User talk:Swimmtastic

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Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome!  JGHowes talk  -  14:08, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
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!Voting in AfDs
Articles for deletion/Replicas of Michelangelo's David (2nd nomination) - Lockley has a point - you have !voted nine times. Just a single delete will suffice. Would you mind changing your other deletes to "comment" or something, or just make them into ordinary replies. The closing admin will probably be able to count properly anyway (and shouldn't be counting in any case), but it is best to avoid confusion. Carcharoth (talk) 21:42, 30 May 2008 (UTC)


 * In case you don't know, you are only allowed to make one bold "delete", so please refrain from doing this or it will be seen as disruptive and likely to lead to a block. You may "comment" wherever you wish. Thanks.  Ty  00:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia: WikiProject Swimming
Hi there, Ive recently joined the WP:WikiProject Swimming team. Im committed to getting on top of the project. Since you have listed yourself as a participant i thought i'd let you know what i've done. Ive got a bot thats going through the relevant catagouries that apply to the project and tagging them with our banner. Ive done all the stub class articles and assessed them automaticlly, and im starting on the 3000 other articles that ive identified. So this will mean that we will have all the articles in the scope of the project together and we can start working on them. So if you have any spare time theres going to be thousands of articles that will need assessing. There are around 2000 articles Just in Stub-Class swimming articles, and most of these will need the importance assessed. I think it's important we get all this assessing done, so we can start working on the articles.

Don't fell pressured to start assessing articles, i just thought that since theres going to be so many articles, you should know that theres heaps of work that needs to be done, ill be trying my best once my exams are finished. Remember many hands make light work.

Cheers Printer222 (talk) 13:34, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Re User:Fir0002
Hi Swimmtastic,

I don't want to go into a huge debate over this, but will just give you a bit of history.

The reason Fir0002 (and others) point out when a new user is voting is mainly to do with Sock puppetry. So when you say that "...leaving a comment citing the number of edits has a purpose" you are totally correct. Let me explain. We have seen over the years a number of new 'users' briefly appear to offer their support/oppose votes on one or a few photos. In some cases it turns out that these new users are in fact sock puppets, i.e., fake accounts made by another user in order to give themselves more votes and say in the 'consensus'. (On many other occasions they just disappear again without leaving enough evidence to say whether or not they are socks). Incidentally, it's the same reason we don't accept 'votes' from anonymous IP addresses.

If you don't think it happens often, then you may be interested to know that I have found two users this year alone doing this at FPC (covering something like nine accounts in total); in both cases it was proven and they eventually admitted their guilt and have been banned. There are currently a few other accounts voting at FPC that I am somewhat suspicious of.

OK, the point being, it is pretty easy to make a new account at Wikipedia. Until that account 'proves' themselves as a legitimate editor then we all have a right to be suspicious of it, especially when they are 'voting' for consensus making decisions like FPC. For all anyone knows you could be an old user with a beef against Fir looking to get revenge, or a user trying to get your photos promoted by voting under multiple accounts. Note I am not saying you are those things, I'm just saying we cannot know and have a right to be suspicious until you've been around a bit.

As it is you seem to have a bit of a beef against Fir already - to quote from what you've said on my userpage: "...but more and more his contributions seem to be spam" and "...he still appears to be a passive-aggressive bully" as two examples. Those are pretty strong statements, especially for someone that has been around for a very short time and has had very little to do with the FPC process or Fir0002. Now it's quite possible that you have been watching FPC for the last year without commenting and have thus formed your opinion of Fir that way - I can't know, because as I've said above all we have to go on is your edit history, and for you that's very short.

Now re that, I did not vote, but personally I did feel it was up the standards, as did a majority of those that did vote. It's not necessarily Fir's best, but we don't vote based on whether Fir has taken better shots in the past, we vote based on whether it meets the Featured picture criteria, and for mine this image did. You are welcome to disagree (could I also just add that your vote was a little unclear - you said editing the foot was unnecessary (which I agree with) but that "..it was ok before"; I wasn't sure whether you were therefore only opposing the edit; but anyway, that's peripheral to the discussion).

Looking at Fir's comments on that photo I see six comments that either fully or partially Oppose. He has responded to two of them. One being his brief note re you being a new user, which I've pointed out previously is perfectly acceptable and standard practise. In fact he does this on contributions that are neither his photos or that he even necessarily supports - see here for example. In other words he has only really 'argued' with one of the six oppose voters, and that was to entirely validly point out that that user's unsubstantiated and clearly incorrect claim that the bug was a 'cut out' was incorrect.

I'm really trying to understand where you may have developed this antipathy towards Fir, but looking at this nomination I just can't see it. It seems to contradict several of the claims you made in what you said on my userpage. I don't see where he's disregarding other opinions, I don't see where he's bullying, I don't see how he's not working to reach consensus.

Now you may disagree with this, but personally I think it's fine for him or anyone else to nominate a photo and then argue for why they think that photo should be promoted, especially when oppose reasons are totally invalid, as with the example I cited above. Of course one must be careful to keep the argument within reason, but I don't see Fir getting into unacceptable practises such as personal attacks, etc, that I see other users doing; when his arguments do degenerate a bit it's usually following a fair bit of sustained provocation from the other user. On my talkpage you almost seem to be saying that you think he should nominate a photo and then argue against support votes; to me that just seems weird and counter-productive.

Anyway, will leave it there, --jjron (talk) 09:18, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

RE: John McFall (athlete)
In the past, when someone has hastily passed or failed a GAN, the editors decided to delete it as it had never happened to give the article a fresh slate. I understand what you mean, though, so it won't happen again. Nikki 311  01:14, 28 June 2008 (UTC)