This is an old revision of this page, as edited by William M. Connolley (talk | contribs) at 19:19, 28 February 2009 (will this work?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Holding Pen

Secret trials considered harmful

Well, I've read the evidence: general impression is that this is revenge by DHMO's friends for his RFA failure. Why? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

And now I've read the judgement. And it seems to me that arbcomm has run itself off the rails. It would seem that they've got themselves infected by the bad blood from DHMO's RFA. So:

• Given the sanctions, which are more humiliating that restrictive, the case was clearly non-urgent.
• There is a good deal of interpretation and selective quoting in the evidence. I don't see any eveidence that OM was given any opportunity to respond, and that is bad (looking at OM's page, I think this response from arbcomm is revealing: when asked directly if OM was given the chance to respond, the reply is weaselly).
• I'm missing the result of the user RFC that obviously the arbcomm insisted on being gone through first. Could someone point me to it?
• Could all these people please get back to the job of deciding the cases validly put before them, most obviously the G33 and SV/etc ones

William M. Connolley (talk) 21:43, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, whatever the actual substance of the complaint: I'm deeply concerned about ArbCom (or unspecified parts of it) trawling through a years worth of contributions, selectively quoting parts that support a certain point of view, assemble all this into a large document, and without further input from the user in question or from the community issue an edict from above. And for good measure they (?) declare a priori that an appeal is possible, but will be moot. Well, maybe it's acceptable because, as we all know, the committee is infallible. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:46, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I admit, my prior opinion was that arbcomm is generally slow but usually got the right answer. In this case, I'm doubtful. BTW, I'm almost sure I had a run-in with OM once. Can anyone remember when/where? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:50, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

In case you have not yet noticed: This seems to be deeper. . --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:58, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Holy @#%$! I was wondering how all of them took leave of their senses at once. R. Baley (talk) 22:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

!?! That looks bad William M. Connolley (talk) 22:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Is this some sort of hallucination?????? WTF??? BTW, you did run into me, because you blocked someone in a manner that I felt unfair. When I found out you are/were one of the "good guys" on global warming, I had mixed feelings. Now, I feel safe that you're watching over the article, especially since Raymond Arritt is gone.OrangeMarlin 22:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

This whole notion of "good guys" and "bad guys" is a seriously poisonous and harmful way of seeing fellow contributors. It encourages the worst excesses and does not lend itself to reaching consensus with the dark side/evil ones/whatever. Orderinchaos 16:03, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I like to think that the people reverting vandalism might be considered "good", and the vandals "bad". Perhaps thats a bit too old-school, and you prefer a more nuanced approach? William M. Connolley (talk) 16:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm taking William's interpretation of good and bad editors. However, I consider NPOV vandals to be vandals too. Yes there is a nuance to all of this, and that's the problem. It's difficult.OrangeMarlin 16:20, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

So whats going on?

Most discussion is at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Orangemarlin and other matters, it seems.

Presumably someone will be along to sort out this car crash at some point. In the meantime I've been trying to see whats going on, and I've found...

• As we know, KL has repudiated FT2's postings . But rather suggests that secret proceedings were indeed going on.
• tB has "temporarily" blanked the page , which is nice, though not as good as "permanently"
• Jimbo has weighed in, saying basically "I haven't got a clue whats going on" . Later updated to the Arbitration Committee itself has done absolutely nothing here , which does rather suggest FT2 acting alone in acting, though doesn't address discussions.
• CM is cryptic turns on the interpretation of "formal" in "formal proceeding", a semantic point that is not vacuous
• JPG says its miscommunication and begs for patience but confirms the secret case
• FN thanks us for our patience as does Mv
• Jv appears to endorse FT2's version, adding the OM case to those recently closed and posting the result to ANI . How does Jv know this is the will of arbcomm? And interesting question, which I've just asked him, and which he is studiously ignoring.

Other arbs appear to be far too busy to deal with trivia of this type.

So its hard to know what *has* happened. But clearly its not just FT2 running amok, or the other arbs would say so. My best guess is that secret trials (discussions?) were indeed in progress and that they are too embarrassed to admit it; and that there is some frantic behind-the-scenes talking going on to try to get a story straight.

• CM . The statement is bizarre and is going to leave a lot of people (including me) unhappy. It looks like "it was a regrettable miscommunication, please don't ask any more questions" is going to be the line.

William M. Connolley (talk) 18:31, 29 June 2008 (UTC) & 20:30, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

What stuns me is how any arbitrator thought that allegations of uncivil behavior (however true) needed to be urgently addressed in a blatantly out-of-process manner while a case of full-bore socking by a repeat offender, resulting in high-profile articles being locked for weeks, was allowed to languish. Hopefully the committee realizes they cannot put the business of Arbitration on hold to focus solely on this drama, and will continue the voting. - Merzbow (talk) 03:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Yup, still baffled by that one William M. Connolley (talk) 21:30, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, it looks like the official line is it all ended happily ever after , nothing to see, move along here William M. Connolley (talk) 06:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

And FT2 is terribly busy

Hmm, so... it all ended happily ever after and everyone forgot about it? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:06, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I haven't forgotten. Who knows if it will happen again or is happening now. OrangeMarlin 21:52, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

FT2 is back secret activities. I can't believe it.OrangeMarlin 23:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Geogre-William M. Connolley

This arbitration case has closed and the full decision can be viewed by clicking the above link. Both Geogre (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) & yourself are indefinitely prohibited from taking any administrative action with respect to Giano II (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), or edit wars in which Giano II is an involved party.

Furthermore, please note that the temporary injunction in the case now ceases to be in effect.

Regards, Daniel (talk) 03:51, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Arbcomm at its worst: a feeble wimp-out and a waste of everyones time. But thanks for letting me know William M. Connolley (talk) 20:19, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Since I'm here: 2008-10-02 Block log); 23:08:48 . . Moreschi (Talk | contribs | block) unblocked "Giano II (Talk | contribs)" (c'mon, for Giano this was very mild, and we can't bully people with blocks into writing more kindly). Apparently is not incivil; and we have an explicit double-standard for G William M. Connolley (talk) 07:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Current

William M. Connolley was inducted into The Hall of The Greats

William - famous scientists is one area I have ignored, and one reason we likely have never crossed paths. I dedicated this photo of De Niro for all the work you do on this important area, one I am of no use to, but one where even I know what good work you do. --David Shankbone 02:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, thank you very kindly, and apologies for taking so long to respond. I'll have to live up to it now William M. Connolley (talk) 20:08, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

These dedications are for the totality of edits already made. You wouldn't need to make another contribution, and it would still be just as appropriate. Of course - keep editing; we need you! I wish I had something more suited to your area of work, but I thought De Niro was a good compliment. Who doesn't like De Niro? Happy New Year. --David Shankbone 20:10, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Well Clint would be my option... any way, good work!

Gipset (talk) 07:16, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

After returning from a wikibreak of a couple of years I've been having a look round some contributors whose work I used to admire and I'm pleased to see you're still going strong. So here's a barnstar for defending the absolutely crucial topic of climate change from the utter bullshit that gets hurled at it by Misplaced Pages's less informed souls. You are a huge asset to the project and you must have the patience of a saint. Keep up the good work! — Trilobite 03:57, 27 January 2009 (UTC====)

Thanks for the praise; and welcome back yourself William M. Connolley (talk) 11:16, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

The <div> tag and Cascading Style Sheets_tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets-Current-2009-02-03T06:39:00.000Z">

The <div> tag is part of the HTML standard, and in essence lets you group things logically in a HTML page. Since different user agents have different needs and treat the data differently (e.g. a screen reader for the visually impaired, a bot or a normal browser like Firefox) the rendering of elements and the logical structure has been separated into two different languages: HTML and CSS.

HTML is supposed to structure the document logically while CSS is used to change the visual appearance of a page. A website usually only has one or a few CSS documents (style sheets). Many HTML documents can then share the same style sheet, providing consistent formatting across the site.

The div element has two attributes, class and style, that are linked to the style sheet. The class attribute determines what "class" the element belong to. It is then possible to define a default style for elements of this class in the style sheet .

The style element is what's most interesting here though, it lets you override the default style of an element. So the part within the style="" is actually CSS.

W3C (website) is in charge of the CSS standard and it can be found on their website. Unfortunately, the dominating browser sets the de facto standard so things might not work as expected or even be implemented yet.

The W3C specifications aren't particularly good for learning but they are good as a reference. What you are looking for is probably: .

If you search the webb for CSS you will find countless examples and tutorials. Quick Googling turned up this for example: .

I took the liberty to modify your div tags on this page as an example, feel free to modify and revert as you like. I hope this is somewhat helpful at least. :)
—Apis (talk) 06:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)_tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets"> _tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets">

Thanks! William M. Connolley (talk) 20:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Current noise on Global warming

It's very true that there has been a huge amount of editing lately on Global warming, and we all know why. I tried to shunt the editing storm off to my Sandbox, but that wasn't creating a consensus. I've tried to convince people to edit first at the most specific articles, and then move to the section on global warming, and then to the lead, but that's not working all that well either. So now I've decided to jump on board and try to use the agitation to simplify (instead of continually complicating) the article. Actually, Short Brigade Harvester Boris and Atmoz started first to use the current agitation to simplify the article, and it seemed like a good thing to jump on board with. The reason I'm posting here on your talk page is to explain my revert of your edit. The article really does get clogged up with he said/she said (here is an edit of mine where I tried to minimize some of it) and the occasional spring cleaning of the article is probably a good idea.

In related news, I'm starting to get less friendly and quite a bit more testy in editing that article: I think I'm starting to understand some of your attitude about editing there. I'm mostly there just because I like trying to diffuse tension, and if I can't get back to being unrelentingly friendly, I'll stop editing there. - Enuja (talk) 22:35, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, well I don't agree with your revert, and I'll explain it on the talk page. Simplify yes, that bit... not yet at the very least William M. Connolley (talk) 23:15, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Antisemitic incidents

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		Even though it's been restored, we really need people to be more proactive in deleting NPOV-violating material. Thank you for restoring a little bit of my faith. Sceptre 00:02, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you William M. Connolley (talk) 08:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Re: Balkan sanctions

Re: . Thanks for the response. I will recuse myself if the following does not change your mind.

User:Aradic-es's disruptive editing started here at Novak Djokovic, in the midst of the move request. The discussion there is longer and older, but overtures were made at both pages (Marko Djokovic) to discuss rather than war. I thought it was clear from either page that Aradic-es was making controversial edits, whereas I was reverting them until compelling reasons were presented for their inclusion. Following the closure of the move request, Aradic-es continued the naming dispute along this avenue, making edits without consensus clearly for the sake of provocation. I believe I had consensus to maintain the template header, as it fell underneath the banner of the move request, which was closed and resolved.

Whatever you decide, I find it disheartening to find myself on a blacklist meant for Macedonian nationalists. I edit tennis articles. Until you pasted the link on my talk page, I had no idea either player was related to Macedonia. My edits were done in good faith to clean up both articles after disruptive and WP:POINT-related edits -- presumably the very things that Macedonian project was meant to curb. Being lumped in with them is a little chafing. --Yano (talk) 23:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The edit you point to looks very much like a nationalistic-dispute type one to me. The Balkan sanctions are to address Balkan articles, recognising that fierce edit wars often occur there. Like it or not, you are in one (or were). Whether you care about the national aspects doesn't really matter. You are not really on a blacklist - your edits to other articles are unaffected. If you don't especially care about this article, then take it off your watchlist. Once again, I can only give the std.answer always given to people who assert consensus: if you are correct, then you don't need to revert, because other people will do it for you. Please address this point in any reply William M. Connolley (talk) 08:27, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi William! As you have proven here User:Yano is accusing me for the same thing he is doing himself. Deleting his native name form(s) is that what is disruptive and therefore-vandalism! Stalin has 3 name forms (Georgian , Russian and transliterrated English) in the infobox title then I don't understand why Đoković Brothers should not have??--Añtó| Àntó (talk) 09:49, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

"vandalism" under WP:3RR has a very restricted meaning; these edits are very clearly not vandalism for these purposes. I rather doubt that they are for any other purposes, and I don't think you will help yourself by calling them such William M. Connolley (talk) 11:28, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not plan to edit Marko Djokovic or make any further appeals, but thank you for the responses. Following this latest development, I can see that discussion is impossible. --Yano (talk) 00:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

My edit here reverted by William is no less polite then of some other users about Fooland and foolandish —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aradic-es (talk • contribs) 08:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I could (like) many other users not to fullfill my user page at all (or at least the babel) then I could pretend to be some AMJohnson from middle of nowhere . iguess mylife here would be much easier. --Añtó| Àntó (talk) 08:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Yes, I'm pretty sure it is an attack on me as his first actions were to vandalize my userpage twice. I also believe he is a sockpuppet for a user who has used a variety of accounts to make several edits to the Akron, Ohio article. I think he means well, but pays little attention to Misplaced Pages policies (or misunderstands them), plus most of his edits are poorly written and unsourced (not sure if English is his first language). When other editors try to fix the problems, he usually reverts the edits. Sometimes he'll do what we asked, but it seems he has taken ownership of that article. User:Stepshep has also had problems with him/her. As for the article, if it's poorly written and unsourced, feel free to edit or remove it, not matter how much you know about Akron. The article is full of excess info and tangential subjects. The more experienced editors we can get on that page, the better because it's in terrible shape. --JonRidinger (talk) 23:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I've indef'd him on username grounds; we'll see what developes William M. Connolley (talk) 08:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Guidance

Ok, so I've been warned for edit warring. Here were the exact stages. One, I contributed a valid, reliably sourced edit. Two, User X undid it as not notable. The info is from the New York times and MSNBC and has relevance to US national policies, so I disagreed. I reverted it and requested discussion on the talk page. Then, without regard to my request for discussion User Y undid my edit with zero comments.

What was my appropriate next step? Is user Y not edit warring? Manyanswer (talk) 01:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I recommend WP:1RR. Please remember that being right is not enough. If you are putting an edit in, and multiple people are taking it out, then you have no choice but to go to the talk page and discuss it. Ultimately, if you can't convince people, you'll have to give up on that edit, no matter how right you might be. But you should also consider the possibility that you are wrong; or that although technically correct it doesn't belong William M. Connolley (talk) 08:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I guess it's not clear and there is no policy on this - that the information should come out prior to resolution of discussion. Burden was thrown, but clearly calls for sources, not notability. I had two major sources. It seemed to me that I was acting in good faith and started a discussion, and it was frustrating to have the second revert come from someone who wasn't even participating in the discussion. Manyanswer (talk) 13:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Fan Mail

I ran across your profile randomly about a week or two ago and asked for some help. You've been busy (as I can obviously see since I have your page on watch) and weren't able to give any guidance which I totally understand. I just wanted to say that I think you recieve a lot of flack that you don't deserve. I think I might have tapped out a while ago had I been in your situation but your resilience is obvious. I know you attempt to help users who don't seem to understand the policies of wiki to no avail and I want you to know that I'm ready for any you might have to give a new member when you're free. I feel like a kiss ass now so I better call you a dirty name or something so... you're a <insert dirty word>. Keep up the good work. OlYeller 05:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Reviving Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/Fluid dynamics

Crownest has expressed interest in reviving this. Since you were a member of the FD project (now converted into a taskforce), I'm wondering if you'd be a part of the Taskforce. The taskforce is undergoing a significant overhaul at the moment, and by the end of it, it should be fairly easy to get around and there should be a nifty compendium of useful tools for people interested in FD. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

In principle, I can help in small ways, though no longer being professionally involved. I wonder if there is an embedded prog taskforce? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

block review

I'm a bit confused by your assertion that Histopher Critchens and User talk:Wikipedius Reparo are the same user. Both seem to have been revert-warring at Syrian Social Nationalist Party, but they seem to be on opposite sides. See for instance: WR readds a passage that HC later removes, and HC changes "thugs" to "members" after WR changed "members" to "thugs". Are you sure about this? Mangojuice 21:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I'm certainly not sure. I'll have another look William M. Connolley (talk) 21:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, still not sure. My guess was based on begin done by both. W is without a doubt *someone's* sock; check his contribs ; real anons don't turn up and post to AIV less than an hour later William M. Connolley (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

To be more explicit: I'm not going to unblock now. But if you want to go ahead and investigate and unblock, I won't object William M. Connolley (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

CH's contribs are suspicious too: they begin too abruptly William M. Connolley (talk) 21:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

QI

I don't know if you watch QI but the episode last night on cockney slang was interesting. Did you know why people who dislike the US are called "listerines"? Apparently an American is known as a septic (Septic tank<>Yank) so an anti-septic is someone who doesn't like septics. I wondered if your comments on global warming septics were written in knowledge of septic=american? --BozMo talk 08:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Thats quite funny, though I'd never heard it before. I was explaining to my son about Richards last night :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 08:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

WWIIOL Edit War

Could you please ask Datenschleuder to refrain from undoing every edit he deems unfavorable to his favorite video game until after mediation has run its course? It's getting rediculous.MrSpammy (talk) 01:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear. You poor people are so innocent that you don't even know how to edit war properly - you don't have to undo the edits one-by-one, you can do that en bloc. Otherwise, I've replied on the article talk page. Also, consider WP:DR William M. Connolley (talk) 19:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Jyotirao Phule - Vandalism/Edit War

The article on Jyotirao Phule is being subjected to edit war or vandalism by the IP user 136.159.248.217.

All requests to engage him in discussion for building consensus have so far fallen on deaf ears since last 2 weeks. You can review the article revision history here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/Mahatma_Jyotirao_Phule

You can also view the discussion page here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Jyotirao_Phule&action=history

What would you recommend to prevent this edit war or vandalism? I hate to use the word vandalism but if an editor refuses to engage in discussion despite requests, any other conclusion does not seem to be justified, imho.--Internet Scholar (talk) 19:00, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I've just had a look. I'm sorry to have to tell you that the level of dispute there seems so low that it's not clear to me why admin intervention is required. I could consider semi-protecting it, but you'll need to make a better case William M. Connolley (talk) 19:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC)