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Revision as of 15:10, 5 November 2016

Can't resist poking the beehive

it really seems like Gucci's bitterness is personal; i.e., his Russian background is clouding his judgement, causing him to literally read hidden messages into Brzezinski's innocuous CNN interview that are not apparent to objective observers. I've never denied that all editors have their biases, myself included (in fact, those who claim to speak only the objective truth are usually the most doctrinaire POV-pushers), but I have also maintained that the key to neutral editing is acknowledging those biases, and perhaps taking a step back on topics that arouse one's emotions.

Tone it down a notch. You can yell "thief!" all you want, but you remain the only super-patriot—or any kind of "patriot"—in the debate (putting Wishes' weirdly displaced Valeria Novodvorskaya-style patriotism to one side) . There's nothing that reminds me more of the simultaneously glib and mendacious propaganda I'm bombarded with 24/7 in Moscow than your latest rants. Whatever it is that's "clouding my judgement", it sure as hell ain't Russophilia: that fact should be blindingly obvious from past discussions. Anyway, don't let me get in the way of you patting yourself on the back while demanding self-criticism from others. P.S. I plead guilty to knowing a language other than American and not being a member of the Mayflower club. Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:42, 3 October 2016 (UTC) Btw, your cute apocryphal story about Fusako Shigenobu is a little hard to believe, given that she was half a world away from Japan when the Red Army started killing its own members. Probably some shit Becker made up to go along with her story about how George Habash (and not Wadie Haddad) was the mastermind of the Lod hijacking-massacre. Not an a particularly convincing first attempt at "Leftism in an Nutshell". Guccisamsclub (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Commenting since I was mentioned here... I think this has nothing to do with any "biases". I think that Guccisamsclub is simply WP:Nothere: what he does in the project is mostly following other contributors and engaging them in very long and unproductive discussions. These discussions are unproductive because: (a) they concern subjects of marginal interest and importance for corresponding pages, (b) I do not think that G. really understands these subjects (this is not really a matter of bias), (c) he frequently resort to Straw man "arguments". Of course he also edits the corresponding pages, but I have an impression that his edits in such cases (e.g. this, this on a page he never edited before and no one else edited for years) are frequently an attempt to engage others in another senseless discussion. My very best wishes (talk) 17:38, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Gucci has made many positive contributions to Misplaced Pages—primarily in the form of correcting serious inaccuracies related to the Second Indochina War and its aftermath (i.e., 1 million "re-educated" in post-1975 Vietnam, 650,000 famine deaths in post Khmer Rouge-Cambodia, 2.7 million tons of U.S. bombs dropped on Cambodia)—but (for whatever the reason) I am reluctantly drawn to the conclusion that Wishes quite accurately describes Gucci's editing behavior whenever the subject is the former Soviet Union.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:53, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, you definitely have more experience here. So whatever. I just can see a recent pattern. My very best wishes (talk) 20:13, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• We can shake hands on that note, I suppose. Although I still don't get why you decided to paint me as an Anti-American Russophile Russian conspiracy theorist. I don't mind personal attacks when they have a grain of truth to them. But that was the equivalent of calling Angela Davis a stooge for American imperialism and a member of the John Birch Society. Bizarre. I mean I even supported the NATO operation in Libya, for chrissake. My interest in the article has nothing to do with blaming the invasion on someone other than the Soviets, as I've stated explicitly. The US "pushed" the Soviets into Afghanistan is the same way that it left Putin no choice but invade Ukraine and bomb Syria, all in the name of "defense". The USSR's security concerns about Afghanistan were probably more legitimate (for various reasons I'll not go into) — but fundamentally these cases are equivalent. Nobody "pushed" them anywhere. Now if you could only see American interventions the same way I see Russian ones, that'd be great. 21:11, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

- In the interest of fairness, I should add that Novodvorskaya (mentioned up top) should at least be credited with publicly defending the Chechen cause in Russia. Wishes is just sloppily (violating all guidelines) pushing some banal "anti-Soviet" POV on the english wiki, i.e. in the West. Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:11, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

"Now if you could only see American interventions the same way I see Russian ones." I'm not the one who supported the NATO intervention in Libya.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:17, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I'll take that as a retraction. Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:06, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

What am I supposed to be retracting? I doubt you can find an edit of mine that could be construed as supporting NATO in Libya, so I'm guessing the retraction must be related to my insinuation that your apologia for the USSR is related to your ethnic background. Well, I could think of a far more accurate slur than calling you a Russian, but—unlike calling you a Russian—it would likely result in my being perma-banned.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:41, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

How about calling G's behaviour as attesting to a tragic case of nostalgia for the Soviet Union... Some people seem to think there are golden ages in history, particularly if they didn't live through them. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:49, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

How about listening to what the other 'person actually says? Or would that get in the way of POV-pushing too much? Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:02, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

That would only be relevant if the other person didn't leave walls of text (and if the 'person' wasn't actually the 'elephant' in the room). Aside from that, I'm eruditer than you. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:10, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

You can go ahead and measure the walls of text in Talk:Soviet-Afghan war with a ruler. Report back on your results. Anyway, enjoy your your eruditiness.Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it often requires more time and energy to refute bullshit than it does to make it up.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Keep in mind that students who studied humanities in Moscow State University (for example) also studied a "secret" discipline known in old times as "military disinformer". This includes skills how to manipulate other people. BTW, I did not study humanities. My additional, "military" speciality was parasitology. That's funny.My very best wishes (talk) 13:52, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: "Aside from that, I'm eruditer tha you." --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 18:21, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Guccisamsclub: Your USSR-kissing is so blatant it's embarrassing. --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 18:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

BowlAndSpoon is a sockpuppet troll. Do not feed him.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:30, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

That's eruditeninity, Guccisamsclub. Stick with me, son, and you'll learn how to speak propa English real good. In fact, you might even learn how to write a terse response on a talk page without other editors having to print it out in order to read it. You must be a marvel in face to face debates. Contrary to what you appear to believe, talking over people whilst bewailing the fact that they're not listening to you isn't a debate. Keep measuring your rewriting of articles based on the fact that you've worn them down as a 'victory'. You're going to be disillusioned when you discover how quickly biased content is overturned once editors have had jack of you. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:14, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

As if what anything you just said has any connection to reality. Even if it did, it would prove nothing: for example, the person who writes more is not necessarily wrong, etc.. Your jokes are lame; Wishes "humor" is weird as hell. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:38, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Why am I not surprised that you take yourself so seriously? Oh, probably because it seems apparent that you have no sense of humour... other than gleaning some perverse sense of 'fun' out worrying the beehive... and you don't appreciate MVBW's jibe. Hornet, meet the para-psychologist (or is that parasitecologist?). He knows more about you than you're comfortable with. Uff, you'd be a truly difficult person to live with. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Ok. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Guccisamsclub: Imagine living with Iryna Harpy!! Something like this? There is an awesome disparity between her self-image and her actual intellectual abilities. Along with her other obnoxious traits (the magisterial self-regard etc.), this strongly indicates a narcissist: "These individuals often display arrogance, a sense of superiority … people with NPD may exhibit fragile egos, an inability to tolerate criticism, and a tendency to belittle others in an attempt to validate their own superiority." --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 07:38, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Re: Space Harrier

Yeah, I thought it odd as well that a 32X port released in '92 wouldn't be reviewed until three years later (GamePro), but shame on me for not following up on it anyway. Ugh. Anyway, thanks for the detective work and your edits on the article. sixtynine 03:31, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Sure. Thank you for turning the article around so quickly.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:46, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

SH is one of my all-time favorite games and holds a lot of memories for me, so it's been a labor of love. :') sixtynine 16:11, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Blind reverts

Please do not repeat the likes of this . It is not "being bold". If you have objections to specific sentences or content, please confront them on an issue by issue basis. By blind reverting you inserted obviously false content (like the outdated box office figures) and unsourced pov (like "blessings that constitute the greatness of America" the was being falsely claimed to be a "statement"). Those two bits of content change were explained in my edit summaries - this blind revert also revealed that you ignored those summaries. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 14:54, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

You misunderstood the edit summary. The POV-pushing likely sock was being BOLD; per BRD, I reverted him. Unless you explain why Alan Dershowitz, who you blindly deleted, is unreliable, I am going to revert right back.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 14:56, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Talk about blind reverts: Sowell quite explicitly says "Perhaps it takes somebody from outside to truly appreciate all the blessings that too many native-born Americans take for granted. D’Souza understands how rare — sometimes unique — these blessings are." This is in the second paragraph! How blind can you be?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk)

It is NOT a quote. There is no "greatness of America" quote. Do you actually think that this CONTENT wording is npov language suitable for an encyclopedia? Such hagiography is only appropriate if it is contained within an actual quote. And the quote has to be from someone notable or an expert, otherwise it is pointless. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:08, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

As for the other issue you raised - address it without a blanket removal of other editors' work. If you blind revert again, I will report you. Remember that this article is subject to various restrictions regarding US politics-related articles. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:13, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

And I actually support the position that it is not appropriate mention in the first sentence of the lede that the subject of this article is a convicted felon. It is over emphasis to have it in the first sentence, it is not what he is most notable for (though he actually seems to be playing up his conviction, based on reviews of his recent documentary) and there was certainly no need to mention the conviction twice in the lede. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:18, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

The other editor was mass deleting content based on a misleading edit summary designed to obscure their intentions while fragrantly violating BLP and inserting D'Souza's mugshot. Per BRD, that editor needs consensus for such sweeping changes.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 15:18, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm not taking ownership of, or supporting, anyone elses edits by my revert of your revert - but when you blindly remove the good (which I consider my edits to be) with the allegedly bad, you are not reaching a stable article with accurate content. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:26, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Fine. I added your changes back in regarding the box office, and quoted Sowell directly. There's no need to restore the mass deletions I criticized on talk, with no response.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 15:28, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Your SPI witch hunt

Looks like your sock witch hunt went no where. Looks like my account is going nowhere.Oneshotofwhiskey (talk) 01:37, 14 October 2016 (UTC) P.S."BTW, Oneshotofwhiskey, I know a sock when I see one, and will likely be filing an SPI shortly." Apparently you don't - as your investigation has left you with egg on your face, and destroyed your credibility. Seeing as you are defending the paranoia and most outrageous behaviors of convicted felon Dinesh D'Souza (who himself sees conspiracy theories everywhere and relies solely on emotional reasoning for his worldview) that would explain your egomaniac paranoia and failures in that SPI and elsewhere. Learn from your "failures".Oneshotofwhiskey (talk) 12:56, 14 October 2016 (UTC) P.S. Since you are trying now for a second time to WP:GAMING the system by trying to intimidate me off those pages with false accusations, I think it is safe to point out now your hypocrisy that you've blatantly reversed my edits in violation of 3RR. That would only be possible if you were also ] and stalking my contributions. I would expect an editor who knows the rules as well as you, and is quick to lecture others about the rules, to know better than to engage in an edit war.

You can delete all the templates you want warning you about rules you are violating. As you already know, that doesn't mean the administrators investigating your behavior won't see my edit history in warning you here. Nor can you feign ignorance that you weren't warning. Covering up a warning won't hide your violations here or elsewhere. Good luck.Oneshotofwhiskey (talk) 00:58, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Congrats on your 13,000 edits. Don't agree with you on anything (almost), but the stamina and dedication required to hit 13k edits are not to be sniffed at. BowlAndSpoon (talk) 20:08, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Arbitration request

Hi TheTimesAreAChanging. I'm Kevin, an arbitration clerk. I have to go very soon, but looking at your recently-filed arb request, you should be careful that this is a conduct, not a content, dispute (ArbCom is not allowed to intervene in article content) and that previous conduct resolution venues (e.g. WP:ANI) have been exhausted. If that is not the case, it is probable that your request will be summarily declined by the Arbitration Committee. Thanks, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 22:22, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Alert

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Template:Z33 Robert McClenon (talk) 22:25, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Dinesh D'Souza arbitration case request declined

In response to your request for arbitration of this issue, the Arbitration Committee has agreed that arbitration is not required at this stage. Arbitration on Misplaced Pages is a lengthy, complicated process that involves the unilateral adjudication of a dispute by an elected committee. Although the Committee's decisions can be useful to certain disputes, in many cases the actual process of arbitration is unenjoyable and time-consuming. Moreover, for most disputes the community maintains an effective set of mechanisms for reaching a compromise or resolving a grievance.

For grievances about the conduct of a Misplaced Pages editor, you should approach the user (in a civil, professional way) on their user talk page. However, other mechanisms for resolving a dispute also exist, such as raising the issue at the administrators' noticeboard for incidents.

In all cases, you should review Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution to learn more about resolving disputes on Misplaced Pages. The English Misplaced Pages community has many venues for resolving disputes and grievances, and it is important to explore them instead of requesting arbitration in the first instance. For more information on the process of arbitration, please see the Arbitration Policy and the Guide to Arbitration. I hope this advice is useful, and please do not hesitate to contact a member of the community if you have more questions. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 20:18, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Stop

...poking the bear, please. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 02:59, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

@DoRD: So you're saying other users are not allowed to comment on an unblock request? A previously uninvolved admin must decide whether or not to unblock merely by evaluating the petitioners's own claim that the socking/evasion was all a big misunderstanding?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:07, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm saying that, given the shared animosity, you should leave them be. Reviewing admins will evaluate all the evidence, including the SPI. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 03:10, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Vietnam war casualties

Currently the casualty section does not make sense because the max deaths under South and North Vietnamese civilian casualties is lower than the minimum Vietnamese civilian casualties section. I don't have access to Lewy's book, but how does he have these estimates that do not add up separately for south and north civilian casualties and separately for total Vietnamese civilians. Is his 627,000 figure even his minimum estimate? Also why would the minimum figure be 627,000 when the sources used in the info box by Hirschman and Thayer are also lower than it. Stumink (talk) 21:17, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

See Lewy's Table A-8. I suppose one could argue that 405,000 is Lewy's "minimum" number of civilian deaths, but his estimate of 444,000 NVA/VC killed in action is based on the assumption that one-third of the 666,000 claimed by the Defense Department were actually civilians. If the numbers given at different places on Misplaced Pages seem inconsistent, the problem is more likely to be Misplaced Pages itself, rather than the sources.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Of course, I claim no expertise when it comes to war casualties. If one takes only the smallest figure—from Hirschman et al.—and assumes that all of the males age 15 and up were combatants and all of the women and children (younger than age 15) were civilians, then the absolute rock-bottom minimum estimate for civilian mortality is 227,000. I can understand why you wouldn't want to use 627,000 as the "minimum" when the Vietnamese government's 2 million is the "maximum," but Guccisamsclub has written far more eloquently than I about the danger of combining multiple implausible "low" estimates to create a synthesized "minimum" that is actually an order of magnitude more implausible than any of the cited "low" estimates are individually. Clearly, we should tread carefully when broaching this sensitive topic; if you wish to pursue WP:BOLD changes, I would recommend explaining your concerns on the talk page first.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:40, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

FWIW, Ed Moise has commented on the Hirschman et al study: "Charles Hirschman, Samuel Preston, and Vu Manh Loi, "Vietnamese Casualties during the American War: A New Estimate," Population and Development Review, 21:4 (December 1995), pp. 783-812. The estimate of 966,000 deaths (plus or minus 175,000) looked low to me, so I took a brief look at the article. The study was based on questioning 804 adults, half urban and half rural, in a few areas of Vietnam in 1991. People were asked whether their parents and siblings were still alive, and if not, when and how had they died. When extrapolating from these results, the authors do not appear to have made any effort to deal with problems such as (a) that asking people about their parents will give no data about members of the previous generation who were killed before they were able to have children, and (b) that the asking people about the fate of their siblings and parents will give no data about families that were wiped out in the war. Given this, the statement of the authors (p. 797) that "our estimates of mortality are likely to be biased downward" seems an understatement." 1. The BMJ , which was drawing on a considerably bigger sample sizes, said basically the same thing. Hirshman, together with Lewy represent the low extreme in the range of estimates. The range of 2-4 million is accepted by virtually everyone who has written on the topic recently, from Robert McNamara on down. This is a range that's backed by the WHO, Uppsala/PRIO and official Vietnamese figures. Given the length and intensity of the Vietnam War, this should not come as much of a shock. Well maybe not to the average person on the street in the US who thinks that the number of Vietnamese deaths was not far from the numbers of American deaths. So one million—with the range of civilian casualties it implies—is low. Stumnik's civilians ~200K appears to based on some kind of synthesis or selective reading: it is miles away from any estimates modern historians would defend in print. It also defies all common sense, IMO. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

The BMJ's study has garnered fierce criticism and I wouldn't call its very high estimate of 3.8 million particularly credible—especially since adding its figures (Table 2) for 1955-1964, 1965-1974, and 1975 yields only roughly 3 million. The BMJ's assumption that there were roughly as many deaths from 1955-1964 (1.3 million) as from 1965-1974 (1.7 million) flies in the face of all other evidence attesting to an enormous increase in the scale of the destruction following the beginning of overt U.S. involvement in 1965, and seems particularly odd when other sources estimate little more than 100,000 killed during the former period. Lewy's 1.3 million refers solely to the latter period, and is probably one of the more accurate figures available, despite the high uncertainty surrounding any estimate. Uppsala University's 2 million (Table 3) is also a reasonable approximation for all three periods combined, but I think the BMJ is the outlier for suggesting a toll twice as large as that.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:32, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I also find the BMJ/Uppsala estimates for the Guatemalan Civil War—20,000-33,000 killed—very interesting. As I've said before, no-one actually believes in the fabled 200,000.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:04, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Replied on my talk page. You're probably right that we should use the 20-62K. Guccisamsclub (talk) 15:04, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Be careful about your editing at articles under Discretionary Sanctions

You have been warned in the past about the Discretionary Sanctions that put special editing restrictions on articles about current U.S. politics. The article Political positions of Donald Trump is one such article. One of the DS restrictions is "All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion). If in doubt, don't make the edit." The material you added to the "Disabled Americans" section was reverted, and you added it a second time. That was a violation of these special restrictions. Don't add it again or you could be subjected to sanctions (i.e., blocked or banned). If you think this material should be included, discuss it at the talk page. --MelanieN (talk) 15:10, 5 November 2016 (UTC)