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:: Sam, you're not helping here. It's not a matter of my feelings, it's about your gross, unprovoked and unwarranted personal attack. --] 14:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
:: Sam, you're not helping here. It's not a matter of my feelings, it's about your gross, unprovoked and unwarranted personal attack. --] 14:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
:::Tony, perhaps you should take a break. You're starting to in . You state twice that you have no issues with rude, arrogant behavior, but as soon as someone does likewise to you, you take offense. ] (]) 15:12, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I am user jackbirdsong, and recently i stumbled my way into attempting at a more concise and readable article under the heading of socialism. All was well until a user, apparently a recurring problem, completely edited the article into a holy mess. I noticed you blocked (i'm guessing suspended?) that user, and i wanted to express my thanks for that, along with my hope that you will help me to keep an eye on the page, as i am inexperienced in the ways of wikipedia. Thanks again. --Jackbirdsong00:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
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Hallo Samuel
For the first time now I contributed to two articles:
"Iman Wilkens" and "Where troy once stood". Would you check them to see if the're allright and as English is not my native language could you check on that as well?
Iman Wilkens looks ok, though it had some basic style errors which I've tried to correct - pages should not start with sections, only the use of the article title in the lead section should be bolded, references and external links get their own sections, and with people, their categories need to be 'sorted' so they appear under the letter of their surname, not their forname. You can see what I've changed here. Don't worry - the Misplaced Pages Manual of Style is massive, and best learnt on the go. I've never read any of it. I also expanded your reference - you don't need all the information that I put in there, but there definitely should be an ISBN number or equivalent for any books cited, so readers can go and find the book for themselves.
Where Troy Once Stood, I'm sorry to say, isn't a good encyclopaedia article at the moment, as it suffers from two core problems - verification and neutrality. With verification, I'm talking about sentences like "ridiculed by experts and reviewers" - what experts and reviewers? "On the other hand his books are high on the most-wanted-books list and are sold second hand for high sums of money" - what list, sez who? These are good claims of notability, but must be backed up or they mean nothing. The article should cite print or web articles to back up the claims, e.g. print or references to the reviews that have been ridiculing the book. An example of the citation style to use is in Iman Wilkens, and you can find instructions on how to use at m:Cite.php.
As regards neutrality, it accepts unquestionably that the claims in the book are true: "the false assumption", "in this book it is made clear", etc. Encyclopaedias have to be written from a neutral point of view, and this isn't. While it's perfectly acceptable for an encyclopaedia to repeat an author's claims and how he came to that conclusion, it can't say that they're absolutely true, especially with an idiosyncratic view such as this book's. They can be covered adequately while still not taking sides. It doesn't need too much work to correct it - for instance my first example can be made acceptably neutral just by removing the word 'false'.
I hope that helps and that you can try to correct some of the problems with the second article - if you don't someone else will, and it may not be as much to your liking as if you did it. --Sam Blanning09:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments. I've edited both articles, improving on verification and neutrality but I think that stylewise Where Troy Once Stood needs some more adjusting, which I'll do in time.--Antiphus18:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree strongly with your reverting my edit. There is a dispute, the entry I made was as neutral as I knew how to make it, with links to both Misplaced Pages:NotabilityandMisplaced Pages:Non-notability, not just the former. Your comment that "notability is still an accepted reason" is untrue. While accepted by some, it is by no means accepted by all, which is the point of the dispute. I'd like you to take the initiative to revert to the earlier edit; I'm not interested in starting an edit war.—Chidom21:13, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
The idea that Misplaced Pages should not have any notability criteria is on the fringes, being generally agreed to violate WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information, as well as making WP:V and WP:NPOV in vanity articles impossible to maintain if it ever happened. Your edit made the length of the paragraph in question twice the length of any of the other paragraphs, and is an example of m:instruction creep. On this page in particular, the fringe dispute is not worth going into, just as we don't mention in the paragraph two steps above that the use of bolded 'keep' or 'delete' is condemned by some editors as a violation of 'AfD is not a vote'. Editors reading this page aren't looking for the ins and outs of the various debates surrounding deletion - they want to know how to participate, and the root page of WP:AFD should tell them that and only that. Anyone who wants to know about the arguments surrounding notability will find them at Misplaced Pages talk:Notability and other forums. I'm not reverting. --Sam Blanning21:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I re-edited the paragraphs with an explanation as to why on the Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for Deletion page; I've tried to present a more balanced view. I still (obviously) disagree with a blanket statement that notability is a good argument; however, I have not said (nor does my edit say) that Misplaced Pages should not have any notability criteria. I'm also not sure that having a paragraph be longer or shorter than others is a good qualification for its inclusion or deletion. I'm not known for my brevity, however, so if you can come up with a balanced presentation with fewer words, that would be great. —Chidom03:12, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I was interested in the comment you left on Kelly Martin's talk page. Can I solicit your participation in the discussion on the RfA's talk page? --Guinnog12:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't using reverse psychology to get the admins to do what I want; I was making a statement about the futility of reporting anything. For too long I've seen admins do absolutely nothing about repeat vandals (always claiming "they haven't done enough yet, so it's not worth doing anything about them", causing me to have to report them 3 more times to get anything done) and even less about the ones who are trying to destroy the neutrality of Ayn Rand related articles. It took over a year just to get one of the people who was making biased edits banned, and he wasn't even the worst offender (Laszlo, the actual worst offender, is still allowed to continue his vandalism). There's no reverse psychology in stating this; there's only the truth about Misplaced Pages's weaknesses being pointed out. -- LGagnon04:03, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
There's very little point in trying to make a statement at WP:AIV, because it will be removed as soon as it is recognised as being in the wrong place. --Sam Blanning14:40, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
As per norm?
What dose it mean on a request for deletion when a user writes as per norm? I have never seen It fully explained and seams to be a way of sombody registering a delete (usually) against a page without proper explanation. So plaese can you expalian to me what as per norm means?--Lucy-marie20:29, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I think you mean "nom" rather than "norm" - it's an abbreviation for "Per nominator". So it's a valid explanation as long as the nominator had a good reason in the first place. --Sam Blanning22:02, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I'll make a full reply on the Misplaced Pages talk page when I have more time, but I can tell you now that I don't like the idea. The main problem is that if you block 26 users who at any point reach the threshhold, then you're vulnerable. Anyone monitoring WP:AN/3RR or WP:AN/AE would very quickly be subject to pissed-off users calling for blood. "Users in good standing" means nothing. --Sam Blanning09:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I've commented on WT:RECALL. You probably won't believe me when I say that before I set fingers to keys, I was wondering whether I was going to think of anything more to say than the above paragraph :-) --Sam Blanning23:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm Free-Encyclopedia. You might remember me because recently you pointed out to me that my username had been complained about by another Misplaced Pages user. Anyway, I created the article 'Inkdeath,' about the upcoming Cornelia Funke book. However, that was the working title. The recently released official title is 'Inkdawn.' I want to know how to change the title of the article without changing the content. I would appreciate if you could do it this time. But I would like to know how to change the title of the article, so I can do it in the future. Because since I started writing this entry, P. Diddy has officially changed his name three times. Please reply as soon as possible, please.Free-encyclopedia02:27, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Done. All you have to do is click the 'move' button at the the top of every page. Incidentally, where did you hear that the title was being changed? I found some forum chatter on Google but no 'official' announcement. With things like this it's a good idea to cite your source in the article if possible. --Sam Blanning09:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
According to the 'Inkspell' page. It says the title was changed there. In an interview a few months back, Funke said the working title of her book was 'Inkdeath.' So I checked the 'Inkspell' page out of curiousity, and I found the title was different. To double check, Funke said so herself on her website. The German portion of the website; I would assume she makes the same announcement on the English part. January 2008. It says sometime in 2007 on the 'Inkspell' page, but I didn't feel like changing it.Free-encyclopedia21:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I see - when I did my Google search I was searching for the English titles, not the German ones. By the way, when you post a reply please edit the current section of the talk page rather than starting a new one - just click 'edit' next to the header. --Sam Blanning22:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
We usually try to assume that warnings will do some good. With this user, the instant block was reasonable, but personally I would have given an 'only warning' along the lines of {{test4im}} first. They do work - often a user will indeed know perfectly well what he is doing but will stop once threatened with blocking. They're also almost always required before blocking if the vandalism is coming from an IP address and not an account (to avoid collateral damage).
Also, you might want to consider changing your username if you're going to be helping with problem users. It's quite confrontational in that sort of context. --Sam Blanning01:15, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Fred Bauder already blocked him as a sockpuppet of General Tojo - I've changed the sockpuppet tag and rolled back the rest of his edits. May have caught some good ones as I did, but if there were any that raised an article to FA quality, I'll eat my hat. Certainly I'm not leaving allegations of paedophilia in bios of living people for the sake of some spelling changes. --Sam Blanning12:31, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
As an administrator, I expected you to actually READ my arguments and discuss and debate them with me. Did you do that? No, you went and said "OMG, Look at all the Wikinuubs, lol!", and then completely disregarded all of my comments. As an administrator, I expected you to be above that; apparently I was wrong. I no longer believe that you are administrator material, and will most likely appeal my case. Ameise -- chat03:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Unless, of course, you can give me a reason as to why you completely disregarded mine and several other people's arguments.Ameise -- chat04:08, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Deletion review reviews process, not content, as I already said. I read the comments (though as I said, I sympathise if others don't bother) and none were compelling enough to justify another AfD. --Sam Blanning12:24, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Besides the facts that exactly 4 people voted, no one was notified that an AfD was in process while we were loaded down in development of the software, and that the same 4 people that voted to delete it also are the ones who continually try to keep information about it off of the Star Wars Galaxies article?Ameise -- chat16:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Why should any of that be a reason to overturn? Article subjects don't decide whether their articles are kept on Misplaced Pages, and I would consider it pretty obvious that if you consider something not worth mentioning in the most directly related article then it doesn't merit its own article. By appearing to say "We weren't told and we were busy so we should be allowed another chance to stuff the ballot" you practically make the case against relisting yourself. --Sam Blanning16:11, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Who was going to stuff it? I -never- told anyone to register to stuff a ballot, I was referring to myself and the other main article editor; unless you are accusing me of being an SPA. For that matter, when did I -ever- say that I considered it not worth mentioning in the most directly related article; if you actually had read what I had just said, I stated that the ones who voted to delete the article were also the ones who deleted all information about it IN that article. Please read what I say in the future.Ameise -- chat20:04, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Thank you!
Thanks for updating the DYKes, not to mention using another one of my suggestions and a beautiful photo by Egil Kvaleberg! It's so good to finally see the "European" update taking place! I don't know whether you updated the DYK seeing my comments in the admin notice board, but I am still wondering about the "recent articles" archive the template links to - they are neither recent nor do they contain an archive of DYKes, as those are archived at the bottom of the DYK template talk page. Is that like it should work? Bravada, talk - 16:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I did see the notice, thanks for that. I think we may be alright for the moment, as there's currently enough items that two updates a day will probably include all of the eligible items - when there are ten or twelve items in one daily section it starts to look daunting, but two updates will take care of all them, and that's assuming they're all eligible. Best to leave the notice up just in case, though.
Samuel Blanning, thanks for signing up for the Esperanza User Page Contest. The judges have received the fifteen entries, and are ready to start judging. The judges will take a week to complete the judging process, and they will contact all the participants when the judging is done.
Both. The article was recreated three times by its subject, User:Richardbooth. Once in June, and three months later it was deleted after an Articles for deletion discussion. He then recreated it in December, despite having participated in the previous discussion, and it was deleted immediately as a recreation. He then recreated it again in March, which spawned another AfD discussion, where no-one appeared to notice the previous deletions (and Booth certainly didn't acknowledge them, despite being aware of at least the first nomination). I closed that discussion, and closed as 'delete' for the reasons you can find at the top of that page, which included its repeated recreation by the subject. I then protected it to prevent further recreations, as there seems little doubt that Booth would have recreated the article after a couple of months after the AfD as he did before.
For future reference, when an admin protects or deletes a page he should leave a reason in the page's log. You can find that here, or by going to the page, clicking 'history' and clicking 'View logs for this page', which contains links to both deletion discussions (I screwed one of them up but you can still copy and paste it into the search or URL field). Hope that helps. --Sam Blanning13:18, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
someone messing with an article
Hallo Samuel
Someone made me aware of a grammatical mistake I had made in my Iman Wilkens article which I welcome of course but he did it in a manner I really dislike. (He put a very funny? line in the article about Troy being located at the "Four Went Ways"). I thanked him for his lecture and asked him to repair the article and I suppose I'll give him the opportunity to do so but isn't this a form of vandalism?
Regards
Antiphus19:03, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
His edits seem good faith to me. Grammar correction certainly isn't vandalism, and while inserting incorrect information is vandalism if done deliberately, if it's done accidentally in good faith then it's just a content dispute matter.
He says on his talk page that he read it in news reports, so you should feel empowered to ask him for a citation to a specific report. Otherwise, feel free to remove that bit of the article as unverified, especially if the book doesn't actually mention it (but don't do a wholesale revert unless you feel his grammar edits were all wrong as well). It's possible that someone read the book and deduced that the area Wilkens claims as Troy now contains a service station. I did a search for "four went ways" and "troy" on Factiva and found nothing, myself. --Sam Blanning19:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
You were right; there was no cause for my distrust. He agreed that I'd re-edit the line he contributed and this improved the article.
Best Wishes Antiphus21:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Brand X vandal
Hey Samuel,
Just noticed that you banned the IP address of the Brand X vandal (User:82.35.114.39) that I mentioned on User:Elkman's page. Just wanted to thank you, as I spend a good hour each day just reverting this guy's edits (I've nominated about 2-3 pages he's made for AfD). I appreciate the quick action on this.
Yep, just noticed and began to revert some edits. I've reported it on the vandalism in process page. This guy needs a hobby. --Ataricodfish20:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Blocked, thanks. One thing I would recommend is to stop leaving him messages on his talk page, it only encourages them. Just list them at WP:AIV and say 'sockpuppet of User:Kenwood 3000, please block immediately without warning'. --Sam Blanning10:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
It's not the format I'm worried about. (If this is something to do whether you think the order implies importance, you've still got admins first by Western reading standards.) Its existence implies that it matters how many non-admins support the proposal compared with admins, which it doesn't. As they're equal at the moment it's a bit moot, but if there was a significant difference (or even a difference of more than 2 or 3), it would plant the seeds of a pointless "OMG admins don't want to be accountable" vs "OMG non-admins are a lynch mob" argument. --Sam Blanning22:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
That wasn't my intention, I jsut wanted to get some stats. Not imply this or that. But if you're uncomfortable with it, I'll leave it off. But I'll recall you later!!!!! ;-) Karwynn(talk)22:44, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree it's an interesting statistic, but I think those who are interested should count it themselves (it's not exactly burdensome, it just takes three minutes with Special:Listusers). The prominent display of it and the apparent obligation to update it is a problem, in my opinion. --Sam Blanning22:47, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
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Perhaps at some point you'll realise that the way you presumably feel now is how others feel when you show such utter disrespect to them. I doubt it, but I'm certainly not going to moderate my manner of speech for the sake of your feelings. --Sam Blanning13:27, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
There is a saying that when you wrestle in the mud with a pig, you both end up dirty but the pig enjoys it. Do you want a list of diffs where I have been incivil to Tony? I mean really incivil, not his hyper-sensitive-only-when-it-comes-to-himself version. It does no good. - brenneman13:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Sam, you're not helping here. It's not a matter of my feelings, it's about your gross, unprovoked and unwarranted personal attack. --Tony Sidaway14:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Tony, perhaps you should take a break. You're starting to argue in circles. You state twice that you have no issues with rude, arrogant behavior, but as soon as someone does likewise to you, you take offense. rootology (T) 15:12, 15 August 2006 (UTC)