User talk:R. fiend/Archive5

Not an admin!?!?

I heard a rumor that you're not an admin, and I said to myself, "Impossible, this is R. fiend we're talking about!" And now I come to find that it's true - this must be remedied. Would you object to my nominating you? -- BD2412 ^talk 20:32, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

• No problem - I'm always around, so I'll check you again in a week. I can imagine that you'd want to be on top of things, since an RfA is the kind of place where bruised feelings might arise from certain situations where, although you were empirically correct, a thin-skinned editor might have taken offense. Cheers! -- BD2412 ^talk 18:22, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • The die is cast! -- BD2412 ^talk 19:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

"Promotion" as a criterion for deletion

I was interested by your argument that having articles on "less notable" people verges on "promotion". I find it an interesting but misguided idea. I agree that there is a danger that interests will seek to promote themselves through Wikipedia and that that is on the whole a bad thing.

Before I say anything else (and I hope you don't mind my even having anything to say but I like to talk to deletionists rather than just stick to abusing them ;-) -- there are clearly different philosophies involved, on each side arrived at as the product of reason, so there is room for the two sides to try to understand each other and work to accommodate each other) I should say that my idea of an encyclopaedia that is ambitious enough to encompass "the sum of human knowledge" is one that ultimately can encompass knowledge about anything and anyone in principle, given the caveat that the information must be verifiable and presented neutrally. I think these principles are our main protection against your fear about promotion.

I do not believe concerns about the "quality" of the subjects of articles is tenable or desirable. I agree with Jimbo that an article on each episode of the Simpsons would be a fine thing, not something to be despised. I don't watch the Simpsons or care about it in any way. I worry that any "bar" that is based on "notability" is doomed to be arbitrary (how do you decide if something is of sufficient "importance" to be included in your encyclopaedia? Any choice is unlikely to have a solid basis) and subjective (what is notable to you is almost bound to differ from what is notable for me). It goes without saying that items notable to an American differ from items notable to a Malian but each is a part of human knowledge.

But I do believe that concerns about the "quality" of the articles are valid. I think these have two forms, each needing consideration. The first is that we should want the reader to find what they expect under each title. I don't think we should exclude an article on a candidate for a councillorship, but the reader would not expect a campaign ad. Wikipedia ought not to become a repository for people's personal odds and ends, and content should not simply be whatever someone feels like putting. The wiki exists to prevent that's eventuating, of course. I think we would be better off, and have a better encyclopaedia, if we agreed that there could be an article about anyone (yes, even your mum) so long as it said only what was agreed to be notable about them. Make "notability" a criterion of quality of content and not quality of headings, and I think we would all be pulling in the same direction. If all there is to say of interest about some guy is that he was a candidate in an election, then the article about him should consist of a well-written sentence that says so. It is readily verifiable and true. It goes without saying that it can and should be neutrally presented.

What objection is there to that? I truly want to know. Is the encyclopaedia harmed by broad coverage? I can't see how. It is surely only harmed by poor material, inaccuracy and error.

The other concern that is valid in my view is that allowing broad coverage of this kind leaves enormous holes and that the coverage will be uneven. If you say, yes, we will have short articles on all schools, the problem becomes that we do not have articles on all schools. Someone needs to round up all the schools and ensure that all have articles.

There are a lot of schools! That's a big job. But I do think we can think big. This is not a project that's nearly finished. It's mammoth, a spectacular folly. Wikipedia should not necessarily end at a million articles or even two. Who says it must?

But I accept that that is a problem and that those who want the broad coverage need to commit themselves to it. I accept on my own part that even my little project to write the suburbs of Brisbane up is not done, and writing up the schools of Queensland would be enormous and arduous for me. Still, it's what I ought to undertake if I mean what I say. I sort of need you guys to stop trying to delete them first though ;-)

You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? There is less problem with "promotion" if the article on Joe Smith is accompanied by articles on all the candidates, each with roughly the same content.

This is a corollary of the second concern. It's problematic that Joe Smith might have a full biography and Joe Jones might not, when both are standing in an election. But agreeing standards for presentation of candidates in elections, or schools, or towns with no inhabitants, or episodes of the Simpsons is something that we do, and something that can be far more objective than deciding what is or isn't important enough for our encyclopaedia, something you and I are unlikely never to agree on.

That's the rub. There will always be a clash between those philosophies, and who wins and who loses will be personal and subjective: basically, whoever has the numbers at any particular time. So School X is deleted and School Y is kept; councillor A is scratched but councillor B survives, and just because for the latter we gathered support and for the former we did not. AfD (or whatever we call it) does not attract most editors and like all votes on WP, its "consensuses" are hardly the will of the entire editorship (although over time they tend to represent it). Most editors care a lot more about their subject area, and what content it has, than about whether Homer Simpson's trip to the doctor is covered.

I'm urging you to consider whether verification and neutrality are not sufficient protection against "promotion" -- not an outcome of granularity in any case so much as it is of enterprise (one of the first things I did when I became a non-anon was to battle to keep an article about a computer operating system from becoming a piece of promotional material -- and I recently had a look at McDonald's, which could well have been written by the company itself -- as WP becomes more well known, it has to be considered a concern that companies with sufficient resources will hire people to sign up as editors and astroturf the place -- virtually any article in WP can be controlled by a bloc of a dozen editors, most with fewer; I truly think we have more from the "notable" that we cannot fight than we do from the "not notable" whom we easily outnumber) -- and whether we couldn't rather spend our energies -- in your case considerable -- more wisely in encouraging high standards, making the edifice impressive to look at rather than worrying about how big it is.

Sorry for taking up so much of your time if you've read down to here. I have blatheritis at the moment. It'll pass ;-) Grace Note 02:29, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

You're a sysop

I'm pleased to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. Congratulations!. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:07, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

• Congratulations, sir, you now own a fine mop. Cheers! -- BD2412 ^talk 22:43, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Congratulations are indeed in order! Well done! Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 00:56, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
• Well done, Sir! -- Hoary 23:28, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Popups tool

Congratulations on being made an admin! I thought you might like to know of a javascript tool that may help in your editing by giving easy access to many admin features. It's described at Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. The quick version of the installation procedure for admins is to paste the following into User:R. fiend/Archive5/monobook.js:

// [[User:Lupin/popups.js]] - please include this line 

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

popupShortcutKeys=true; // optional: enable keyboard shortcuts
popupAdminLinks=true;   // optional: enable admin links

There are more options which you can fiddle with listed at Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. Give it a try and let me know if you find any glitches or have suggestions for improvements! Lupin|talk|popups 23:55, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

RFA

You're welcome, and heh. Be bold and make the template if you want, ;) Oh, and please check WP:NVP --Phroziac ^(talk) 17:49, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Not yet.

Congratulations again on your well-earned promotion. As for me, I'm afraid my answer will indeed remain "not yet". At the moment, I happily have my hands full with Wikiprojects, none of which require admin powers. My plan has not changed - I will wait until December, when my current internship comes to an end and I find out which city or state I'll be living and working in next. In the interim, if I see a vandal who needs blocking or a nonsense article crying out for speedy deletion, I'll be knocking at your door. Cheers! -- BD2412 ^talk 18:01, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations

On your recent promotion to administrator here at Wikipedia, the most important online information resource. I have a slight idea of how many demands are about to be placed on your time here at WP and I for one am fully appreciative of your interest in doing so. The picture you mentioned was sent to me by a friend on here and I put it up on my user page. About your vegetarianism you mentioned on my talk page, without making too much of a point I could suggest that my user name is a parody of meat consumption in general, and that a hamster sandwich is every bit as ridiculous as turkey-on-a-bun. But its really just an absurdist play on words. Any hidden meanings are strictly ancillary. Good luck, brave editor! Hamster Sandwich 21:09, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Congrats from me too. Yes, we've argued about things before now - but in most cases such arguments simply show the passion we have towards this project (rarely a bad thing). You'll be a fine admin - and we'll probably spar again in future! :) Grutness...wha? 01:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

de nada

The biggest obstacle was that I so rarely look at RFA. As soon as I saw you there, I did the right and obvious thing. I was just worried that I might have been too forceful in my comments and waved a red flag before those who vote "OMG Keep you deletionist trolls." Then I noticed that they were charging anyway, so I figured, "Might as well." Geogre 16:28, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

edit summaries on minor edits

I don't mind if someone doesn't use edit summaries on minor edits. At least when looking through your history though I noted several times when you did a major edit that you didn't use an edit summary - that's what I was referring to in your RfA. Hope that explains it... Take care! Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 22:13, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

List of songs by name.

Hey, don't worry about it. Among my first dozen or two edits were a couple to total Honorverse fancruft entries, and I even started an article that in the last half-hour I called shipcruft. I've no doubt you'll be a fine admin. The Literate Engineer 05:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Closing AFD discussions

A reminder: Whenever you delete an article as a result of an AFD discussion, be sure to to paste a link to the discussion in the "Reason for deletion" box. In other words, instead of entering "per AFD", write something like:

[[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Article to be deleted]]

This enables others to have easy access to the AFD discussion when they view the deletion log or when admins view the deleted edits, like this example. Thanks. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 17:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Critical response on user page

Genius! I've done the same with criticism on my user page!!! Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 21:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Rosalind Franklin

Hello. On 9 August 2004 you added this Watson has stated that Franklin should have discovered the structure of DNA as much as two years before he and Crick did to the Rosalind Franklin page. We're looking for citations for the page for a reference list. Do you remember where you got this information from? I can find no support for it online with a simple google search. We might have to remove it from the article. Thanks for any help.Alun 09:17, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Afd closings

Hi there. You closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mobile companies recently, but don't seem to have deleted the article.

Also, I've noticed that you haven't been substing {{vfd top}} and {{vfd bottom}} in your closings. General practice is to subst these, not so much to reduce their impact on server performance (which is probably minimal; most people don't spend too much time paging through the old vfd logs), but because they contain comments saying what to do if an article of the same name is afd'd again - namely, not to erase the old discussion. It's especially problematic because the templates, until, recently, contained backlinks to Template:vfd top and Template:vfd bottom, which makes it impossible to find unsubsted instances through What Links Here (unlike, say, if you had been using the shortcuts from {{vt}}/{{vb}} or {{at}}/{{ab}}). —Cryptic (talk) 21:40, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out that I forgot to actually carry out that deletion. I've just remedied it. As for the "subst" and stuff, well, I've never fully understood what the "subst" means, but I'm happy to use it if that's what one's supposed to do (well, not "happy", I've discovered that AfD closings take long enough without adding more typing to the process, but I'm "willing", anyway). Now, it was difficult to tell from your message, but are the shortcuts you mentioned acceptable? That would be even better (less typing instead of more), and I'd be genuinely happy to use those. -R. fiend 16:06, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Subst: causes the template tag to be converted into the template's contents when the page is saved, instead of staying "{{vfd top}}" and being converted each time the page is viewed. For a practical example, see this diff. Using the shortcuts is better than vfd top/afd top, in that a bot could conceivably be written to fix them, but there isn't a bot that's currently doing this so far as I'm aware. (Sorry about the extremely delayed response; I've been tied up in real life.) —Cryptic (talk) 07:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Hammond, Winifred Scott

I assume your entry * [[Winfield Scott Hammond|Hammond, Winifred Scott]] was just a transcription error on List of people by name: Ham.
--Jerzy•t 21:54, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
_ _ Yup, i see the simple possibility is solidly confirmed. _ _ BTW, IMO yr right in the approach to surname Dabs that you took w/ Hammond, but i find there are contrary arguments (primarily that it would take a policy before you could know that you didn't need to check both places). So i have on my back burner an experiment w/ a template scheme for generating, in the two places, both pipings from a single template. We'll see. _ _ And tnx for making the effort, by any approach, to get a more complete list whether in either or both places. I lk fwd to enhanced Cat facilities that may make LoPbN no longer worth maintaining, but for now i find it valuable.
--Jerzy•t 17:13, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

User:Lidix

User:Lidix appears to be a vanity band article not-so-cleverly disguised as a user page. -- BD2412 ^talk 19:50, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• Addendum: user's only edits are creating the user page and adding these three orphan images: Image:Lidix Forsh.jpg, Image:Puke-green(maydaforsh).jpg, Image:Lidix statefair bio3.jpg. -- BD2412 ^talk 19:55, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I shall MfD the user page, then - the images can go straight to IfD, as they're orphans and there's nothing to suggest that they'll ever be of use for an article (I suspect that the user had an additional pic deleted along with the original article). As for the cowbell, I was sadly informed that having it on my talk page is outside the fair use license under which it appears on Wikipedia. At least Wikilove is under the GFDL! -- BD2412 ^talk 20:44, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Hey, this was your idea, you ought to cast a vote! ;-) -- BD2412 ^talk 17:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Oops - now I see that you did! -- BD2412 ^talk 17:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of JibJab's "This Land" Lyrics

Since JibJab's "This Land" Lyrics was previously deleted and has been recreated, does it not qualify as a speedy delete? Jdavidb 21:14, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Hopefully it will not come back again; there was a stray link remaining from JibJab before which I removed earlier today. Jdavidb 21:23, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

BTW; I don't think it was especially stretching the rules. I was actually in the process of adding a speedy delete tag when the article got tagged as a copyvio. To me that was always just an extra reason for deletion. Jdavidb 21:32, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Pradeep Aranpally

You just speedily deleted this article. It does assert significance of the subject. I don't believe hoax is a reason for speedying, so if it is a hoax you might go to AFD. In the meantime please undelete. --MarSch 15:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

If it is a hoax someone will AFD it. I know that it takes much time to do this and I sympathize with your reasoning, but I think you've stretched speedy criteria too much. So please undelete and let me stub it.

PS you might want to take a closer look at User:Korath/autovfd.js --MarSch 16:10, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

White Horse Circle

An AfD resulting in "delete" does not preclude anything ever occupying that space, and valid redirects are not deletable under the speedy deletion policy. The redirect placed at White Horse Circle is not recreation of previous content, so it is also not deletable under the speedy deletion policy. Please keep this in mind in the future. Thanks. Unfocused 19:29, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Violating policy with the comment "same shit as before" isn't an act of bad faith from an administrator. I suggest you revert your change. Unfocused 19:54, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Please stop speedy deleting a useful redirect; I will continue to revert it as the vandalism that it is. --SPUI (talk) 20:05, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

It was edited out. You restored it. I fail to see how your interpretation of the way things work can ever vanquish vanity from wikipedia if it can just be created elsewhere, immune from AfD. -R. fiend 19:56, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

We're not talking about vanity here. We're talking about a traffic circle and a local landmark, which makes perfect sense in an article on the township. --SPUI (talk) 20:07, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

• There is a paragraph on White Horse Circle in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey (which you may argue the value of, but frankly, is any human addition of information to a Rambot-created page a bad thing?), so I can see no reason not to have a redirect except to try to prove a point to SPUI. Please do not delete it again. And please refrain from swearing in your deletion summaries. --Stormie 21:13, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Blocking SPUI

You've no business blocking SPUI over an edit war that you're participating in. You should take the issue up on Wikipedia's Admin Noticeboard for someone to address it there, or ask another, third party administrator to perform the block for you.

Regardless of our disagreements, I'd rather you not be censured for improper use of admin powers. Unfocused 21:02, 30 September 2005 (UTC)