User talk:Unomi/Archive/2011Jun

Policy on refactoring
Hi Unomi. I'm sure you meant well, but I'd like to ask you to revert this. The entire section will be collapsed soon enough, and there's no reason anyone should have to go through two collapses to find that thread. Further, my having archived-in-place was sufficient to the purpose. Whether you agree or not, however, I believe you're obliged to accede to the request. Hatting a thread is a form of talk page refactoring, and our policy about that says, in part:


 * Refactoring should only be done when there is an assumption of good faith by editors who have contributed to the talk page. If there are recent heated discussions on the talk page, good faith may be lacking. If another editor objects to refactoring then the changes should be reverted.  (emphasis added)

Given that AGK just a day or two ago accused me of pretty egregious bad faith for having questioned his impartiality, it should be pretty clear that that felicitous assumption is, in fact, lacking. Please revert your collapse immediately, before the entire section is otherwise modified or archived. Thank you, –  OhioStandard  (talk) 03:32, 8 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Nevermind. I see you've edited since I posted the above, and since I needed to post what I hope will be a final comment, I've undone your "hat" at the same time, but retained my previous close, only noting a "late edit" made to the "closed" text, below it. If I had any idea when the entire thread would archive, or what the timeline is for that, I probably would have waited longer for you to respond, but I didn't want to see the whole thing archive before you did so. –  OhioStandard  (talk) 04:23, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I was literally just about to undo it on your request. un☯mi 04:25, 8 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I appreciate that, thank you. –  OhioStandard  (talk) 04:34, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Let me for the record say that I hold no objection to you saying what you did apriori, in general, I have not followed WP *at all* until recently, and even then only in very limited scope - I am not in a position to evaluate any of the content. My only intention was to seek to defuse a situation which I felt was nearing a point of limited returns. I agree that the conversation should not have been removed, I also believe that it was off-topic and even irrelevant to the question raised. That said, if you felt by my actions that I sought to marginalize or cast a pall upon them, then please accept that this was not my intention, ( Yes I know that you didn't say that and I hope that you don't believe that, but let me just say that for the record ). My intention was only to ensure that the archive was kept with a minimal amount of subsequent dramah, as I believe that having your hand forced at this time would not guarantee a beneficial outcome to the project. un</b><b style="color:#483">☯</b><b style="color:#383">m</b><b style="color:#283">i</b></i> 04:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks; I'm grateful for your explanation, although it wasn't necessary: I never doubted your good will in the least. As far as off-topic? Well, yes, if you look just at the thread title that RSA chose. It shouldn't be and isn't off-topic for the AE board entire, though.


 * Or if it is to be considered so, then we urgently need some centralized location where concerns about socking in the I/P area can be attempted to be addressed. I don't think I exaggerate to say that the huge upsurge in obvious socks in that topic area, and their rapidly increasing sophistication in evading checkuser detection, does pose a tremendous challenge to the encyclopedia. Nor is it a challenge that our conventional SPI/checkuser process has been able to deal with effectively.


 * But since you mention that your involvement has been fairly recent, may I ask if you're unaware of the extraordinary off-wiki recruitment efforts for new pro-Israeli editors that are made on an ongoing basis, and how nearly overwhelmed the whole topic area is by the participation of socks? –  OhioStandard  (talk) 05:15, 8 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, yes, RSA did choose the thread title - but that doesn't change the title :)
 * I am not saying that your content was off-topic for the board, as I wrote in the hat "Collapsed discussion which may or may not be pertinent to ARBPIA in general, but presumed to fall outside the intended focus of this thread." - I tried to be neutral about its pertinence, not because I thought it wasn't but because it didn't matter. The alternative for me in that case would have been to create a new section heading based on the content - but that would be more presumptive of me. If I had thought it would be good advice I would have asked you create a new section - slightly more technically correct advice would have been to ask you open an SPI case but it wouldn't have been good advice either.
 * The thread, which was otherwise nearing a near-drama-free consensus based conclusion was about whether a particular article fell under ARPIA - it doesn't matter who started it, it frankly doesn't even matter if it was by a sock or not.


 * I don't condone socking, we have policies in place which bars the practice, policies which I support. However, I hold the personal view that even the presence of socks should not have any effect on outcomes - if they do it is because of either A. Failures in the WP process. B. Failures in the underlying argument that they are aligned against. As the saying goes: "You can't defend the indefensible".


 * The WP process is prone to failure, imo, and working to fix that seems to me much less of a Sisyphean exercise and one with broad benefits. In an ideal world, when a possibly new editor repeats arguments that have previously failed, the community can point to a solid, broad and well sourced discussion which precipitated the current content. The onus will be on them to argue against that consensus and involve a broad enough swath of the community to demonstrate a mandate for an alternate one. New arguments will be tested and their relative merits archived, we may not run out of socks, but socks will run out of arguments.


 * The world is unfortunately not ideal; We are all far from perfect and as a result discussions get sidetracked, people misstep, emotions flare and misconceptions are not addressed - you misstepped when you brought in your allegations that were without relevance to the current discussion, in doing so you excited Owain into making a misstep of his own and drew Sean into being a party to a situation which I frankly would rather have had not happened.


 * There is no point in bringing an allegation which 'might' be upheld, collect your diffs and move on - don't bring a case which you think "neutral parties" ( should there be such a thing ) might accept, bring one where the perennial supporters of the subject cannot argue against it without cost.


 * Accusing AGK of personal involvement is a hugely bad idea, it doesn't even matter if he is involved - without decisive proof you are just undercutting your own position and setting yourself up to be sidelined. I would argue - so what if he were?


 * Focus on ensuring the impeccability of your own actions, from there everything else is easy.
 * I should say that I do not always follow my own advice, but rarely do I regret when I do.
 * Much love, <i style="text-shadow:grey 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;"><b style="color:#626">u</b><b style="color:#525">n</b><b style="color:#425">☯</b><b style="color:#325">m</b><b style="color:#225">i</b></i> 08:18, 8 June 2011 (UTC)