FreeAccount
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Hello FreeAccount, and welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, please be sure to sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes (~~~~) to produce your name and the current date, or three tildes (~~~) for just your name. You wondered on your userpage about the existence of a six degrees of Wikipedia experiment: here it is. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --Canderson7 23:10, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
Her Majesty
editYou are quite right, at least according to the official site of the British monarchy itself, which refers to her only as "Queen Victoria", no Majesty (I provided the link somewhere on HM's talk page). These people seem to think there is disrespect in adhering to standard encyclopedic style, or for that matter to standard writing style of any kind; at least that's what "POV vandalism" suggests. It is a great pity to see people exert themselves so to make Wikipedia look so foolish, right in the opening bite of otherwise rather good articles; it casts doubts on the credibility of Wikipedia, and gives the lie to the claim — an axiom of Jimbo Wales who founded Wikipedia and is still the god around here, that "Wikipedia is not an exercise in democracy". You also have it right, you and I, and anyone who opposes this silliness, will be reverted to kingdom come. We need to take turns watching these articles, since the 3-revert rule is being manipulated right now by our two friends; but if we can gather together the (larger) number of like-minded people, and revert them alternately, then they will be the ones on the wrong side of the revert rule.... Welcome indeed to Wikipedia; now you can see why I spend most of my energy on my own site! Best, Bill 23:47, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid Bill just told you a pile of dog droppings. Wikipedia some time ago decided to use styles in articles on royalty. (I opposed it, BTW.) One of the main reasons why this policy was chosen was because different monarchies and different timespans use different styles (some are Majesty, some are Ducal Highness. some are Grace, some are Serene Highness, some changed from one to the other, etc). It was thought important to indicate in each monarch's page what their style was when they reigned.
In April (I think it was) two particular users unilaterally sought to overturn the policy. A massive edit war erupted. A vote took place which became a complete farce and created immense bad blood on such a scale that a re-run was thought inadvisable in the short term. So a truce was agreed based on one simple rule. If an article had a style, it was to be left in. If an article did not have a style at that stage (and only nineteenth and twentieth century articles had had styles added in) no style was to be added in. All articles were to left as they were at that point, allowing the issue to be revisited in the future, probably after 6 months or longer, when tempers had cooled. (At that stage tempers were so frayed that wild threats and allegations were being made.) The Queen Victoria article had a style in, so the compromise agreement reached to stop the edit war means that it must keep it for the time being. To avoid reigniting the edit war, I and overs have been reverting the insertion of styles were they did not previously exist, and reverting the removal of them where they did previously exist. Bill has been told all this but seems blindly determined to pee all over the peace deal worked out by people and restart an extremely ugly edit war rather than let things rest and let tempers cool down. To preserve the consensus that stopped the war, and allow the issue to be discussed calmly in the future, all changes (whether adding in or taking out styles) will simply be reverted on sight. Bill's behaviour is frankly irresponsible, especially for someone of his status. He wasn't around for the edit war and will run away from responsibility for it if his stupid actions start it all again.
Please, simply let the status quo remain for the time being. If Wikipedia changes its policy by consensus later, they can all be removed easily. But given the bitterness of the row just ended, the last thing Wikipedia needs is for provocative edits by Bill to start Style Wars II over hundreds of articles. When tempers have calmed, you like everyone else can work to find a consensus over the issue. FearÉIREANN
\(caint) 00:22, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I understand. What I meant was that Bill knows full well that this is a touchy topic that could ignite a nasty edit war. He knows full well that it is best left alone to let things settle. But he deliberately tries to provoke the issue. So far his actions haven't started the whole war again, but at any time it could. (A blocked user in Canberra has deliberately been doing this over the last week also.) Deliberately trying to reignite a war when he knows that the agreement to stop it was to leave the topic alone for the moment, is to my mind "vandalism". It is grossly irresponsible. FearÉIREANN \(caint) 00:40, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Here's just some of the bitter debate this issue triggered off before. I'm trying to avoid it starting again. [1]
[2]
We don't want to have to go through this sort of row again. If things can be left settled for a while, then a reasoned debate should be possible in the future. If another row erupts, god knows how long it may take to have a calm debate happen. FearÉIREANN \(caint) 01:04, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Six degrees of Wikipedia
editIn response to the question on your user page, there is a tool that links one article to another, you can use it here [3] --nixie 06:24, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Blocked
editThis user is now blocked as a sockpuppet of a banned user.
- Huh? WTF? FreeAccount 06:37, 25 July 2005 (UTC)