User talk:GTBacchus/Archive 17

PS move request reply

Hello Tony. In case you have added Talk:Pixel Pipeline to your watchlist, this message is probably useless. I just want to make sure you have twice the chance of reading it, just in case.
I wish you a nice day!
MaxDZ8 talk 17:08, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, I'll reply to you there. By the way, that's a neat thingy - that secure link. Where can I learn more about that? -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:12, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't truly aware of what I did exactly to produce the secure link above, but it seems it's a result of using the secure log-in procedure. I'm not really sure it's something valuable.
I'm now trying to make up my mind for the reply on the talk page.
MaxDZ8 talk 12:55, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

The American Left

Thankyou for your hard work which I am sorry for having caused you. Another editor had moved the article and then changed the original title to redirect to another article, so I could not move it back. If this happens again I will ask you for help. BTW does the talk page history get moved too or is that unneccessary? TFD (talk) 17:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Mahmud Pasha

Hi GTBacchus! I know you can fix things like this one, so here it goes. User Cplakidas made a redirected page Mahmud Pasha to Mahmud Pasha Angelović and than he redirected page Mahmud Pasha Angelović to Veli Mahmud Pasha. Basically, he redirected old existing article to a newly created article (both of them stubs). While doing so he didn't copy nothing from original article. I have manage to find the informations from the original article, and I have implemented them into a new one. I don't have nothing against a new name of the article, just wanted to see if things are o.k. now, or something else is required. Thanks, Kebeta (talk) 15:04, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I believe I've fixed everything, so the history of the article is located at the same title as the article itself. If you notice anything I missed, please let me know. Cheers. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Kebeta (talk) 08:16, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Ping

Hi, GT! Check your e-mail? Thanks,  – OhioStandard (talk) 00:34, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah... did you get my (partial) reply? -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:34, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

"Fixing"

FYI, turning blue link into a red link is not "fixing" anything. If the blue link is "wrong" (whatever that may mean), first create a NEW blue link that is "right" (whatever that may mean) and link to that, rather than to a red link. Or just leave it alone. Pdfpdf (talk) 15:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

IPs cannot create pages on English Wikipedia. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 15:44, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmmmm. (So why don't you create an account?) Pdfpdf (talk) 15:49, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Several of us have been making that inquiry for a couple of weeks now. I believe this user has an account, or had an account. My recommendation is that they log on with that one. Montanabw^(talk) 20:27, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Turning a blue link into a red one is completely acceptable. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that it isn't. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Pardon? Before I make any comment, I'll ask: Please explain. Pdfpdf (talk) 12:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that red links aren't bad. An example: Suppose there's a genus of butterflies called Paris. (I don't think there really is.) If someone links that, it'll be a blue link pointing to the city. Someone else notices that the link is wrong, and changes the link from "[[Paris]]" to "[[Paris (genus)]]". If there's not an article about the genus, then the link will appear as red. This is perfectly fine.

The person creating the red link is not obligated to first (or ever) create the article. Red links are part of how Wikipedia grows.

Does that help? -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

"Does that help?" - Yes, thanks. Those are the sorts of things I intended to say in response to your words: "Turning a blue link into a red one is completely acceptable."

As for: "Don't listen to anyone who tells you that it isn't.", well, that's just bad advice, (and rather rude). Listening to everyone is one of the ways to learn things. Even when they are things you have already made up your mind about, you learn about the people who are saying them. e.g. I have learnt that some of the things that you write do not always convey the meaning you intend. Also, I've learnt about <p>; henceforth I'll probably use it in preference to <br>. So that's helpful too.

Thanks for your reply. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 05:35, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's fair. It was a bit rude the way I said that. I apologize.

I guess I feel very strongly that new (or non-logged-in) users shouldn't be told about "rules" that aren't really rules. I'm a big fan of WP:IAR and WP:WIARM. I don't want people to feel constrained from contributing. Sometimes those strong feelings result in my being less courteous, and that's inappropriate.

The bit about our words not always conveying what we intend is pretty universally applicable, I'm pretty sure. Thanks for giving me a chance to explain myself rather than jumping to any conclusion. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:48, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

It seems that despite first "appearances", we seem to agree with each other. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 01:00, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thanks for helping me get set up on wikipedia. I always loved wikipedia and I didn't know I could edit it. I thought you had to be a super genius or something, but thanks for showing me that you don't have to be. :) AdbMonkey (talk) 02:50, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

:D Being a super genius is kind of overrated anyway. -GTBacchus^(talk) 14:16, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

ANI

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Montanabw behavior. Thank you. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 23:30, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi GT, your name is being invoked at the ANI, so best you weigh in. Check the links, but review the diffs presented in their entirety, in full context. I was just trying to see if other people had an experience similar to mine and I found someone. Apparently, my comment there to that user was ANI worthy. Montanabw^(talk) 01:45, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, both of you. I've commented there. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:13, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Transatlantic

Hi, now that Transatlantic is a disambig page, could you help fix the misdirected links per WP:FIXDABLINKS? Thanks, --JaGa^talk 15:50, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I can help with that, though I'm not likely to do them all in one sitting... :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:54, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! WP:AWB is a very helpful tool, as are navigation popups with the popupFixDabs flag set to true. Also, if you get to the point where all remaining articles need to be pointed to a single article, I can do a mass edit - but only if all the articles have been reviewed first. --JaGa^talk 16:54, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, for some reason, I like doing these manually. I can do them pretty quickly, the count is about 225 last I checked.

Also needing to be done: I noticed there's a page Transatlantic (disambiguation), which is largely redundant with the current content at Transatlantic. Somehow that situation should be reconciled, but I can think of about 4 ways to do it, none of which is quite optimal. Hmm. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:05, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Christianity

The Template:WikiProject Christianity has recently been seriously changed by another admin. I know that at least one group (LDS-work-group) has been completely removed due to syntax changes (not because it was remove). Another Admin who has done work on this template, such as yourself, needs to go back and fix it.--ARTEST4ECHO ^{(talk|contribs)} 13:10, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Pardon me sir

Do you know if I can make a page? Like a talk page explaining to wiki about myself. Like you did? Omg, I'm sure you know. Do you have a link to the part in the guide? Thanks if you can. AdbMonkey (talk) 05:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Whoopsie

Nevermind! I found it. Thanks! (Der.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by AdbMonkey (talk • contribs) 05:53, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Glad you got that sorted out... -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Thoughts on initial proposed revision of this article?

'Afternoon GTBacchus,

Since you seem to have an interest (and solid knowledge of) the DFW metro area, hoping to get your thoughts on a revision that I've proposed for the Wikipedia article concerning a Dallas-based company (Rent-A-Center) -- an article which, in it's current state, fails to tell what it is that this organization is and does. With this revision, I've sought to bring the article up to Wikipedia's own standards. I would normally implement this revision myself; however with a potential WP:COI present (as it happens, the subject is a client of my employer) I'd like to reach adequate consensus before doing so.

Might you be able to take a look at my proposed revision (described here) and let me know if this seems reasonable? Cheers, Jeff Bedford (talk) 16:28, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Wreck of Collins Liner "Pacific" found?

I was reading the additional matter you put down questioning the so-called discovery of the Pacific's wreckage some sixty miles from Liverpool. Yes it does seem to be odd that no wreckage ever showed up at the time (although there is a passage I read in the book WOMEN AND CHILDREN LAST many years ago that the Cunard liner "Persia" saw glass and wooden wreckage when traveling shortly after the "Pacific" left - but it was in the ocean). My question is why has no further investigation of this site been made? It is rare for a century old shipping mystery to be near possible solution. Has anyone approached someone like Clive Custler about it?

Yours,

Jeff Bloomfield

("Jessie Leiman") —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.64.46.143 (talk) 03:35, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Somalia move

Greetings, GTBacchus. I'm not sure the move of Anarchy in Somalia to History of Somalia (1991-2006) was a terribly good idea, either procedurally or from an encyclopedia perspective. The old article, while at a problematic title, was a decent standard (GA) treatment of a topic of concise scope. The new article, whose title was only proposed by one editor in the past few days in a months-old discussion, covers a much vaster topic, as you can see from the two sections devoted to it in the History of Somalia now-parent article ("Somali Civil War" and "Recent history"). As you can see, the parent article focuses on the two main topics of note in the history of the nation during this period – the civil war, and the warlord-government struggles, neither of which are within the scope of the old article, which focused on the socioeconomic effect of non-state provision of goods and services.

It may very well be that these diverse topics could be covered in adequate length at a high quality in the one article, but that could take years, and we will likely be left with a hatchet job stitching until the systemic bias wikiproject get around to the millenial sociohistory of East Africa (which should be around 2054). I really think this ought to be reconsidered. Skomorokh 17:54, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:SEA Activity Check

Hello Fellow WikiProject Seattle members,

My name is Russell, and I saw that the Seattle WP was tagged as only semi active, so was BOLD and decided to jump in and see about revitalizing the project. Your recieving this message because you are listed as a participant in the project. If you are still interested in participating, please update the table with a status. If you do not respond by Jan 1, you will be considered inactive. If you want to opt out before then, simply remove your name from the table.

Questions, comments, concerns, let me know on either the project or my talk page.

Thank you, and have a great day.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Seattle at 06:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

E-mail

Hello, GTBacchus. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Richwales (talk · contribs) 04:05, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

RfA's then and now

You're right — things have indeed changed dramatically in the past few years. Thanks for the note; I'll be very interested in hearing anything else you might have to say after you've managed to get some sleep. :-) Richwales (talk · contribs) 04:41, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Diacritical moves

Hi there - I'd also love to see stats on diacritically-based moves. If there are trends, if it makes a difference whether it's a person's name or a place, that sort of thing. And also on how the current titles got that way. How many were "born" with diacritics, how many were moved there later on (with or without consensus). And vice-versa. Any ideas on how to assemble those kind of stats? I'd help (assuming enough spare time - always a big assumption). Dohn joe (talk) 01:10, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I once made a list.... User:GTBacchus/RM closings, of the first few hundred RM discussions that I personally closed. It's a big set of raw data, but it's not particularly well-organized, and it gets more out-of-date every day.

For the last while (few years?), the RM page has been maintained by a bot, so there might be an easy way to document move requests by general type and by outcome. Even if this couldn't be done retro-actively, it might be a cool thing to implement for the future. I suppose that Wikipedia talk:Requested moves would be a better place to have this conversation? -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:32, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Undoubtedly. I'm probably done with WP for the day, but you or I should bring this up over there. Dohn joe (talk) 01:50, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

WP Seattle activity check - reminder

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Seattle at 12:36, 23 December 2010 (UTC).

Merry, merry

Bzuk (talk) 02:11, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 09:21, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

TPR Storytelling move

Hi GTBacchus! This is just to say thank you for closing the move at TPR Storytelling. It's very nice to get some closure on this, and it is a nice Christmas present. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 05:11, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! If you're in one of the few time zones where it's still Christmas, then Merry Christmas to you, too. Else, uh... happy Boxing Day! :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:13, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello GTBacchus

Hello GTBacchus,

There is a wikipage that needs some valuable content, but I do not have registered user rights because I have not done 10 contributions. You have made contributions to the page so I think you will find the content valuable. Can I contact you about making a contribution?

Thanks, David@eroticflow.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.218.209.173 (talk) 23:40, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I mean, I guess you already have contacted me. You're welcome to send me an email; just use the link on the left side of the screen. I'm interested to see which article you're talking about. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:08, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

By the way, you don't need "registered user rights" to contribute to most articles. Have you tried editing it yourself? -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:08, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Argidava

Thanks for the move! Happy Holidays! --Codrinb (talk) 21:55, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome, and happy days to you, too. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 09:21, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

La Jolla

Did you miss the independent discussion at Talk:La Jolla, San Diego? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:36, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose I did. How about I finish tidying up redirects, and then I'll see you there? -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, that was straightforward. I've fixed it now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:40, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

New Year

Thank you very much for working with me in 2010 to make the encyclopedia a better place. Regardless of any disagreements we may have had, I want to wish you all the very best for 2011. I look forward to working with you, and I hope for health and happiness to you and your family in the year to come. I therefore send you this glass of the cratur, so you can celebrate, whether it is Hogmanay or New Year's Day where you are. Warmest regards, --John (talk) 04:58, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you so much! :) I wish you all the things you wish for yourself in the coming year, and look forward to seeing you around. Cheers. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Talk:TfGME#Requested_move

Why was TfGME moved? The associated discussion came to the conclusion moving wasn't the best course of action. ChiZeroOne (talk) 07:10, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I misread the discussion. I'll put it back. -GTBacchus^(talk) 08:59, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. No worries, tbh I should have requested the discussion be closed a while ago but I forgot about it. ChiZeroOne (talk) 03:12, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

And your point is?

"If anyone wants to do anything about Malleus that will be meaningful, and not just pissing into the wind, then they'll have to start with an RFC/U." Malleus Fatuorum 21:24, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

My point is precisely what I said. I'm not sure I understand your question. I'm not saying whether someone should or should not start an RFC/U; just pointing out that anything short of it is fatuous. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:24, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

My question is rooted in the knowledge that there are many editors here, some of them admins, who would like nothing better than to see me gone. I just wondered if you were one of them. Malleus Fatuorum 23:06, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

There are many things I'd like better than to see you gone. I'd like to see you contributing to Wikipedia in your usual high-quality manner, and I'd like to see you involved in less heat and static. I'd like to see you not show up in WQA threads that are easily avoidable. I certainly recall seeing you choose to say or do things that would obviously and inevitably lead to heat and static, and then when shit happened, you played dumb about it. You're not naïve, and you can't fool me into thinking that you are. (No, I'm not talking about the current instance, at all.)

So, yeah, I'd like to see less of that kind of nonsense. I'd like to see your good work continue, and your unnecessarily provocative bullshit end. That's a pretty reasonable desire, isn't it? -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:44, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Just as I thought. I doubt you and I will ever agree about anything. Bring on your RFC/U. Malleus Fatuorum 23:52, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

We agreed on something just about an hour ago - in your own words - and I suspect you and I would agree about most editing matters. The only points where we disagree involve how to treat other people, and the usefulness of stirring up shit. You seem to think that you can yell at people and have some positive effect in the world by doing it, and I know that to be false. You once tried to "set my hat on straight" by talking to me like I was dirt. That was neither smart, nor useful, nor effective. I mean, unless you think that venting your feelings is a valid use of Wikipedia's servers. It's not.

That's all, though. We probably agree about most other things.

I'll never open an RFC/U on you or anyone else, and I have no desire to do so. If you think otherwise, it's because you foolishly believe you know things that you just don't know. You're dishonest, and emotionally a child. Now leave my talk page. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:58, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You do realise that's a personal attack GTB, and unless you do something about it I will report it to one of the admin boards. Malleus Fatuorum 00:02, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I wish you would both knock it off there before it gets nasty. Seeing this on my watchlist is distracting me from enjoying my last day of winter break (aka catching up with grading and running AWB in the background). You are both good people with good intentions and I wish you would both just walk away from this now. Please. --John (talk) 00:08, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

John, I appreciate and respect your point. However, I feel that, given his history, asking for people to just make nice and move along is equivalent to asking that Malleus continue to get a free pass for chronic ass-hattery. He abuses more editors per week than I have in 5 years, he mocks anyone who reports him for incivility, and then turns around and reports me because I actually hit a sensitive spot, which he finds in others for sport. That's capital-H Hypocrisy.

The only personal attack in there is that I called him dishonest (I got diffs!) and emotionally a child, which I stand by, and he has now in the AN/I thread called me a child twice, and dishonest once. I don't support a block of him, though. I support someone getting through his skull that he's wrong, chronically.

This is not a symmetric situation, this is Malleus taking his seat as the God-King of Trolls. I'm not the easiest to bait, but he did it artfully, and I think you'll see that if you take a broad view of the situation. I'm happy that I realized what was going on when I did (right before I said "Gobble"), and I'm happy that his colors are showing now for so many to see. He's been getting a free pass for way too long, and he'll never change as long as people say, "Now, now, you both have good intentions".

If you care about the people he drives away from the project, then I don't see how you can hold us up as equal in any way here. Whom have I driven away from Wikipedia, with my chronic incivility? If I only light into an average of 1 person every 18 months, then it might really be about that person, and not about my "anger issues". Am I making sense here? -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:42, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Wind

No. Malleus Fatuorum 02:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

No. Just trying reading what you just wrote, as if you were someone else, without all of your baggage. Malleus Fatuorum 02:09, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:19, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Too little too late. Malleus Fatuorum 00:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

AN/I notice

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--John (talk) 00:18, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks John, I was just about to add that myself. Malleus Fatuorum 00:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

• I've blocked you for 12 hours for the diff at ANI and your comment preceding it. Admin or not, there's no need for attacks like that. I'm sure there'll be a review at ANI, but you;re welcome to appeal with {{unblock|reason}}. With regret, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:05, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the note. I have no plan to request an unblock. I think we've quite neatly shown that Malleus' brand of behavior is extremely unhelpful (and immature and stupid), by showing just where it leads. I couldn't be happier. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:08, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Wow

I've never been blocked before; so this is what it's like. Good work, Malleus, you've proved my point. Telling someone off is unhelpful, and leads to inevitable drama. That's all I had to say. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

So you consider yourself a martyr, eh? Sacrificing yourself for the good of the community, to bring alleged hypocrisy to light? Wahoh (talk) 02:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

No, because I haven't sacrificed anything. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:11, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Wow, you sound really supercilious both here and in the sections below. Wahoh (talk) 03:13, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. Go edit an article. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:24, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Note to Mal

If I'm treated differently from you, it's not because I'm an admin. It's because I haven't got a pattern of behaving this way, and you do. Remember, "fuck off, troll"? By acting the way you act, I stirred up shit and got blocked. Duh! -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

My money is precisely where my mouth is, and I notice you continue to engage in the behavior that you decry in others. My point is neatly made, and the mud's on your face. I couldn't be happier. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:26, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Still doing it! Report me for calling you a child, and then repeatedly call me a child! This is awesome! I couldn't have written it better! Are people taking notes? -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

"Go for it, if you think you're hard enough"???? Does this man fancy he's in a movie or some shit? Is this for real? -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Note to Bugs

I'm an admin open to recall. All you have to do is get a handful of editors in good standing who agree that I should relinquish the mop, and I will. I am totally at service to the desires of this community. Desysop me, if you mean what you say. Else, it's wind. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:46, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

You're not even being accurate, man! That's not when you withdrew. You withdrew after the scene where you ran to AN/I to ask whether it was ok for me to maybe edit Dramatica, and then I made it abundantly clear that you had fucked up. You withdrew, quite appropriately, in shame after that. [1] July is later than April. Convenient memory of yours. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:05, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Will someone please tell Retro...

...a few things? Not being arsed to spell my name correctly is a bit of a puzzle in a post that asks us to treat each other with respect. If nothing else, use copy/paste. What he doesn't know is that 99% of my contributions here are devoted to singing precisely the song that he's singing now. Only in the case of the very worst and most malicious editors (Malleus and Bugs, for example), do I even come close to flying off the handle.

I've had four incidents in 5 years, compared to Malleus' record of shitting on more people than that every single week. He drives people away from the project, and I get people thanking me for teaching them to be less combative and more collegial. My record is easy to review, and I'm open to recall. RFC/U me, if you think I've got anger issues. I've got issues with the way our community tolerates chronically malicious and trolling presences such as Malleus and Bugs.

Retro's mind-reading is also off. He says that I gobbled "totally ignorant of the fact that he probably insulted Malleus". How insulting can you be? I knew damn well that I'd insulted him, quite intentionally, thus giving him the response to baiting that he sought. In the moment that I did it, I let him troll me unintentionally. Just as soon as I did it though, I realized that I had let him troll me, and that it was going to play out in a way that I find just skippy. I was about to watch him become a fully completed hypocrite, and the best thing I could say was "Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble." It really is the best response to some kinds of energy, at least according to certain scripture. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:31, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

"I've had four incidents in 5 years, compared to Malleus' record of shitting on more people than that every single week. He drives people away from the project." Can you provide any evidence for that slander? I will give you seven days to either support your assertion or to apologise for it before taking it to ArbCom. Malleus Fatuorum 03:18, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

You just said earlier today that you never demand apologies. Another lie. Please take me to ArbCom; I can't wait. Don't bother with the seven days; you'll get nothing from me. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:20, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

It's your choice. not mine. I asked you to provide some evidence. Where is it? Malleus Fatuorum 03:25, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I just said, "you get nothing". I don't lie; that's your game. If I said you get nothing, then you get nothing. Your hypocrisy increases with each post. Do it, already. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:27, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

What world are you living in? You're a sysop who's been blocked for incivility, yet you persist with it. Has the block taught you nothing? Malleus Fatuorum 03:31, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

You're still unwilling to put your money where your mouth is. Do something about it, or you've proven that you're nothing but a windbag. Your threats are empty, Malleus. Empty. How's that feel? BTW, pointing out bald-faced lies that I can easily link to is not incivility. Making them might be, but I don't report people for incivility. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I mean... do you seriously think you can intimidate me? Wow, man. Just wow. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

"Has the block taught you nothing"? You must be kidding. What did you just say earlier today about the effects of blocks on yourself? Do you even remember? And now you try to get all school-marm on me? That's just stupefying. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:36, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Retro, Retro, Retro...

I'm sorry, but getting the community to take a closer look at Malleus' behavior is not a wrong-doing. I am quite happy with how this is going. You don't know the context sufficiently well to make apt remarks. I appreciate and respect the spirit in which you're offering conciliatory words, but you don't realize just how much shit we put up with from MF. Many people do realize it, and that's why I'm welcoming scrutiny. If I just apologize and sweep it under a rug, then I'm doing the community a disservice. Malleus is an actual problem, and we've been ignoring it for too long. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, there is nothing wrong with opening up a discussion to get consensus on the matter of Malleus' behavior. But just remember, that how mad we can be is no excuse for the sinful actions we do as a result. Just be calm and just give the facts. Sensible community members would look for the facts I would believe, and contestable behavior can cause more trouble than it repairs. And if Malleus does happen to be committing disruptive editing, then insulting him/her might only make it worse. There are many, many jerks in this world (I am not saying that Malleus is one, as whether his/her behavior is good or bad would be determined by consensus), so do not let them get under your skin. And we all make mistakes, so just learn from them and move on. [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 04:05, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

It really doesn't help to use words like "sinful" when talking with people who might not share those notions. We don't go to the same church, okay? I appreciate what you're doing, but that's a good way to push people's buttons.

To reply to your comments... You really aren't familiar with my record. If you think that what you're telling me is anything different from what I say every single day, then you're wrong. I'm a step ahead of you. I was rude to Malleus, and that was an error. That's easy for me to grant, but I'm not going to apologize to him, nor to do anything that simply encourages this being swept under the rug. I believe that Malleus is consistently driving people away from this project. A delay in looking at his editing is not helpful. If he files some kind of case against me, that's the fastest way to get this problem aired before the Arbitrators. Therefore, I'm all for it.

I don't want to make nice, and to pour oil on this water. I want Malleus to understand that he's not as completely above-the-rules as he claims to be. I don't claim to be above the rules; he does. He just did it on AN/I. How many times should we sweep this under the rug?

When it comes to responding to an RFC/U or an ArbCom case, I am actually very, very, very good at being calm and just giving the facts. You are not familiar with my record. I care about this project very much, and I'm tired of seeing it shit on by a troll as insidious as Malleus Fatuorum. He is doing the project very great harm, and that's why I describe him as one of the worst and most malicious editors. He doesn't get banned in a week; he keeps damaging the project for years. How long shall we turn a blind eye to this? -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:13, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I would welcome arbitration

I would be more than happy for ArbCom to look at my behavior as well as Malleus'. Unfortunately, they don't tend to take cases if there hasn't been at least an RFC/U first. I hope someone will file one of those soon. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:29, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Unblocked

Just to let you know I have unblocked you per the consensus at ANI. Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:48, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate that. I've just posted a couple of replies there, and I'd like nothing more now than to head back to my usual haunt at WP:Requested moves, where the only drama I have to deal with is centuries-old ethnic disputes and strongly-held feelings about the English language. A nice break from... this.

I do hope this leads to some scrutiny of MF's behavior, but I'm not terribly optimistic about that. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:54, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd prefer that it led to a scrutiny of your behavior, which I think has been apalling. We'll see how things go from here. Malleus Fatuorum 04:18, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm for that. Why are you still delaying? Empty threat, right? -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:19, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Not empty at all, just giving you time to think about what you're getting into. It's your choice. Malleus Fatuorum 04:21, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't need time to think, as I already said. It wasn't a lie. Some of us don't lie the way you do. ("I never demand apologies.") You get nothing from me. Now file a fucking case, already, or you're completely full of wind. I'm calling your bluff; how many times are you going to make me call it? I'm set, and I won't change my mind. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:23, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

There would of course have to be at least one RFC/U, but I don't think there would be any shortage of editors willing to endorse it, do you? Continuing to abuse me is doing your case no good whatsoever. Malleus Fatuorum 04:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Why are you still talking to me? Do it already! -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm giving you time to calm down, and think about what you're getting into. Malleus Fatuorum 04:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I've told you my position, and I wasn't lying. Nothing will change, except that it becomes clearer with each comment here that you're bluffing, i.e., lying again. I'm calling your bluff. There is nothing further to talk about. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:36, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

We'll see. Time will tell. Malleus Fatuorum 04:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2. L.O.L., this is a user talk page! X-D) He is asking you to file an RfC/U. Why do you not do it? Refusing to file an RfC/U on someone that you claim has thrown a personal attack at you, and who is asking you to file one, almost makes you look like you are afraid of the boomerang (i.e. that you do not want to incriminate yourself). [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 04:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

He won't do it. See which of us is afraid of scrutiny. I've been an admin open to recall since the idea of administrative recall was first mooted.

I would appreciate Malleus leaving my talk page alone, as I'm trying to get back to work on the encyclopedia, and the constant orange banners are annoying. If there's actual new information, then by all means bug me, but this? Please. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:44, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Let's just wait and see. Malleus Fatuorum 04:49, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

For what? It is awfully starting to look like you are trying to hide from the boomerang. [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 04:51, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec)You're repeating yourself, Malleus. Cut it out. We know where we're at: You're scared to do what you said you'd do. It bores me. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:52, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Just ignore the continued comments from Malleus, I've asked them to stop.[2]. I'll be glad to just remove any further baiting comments and take action if this harassment continues. Dreadstar ☥ 04:54, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. When I saw it, for some reason I though "wiki-hounding" (which happens to be discussed in a section of WP:Harassment. I am leaving this page now. I do not want to cause any more annoying "You have new messages" banners for GTBacchus. [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 04:58, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Recent Issues

Hello, GTBacchus! It's been awhile since we've chatted and I know we always got along fine when we were involved at the Charles Manson article about a year ago. I remember you distinctly from then: you came into a fierce content dispute between two ..."opinionated" editors, and you were very helpful and neutral for the bulk of it. Then, after negotiations failed (which I knew they would because no one could have stopped what was happening)... you "snapped". I don't need to put the diffs up here (and I very well have some ;>), but I remember you "changing" before my eyes into a profanity-spewing "different person": almost a Jeckyll & Hyde-like-thing.

The same thing happened (IMHO) with this episode with Malleus: it's all there in the edit histories. We all know how Malleus can react when approached in a certain way, and I was very surprised to see you act the way you did as an administrator. You started out civil and then went "ape-shit". I'm not an admin (and you couldn't pay me enough to go through the RfA hilarity), but when you offer to provide diffs upon request of his dishonesty and then refuse to provide them it doesn't look good. You called him (and it doesn't matter if it's him: he's an editor in good standing) a liar and several other things multiple times without providing the diffs: that you offered, that he asked for, and that you then refused to provide. Those are personal attacks without the evidence to support them, as defined by the policy (point #4 in particular).

In the Charles Manson dispute you mentioned several times "I got pissed", and you mentioned possible "anger issues" earlier here today. "Don't edit when angry" is not a terrible thing to consider. Please let me know if I've got anything wrong here, and Cheers... Doc talk 09:35, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it is just me, but I don't see how bringing up this completely unrelated incident from a year ago is helpful. I can see that you are trying to draw a connection between the two, but I don't think there is one. Viriditas (talk) 11:35, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

That's how I met GTBacchus: I'm not trying to point out a pattern of incivility that should be sanctioned. I hope he will respond: this is not an indictment of him but a request for his input on my "take". Most editors that I "question" either can defend themselves very well: or have no defense. He is of the former category. I'm sure he'll understand what I'm bringing up and why. Cheers :> Doc talk 11:42, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

There's some stuff to think about here. One easy point: "when you offer to provide diffs upon request of his dishonesty and then refuse to provide them it doesn't look good." I didn't refuse to provide diffs of his dishonesty. He never asked for those. He asked for diffs documenting that he's driven people away. Those instances, don't tend to have clear diffs, unlike his dishonesty, which is easy to document. He lied 3 or 4 times during the affair yesterday, and I pointed those instances out, quite clearly. I am still completely willing to provide further documentation of Malleus' dishonesty, and he still hasn't asked for such, nor responded to what I have already provided. He wants documentation of those he's driven away, and I'm holding out on that until he fulfills his promise.

Your points about anger are well-made, and I'll take some more time to respond to that. If anyone wants further evidence of Mal's easy-to-document dishonesty, they need only ask. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm asking. Malleus Fatuorum 22:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Finally! :D Give me few minutes to read this post below, and I will trot out a list of your words and behaviors that I perceive as dishonest. I pointed out some blow-by-blow yesterday, but I'll recap. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:00, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok. Yesterday's examples are fairly trivial, but their bald-faced nature makes them stick out in my mind.

(1) Just a couple of hours after saying at WQA, "I have to agree with GTBacchus", you said that you doubt we'll ever agree on anything. That's trivial and silly, but glaring and telling to my mind. Someone who tells trivial lies will also tell big ones. Saying you doubt we'll agree on anything is also an absurd and grandiose claim, when it's trivially obvious that we agree about very, very many things. We both abhor abusive admins, for example, except that you won't believe me despite my clear record of calling them out, and watching them get desysopped for precisely the behavior I called them out for. What do you care about facts, when you've already decided you know what I am?

(2) Just a couple of hours after saying: "I've never demanded an apology from anyone on wikipedia, and I don't expect to start now," you demanded an apology from me. Is it true that you've never done this before? Perhaps. Maybe this was an entirely new behavior out of Malleus Fatuorum. It reeks to me of dishonest posturing followed by hypocrisy. Technically, you "don't expect to start now" leaves open the possibility that you might, which would make it less of an honesty issue and more of a self-knowledge one. Who knew that you were about to open a new door, reporting others for "civility violations" and demanding apologies? Next thing you know, you'll have a "civility police" badge, and you'll wear it proud. I guess you'll never say again that you've never demanded an apology, because now you've done it. Remember that.

(3) Now we get to substantial stuff. Given your attitude about "civility police" there's something fundamentally dishonest about reporting someone for a civility "violation", but let's not linger over that. I got under your skin, and you reacted as such; this is normal. Lots of us (including myself) engage in behavior that we normally decry, when we're pushed to a certain point. That doesn't make us phonies so much as fallible humans, and if we can start from the premise that we both make mistakes in our interactions, then we'll get along just fine. I've never seen a glimmer of that kind of humility from you. Does it exist? I dunno.

Here's what I'm really thinking about, and it happened a little while ago, leaving a big impression in my mind. There was a WQA complaint about you, and I saw the thread and commented. Someone had posted a civility warning to your talk page for telling another editor that he should grow up. Your response to the warning was "fuck off, troll", and his response was to go to WQA. I told him that leaving you civility warnings was pointless at best, which I think we would agree about. (There it is again! We agree!) Then you and I had a very interesting conversation.

You said that a reasonable person performs whatever actions are most likely to lead to their preferred result. We agree about that. :) I pointed out that you had essentially requested the WQA report, because you performed an action that was most likely to lead there: namely, telling someone to fuck off and calling them a troll, when they've already exhibited an officious and lawyerly approach to civility. This is a no-brainer. Tell a civility-cop to "fuck off", and you've just asked for "escalation, please". You said that my logic was wrong at the following point: that you really expected he would just fuck off. I responded that you couldn't possibly be that naïve, and your reply was fascinating. You said that you'd heard enough of my "psycho-babble", and came around to my talk page to yell at me and "set my hat straight" (another dishonest claim, which I'll get to in a moment).

Now, what really happened here? You knew damn well that a civility cop won't fuck off if you tell him to fuck off. He'll escalate; this is obvious, and you have more than enough experience to know it. You knew damn well that he would escalate, and you pushed that button, quite intentionally. After pushing the button, you claimed that you didn't know what that button did, and that you actually expected him to just toddle off into the sunset. When I pointed out that you can't be that naïve, you became abusive. You didn't argue that, no, you really thought he would leave you alone. You didn't stop and think and say.... "hmmm, there's a thought. I guess that is pretty predictable." No, you started in with the name-calling.

Now, is this a trivial untruth? No. It's not a "lie" in the most literal sense of the word. It is fundamental, deep-down-inside dishonesty. It's intellectual disintegrity. When someone pointed out that you were wrong, you didn't think about acknowledging it; you just went into attack mode. That is the opposite of honesty. An honest man hears criticism, considers it seriously, and either takes it to heart, or says why it doesn't apply. An honest man does not respond to honest criticism by flying off the handle. An honest man owns up to his mistakes.

It's pretty clear that you enjoy a fight, that you like telling people off, and that you get a kick out of seeing people get upset over your blunt words. Do you admit to this? No. What do you do? You say that someone needs their hat set on straight, as if you're stupid enough to think that your yelling at someone will somehow improve them as a person. You would have to be a great fool to think this, and you are not a great fool. Thus, dishonesty. You don't yell at people to "set their hats straight", because you know goddamned well that it doesn't have that effect. That's like saying you piss to make the sun rise. You piss because you have to piss, and you take the piss because you want to take the piss. You see, I can't believe that you're stupid; you weren't just born last week. You know how people react to things, and you know that they'll react in ways that you then claim to be surprised by. Therefore, I must believe that you're playing games with us. Playing games, and not owning up to them, is fundamentally dishonest. Honest men simply don't do it.

I'm not talking about trivial untruths; I'm talking about fundamental intellectual integrity.

So, why did I call you dishonest? Well, partly it was to point out the nonsense in your claims from last time. Partly it was so you would ask me for examples, and as I think of more, I'll add them. Partly - largely - it was because I knew it would piss you off, and I am honest enough to own my motivations, even when they're as shitty and stupid as they were yesterday. Pissing someone off is a terrible motivation, anytime, any place. No question: I fucked up. So did you, Malleus, and I wonder when you'll be someone who can admit as much in public.

I'm owning up to mistakes here. It was a mistake to tell you that you're dishonest and emotionally a child, and it was a mistake I made because I was upset with your ridiculous writing off of my previous statements. Posting in anger is always a mistake, and I've done it a few times. I'm now trying to make the most of it. I'm certainly not apologizing for it, despite it being a mistake, because I want you to file that case. I think it will serve the community, which is much more important than either of us. I don't think that's a mistake; we'll see.

What have your mistakes been, Malleus? -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:05, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

PS: I'll add to the list if more instances of dishonesty occur to me or are brought to light. I wonder.... applying my advice here to myself, how are you most likely to respond, and is it what I'm after? Hmmm... I hope you respond by filing an RFC, and I hope you read what I've written carefully enough to consider applying it to yourself. I know little enough about how you function that I honestly can't say whether the latter is likely. I don't think it is, but I don't know what would work better, so I'm using the only reliable tool I've got, which is to break things down into logical pieces, and trace the causes and effects. We'll see... -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:05, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Struck a word, this brinksmanship really needs to stop. Franamax (talk) 00:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Note from Bigtimepeace

I read about this on ANI because I was bored, I guess (that's not really a very good excuse, I know). I'll say something here because I think it might possibly help (or possibly it will make things much, much worse—I'm not Kreskin).

GTBacchus I forget if we interacted directly—I think maybe so—but I have observed what I take to be very good conflict resolution skills from you in the past, and I recall some meta-comments from you that were quite insightful when it comes to issues of civility and the like. To be honest, I'm not really seeing any of that in this particular situation.

I agree with you that Malleus has created and/or contributed to some real problems in the past (outweighed by excellent encyclopedia contributions in my view) and we've never been able to do much of anything about that, which is not a good thing. I also agree with Malleus that he has been blocked completely inappropriately in the past, and I'm in agreement with him that admins often get away with actions and rhetoric that non-admins generally do not. That is a serious problem, and I think that's what Malleus is bothered by here. It's a very legitimate complaint in general, whether or not this is the best case for it. I think I would agree with Doc above that you, GTBacchus, just got a little too pissed here, which happens to basically all of us at some point. Your rhetoric is just too intense and I don't think it's helping your goal of having the community deal with perceived problems with Malleus' behavior.

For one thing, it's never a good idea—and I really mean never—to call anyone a "liar" or "dishonest" no matter how iron-clad is your case. Even if you produce two diffs that completely contradict each other, that is not sufficient basis to call someone a "liar." They still may read them differently than you do, or they may argue that they just communicated poorly, or they may have a warped view of "reality," whatever that is (in no way am I saying these are true of Malleus or anyone else). Point is you will never be able to prove objectively on Wikipedia that someone "lied" and it is silly to even try because questions about lies and truth are even more subjective on the internet than they are in real life (though that seems semi-impossible). When you do drop the liar label, the person in question will almost always get pissed and then you're off on an argument that will get nowhere. Instead of saying "stop lying you dishonest liar" just say "well that seems to contradict what you said earlier when you told me _____." Some, including maybe Malleus, might look at that as wishy-washy, beating around the bush, disingenuous bullshit, but I think it reads better to other editors and is at least somewhat less likely to provoke a shit storm—it's also hard to argue with since you are talking about your subjective perceptions. This is a specific point but I think it's worth considering in the context of this dispute and for the future.

I'm guessing neither of you are very inclined to do so right now, but I'd recommend disengaging. ArbCom is certainly not going to take a case about this minor imbroglio. It's hard to imagine an RFC/U helping anything. So what should be done? I have no idea (I told you I'm not fucking Kreskin goddamnit!), so best to do nothing, i.e. go back to whatever you were doing before. It's not really "fair," but then again what is these days? Both of you are long-time Wikipedians, so no doubt you're able to deal pretty well with completely unsatisfying resolutions to disputes—better to come to that end sooner than later and without another thirty comments on someone's talk page that you'll have trouble remembering even three months from now. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 23:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

For the record, pathological liars do tend to burn themselves out fairly quickly here, or are found out by others. I ran into this situation a few years ago, and when I brought it to the attention of the community and several different administrators, they chose to ignore the problem completely. Eventually, it resolved itself, but I learned my lesson: don't depend on the community to take responsibility for making the right decisions, as they tend to avoid it altogether. The cultural demographic here is all about "ignore it, and hope it goes away", which says a lot about the maturity level of the average editor and human nature in general. Viriditas (talk) 01:25, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Just so there's no misunderstanding here, who are you calling a "pathological liar" Viriditas? Malleus Fatuorum 02:17, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

My personal remembrance and reminiscence of things past could not result in a misunderstanding since it was not intended to convey or impart any private information about current, active editors. Viriditas (talk) 02:24, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I would broadly agree with everything you've said here. As for disengaging, I'm disengaged with Malleus, except for answering his request for documentation above. The ball is in his court, and he'll either file the case he said he would, or he won't. If he files a case, I'll respond, if not... oh well. The only thing that an RFC/U will accomplish is to document problems for a future ArbCom case. That's all that RFC/U's are good for, mostly. I've never been party to Malleus receiving unfair blocks, and if he wants to take them out on me.... oh well. I truly hope that he brings an RFC against me. I want the vindication.

One other thing, and you're welcome to test me on this. If someone says I lied, or calls me dishonest, my very first reaction will be to ask for documentation. That's before I fly off the handle. If it turns out I spoke an untruth, they'll have an apology before they have time to ask for one. I take honestly extremely seriously. If I'm going to stop being honest, then I hope also to stop breathing in that moment. If someone claims to have caught me being dishonest, my thoughts are about identifying and fixing that problem, not about hitting that person. I'm not playing around here. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:11, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Posting here for lack of a better place: GTB, from what I know you're a pretty good admin, but it does seem that you've had a minor meltdown here. Please put the anger and determination to have a confrontation aside for a little while. You and MF are not going to solve all the wiki-problems in the universe here, I don't think you'll solve even this one the way the two of you are going.

In particular, I've warned Malleus about repeated posting to your talk page. Further thereto, please either take great care in the wording of your posts here so that MF doesn't feel compelled to respond in a matching derogatory vein; or grant your explicit permission for MF to comment here in whatever manner they see fit. Your choice. Franamax (talk) 00:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

You warned him? What effect will that have? Same as other warnings he's received? Malleus may reply here in whatever manner he sees fit, and then we can all see what he means by "fit". I have a hard time seeing "please don't have a confrontation" as anything other than "let him be as abusive as he wants to be, anytime he wants to do it". Nobody has suggested any way of mitigating his behavior other than to let him be. That's been failing for years. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:05, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Well you do your admin actions and I'll do mine. I don't issue warnings lightly (and I think I've still never placed a warning template after 3 years, I use my own words). If you're opening up this page to Malleus by explicit invitation, I for one will consider it a no-block zone. But really GTBacchus, you're better than this and I think you could really use a day off. A way to "mitigate his behaviour"? Fer-gawd's-sake just freakin' ignore it would be a possibility. If everyone did that, it wouldn't be a big issue - but there's always someone who will take the bait. So whose fault is it then, the good fisherman or the silly fish? This will not get resolved, and discussing who is the bigger liar just goes nowhere at all that I can see. Franamax (talk) 01:23, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that baiting is a behavior we frown upon. Until we can change human (or fishy) nature so that nobody takes bait, then having people around baiting for sport is a problem. If I ignore it as I have for years, then fish after fish after fish gets shit on.

Regarding "discussing who is the bigger liar": If someone has made postings about my honesty, I haven't read them yet. When I do, I'll own up to any failing on my part, because I have no wish to be dishonest or misleading in any way, shape or form. It is my extremely honest opinion that if someone sees fit to use our servers to bait, insult, abuse, mock and poke at others, then they should be stopped. I don't do these things, and the only time I get really upset is when I see someone else getting away with treating their fellow Wikipedians like dirt.

I won't look away from active abuse, and I'm sorry if anyone else thinks that looking away is a solution. I'm sorry if anyone thinks that blaming people for not being "thick skinned" enough is a solution. I'm sorry if anyone thinks that we should expect editors here to tolerate contempt and derision as being par for the course. We should be better than that, and I'm very sorry if we're not. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:22, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Now that I've had time to catch up, I see that "discussing who is the bigger liar" is a completely misleading red herring. Nobody has even accused me of dishonesty, so that is sure as hell not what any discussion is about. Malleus asked for documentation of why I called him dishonest, I provided it, and that's that.

Looking the other way is no solution, and I'm disappointed. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

"the bigger liar" was not intended as a red herring (as in distracting from the real goal via misdirection) at all, but I believe you are correct that your own honesty has not been questioned here. Rather, I was referring to a) MF's record of calling others liars, which yes I do believe I can thoroughly documemt as needed; and b) my perception of continued "dares" and provocations to each other. You seem clearly to wish a confrontation here, to "setlle this" once and for all, but I rather doubt you will gain much traction heading up this particular road. Anyway, no-one has questioned your honesty. Looking the other way? We all do that occasionally. The question is: is this the issue you want to hang your hat on? If so, then file your own RFC/U or RFAR - or at the least calm down and put what you are saying into reasonable terms of "tried and failed to resolve the dispute" so that others can judge beyond your evident frustration with the current situation. Franamax (talk) 03:12, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I might be significantly calmer and less frustrated than you think. It's getting to be days between posts - how much emotion do you imagine I'm dragging around New Orleans with me? There are bigger and better fish to fry around here than anything on this Wiki, at least for my money. Also, I process things without doing all my thinking aloud on this page.

I feel pretty good about the way this situation is currently disposed: Either MF will do what he said he'd do, and that makes me happy, or he won't do what he said he'd do, and that makes me happy. I do feel passionately that Wikipedia suffers when we allow chronically abusive users to get away with it, and I think that MF is chronically abusive, but I don't have to file any action against him. Someone else will do it, and eventually he'll either moderate his behavior, or he'll have to go. It's just life on Wikipedia. Have a beer; it's a beautiful world. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Calling me "chronically abusive" is a clear personal attack, one that might earn a non-administrator a warning at the very least. I'd suggest that you consider the wisdom of perhaps engaging your brain before posting again. Malleus Fatuorum 03:31, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm describing a behavior, which is not inappropriate to do. Your behavior is problematic, and it's fine for me to notice that. If you disagree, we can talk about your behavior, but crying "no NPA" in the same breath as telling me to "engage my brain" is not going to get you very far, or make you look very sympathetic. If you feel that someone has been rude to you, then being rude back is not a very good strategy. Try the high road.

I've never suggested that your brain is less than engaged; simply that you're doing something disruptive, and doing it regularly. I don't suppose you mean to be disruptive, so it would be good for you to learn better interaction skills. Now, you work on that, and I'll work on doing what I do.

Don't worry; I won't file a case against you, and you know that because I said I wouldn't. You were quite clear that you absolutely would file one against me, and I look forward to that. Meanwhile, don't act like a "civility cop", crying "NPA" when someone suggests that your actions may be problematic. I'm describing your actions just as dispassionately as ArbCom will eventually have to describe them.

Before you reply, think: What's your goal, and what is most likely to lead there, in this universe? Will berating me get you where you want to be? -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:37, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

"I'm describing your actions just as dispassionately as ArbCom will eventually have to describe them." Please don't waste any more of your time trying to threaten me, it never works. Never. Malleus Fatuorum 16:10, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! :) It's not a threat, but a prediction, because I absolutely won't be the one doing it. I said I wouldn't file any kind of case, so I won't. Someone will; it's inevitable. I hope you do what you said you'd do. Have a nice day, and I'll keep my counsel on how I spend my time. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:14, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I suppose Viriditas was dead on. _EricLeb⁰¹ (Page | Talk) 18:01, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

"He's a jerk but he does good work" is not a good way to deal with problems. [3] Anyone who seriously considers "ignore it" to be a useful solution to a problem like this should stick to article writing and leave disputes to others. --Kbdank71 22:06, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Offline for a while

I haven't had time to read anything new posted here since my last login, 24 hours ago. I'm going out in a few minutes, and I may log on tonight after I see my friends at our usual Tuesday night gathering.

Tomorrow morning, I set off for a mathematics conference in The Big Easy, and I'll be away from home for about 5 days. On Monday the 10th, I'll be back for sure.

Between now and then, I don't know how much I'll have time to reply to. When I get back, I'll read everything, and reply in detail as necessary and appropriate. I hope that, if someone is putting together an alluded-to RFC, it happens soon, as I'm quite eager to see what people think. Whatever the result of that, you can be sure I will continue to contribute in my usual way, because I've become quite attached to this crazy place that we call Wikipedia. I wish you all peace and good health, and I look forward to re-engaging in a few days. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:15, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Have a Po' boy for me: I've heard they're pretty good. Neither you or Malleus are going anywhere far away from the project, by the way. You're too addicted, like me. :> Doc talk 07:01, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Security Now!

Can you revert this edit. Now that I've noticed it, I want to explain why the previous comment by User:Pnm was unfounded. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:17, 11 January 2011 (UTC).

Ok, that's done. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I've said my bits. You can close or not as you see fit. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 22:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Move requests

Thank you for you comments in closing the Dee Doocey move request. How would you propose going resolving this issues you viewed. It has purly descended into name calling (I am not wholly innocent, but am trying to steer the convesraion away for personal comments although unsuccessfully.). Could please try and untangle some of the mess which is being creaated by entrenched interests on both sides of this issue. -- Many thanks Lucy-marie (talk) 21:40, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

It is a bit messy, isn't it? That's inevitable, but it can be minimized if everyone agrees as to what's actually going on. The whole WP:NCPEER guideline is clearly in a state of instability, and where it ends up will eventually be determined in these move discussions. People will talk about NCPEER at its own talk page, but that's not really where the decisions are made.

Therefore, we'll end up discussing quite a few cases on merits, until we see something consensual emerging from the soup. Whatever that is will be noted at WP:NCPEER, at which point people will immediately start treating it as statutory law, written in stone. So it goes, 'round here.

I'm working in moves quite a bit these days, so until that changes, I'll keep making comments and doing what I can to steer the discussion away from the various rocks and into appropriate waters. I think that's the best thing - to stay focused - and for everyone to remember that we're all on the same side, and that we get to decide how Wikipedia will work, based on our mutual good-faith commitment to the project.

I hope this is somewhat helpful, and I'll see you on those talk pages. Let me know if you have any more general questions or concerns; you know how to find me. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:52, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Ann Arbor

I know you said you would not argue against a reversal of your original closure, but I presume you were talking about a legitimate reversal made by at least a knowledgeable editor in good standing if not an admin. That's not what happened. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Improper_move_closer_by_non-admin_User:macr86_at_Talk:Ann_Arbor. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:22, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:13, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't believe no one is unclosing the discussion and reverting the move. Are they really going to take advantage of a situation created by an apparent vandal because it happens to coincide with their POV? I assumed at least one admin could be more objective than that. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It's happened now, although it's beginning to look like we'll be back at Ann Arbor, Michigan before long. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I agree that consensus has not come along far enough yet to clearly support the shorter name, but it has come along far enough to also not clearly support the longer name. The way this is handled in other countries like Australia is some cities are slowing being moved. I thought we were there with Ann Arbor. I still think we might be. I really want an experienced and knowledgeable uninvolved admin to give the arguments careful consideration and close accordingly. Perhaps someone who used to close a lot of requests but is now "semi-retired" or moved on to other tasks? Someone like that. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that would be ideal. Maybe a note at WT:RM would be helpful, or perhaps a content RFC. It would be nice to find out what the community of editors really thinks. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

If there's insufficient support for the new short name then it should go back to the old, longer name that's consistent with the naming convention.   Will Beback  talk  04:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not clear how well supported that naming convention is, but it appears that the discussion is going to favor what you're saying, at least for now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:59, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm having a deja vu. Chicago was debated for five years during which time it bounced back and forth between Chicago and Chicago, Illinois numerous before it was finally allowed peace at Chicago in 2007.

• Due to incomplete logging in the early WP software, it's apparently not possible to know how the article was originally named. The earliest edit in the history is on October 25, 2001, but it's obvious that was not the first edit. However, on May 27, 2002, this edit indicates the article was moved "from Chicago", implying it was at Chicago prior to that, and originally, presumably.
• First time, apparently, a specific move from Chicago, Illinois to Chicago is proposed/discussed. 00:17, 16 Apr 2005 All objections are based on the proposed move contradicting "the standard". There is voting for two days from 4/17 to 4/19, and Chicago loses 10 to 13. This argument is interesting: "when one is making hundreds of edits a day, lack of convention for names would slow things down considerably.". Editors really should double-check every link they use, and to the extent that pre-emptive disambiguation inhibits them from doing so, is an argument against it. The decision on May 15 is "Stays at Chicago, Illinois, do not move to Chicago.".
• Talk:Chicago/Archive_2#Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_.28city_names.29 - a request from User:Dralwik to participate in a survey which would move Chicago, Illinois to Chicago. 30 June 2005 22:27 (UTC) Apparently that didn't fly.
• Talk:Chicago/Archive_3#Chicago.2C_Illinois_--.3E_Chicago User:Rob starts a move discussion. 18:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC). Interesting commentary but proposal fails. Mention of another general proposal at the guidelines.
• Talk:Chicago/Archive_4#Requested_move User:Nat Krause proposes a move that succeeds on 23:29, 14 August 2006 (UTC) Ariticle is finally moved to Chicago (first time since 2002, I believe) Note that this is before the AP list change is accepted.
• Talk:Chicago/Archive_5#Discussion_to_move_Chicago_to_Chicago.2C_Illinois discussion about moving back to Chicago, Illinois. 05:14, 10 July 2007 (UTC) Apparently failed... note exception for cities on AP list, including Chicago, is added to guideline one month later, and there has been peace and tranquility ever since.

In retrospect, it's really silly that the article about Chicago was not allowed to stay at Chicago in 2002, nor allowed to move to Chicago all those other times the requests were made. Some day it will be obvious to all how silly it was to not allow Ann Arbor stay at Ann Arbor in January of 2011, if indeed it is moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan again. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Ann Arbor

Hi. I hope it didn't come across that I was insulting you. I have seen some instances of closure recently that concerned me - but nothing that you have done. I have left a comment on the Talk page. Deb (talk) 12:48, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

No worries. I think we both know that we're both working in good faith here. Take care. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:55, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The Department of Musicology at the Palacky University Olomouc

Hello,

some time ago, you moved Palacký University, Olomouc to Palacký University of Olomouc. I would like to ask you to do the same with The Department of Musicology at the Palacky University Olomouc. I propose to rename it into Department of Musicology (Palacký University, Faculty of Philosophy), putting it into the same line with Centre for Clinical Legal Education (Palacký University, Faculty of Law). I am not sure whether the latter is the best way to name an article, if you have any better idea, please change both the Musicology department and the Clinical Centre.

I merely write on Wiki, the technical things like renaming articles are beyond my capabilities. I would be thankful, if you could help me with that.

Best Regards Cimmerian praetor Cimmerian praetor (talk) 15:29, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

(same text at User talk:Propaniac)

Thank you.Cimmerian praetor (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Owsley_Stanley#Steely_Dan

I see you've met Dlabtot. I've had to remove several articles from my watchlist because of him. You got off easy. Viriditas (talk) 21:47, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Incubation project

I see from the discussion there that you have an interest in the Incubation project. You may be interested in this: Wikipedia_talk:Article_Incubator#Use_of_incubation_outside_stated_guidelines. Regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 18:18, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Abortion - death

Take a look at the Abortion lede. Someone is trying to change it again. 67.233.18.28 (talk) 16:50, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

67.233.18.28

You're probably just as frustrated as I am with the IP user 67.233.18.28. The reason I haven't responded to your points is not because I am unwilling to discuss, but because I don't want to be dragged out into a long WP:IDHT argument with him. Obviously I'm involved, and I guess you are as well, but is there anything at all we could do about his conduct? NW (Talk) 17:55, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm probably not. I just entered the discussion, and I get the impression you've already gone twelve rounds with him. It looks like an uninvolved admin has arrived on the scene though; let's see how that plays out. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:04, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Tomáš Kubalík move closure

I don't necessarily disagree with your closure, but it might be helpful to address the proposal, which noted that Tomas Kubalik was just moved to Tomáš Kubalík. So, if there's no consensus, then maybe it should stay at Tomas Kubalik. As the ip !voter, 65.94.47.63, put it, "As this looks like it would never pass a WP:RM, so it should be reverted." I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this line of reasoning, but it might be worth addressing it in your closure. Thanks, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:54, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've made an extra paragraph in my closing rationale, which I hope addresses the concerns that you're bringing up. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:04, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Hey, thanks! ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 04:23, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Bash (Unix shell)#Requested move

Really? One of the opposes is, well, invalid because it isn't true, and the other is from a user who outright admitted that the naming guidelines agreed with the move but who opposed it anyway. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 10:28, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, really. The discussion was a week deep into the backlog, and there was very little input from the community. If a few more people care to weigh in, then the page can be moved without having to go through the whole RM process, and I'd be totally willing to help with that. When I'm closing these things, I've got to make a call one way or the other, and it's pretty much guaranteed that someone will disagree with my decision each time.

It doesn't seem to be an urgent matter, so if it gets moved in a week rather than today, no big deal. If it doesn't get moved at all, that's also no big deal. Why not drop by a relevant WikiProject, see what people say there, and then let me know? -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Meh. WikiProject Free Software has about three significantly active members and two of them contributed to the discussion. It's purely an issue of following the naming guidelines: you don't have to know anything about the program to follow the argument. How about a relist? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 20:03, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

If thumperward's comment about the "user who outright admitted that the naming guidelines agreed with the move but opposed it anyway" is a reference to me, as it appears to be, that's a dishonest misrepresentation. My actual remark was that the name change "would allow us to obey the guidelines according to your interpretation" which is not exactly the same as saying that's MY interpretation. Frankly, I have pretty much had it with thumperward. As I also remarked, "Notably absent is any claim this would improve the article." For the life of me, I cannot figure out why thumperward is behaving like this, starting with his unnecessarily difficult behavior at User_talk:Thumperward#Moving Bash. I think he should give it up and move on. He's welcome to think he's right and that all the rest of us are idiots; who cares. But he's not welcome to think he should get his way even in the absence of support from a consensus. And he's definitely not welcome to misrepresent my position. Msnicki (talk) 05:47, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I didn't think I was misrepresenting your position. If I have done then I apologise. As for why I'm "being like this", it's because I occasionally get annoyed that I can do things like huge reorganisation of floppy disk without any hassle, and yet I find myself spending days and weeks jumping through red tape for the most trivial page moves regardless of what the naming convetions say. I know that Parkinson's Law of Triviality tells me to expect this, but it still gets my hackles up. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 10:55, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

The reason you're getting pushback is because the singular reason you're offering is that it's your interpretation of the rules and because you seem insensitive to what this does to the article. It's possible that your reorganization of floppy disk is wonderful and that even a curmudgeon like me would love it. But I don't like this proposed change and I've told you why. I also dislike having my legitimate disagreement dismissed as "red tape". And again, your only response is that YOU think this is what the rules require (misrepresenting your own opinion also, in this case, not as your opinion but as TRUTH). Well, look at those rules: One of the examples disambiguates with "set theory"; if your interpretation was ironclad, why didn't the example disambiguate with "mathematics"? There IS no answer. It is a judgment call and your judgment in this case is poor. Msnicki (talk) 13:27, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Hey, guys: I don't care who said she said he said what. I don't care what you think of each other's judgment. I'm not believing or disbelieving anything in particular, and whatever issues you may have with each other, I think you should pursue somewhere other than my talk page. I've posted a couple of notes around to get more input on this naming dispute, and no decision will be made based on either of you telling me anything about the other. Let's let it drop, okay? Please. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:15, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. Cheers. Sorry for the talk page noise. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 07:49, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Move of Miguel Angel Pantò

Hi GTBacchus, I saw that you had doubts about moving "Miguel Angel Pantò". You wrote that you are not sure about the reason of the move; I see from your user page that you understand Spanish, so you probably know that in Spanish all accents are acute: since Pantó was born in Argentina, he had an Argentinian name, with acute accents. The grave accent is a misleading Italian way of writing Spanish, since Italian language doesn't have as many acute accents as Spanish does. As you can see here, I personally moved the page on it.wiki about two years ago. This move is a mere linguistic issue. Excuse my mistakes while formatting the request, it's completely different on it.wiki. :-) I see that you are on a Wikipause: you can find me here on en.wiki, but if you need to talk with me with hurry, or for any other reason, feel free to contact me on it.wiki. --Triple 8 (talk) 21:06, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, that makes perfect sense about the accents. When I processed that page, I didn't even really look at what the issue was with the name, because I was just trying to adjust the formatting so that the bot tending the page at Requested moves would know where to list it. Of course, there are no grave accents in Spanish, and I'm sure there won't be any problems moving the page when its requisite seven days have elapsed. Thanks for the note. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:34, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

About your remarks at Talk:Côte d'Ivoire in the now-closed RFC / RM

You don't like the word "idiocy". So many people don't like the word. Many people don't like many things. I don't like someone who has nothing better to do than mock and insult those in disagreement. That is what Fyunck(click) was doing when i was bothering with that discussion. Somehow my responses to him buried his comments which instigated the responses. When you start an RFC on a topic which already has a failed RFC on the current revision of the talk page i wouldn't call that an intelligent move. Those who dismiss all instances which do not support their desire and claim they have thus found a dominant common name are where the idiocy comes in. Claiming the USA calls it Ivory Coast while dismissing the CIA use of Côte d'Ivoire is not a particularly wise move to make. Basing it on what the majority of the US media goes by is equally dismissive of the rest of the world including the country at the centre of the issue. Repeated requests to move the article when throughout the English-speaking world it is about equally split is at best frustrating. If one looks to more than just the English-speaking world i have a feeling the dominance would go to Côte d'Ivoire but policy is to dismiss all non-English sources in matters such as this.
The "anti-English only" comes from fighting over whether it is appropriate to link to an article about a company whose business is conducted in French when the article where the link would be is found on English Wikipedia. The article being linked to is also on English Wikipedia but apparently linking to it is a no-no. Calling something inherently non-notable and inappropriate to link to because it isn't English but is worthy of its own article is where my "anti-English-only" comes from. Also i thought declaring a personal bias would be a good thing rather than hiding it. That being said i am not at all fluent in anything but English.
As to telling that person, "you can go back under your bridge now", it was in direct response to their calling me a troll despite my having previous legitimate involvement in the matter being discussed.

I'm glad you found a couple uses of the name cote divoire but Ivory Coast is so overwhelmingly used in everyday English and the press that if we start to list these silly types of items as you did we'd run out of bandwidth here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 03:34, 20 June 2011, Monday (13 days ago) (UTC−6)

Got this from moi:

I'm not glad that you have nothing better to say than dismissive insults and mockery at those whom you disagree with. I personally find not one item in the list to be silly. I happen to agree with the position of the one who made the list but to stoop to calling the World Trade Organisation, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the CIA, Chinese news, and the United Nations silly types of items which presumably are worthy of instant dismissal while claiming an obvious overwhelming use in presumably American everyday English for Ivory Coast does nothing beneficial for anyone. The usage in international media is generally about evenly divided. Ignoring that which you don't like is an example of why i voted as i did, which you subsequently commented on. Wikipedia is neither American nor yours personally. delirious & lost ☯ ~hugs~ 04:04, 20 June 2011, Monday (13 days ago) (UTC−6)

and this a few minutes after (though it was placed before on the talk page):

So besides calling people who disagree with you "silly" and "trolls", do you have anything to contribute to your own move request? It seems that you want to change the country's name because you can't even write it properly. Laurent (talk) 04:18, 20 June 2011, Monday (13 days ago) (UTC−6)

Laurent's comment is also directed at Fyunck(click) somewhat in my defence and in defence of a few other people who were denigrated by Fyunck(click). You can threaten to block me. You can block me. It won't make me think better of Fyunck(click). There was a very long comment on the content; posted in 3 or 4 parts to minimise potential edit conflicts. If you and Fyunck(click) openly declare your refusal to read it and then blame it on my use of the word idiocy then that is your choice. I don't agree with it as i tend to read it all but you are free to decide such for yourself. Oddly enough you presently find yourself at odds with Fyunck(click) over the closure of the RFC. "I'm tired of seeing this article come through WP:RM. Doesn't it get old for everyone else, too? There are a million articles that need improvement, and people would rather spin our tires in this same old mud pit? Why?" is a more jovial visual but holds about the same meaning as "idiocy" in my understanding. delirious & lost ☯ ^~hugs~ 03:30, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for your comments. I'm not sure what to say in response. The more you use inflammatory language, the worse your chances are for dispute resolution. The more you use inflammatory language, the less chance that people arriving upon the situation will take you seriously. The same applies to me. When I sound more intemperate, I'm less effective as an editor.

I never declared a refusal to read anything. I read your entire comment, and I commented on the part that stuck out the most to me. That kind of thing sticks out to people.

If someone calls you a troll, the best response, and the one that will make you look the best, is to rise above it, not to hit back. This is useful knowledge for you; think about it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:02, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

List of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero episodes

Just wanted to thank you for finally performing the move. Much appreciated! Fortdj33 (talk) 15:59, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

You deserve a barnstar!

		The Wikiproject Lepidoptera Barnstar
		For your work on Sphingid moths. AshLin (talk) 04:02, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you so much! :D

I don't really know anything about Sphingid moths, but I was able to figure out the sub-families and tribes well enough to sort a lot of stubs. The work was fun, and it's a good reminder to pay more notice to my Lepidopteran neighbors. There might be Sphingids on my front porch even as I type! Maybe I'll do some more in-depth reading. :)

Thanks again. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:13, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you GTB for your contribution to Fossil fuels lobby.

Thank you GTB for your contribution to Fossil fuels lobby (Energy lobby).  :-) 99.181.136.35 (talk) 04:01, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Bad move of Joseph Smith

You appear to have screwed up a recent move so that Joseph Smith is now an infinite loop. It is beyond me to resolve this, can you do so? PatGallacher (talk) 11:10, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Joseph Smith

Hi, I'm not sure what happened, but the recent move of Joseph Smith, Jr. to Joseph Smith has resulted in a self-redirect and the entire edit history being deleted. I tried restoring the article and edit history but go a wikimedia error. older ≠ wiser 11:47, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I've asked another Admin to see if they can do anything with it. Padillah (talk) 13:09, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear, I'm sorry. I was moving the page, and I got a "session data lost" screen, and I hit "refresh", and I think I ended up making the same move twice, with the second overwriting the first one. It might need a steward to fix it, because the revision history has over 10,000 versions in it. :/ -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:10, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

The article does not work

I can not access the Joseph Smith article, it does not work.79.209.37.150 (talk) 12:47, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Admin's Barnstar
		For relentlessly encouraging other editors to pursue the betterment of the project, for humbly stepping in to resolve conflict in high-stress areas, and for simply using the admin tools for niceness instead of evil, I award you this barnstar. Neelix (talk) 13:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! It's true, I try not to be evil (and sometimes succeed). Thanks for noticing. ;) -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:58, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Grumble

Do try harder. You should not have closed Talk:Jakub Petružálek#requested move, especially with an argument that it's the Wave of the Future. Admins should not use a crystal ball, any more than article writers, and you are involved in the issue. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:32, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

There was no crystal-ball gazing there. I said the present is much more accepting of diacritics than the past has been. Nothing at all about the future. I certainly don't see how I'm involved in the issue. Am I pro- or anti-diacritic? I've closed plenty of moves in both directions, you know. I've certainly tried to read consensus on the issue, over the years, but I don't care one way or the other. I just do my best to read consensus accurately; I've observed it grow steadily more supportive of diacritics over 5 years.

Since you've questioned this decision, I've posted to WP:AN#Request review of my actions for review of my actions. I will always defer to the consensus will of the community.

In general, Pmanderson, if you have an issue with any action of mine, you're welcome to bring it up at the time. You needn't wait until someone gives me a barnstar to let me know I've screwed up. I'm actually very receptive to constructive criticism. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, anyway. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:57, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I didn't wait, I just found this section at the bottom. Whatever ANI does, feel free to remove the thread. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:19, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Nah, I never remove things on my talk page. It's a record of who said what, and where, until I archive it. I still don't understand your allegation that I'm somehow "involved". If you want to explain that, I'll eagerly listen. I'm willing to try harder, but the more specific you are, the more responsive I can be. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:25, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I have seen you in these discussions (although your example is more visible than you are); I may have made more of it than there is. I have made a proposal at AN. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:48, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

My "example is more visible" than I am... I am very curious what this means. Specific examples would be awesome. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:54, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

For example, the use of the closure linked to in this section of a current RfC. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:18, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Fascinating. Thank you for that link. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:51, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Old fooian and related category nominations

In looking at some of the latest comments for a series of CfD nominations on July 19, there is some rather odd timing that hints of WP:CANVASS. While the notices posted by User:Ephebi about these discussions are neutral, they appear to only be posted on user talk pages of those opposed to the change based on the opinions added. This topic of the Old Fooian form for school attendees has been discussed over the years with, as I recall, results being for both sides. I don't know how much you have been following CfD or if you have any interest, but I believe you have been doing some difficult RM closes, so that may qualify you as an uninvolved administrator here.

My current leaning is to close the lot as a tainted discussion. I'm also concerned since some of the responses are just being added to discussions solely on the topic and not really considering the merits of individual discussions. That further suggests a negative impact to the discussion in violation of WP:CANVASS. Please respond on my talk page since you are not the first admin I've asked for advice. The best outcome would be a clear untainted close of keep or rename. But if process has issues, then that is not going to happen. Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:30, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Jimo in China

You renamed/moved Jimo and closed the discussion about it, imho a bit prematurely. I agree the rename/move is correct, but we should have waited until some more facts about Jimo are added to the article. Right now, administrative importance (top article name) and contents are out of balance. To reach a new balance quickly, I suggest to put Jimo on the list of articles needing improvement. Shenhemu (talk) 01:16, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for commenting. You are articulating a perspective that I have never before heard or considered in article titling questions, and I find it intriguing. We agree that speedy article improvement should be a goal for Jimo. I'll look into that now, and I'll be thinking about the "balance" you refer to. That's very interesting. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:28, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

RE:Thanks for catching that

Thank you for the warm message GTBacchus! I appreciate your contributions to the article as well :-) Cheers mate. - Fedayee (talk) 15:25, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

St David's and the Cathedral Close

You deleted the redirect at St David's and the Cathedral Close. That is the official name of the city of St Davids. Even though it has no internal links it should be there for external links. Agathoclea (talk) 07:05, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

The redirect is still there. I only deleted its talk page. -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:06, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed when I posted that here. Misread the logs - sorry. Should stick a WP Wales banner on that one anyway. Agathoclea (talk) 07:08, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, if you like. I don't know how standard it is to put project banners on redirects, but I have no objection to it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:10, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

It is a very low priority task as it is not normally seen, but useful when a RfD gets filed the project gets notified. Agathoclea (talk) 07:14, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for closing Gandhi

Thanks for taking the time to read through and mull over the many arguments in the Gandhi move. I enjoyed reading your Sandbox comments, especially the small print about Victoria and Gandhi. I'm amazed that you can do all that and so much more in a day's work. Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 07:49, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Echo Fowler. I don't agree with your close decision but I've closed enough move discussions to know that there is always someone who disagrees :) I think your sandbox summary was excellent and you did an outstanding job in examining all the arguments in what was a contentious move, way beyond the call of duty. Thanks. --rgpk (comment) 19:32, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the kind words. It was a very interesting case, that really made me think about all that goes into deciding an article title. I think the table was awesome; it would be hard to overstate the power of that strategy. Somehow stripping the names away from the arguments just makes everything clearer, and I think that people rise to the occasion. I'd like to see that technique applied more often when we've got tough decisions to make.

Anyway, this wasn't a situation where it would be possible to please everyone. I hope everyone at least feels their arguments were taken into account, and that there was some fairness to the process. That's ultimately what makes these things stable, so I guess we'll see.

Cheers. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:17, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

All points considered

You have not considered all points in the "For"- "Mahatma Gandhi" section in your sandbox? I think you missed them inadvertently. Please consider them and update the sandbox. 167.219.48.10 (talk) 12:16, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

What have you got in mind? -GTBacchus^(talk) 12:25, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

1. A basic websearch results test or "ghit test" is overwhelmingly slanted towards Mahatma Gandhi. "Mahatma+Gandhi" 39,200,000 results vs. "Mohandas+Karamchand+Gandhi" 1,820,000 results (1:0.046)
2. Mahatma Gandhi is a world figure. Is this move about popular nationalism? List of roads named after Mahatma Gandhi is an example of the popularity of the title in India as well as the rest of the world. Other examples, Mahatma Gandhi District, Houston, Mahatma Gandhi Memorial High School (Fiji), Mahatma Gandhi Market, and various other institutions
3. Here is a counterpoint to point 8 ("For" Mohandadas Karamnchand Gandhi). In 2008 when there were no 'search suggestions', the traffic for Mahatma Gandhi was significantly higher than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

167.219.48.10 (talk) 12:29, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I took all of that into account.

1. I know about "ghits", and how worthless they are. Good use of Google restricts to Google Books, or Google Scholar, or Google News, to filter out a lot of the unreliable sources. Even in those searches, "Mahatma" comes up more often, and that's why I said it is preferred under recognizability.
2. The "popular nationalism" argument is a canard and a red herring. No decisions here are being made based on nationalism, no decisions are made to avoid the appearance of nationalism, and I never suggested that anyone was motivated by nationalism. Arguments such as this should never even be made on Wikipedia. HOWEVER, I explicitly took both sides of this argument into account, down at the very bottom, under "Other arguments". I give the whole "nationalism" tangent almost zero weight.
3. This is just a restatement of how much more common "Mahatma" is, and I took that fully into account.

I hope this clarifies matters. No points were ignored, although not everything was copied and pasted to my sandbox. I read it all, and I thought about it all. -GTBacchus^(talk) 12:37, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Puzzled

I did not participate in this discussion, but I just read your sandbox analysis and I am deeply puzzled. I don't have time for a full response right now, but I must mention that your interpretation of concision seems especially contrived to favor some predetermined preference in this case. I mean, concision is clearly defined to mean that shorter titles are preferred. Among those being considered, how this does not favor the one that is clearly the shortest, Gandhi, is beyond explanation. Of course "a full name is 'concise' too", but just a surname is even more concise. Come on!

There are other similar problems in your analysis, but that's probably the most obvious. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:17, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Nothing is "contrived to favor some predetermined preference", because I have no predetermined preference. Therefore it's impossible that I would contrive something for that reason. If you think I'm a biased closer, please say so quite directly, and I'll request review of my close at WP:AN, as I always do when challenged.

The point of "concise" is not that we choose the very shortest title available. It's that titles not be overly long. A person's full name is not overly long. Before you go quoting the text of WP:AT to me about conciseness, remember that I'm in a very privileged position regarding knowledge the original intent of the authors of the Principal Naming Criteria.

What you may consider an "obvious" "problem" in my analysis might be your own opinion, you know? That's a dangerous word, because once you say something is "obvious", you're calling anyone who doesn't see it somehow dumb. To me, none of this is "obvious", because there are obviously intelligent people disagreeing about it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:54, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I've requested review anyway, because this is the second challenge to my close. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Review of controversial move request?. I hope you realize that this would have happened no matter how I closed the thing. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:01, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I chose my words carefully. In particular, I did not say anything actually was contrived. I said "seems especially contrived". Seems means "gives the impression", and that's the impression I, for one, got.

When you say "concision" means titles are not supposed to be overly long, I believe you're thinking of WP:precision, which says titles are not to be overly precise (which, by the way, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arguably is).

It's true that "the point of 'concise' is not that we choose the very shortest title available", but that's a straw man since that's not what I said. Concision says, quite simply, "titles are expected to be shorter rather than longer." "Gandhi" is shorter. "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" is longer. We expect the shorter (all other criteria assumed equal). That is obvious.

That's the point of weighing the criteria. No criterion alone is decisive. But when we evaluate how any one criterion applies to the choices being considered, we must look at it alone. Regardless how much weight we give concision, it weighs in favor of the shorter one. That doesn't mean other criteria don't weigh more and indicate an alternative, but to deny that concision favors the shorter (especially the much shorter, as in this case) is not giving concision any weight; it's ignoring it altogether. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:19, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

No. I was certainly not thinking of precision, I was thinking of concision. You seem to be giving the weight of law to the words "titles are expected to be shorter rather than longer". Those words are just something we wrote down one day. They were not handed down to Moses, and it's almost entirely certain that they're not the best way of expressing the principles involved.

To me, it is extremely "obvious" that our policies should not be read legalistically. It's very "obvious" that a full name is not a problem under "concision". It's "obvious" that I didn't ignore concision, but that I think of it in a less strictly by-the-words way than you do. It's "obvious" that my thinking of it that way is reasonable, and in line with the intent of the policy.

Regarding the relative weights of criteria, those vary from situation to situation. In this case, none of the titles was a problem under concision, so concision weighed nothing. Also in this case, "Mahatma" won under recognizability. However, the weight of that criterion is diminished by the fairly high level of recognizability of "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi", which is very familiar to a large proportion of educated people on this planet. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:32, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)P.S. Your warning, " remember that I'm in a very privileged position regarding knowledge the original intent of the authors of the Principal Naming Criteria" smacks of WP:OWN. I shouldn't need to remind you that whatever was the original intent, consensus changes, and it says what it says. Here is an example from last October where another editor clearly interpreted conciseness to simply mean what it says, shorter titles are expected, since he says conciseness favors "Queen Victoria" over "Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom" and "Victoria of the United Kingdom".

By the way, I'm not asking for a review, at least not yet. I'd like to finish my analysis first. At that point, if I feel your decision is in error, I suspect I'd first try to persuade you to reverse, before appealing for a review. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:35, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't "own" it, B2c, I just know what happened. I was there. I know that consensus can change, but it's not clear that it has changed in this case! One person interpreted concision according to a strict reading of the words. That doesn't mean that consensus favors a strict reading of the words. It could just mean that people are easily led by overly rule-looking language. We certainly know that to be true.

It's not at all clear that consensus has changed to demand strict literal readings of rules here, i.e., that the lawyers have won. It has never been consensus to treat our policies as statutory law, because IAR still stands.

As far as the review, I always ask for review when my closings are challenged - no matter what the challenge looks like. It's not an escalation, and it's not a big deal. It's just what I always do. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:43, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Can you provide evidence that someone else, somewhere, at some time, interpreted concision to not mean that shorter is preferred (all other factors held equal), but that "titles [are] not [to] be overly long?" That when none of the titles in contention are "overly long", even if one is significantly longer than the others, that concision does not indicate the shorter title is preferred. Heck, can you provide any evidence that even you ever interpreted it that way before this case? --Born2cycle (talk) 18:54, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't know of any evidence like that. Maybe I'll think of it or find it later, but I don't know when this has come up before. This experience will provide some evidence of what the community thinks of my reading of the spirit of the policy. So far I know that one editor finds it reasonable, and one disagrees with it. No more have commented yet on that particular point. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:58, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, by the way, for motivating me to fucking quit working in Requested Moves. I won't, because I'm one stubborn bastard, but that's what I'm getting from this interaction right now. I think you should close about a thousand move requests, deal with all the static that comes up, and then come back and tell me I'm fucking everything up. Spit.

Wikipedia is not made of "rules", and it never will be. That is a beautiful thing, and one day, you'll understand this. For now, just think about how your words come across to other people. Nobody here is just a screen name; we're human beings, and we react in predictable ways. Think about it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 10:19, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of the argument, and despite the profanity, Nobody here is just a screen name; we're human beings is a profound statement. Yesterday I too was wondering about the same thing, are we just virtual beings with a username? Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:19, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I've reread this section and I honestly don't understand how I became a bee under your bonnet, or what this has to do with whether WP has "rules". I simply question your interpretation of the Concision criterion to mean that "A person's full name is concise" (your rule), and, thus the full name Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is no less concise than Gandhi. By that reasoning George Herbert Walker Bush is no less concise than George H. W. Bush, Wladziu Valentino Liberace is no less concise than Liberace, and Madonna Louise Ciccone is no less concise than Madonna. Is that how you really see it? --Born2cycle (talk) 18:45, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I see that none of those titles present a problem in terms of concision. I'm not talking about concision in a vacuum, I'm talking about it as it meaningfully applies to article titles here, and the difference in concision between "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" and "Gandhi" is not anything we need to be concerned with. Neither name falls afoul of the concision criterion. I look at "Gandhi" and ask, "is this concise enough?", and I answer "yes". I look at "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi", and I ask, "is this concise enough?", and I answer "yes". The point of the concision criterion is not to distinguish between cases like those; it's to distinguish wordy titles from reasonable ones. A full name is not "wordy" to an extent that we need to be concerned about at all. I didn't say that "Gandhi" is no more concise than the full name, if all we care about is the definition of the word "concise". However, I don't care one bit about the definition of the word "concise" except insofar as it applies to article titles on Wikipedia. In that sense, the criterion does not, to my mind, based on my observations of community decisions, distinguish between those two choices. If you had never seen a "concision criterion" written down, would you look at a person's full name and say, "oh that's too long". The point of the criterion is to avoid things that are too long.

The other examples are, of course, each their own thing. "Madonna Louise Ciccone" is considerably less recognizable than "Madonna"; same for Liberace. Both names for Bush are fine. None of these options that you've presented falls afoul of the concision criterion, to my mind, based on my observations of community decisions.

When we wrote that criterion down, we weren't making a rule; we were making an educated guess about de facto naming standards that we were trying to abstract from a thousand varied experiences. We, with 100% certainty, got it wrong. Those criteria are guaranteed to be wrong. Neither you nor I nor anyone has ever actually seen a correct set of naming criteria. What I was trying to abstract when I wrote "concise" on that page was not the difference between "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" and "Gandhi". It was the difference between wordy titles and titles that just get to the point. The letter of the law is a terrible approximation of reality, and that's why reading policy pages around here is like huffing rat poison: it's a bad idea. If you literally ignore them, like the policy recommends, and read the community instead, then you'll be much more on the right page. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:41, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

This helps. This not a case of literal interpretation, which I abhor. I'm just trying to establish what the words means. I suggest the current descriptor -- "titles are expected to be shorter rather than longer." -- is overly simplistic, inadequate and misleading. I'm sure we could do much better. Even "avoid wordy titles" is much better, I suggest. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:49, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't notice this while posting below. I agree that the criterion could use re-wording. Now we're playing the right game. Use your knowledge of community standards to correct what the rules say, and then try not to believe too strongly in what you just wrote down. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:55, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Born2cycle, you said, at WP:AN: "We really have to agree on what Natural and Concise mean and how they are to be applied -- and state that clearly at WP:CRITERIA -- or we're never going to get consensus on anything." That is entirely incorrect.

We need to read community decisions, notice consensus where it happens, and then abstract principles from it. We do not reason top-down; we abstract bottom-up. If you're trying to use the letter of the rule to understand what the rule means, then you've got it backwards. The letter of the rule is pretty much always wrong. If you take it as an approximate guess made by a fallible human who was trying imperfectly to express real criteria that we don't yet understand, then you're on the right page. There was not a consensus for the one-word name; if those criteria hadn't been written down yet, would people be arguing that a person's full name is somehow too long? Since I've never seen people making those arguments, I say that's not a de facto standard. The only reason someone would make that argument is if they read the criteria and then tried to apply them literally. It's a bad idea; you really shouldn't read policy pages at all, until you're ready to start correcting them based on your knowledge of de facto community standards. Then you'll realize just how thin and insubstantial those pages are. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:54, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand how what you said explains how what I said is "entirely wrong" (or wrong at all for that matter). I agree with everything you said, except for the part about what I said being entirely wrong. I think you're conflating "We really have to agree on what Natural and Concise mean and how they are to be applied -- and state that clearly at WP:CRITERIA" with something like "literal rule following". Understanding what something means, and being clear about it, is quite different from literal rule following, which, again, I abhor. Understanding what it means and being clear about it also does not mean top-down rather than bottom-up. We determine meaning bottom-up, but then reflect it in the rules as clearly as possible. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:46, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

We also have to remember that the reason we have policy and guidelines is so that those who do take the time to determine meaning bottom-up can convey that knowledge and information to those who don't take that time. For them, we need to try to be as clear as we reasonably can. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:48, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. I seem to have some kind of knee-jerk reaction when I see people talk about policy in certain ways. This is something I could think more about before I tell more people that they're "entirely wrong". Interesting... -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:53, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Moving

I’ve created the article Index of Ottoman Empire-related topics on 24 June, 2010. On 11 October 2010 somebody proposed to remove the article to Outline . But the proposal was not supported and the notice was removed on 26 June 2011. Now I see that you have moved the article as a result of a second discussion. Well, wouldn’t it be better if I was also notified of the discussion. Cheers Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 13:36, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Another article move

There is another article move proposal. Please look at it (I hope I am not breaking rules). We can see another demo of how consensus is judged. Perhaps. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:13, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

? Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:51, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about "breaking rules". You're supposed to be ignoring those anyway. I'm going to click on your link now and see what's there. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:26, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah. It looks like I got there too late, and someone else closed it. I was visiting a friend who was in town from South Korea for the last day-and-a-half. I only get to see him every couple of years, and I've been offline accordingly. Many move requests come and go, though; I'll be checking on the backlog before long, and we'll have plenty of examples to look at. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:04, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Use English

You wrote "On the English Wikipedia, article titles are written in English." That is not entirely true. WP:EN advises using the name most commonly used in English sources not that it necessarily always use English. Luftwaffe is the accepted English common usage of the German Air Force. Marcus Qwertyus 22:25, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I've cut that sentence, as it didn't really add anything. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:32, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi

I appreciate your concern, and I do agree. Trust me, I do not always use profanities in my edit summaries, you could check. I admit I was upset in real-life at the times of my reverts, and it mirrored here. Thanks for the care :)--CallMeNathan • Talk2Me 07:46, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

No worries. Hope you're having a good weekend. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions?

Suggestions? --Born2cycle (talk) 09:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Also, you should know I purged an uncivil comment [4]. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:59, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Talk:2008_Mumbai_terrorist_attacks#Requesting_Move_2

Can you close or relist? Thanks!--Cerejota (talk) 19:11, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Nice timing - I'm reading that discussion right now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:12, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Hahhaha sorry, and thank you.--Cerejota (talk) 20:32, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Help with China

Hi; you appear to be quite experienced with contentious article naming disputes.. do you have a recommendation on how to proceed in the one going on at Talk:China? I asked about this at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves. Thanks, Mlm42 (talk) 18:57, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Well... I can't make any promises, but I'll have a look. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:20, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how far you are willing to involve yourself with this, but if you are willing to informally mediate (or whatever you would like to call it!) then would it be a good idea if you laid done one or two rules and ask people to follow them? I ask because there's an obvious issue that points some people see as redundant may not be so to others, which causes issues if involved editors are changing arguments in the table. I'm not excusing myself from anything, but in my opinion it would be useful if you told editors to let you deal with repetitive points or something similar to that, just on procedural basis. I've been part of one longrunning dispute, about organisation of the List of sovereign states page, which finally got somewhere when our mediator started to actively moderate our discussion, redacting parts of our posts which slipped into personal attacks or were unrelated. If you don't wish to take that sort of role, that's your decision of course, just a suggestion on my part from that experience. As another point, what is the next step in the process? Will each point be discussed with yourself (or another uninvolved editor) concluding each debate individually, before brining all the salient points together again? Thanks for you time, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 16:13, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for this suggestion. I've just added a section to the talk page regarding the removal of points from the table, and addressing the handling of uncivil statements.

As for the next step... that's trickier. These things are kind of unpredictable. Sometimes, once the arguments are all on display in their "Sunday best", someone think of a previously un-considered solution, and that's great. This doesn't seem super-likely to happen in this case.

When the table settles down, I'm going to read the whole thing carefully, and then post my comments about it. Also at that time, it would be good to post a few notes around the Wiki inviting uninvolved editors to peruse the table and also make comments. Then I expect I'll propose a solution, and we'll see what people think of that. I believe that allowing everyone to have their perspective considered and seen by all will give us the best chance at stability, whichever solution we end up choosing. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:02, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of copying from your statistics question and adding green font to the notes about the points, as otherwise they may be confused with the brackets that are part of the points. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 17:32, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Any advice on what to do next? I feel like we've started going in circles again. Benjwong has insisted a source showing the PRC flag was using China to talk about something other than the PRC, T-1000 seems to regard all external sources POV. No doubt I and others are being as repetitive back. As your idea seems to have not gained acceptance, do you have any other thoughts? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 09:27, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we just need to wait until the primary topic RFC is complete and then you suggest a merge request between China and PRC. Given at that point PRC meets WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, WP:COMMONNAME, WP:POVTITLE and all of WP:CRITERIA except possibly precision (but as China is always used to refer to the PRC that is highly dubious) for the term China and WP:CONCEPTDAB is irrelevant as the current China article isn't the primary topic. There is also the Freeloader's point which is very strong.

Probably the merge discussion should be listed on WP:CENT which will get a lot of outside interest - it is about one of the world's most important countries after all - and given the overwhelming evidence I think that discussion should be pretty one-sided.

Continuing the discussion in the meantime has some use as someone might bring up a more compelling argument as to why the merge is unacceptable, but as they haven't so far I think that's unlikely. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:42, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Requested moves...

Hi , GTBacchus.As you know, this use completely ignores Wikipedia:Requested moves and Wikipedia:Article titles. I want explatin to him these rules, but unfortunately my English is poor. Could you explatin to him ? Takabeg (talk) 12:52, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree

I just finished reading your comments about civility on Jimbo Wales' talk page. I completely agree with you. An admin said that I had coprophilia and never found anything wrong with it. Two recent examples are when I brought an editor to ANI for telling someone to f off. The admins made comments like "sigh" and "Seriously, Joe. Chill". They also told me that it was alright for the editor to tell the person to f off because the other editor was being disruptive. The same editor that I reported told me to f off also after I filed the report. When an admin did not discuss an MfD calmly, I said "Sorry for getting on your bad side". His response was, "Not my "bad side", my "you appear not to understand WP rules" side.". He also told me to read three policies which I already read. I explained to him that I understand Wikipedia policies since I participate in AfD, speedy deletion, create notable articles, am an autopatroller, expand articles, create and expand articles for DYK, am working on an article for Good Article status, revert vandalism, and nominated many user pages for deletion that were successful. One of his final comments was, "Whether or not you have appreciated WP policy elsewhere is irrelevant." Wow. Joe Chill (talk) 14:10, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey, I've taken forever to respond, but I want to thank you for posting this here. This is an important issue, and it's very difficult to address. In a way all of my work here is about proving that defenders of antisocial editors are wrong, when they use the fact that someone deals with a lot of conflict to excuse their battleground mentality. I know that we can deal with conflict in better ways, but proving that claim on this website is a serious project.

There's an AN/I I've just been participating in today that arises from a editor we've been protecting and enabling in his persistent battleground mentality. We as a community persistently protect and enable lots of destructive behavior, and it's a pathology that we're suffering from. We should form some kind of Dumbledore's Army, but not an army. We need The Beatles. -GTBacchus^(talk) 08:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Requested Move closing at Climate Research Unit

Thank you for a thoughtful, well-constructed closing argument. I specially think it was important to make the point of systemic/principle issues versus the specific content issues. I often found myself in that discussion having to address issues of principle, rather than content, and that leads me to believe that a wider systemic issue is at hand. That is beyond the POV warrior phenomena of only interpreting policy to support one's POV, I mean literally good faith differences on what policy should be being discussed. That the conversation can get derailed so easily is the policy's fault - the role of policy, IMHO, is to focus and narrow discussion and diminish such meta-discussions to accelerate and facilitate editing. It often fails spectacularly in this sense. I am begining to think that the whole policy system is broken - but things like the massive overhaul of WP:RS are positive signs. --Cerejota (talk) 14:25, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Closing Crêpe

GTBacchus, many thanks for attending to that difficult second RM, and especially for your closing remarks. (It took some considerable time and effort for me to do what I did, I must tell you.) That pair of RMs will make an excellent precedent for future reference. I'm also glad that you mentioned Erik Haugen; I have now posted something at his talkpage myself. My best wishes to you. Noetica^Tea? 06:45, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I admit I did not read the new commentary, but there were over 25 comments today alone. That is a highly active discussion, and comments you made previously about this move indicate you are not uninvolved. I've reverted the close, and would appreciate it if you would move the page back and let an uninvolved admin close it after the discussion has settled. Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Born2cycle, if you are concerned about some anomaly in the closure of this RM, why were you not concerned about the closure of the first RM, which was based in large part on manifestly flawed evidence from you? Why have you said nothing in answer to my painstaking refutations of that false evidence, absenting yourself from the present RM for the last five days or so? Why do you feel free to inconvenience so many of us so much, over such a tiny issue as a hat on a pancake? Please adopt a more mature and less disruptive attitude. Through your unanswerable carelessness, you have been the immediate cause of my losing a day's full-time real-life work, while you stayed silently away. Don't do that!

The closure of the present RM was a straightforward matter to be achieved expeditiously, once that faulty evidence was exposed. Please leave a good outcome alone.

Noetica^Tea? 08:06, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything you posted, Noetica. I did not have that article on my watch list, apparently. No idea what you mean about flawed evidence from me, but I would like a chance to look at it and respond. If it's compelling, great. I'll check it out. I've been very busy in the real world and unable to keep at WP the last few days. I did just check in a bit earlier and I noticed this seciton on GTB's talk page and the close despite a huge flurry of edits in the last few days, especially today. It's highly unusual to close a discussion while it's still so active, no matter how long it has been open. I'm not asking for a reversal - just time for the discussion to settle down before it's closed. --Born2cycle (talk) 08:16, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

GTB, thanks for the kind words; and thanks for your huge effort to keep the RM backlog so small. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:26, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

ANI Notice

Unfortunately, my revert of the close was reverted. So I opened an ANI: [5]. ---Born2cycle (talk) 08:35, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I've replied there. Just because people are still actively beating it, doesn't mean the horse is alive. -GTBacchus^(talk) 14:21, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Maybe not, but it's a strong indicator - the strongest we have - that consensus is still developing. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:40, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Let's discuss this in one place at a time. Due to your initiating a thread there, that place is ANI. Okay? -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

		The Anti-Flame Barnstar
		For staying as cool as the proverbial cucumber during the dramafest whipped up by a dissenter, I would award you this barnstar. You work in general at RM is appreciated, and how you resolved this case (including the rationale thereof) is especially commendable. Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:47, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Wow. That's one I've never seen before. Thanks very much! -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:44, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Complaint

You have been duped by a cabal of our worst editors. Noetica, Tony1, Ohconfucius, and Dicklyon should be banned; your closure is unacceptable. Please stop. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Stop what? What am I doing? You disagree with my close at Talk:Crêpe? Then reopen it. I've said I'd stay out of the way. What is my ongoing disruption that you're trying to stop? -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Your close is appalling. Please stop closing moves if you're going to do it like this; in fact, please restore article to its state before your close. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. Can you at least provide some evidence, or something to convince me other than a curt request? Can you show me your side of the issue, or are you expecting me to just do what you say without question? Why should I go against my own judgment? -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:35, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

And you want me to stop using my best judgment to close moves according to my understanding of consensus and policy? If you want that, you should at least cite more than one example of something I've done that you disagree with, and I hope you're willing to pick up the slack. Before I increased my move-closing activity recently, the backlog was two-thirds of the whole page, and now we're keeping up. I think I'm doing a lot of work - hundreds of moves - and I must make mistakes, being human, but nothing I've seen has led me to believe this was one of them. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:39, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

• Quite simple;
• there was no consensus; one editor changed his mind (a rare, but not extraordinary, event).
• Kauffner's argument (that dictionaries are divided, and tend to use crepe, was at least as strong as any argument made for change; in particular, it expressly disproved the ENGVAR argument: if some British dictionaries prefer crepe, crêpe cannot be the specifically British spelling.
• That should have been enough. There was no ground to close early, no ground at all to close as you did. I had confidence in you until now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:45, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

PMA, I'm sorry that you feel your confidence in me is destroyed by one close that you perceive to be bad. I still disagree with you, and I'll tell you why.

• Consensus isn't always the threshold in move discussions, because we've got to use one title or the other, so we generally choose the better, more well-supported one. In this case, I was restoring a title that had been adopted on weak evidence, because I saw much stronger evidence in the other direction, and I still haven't seen that refuted.
• Kauffner's evidence lacked the detail and rigor to show that it truly reflected use in reliable sources. Those arguing for dropping the circumflex have cited numbers from Google searches without analyzing them source-by-source, and I still have seen no refutation offered of Noetica's extremely detailed analysis. He went through source-by-source, and I believe he showed (A) that serious cookbooks on any side of the pond tend to use the circumflex, which also matches my own observations in cookbooks, of which I've got a good handful. (B) Many dictionaries use the circumflex, and the most detailed seem to highlight the distinction between different meanings of "crepe" or "crêpe", and point out that the circumflex is particularly common when talking about the pancake, and not when talking about crepe paper or crepe myrtle trees. Noetica set a pretty high bar here, as far as standard of proof, and if I see anyone match or exceed that in the other direction, then we've certainly got something to talk about.
• I already explained (on ANI and possibly elsewhere) that ENGVAR was not a consideration at all, so I don't know why you bring it up. Authoritative American cookbooks tend to use the circumflex.
• I've said repeatedly that if anyone re-opens the discussion, I won't get in the way. I don't know why you haven't done this.

Now, I'm still using my best judgment, and I am absolutely open to being convinced that I erred, but there's a standard of evidence that's been set, which nobody has matched to show that Noetica was wrong. My judgment says that I should go with the best evidence that I've seen, and I'm doing that.

If you're not willing or able to put up the evidence, but you still want me to stop closing move requests, then I'll do so at the request of, gee... five Wikipedians in good standing. Heck, I've always been on the list of those willing to give up my admin bit at the request of the community; if you want to stop me, it shouldn't be too hard. I'll hear a call of no confidence, but I'd like to hear five distinct voices. Then I won't close moves any more, and someone else can handle the hundred or so I do each month, with a very low rate of complaints.

I think it would be better, however, if you either produce evidence for your preferred title, or accept that the best evidence has been presented by someone who disagrees with you. I'm about to go away for several hours, so I won't see new messages for a few hours. When I check back in, I'll look for that orange banner, and see what your reply is. For now, I wish you a good evening. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:45, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

"Kauffner's argument (that dictionaries are divided)" was as strong as any argument made for change, in the sense that it was shown to be incorrect, like the incorrect assessments of Google page hits and book hits. No actual dictionary was shown to omit "crêpe". And even if it had, it would not have made up for the gross error that was the basis of the first move that this simply un-did. The "pack of dosruptive and dishonest editors" in favor of repairing this were motivated (speaking for myself only) by the need to hold the line against this kind of senseless google-driven naming chaos. It's less clear what your interest in it is. Dicklyon (talk) 23:37, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The article should never have been moved in the first place, so your action to close was an obvious response to overwhelming evidence (provided by some of the best and hardest working editors on WP). Now that the status quo has been rightfully reestablished, there's nothing to stop editors opening a fresh Crêpe → Crepe discussion (but that's something that they don't seem keen to do). Congratulations on your common sense action on this. Please keep up the good work. GFHandel ♬  22:44, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there was a pack of dosruptive and dishonest editors. A useful admin would have ignored them all, once their arguments had proven to be fallacious. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:49, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Where is the refutation of Noetica's detailed evidence? Please show it to me. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:49, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

FYI, I filed at complaint at ANI, (perma‑link, here), over PMA’s behavior here on this page; in particular, his 22:49 post. Claiming that a cabal of other editors are “dishonest” shows PMA is getting way out of hand. And, though I know admins are supposed to take it on the chin, merely closing an RfC like you did shouldn’t subject you to this sort of haranguing with suggestions that you aren’t useful. Wikipedia is supposed to be a fun hobby engaged in by volunteers working collaboratively in a collegial manner. PMA is making that tough and seems to be intent on making himself even more of an annoyance as of late. No one should have to put up with so much crap from a single disaffected editor. Greg L (talk) 01:09, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I see the cabal is at work.;-> I don't see any "detailed" discussion by Noetica; what discussion there is is refuted by Kauffner's citation of dictionaries: both forms are used on both sides of the Atlantic. If you want me to answer some particular post, please supply a diff. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:49, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

You keep saying "both forms are used on both sides of the Atlantic." We didn't need Kauffner to prove that, as it was a point on which there was no disagreement, especially after Noetica's detailed report from looking at a range of books. Maybe you need to go back and read the mess that you amplified. Dicklyon (talk) 15:14, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Nevertheless this same editor claimed that there is an ENGVAR difference. If both forms are commonly used on both sides of the Atlantic, that claim is fallacious, and !votes based on it are WP:ILIKEIT. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:45, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The earlier proposal of it being an ENGVAR issue was based on refuting the claim that the circumflex was not much used in Britain; later, it became clear also that the claim that is was not used in the US was equally bogus. In the end, nobody was claiming that either form was rare on either side of the Atlantic. As Noetica pointed out to you there, you were swinging at an already-downed strawman; just noise, really. Dicklyon (talk) 19:57, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm currently composing a detailed reply, but I'll mention for now that Dicklyon is correct. ENGVAR was not a consideration in this move at all. That turned out to be a false alarm, a red herring, and apparently now, a straw man. What a lot of metaphors for one poor guideline. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:00, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Detailed reply to Pmanderson

This is a reply to Pmanderson's posts above stamped "14:49, 18 August" and "15:45, 18 August", and is an edit conflict with everything after the latter, including my own comment above.

Pmanderson, it's true that I thought, when I relisted the discussion, that there was an ENGVAR difference. It turns out I was wrong about that, and it had absolutely zero to do with my close. Did you not read the previous ANI about this, where I explained this? ENGVAR was completely irrelevant. Above, in this very conversation: "ENGVAR was not a consideration at all, so I don't know why you bring it up. Authoritative American cookbooks tend to use the circumflex." I stated once that I thought there was an ENGVAR issue, I turned out to be wrong. ENGVAR was not a consideration at all.

I did not give any weight to any argument based on ENGVAR. It was not a consideration at all. My American cookbooks, and a large proportion of authoritative American cookbooks, use the circumflex.

Noetica's evidence that convinced me to move the page had nothing at all to do with ENGVAR. ENGVAR was, as it turns out, not a consideration at all. What number of times shall I say this, because I've been clear about it in at least three different places, including earlier in this very conversation?

Now, you ask for a diff with Noetica's detailed evidence. I'm glad you asked, because breaking this down will be very useful. As I said, I'm going to point to this in the future as an example of how to Do It Right. Check it out:

• 1 Here's where he looked at actual pages of actual sources, restricting to books about cooking because it makes a difference, and determined that Google is failing to distinguish the circumflex form from the unmarked form, getting it wrong somewhere close to half the time. He also does a combined search and finds the two forms to be used equally. No ENGVAR claim is made here.
• 2 Here's another critique of Born2cycle's Google results, with more discussion of individual sources that he actually looked at, as opposed to counting them by glancing at a screen full of results.
• 3 Here's where he replied to you, Pmanderson, detailing the differences between your example "role" and the situation with "crepe". He also points out that "morale" never carried a diacritic in English. Is that true? I don't know. If so, then it's a good point.
• 4 There's more here about "morale". I admit that I don't see a direct relevance to the "crepe" question. I'm open to being shown that in some more detail; perhaps I'm being thick. It wouldn't be the first time I failed to grok a comparison.
• 5 This post is a response to someone else, and not evidence. We'll move along.
• 6 Here we've got three points of detailed evidence. There's an extended quote from the OED attesting to the word with circumflex in place. Second, there's a Google books search, producing 22 results where details can be determined. In 18 of those, the circumflex is used. Third, he looked behind another Google search and showed that Google failed to report the circumflex in 15 out of 142 hits.

  That's some detailed evidence, and no mention yet of ENGVAR. Let's keep going.

• 7 This one's not evidence; we'll move on. I'm just including them all because, I dunno. Completeness. I already pasted all the URLs.
• 8 Here, Noetica looked more closely at some of those Google books results, and determined that about 90% of them use the circumflex. That is detailed and compelling evidence, it applies per COMMONNAME, and it makes no appeal of any kind to this red herring, ENGVAR.
• 9 Here Noetica refutes claims about The Montreal Gazette and The New York Times avoiding the circumflex. It turns out they use it a lot. This is detailed evidence that makes no appeal to ENGVAR, as Montreal is in Canada, and New York is in the U.S.A.. I hope to visit both someday.
• 10 No new evidence here, but he's put a lot of work into this by now, hasn't he? Am I right in assuming Noetica isn't a "she"? Hmm.
• 11 Here's more detailed refutation of Kauffner's evidence. It repeats a bit from above, and I can see why. There's also more book-by-book examination of usage, showing a preponderance of reliable print sources using the diacritical mark. Still no mention of ENGVAR.
• 12 Finally, here's one more actual source, using the diacritic.

Now, I'm claiming that this is detailed evidence, and it makes no appeal to our favorite guideline regarding national varieties of English. It's all source-based, it involves looking at actual pages in actual books, and it's pretty overwhelmingly in favor of the circumflex.

If you can refute this evidence in some way, I'm all ears. If you can top this standard and show me that actual sources generally don't use the circumflex, then I will quite happily move the article back, and eat lots of crow publicly.

Now, Pmanderson, have I met your request for a diff to respond to? Pick one. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:13, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll take 3, for now. Morale (French moral) is an analogy; by analogy, we are not bound to use crêpe because it's correct in French; English uses what is convenient in English, and that makes it correct English. Noetica dismissed this, but did not answer it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:03, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, correctness or incorrectness in French had nothing to do with my decision. Obviously we base our decisions on usage in English, which is what was addressed by all of the evidence. Are the sources that Noetica used in all those points written in French or in English? I didn't see any French ones, so I don't see the relevance of how words are spelled in French versus English. "Crêpe" is spelled "C-r-ê-p-e" in English, in most of the good sources.

Would you care to address any of the evidence about English-language sources? We're not here to talk about French. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:12, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

It begins to sound like the only argument to have weight with you is WP:COMMONNAME, and that you interpret as Born2Cycle does: if 53% of the sources use spelling X, it prevails - but disagree with him on the facts. That view is not policy; it certainly was not consensus of discussion - which did go off after ENGVAR and after what's correct in French. If you hold that view, you should relist the discussion, and join it expressly; if you did not, please explain your closure in more detail. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:57, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with Born2cycle most strenuously over COMMONNAME. I'm on record doing so, a lot. I'm sure you've seen it.

The only arguments I considered were those offered in the discussion. Kauffner and Born2cycle supported their argument with Google searches. Noetica supported his argument with Google searches that included much more detailed analysis, and in which he specifically refuted the Google evidence presented by Kauffner and Born2cycle. (If I omit any other names it's just that I'm not looking it up right now. I know that more than three people were involved.)

I certainly didn't consider any argument involving ENGVAR or French. I considered one set of searches, and another set of searches, and I saw that the second set was far superior, in terms of thoroughness, detail, and accuracy. No other relevant arguments were offered.

Here's the explanation for my close: I saw strong evidence that a preponderance (waaay more than 53%) of quality English-language sources spell the topic "Crêpe", with a circumflex. Nobody refuted this evidence, and I don't see any other reasons, policy-based or otherwise, that we should drop the circumflex that most reliable sources use.

If anyone can convince me that it's more common for reliable English-language sources to drop the circumflex, I'll listen. However, no one has tried yet, beyond B2c and Kauffner's initial searches, which were frankly torn to shreds by Noetica's detailed analysis.

If anyone can point to a reason that we should break with most sources, and drop the circumflex anyway, I'm open to hearing it. There certainly might be applicable principles besides COMMONNAME, but nobody has cited one yet. What have you got in mind? Show me; name it. All I've got right now is source-based evidence, and it is overwhelming in favor of the circumflex.

If I haven't explained my close to you satisfaction, please let me know specifically which part I can state more clearly. Thank you.

I still would be very happy to see you respond to any of Noetica's analysis of sources. So far you've only explained your point about "morale". There's a whole lot going on in that list that you haven't touched. Nobody has even tried to touch it yet. If they have, then please show me where. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

• Post 1 shows that the usage is about equal. That's not a reason to move; it's a reason not to move.
• Posts 3, 4, 5, 7, and 10 are irrelevant to your stated closure.
• Posts 2 and 9 deal with the ambiguity problem by searching for Crêpes Suzette; finding that that term is still spelled as in French; since it has an unEnglish postpositive adjective which is a French proper name, that's not surprising.
• Post 6 cites the OED, which made its decision how to spell the word in the nineteenth century. This entry is virtually unchanged since 1989, and the change relates to a different sense. Since the rest of this is about usage after 1990, true but not useful.
• It also deals with a Google book search for books with either spelling in the title; no search more devoted to finding specialist sources, which we do not want, could be imagined.
• The remaining point there is that Google cannot be relied on to recognize the difference between the two spellings. Quite true, and that's why you have to look at general usage.
• The rest of these are repetitious. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:54, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you. I'll reply now. I'll format my remarks to match yours, bullet for bullet, with a summary at the end.

• Post 1 is superseded by post 8, which revises the percent using the circumflex from approximately 50% to approximately 90%. I should have been clearer about that; good point.
• You say that posts 3, 4, 5, 7 and 10 are irrelevant. Let's see. . . Yes. They're gone now, turned into entropy. Good times.
• In post 2, Noetica uses the phrase "Crêpes Suzette", which he seems to have done in order to restrict to culinary usage. That's something I'll address in a minute. Post 9 is more interesting. I wouldn't say your characterization, that it "deals with the ambiguity problem by searching for 'Crêpes Suzette'," is quite fair. Like I said, I agree that his use of "Crêpes Suzette" to distinguish culinary usage from other usages is worth looking more closely at, but the issue being dealt with in post 9 is not that. The real heart of that post, I'll quote here:

  "First, with regard to books, I don't know why you are against favouring book evidence for "particular words". The experts on crêpes are surely those committed enough to write books about them. Their expert usage will usually trump the preferences of those who publish and edit their work. Second, with regard to newspapers, the evidence on which you based your closure decision is deeply flawed. It is simply not true that Montreal Gazette and New York Times, for example, avoid "crêpe" except in business names. Look at some real evidence: for Montreal Gazette, and for New York Times. Both teeming with crêpes!"

  This seems to me to be substantive discussion about why usage in authoritative sources is given more weight than usage in general sources. Is that what you're disagreeing with? That's a conversation to have, sure.

  Also, I see here a refutation of the claim that those newspapers "avoid "crêpe" except in business names". Those last two links show 65 and 372 links (if you click through to the last page Google gives you) of instances in the Montreal Gazette and The New York Times respectively where we see "crêpe" not in the name of a business. Those numbers are approximate. That part seems to check out. Use of the circumflex in a non-proper-noun sense of "crêpe" is established with some frequency in general-readership newspapers.

  Now let's talk about using "Crêpe Suzette" to highlight culinary usage. There's not much to say here, because if you look at the actual numbers, it doesn't make any difference. Taking a random sample of "crepe" and "crêpe" results (details available on request), I see that among the hits that relate to pancakes, they use the circumflex about 65% of the time. When we include "suzette" in the results, they use the circumflex about 58% of the time. So it looks like it's probably more than 50%, but not by much. Adding the term "suzette" certainly didn't skew usage in the circumflex direction by much, since it drifted in the opposite direction, so I don't really see a problem there. That is admittedly a pretty small sample at that point. I guess crêpes Suzette aren't big news in New York very often.

  This discussion is making me kind of hungry. You know, Pma, if you had approached me in a polite and friendly manner, I would have given you just as much attention and consideration as I'm giving you now, and there wouldn't be a discussion on ANI about banning you, even as we speak. It's a much easier way to work.

• Next is post 6. I think Noetica's reply below about how the OED is updated is sufficient. They've updated other parts of the entry since then, and they've seen no need to update definition #3. That seems to indicate that they didn't see usage change since then, i.e, the circumflex is still in use. In the presence of active updating, it makes sense that lack of updating indicates no change.
• Next is the point about books as specialist sources, versus more general sources. We already mentioned this above, and I do see substance here. We'll summarize at the end.
• I think Noetica adequately addresses your final point below. The way to deal with Google's problems are to look at a lot of actual sources, and look more closely than Google does by default, at least when the technology, or our own inclination to do bricks-and-books research, permits it. If the only alternative is to just base what we do on a handful of online dictionary sites, I think the thorough-research approach is much more appealing, in terms of how reliable we're going to end up being. There's room for disagreement here. Again, we'll summarize in a minute.
• Next, you say the rest is repetition. So the ones you didn't mention are 8, 11 and 12.

  Post 8 is the one that supersedes post 1, revising the 50% figure up to 90%. Granted, there are error bars of uncertain size around both of those, but 50 to 90 is a significant-looking jump.

  Post 12 is just adding one source, a major culinary encyclopedia, that uses the circumflex throughout, although Google reports it as using the unaccented spelling. Further proof that scratching the surface of Google searches yields much more enlightening information.

  Post 11 has substance. There are various searches, and there's some content about what constitutes a reliable source for the spelling of a word in the culinary lexicon. This is that same issue that keeps coming up, it seems.

So, now we get to summarize. It appears that books about cuisine use the circumflex in high proportion, and that more general sources such as dictionaries use it in lower proportion, but it's not uncommon even in those. Dictionaries that address the circumflex directly note that it's particularly common when the word has its culinary meaning. Major newspapers seem to use it a bit more than half the time, at least from what we've seen.

Now, if you want to argue that we should favor usage in general-use dictionaries and newspapers over use in more authoritative dictionaries as well as authoritative books on the subject, then we could talk about that. Is that your main thesis here?

Considering all the evidence we're looking at, I judge that if we give more weight to authoritative sources, we have a strong case (80%-90%) for including the circumflex, and if we give more weight to general sources, then we have a weaker case (55%-70%) for using it. We gotta pick one, and there's more weight on the circumflex side.

That's how I called it, that's still how I see it, and I still won't object if someone re-opens it. If anyone does that, they should be very clear what their relevant argument is. Namely, to support removal of the mark, you need to adopt the position that general sources are preferred over authoritative ones, and that we should take a slight preference for the accent as a reason not to use it. Is that the case you wish to make? It strikes me as counter-intuitive, but there's a lot of things I've never intuited.

Again, I stand by my close, but I won't get in the way if someone reverses it. Of course I can't guarantee how anyone else would react. I'm pretty easy-going, because I find it very easy not to actually care about squiggles above letters. I can take 'em or leave 'em; I just do my best to close move requests using my best judgment. I think my batting average is pretty good. -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:56, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Noetica comments

GTBacchus, I think you are doing far more than is reasonably required to explain your decision. As you were closing the RM, I was composing a refutation of the latest "evidence" that had been brought by Kauffner. When I came to post, the RM had already been closed following Dicklyon's rebuttal. Unlike Dicklyon, I focused on Kauffner's claim about WorldCat: its list of titles that include "crêpes" or its variants shows that WorldCat makes no distinction between "ê" and "e", and even the covers illustrated at WorldCat contradict what Kauffner was carelessly asserting. Similarly for his last dictionary evidence.

The essence of all this has been stated again and again: most of the evidence was inept, and soundly refuted; yet it was repeatedly appealed to by those who are not interested in the facts.

First PMAnderson homes in selectively on his point about morale, saying that I "dismissed this, but did not answer it". Wrong. The exchange went like this:

PMAnderson: In general, words (like this one) which are actually adopted into English, lose their accents and are respelt; see role and morale; this is as true of British English as of American.
Noetica: The general point about loss of diacritics in English is just that: a general point. Whether it determines things in the case of "crêpe" (the culinary term) is a specific point. [...] "Role" is much longer established in English (OED: 1606) than "crêpe" (1797). As for "morale", what is the point supposed to be? It has never borne any diacritic.
PMAnderson: The French for morale, in the current sense of "group emotional state", is moral; see the OED. Anglophones have reformed this distinction to what is useful in English, which is what this encyclopedia is written in.
Noetica: Yes, understood. It was not clear from what you wrote. Compare the nouns locale and chorale to distinguish from the adjective and noun local, and the adjective choral, with learnèd influence from Latin neuter -ale endings. Peripherally relevant, at best.

Do I "dismiss and not answer" a point by PMAnderson? He hints at an analogy; I point out that it is a tenuous one. I acknowledge that in English morale makes a distinction in spelling and implied pronunciation from moral; but crepe hardly does that. Does PMAnderson now want more detail? He only has to ask: If either form achieves the needed distinction, it is crêpe, which is less likely to be mistaken for creep, or to be read as a misprint for it. OED duly records the dominant form crêpe. But compare role which is far more common and assimilated; and compare debacle (OED: 1802), not the rarer débâcle (earliest in OED: 1848), for which there is no contrast to make with a pre-existing English word.

Anyone familiar with my work, at WT:MOS for example, ought to concede that it is meticulous. Such work takes a great deal of time, and the use of extensive print, software, and online resources that I subscribe to. PMAnderson does hardly any work of that sort for style or titles; yet he abuses, maligns, and misrepresents me at every opportunity. I have never initiated action against him for this; but he has repeatedly called for me to be banned (!).

Just so you have some context, yes? (More to come concerning PMAnderson's latest post, above.)

Noetica^Tea? 23:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind that I sectioned you off. I hear you saying that I'm going beyond the call of duty in explaining myself, but I don't mind 'cause it's fun. I'm working on a detailed reply now, and I want to see how this plays out. I'm going to learn a lot, and be better at understanding Google evidence in the future. This discussion may well improve how our titling policy is written, by clarifying and highlighting specific nuances of how we decide on titles. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:43, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

[That's fine of course, Bacchus. Great work! But I'm going to have to stop, as I explain below. I do hope all this will be useful, because it's occupied far too much time for far too many of us. –N]

On PMAnderson's points concerning the posts listed earlier:

• "Post 1 shows that the usage is about equal. That's not a reason to move; it's a reason not to move."
  • That post was explicitly modified later, showing that a stronger claim for "crêpe" was warranted; and in any case, the context was that another RM had already wrongly upset the status quo.
• "Posts 3, 4, 5, 7, and 10 are irrelevant to your stated closure."
  • Not claimed as relevant! But PMAnderson conveniently ignores 10 as modifying 1.
• "Posts 2 and 9 deal with the ambiguity problem by searching for Crêpes Suzette; finding that that term is still spelled as in French; since it has an unEnglish postpositive adjective which is a French proper name, that's not surprising."
  • Post 2 is confined to "crêpes Suzette", sure. But not post 9: "Look at some real evidence: for Montreal Gazette." Go on, look now. What PMAnderson says is flat-out false.
• "Post 6 cites the OED, which made its decision how to spell the word in the nineteenth century. This entry is virtually unchanged since 1989, and the change relates to a different sense. Since the rest of this is about usage after 1990, true but not useful."
  • False and misleading. The description OED gives of itself online is this "Second edition, 1989; online version June 2011". The dictionary is continually updated online. Since 1989 the subentries at "crêpe" have been reorganised, and the entry updated to include a citation from 2006: "B. Pilch Windows on Life x. 97 The bride's going away dress was of periwinkle blue crêpe romaine with a hat to match and a silver fox fur." OED records no change for subentry 3, concerned with cuisine; since it does make other updates in the entry (at least up to 2006), we can take it that there is nothing to record.
• "It also deals with a Google book search for books with either spelling in the title; no search more devoted to finding specialist sources, which we do not want, could be imagined."
  • Too vague to reply to. I can't tell what he means. My searches were carefully designed, and duly analysed beyond the mere results pages; and I presented my findings.
• "The remaining point there is that Google cannot be relied on to recognize the difference between the two spellings. Quite true, and that's why you have to look at general usage."
  • No, that's why we have to use Google with skill, and to interrogate the hits. I did that; PMAnderson did not; Born2cycle did not; Kauffner did not.

Frankly, I've had enough. PMAnderson makes no telling points at all here. If he had been a tenth as diligent in the RM as I had been (along with Dicklyon, and others whom he has wanted banned!), we might not be wasting time raking through the ashes here. It's burned out. Leave it. Move on – as I will now, since I have well and truly run out of time for countering the same scarcely varied inaccuracies yet again.

Noetica^Tea? 00:31, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Missing the point

GT and PM, I think you are both missing the point. This was not an RM to move from one established title to another based on slight majority of usage; that would be inappropriate. It was simply an RM to undo an improper RM that used a totally bogus reason, and had no consensus to move. It was enough to show that neither spelling is rare. The rest is gravy, extra work done because people were not getting the point and kept trowing up more flaky arguments and flaky evidence. The fact that PMA kept returning to a dead rotting strawman makes it clear that he was clueless; what remains unclear is why he came to this fight in the first place. Dicklyon (talk) 06:08, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

It's clear to me that it had to do with a battleground mentality, a set of grudges, and a rotten mood.

As for missing the point, I'll miss whatever points aren't interesting to me, and feel good about it. For me, there are two things going on here, or I hope they're both going on. Pmanderson is - I hope - seeing that flying off the handle was a bad idea. Also, I'm doing some serious, detailed thinking about uses and misuses of Google, which I think will be helpful in my continuing work in Requested moves.

I do intend to continue closing move discussions, according to my best judgment, as I've been doing for close to 5 years. I'll also remember the lessons of today; you can count on that. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:17, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, I do appreciate your seriousness in all this. It's just that this one should have been simple (if not confused by the bad google counting and the added noise of PMA). Dicklyon (talk) 06:22, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I doubt we'll see the move reversed anytime soon. That could easily be wrong; the Wiki hasn't run out of surprises, I'm sure. I think I was right to close the discussion when I did, and I think it will stick. It was a tough call, and I'm certainly considering what lessons I'm learning from it. Somehow, the mess had to happen though. There's straws and there's camels.

I think I've actually gotten better over the years at remaining dull and businesslike in the face of potential drama. The power of sticking boringly to the point never ceases to commend itself to me. Heck, I got my ISP to knock $20 off my monthly Internet bill yesterday by applying similar techniques. It's like aikido, only boring, and sometimes there's money. :)

Of course, the learning has come at the cost of some pretty stupendous failures. There are people I'm glad we're rid of, and there are people still here whom I'm super-leery of interacting with. Whether PMA ends up in in either of those categories is... being determined, I'm sure. There's good support on ANI for at least a month of vacation. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:46, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Trebizond Vilayet

Hello, I was hoping to have you follow up on Trebizond Vilayet (and other related articles). The changes are still being made despite your request that we hold back. I'd like to get this resolved because so many articles are affected by the decision which needs to be made about name selection. Ordtoy (talk) 14:18, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The article hasn't moved again, and as far as I can tell, there's no consensus to move it at this time. Do you wish to move the article back to "Trabzon"? The other editor, Takabeg, provided some evidence, which may not be the best available, but I haven't seen any concrete evidence for the other name.

You said on that page that "Google search results are such an imprecise measure, especially when the numbers are so small that common sense must be used in these situations." I agree that raw Google numbers don't mean much, but that means we need to set the bar higher, and produce something more compelling. My common sense doesn't tell me which way the page should be titled, because I'm not familiar with the topic of the article.

If you're familiar enough with the literature to say which spelling is more appropriate and why, then I'll certainly listen, but I'm not going to add another move to the page history simply because other Wikipedia articles spell the name of the modern town that way. How do scholars of the Ottoman Empire spell the name of that historic vilayet? -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:18, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The nineteenth century spelling of Trabzon in English is and was Trebizond; see WP:NCGN for a parallel case, the Treaty of Nanking.

However rough Google ngrams may be, they are indicative when the difference is an order of magnitude or more. This ngram suggests, accurately, that use of Trabzon before 1950 (and 2000 would be defensible) in English is an anachronism. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:56, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate that. That's helpful. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I missed your reply here, only seeing it just now. I provided several examples of how there doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia-wide convention of using historical spellings for one time period and then switching to modern spellings for a modern period. I know I'm repeating myself, but the examples I gave were along the lines of: Beijing/Peking, Tokyo/Tokio, Beirut/Beirout, etc. In all these cases, Wikipedia takes the modern spelling for all historical periods event though the second form was more prevalent or even the only form used in previous eras. I can't find an example of Wikipedia spelling conventions following English historical usages (please correct me if I am wrong). I am also quite sure that such a practice would only hinder people searching for information. Making an English speaker of today know all the historical spellings of geographical entities just to find articles about them seems counter-productive. As for your question about modern academic (emphasis on those two terms!) scholars of Ottoman history, they almost invariably use Trabzon. The common practice is to use Trebizond for the pre-Ottoman period (this is also true for other places throughout the Ottoman Empire). Ordtoy (talk) 06:25, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

There certainly is no uniform practice.

But where it has been discussed, as with the three articles Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul, the decision has usually been to use each name for the city in an appropriate period. In principle, our relevant guideline suggests using the historic name currently used in English for a given period (thus, we do not usually refer to the city on the Bosphorus as New Rome, because English literature generally doesn't); but the most common name for a given place and time is usually the name used at the time. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:53, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

The idea of using an appropriate name for an appropriate period is reasonable. However, the periods in question appear to be the Greek period, for which forms of Trapezus/Trebizond are used by scholars. Following the Ottoman taking of the city, the name in literature is Trabzon to reflect the Turkish corruption of the original name. This is the division accepted by academia. The Encyclopaedia of Islam (the most respected encyclopaedia for Middle East history), for example, follows this practice. With Istanbul/Constantinople we are dealing with the name change of a major world city so it is not comparable to Trabzon/Trebizond. If they know it at all, virtually all English speakers of today will be familiar with Trabzon, which is the name of the city today and was the name used in Ottoman times. Moreover, I'm still rather insistent on knowing why the practice of adopting archaic English forms is applicable here but not say for Tbilisi/Tiflis? Ordtoy (talk) 15:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey guys, would Talk:Trebizond Vilayet be a better place for this discussion to occur? -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:41, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom? Oh, that is just so damned much fun

Hello, GTBacchus. You have new messages at Greg L's talk page.
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Red tape

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Sandbox talk page

Just dropping you a note to let you know that there is a previous discussion about ArbCom cases at User talk:GTBacchus/sandbox. Maybe that should be blanked or moved to allow new discussion? Also, does this mean that you do have previous experience of ArbCom cases? Carcharoth (talk) 07:27, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I have no memory of that discussion, but I'll look into it. My hunch is that it was just a question of enforcement of some previous decision. I'll check; thanks. I've blanked it for now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:33, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

This proves to be non-trivial to check on. Is it even possible to see my contributions from April 2008 by expending less than ten minutes? I gotta figure out my median contribution date, and update it regularly. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

That conversation related to this edit I made to the sandbox itself the previous day, in which I made a point about ArbCom decisions versus policy, and MartinPhi was questioning the details of that. This arose from discussions surrounding the development of a WP:FRINGE guideline. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:28, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Glad you found it. Hopefully by now you found the "month" and "year" options in the contributions display page? Your userspace edits for April 2008 are here, to give an example. There are various other tricks to finding contributions from certain dates and giving permanent links to various things. You may need to know some of those tricks. Wikipedia:Complete diff and link guide may be useful. Carcharoth (talk) 23:29, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Good lord that's an easy solution that I stared right past. Would you believe I've never used that feature? Thanks for the link to 1st grade, I'll pay attention this time. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:32, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Compromised account?

Sorry to bulk up your talkpage with this stuff, but I don't have the heart to add an OT view of my very dull mental processes to the already over-long Pmanderson ANI thread. You can always delete it. (I've put a permanent link to it on ANI, in case anybody wants to come here and wallow in my embarrassment.) In answer to your question about what I meant, then:

Proposal 1: It's not my account, it's my head: I got confused. What I meant to say under the first proposal, but didn't manage to, was that I supported a six-month ban from project space (as suggested by Jayron, to whom I was responding), followed by a longer MOS ban.[6] I added that I wanted to be taken to support any time-limited project space ban + MOS ban — except that I didn't say "project space" that time, either. My emphasis was on opposing an indef ban. I suppose that's why I missed specifying what kind of time-limited ban I thought acceptable. Sorry about that. Very nonsensical of me, especially as the details of the discussion are complex enough without such confusions.

Proposal 2: Then GWH proposed just the ban I'd been requesting [plus a two week block, which I was obviously against]: that PM be indefinitely topic banned from MOS, and banned from project space for three months. The thing is, I had by then changed my mind, through taking in what other people had said, and I had been impressed — somewhat — by PM's own comments, and — largely — by your comments, GTBacchus, which obviously came from much interaction with PM, and much good sense. I now thought the community ought to go with only a MOS ban.[7] (Other sanctions could always be added on later if needed.) I should perhaps have pointed out that this was a change for me; but I frankly didn't think anybody would be fascinated by that info, and I regarded GWH's new poll as the current one (though I see now that people were still contributing to Proposal 1).

Proposal 3, for a 4-month block with lipstick. I'm still against all blocks, and recommend, again, a topic ban from MOS and nothing more.[8]

Pathetic, isn't it? You don't have to tell me. I, too, am better with more sleep. Bishonen | talk 13:06, 20 August 2011 (UTC).

Bishonen, thanks for posting this. That all makes perfect sense, and I hope I wasn't rude to you at AN/I. I was posting fast, and not listening to enough Beatles music, so I apologize if I bashed your name around inappropriately. Now it's morning. Ok, technically it was morning then, and now it's past noon; whatever. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:19, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom

BTW, Bacchus. I stumbled across the thread on Tony’s page where you invited him to go before the Inquisition. His reaction was interesting, to say the least. But not surprising. Tony has been to ArbCom before. Most distasteful

In this particular case with PMA, it is about tendentiousness, incivility, and an unwillingness to abide by consensus (i.e. editing against consensus). The trouble with PMA is whenever the community tries to deal with him, he immediately tries to change the metric to one of “14/15 splits” and “I hate the ˆ in ‘crêpe” and points out how a mean bad group of four or five editors are mean to him and said *hateful things* (like “Damn it PMA, please stop disrupting the entire universe and making me hate life and feel exhausted”), and how everyone conspires against him.

If this were to go to ArbCom, I guarantee you that PMA would try to raise all these issues. Conspiracy to ignore valid views of the minority. In his world, his arguments often don't get traction and nearly everything being written on MOS and MOSNUM that is against his wishes is followed up with a quick revert with this edit summary: “No consensus for this. Discuss”. Then you go to the talk page, there is usually only one or two or three other editors who give a dump about the issue, and it is hard to establish that anything is a consensus to PMA's satisfaction if the consensus is not to his liking.

And, mind you; when I write that PMA will revert with “No consensus for this. Discuss”, the circumstances can be one where there were three editors collegially discussing the issue on a thread who came to an agreement. PMA will just ignore all that, start a new thread, and then quote about votes two years earlier in the New Zealand version of Wikipedia that showed their ‘consensus’ is flawed. (yes, I am exaggerating)

I think you might approach Ohconfucius. He is in a “take no prisoners” mood right now with PMA. I have no idea how he would respond. Nearly everyone you contact will have little enthusiasm for an ArbCom do-da with PMA if there isn’t a group of admins who ride herd to keep the discussion on-topic. PMA knows how to press buttons until the heat death of the universe. The result is that everyone who has dealt with him has snapped back at him at one time or another. It is deeply frustrating to go to ArbCom and have some 21-year-old arb write Well, I see that Greg and [insert editor’s name here] both wrote ‘Damn it’ to PMA in their responses to PMA, as was evidenced in PMA’s list of 840 diffs to show how the whole world he opposes is a poopy-head. These other editors can’t expect PMA to conform to conduct expected if they have *hate words* like that for our loving brethren [yadda yadda - go puke].

You’d think that ArbCom’s procedures have been anointed with the holy water of distilled wisdom of all wikipedians and has time-honored traditions that ensure the Right Thing©™® is always done. Ultimately, it is a fluid and evolving thing that is operated by an all-volunteer group of people. The motives of those participating will be as varied as you can imagine. It will take coordination and effort to figure out what the real issue is, figure out what you want to achieve, and keep things on track.

Perhaps the simpler way to go about this is to go back to the ANI thread, demand that some admin grow grow some backbone, and just dish out something appropriate. There was clear support for lots of remedies; it shouldn’t take too much imagination to grok the mix and figure out that a month-long block and a MOS and MOSNUM-wide six-month ban are in order. Greg L (talk) 14:51, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

If Greg doesn't mind me pointing out a few things here: (1) Not all arbs are 21 (some are considerably older and wider, though maybe not wiser), and even the younger ones can be excellent. (2) Others also know "how to press buttons" - Greg's post and verbose style and overblown rhetoric above is an excellent example of pressing buttons (memories are coming back for me here). I'm sure some of the things I say press some people's buttons. The key is not whether what you say presses people's buttons, but what your reaction is when told that your style, or what you are saying, is pressing people's buttons. (3) Greg is right that ArbCom results are not always predictable, but this is ironic when you consider that in the ANI thread, someone (I forget who) made some appeal to authority by lauding Casliber in his role as arbitrator as "one of the most respected members of the community", and hence we should listen more to what he says (he proposed the ban). Most Wikipedians with any sense reject such appeals to authority, but when you go to ArbCom, that is exactly what you are doing - submitting yourself to a binding process with the authority to resolve disputes. Carcharoth (talk) 16:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, wow. Greg, thanks for your post. I hardly know what to say. I can't even... that's a lot of adjectives. I've approached Ohconfucius.

Carcharoth, thanks. Let's see... Your point (1) is not a concern for me. (I'm 34, but I usually feel 14 and 200.) As I've mentioned, I know the lay of the land. I look all head-down and dull, but there's not too much getting past me.

Ditto for (2), more-or-less, but the reminder about button-pushing behavior is certainly apropos. I hope someone will let me know when I start pushing buttons, so I can stop. A slippery slope, that one. Your notes on AN/I have been appreciated.

I understand in (3) that ArbCom is a binding process, and I'm not afraid of it. If it's what is necessary, then it needs to be done, and I'm willing to do it. That's why I signed on as a janitor.

If I come out of it exiled to stub-sorting for six months, I'll be the best stub-sorter this side of the Pecos. If I'm de-sysoped, I'll have less stress. If I'm fined money, I'll let it go to collections and move to Africa. If I'm banned, I'll get my Ph.D. faster. It's all good.

If something gets worked out before I get to ArbCom, that's good too. Maybe better. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

• Well, if that just doesn’t frost my shorts: having Carcharoth attempting to put my behavior on the same moral and disruptive plane as the colossal disruption and grief PMA causes. I never said I was a fucking Boy Scout; I was saying PMA is a major disruption. Someone learn to see that distinction please.

  I see PMA has his supporters. Either that or just another admin anxious to show to the world how he can pound out There’s room for improvement in everyone’s behavior, M’kay? That art of crafting slogans like that is necessary to become an admin nowadays. Fine. So…

  I’m like Tony here. If you guys can’t get your act together and do something about PMA without dragging everyone who runs into a loggerhead with PMA into an ArbCom—just because block after block after block at ANI won’t change PMA’s ways, then I’ll quit the project if anyone involves me. I will no longer put up with administrative bullshit where an ArbCom action has something like 500 links to edit-diffs and talk about “14/15 splits” just to reign in his tendentiousness.

  And I will certainly not expose myself to an ArbCom process where some arb might write There’s room for improvement in everyone’s behavior, M’kay? and then dish out some stay-away orders as if MOS and MOSNUM needs to be protected from Greg L. The community can have PMA. I’m staying away from all places PMA inhabits. My input isn’t needed there. If you all come calling, my response will be “I have a real life. God speed.”

  For one thing, PMA happens to be advocating positions on MOS I completely agree with—although not to such an extreme in some cases. But the principle he abides by (Wikipedia should follow the way English is practiced and not the way it ought to be practiced), is one I completely embrace. But I could see that the manner in which he went about achieving his ends had a major effect on other good editors I respect and who do good for the project. Good luck to Wikipedia.

  And good luck to you, GTBacchus; when you wrote on my talk page that you couldn’t even become an admin today, I immediately thought “why are guys like this so rare on Wikipedia?” Greg L (talk) 20:53, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Apology and future case

I have commented at length on the nature of any future ArbCom case at ANI. Since the attitude displayed by the quotation from User:Mclay1 is central to the problem, I would make him a party, although the appropriate sanction would probably be that he must quote and discuss it at any future RfA. If he changes his mind, great; if the community wants an admin with this view, we deserve him.

Please let me know what language here has offended you; I will be happy to strike or formally retract anything excessive. I do believe that you are in error on the substance, and (rarely though I agree with him) Born2Cycle has a reasonable objection to your timing; between those, I find your judgment iffy. I intended to say no more. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:15, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

You want to know what "language" has offended me. That's interesting, because I don't care about offensive language. You can call me a motherfucker, and I'll smile. You offended - not just me, but yourself as well - with your actions, and no amount of pretty "language" can hide that.

I'm taking a long time to formulate this response, because I'm trying very hard not to post in anger. Posting in anger is always a bad idea, because it causes problems to take orders of magnitude more time and resources to address than if we were to refrain from posting in anger. That's the number 1 problem.

1. Posting in anger is a Very Bad Idea. It leads to a waste of community resources that could be better spent addressing problems, and not talking someone down from a rage, which goes and spawns five other rages that need talking down, etc., etc. Do you know that Mathsci ended up yelling at Baseball Bugs, because you yelled at me first? That's absurd.

   In my opinion you owe the community an apology for posting in anger, instead of carefully distilling the most important issues and raising them in a calm and respectful manner. That's what I do, you see. I carefully distill the important issues, and I raise them in a calm and respectful manner. At least... that's what I do when I'm doing it right.

   I'm not claiming it's easy; I'm claiming it's right.

2. Instead of asking me to explain my decision, you demanded that I reverse it, while insulting me and four other editors in the process. I am not a "dupe" and I was not "duped". You weren't in a position to know whether I was or not.

   I carefully weighed the evidence, and I made my best call. I read a lot of evidence, and I put a lot of thought into it, as I have by now amply shown. You didn't even give me a chance to show that I had based my decision on a careful weighing of the evidence. I would have given you a chance.

   That was rude as hell, but it's a wash by now. Just remember: you can guarantee that addressing people in that manner will generate lots of heat. Unless that's your goal, you should find a way to show some restraint.

3. The worst part is that you hadn't carefully read the evidence. You couldn't possibly have, when you posted, "I don't see any "detailed" discussion by Noetica; what discussion there is is refuted by Kauffner's citation of dictionaries: both forms are used on both sides of the Atlantic." This is so far irrelevant as to be asinine. I've abundantly shown that his evidence was detailed, and your statement shows that you weren't even passingly familiar with it.

   Noetica never mentioned any ENGVAR issue in any of his evidence. Even the "morale" tangent was him replying to your introduction of a non sequitur argument about proper French spellings, which no one had brought up.

   Your claiming that Noetica's evidence had been refuted in terms of ENGVAR was a way of announcing, "I don't know what Noetica's argument was, because I didn't read it." I had to repeat myself - what? three times? - before you began to articulate objections to the actual evidence, when you finally stopped claiming it had been refuted by obvious non sequiturs.

   Only after I took hours and hours out of my day for you did you even start to formulate counter-arguments, regarding general sources, which I'm interested in talking about. Without being yelled at. I might even agree with you, if you were to give me a chance.

   I had put a lot of thought and effort into weighing the evidence in this case, and deciding where the strongest weight lies. You had put in none of that work, and you berated me as a useless dupe for being persuaded by evidence that you hadn't even read, at least not carefully enough to know its basic contents. If you're going to tell someone that their judgment was "appalling" (which you've now dialed back to "iffy"), and question their overall usefulness to the project, then you should at least do the basic work of finding out what the evidence they weighed even looked like.

   In the future, don't do that to someone. I can promise you, I'll even make a blood oath, that I will never, ever berate you for displaying poor judgment when you've invested much more work into investigating the evidence in a discussion than I have. I will approach you with respect, and calmly request an explanation.

   Until you've determined that I didn't examine the evidence, you may assume that I did, because I always do. That means, to show that I'm wrong, you'll have to examine the evidence yourself, without having me walk you through by hand. Do you know how much work I put into explaining myself to you? You caused all that work, because I'm the kind of guy who is not willing to blow off criticism, no matter how poorly informed it turns out to be.

   You owe me a day of my life, but I'll call it even if you just stop treating human beings this way. We're all human beings, and I wouldn't treat you - nor your dog - the way you've been treating me. I'm talking about respect.

Do the right thing, and show restraint and respect. Then we're cool, and we don't need ArbCom. Are we cool? -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:58, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I hope we are cool. Some of what happened was verbal misunderstanding. When I said there was no detailed analysis, I meant that I saw detail, and I saw some (very little) analysis; but it did not seem to be in the same place. If I had posted after a delay, I might have found those words. I had read; I had understood; I disagreed with your description, and do now.

In particular, I still, having looked at (for the second time) and commented on Noetica's contributions, would not call most of them analysis at all; the long lists of uses for crêpes Suzette seemed then, and seem now, simply irrelevant; it's a different word, and there is every reason to expect to be more French.

The original post, to which you refer below, seems to me reasonably accurate; I hold, still, that it was a reason not to move. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:37, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I look forward to working with you in the future. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:46, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Timing

Why did I close that move after only two weeks, instead of re-listing it for a third while people were still arguing?

Well, it had been a long time since Noetica's very first post in which he showed - in detail - that the previous move had been based on Google evidence that was completely meaningless. In all that time, nobody had addressed his initial critique in any way.

I saw the same old group of people arguing over a trivially insignificant squiggle on a letter, and it was clear to me that we were seeing smoke from another fire. Since nobody was offering anything that addressed Noetica's detailed evidence for two weeks, I closed the thing in the direction indicated by evidence, figuring that the real issue would come to light, freed from the artificial context of pancakes.

I was right, and I'd do it again. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:58, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

On consensus (Hathaway)

Regarding this close, I'm a little disappointed that there was a judgment that there was "no consensus" when it seems very clear to me that there cannot be a consensus that overrides common sense. It is crystal clear and demonstrable that Anne Hathaway (actress) receives 16x the hits of Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare), and yet there is a small group of folks who prefer the status quo and support it with the unsubstantiated assertion that the Bard's wife is "obviously" more notable (and some even saying she "always will be"). I'm not making a federal case about this, just commenting that I thought this would have been a more nuanced close because it doesn't seem to me that consensus (or even lack thereof) can or should trump common sense. I'm familiar with your work in the past and respect it, which is why I'm posting here - you may not agree with me, but I believe I can express my thoughts on the matter without you feeling like I'm attacking or threatening or acting in bad faith (none of which I'm doing). (Clearly I had an opposite opinion since I started the requested move, so you'd expect me to disagree, so of course you might take this with a grain of salt...and I get that.) I know we generally default to the status quo, and I see that's the safe thing to have done, and I have absolutely no intention of stirring up drama...just making a comment here. For the record: I don't think you misjudged consensus in the discussion; I just think that the consensus was almost entirely based on personal opinions rather than policies. Thanks for listening.  Frank  |  talk  18:51, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. You're right that I don't perceive an attack, nor doubt anyone's good faith. I think it is seldom common ground in discussion though, as to just what constitutes "common sense".

You're right that I took the safe close. I guess I've seen a lot of actresses come and go, while there's only ever been one Shakespeare's wife. To my mind there's a higher bar for a current celebrity to overtake someone of historically enduring notability as a primary topic. Enough people were saying that bar hasn't been met that I deferred to their "common sense".

If someone named "George Washington" makes really big news tomorrow, most people typing that name will be searching for him... for a little while. The differences here seem to be over how much time constitutes "a little while", and how much to weight enduring historic notability versus the potentially short-lived kind.

We're weighing decades of making films and winning awards, versus centuries of compelling the scholarship and imagination of dozens of generations of historians and novelists. There's lots of room for "common sense" to diverge.

That's why I closed it the way I did, anyway. I can't guarantee that my decision was right for all time, but I did my best. Thanks again for your note. If you have any further questions, please let me know. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

The thing that struck me, though, is that the hits to our own pages demonstrate overwhelmingly what people are looking for, so it's inappropriate for us to make a judgment about who has enduring notability (or even popularity, because such a determination could change later). Our own readership makes very clear which page it is looking for and has been for several years (at least). That's the primary reason I wondered about how consensus could trump common sense - I think it's foolhardy of us to try to actually determine who is more notable, because of course the long view does have to come into play in that discussion. It's just that a page naming discussion is (in my view) quite a different thing than a discussion about who is more notable. And, for what it's worth, I have read my (American) share of Shakespeare in my time, and I had no idea he was even married, let alone what his wife's name was. Anyway, thanks for your response. I suspect the actress will continue to garner awards and eventually the fabric of the universe will be rendered properly..... :-)  Frank  |  talk  20:12, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

As long as you claim that something is "common sense", which your interlocutor doesn't agree is "common sense", you will find it very hard to establish common ground in a conversation. Your idea of what constitutes "common sense" is just that: an idea. Consensus didn't trump common sense. One group's common sense failed to gain consensus support over another group's common sense.

To me, it's common sense that a popular actress of the day is of passing notability. The vast majority of the popular actresses of Shakespeare's day - or of the 1700s or 1800s - are less famous now than Shakespeare's wife. Even the ones who won awards.

To me, that's common sense. Remember, too, that very few readers are visiting that dab page. People who want the actress get to her in 1 click, in the vast majority of cases. These are the days of autocomplete, and smart search. Miraculous times.

Try and define exactly which claim you mean when you say "common sense", and try calling it that instead. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:12, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Point taken: "common sense" is not necessarily so common. Again - thanks for engaging. Regards -  Frank  |  talk  18:28, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Arbcom request

Given I basically wrote a statement at ANI I copied it across to your sandbox, if you do make it live please can you copy it across to the case request? If you don't file an Arbcom case no worries. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:56, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's fine. Cool. Thank you. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Sir Bacchus. Rather than ArbCom, what do you think about the two less draconian proposed remedies here on ANI, as well as the one below it? Greg L (talk) 02:13, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Huh. I was about to say - "that thread's getting long, I'm surprised it hasn't got its own page yet." It's got its own page now."

I'll support anything that looks like it'll get off the ground. Either it works, or it gets us closer to the next step, where we can say, "look what didn't work". -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:49, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

You asked when you !voted “what else has happened?” Nothing else other than a general consensus appears to have been reached. I just did a quick calculation. Assuming editors can write often-complex HTML wikimarkup prose at 21 words per minute, and assuming six editors on average read any given post by someone at 4.5 words per second, the 26,000 words on that page means 30 man-hours have been devoted to this case. Plus the hours spent on individual editors’ talk pages. Plus the hours spent back-channelling. In a way, I think that is unfortunate. But in another way, it is rather heartening that so much effort is willing to be expended by a social community to ensure fairness to individuals comprising the community. Greg L (talk) 16:15, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

...and a chance to practice your arithmetic is never a bad thing. :D I've just started a fun new page, inspired by something in that thread: User:GTBacchus/self-criticism. Maybe it'll start a fad!

I never know how much back-channeling goes on. I'm almost never a part of it. Apparently there's a whole meta-Wikipedia chat-sphere, and I'm totally oblivious to it. Kind of awesome. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:20, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I understand there’s some sort of admin blog-o-sphere that requires knocking on the door and giving a password to be admitted to the speakeasy. I can just imagine what goes on there.

As for the self-criticism list, I don’t need a written list; I remember all my mistakes and try not to repeat them. As a mechanical engineer, I usually do just one-each of every type of mistake because the engineering world and the world of physics is so predictable. Social mistakes are a hell of a lot harder to not repeat.

Interestingly, the engineering world is sorta odd. Old electrical engineers in China don’t make dick for pay as they transition from state-owned businesses to private ones. But older (read: experienced) mechanical engineers make a mint during these transitions. You see, experienced mechanical engineers have a mental list of the 1001 ways to screw up and a separate list of the 101 shortcuts to make complex problems simple to solve. Greg L (talk) 16:48, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

It's, to put in into Harry Potter terms, a counter-spell. Useful stuff. I think of it as bug-repellent, in addition to the personal value to myself. I was raised Catholic, you know. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:07, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

• The back-channels being referred to here may be WP:IRC, something I've never used myself (I don't think the reference to an admin blogosphere is correct, though there is a Wikimedia blogosphere for editors of the Wikimedia projects who blog about their work on those projects). From what I've seen, most of the side discussion goes on at user talk pages (like the conversation above). User talk pages are sometimes used for their intended purposes (to notify editors of centralised discussion elsewhere), and sometimes for their secondary purposes to have side conversations, away from the mainstream and noise of a noticeboard discussion (the key is to transmit conclusions back to the main discussion if that is needed). The number of user talk page side conversations associated with some centralised discussion threads can be astounding (try, for example, tracking down all the user talk page conversations associated with the Pmanderson discussion - as Greg says, there are lots of them and most of them are more interesting and revealing than the main discussion). The third use of user talk pages is as a place to 'hang out' with other editors and make small talk (I call this the 'social bonding' aspect of user talk pages). Someone will no doubt write a thesis about all this one day. And some people also get very annoyed when people jump in uninvited to user talk page 'socialising' threads (this is why some people go off-wiki to discuss things, or ban others from posting at their talk pages - there is a huge amount of social etiquette surrounding user talk pages). And I've jumped in uninvited here, so I'll finish with my apologies if this post raises any hackles. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 18:27, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks for dropping in (from my point of view). I very much appreciate it. Greg L (talk) 19:58, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Babe Carey

Hi, GTBacchus. The above linked article needs fixing again. One of Dane97's sockpuppets cut-and-paste moved it again. Flyer22 (talk) 08:14, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Never mind. I fixed it. Flyer22 (talk) 08:20, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Google books

Hi, GTBacchus. Thanks for your constant contribution. I think maybe you are interested in this topic. Anyway Dohuk is more common. In this situation GeoNames Search is not reliable. Thank you. Takabeg (talk) 09:49, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Help with China part 2

There are some new comments above which you might have missed :). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:17, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Why?

Could you please elaborate on your closure? So far as I can tell, the decision flies in the face of cited facts, guidelines, and policies.LeadSongDog come howl! 04:13, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I've posted further explanation at the talk page. -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:51, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for responding and for choosing to take it to review. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:17, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Area Codes

You asked me a question on my talk page regarding moving the page Area codes 905 and 289 to Area codes 289 and 905 because I wanted to change it to numerical order. I also changed all the links on other pages that reference the original page to eliminate the possibility of a double redirect (which does not go through). I'll explain my thought process and you tell me what you think. But first, a little history to explain why I do this that way.

Originally all area codes were of the format N0X N1X where, in telephone technical code, N means 2-9 and X means any digit. Prefixes were always NNX so that the primitive computers of the 1950s and 1960s could determine what the number was. You dialed a NNX-XXXX local number as 7 digits, a long-distance one as 1+area code+7d, N0X/N1X-NNX-XXXX. Now, in some places a number in the same area code was long distance, so they allowed you to be warned by dialing 1+7d, 1+NNX-XXXX but that meant that a prefix couldn't be the same as an area code. There were some special settings so 411 or 1-411 would also work.

In the late 1970s that scheme of NNX prefixes came up against a brick wall when they started running out of prefixes in some areas but didn't want to go to the trouble and expense of starting new area codes. The computers were also smarter, and so the idea of allowing prefixes to be NXX adds about 20% more phone numbers. But you could no longer have 1+ for 7 digit dialing if there were NXX prefixes unless you implemented a time out so if you dialed 1+7d and waited a long time for it to realize you're not dialing an area code.

Then there was the AT&T breakup and the deregulation of phone service allowing any reasonable competitor to either resell phone service from the phone company or put in their own switch. Plus cell phones. The floodgates opened, and now even adding NXX prefixes weren't enough to cover demand, plus they couldn't allocate a telephone company a partial prefix, the technology wasn't there to allow a partial prefix assignment with multiple companies sharing one prefix, so if you got an assignment it didn't matter whether you had 300 customers or 3,000, you got a whole prefix with 10,000 numbers.

This exacerbated the exhaustion of prefixes and so more area codes had to be added. Then they had problems there because area codes still had the old N0X/N1X format, which limits to about 200 area codes. We had two choices: go to a longer area code format (which will probably occur once the current scheme becomes exhausted, sometime around 2020) or make area codes the same as prefixes, NXX format. The latter is the choice that was made.

Now, originally when a new area code was issued it was done by splitting an existing area code, part of the code stayed in the old area code and the rest went to the new code. It meant everyone where the new area code was to be created had to change everything: stationery, business cards, anything with numbers programmed into it to the new area code. Also, if you keep splitting an existing area code eventually you end up with a tiny area code in a densely populated area; the 213 area code, which used to serve all of Southern California, is basically just downtown Los Angeles. Chicago's 312 is basically the Loop and that's it.

It was a political decision to implement overlays. (Technically any issue where multiple people have to agree to a solution to a problem is a political one, but bear with me.) The issuance of new area codes wasn't merely the incumbent Bell company deciding to add one, now you have NANPA, (the private administrative body that handles area code assignments), the FCC and the State Public Utilities Commission (or the equivalent if it's not called that). So the choice between splitting and overlays is based on whose politics are better served. Originally, most people wanted to stay in one area code (which allows 7-digit dialing on local calls) as opposed to having overlay codes (which require 10-digit dialing on all calls).

An example of where it wasn't a political decision was back when there had to be a new area code in Southern California, area code 310 to split part of 213. Since, at that time, the control over what prefixes got put in the new code and which ones remained in the old one was left with the Bell company for that area, Pacific Bell got to decide. And what PacBell decided is the much smaller competitor General Telephone ended up having all of its exchanges moved into the new area code, while Pacific Bell generally minimized the exchanges it had to move.

Realizing that having overlays means your number never has to change, most people came to the conclusion that merely having to dial the area code on same area code calls was easier than having a 50/50 chance of needing to change your area code every time the one you're in runs out of prefixes (or the alternative, impose rationing of telephone service, a new customer will have to wait until a number becomes available.)

So anyway, given that the use of overlays is the result of a combination of legacy old numbers and new ones, I want to establish my own policy in that all area codes should be considered equivalent, whether they are pre-1999 N0X/N1X or post 1999 NXX codes. That's why I don't order by whether it's an original 1947-1999 code or one of the new ones, when there's an overlay the primary listing should be in order by number (but with redirects for the alternatives; that's why there's a redirect for area codes 703 and 571 to go to area codes 571 and 703. I think it's fairer this way as it doesn't "ghettoize" those who end up in an area with new-style area code (and possibly overlays).

I will admit the policy isn't uniform, eventually I'll change a page that is set up not in compliance with this policy but it may be weeks or months depending on how I feel, how tired I am and how much work is involved. If I have to change 10 pages I'll do that in one day. If it's 100 pages that have to be redone it may take several weeks. After all, this isn't a job, it's supposed to be fun, not work (or if it was work I'd expect to be paid for it!)

I admit it's an arbitrary policy decision, but I made it because it seems fair, it treats all area codes equally regardless of how recent they are, and it's consistent in that the listing is in numerical order. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) (talk) 00:11, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Replied at your page. Let's keep the conversation in one place. -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:40, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

please help

HI, I found some Anonymous IP adress are Break this article : Kuomintang , please take ACTION to stop it, thanks.219.85.124.116 (talk) 12:36, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

WHS redirects

Thanks for getting that move done. I will take care of the incoming links to the redirects, after which ... I'm not sure what they would need to stick around for... Can they be deleted? Or should I make them into a two-item list? Nightw 18:25, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Once all the links are fixed, there's no reason to keep those redirects around. If you let me know when they're free, I'll just delete them and we don't have to go through any formal procedure. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:01, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Awesome. 1 and 2 as you know are all done (except for links in talk and user spaces). The other one I'm tackling now — who knew there were so many World Heritage Sites in Asia and Australasia! Nightw 22:37, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the Luis Suarez page move, I know what a pain they are to do sometimes. :)GedUK  20:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

No problem. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:36, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RFC on the primary topic of China

As a frequent Wikipedia:Requested moves closer of contentious debates, would you be willing to join a triumvirate of admins to close Talk:China#Requested move August 2011? See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RFC on the primary topic of China. Cunard (talk) 08:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow. I've never been invited to join a "triumvirate" before. I'll check it out. -GTBacchus^(talk) 14:39, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Re: Page move

Hello, and sorry for the relatively long delay in replying back.

The move of WCFN to WCIX is actually the first time in my six-year history on this site that I cut and pasted an article in order to move it. And yes, I did forget the talk page, how stupid of me? Normally, of course, I go through the proper procedures.

The problem was that the WCIX page, at the time, redirected to WFOR-TV (who formerly used the callsign WCIX). I wasn't sure what was going to happen if I moved WCFN to WCIX, like if there would be any double redirects or anything like that (which, now that I think about it, probably wouldn't happen).

Thanks for the heads-up -- M (^speak/_spoken) 23:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Talk:China move proposal

Dropping a line on your talk page as well as User talk:RegentsPark about the discussion that's raging along regarding the move proposal. It's still generating additions to the topic, but I'm just curious if you think there's any kind of consensus, or lack there-of, yet for what the final decision ought to be? I'm kinda starting to lean towards a non-consensus close rather than my earlier "move" thinking, but I dunno if that's a result of the arguments or my backing away from the consequences of the move... Tabercil (talk) 03:23, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi GTBacchus. Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RFC on the primary topic of China. After a relist, Talk:China#Requested move August 2011 is ready for a closure discussion by a triumvirate of admins. Cunard (talk) 02:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	China move. Sometimes, the Mop is a big deal. This was such a time. Cerejota If you reply, please place a {{talkback}} in my talk page if I do not reply soon. 16:25, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Cerejota. I hope the way we did it leads to some greater degree of stability for the article. I'll be keeping an eye on it... -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:45, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Who were the other two in the troika? They deserve it too ;)--Cerejota ^{If you reply, please place a {{talkback}} in my talk page if I do not reply soon.} 18:46, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

That would be User:Tabercil and User:RegentsPark. I'm glad I didn't have to do it alone. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:50, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Terrorism - Welcome Back!

Welcome back from Wiki Project Terrorism! I'm Katarighe, a Wikipedian member since 2009. I'm currently the successor of Sherurcij in September because, he has not edited Wikipedia using this account for a considerable amount of time since May 2010. We are trying to renovate the new WP page this fall 2011 and we look forward this month whats next. If you are interested, start the renovation with us and new awards on contributing terrorism are coming soon. The WP terrorism newsletter begins January 2012. See you on October for the updates on WP terrorism. I will send this message next month about the updates. Good Luck.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Terrorism at 22:37, 25 September 2011 (UTC).

Bible

Hello, I hope you're doing well. I thought I'd ask you, since you seem to know a lot more about WP then I do, what's the problem with including another quote from the Bible in the article. As I see it, what God says is a lot more important than what man says about God's Word. WalkerThrough (talk) 21:27, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

That's an understandable position, but it's all in the details. If you're going to say what God says, then which translation shall we go with? I like the original Greek, personally, bit I'm odd that way.

Also, as an encyclopedia, we tend to rest on secondary sources over primary ones, because then we're not deciding which bits of primary source are the most important. We're following the determinations of experts who've studied these matters much more thoroughly than most Wikipedia editors.

That said, I'm not sure there is a problem with including another Bible quote in the, let's face it: Bible article. It's just a matter of how it's done. We put things in the voice of scholars who have decided which verses are most important to quote on which topics; else we're deciding what's most important, and that's not part of our job. There's a delicacy to getting it done, that's all.

The more you observe interactions on talk pages, the more you'll start to notice.. Some Wikipedians really know how to surf the waves of this site, while others get by on sheer weight of academic prose, while others are savvy about who to suck up to and who to bully... You'll get ideas of how different people come across, and what kind of reputation you want. Watch who gets banned, and who seems to be teflon-coated.

There's a lot going on here, and careful observations of interactions will richly reward you in the right ways. I've seen a lot of editors come and go, and each one has a lesson for you, whether they learn it or not. Study the personalities in the discussion on the Bible page, and see what that shows you. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:46, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I made a point about that at the talk: Bible which I will quote here: "You have to keep eye on the important complication presented by the fat that the Bible isn't "a book", but a lot of different books that say different things, and which have to be interpreted in order to make sense (in order even to be read by most people they have to go through the interpretation of a translator). We cannot use the Bible as a source for its own views because a. which Bible? b. which translation? c. what does that translation mean? In short - the Bible does not objectively say anything beyond what Theologians or other Bible scholars think it says. There is no objective truth we can refer to." Therefore we cannot use quotes from the bible to speak for themselves, because they don't. They only take on meaning as they are interpreted by bible scholars, therefore we can only refer to whatever conclusions different Bible scholars have come to about what the Bible says. You should read our policy on WP:OR. The Bible is basically a primary source, trying to interpret it as a layperson is conducting theological research. We don't publish original research here, only research already published by professional scholars. The complications of choosing which Bible edition to quote and which interpret of the quote to follow is added to that fact. You may think that just adding a quote from the Bible is simple, but it is in fact very very complicated.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:29, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but it sure it easy to say that lots of people wave signs at various kinds of gatherings that say "John 3:16". I'm not saying that's the most apposite example for the content dispute in question, but you get my point, perhaps? -GTBacchus^(talk) 04:47, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Those people tend to come from a very particular kind of religious background with a particular interpretation of a particular version of the Bible. How are we going to present their interpretation of John 3:16 in a NPOV manner without also presenting the views of those who don't wave signs. We can quote the Bible of course, but the question is always "why that particular quote" - and that can only be answered in relation to a particular theological tradition. Also we would have to rely on secondary sources to find which quote to choose to quote, just picking a quote we like is very likely to be OR. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:31, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow, you seem to have missed my point. I said nothing about quoting John 3:16, nor about presenting someone's interpretation of it. Nothing. Lots of people hold up those signs. Period. That is easy to cite. Your last sentence is precisely what I'm saying. I didn't choose John 3:16. The guy at the football games did. Where did I suggest we get to choose a quote? I said, "We put things in the voice of scholars who have decided which verses are most important to quote on which topics; else we're deciding what's most important, and that's not part of our job." Thanks. -GTBacchus^(talk) 14:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I missed it, but I may not have explained myself well. What I mean is that the sign John 3:16 doesn't mean anything by itself. It means something because we take it to mean something. If we are writing about the Bible as inspired and we mention that many Christians like to cite John 3:16, that entails that that place in the scripture is relevant for that discussion. That prompts the question of whether it is relevant, and how other people interpret that verse. If we choose to mention that other people quote John 3:16 we are also choosing a quote, because other texts are quoted as well, why this one? What I am saying is that there are no "bare facts", because the only reason to choose one "bare fact" over the other is because we think it has a particular meaning. That particular meaning of that particular fact has to come from an interpretation and it is OR for us to do that. If we can find a secondary source that mentions that certain Christians in certain contexts quote John 3:16 to illustrate their belief in divine inspiration then we can site that secondary source, but to make that observation ourselves is a bad idea in relation to synth, or and npov in my view, because it requires subjective judgments by editors. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:01, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this discussion would be relevant at Talk:Bible. Your final sentence here is, again, precisely my point. We make no observations ourselves. We're not disagreeing about anything.

The question of whether John 3:16 is relevant to the present question is why I said, "I'm not saying that's the most apposite example for the content dispute in question". Unless a scholar cites that as an example of... let's talk about this at Talk:Bible, shall we? -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:18, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Page move ban

The discussion at WP:AN seems to have concluded with no objection to removing my page move ban. Are you able to now close the discussion and remove the ban? Your consideration of my request is much appreciated. Dolovis (talk) 02:04, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

The discussion has now been archived with no objections (just the one red herring comment). Please close this matter as resolved. Thank you again for you consideration. Dolovis (talk) 12:31, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

There actually was an objection of Mjroots. So there was one support and one oppose and a bunch of no comments. Lack of consensus leads to staying as status quo. And since I didn't see the discussion until now then I will second Mjroots comment. -DJSasso (talk) 17:35, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I'll bring this back up at AN. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:42, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Please see WP:AN#Page moves for User:Dolovis. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:03, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Again, the discussion, with the usual suspects banter, has petered out without any objection raised. Could you please lift the ban before this discussion is also archived. Cheers! Dolovis (talk) 04:23, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

It appears that no one wants to involves themselves in my matter. Could you please close the matter yourself, or if not, would you please approach a non-involved admin to take a look to close. Thanks again for moving this along before it is again archived. Dolovis (talk) 00:00, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The thread has been closed, but I have received no notification of the result. Could you please confirm for me if the page move ban been lifted? Thank you. Dolovis (talk) 21:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

It appears that the thread is closed, with the conclusion that your ban is relaxed to only cover diacritic-related moves, which it sounds like we're not going to have any issues with, because we all know they're controversial. I think you can stop worrying about this now. I can't give you a receipt, nor a confirmation number. Just go in peace; edit the Wiki. Let me know if there's any trouble. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:40, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

The thread may be closed with the conclusion as you've stated, but there has been no change to my editing restriction posted at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions. I am hoping that my name can now be removed from that list. Who should look after that follow-up? Dolovis (talk) 04:03, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

It was amended. -DJSasso (talk) 12:30, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Research Advice re General People's Committee Article

Dear GTBacchus,

I am writing a research paper on the history of Libyan political personnel and came across a wiki article you contributed to, which I translated from Arabic to English using google. The Article is entitled “General People’s Committee”, which you can access as follows: http://ar.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/اللجنة_الشعبية_العامة

This article is exactly what I’m looking for, but there is a historical hole from 1990 – 2006. Do you have any idea why these dates are missing from the article? Do you have any information on this topic pertaining to 1990 – 2006 or know of any other sources I can consult to find the missing information? I have to submit my paper to my professor by Monday morning, so if you could prove any help at all, I would truly appreciate it! Please feel free to contact me directly via e-mail at agreen789@yahoo.com.

Thank you in advance for your time and hope to hear from you soon!

Sincerely, Ann Green --AGreen789 (talk) 20:03, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

refactor

I'm having problems with my computer; large POSTs (e.g. tacking a comment on the end of a large section) take an inordinate amount of time to save. I intended my comment to go at the end of the previous section but it took so long to save that you posted that new section and it ended up in the middle of it. It was not my intention to disrupt what you were trying to do by jamming my comment in where it ended up. You are welcome to refactor. Hesperian 01:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Salt

How much does following process matter? What about changing, or not changing, a title based solely on following ENGVAR? See Talk:Iodized_salt#Requested_move_2. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Closed; thanks. -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Despite the ignoring of LtPowers (talk · contribs)' argument, I presume that you made a good faith error, but the result is another horrible closing that flies in the face of consensus. Challenged here: Talk:Iodised_salt#Moving_beyond_just_questioning_the_RM_decision_to_actually_challenging_it. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Presume what you will, B2C – but keep it to yourself. Too often you dispute the conscientious decisions of the most conscientious admins. Others have powers of analysis too, you know; in some cases they prove superior to your own. Accept even-handed decisions taken after long, wide consultation, and move on.

GTB, my advice is to ignore vexatious appeals, as you appear to have decided to do in this case. Your time is more valuable than that, and your hard work taking care of difficult RMs is much appreciated.

Noetica^Tea? 23:42, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Noetica, I feel rather strongly that one of the most valuable uses of my time on Wikipedia is responding to criticism in more productive ways than by ignoring it. I take any criticism of my actions seriously, and I try to give full explanation to anyone who requests it. To me, this is important, so I'll keep my own counsel on who to ignore. Thanks for understanding. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:07, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Please don't get me wrong. If you want to explain your actions, or to continue what you see as useful dialogue, I am the last to stand in your way. I share your belief in doing all that. I must have misinterpreted your brief answer to B2C above: "Closed; thanks." In my judgement, B2C is given to vexatious pursuit of points that have been well settled. If I have misread your judgement on whether that is the case this time, of course I withdraw. It's your time, and your call. Noetica^Tea? 02:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I really want Born2cycle to take me to an RFC/U, with all due haste. Meanwhile, I've got to play the only ballgame I know how to play, so I'll keep replying to Born2cycle for the foreseeable. Thanks for your concern, genuinely.

If you want to open an RFC/U about Mr. Born2cycle, regarding that "vexatious pursuit of points that have been well-settled", I'll probably show up and say something. I'm very unlikely to do it myself, though. Personal preference and style, you know... -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

By the way, I brought this particular discussion to your attention because I wanted you to contribute to the ongoing discussion, not close it. Of course, you're not wrong to close it, it's your choice. It's just not one I would have made in your shoes. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:13, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Every time you see me make a decision you wouldn't have made "in my shoes", are you going to challenge it, as "horrible"? Is it "horrible" if we sometimes disagree, and life goes on? If you specifically don't want me to close a discussion, please request that in so many words, and I'll seriously consider your request.

I'd prefer you back off me a bit, and consider the value to the project of busting GTBacchus' chops left and right. Whaddya think? Am I a serious problem, who needs taking out, or am I someone who does a crap-load of undesirable work, and who might make calls in a style different from what you'd do? Your behavior indicates that you believe the former. Is that so?

If so, I suggest you cut straight to the part where you open an RFC/U, because I'll change if the pressure comes from a consensus, not from one self-appointed watchdog and process-hound. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:21, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I've explained why I thought this particular decision was horrible at the AN discussion.

It is my opinion that actions based on your philosophy in general create serious problems to the encyclopedia. But because your actions are made in good faith, and the damage is insidious in its nature, the problem is not even recognized by consensus at this time (nor you), so it's premature, from my perspective, to try to find consensus regarding this issue, in general, at this time. Individual events like this one are another matter. But even there, my hope is that you would recognize the error yourself, and reverse. One can hope, yes?

Anyway, in honor of Steve Jobs's sad passing today, allow me to paraphrase him. ‎"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change Wikipedia, are the ones who do."

By the way, don't you see the irony in you calling me a "process-hound" when your decision in question here was based entirely on your opinion that process was not followed correctly (i.e., your belief that ENGVAR was not followed)? It's dripping rich, whether you see it or not. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:45, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Born2cycle, I see your "rich" irony, and I yawn. Your arrogance bores me to no end.

"But even there, my hope is that you would recognize the error yourself, and reverse." Whether I made an error is neither for you nor me to decide, but for the community. I would recognize it on your say-so alone if I were convinced by your arguments (I wasn't), or if I believed (I don't) that you had a better insight than I do into community thinking on this matter. Your claim about consensus will either be borne out, or not. Let's watch and see, shall we?

"It is my opinion that actions based on your philosophy in general create serious problems to the encyclopedia." The feeling is mutual, and I'm right. At least, I have as much ground in this discussion for insisting on my rightness as you do for insisting on yours. Or is your insight is clearly more keen, accurate and penetrating than mine, obviously?

If you're right, a consensus will recognize that, and support you. My eyes are peeled. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:51, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

You seriously think my decision was based on the "process" of ENGVAR not being followed? Your reading comprehension skills are through the basement, son. You don't know what the word "process" means. You're insisting on making decisions based on whether the right paperwork was filed in the right way. I'm saying we need to stop thinking about paperwork, period. This was a page not to move, so let's put it back and not move it again, no matter what ghost of a local consensus someone thinks they see one week. That's not a "process"; it's sticking to the spirit of the ceasefire. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I never referred to ENGVAR as process, Mr. Reading Comprehension.

You continue to make the same error - ignoring Powers' argument. ENGVAR says to retain the established variant of the article. The established variant is British English. This move has no effect on that - the variant remains British English reqardless which title is used. ENGVAR, and the related ceasefire, are therefore inapplicable here. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:26, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Then I don't see the richness of your irony: "your decision in question here was based entirely on your opinion that process was not followed correctly (i.e., your belief that ENGVAR was not followed)?" If "i.e." means what I think it means, then you just equated "ENGVAR" with "process". Right there. I've heard your argument, and I disagree with it. I'm going to suspend judgment until I hear opinions from others. Okay? Okay. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. By "follow process" in this case I meant to follow the WP:RM process and abide by applicable policies, including following ENGVAR (if it applied). The part of following that process that you apparently believed failed was following ENGVAR, hence the "i.e.".

For the record, you have never even addressed the point about the language variant of the article not changing regardless of how this particular title decision is made (and how that means ENGVAR compliance either way), much less explained why you disagree. At least you finally have said you disagree, though it's entirely unclear with what exactly. If you actually have a good argument, I'd like to know what it is. Maybe I'm missing something - but if I am, I don't think it's anything that's been said or presented in either of the RM discussions or closing remarks, so at best it would be an ex post facto justification for your closing decision. But if you want to keep it to yourself, of course that's your prerogative, and I respect that. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:24, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

"If you actually have a good argument, I'd like to know what it is." FINALLY YOU ASK! I don't do these things without a good argument; all you have to do is ask. It's not "ex post facto" either, just because I didn't unpack all the details before-hand for the benefit of those who weren't going to follow without hand-holding. I already had the argument when I made the call. You didn't ask me what my reason was, and then listen like a reasonable person. You informed that I was wrong, because there was no way any argument could possibly gainsay your certain knowledge that you're right, and I'm wrong, and you know that before hearing the reasons. If you want to know why I made my call, why in the hell didn't you just ask? That would be so much better than what you did. So much better. What's your problem, that you can't just ask?

What a dick you can be, Born2cycle. I'm super-helpful and nice if you just ask. If you barge around telling me how horrible I am without bothering to ask, then it's gonna be a lot less cool! Get it??? -GTBacchus^(talk) 14:25, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I ask and you still don't answer?

I'm a dick for assuming the reasons you stated for making your decision were the reasons you made your decision? I simply noted your stated reasoning was flawed (which it is, regardless of whatever else you had in your mind), which, in the context of the actual comments made in the discussion you were closing (and not, for example, interpreted based on the premise that the established English variant of the article is not British but Australian, which was not argued in the discussion or in your closing), was clearly wrong, unless one presumes your fantastic and unsubstantiated personal interpretation of what ENGVAR means, despite its name and wording clearly saying otherwise. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:36, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Born2cycle, I will answer your question. You should really chill the fuck out and display a little bit of patience. I'm giving you a lot, and you're pushing it.

Here's the non-dick way to do what you're trying to do: You post to my page saying,

GTBacchus, I disagree with your close, and with the reasons you cited in making the close. Can you please explain yourself more fully, because it appears to me that you're not basing your decision on sound reasoning. I know you're a thoughtful guy, so I assume there is sound reasoning that you just haven't fully explained. I'd like to see it.

My reply to that is: "Certainly, I'm happy to explain. Check it out:...", and then I explain, to any degree of detail that you like. You approach me courteously, with a question. I answer it. After you've given me a chance to explain to the level of detail you're requiring, you decide what to do next.

Since you're making a serious request for my detailed reasoning, I'm not just going to dash something off, especially not when I'm feeling this personally irritated with you. Your question, despite your attitude, deserves a serious and careful answer, and I'm going to post one when I've had the time to write it up clearly, unambiguously, and in some detail. Okay? -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, my "fantastic and unsubstantiated personal interpretation" is not personal in any sense. I didn't make it up, and I've never promoted it. I've observed it, in hundreds of discussions. It's extremely substantiated, because I saw it happen in the field, over the course of more than five years, instead of learning about it by reading inaccurate rumors on a guideline page. The only way my "interpretation" can be wrong is if its inconsistent with practice. You don't know whether it is or not, do you? -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:49, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Fine. I agree I should have used more decorum when first reacting to your close here. My explanation (not excuse) is that after I brought the discussion to your attention, you closed it in favor of moving without addressing the oppose arguments made, including my own but especially that of Powers'. I found that to be rather dickish (to use your language), and reacted accordingly. That's an explanation, not an excuse, because I should not have been antagonizing despite your behavior. I'll try to do better.

Anyway, take your time on a thoughtful answer (though I would hope the thinking was done prior to your deciding to close). --Born2cycle (talk) 18:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I've answered that last jibe already: You can guarantee that I think about these things carefully. Most of the thought is part of an understanding I share with most of the people I work with here, so I don't find myself unpacking all the principles every day. It takes a minute, if you want it done right, and I do. See below. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:16, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I suggest you formed your opinion of how others interpret ENGVAR in discussions about changes that would change the variety of English of the article from (or back to) the established variety. If not, then perhaps you could identify a few of those "hundreds of discussions" where ENGVAR was used to argue (for or) against changing a spelling that did not affect the variety of English of that article, which is the case here (unless you presume the article's established variety is Australian). --Born2cycle (talk) 18:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Good Lord, no. Born2cycle, are you making a funny? I'm not going to claim a technical win on "Australia", because my whole point is that we should not think in terms of technicalities. If you think for a moment (even after I've dismissed it once already in this conversation) that I'm thinking about a technical argument, it truly causes me to doubt that you read what I write. If there's anything I'm repetitive about, it's that we don't do technical, legalistic, dogmatic readings of rules. I will never seek to use a loophole; I don't believe in them.

I will start a list of discussions in which ENGVAR's usage is established after I fulfill three of your other demands, you demanding one. You have clearly done no such investigation, and you don't have the experience (or apparently the motivation) to do the research yourself, so you're demanding that I do research to justify claims that I base on experience that you don't share. Does it not seem to you that some tiny shred of burden of proof might be on you to show that the community's behavior actually reflects your presumptions? Where are the successes of your insight that recommend you as an expert in these matters? All I have is my experience and understanding; what are you bringing to the table?

You're familiar with MeatballWiki, no? You must be... -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:16, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

ENGVAR

People used to argue about which way to spell words like "colour" and "legalize" on Wikipedia. I'm not entirely sure how long these arguments went on before our "ENGVAR" guideline was written down, but some of them didn't last long. Beatles article: Use British English; that was easy. Others lingered, and there seemed no reasonable way to end them that involved actually determining a correct variety of English to use for each article based on some arguments. Those arguments would go on forever, and they're low-stakes enough to make them worth ending no matter which decision is made in any particular case.

The solution: Pick a rule that doesn't involve anyone having to think about it or decide each on a case-by-case basis. That's not our favorite way to do things, but in this case it was advisable in order to divert energy from a thousand fruitless and unenlightening arguments back into encyclopedia-building, broadly construed. First established usage in a non-stub form of the article is, IIRC, the criterion we settled on.

People call ENGVAR a "ceasefire", because its point was - and its point remains - to prevent people spending their energy on decisions about which of two perfectly acceptable spellings to use for a word. It's not about whether we can associate the spelling difference with a specific border or set of borders among anglophone countries, at least one of which separates two well-defined nation-states, as recognized by the UN and two other major international bodies.

Moving the article from "iodised salt" to "iodized salt" back in May was a bad idea. It flies in the face of ENGVAR, because worrying about whether the word is spelled with an "ess" or a "zed" is a step too far from encyclopedia-building, and we all agreed to leave those things alone.

Now, arguing that ENGVAR doesn't apply because the spelling change doesn't technically fall into the category of "National variant of English".... that's yet another step removed from encyclopedia-building. Questioning whether this cease-fire was supposed to apply to article titles, or simply to spellings of words within articles is another example of fruitless caviling over details that are not related to improving the encyclopedia.

The point of ENGVAR is that there are more important things than how we spell "iodize" to worry about on this project, and that will always be true. This clearly falls within the spirit of the ceasefire, so the move in May was bad. Resetting the article to a long-standing name using an spelling of the word that's fine in some variety of English is entirely consistent with the spirit of ENGVAR, which is "leave these things alone when they're stable, don't encourage moves!"

Cutting the argument off and not responding to technical matters is also entirely consistent with the spirit of ENGVAR, which is, "seriously, stop arguing about how words are spelled. Just stop. Get over it, and go add sourced content to an article, or something. Don't be here to argue, please."

You've mentioned Powers' argument quite a few times. His main point was that this is not worth arguing over, and that's precisely what I think, too. In shutting down the fruitless argument, I took the title back to its pre-May position because the May move was a fairly recent move from a long-established and perfectly acceptable name. I don't see that as being against the spirit of his argument: one could also make a case that leaving it precisely where it is does more to discourage moves. I disagree; I think leaving it at the more recent spelling would encourage moves such as the one in May, in which a small group of editors in 4 days seemed to agree to worry about spelling differences within English, after all.

Born2cycle, if you would watch and learn more, and criticize a little less until you know the lay of the land, you would not have to have all of these things explained to you in so much detail. I learned it through experience; you can too. That said, I will quite cheerfully answer any questions you might have about this, including "why didn't you say all that in your closing rationale, GTBacchus?" I'd rather you try and guess the answer to that one, though. It's not very hard. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:16, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for going by what the guideline says rather than taking your word for it's supposed to mean. I say again, if what you say is correct about what it's supposed to mean, then it should say that, and not what it says now. Because going by what ENGVAR actually says (spellings should be consistent with the established English variant of the article), your decision was horrible. But given your interpretation of what ENGVAR is supposed to say (don't change spellings from one perfectly acceptable spelling to another), your decision was reasonable.

You seem to be hesitant about changing ENGVAR to actually reflect how you believe it was always and continues to be widely interpreted. Are you? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:16, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not hesitant to update it, at least not particularly. I'm always happier when the guideline pages are appropriate, and that's worth the small amount of static that accompanies many project-space edits. It hasn't been a priority for me, because I don't tend to prioritize those things, but I'll have a look at the page. It probably won't be today, though, as I've got other plans about to kick in. :)

It's on my list now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 14:27, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

You know.... what ENGVAR actually says: "spellings should be consistent with the established English variant of the article" is true and fine. It doesn't imply, "therefore you should change spellings at will as long as you're not changing the national variant".

I'm chewing on that section, which is misleading in kind of a subtle way. The actual point of the ceasefire is obscured in all the details. Any ideas? -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:02, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Arrogance

I warned B2C, now I'm warning you. Cut it out with the "arrogance" accusations.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your reminder to play nice. You're right, of course. I got a little playful with him there - more than was appropriate. Sorry, and thanks again. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:24, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

For the record, I took it that way and was being playful too, but for the sake of how it looks to others, I agree it was more than appropriate. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:05, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

B2C and the Genesis page

Hi; since you're one of the few admins paying attention to Sega Genesis and Mega Drive, I'm giving up the stupid endless debates with User:Born2cycle and his ilk. I'm removing the article from my watch list. I'm done dealing with it now. Wolftengu (talk) 02:10, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

[I apologize for writing on your page after asking you to stay away GTB, but since this comment is about me I need to say this for the record in case others see it and get the wrong impression].

For the record, my first comment about this was made on WT:AT at "19:05, 11 October 2011", less than 3 days prior to Wolf characterizing debating with me about it as being "stupid endless" here. My first comment at Talk:Sega Genesis and Mega Drive was stamped a few minutes later, "19:13, 11 October 2011", and then I made the move proposal a few hours later (at 23:46).

That's interesting, considering this issue has been debated, apparently, for years. Further, given the quality of the discussion, I think there is a good chance it will be resolved with an uncontroversial title in a matter of days now. The worst case, which isn't bad at all, is an admin will invoke MOS:RETAIN and go with the first name given to this topic in 2001. That has proven to be a decisive way to settle these issues in the past, and I see no reason why it wouldn't be here. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:29, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Shell sort#Requested move

Could you reopen this discussion, please? I was checking the sources and the reasoning on which the oppose votes were based is flawed. Knuth does in fact call this "shellsort", not "shell sort". —Ruud 22:47, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Here's another source that uses "Shellsort" [9]. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to re-open it. Born2cycle, you asked me to leave you alone. Please then, leave me alone. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:06, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Moving Burma to Myanmar - ongoing poll

This is to let you know that an ongoing poll is taking place to move Burma to Myanmar. This note is going out to wikipedia members who have participated in Burma/Myanmar name changing polls in the past. It does not include banned members nor those with only ip addresses. Thank you. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:53, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

New Page Patrol survey

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WP:RM

Seeing as you participated in the last round, I have proposed that Journey Through the Decade (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) be moved, again.—Ryulong (竜龙) 18:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but I've got better things to do with my time on Earth than give a shit about whether a 'T' is capital or lower-case. Good luck. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:05, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Diacritics being discussed on Jimbo’s talk page

I’ve mentioned the way you (properly so, in my opinion) closed a move request on an article. The discussion is here on Jimbo’s talk page. If you can add anything of value to the discussion (I suspect you can given your recent expertise in this area), it would probably be helpful over there. I think your participation would certainly improve the quality of the discussion. Greg L (talk) 00:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I've been offline, so I missed this.

I do have a couple of comments. I think it's not very helpful for anyone to suggest that the matter of diacritics is anything but controversial. Even in situations where it isn't, it's safe to treat it as if it is.

I don't see the value in setting up a group that's dedicated to either keeping or removing diacritics from articles here. Either of those is partisan and likely to cause lots of trouble. A group dedicated to neutrally fostering discussion and determining consensus might be pretty cool, but as a realist, I don't believe such a group will be created. Is that MfD still going? -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

It has mercifully ended. But I doubt the heat will let up anytime soon. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:57, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, is anyone working neutrally for consensus, or just trying to push their own sides? If it's just the latter, then no, we won't have peace. We reap what we sow. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:15, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Basil W. Spalding

To whom it may concern,

Hello. I can imagine your busy so don't feel offended if I just jump right on to the point here. First of all, believe me that what I'm about to say is the truth and I really hope you will allow me to fulfill my wish. I recently started an article titled (Basil W. Spalding). I can give you a summary of what I plan to add if you want? Anyway, I do not exaggerate when I say that I honestly think you should consider allowing me to contiune and not to delete it. Basil Spalding was a very interesting man who is connected to many famous people and places, the people and places can all be found in Wikipedia. I mean no offense to anyone, but there are articles in Wikipedia that are far less interesting and helpful. Please reconsider, you'll be glad you did.

Thanks a lot! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abdullah-b-h (talk • contribs) 16:34, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Basil W. Spalding, eh? It seems to already be deleted. Let's have a look at that deleted history... Oh, I see. I recommend you check out the page Wikipedia:Articles for creation. They might be able to help you there. -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:44, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Yogurt

Hi GTBacchus, I wasn't sure who this was addressed to. I didn't know if it was a collective response or to a single person. Cheers,
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 02:17, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

It was a reply to Born2cycle. -GTBacchus^(talk) 08:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Criticism of Islam sidebar

Template:Criticism of Islam sidebar has been nominated for merging with Template:Criticism of religion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you.

DJ OZMA

A new move request has been started suggesting that it be moved to "DJ Ozma". You are welcome to contribute, once more.—Ryulong (竜龙) 00:06, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

B2C

Please see this version of “WT:Requested moves.” You might be an involved admin; I am not. Please advise me next time you see more tendentious behavior out of that guy. Greg L (talk) 04:32, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Appreciation

Your work in the area of RMs has been much appreciated. I say this irrespective of whether any particular judgements have been for or against my own RM applications (that's not the point of your work, of course). Please consider coming back if you feel at some stage you can bear it. The system needs you and more admins. Tony (talk) 04:33, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

• Agree. If you are getting frustrated clean off certain pages by B2C, just watch and see what I do about that. That sort of thing frosts my britches. Greg L (talk) 04:57, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for your comments, both of you. I've very much enjoyed working in RM, and the feedback I've received from the community has almost always been positive and encouraging. I've tried to champion staying away from activism and done my best to just hold up a mirror to community wishes. That's partly why I'm taking a break.

  I'm hanging back for now, but keeping an eye on things. I've noticed that the backlog has remained a manageable size lately, and when I see it swell, I'm very likely to jump in. I'm eager to see whether the community will eventually act to curtail Born2cycle's tendentious behavior; I hope we do. Even better would be a voluntary change on his part. However, I'll only be hopeful for that after I see some glimmer of recognition from him that he's aware of a problem in how he carries out his activities here. Maybe we'll see that soon. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Personal attack

"Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence", such as the opinions of my behavior expressed by you here and here at WT:RM, are personal attacks. See WP:NPA#WHATIS. Referring to someone's alleged tendentiousness is not a complement - it's an "accusation about personal behavior" that lacks evidence. Why you think any of this is appropriate at WT:RM is beyond me.

Please remove all your comments about me and my behavior from that talk page. If you have an issue with my behavior, take it up in an appropriate forum, please. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:00, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not going to remove my comments, because they're relevant to how requested moves work - do we continue to tolerate behavior of the sort you're displaying, or don't we? Relevant issue.

If you want specifics, I'm happy to provide more details, but the evidence is precisely the section in which I posted. My use of the pronoun "this" indicates that the dispute at hand is evidence of your tendentious behavior. You don't let a thing go, but instead fight every decision you disagree with as far as you can, like a lawyer bent on reaching the Supreme Court, or so it has appeared to me over the months I've seen you do your work. You want a list? Such behavior is contrary to our cultural norms, and is harmful to the project.

You are fulfilling my prediction to a 't': tendentious complaints, and no evidence of self-examination. Apparently, you just don't consider that your behavior might be a problem. I suggest you consider it, very, very carefully.

If you feel that I'm out of line, there are appropriate fora to drag me to, and I'm sure you're fully aware of them. If I make a list of your problem behaviors, with detailed evidence, it'll be an RFC/U, because I'm not going to waste my time doing it twice.

Good day to you, sir. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:12, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

GT: See my response to him here on my talk page: (perma-link). I think the time is rapidly approaching to deal with his low-key but exceedingly pernicious (Having a harmful effect, esp. in a gradual or subtle way) manner on Wikipedia. Greg L (talk) 19:19, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Can either one of you please explain what you mean by "behavior of the sort you're displaying" that you believe is problematic? I argue for positions that improve the encyclopedia, and which are supported by significant numbers of other editors, and the broad consensus of the community. In the area of titling, one area of interest for me is stability, in particular resolving long-standing contentious situations. For example, I suggest the behavior I displayed at Talk:Yogurt and Talk:Sega Genesis (two cases in which GTB complained about my behavior) was instrumental at helping find strong consensus for stable solutions in both cases. Catholic Memorial School is a broad consensus case. The idea that there is no consensus about "Catholic Memorial School" not being ambiguous is preposterous in the face of the long-standing and unchallenged redirect at Catholic Memorial School. That the closing admin fails to concede this point no matter how well it is pointed out to him by an ever-growing number of editors, including me, is somehow my fault? Again, what exactly am I doing that so wrong? What problem are you trying to fix? I mean, isn't discussion the preferred method for finding and building consensus at WP? It's not like I'm going around repeatedly favoring some opinion with which few people agree (I might have those opinions, but they are not the ones I advocate, because that would be tendentious).

To be clear, GTB says: "You don't let a thing go, but instead fight every decision you disagree with as far as you can, like a lawyer bent on reaching the Supreme Court, or so it has appeared to me over the months I've seen you do your work. " Okay, are you thinking of my behavior at Talk:Yogurt, Talk:Sega Genesis as well as Catholic Memorial School. How that last one will turn out is still TBD, but, yeah, like at Yogurt and SG, I see an issue worth resolving. And others agree with me. So I pursue it until consensus can be reached, or it's clear that it can't be reached (which happened a number of times in the case of Yogurt, but even that was finally resolved). You further state that "Such behavior is contrary to our cultural norms, and is harmful to the project." I'm sorry, but again, how is developing consensus through discussion (which is what I do whether you give me credit for it or not) "contrary to our cultural norms", much less "harmful to the project"? If you have an issue with Wikipedia:Consensus#Reaching_consensus_through_discussion, I suggest you take it up at WT:CONSENSUS. FYI, it states:

When agreement cannot be reached through editing alone, the consensus-forming process becomes more explicit: editors open a section on the talk page and try to work out the dispute through discussion. Here editors try to persuade others, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense; they can also suggest alternative solutions or compromises that may satisfy all concerned.

That's what I do, or at least try my best to do. To say that trying "to persuade others, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense" "is contrary to our cultural norms, and is harmful to the project", which I what I understand you to be essentially saying, is, well, "contrary to our cultural norms, and is harmful to the project." --Born2cycle (talk) 20:57, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you didn’t read all of GTBacchus’s previous post. The last paragraph reads as follows: If you feel that I'm out of line, there are appropriate fora to drag me to, and I'm sure you're fully aware of them. If I make a list of your problem behaviors, with detailed evidence, it'll be an RFC/U, because I'm not going to waste my time doing it twice. If GTBacchus doesn’t respond to you, this sentiment of his that I just referenced might explain it. Your proclivity to circuitously argue points until the heat death of the universe and make serial assertions that amount to “black is white and up is down” does not make it incumbent on others to refute your assertions one by one. Furthermore, your quoting Wikipedia policy and highlighting key passages as if you wrote it, patented the concept, and teach it at Harvard does not impress. I suggest you take sufficient time off to give some thought to ‘cause & effect’ before still more things happen on Wikipedia that make you sad. M’kay? Greg L (talk) 22:20, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Born2cycle, not all of our cultural norms are written down. Your obsession with what's written on policy pages is one of the bigg.... I bite my tongue.

You would learn a lot by observing more, assuming you're right less, listening more, and saying a good deal less. I'm not going to respond to, "I'm right, and here's a list of reasons why I'm right!" I'll respond to, "You know, I think I must be doing something wrong, and I have some idea what it might be. What can I learn now?" If you take disagreement from others only as evidence that they're wrong, then you'll never learn anything.

Humility: look into it. It will smooth your path here like you wouldn't believe. Now, accuse me of lack of humility; I predict you do precisely that. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:39, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The truth is I have no idea what you think I'm doing wrong. Now you're talking about an RFC/U for violating what you believe are cultural norms that you admit are not even written down. How convenient.

And Greg likens my successful arguments to arguing “black is white and up is down”? All I can figure is that you're annoyed by my ability to successfully build consensus after you've told me to walk away and leave the issue unresolved, as you did at Yogurt, Sega Genesis and now in your attempts to us finding a consensus solution at CMS. I get the impression that you favor ambiguity, indecision, and repeated "no consensus" decisions over works towards consensus resolution of conflicts. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Pretty unimpressive. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

• Quoting B2C: The truth is I have no idea what you think I'm doing wrong. Oh, well… I can address that one. See this MfD Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User talk:Born2cycle/dicklyon, which was an *attempt* by the community to delete a dirt‑file page you created on another contributor. Every single aspect of that, from…

1. the fact that you created that file,
2. to how you humiliatingly and publicly titled it with the other editor’s name in marquee highlights,
3. to how you waved your dirt-file right in the other editor’s nose to “warn” him and dissuade him from opposing whatever it is you do on Wikipedia,
4. to how you were directed straight to the relevant policy on how you can’t do precisely what you did,
5. to how you yourself cited that policy and quoted that policy,
6. to how you argued and tried to wikilawyer yourself various excuses that you felt could cover all bases,
7. to the time spent by the community in trying to get it through your head why you weren’t supposed to be doing what you were doing,
8. to the circuitous, tendentious nature of your arguments,
9. to your stubbornness when the admin there, seeing your contrition that was clawed out of you, assumed you cried “uncle” and were agreeing to having your dirt‑file deleted. But no, you complained that your blanking it meant only you wanted it blanked and insisted the file be undeleted until the MfD ran its full seven-day course and was formally deleted at the end of it,
10. to how your final excuse (you never read what you yourself cited and what everyone else was directing your attention to) amounted to “pay no attention to all my other excuses for why what I was doing was OK anyway and pretend all my prior excuses never existed.”

Everything about that effort, which consumed huge amounts of other human beings’ time, is just sooooo ‘you’ and is exemplary of the way you interact with others and waste our time and frustrate the community (regular editors and admins alike) until we want to bang our damned heads on a wall—or, in GTBacchus’s case—just give up and walk away from all RMs to avoid further encounters with you. The above MfD is a textbook read on your disruption via tendentiousness.

And then you come here, fluttering innocent eyelashes and profess that you have no idea whatsoever what you might be doing incorrectly. Just pardon me all over the place if I don’t know whether to laugh at that for being posturing in the form of lame faux cluelessness, or to pity you because your confusion is genuine and you are so clueless.

You stated that you have no idea what you’re doing wrong. Well, you got it; just go read that MfD for a play-by-play on what you are doing wrong. Greg L (talk) 19:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the point in rehashing all that here. But I will say there wasn't much AGF going on there, especially from you (which you carry on above), and that the uninvolved admin with whom I don't have a history who participated in that discussion, Sphilbrick (talk · contribs), got it right. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, sorry to make you “sad” again, but I will not let you get away with *innocent little ol’ me???* misdirection. You know full well what you’re doing because you play everyone for fools and Wikipedia like a board game. Your tendentiousness ran GTBacchus—an admin, no less—clean out of all RMs. Moreover, when he declared he would stay away because he just couldn’t handle any more of your tendentiousness (a tactic you pretty much patented), you claimed such a statement was a personal attack and deleted the portion of his post that was critical of your behavior. Then you professed—right here—to be all confused and clueless as to what you could possibly be doing wrong. And then, when faced with a metric ton of Iranian-centrifuged, weapons-grade bullonium of your own making (also right here on this page), you muster up I don't see the point in rehashing all that here and pull another of your classic hiding behind the apron strings of “AGF”, which you use in place of “Admire and love every thing I do, which could only be good and wholesome and fortified with 12 essential vitamins”. Sweet. As for your All I can figure is that you're annoyed by my ability to successfully build consensus… uhm… no; it definitely isn’t that, nor is it my secret envy of your ability to channel Truth, Justice, and the Wikipedian Way©™®. You must desist with your circuitous, tenacious, tendentiousness, which is disruptive, or the community will resort to tools to protect itself from you. Greg L (talk) 22:14, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

To GTBacchus: Check out this post of his on my talk page. (*sigh*) Greg L (talk) 23:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

So sick of this bullshit

Wikipedia is not made of policies and pages that might or might not adhere to the policies. It's not made of arguments that might or might not be consistent or valid. It's made of human beings, with feelings, volunteering their time because we enjoy this and find it fun. If your actions make others stop finding it fun, then you're hurting the project, because you're making people not want to contribute. You've sucked the fun out of it for me, Born2cycle, and that's why I get kind of sick when I see your name.

You don't get it. You don't get when you're driving someone to the point of hair-pulling frustration, that maybe you should back the fuck off, and that maybe some things are more important than making clever, detailed arguments. If you drive off other volunteers, then you're doing net harm to the project, no matter how cleverly you clarify a rule about a trivial titling matter. I hate you, because you're more interested in being right than you are in whether other people can stand to interact with you. Please stay off my talk page. You make me sick.

Thanks for pissing in my corn flakes, you self-centered prick. Now drag me to WQA, like the officious fuck that you are. I'm just about fucking sick of this project, because people like you are allowed to run rampant. I spend years, trying to do my very goddamned best at being an admin, and trying my very goddamned best to be pleasant to everyone while doing it, and I'm largely successful at it... until you come along with your revolting attitude, and never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER let up, no matter how ROTTEN you make other volunteers feel about giving their hard work and time to a project they used to love. I'm ready to throw in the fucking towel.

Is anybody listening? -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Yes. Don’t let him get to you so much. His willingness to wear out his keyboard does not make it incumbent on the community to give his views greater weight than those of other editors. When dealing with a tendentious editor who throws up a wall of strawmen arguments and falsehoods, it is a losing proposition to try to dispute them one by one with logic; you are only playing his game. To borrow a line from WarGames: “The only winning move is not to play.”

  I know how to deal with people like B2C. But that takes experience and many—like you—fall victim to the trap. Your frustration indicates to me that he must either change his ways pronto, or the community will have to protect itself from him. I truly don’t have any watchlists and seldom obsess about other editors to the extent that I even bother to look at their contributions history to see if he or she has others pulling their hair out. So let me know the next time he gets tendentious and I’ll step up to the plate to coordinate things. I’ll be looking towards you for the detailed blow-by-blow on all his past crap.

  To B2C I know you. You are tempted to come here and make a self-serving post. Perhaps you are tempted to write something like about how you are so terribly baffled at what you could possibly be doing wrong and how you can only conjecture that it must be due to everyone else’s envy of your uncanny abilities to build consensus. And perhaps it would be rife with allegations of failures by the community to assume your phenomenal great good faith. Unless you can muster “I’m sorry. I’ll change my ways,” save it. More landing on the talk pages of editors whom you know you’ve ticked off lately, with more of your patented B2C-crap will do you no good at all; you just think it will. Greg L (talk) 06:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  • No, I really want out. You don't know my history. I've been frustrated here before. This is deeper. There's a problem so deep in the system that it can't be fixed. I want out. Who do I talk to about de-sysopping myself? Fuck it; I can look it up myself. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:15, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'm a largely uninvolved bystander, and I'm sick of it. I imagine you feel like I do, but multiplied by about 50,000 times. Sympathies, and hang on in there, Mate. He'll get his comeuppance, although it may not be soon enough. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:11, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • And nothing can be done about it. Self-immolation is preferable to witnessing more, no matter how undignified it may be. I'm so done. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:15, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I share your feelings at times, GT, but please, please don't leave, and definitely don't hand in the mop. We can't afford to keep losing good editors and Administrators. Dougweller (talk) 06:12, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm not looking for kind words to draw me back. Wikipedia should fix itself, but it's gonna be without GTBacchus. Learn from this, and make Wikipedia better. Maybe I can leave that as a legacy. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:15, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Jezzus. How much sunlight have you received there in the last month? Your writings look like you haven’t seen the sun in a while and could use some 2000 I.U. vitamin D pills each day for a few weeks. Greg L (talk) 06:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, my off-Wikipedia life is quite happy just now. Grad school is perking up after a slow semester, a large check is expected next month, and the love life is better than it's been in... well, I guess ever. Maybe that makes it easier to get out of here. I've got plenty else to live for; no point hanging onto a hobby that stopped being fun. I had a really good run here, and all things must pass. Don't worry about Tony, he's got a life outside of GTBacchus. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh! You’re graduating in life and moving away from Wiki-life. Wikipedia started feeling like “Same shit – different sandwich.” Congratulations. But it makes some of us who stay behind feel like mooks when you guys do that. Greg L (talk) 06:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Lol! Sorry 'bout that. :D This actually feels really good right now. The bridge exploding was a moment of pain, but now that river's flowing again, and it feels right. This is for real. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

GTBacchus, look for "kind words" or not, you will get them. And they are more than mere kind words. I too am horrified by what I read here. Please step back and do nothing about this for a while. There are many who are frustrated as you are, but who are not as ready to articulate it – not that there's any fault in doing so! Take time out now, to get a longer view. I'm sure people are ready to deal with the immediate cause of your frustration, which is shared by others. Trust me on that!

Move back from the brink. Editors of good will are very concerned to make things work better. Just wait a bit.

Noetica^Tea? 06:33, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I may come back someday. I'm not resigning under a cloud, so I can. I'm not, however, going to be the guy who threatens to leave and then gets talked into staying. Just keep up the good work, and keep making Wikipedia great. I'm proud of the good work I did here; it's time to move on. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Nothing in any of this portends the end of life as we know it. Leaving Wikipedia is not a life-wrecking decision; I toy with it all the time. But don't do it impulsively. Don't let any disruptive element win, by short-term tactics. Just take a break, OK?

If you decide you still want to leave a week from now, no problem. No bad look; no additional harm. But you might decide to stay. Face that fact!

Noetica^Tea? 06:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not as impulsive as it looks. I'm very close to turning in for the night, at least, and I'm reasonably certain I'll still have this clarity in the morning, and in February. Grad school needs my time more than Wiki does. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• I don't think I've said it before, but I really appreciate all the effort you've put into RM (and probably many other areas of the project that I'm unaware of). Others have been more eloquent than I could ever be above, so all I will say is that I hope you come back one day. All the best, Jenks24 (talk) 07:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • This is a great loss. Bacchus, please don't leave. Tony (talk) 08:14, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• GTBacchus I understand the frustration I sense in your post's here. Mostly it would be impossible to refute your rationale and with time being the most valuable commodity vested in building this encyclopedia, it intuitively follows that time spent on folly is time wasted. I only hope you know that your efforts are not entirely unappreciated and that I for 1 have been uplifted, even empowered at seeing some of your very efforts. It was an oversight that I didn't tell you this then. If you find room to continue selflessly giving, you will be a colleague in strengthening areas in dire need of strength. If you are certain that your better future is served by leaving, do accept my thanks for the efforts and time you have given. With sincerity and utmost esteem - My76Strat (talk) 08:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Your efforts are not unappreciated. I've found real life to be a great antidote to Wikistress. You don't owe this place anything, if it's not fun anymore you shouldn't do it. I do hope at some point you'll decide to come back; please feel free to ask me for assistance. Nobody Ent 13:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• I just want to echo what Nobody Ent just said. I have appreciated your efforts on Wikipedia and will miss your sane voice amid the chaos here. But by all means, you should not feel any obligation to expend effort in something that sucks energy and joy from you. I hope that you can return with a renewed perspective at some point. older ≠ wiser 13:18, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I hear you GTB. But the key is not to let it get to you and to simply walk away from the discussion (stock response: "take it to ANI"), especially when you're dealing with persistent editors. Whatever you end up doing, thanks for the thankless but stellar work on RM.--regentspark (comment) 16:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Why I'm leaving

Wikipedia has been a very rewarding hobby, until it stopped being rewarding. I'd like to say something to summarize what killed it for me, and I'm not sure I can do it in a first draft, but I'll say a few words, which I'm unlikely to polish and perfect. Anyone really interested will just have to accept a rough version, and connect the dots for themselves as they are able.

I just posted on Born2cycle's talk page that he is why Wikipedia is no longer fun for me. However, if he leaves tomorrow (which he won't), I still won't come back. He's the particular, but the general state of affairs guarantees that there will be more particulars, further down the line. There have been previous ones, but sadly, I think it's getting worse. I mean, I think it's getting harder to deal with people who are insidiously damaging to the morale of those around them.

The poor guy means well, which makes it more sad. Unfortunately, we as a community are exceedingly bad, and getting worse, at letting people know when they're doing damage on a human level. Our penchant for coddling chronically uncivil editors is well-documented, and it's a problem. However, this guy's not particularly uncivil, not in the classic, easy-to-point-at, way.

Where blatant incivility is like a sledgehammer, officiousness and wikilawyering are like acid. Both can damage the structure of an edifice built on good faith and good will, but the acid is more destructive, in the long run. We used to have a culture that was vigilant against such behavior, but it has become more and more acceptable over the near-decade that I've been observing. Entropy will push us towards bureaucracy, through the work of perfectly innocent instincts and feelings, as exemplified by Mr. Cycle. In bureaucracy, there is no room for humanity, and without humanity, the only volunteers will be bureaucrats and lawyers......

Yes, this is all very vague and probably riddled with problems, and like I said, I won't be back to edit and perfect these thoughts. Take what you can from them, if you're inclined. Please read the meatball Wiki, and preserve the spirit of WP:IAR, and find a way to slow down the lawyers. They'll eventually win, just as the stars will eventually burn out, but slow them down! Keep the magic in this project as long as you can! There's plenty of magic left still, to go around for many years, but the vein of it that I've been mining seems all used up and barren to me, and I'm too tired to go digging around for more. Besides, other sirens are calling me to other islands, so I'm moving on.

Please be excellent to each other, and keep loving and maintaining Wikipedia for a long, long time. I'll be reading, and fixing your grammar when I can. :D -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:59, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Good luck! --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I've been both helped and admonished by Mr GTBacchus through the years and I can say he's always been fair and straight. I always say admins have an absolutely thankless job and I don't know how they can do it week after week. Obviously they can't and we have lost someone I respect. I see you'll still be reviewing and editing on occasion but thanks for making wikipedia a better place. Most know you did your damnedest to make it so. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:53, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

To be fair if we avoid bureaucracy too much then you get significant unfairness - we have a large group of editors who are never going to see eye-to-eye on common sense grounds. Unfairness is also extremely annoying.

I do appreciate your patience and help with moving China - much appreciated. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

See you around, chap. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

So sorry to see you go, GTB, but think I understand. You have been a model for me on the deeper meaning and understanding of civility and reason.(olive (talk) 04:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC))

I very much agree with your points, and I have actually been close to such a decision myself. Suddenly, other hobbies look so much more attractive. It is still possible to contribute to the writing of an encyclopedia here, most of the time. But there are too many signs that that's no longer what this project is about. That we are writing an encyclopedia and everything else is subordinate to that was once so obvious that it didn't really need saying.

Or maybe this is all an example of the recency illusion. Maybe it has always been like that, and merely the way we are weighting our various experiences has changed. In any case it doesn't make sense to stay here without the fun and returning if and when you feel you will have that again seems like the best option. Hans Adler 07:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

What then, to do to prevent good editors being driven away in the future

• Well, I’m starting to write this at 11:39 p.m. my local time. I couldn’t fall asleep.

  I’ve thought about this for a couple of days. Wikipedia has had pendulum swings in how it responds to various forms of disruptions. Wikipedia has at times—and perhaps still is—pretty darn good (quick… too quick?) to dish out a 24 to 48-hour block because some editor blows his top at provocation or baiting and writes something like Fuck off. You’re an idiot!. But Wikipedia has been horrible about dealing with chronically tendentious editors.

  The reasons for that are obvious: tendentious editors can play by most rules and play Wikipedia and wikipedians like a game and drive people crazy. So there is seldom a bright-line rule they break that causes gasps from the gallery and leads to a block. Instead, tendentious editors are like a cancer: it’s insidious, slow, agonizing, and seldom acute. Such behavior is very deleterious to a collegial working relationship, which is essential to a collaborative writing environment. But the simple fact is that WP:Tendentious editing is still Wikipedia:Disruptive editing.

  I think it is time to establish a bit of a precedent (if this hasn’t already been done before). This weekend, I intend to start an RFC/U on Born2Cycle. If the natural course of events were allowed to occur there that occur elsewhere with tendentious editors, the page would fill up with thousands and thousands of words of purely tendentious, shear nonsense from B2C; you can’t play their game because it is a tedious, time-consuming, and ultimately a losing proposition. So I have a plan to nip that in the bud so we can get down to business and not have tendentious editing flout efforts to put an end to it.

  I intend that the litmus test should be exceedingly straightforward:

1. Has Born2Cycle been chronically tendentious?
2. Has he been told of this on at least several occasions?
3. Has he denied it or otherwise exhibited an utter lack of being able to see this tendentiousness?

If the consensus is in the affirmative for all the above, then I submit that proper remedy is obvious. The community has every right to protect itself from disruption. I see no point fooling around with chronically tendentious editors who demonstrate great facility to play games and wikilawyer and treat other human beings like they are pawns on a chess board—and who further exhibits utter cluelessness and denial that they have such an effect.

I plan to start on this Sunday. I have my own personal dealings to which I can point establishing the above three questions in the affirmative. I had no idea B2C had GTBacchus wrapped up in such knots elsewhere on Wikipedia and I would appreciate his help with a few choice links and diffs.

Now I will go to bed and (hopefully) go sound to sleep. Greg L (talk) 08:02, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

P.S. I might have to move my RFC/U to Monday to allow some other editors time to prepare links and diffs (evidence).

To all who will be contributing to this: We don’t need nor want hundreds of differences that parse a tendentious thread down to the atomic-level details of tendentiousness; let the page and B2C’s circuitous arguments (that change and morph to the prevailing winds as he gets painted into corners) speak for themselves. We need only the link to the page to demonstrate point #1, above; like this link to the MfD on the dirt‑file page he created and vigorously defended. Then it will be helpful to have diffs, just like this ∆ edit to demonstrate point #3 above. The same for point #2 above. I intend to start with a sandbox in which all contributors may consolidate their proof. Let’s keep it short and simple; I intend to set a precedent where this RFC/U will serve as a paradigm as to the process the community uses when dealing with chronically tendentious disruption.

The RFC/U sandbox is here: User:Greg_L/sandbox. Everyone is free to use it now. You can create sub-treads to use as a temporary placeholder or scrapbook. At the top of the page, you may place to-the-point material you plan to present in the motion.

Remember, this is not about B2C bashing. This is entirely about the community protecting itself from tendentious and disruptive editors so as to foster a proper, collegial environment in which editors may enjoy their hobby as they participate in a collaborative writing environment. We need only demonstrate points #1, #2, and #3, above. KISS. Greg L (talk) 17:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I think given the outcome of the AN discussion (why did anyone start a motion like this on AN anyway?) it is extremely unlikely that this will have any traction. I would urge you to wait and see how B2C lives up to the promises made at AN. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• This is not merely about B2C; it is about establishing that the community can protect itself from editors like him. You may nevertheless be right that the RFC/U will go nowhere. I expect that points #1, #2, and #3, above, will be amply demonstrated at the RFC/U. If editors still want to !vote to allow B2C to be part of the community in the face of all the evidence, their arguments will be scrutinized to see if they are credible and make sense.

  Now please stay off the sandbox unless you are going to contribute only what is truly required there; it is not a venue to soapbox about how editors are just talking past each other (and should all just hold hands on a mountain top, gaze in each others’ eyes, and sing songs about drinking Coca‑Cola and world harmony). It will be well established, IMHO, that B2C has extraordinary difficulty telling the truth, likes to misdirect, and is chronically tendentious.

  The RFC/U won’t even presume that a community of editors trying to work collegially in a collaborative writing environment and enjoy it as a hobby have a right to protect themselves from disruption; that too will be explained in black and white. Greg L (talk) 18:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

So what I'm gathering from the above post Greg is that all editors are invited to participate so long as they subscribe to your viewpoints? Telling another editor to "stay off" doesn't bode well for the objectivity of this effort; especially when you've invited others to participate. Now I personally have mixed feelings at this point, but I find it strangely ironic that you take this approach. It comes across as a "but I know I'm right" type of thing - sound familiar? Don't get me wrong, I think the world of GTB, and I hope he returns sooner rather than later. I've always found him to be a man of true integrity, and I'm rather upset that he got pushed to this point. But I would ask you to rethink your approach here. Your tone in the above has the same poor communication qualities of those you wish to remove from the project. Thank you for your time. — Ched :  ?  21:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Try reading whole sentences next time, Ched. That’s not too much to ask. I wrote “Now please stay off the sandbox unless you are going to contribute only what is truly required there”. That’s not too much to ask either. What ErikHaugen had to say on the sandbox wasn’t part of preparing evidence; he paid only lip service to that and the other 99% was arguing his position in advance of the RFC/U. He’ll have to wait until the time comes for that. As for your Your tone in the above has the same poor communication qualities of those you wish to remove from the project, you and I will just have to agree to disagree on that point, M’kay?? It’s not the *tone* B2C used anywhere that was responsible for driving a bunch of editors nearly bat-shit crazy and which made GTBacchus quit the project in shear frustration; was it? This is about chronic tendentiousness, which is disruptive, and the community’s ability to deal with that sort of thing up to now has been just abysmal. Greg L (talk) 00:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I've replied on your sandbox, hopefully I have misunderstood why you are asking this. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 04:57, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh… please stop playing coy and desist with your games. Your 18:03, 20 January 2012 post above makes it perfectly clear that you think we should give B2C a chance to show that after hundreds of man-hours to reign him in, he deserves to slime his way out of trouble and declare “Oh… I get it! You aren’t happy with my SOP” only when Occam's razor is within a millimeter of his neck. I’m not interested in playing games and I am certainly not interested in responding over there to you as if you were gosh-golly really trying to help us accomplish precisely what you stated you don’t want us to accomplish. Read the stated objective at the top of the page. When you’ve got a clear understanding of the stated objective, and if you have something to contribute towards that objective without disruption, then you are free to contribute. Greg L (talk) 08:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Greg, I appreciate you're frustrated, but please tone it down. This kind of post isn't winning any friends. Erik, I look forward to your contributions. Tony (talk) 09:00, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Yes. Your observation that I am frustrated is correct. I shouldn’t have been frustrated. I had generously collapsed his section only to see Erik further push buttons. His material is now deleted. The only material allowed on the sandbox will be that which is genuinely intended to achieve the objectives stated at the top of the page. Eric was merely trying to mount a defense for B2C by arguing the meaning of a linkdiff. That is not the place nor is this the time to be debating material as it is being assembled. Erik is still welcome to try again. If he abuses this offer and tries more games, I’ll ask him to stay away. Just that simple. Yesterday, I deleted a raft of evidence contributed by a brand new sock (User:AquatiCat) wherein the puppet master was obviously an experienced editor with ample past dealings with B2C. Fairness cuts both ways and I’m not asking too much from just one side of this issue. I’ll be much more inclined to use my [delete] key more liberally from hereon. I activated the talk page over there (User talk:Greg L/sandbox) where we can discuss germane matters in a collegial fashion. I will be more tolerant of the standard wiki‑games to be played on the talk page—but not too much. Greg L (talk) 17:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
  • If it's actual evidence of problematic behavior, I, for one, would like to know about it, regardless of who gathered it. I mean, if someone with a grudge has to create a sock for some reason in order to contribute, so be it. Shouldn't the focus be on the quality of the evidence rather than on who gathered it?

    That said, I don't see any evidence of anything beyond pretty normal banter which I've already agreed to tone down in what was added in all that[10], but since I'm the one with the problem, I might be missing something. In other words, if someone thinks there is evidence there of RFC/U-worthy behavior on my part, please include it. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Observations Considering the factors which contributed to GTB's (hopefully temporary) leave, I suggest that perhaps this conversation might be better suited on a different page. — Ched :  ?  10:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
• I agree with a reservation that this would be a perfect juncture for GTB to make an occasional edit, on this occasion namely to quell dissension and perhaps gently dissuade reprisal in his name. My76Strat (talk) 11:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, okay. I've been away. Please use my talk page to be kind to each other. If Born2cycle doesn't live up to the promises he made at ANI, then a lot of people will notice, and he'll get less forgiveness next time. I just read over the ANI thread, and I think it went about as well as could be expected.

  I'm going now, probably for a long time. I've revived my account at my old, pre-Wikipedia haunt, and I think I'll enjoy being active there for a while. I've also got a whiteboard full of mathematics to stare at right here, two cats to feed, and a whole world of other life to live.

  Please be kind to each other, and try to gently remind Born2cycle, when necessary, that article titling is a low-stakes game, where we can afford to let time take care of most problems. The best strategy for handling a stone that's out of place is sometimes to leave it alone, keep placing other stones properly, and let its out-of-place-ness speak for itself. Letting others make corrections is so much more powerful than making them oneself, so much of the time. Born2cycle should learn this. He's got good energy; it badly needs reigning in and controlling. Someone gently teach him, please.

  Goodbye now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Goodbye. Greg L (talk) 18:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
• Selfishly, I hope that it is only a short Wiki-break which you take, for your own re-generation. I have learned so much from you during our interactions. (remember, WT:IAR?) Of course the pedia will continue, imperfect. However, just a word from me, AGF works in RL. And now the important thing for me to say here is, take care, consider yourself; as a loving being, you deserve the best. Fond wishes, NewbyG ( talk) 09:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

• Wow, GTB, that's another gem going on my page. [11] I definitely get it, and I'll do my best to remember. Thank you again. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:13, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The best six months of my life

Hi GTB, I resigned/retired (take your pick) from being an admin 8 months ago after almost ten years of quiet service. I made a policy error, and rather than politely correct me, a trio of younger admins flamed me into utter humiliation and then handed out barnstars to each other to celebrate. So I quietly handed in my mop bit, made no mention of my reasons on my userpage, and disappeared into anonymity.

As a result I've just had the most enjoyable time on WP I can remember for years. I've REALLY enjoyed my editing, and I've done a lot of good work (IMHO of course). So my advice is drop out. Edit without even logging in. Don't get involved in ANY discussions. If a conflict is looming, go away, remove the page from your watchlist and find another article. As time passes, you might remember why you fell in love with this absurd place to begin with. Warmest regards, Manning (talk) 11:20, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, one of the more liberating features of editing without logging in is that you don't even have a watchlist. :-) 67.119.12.141 (talk) 04:03, 28 January 2012 (UTC)