Talk:Stuart C. Lord

My additions regarding the layoffs at Naropa and the timing of his resignation, both with newspaper sources, were removed by StoneJamison. See previous versions for more info.Donalds (talk) 00:38, 26 March 2012 (UTC) The links to newspaper articles about the reasons for Lord's resignation from Naropa have all been removed. It seems that the article has been tidied up, as one might tidy a resume. This article is still being censored.Donalds (talk) 11:08, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Uncalled-for reversion

Donalds has reverted my Wikipedia housekeeping mark-up (see history), intended to accomplish exactly one goal: to prevent this wording from being tampered with. This mark-up is invisible to users, exists for precisely the purpose of preserving the integrity of the quotation, and has no effect on the quotation whatsoever. Please explain this illogical act. Laodah 23:39, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

The edit summary says "no changes to quotes" as if invoking the Wikipedia rule that we quote sources exactly. But there was no change to a quote here. Both versions of the article in question here quote the source the same way. It certainly wouldn't make any sense for there to be a rule that no wiki markup can be used within the wiki source code that generates a quotation. Would it? Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 00:26, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Donalds didn't do a thing. I did. I've never encountered a user quite like you before, so I'm not sure how to proceed to explain, uh, "this illogical act." Let me see if I have your reasoning right. You believe that the person quoted misused the word "around". However, rather than put in a visible "sic", you put it in but hide it. How does that preserve "the integrity of the quotation"? Do you mean that it's better than actually making the word sic visible? @Drmies: Help out here, please.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:29, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• I have no idea what that markup was supposed to accomplish. But who, in this article's history, is working as the PR rep for this administrator? Drmies (talk) 00:36, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Ha! That's what I like about asking for your help. I focus on a narrow issue and you come in and tackle what is clearly the more important issue. To answer your question, for at least the first two years, it would appear to be the article author, StoneJamison.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:17, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

My apologies for misattribution. The invisible tag is meant precisely to avoid monkeying with the way the quotation reads. Quotations are important, and Wikipedia policy states they are not to be edited. However, copyeditors (also called grammar gnomes) can slip up and edit them accidentally. That's why this mark-up exists: to warn any of us who searches in that this is quoted text. If anyone can post a link to the Wikipedia policy specifically stating that invisible housekeeping mark-up can't be added to quotations, I will concede the point. Otherwise I'm going to reschedule our Stuart C. Lord entry for maintenance. Laodah 04:10, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

You think you are going to find a policy that even mentions this issue? That's absurd. Consensus is the only applicable policy, and there is no consensus for adding that template to the text. I still do not understand how it helps. Warned "that this is quoted text"? Quotation marks aren't enough? So far, all you've demonstrated is that a particular template parameter makes no sense. This appears to be an obsession with you. Perhaps you should move on.--Bbb23 (talk) 04:18, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand this at all, Laodah. You put invisible markup in text thinking that this will prevent someone from changing it? Guess what, Bbb just did. No, there is no policy, I think, that says you can't do exactly what you were doing, but we do have policies against disruption. Drmies (talk) 15:22, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I understand it completely. I am a copy editor and a wikignome and the sic template is useful to me too. Laodah did not invent the "hide" argument of the template and neither did I - I learned to use it from someone else, and I know it has been in use for many years. Allow me to explain the sic template: It has three functions. 1) place the text "[sic]" in the quotation to assure readers that it is not a mistake by a Wikipedia editor. This is only for the hide=n form, which we use when there is a good chance a reader would think it's an editing mistake. We use hide=y when there isn't. 2) prevent editors from accidentally "correcting" the quotation. This is a real risk, because copy editors work in source code and at a technical level, and in a lengthy quotation, it is easy not to realize that you're inside a quotation. I have in fact corrupted quotations many times this way. I know because sometimes someone is proofreading all changes to an article, notices the error, and tells me. I hate to think of all the times I've permanently corrupted a quotation because nobody was reviewing my work. I at least hope it didn't happen where someone removed a sic template that someone had placed there for that purpose. 3) assist wikignomes in finding text that needs work. A proper search for a phrase can ignore all instances of it that are tagged sic. We can get more copy editing work done with Wikipedia thus tagged.

I haven't seen a compelling reason to remove a sic hide=y template from a quotation. In any case, I know there's no consensus that it should be removed.

The reference to disruption is irrelevant, by the way, and a little bit provocative. Nothing being talked about here has anything to do with disrupting the orderly working of Wikipedia. At worst, we have a few editors with different opinions about what the optimal markup for a certain sentence is. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 20:47, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Both you and Laodah have your own SPA-like activities at Wikipedia. Indeed, in many ways you are remarkably similar, the only difference being Laodah appears to restrict their activities to what they call the "lazy around", and you restrict yours to "comprised of". Indeed, both you have lengthy essays in your user space about each of your grammatical issues. That said, I can see your point in some cases but only if another gnome would think that "around" was even an issue. I assume there are no statistics on such a phenomenon as most people, even MOS-obsessers at Wikipedia, wouldn't even care, but I think it's reasonable to believe that very few editors, if any, would "corrupt" this quotation or any other quotation where, according to Laodah, "around" is being misused.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• I see no word "around" in the article, so presumably the quotation wasn't worth keeping. It's routine to use {{lc|hide=yes}} to surround something not quite right in a quotation, to prevent bots and not-paying-attention editors from altering the quotation, when the construction is familiar enough no one's going to have a "WTF?" reaction. It's routine to use it without |hide= to make a visible " [sic]" appear when the quote contains something that is likely to produce a "huh?!" reaction in readers. I dug the quote out of edit history. The problem is its repetition of the same error. We neither want a visible " [sic]" twice in the same quote (looks like we're mocking the speaker), nor do we want to silently use a quotation that has multiple such errors (especially the same one twice in a row), since it makes us look like we don't have any sense ourselves in choosing quotations that are encyclopedic, instead of just annoying blather. This one was bad enough that one should just paraphrase instead of quote directly. PS: I support both editors' unusually single-minded cleanup efforts when it comes to prose written in WP's own voice. Many uses of "comprised of" are confusing and ignorant, as is nonsense like "awareness around" and "centered around". God[s]speed both of you. But see lead at WP:MOS: "If a style or similar debate becomes intractable, see if a rewrite can make the issue moot.". This very frequently applies to squabbles over {{sic}}.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:51, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

• @SMcCaandlish, thanks for your comments. For everyone's information, I asked him to comment based on his knowledge of the template (look at the template history). Because the word at issue is no longer in the article thanks to Drmies, the issue is moot, but I will be more careful in the future if the issue of using this template arises again. I must admit I like SMcCandlish's nuanced approach to what to do and why.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:41, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Glad to be of service. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:59, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Second the motion to give kudos to SMcCandlish. Thank you for your clearheaded analysis of the situation. Thanks also to Drmies for the definitive edit; my operational policy is to respond surgically to the issues I work with and leave the articles otherwise as I found them, unless there are other egregious or incomprehensible errors. Therefore I rarely "edit boldly" as Drmies has done. (By the way, there's a Zen koan that advises exactly the action Drmies took, in which two monks are arguing over the nature of the moon's reflection in a bucket of water, and the third simply kicks it over. "Problem gone.") Finally, thanks to BryanHenderson (aka giraffedata) for his customary dispassionate explanation of what we do and how, and everyone else for remaining intellectually honest and supple. I will link to this discussion in future disputes. Would that all of them were based around such coherent reasoning. Laodah 18:27, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Lack of Objectivity in the past

StoneJamison's linkedin profile lists him as an employee of the Naropa University President's Office during and after the tenure of Stuart C. Lord, revealing a lack of objectivity. My edits were reverted by him several times.Donalds (talk) 11:04, 11 November 2015 (UTC)