User talk:SmokeyJoe

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Wikipedia:Numbers

Sorry for the late reply. Feel free to reuse that title for Wikipedia: Notability (numbers), or a redirect to it. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2007-10-08 20:49 Z

go ahead and delete these two

Curious

I'm curious to why you edited my page lol. Did you rdmly come across it...? Dengero (talk) 02:10, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I looked, coming from User_talk:Jimbo, and saw User:DGG has left a message with a wiki link containing an accidental extraneous character. Having spent a minute working out the accident, I thought I'd correct it. I hope you and DGG don't mind. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:32, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

File:Simon Wicks 2012.jpg

File:Simon Wicks 2012.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

This image has been restored. Nevertheless, it is relisted for FFD discussion. You discussed it in Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 March 6, so you may be interested to improve the FFD consensus. --George Ho (talk) 22:00, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Adminship

Hey there SJ! I'm going to cut to the chase and dispense with the pleasantries: Have you ever considered submitting an RFA? Our work together of MFD has shown me (and I'm sure many others) that you have the knowledge, civility, accessibility, knowledge of policy and willingness to effectively enforce that policy. The backlog sitting at MFD (there's currently a discussion that should have been closed a week ago just stting there) leads me to believe that we need another mop on the ground, there at least. Let me know what you think. Cheers! Achowat (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Adminship

Hey there SJ! I'm going to cut to the chase and dispense with the pleasantries: Have you ever considered submitting an RFA? Our work together of MFD has shown me (and I'm sure many others) that you have the knowledge, civility, accessibility, knowledge of policy and willingness to effectively enforce that policy. The backlog sitting at MFD (there's currently a discussion that should have been closed a week ago just stting there) leads me to believe that we need another mop on the ground, there at least. Let me know what you think. Cheers! Achowat (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Achowat. Thanks for your compliment. I have considered. I have considered it most largely because I have often had the wish to read deleted contributions. While contributing to deletion discussions, I have often thought it desirable to know what has been deleted, or to know that there are not things that have been deleted. However, this does not seem so important, as admins now routinely undeleted article histories for the benefit of non-admins, and demonstrate explicit awareness that non-admins cannot see deleted content.

Apart from that, I don’t see any need. In influencing deletion discussions, it is the participation in the debate, not the closing, that matters. And the lack of admin status never seems to hurt my ability to be heard. I don’t feel any urges to close discussions. I don’t think that there are serious backlogs. A contested deletion discussion lingering a few weeks is not a problem, in my opinion. There is a greater need, in my opinion, for more participants, and for the existing participants to communicate better, than for more enthusiastic closers.

At MfD in particular, one of my opinions is that there are too many trivial nominations. Some have characterised MfD as busywork. I pretty much agree, where many nominations are for things that are of no consequence, absolutely none. The main reason I put effort into MfD is to free up other Wikipedian who are better at other things from having to worry about MfD.

I used to contribute to AfD a lot, but have declined in activity there because I started to find the cased overwhelmingly dreary. I find that most nominated articles, if well nominated, are unimportant or uninteresting, or that an enthusiastic newcomer is facing a crushing rejection of their work. In the old days, articles were worse, nominations were more random, and arguments and process were not so refined. Precedent setting was important. These days, I find that most articles at AfD are right on the boundary of what should be allowed to stay, and in trying to map out the boundary line, I have decided that the boundary is fractal.

If I were to submit an RFA, a very serious drawback is my lack of content creation, and lack of even direct content work. I am today up to 361 mainspace edits. Many wikipedians consider significant experience and success in content creation to be an essential requirement for an administrator. This was not the case in the early days, but it certainly is now. As a hypothetical, I am interested in how the community discussion would run. If I were to succeed today, my edit contribution stats would be an extreme outlier. That in itself doesn’t worry me, what does is that it would weaken the default expectation that administrators are proven content creators.

In order to spread my experience to include content work, I occasionally attempt to get involved. Strangely, I haven’t seemed to enjoy it. I really don’t know why. However, I maintain a desire to do some serious content work, and qualify for adminship.

But what about you? You are accruing a decent number of edits, and are now broadening your experience into Project space. I think that today you would stand a better than even chance of success, despite failing User:Achowat/RfA Process/1. With a little more time, your chances will become excellent. The one drawback, that you are a recent arrival who hit the ground running fast and well, is, were you here before, under another name? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:15, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Y'know, your comments are frankly pretty shocking. I've never even considered looking into Adminship. I have the same issue as you, content creation. It's not so much that I find it unenjoyable, I really do like contributing the the on-stage part of the Encyclopedia (though most of my contributions thus-far have been in the back-stage part of the Project); it's just that all of my Areas of Expertise, so to speak, come from using Wikipedia as a primary source, and then following Refs and learning more. I come to the problem that I honestly can only think of like 1-3 things that probably deserve Inclusion that are not already, y'know, included.

As to my history on Wikipedia, it's pretty much what we should expect out of every new editor (or, perhaps, ideally). I hung around as an IP lurker, making small edits to my areas of fandom (A little soccer, some flags, and general typo and syntax fixes). I got really intrigued by the concept of a project that "Fails in principle but works in practice", so I got myself educated. I read just about every Policy, Guideline, and Essay before jumping right in. And no, I'm not saying that every new member should be forced to sit down and dig through WP:OMGWTFBBQ before contributing. I read those because I honestly thought they were fun! To understand WP:REICHSTAG you have to understand WP:CON, WP:CIV, and WP:POINT. From there I just started Recent Changes Patrolling (ClueBot was down at the time, so it was needed) and that led to my ill-fated attempt at New Page Patrolling (CSDs and PRODs and BLP-PRODs and AFDs were a little too hectic for me).

But I got a handle on the why. I guess that's always what has me digging deeper. I patrolled for Vandals because I wanted to know why Vandals decided to attack pages. I wanted to know why adding "hi sarah" to Battle of Agincourt was funny. I wanted to know why editors made new pages, why people have Edit Wars, why the good things and the bad things that happen to the project happen.

And that's really the long and the short of it (perhaps a bit too long). But serious Kudos are in order for you checking out my RFA Process. That's really just set as a reminder for myself of the things I find most important. Adminships, if I may opine (not that you can stop me at this point), is about trusting a User with The Tools and too often Opposes pile on based on a newfound Cause célèbre and I like having something written to remind myself of what's really important.

But you keep fighting the good fight (I know sooner or later we're going to disagree on one of these MFDs ) and let me extend an offer that if you ever need a Nomination Statement written, just drop me a line. Cheers! Achowat (talk) 13:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Achowat,

What in particular did you find shocking?

Wikipedia "Fails in principle but works in practice"? Like democracy? I never believed that line. I blame misuse of the word "priciple" where "prejudice" or "assumption" is meant. The human thirst for knowledge is strong, and when combined with practicle benefit, the quest becomes self-reinforcing. The growth of Wikipedia has gone very well. The growth is mostly complete, although it will never be finished, Wikipedia is now well into the phase of maturation. I wonder what is to come.

Did you develop an idea for why vandals attack pages? (I have my own ideas)

I do agree that the most important thing about granting privileges is trust.

Thanks for your friendship. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:33, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I found it shocking because of what I do. My contributions are mainly gnomish changes, making sure that game logs of soccer matches (that I care about) are filled in and accurate, jumping into content disputes that are happening on talk pages to remind everyone of our policies, MFD, and I've also been trying to revitalize the CVU to make it a useful tool (trying in vain, I'm afraid, but we're finally getting traction). Very few Admins come out of these areas, because they're not "sexy" if you will. It's a lot easier to look at a Brand New Page, help promote it to GA or FA, and say "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair" then to take pride because the infobox is accurate and not spilling raw code all over the place. I very, very rarely contribute to AFD and I've never posted on AN/I, and that's where Admins and Admin hopefuls flock. Essentially, I doubt there are many editors out there who, for lack of a better term, know who I am. My work is so diverse and "backstage" that I don't make the "Big Splash" that gets editors to notice you.

Adam Smith would argue, and I would tend to agree, that people always act on rational self-interest. What is done needs to be of benefit to the doer. Wikipedia benefits me, yes, but not my work on Wikipedia. I already know who won the 2012 Desert Diamond Cup, I watched the game. But I put the results up because it would be a benefit to someone else. And, y'know, someone else put up the results of some other tournament I was interested in, and I benefitted that way. But, Wikipedia existed without me for so long, my contributions are not vital to its continued existence. I guess it's an example of Sorites paradox, that if you take a heap of sand, you can remove one grain and still have a heap, indefinitely, so that at the end even 1 grain of sand can be a "heap". If every editor left, at some point it would break down, but right now Wikipedia doesn't need me to give in order for me to take. There should be, by all accounts, a Tragedy of the commons. But in practice, it works, and it's hard to figure out why. And democracy, as we all know, is the worst form of government.

There are four kinds of vandals that I've come across in my work. They are (in order of destructive tendency) testers, Britanicans, goofballs, and Jokers.

• Testers are not people who make test edits, they're people who like to test our responses. Wikipedia got big when I was in high school and I knew a lot of testers. They're testing us, they're testing our response to vandalism. Testers are responsible for most of the subtle vandalism. There vandalism is most often discussed in the phrases "Hey, let's X and see how long it stays up".
• Britanicans hate the idea of Wikipedia. I don't understand why, yet, but they think the only way to make their point that Wikipedia is an unreliable source is to make it and unreliable source. (Which is folly, since logic would dictate that if you need to be proactive in making it unreliable then the status quo can be seen as reliable; well, que sera sera).
• Goofballs are who we most often think of when we think of vandals (and most of our efforts are put into stopping them), because there work is most easy to see. They put things that they deem as "funny" onto the page, and like to watch it. These are the same people who draw fake mustaches on flyers.
• Jokers just want to watch the world burn. There's no motivation, they neither find it fun nor stimulating, they just like to destroy something beautiful.

Trust is everything. In an ideal world, everyone would be able to delete, block, rollback, and protect. The problem is that we don't live in an ideal world. Having those tools (I hate calling them rights, though I'm sure you'll find some example of me doing so in the last 6 days) is 100% about "can we trust this person to use the tools appropriately?". Nothing else, not one other thing, matters.

And be careful about using that "friend" moniker, wouldn't want this page deleted per WP:NOTMYSPACE . Achowat (talk) 14:33, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

MFD notification

Thanks for letting me know about the MFD. He actually MFD'd another draft in my userspace as well. I left the details in the discussion on Jclemens's talk page here. --Tothwolf (talk) 02:56, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Dispute resolution survey

Dispute Resolution – Survey Invite Hello SmokeyJoe. I am currently conducting a study on the dispute resolution processes on the English Wikipedia, in the hope that the results will help improve these processes in the future. Whether you have used dispute resolution a little or a lot, now we need to know about your experience. The survey takes around five minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist in analyzing the results of the survey. No personally identifiable information will be released. Please click HERE to participate. Many thanks in advance for your comments and thoughts. You are receiving this invitation because you have had some activity in dispute resolution over the past year. For more information, please see the associated research page. Steven Zhang DR goes to Wikimania! 23:29, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Good edit

Good job here. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:57, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Edits at WP:N

I see you cut the phrase "worthy of notice" at WP:N (and also at WP:ORG). I have no problem with removing the the phrase... but your edit summary is confusing: you say "It uses a much looser traditional dictionary definition that contradicts the GNG"... given that WP:N is the GNG, I don't see how something it says could "contradict" itself. Blueboar (talk) 11:42, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

The summary was:

Cut "Article and list topics must be notable, or "worthy of notice"." 1. The lead is repetative, this is a variation written multiple times. 2. It uses a much looser traditional dictionary definition that contradicts the GNG

The statement "Article and list topics must be notable, or "worthy of notice"" contradicts the GNG.

Paraphrasing to "Articles topics must be worthy of notice", this is a threshold that is much lower than the GNG. Many topics are worthy of notice, but it just so happened that no one is recorded in reliable sources as noticing them. The point is that the dictionary definitions are different to the GNG test. I will be happy to continue at WT:N. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:52, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

You miss my point... WP:N = GNG... since the phrase was contained in WP:N (ie GNG) it can not contradict GNG. It is part of GNG. You can disagree with the statement, and argue that GNG should not say it... but what you your edit summary said is: "this statement in GNG contradicts GNG"... which is impossible. Sort of like saying "Article V of the US Constitution contradicts the US Constitution."Blueboar (talk) 00:31, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree that the sentence cut is part of the GNG. The GNG is defined in the section below, and the wording there is different (and acceptable). Or am I still confused? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:19, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Now I see. You think “WP:N = GNG”. Where did you get that idea? GNG = “General notability guideline” is the first section of WP:N. The GNG is the core of WP:N, with everything else supporting, clarifying, explaining, etc. In this case, I removed the words from the lede because they conflict with the core of WP:N, the GNG, and because they served no useful purpose. For real world definitions of “notability”, the reader is better directed to Wikt:Notability or another dictionary. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:22, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Luna

She had a six pack of Otter Pops. That's what happened. :-P Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:46, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Pro-death

The two pages I was thinking of and couldn't find at the time were Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Abortion article titles. MBisanz ^talk 14:19, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Sealand national football team userspace draft

The references needed to pass GNG are already linked in the DRV. Why not just restore the article to mainspace and then plop the references in without the additional hassle of moving the deleted content in and out of userspace? pbp 15:23, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I've created a userspace draft at User:Purplebackpack89/Sealand. It has five references and five interwiki links. pbp 13:09, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Dispute resolution notice

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "The Black Album/Come On Feel the Dandy Warhols". Thank you. --Neuroticguru (talk) 16:43, 22 May 2012 (UTC)