Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Greg L

Moved stuff about 'Outside view' from main page.

This section is supposed to be for 'Outside views'. Looking at the contributions of SWTPC6800 and Fnagaton, they appear to me to be 'Inside' and the table posted by Greg shows them as two of nine involved editors. I could not find a definition of 'Outside' so I could be wrong. Lightmouse (talk) 07:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary:
 * 1) SWTPC6800 (talk) 14:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC) -- As I said in my statement "I am not sure where my response goes in this RFC. Please move them if this is not the correct section." Deleted because Fnagaton and SWTPC6800 views were originally posted as 'Outside views' and are now relocated as 'Inside views'. Lightmouse (talk) 00:09, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Fnagaton and SWTPC6800 are doing their best to shoehorn their "round" desires into a square hole. The complaint is by Omegatron and is against me (Greg L). SWTPC6800 and Fnagaton are involved editors on Talk:MOSNUM, and are therefore intimately familiar with the goings-on there. They know all the details of the IEC prefix dispute and are not targets of Omegatron's complaint; so it makes sense to me that their offerings can most reasonably be considered as "Outside views" as far as trying to get anything accomplished here. Like SWTPC6800 said, move their comments if necessary. Alternatively, we can change the section headings to better fit the circumstances. Greg L (talk) 21:26, 5 June 2008 (UTC) Deleted because Fnagaton and SWTPC6800 views were originally posted as 'Outside views' and are now relocated as 'Inside views'. Lightmouse (talk) 00:09, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Diffs
Sorry about the lack of actual diffs. Greg's made over 1000 edits to the talk page, more than any other editor, ever, and it's a profound amount of work to dig through the history and copy and paste each URL. I asked for technical help with this last night, but there doesn't seem to be a solution besides hours of manual labor. — Omegatron (talk) 00:55, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Response by Thunderbird2 to Headbomb's comments
Headbomb makes a number of statements that I wish to respond to. In each of the following sub-sections, the header is Headbomb's statement and the text is my response. I have signed each of the 3 responses separately.

Omegatron started an edit war by reverting FCL ....
The edit war started on 17 April        . Omegatron’s first involvement, placing a disputed tag on the disputed section, was on 11 May. In what sense was it started by Omegatron? Omegatron later removed the disputed text once it had become clear there was no consensus for it, more than two weeks after the first attempt to do so.Thunderbird2 (talk) 17:29, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Omegatron was in not way edit warring. He placed a disputed tag on a section which was disputed.  He removed the section which never had consensus.  He was well justified in what he did.  He didn't do this is what I'd call an edit-warrior-like fashion.  He was consistently reverted, often by a sock. Once reverted he did not immediately counter-revert.  J IM ptalk·cont 23:46, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes Omegatron did edit war, especially after mentioning mediation and then continuing to revert war, exactly as described in the counter evidence presented. Fnagaton 19:27, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Proper responsed should've been to leave the FCL section on the MOSNUM page, and put a disputed tag on it, mentionning that section was under debate
At least 5 different editors attempted to do just that, and one of them was Omegatron. The others were


 * Tony1


 * Thunderbird2


 * Gene_Nygaard and

Jimp was accused of vandalism for doing so. The editors removing the disputed tag were
 * Jimp


 * Fnagaton


 * a sock


 * and Greg_L.

At one point, Thunderbird2 attempted to clarify which parts of the text were disputed. This is Greg_L's colourful response.Thunderbird2 (talk) 17:29, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The proper response should have been to have deleted the section but, yes, if it had had to be there, it should have had the tag. The proponents of FCL might have truely believed that they had consensus but surely weren't so blind that they didn't notice the raging dispute about the text.  It was clear however that Greg & Fnagaton weren't going to allow the tag ... or at least not without something in return.  An interesting turn in the case of the disputed tag was when several editor resqested that one of the FCL examples include a conversion.  A clear majority of participants at the time were in favour of this, moreover, I believe we had the stronger argument.  Greg, however, attempted to make the inclusion of the conversion conditional on there being no disputed tag on his section. J IM ptalk·cont 00:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Time and time again the users who tried to put a disputed tag there were challenged to provide substantive reasons for doing so. Every time they failed to provide substantive reasons the disputed tag was removed because, as Headbomb points out, unsubstantiated objections can be largely rejected. Fnagaton 19:29, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Greg L [was] right about the consensus of the FCL section at the time (8 vs. 3 vote …)
The vote referred to here (which ended 7:5, not 8:3) was an attempt by Greg_L to gain consensus after the text was placed for the first time on MOSNUM.Thunderbird2 (talk) 17:29, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * What's a vote? The vote is only one indicator of consensus.  Only a dozen (out of about seven million) editors voted.  There never was consensus on FCL, not on the day it was first inserted, not on the day it was finally removed nor any time between.  Greg was mistaken. J IM ptalk·cont 00:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I second Jimp's comment. TONY   (talk)  13:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Yet again, consensus is not only a vote but also good arguments. Since good strong counter arguments were not presented there was consensus was the change. Fnagaton 19:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Third-party comments

 * This subsection is for comments on this aspect of the RfC, from parties uninvolved in the dispute.


 * I was asked to comment here, so here goes: Looks like a routine editwar to me.  Nothing unusual for WP, and especially nothing unusual for WP:MOS and its subpages.  Just hash it out like normal instead of getting all RFC about it folks?  For what it is worth, I agree strongly with the gist of the disputed material that I've seen so far (i.e., the point of technical writing is communication, not geekery for geekery's sake), although I think that the passage (in the versions I looked at) is unnecessarily long and redundant; the examples need to be compressed.  The entire point could probably fit in 2 normal-length sentences.  (PS: Yes, I am aware that I am often tumid myself. This isn't ironic, but rather a strong indication that the passage is too wordy. If I find it wordy, then it must be really, really wordy!) —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 01:34, 19 June 2008 (UTC)


 * All of the responses by Thunderbird2, Jimp and Tony above misrepresent the actual truth and evidence presented elsewhere in this RfC. Omegatron did edit war by removing the entire section multiple times and as the village pump talks noted there was consensus for the MOSNUM change at the time. Fnagaton 19:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Response by Thunderbird2 to Greg_L's accusation of disruption
On 14 June, Greg_L left a message on my talk page accusing me of disruption. I have been advised to respond to it here, so I have reproduced it below, beneath my signature.

Greg_L refers to some recent edits of mine that he deems inappropriate and “against consensus”. Here are the edits, complete with their edit summaries: All of these edits are attempts to improve the respective articles, either by removing ambiguity or by correcting an error. Other editors may agree or disagree with me that they are improvements, but all are made in good faith and none are disruptive. What I do consider disruptive is to have threats of "disciplinary action" placed on my talk page. What is needed here is not more disruption, but less of it. The question is how that can be achieved, given the currently hostile atmosphere at WT:MOSNUM, and the rejection of two recent attempts (1st attempt; 2nd attempt) to discuss the prefix issue on that page. I wish I knew the answer to that question.Thunderbird2 (talk) 18:07, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * restore latest unambiguous version per Talk
 * restore latest unambiguous version
 * restore latest unambiguous per MOSNUM: "For bits and bytes, specify whether the binary or decimal meaning of the prefixes kilo (k, K), mega (M) ...")
 * restore latest unambiguous version per WP:MOSNUM
 * restore latest unambiguous version
 * rv incorrect information: 2^30 B <> 10^9 B
 * correct error


 * Yes Thunderbird2 your changes are dispruptive. Please stop posting your version of events all over the place because your interpretation is not consistent with the evidence presented.Fnagaton 16:14, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Warning about editing against consensus
Thunderbird2: These disruptive edits on computer-related articles,, , , , , , and constitute violations of Tendentious editing and Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

Refusal to 'get the point' says the following that you should read:

Wikipedia is a collaborative writing environment where chaos would reign supreme if 1) editors didn’t follow the rules, and 2) there were no remedies for editors who refuse to follow the rules. Note also, the following from Wikipedia:Disruptive editing:

Consider yourself warned. If you continue to be disruptive, disciplinary action may follow. Please discuss this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Greg L (talk) 18:08, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I would like to know what gives Greg the idea that he can go about issuing these warnings. I got one from him in May. I don't believe Thunderbird2's intention was ever to be disruptive. I don't have a great deal of interest in the binary prefix debate but the use of IEC prefixes is one means of removing ambiguity. The removal of ambiguity is a good thing. It seems that this was Thunderbird's intention. Perhaps these prefixes are not the most appropriate way of removing the ambiguity on WP. What's needed is a bit of level-headed discussion to agree on what is. "Warnings" don't help. J IM ptalk·cont 01:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Um, this is a bit galling to be told by you that someone else is editing disruptively. You are someone who—against all notions of consensus-gathering—plastered your proposal on the MOSNUM page itself in raw state. Then, when it was clearly disputed by others on the talk page, it was removed. But no, you and your collaborators reverted repeatedly.
 * Let me say this: ''do not post substantial changes on any style-guide UNTIL you have consensus.
 * Part of the strategy of you and your cabal is to claim consensus, repeatedly, when there is substantial objection by more than one person on the talk page. Let this stop.
 * I'm not watchlisting this page, because the whole thing makes me vomit. TONY   (talk)  03:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * There isn't substantial objection because, as Headbomb pointed out, when the opposing side stated something they did not provide substantive reasons and also when direct questions were made those questions went unanswered. Also as was shown by the village pump talk there was consensus for the change at the time it was made. Actually there was stated refusal to answer direct questions, therefore that is a refusal to properly discuss the issue. So don't keep on trying to claim the opposite about the consensus because it simply is not true. Fnagaton 16:11, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * At it again, I see. Greg, there's no excuse for repeatedly referring to MOSNUM as policy.  You know perfectly well that it is only a guideline.  It's right at the top of the page.  Please desist. In case there's any lingering confusion over what the difference is, see Policies_and_guidelines. LeadSongDog (talk) 04:21, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * To the extent that I have anything to say on this at all (and I was asked to comment here, presumably because over a month ago I attempted, and failed, to informally mediate the IEC prefix dispute at WT:MOSNUM), I think both sides of the debate have been highly tendentious and are not really listening to each other or accepting that the other side has anything valid to say at all; neither have been quite disruptive per the definitions at WP:DE (please keep in mind that labeling a WP editor "disruptive" is a blatant accusation of bad faith; it should not be done lightly); both have engaged in editwarring; and, the debate has not reached consensus and is unlikely to do so any time soon. Ergo, something akin to the version of the text as it was before the dispute (re-)erupted should remain in place until such time as consensus on the issue is actually reached. I remain neutral on the matter.  I personally have no problem with KB/GB/etc. units, since I know how they apply differently to different media, I understand the argument for KiB/GiB/etc., recognize that those latter units are in fact prescribed by a standard, yet also know full well that that standard has been almost totally ignored.  The real question of the debate is: Is the alleged disambiguatory power of the KiB-style units worth the cost of using units that will be unfamiliar to almost all WP readers?  Questions like this have come up before in other aspects of WP, and the answer is not formulaic. In some cases, WP does use terms/acronyms/whatever that are more precise but less familiar to the average reader, and in other cases they have been eschewed.  It has to be handled on a case-by-case basis, and in this case, we have no consensus after at least 2 years (probably much longer; I first became aware of the recurrent IEC debate here about 2 years ago.) —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 01:25, 19 June 2008 (UTC)