter, sent to or written by him, is known to exist". Torricelli01 (talk) 20:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That seems to be pretty clear.Smatprt (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * My problem with that (and the original) is that while strictly accurate, it gives the reader the wrong impression; it reads far more emphatic than is merited. The Authorship doubters make the argument that the documentary evidence is somewhat light, but the scholarly consensus is that the evidence is sufficient. In other words, the article needs to tell the reader that the position advanced by the Authorship doubters is the alternate view; but this phrasing has the opposite effect, it presents the scholarly consensus as the alternate point of view. I'm by no means married to my own suggested alternate phrasing—albeit, admittedly, I need to work fairly hard to see the same problem you see with it—but I very much think that sentence should reflect the lack of any letters beingfound, not their presumed existence. Would it perhaps be sufficient to leave the phrasing as it currently stands (it got reverted to pre-Smatprt's change during the latest round of reverts)? It was the increased emphasis introduced by adding "…written to or by him…" I had a concern with; the current version that simply says we don't know of any letters written by him is perfectly fine by me. (A bit rushed for time, apologies if this message is a bit sloppy). --Xover (talk) 05:47, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * the current version is fine with me, for reasons I will expound upon later. Since this discussion talked, however, the paragraph has been changed by an anon. Good faith edits I'm sure, but the rewrite wasn't entirely satisfying. I'm working on it some. But the current "to him" wording we are discussing hasn't changed.Smatprt (talk) 09:08, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

On the road again
Hi Smatprt,

I'm travelling so my access to Wikipedia is… unpredictable. Sorry I wasn't around to help out, but you seem to have it well in hand. --Xover (talk) 11:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Anon edits
I dunno. For now I'd suggest just treating it as normal anon IP vandalism and just revert it as needed. If it's our persistent Baconian I don't quite see what he hopes to achieve by pushing that edit—it mainly just looks like a poor-quality edit to me, not his particular form of POV-pushing or disruption—and it could well be just some random visitor. If whoever it is keeps it up the next step would probably be trying to contact them on their talk page, followed by pestering some poor admin for advice if there's no reply. While I must admit finding it difficult to Assume Good Faith after the recent shenanigans, AGF is one of the core guidelines of Wikipedia; assuming sockpuppetry and deliberate disruption without more substantive indication than this would be premature. Or put another way, as yet it doesn't walk like a WP:DUCK. :-) --Xover (talk) 19:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Shakespeare's education
Your edit here is a good one; I have no problem with this wording, which stresses that it's a claim rather than a fact. Cheers. Barney Jenkins (talk) 03:15, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Parallelism
Hi there. Quick note: what people mean by parallelism is with respect to the grammar of that list. You can say "his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether..." or "his sexuality and religious beliefs, and whether", but "his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether" is incorrect. Budding Journalist15:24, 7 February 2009 (UTC)