Welcome, I think. But your "username" is confusing the heck out of me. Please consider picking something that:

  • doesn't seem like an IP address
  • is memorable to other users

Otherwise, your edits will probably come under significantly greater scrutiny from other contributors. --Uncle Ed 15:57, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(Replied on User_talk:Ed_Poor --257.47b.9½.-19 16:05, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC) )

You could always try using the "joke" name in your signature but pick a less ostentatious user name. That way you can spread the humour and lose some of the scrutiny. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:08, Mar 22, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure I mind scrutiny, but I don't want to confuse. I've filed a request. --257.47b.9½.-19 16:19, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)


I've sorted out the formatting, and have added the vfd tag to the article in question -- Graham  :) | Talk 16:34, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

From the village pump

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Hi, no one had responded to this on the village pump, so I'm moving it here in case you want to copy it to RfC instead. You might get more of a response there. Angela. 00:54, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)


So, I've been editing - with the help of others - Diana, Princess of Wales and trying to separate the facts about her death from the conspiracy theories, as well as adding more facts about her life. Here [1] is how it was before the recent round of changes.

So I'm coming back to it every couple of weeks to do a little more research and add a few more facts, if I can find them.

But each time I come back, I find that all references to 'conspiracy theories' and 'conspiracy theorists' have been excised, and replaced with suggestive phrases like 'Accident or Murder?' and phrases like 'deliberately murdered'.

The reason given by the people making these edits is that 'conspiracy theory' isn't NPOV - ie it implies that these theories about her death are untrue.

I can see their point of view on this, but I think that references to murder are much less neutral. This seems to me to be particularly the case because there's no doubt that the death was actually an accident - the facts of the death (that it was a car crash) are uncontested. No-one's suggesting (afaik) that she was (for example) shot or poisoned - the conspiracy theories center around the cause of the accident, and possible cover-ups for that cause.

I looked through Wikipedia for some kind of precedent, and I found that the JFK pages use the phrase 'conspiracy theories' without a problem.

I'd also argue that 'conspiracy theories' is a factual description - these are theories about a possible conspiracy. Although I accept that doesn't mean it isn't a loaded term.

There's also a second problem with the same page: some time ago there was a phone poll in the Daily Express which found that 85% of respondants believed that Diana's death was a conspiracy (or 'murder' if you like). But this was a phone poll, ie the paper advertised the phone number and people phoned in if they wanted to. This means it wasn't representative of the UK population. But each time I come back to the Diana page, I find it's been edited back to something along the lines of '85% of the UK population believe Diana was murdered' - which just isn't factually true.

So, I'd like to request a couple of things, if anyone has time:

- Could one or two people keep an eye on this page? Only I don't have enough time in my life (or frankly enough interest) to keep coming back to it. There's a risk here that the view she was 'murdered' will prevail just because those in favour of it have more time on their hands.

- Can anyone provide guidance on whether 'conspiracy theories' is NPOV? How about 'Accident or Murder?' ?

Best, --257.47b.9*.-19 11:42, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

User renamed

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Hello, I just renamed your user account to 47b. Please drop my a note if something went wrong. -- JeLuF 16:03, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 30 November 2015 (UTC)Reply