User talk:The Cunctator/Oldest

Good work about subjects that interest me! How about adding a few words about yourself to this page? --Pinkunicorn - You're doing an absolutely amazing job on the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack pages. --Pinkunicorn - I totally agree with Pinkunicorn--wonderful job on these pages. --LMS

Twelve hours straight on the website? No wonder it's getting over 1,000 pageviews a day from various other websites that have linked to the 911 pages. Great job, C, thanks. --LMS

You do realise your nom-de-plume will be zapped when the Roman historians get round to writing about one Quintus Fabius Maximus, don't you? ;-) sjc

Cunctator - I just wanted to say thanks for the guidance on the "nowiki" feature - it was appreciated. - chrz ManningBartlett

Hey Cunctator, we might disagree on other stuff, but I have to say your continuing work on the 9/11 pages and the aftermath (such as renaming the anthrax pages to something that made more sense, and working a lot on them) is really great. --LMS

The Cunctator/How to destroy Wikipedia: Weird stuff you have there, Cunctator-san. But thanks for the heads-up.

Cunctator, why don't you e-mail me at lsanger@nupedia.com ? I would like to try to understand where your head is at, and I'd like to do so without creating a public spectacle. --Larry Sanger

Cunctator, appealing to you as a sensible bystander here: BF and I are about ready to lose it with each other over New Age. What do you think?

Cunctator, I am appealing to you to please write to me in private email: jwales@bomis.com to discuss some of the allegations you have made against me. You're either misunderstanding something at a fundamental level, or you are trying to be mean to me for no reason. Either way, I want to get to the bottom of it. I'm leaving this message on Oct. 25, 2001. I hope that you'll write to me within the next 24 hours. We really need to talk this out, because I don't think you really want to be so unfair to me. --Jimbo Wales

Thanks for the support -- she has a lot of neat things to add, but can't seem to make the leap to scholarly presentation...JHK

WINAD undeletes. Stop it. Silly. If Ddroar wants to he/she/it can, you leave it. -- 62.253.64.xxx

''Especially Quimby. Thats not even a word for fucks sake.'' -- GWO

I rather like the idea of a historical archive for Wikipedia, actually. I had created the GNE Project Files page some time ago, so it was just an extention of the same idea. Glad you like it. --STG

Nice job on improving Wikipedia commentary/The Wikipedia Community! --Seb

Most of the vandalism has links to off-server images which, as is being discussed elsewhere, is somewhat unethical. -- Paul Drye

setting aside the angry tone of the vandalism for a moment, I think that revision 802 is beautiful as poetry. especially with the images. The idea that we will all become ceramic figurines coupled with the two images of grimace, one soft and the next ceramic... well, if my creative writing students were so apt with such imagery I would be a happy teacher. Clearly the work is mean spirited, but let me speak up for its artistic merits (merits probably outweighed by the general meanness). Anyway, I am not weighing in on the whole delete or not delete issue. I'm just saying that these pieces are aesthetically pleasing to me (which may be totally idiosyncratic, and should not be taken as an endorsement of the message in anyway at all). Looking on the light side. --trimalchio

Revision 802 clearly stands out, since it is also a parody on the psychological warfare flyers that the US dropped over Afghanistan at about the same time. --AxelBoldt

Maybe it has merits to be in some "modern art" exposition (what doesn't?), but I don't think it belongs in an encyclopedia.--AN - Since I originally put the vandalism up on HomePage Vandalism, I will explain here why I did it. (I was going to do so in talk:Main_Page, but my web browser is screwy and won't let me edit it.) As trimalchio said, I think it has some aesthetic qualities: especially revision 802, less so revision 804, least revision 799. I also think some of it is a bit funny (I suppose I have a crude sense of humour.) Most important of all, it's Wikipedia social history. The biggest thing I was worrying about was, not "does this sort of stuff belong in an encyclopedia?" or "is this stuff going to encourage vandalism?" but is this stuff going to offend LMS and TimShell, since it attacks them, however childishly. If people really wanted to delete it from HomePage Vandalism, I had no major objection. But on the other hand, if it's on the Cunctator's personal pages, I think that unless there is something very offensive or bad or whatever about it, he should be allowed to keep it there. -- SJK

I think it's pretty obvious that The Cunctator has no right to make his personal pages the repository of vandalism. I've decided to remove it. --LMS

Obvious to you maybe, but not obvious to me. I would respectfully submit that you are becoming increasingly controlling and dictatorial, that you have a grudge against The Cunctator and are doing this in part out of a personal vendetta. You shouldn't delete anything out of someone's personal page unless it is offensive or in violation of copyright or a waste of disk space/bandwith, or something similar. Maybe you could argue some of those criteria in this case, but instead you are arguing that archiving other people's vandalism is somehow wrong in itself. So I've put the pages up on http://www.geocities.com/sj_kissane/vandalised-homepages.html where you can't delete them. -- SJK

I understand that what I've done is controversial, but please don't assumptions about my motives, Simon. If you ask, I will report them honestly. No, I am not doing this as a grudge against The Cunctator. I am doing this in order (1) to take a stand against vandalism (it's not welcome on Wikipedia, period) and (2) to clarify the fact that, indeed, I am willing to enforce what I think is right for Wikipedia, and I am not willing to bow to pressure such as you are exerting right now. In other words, I'm not going to drop my principles simply because The Cunctator, you, or anyone else thinks that I am overstepping my authority; rather, I am going to define here and now what authority I feel comfortable in asserting. Those are my motives; I imagine one might have been able to guess them without too much trouble, if one were to have read my recent essay carefully and to have given me the benefit of the doubt while doing so.

I just totally disagree with your account of the right you have over your personal Wikipedia space, and as far as I can tell, it's not proceeding beyond competing assertions. Here's how I see it: your personal pages are there for you to use more or less as you like, but if it looks to me like it's clearly contrary to Wikipedia's mission, as keeping an archive of vandalism very plainly strikes me as being, then I'm not going to hesitate to delete them or otherwise try to rectify the situation.

As far as keeping a record of old pages on Wikipedia, we are obligated to let you do this, but I hope you put up a link back of some sort. ;-)

Speaking simply from the point of view of good taste, I don't know why you would want to keep a record of it. They were in poor taste, displaying the usual idiocy and mediocrity of too-clever-by-half poorly-raised children. That's not something that deserves to be memorialized, you know. --LMS

At Wikipediholic/Confessed wikipediholics, you wrote: "... people seem to hate me." Let me go on record. I love you, man. I especially appreciate your passionate desire to improve the 'pedia. It's a pleasure working with you on this project. &lt;&gt;&lt; tbc

"... people seem to hate me.'''

they disagree with some of your actions, C. That's different --November 3, 2001 3:17 pm by 65.94.176.xxx - I don't hate you. I agree with tbc, & appreciate your concern for wikipedia & what it could be. But at the same time I think some of your arguments suffer from gross oversimplifications that are (to me, at least) a bit frustrating. I take it that's a side effect of your deep & genuine concern, and try to leave it at that. :-) --Koyaanis Qatsi -

C.

Much gratitude for all your good work. You seem to be saving this project from the delete-happy bone-heads out there.
 * Nice to know I'm a "delete happy bonehead." I had good reasons for posting those pages there, Cunc had even better reasons for removing them, an action with which I was completely OK. That's called "collaboration". Comments like this are childish and unnecessary. - MMGB

Could you give us a clue as to how your name is pronounced? How do you expect us to scream your name in the throes of heated passion without a pronunciation guide, eh ?

Thanks!

I'd assume it's something like KUNK-tay-ter. --Damian Yerrick
 * "kungk-TAY-tuhr," according to http://wordsmith.org
 * I've always pronounced it "Throat-wobbler mangrove" - MMGB

In the original Latin it's "kunk-tah-tor." That might count for something.

1-11-27: Cunctator, I'm happy to observe that you haven't dropped out. Neither did I --Mathijs

. :-) Ok, kids, once and for all: "Cunctator" was the nickname of Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus (see the English word "cunctation" = "Procrastination; delay" in any good dictionary) because he defeated the Carthaginian general Hannibal by "delaying" tactics. (See britannica.com if you like).

See us! We didn't write the Second Punic War up for nothing...

December 6, 2001 10:28 pm comment by LMS deleted by LMS December 7, 2001 9:03 pm after removal of "back-handed compliment" to Bias Talk

Cool logo... How did you find the Hobbes quote? --AxelBoldt

Nice entry on DrinkOrDie. I linked to it from infoAnarchy.org. -- Eloquence

Hey Cunc, someone once admonished me for re-formatting an article to eliminate the line breaks inside paragraphs in the source text, and I've come to agree. If that's something your editor does automatically it's not a big deal and we'll just have to live with it, but I'd like to ask that you not actually go out of your way to do that (I just noticed that your change to the Computer virus article did that). It makes the diffs essentially useless. Leaving them in doesn't affect the presentation of the article at all, but it does make the diffs clearer. The only time you have to do it is inside a DL (lines starting with : create a DL), and I've asked Magnus to fix the new software so that won't be necessary either (though I don't think he's actually done it). --LDC

Hi Cunc -- I think that there really isn't a comparison between bowling and pitching. Bowling in cricket requires that the ball bounce and no bending of the elbow by the bowler. Bowlers also utilze cracks in the pitch to get additional movement. The action is so unlike pitching (the goal is, too, come to think of it -- there's no penalty for keeping the batsman from batting and running -- in fact, it's an advantage) that it doesn't quite work. JHK, married to someone who grew up on cricket grounds and therefore indoctrinated...


 * JHK is right, as legspin is dependent on the ball bouncing there isn't really a direct comparison to baseball. About the only analogy that works is between curveballs and swing bowling, in which a bowler gets the ball to curve in the air before it bounces.  --Robert Merkel