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Wikipedia Must Be The Saddest Place on Earth
I have had EEng's talk and userpage on my Watchlist for two months because they are the most fun places on Wikipedia.
FDA Warning: Pagescrolling-related unilateral musculoskeletal asymmetry
My friend told me that the best way to get a man would be to impress him with my ability to crush a can so forcefully that the contents shoot out, fly up in the air and land in my mouth, so every morning I do yoga, swim and then come here for 40 mins scrolling to the bottom of EEng's talk page; my right forearm looks like Popeye's now and it's done wonders for my love life.
Sections were archived, one by one, like tears falling, but saved forever. – Levivich[5]
(a/o February 2, 2016: 131 stalkers, 81/89 "active" [6])
a. Stalkers caught on camera; b. Why was the gardener unhappy?Wikipedians with red lynx cats on their user pageAnd now, without further ado.. Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you... EEng's talk page!
Have you ever been shocked near a swimming pool when you touched a metal fixture, or even in your home, when you touched the showerhead fixture? And for dairy farmers, have you noticed a reduction in milk production?
You recently teased some trivia questions about MIT in this thread at ANI. I tried using Google, but Mr. Google and I have a love/hate relationship and he offered no assistance (maybe he's tired of being used and tossed aside). Will we ever find out what the answers are now that the thread has been closed? Or will I have another sleepless night wondering why Mr. Google refuses to answer my questions?—Isaidnoway(talk)21:26, 30 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Surely you don't imagine I'd pose a shibboleth you can look up on Google. I'd like to give him a day or two to show off his knowledge [7] before I open the secret envelope. For some reason these poseurs often think they can get away with an MIT imposture (this one was a "professor in the MIT system, with a JD in IP and a PhD in molecular biology and supercomputing" who had "armies of grad students and PhD candidates who work in my labs" – "I'm a computer lawyer" seems to be a common fantasy) but rarely, for some reason, Harvard. You can always tell a Harvard man, I guess. EEng05:54, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As a very young man (after high school but before college), I worked at Kaiser Hospital on Geary Boulevard, where they were digging up Gold Rush era graves during relentless medical center expansions. Mind you, I was not there during the actual Gold Rush. But they needed to create a special city, Colma, California, to accommodate all of the exhumed graves. Cullen328Let's discuss it08:04, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes indeed. Colma has 1800 living residents and 1.5 million dead; the town's (unofficial?) motto is "It's great to be alive in Colma!" For the full story see the source cited here [8], and there's a nice map of the four cemeteries that used to surround Lone Mountain here [9]; Gage was buried in "Laurel Hill Cemetery" (which was itself called simply "Lone Mountain Cemetery" until its name was changed in the mid-1860s). EEng18:27, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(1) Immediately as you leave MIT for Harvard there's a sign that famously provides an unintentional pun when seen from just the right vantage. What is it? Answer: The metropolitan storage warehouse — fire proof next to the railroad tracks, which if you stand in the right place reads rage warehouse — ire proof.
(2) According to tradition, one MIT president had some famous last words. What were they? Answer: "Bituminous coal", according to legend the last words of MIT founder William Barton Rogers before he dropped dead on the commencement dais. See [10].
(3) What MIT library makes you go around in circles? Answer: Barker Library, inside the Great Dome; see the map here [11].
(4) What was kept overnight in a car trunk during the Apollo 13 emergency? Answer: MIT's copy of the Apollo guidance system's gyros, to verify their performance at very low temperatures. Search "trunk" in [12]. (If you like that sort of thing at all then this book [13] is outstanding.)
(5) What's long as hell, has threads from five years ago on it, and would be trivially easy to archive, despite its owner refusing to do so for no apparent reason? jp×g🗯️06:40, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In all honestly the unfortunate background meaning did occur to me as I typed, but I was too lazy to backspace. EEng22:37, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I was hoping you might consider some form of organized classification system in the Museum - easy to remember key word searches at the top of the page, and possibly use anchors? Just a thought. I was wondering what section I might look to find a situation where someone is ridiculing another for making a mistake but then makes a bigger mistake when correcting it. Atsme✍🏻📧00:31, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you're looking for WP:ONEGOODGOOFDESERVESANOTHER. As for a classification system, you mean like the Library of Congress system, something like
Nothing complex. Just easy to remember keywords - example above would have keywords like errors, mistakes, blunders, humiliation, ridicule, etc. The keywords would fit in the 1st line under the section title. That would allow for a "find" operation. Atsme✍🏻📧01:17, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I hadn't realize this page was such a resource for others. Well, let's think about it. BTW you'll see some anchors if you open in edit mode. EEng01:27, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I confused what you guys talking about? Subliminal metaphor about a wikipedia topic. Atsme approached argument different than I did. More than one way to get the right answer. Brian Everlasting (talk) 22:26, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Scrolling through your talk page discussions, I was wondering why has everyone left only section headings on your talk page – and then I realised that was just the toc :D Has anyone asked you ever to consider archiving your table of contents because they took a long time scrolling to the bott? (No, I'm not asking you to do that) :D Lourdes01:25, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
One time I accidentally clicked on EEng's talk page on my mobile. Luckily I was able to throw the phone a safe distance before it exploded. Levivich02:02, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I'm Liz. I noticed that you made a comment on the page Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style that didn't seem very civil. Wikipedia is built on collaboration, so it's one of our core principles to interact with one another in a polite and respectful manner. If you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. This feuding between you and Fae has to stop tonight before it goes too far. Please refrain from responding to bait.LizRead!Talk!04:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if you are aware of this, because there are only three separate notification sections above and you might not have noticed them all, but it seems that some people want to notify you about something that I'm sure might have been important but the thread has already closed. Maybe it was on AN, or ANI, or one of those places. Anyway, consider yourself notified of the notifications. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:20, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ivanvector - the source you cited is also an excellent example for Streisand effect per: @DevinCow has jumped from having around 1,000 followers when the suit was filed to over 134,000 since the time of this writing.AtsmeTalk📧14:36, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Dude, I crossed the edge years ago. If you're only getting to the edge now, you've got some catching up to do. --Jayron3214:22, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(Buttinsky) I just read "kills my 2.4G" and it reminded me that I forgot to share this link with you, EEng - it's the companion to "clean underwear" in the Museum of I Shouldn't Laugh but I Did.AtsmeTalk📧21:19, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me there's a good pun on usurpers in there somewhere, but it's just not coming. Below is the best I could do. EEng12:48, 9 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for posting the ANI message first and this message second. It would have been better form to do it the other way around. Haukur (talk) 18:50, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have lifted the block as per the ANI thread. Looks like you were right that this would not fly and I apologize. Haukur (talk) 18:56, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But don't forget to send a photo for the wall of my trophy room.
Apology accepted, and you are to be commended for not digging in your heels. I will be commenting gently (relatively gently, anyway) at ANI in a bit. EEng19:10, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Remember how much fun you had playing with blocks as a kid? Now that you're a mature an adult, you can collect blocks with adult letters, and they're not only stackable, they're collectable. How many more to equal the height of the Empire State Bldg? AtsmeTalk📧20:13, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For your continued and apt use of Monty Python sketches in a wide array of discussions, wherein such sketches diffuse the general tension, and provide to the assembled members of the Wiki-pedia a quaint and pleasant respite from their toils, you are hereby recognized as, if nay promoted to, a third level Python Procurer. Captain EekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓22:22, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Did you know .... that the programming languagePython frequently makes use of example variable names "spam" and "eggs"; indeed our article on Python syntax and semantics refers to "For example, in the sample below, viking_chorus might cause menu_item to be run 8 times for each time it is called:" I wonder if you encounter a run-time error, are you cast into the gorge of eternal peril? Ritchie333(talk)(cont)18:00, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You kind words fill me with joy. To openly plagiarize Tom Lehrer, while at the same time partially changing his words without making clear where or how:
“
If after reading one of my jokes or seeing one of my lame visual puns just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.
Which one? I've been unkind to so many people lately. However, if you mean this [22] it sounds like you've already figured out [23] that I was parodying the unkindness of someone else. EEng13:09, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
EEng, lol...actually, you seem in general like a very kind person. :) Yes, I know you were reflecting back what someone else was putting out there, only with humor, and I certainly understood the impulse. I just this morning rewrote or deleted multiple responses to the thread. :) --valereee (talk) 13:26, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Then what was the unkind remark you want me to strike? Or perhaps you meant there's some unkind person you want me to strike? I'm rarely violent but for you I'd do it, and right now there are several people I'd be inclined to strike anyway. EEng14:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why we are dancing on the head of a pin with this; EEng, strike the belittling remark to do with RexxS's RfA and in your edit summary, apologise. Also, quit with the violence jokes. Aside from the jovial air in which you are doing this, Valereee, I do appreciate your efforts to finish someone else's dirty work. CassiantoTalk14:21, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
RexxS is exhibiting precisely the poor temperament that participants at his RfA were concerned about, and when Valereee explained how confusing a certain template's usage was he called her "inept" (and not in a joking way) so I stand by my post. And your affected hand-wringing about "violence jokes" strikes me as a low blow. Maybe sleep deprivation has made you punchy? Don't be so pugnacious. Let's all just knuckle down and get back to editing. I could give you a backhanded compliment if you want. EEng15:19, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I just... can't stop staring at the pageview graph of Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators. So many questions come to mind. and also that picture should garner more accolades imo --Mvbaron (talk) 14:53, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Is the picture at right depicting such a dilator? It seems somewhat... aggressive, and I'm worried about the purpose of the serrated-teeth structures of the lower part. --A D Monroe III(talk)01:44, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I'd always assumed AmEng was used in MOS, simply because it was the first to appear when the page was initially under construction. Tony(talk)05:18, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
But you see, MOS (and therefore MOS:ARTCON) doesn't apply to MOS, indeed doesn't apply to anything outside article space. (Exception: ACCESSIBILITY, though nominally a MOS subpage, applies everywhere.) It's probably a good idea that each individual essay or policy be self-consistent, but MOS is so sprawling that's probably impossible anyway, and its internal variety is a fun reminder of the Wikipedia salad bowl. EEng13:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Is it me, or does "Engvar and Mos" sound like an early 20th century detective drama series? "I say, Engvar old chap, bit of a sticky wicket over here." "Yes, I can see what happened there Mos, bit of a top-ho there." Ritchie333(talk)(cont)15:04, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Its penetrating investigations are complemented by in-depth reporting. Harvard's catalog adds candidly – AND I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP – Frequency note: Irregular[26]. EEng14:25, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That's "should HAVE used the {{FBDB}} template", you illiterate.[FBDB]EEng22:56, 18 July 2020 (UTC) And stop calling me illiterate. My mom and dad have been married for 75 years![reply]
I figured it might be a heavily overused joke that everyone got really sick of or something. While I figured it had to be a joke, I wasn't 100% sure.. So you got me. Of course I may get you back some day. - Alexis Jazz04:21, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to thank you for bringing a civil and engaging comment in the article's talk page. At least you read something about Pedro II, instead of basing yourself in guesswork or a simple dislike about something in the text. That's refreshing. I might have a couple of issues with your opinion, but they have a foundation. --Lecen (talk) 00:35, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Asking about your recent edit here. What makes this a "shock statistic", other than that some may be shocked to learn that it is a statistic? How would you like it to be contextualized? Gumshoe2 (talk) 16:42, 30 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It seems like the context you want was already provided by the previous sentence on the page. The sentence I added to the page was simply-stated and factual information. Of course various people may disagree about whether it is a positive or a negative fact. So why shouldn't it be included? Gumshoe2 (talk) 19:09, 30 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
So you think the history of a 400-year-old institution should include this year's percentage of A's? EEng21:58, 30 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I was just taking a stroll by fawiki (to remove some cross-wiki spam), when I tripped their abuse filter. Apparently Google translate thinks that their phrase for "abuse filter" is more properly translated as "sabotage factory" (see, for example, w:fa:ویکیپدیا:پالایه_ویرایش. I vote we call the edit filter the sabotage factory from now on. GeneralNotability (talk) 17:41, 6 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like something from a novel about the dystopian future. There'd be "Lawgivers", "Eliminators", a "Sabotage Factory" (for some reason) and so on.Actually, I figured out the factory. My translator's giving Sabotage refinery where I think you're getting Sabotage factory. So I think it goes mw:Extension:AbuseFilter -> refinement:sabotage -> sabotage refinery -> sabotage factory. No idea where eliminators came from, but whatever they are we should have them here for sure.
I see also that regular expressions comes out (after a round trip into Farsi) regular phrases, and this gives me an excuse to tell a story. When my advisor – who for 50 years almost single-handedly created and nurtured the computer science program at <name of breathtakingly prestigious institution of higher learning redacted> – finally announced that he would retire someday (though he didn't say when exactly) there was a big celebration. I mean, not a celebration because people were happy he was retiring, but a celebration of CS at <prestigious institution> in honor of him.Somehow I got the responsibility of creating a <myadvisor>-themed crossword puzzle for the program booklet – you know, something fun. I really got into it, and even if I do say so myself it was terrific. Much of it was lofty and inspirational. For example, one answer was the name of his wife, who happened to be the director of undergraduate admissions; the clue was "She supplies the fires to be lit". But other items were, shall we say, more earthy; for the answer "RE" (which in computer geekery means "regular expression") the clue was "Visage of those who get enough roughage". Whether my advisor ever worked this puzzle I do not know. EEng23:47, 6 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Calling EEng a "real skunk" is not a personal attack. But calling him a "fake skunk" would be. And if you smoke too much, you might call him a "skank funk". And think that it's funny. Anyway, EEng, there's deodorant for that, bro. And better to stick with edibles. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:25, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The whole civil issue is one that needs to be TNT'ed and rebuilt because it is the policy that is wholly dependent on the whims of the corrupt administration. While I agree with the outcome of the ANI here, that saying "your edit is X" is not the same thing as saying "you are X." I was blocked for saying, "Your edit is X" because an admin said, "if you say an edit is X, that means the person is X" and I was blocked for a personal attack.Sir Joseph(talk)21:26, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well AFAICS you were blocked once for Jimbo should have blocked you for longer. You are not an asset to this project[32] and once for So in other words you're not interested in the truth, you're just interested in being anti-Israel[33]. Those are personal attacks -- not the worst by far, but still personal attacks. And context matters. EEng21:59, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't referring to that one. I was referring to a block by El_C. And, I am also TBANNED right now for calling out an edit, not an editor, yet the discussion didn't make that distinction. And with El_C, the distinction wasn't made at all, because if I say, "your post is idiotic" then that means you're an idiot for posting an idiotic post. Which I think is incorrect, because even smart people can post an idiotic post once in a while. Sir Joseph(talk)23:30, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi EEng, I came across this carving while visiting a church in Derbyshire recently. Wondered if you could help me to work out what's going on in it, I can't quite make it out. Cheers GirthSummit (blether)11:56, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Tryptofish, yes, it's frustrating isn't it? I just can't get my head around it. They say two heads are better than one - if only someone would be willing to donate theirs to help solve this conundrum, it might give me some relief. GirthSummit (blether)20:26, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Gerda Arendt, I'm afraid not - you've got the right church, but the carvings aren't mentioned in the listing. I've checked Pevsner, but he doesn't shed any light either. If I go there again, I might see whether I can gather any oral accounts to satisfy my curiosity, but of course that would be OR for our purposes. GirthSummit (blether)00:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not many can handle hardwood with such mastery; clearly, a devotional work. I can't quite make out what's happening on the backside though. Lev!vich00:47, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I realize you posted here looking for help but I'd say it's at the church itself that you'll find the succor you need. EEng01:03, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, and thanks anyway. In an entirely unrelated note, I was thinking about creating a list of all of Zeus's mortal lovers. I started out with high spirits, but I'm afraid that my enthusiasm rather fell at io. Such is the nature of editing here I suppose. Cheers GirthSummit (blether)01:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Looks to me like it's a bishop blessing someone, possibly a Confirmation. Not sure about the person behind, but bishops usually have a companion of some sort. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 08:30, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Crikey - when you said deathless, I thought you meant 'will be remembered forever'. I hadn't realised he was still alive, that's cheering. His Irish ballad was was always my favourite, my dad used to sing it to us in the car, thirty plus years ago now... GirthSummit (blether)14:43, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you put "Template:Larry" into the search box, and let it offer suggestions, there are a bunch of them, for persons with that first name. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:03, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Mr Spock was our first clue back in the day:"May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with Humans? I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant."AtsmeTalk📧23:37, 4 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Funny thing, there was a time that someone or other would step in to say we're supposed to give Trump the benefit of the doubt because, oh, maybe he's just pretending to be a deranged sociopath. People seem to have gotten over that.Meanwhile, in other news (since we're on the subject), the more severely mentally challenged of the stable genius's two older sons turns out not to know what a vaccine is [38]. Now to be fair, a lot of people don't know what a vaccine is, but most would have the sense not to go on network TV blabbing about it without at least looking in a dictionary first. Of course for that you need to be able to recite the letters of the the alphabet in the right order. EEng06:59, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Perfectly understandable, and nothing that a good drink cannot ameliorate. And, of course, all discerning editors have a liking for fish. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:25, 20 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In all Wikimedia projects, spaces and events, behaviour will be founded in respect, civility, collegiality, solidarity and good citizenship. This applies to all contributors and participants in their interaction with all contributors and participants, without distinction based on age, mental or physical disabilities, physical appearance, national, religious, ethnic and cultural background, caste, social class, language fluency, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex or career field. Nor will we distinguish based on standing, skills or accomplishments in the Wikimedia projects or movement.
I just posted because the inclusion of 'skills' seemed very weird. I certainly don't think we should give people a by because they're skilled, but this possibly could be interpreted to say that we can't ding them because they're unskilled. Am I being obtuse? —valereee (talk) 13:30, 29 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I've wanted to ask this for a while now. But... Special:Diff/987768637. And your various other edits where you pick a time in an obscure 4,000 view video or a two-sentence quote from page 386 in some text. Is there some special bookmarking app I don't know about, or some memory pill, or what's going on here? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 03:50, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You mean stuff like this [40]? Believe it or not I carry it all around in my head (see right); when I was in college the dean said I was a "coal mine of information". It all started after I was struck by lightning at 5 years old. Modern science has failed to explain it. But don't worry – I am sworn to use it only for good, never for evil. EEng06:42, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
AND NOW BIDEN IS GONNA DESTROY ALL THE COAL MINES OF INFORMATION! I WANNA SAVE ALL THE COAL MINES OF INFORMATION!
Well, that certainly brings a whole new meaning to "electrical engineering"! Somehow, I envision that it hurt the lightning bolt far worse than it hurt you. (The dean, however, may have been thinking about black lung.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:59, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Further evidence for the prosecution: [41], [42]. EEng
I want to thank you more emphatically than with just a one-click "thanks" for bringing up Jarndyce and Jarndyce on ANI.[43] It made me very happy. Bishonen | tålk15:55, 9 November 2020 (UTC).[reply]
But you have relatively high visibility, at least where Wikipedia subject matter is politically sensitive. Because every change here is more or less permanent, the ship has already sailed, but I urge you to consider the fact that Wikipedia is somehow the most reliable source of consolidated information on the Internet. I get the jokes, the cynicism, the memes, all that, but you are providing an extremely transparent, highly visible profile of personal bias.
The best practices for information sourcing on Wikipedia provide some protection, but they're not bulletproof. An explicitly partisan affectation by the editors undermines the mission of objective truth, and aggravates the environment in which objective truth is a matter of partisan contention. IRSpeshul (talk) 05:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
See that's the problem with these extremely transparent, highly visible profiles of personal bias: look how aggravated the environment is getting. I'm not one to get into an argument about mathism with a mathist (or, as I believe they prefer to be called, "mathematician"), but we have a lot of articles about math, and we don't want to give the impression that we tilt pro-mathian or are some kind of math-wing website. Levivichharass/hound07:38, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree 100%. Everyone has biases. Neutral editing means putting your biases aside when editing (when editing content, anyway), not pretending you don't have any. EEng06:10, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also the original comment comes off as being much like the people who say "I don't have an accent, it's only those people in [other country/other part of same country/other side of tracks in same city] who have accents". Which is to say, un-self-aware. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:24, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am pleased to award this barnstar to you in recognition of your glorious dragonslaying efforts. Although I actually constructed this for you years ago, I didn't award it to you at the time because I felt that it may not have been appropriate. But, in a world gone mad, I ultimately decided to follow the advice of the eminent scientist E. Lathrop Brown. Please consider this a testimonial in appreciation of your commitment to bring a bit of light and laughter to this dreary place. MANdARAX•XAЯAbИAM01:43, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to make someone not not laugh, say do not laugh. I didn't not laugh, but I did revert the change - it is possible that the editor dug up the old newspaper article and expanded the section using it, but given the context, I am suspicious. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:22, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That photog should get a Pulitzer for snapping the shot just a split-second before the sniper pulled the trigger. EEng03:54, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am sad to write that today when asked by an uninvolved editor to review this dispute, I unfortunately noticed some problematic comments on Talk:Joe_Biden/Archive_14#Infobox.
So, do you actually believe that it's not possible to find a published reliable source for Biden's chairmanships and so on, or are you just being difficult? EEng 13:03, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
In attacking the personal motivation of another editor, this does not assume good faith, which is required of all editors. Surtsicna challenged unreferenced material in the infobox, and the sources provided by other editors in the discussion did not verify the challenged material. WP:UNSOURCED says that the burden of adding sources is on editors who want material added. Surtsicna has no obligation to lift a finger to find a reliable source, and whether they believe that task will be easy, hard, or impossible, the requirement for editors who want the material added to provide sources remains. These dates are not obvious or well-known facts, and this type of information often needs correcting by fact checkers, so that challenge is completely legitimate, even if that editor would also prefer the material be removed for other reasons. The above response only serves to antagonize the other editor, making them less likely to contribute to the project in the future, less likely to be agreeable to your suggestions, less likely to help you, more likely to respond in an negative and unproductive way, less able to think clearly, and more likely to prolong your dispute. More productive responses in this context include:
Providing the requested sources, which you actually did the next day after another go-round.
Agreeing that the challenged material should be removed.
Asking for more time to find the requested sources; Surtsicna was willing to leave the material in place with citation-needed tags in the meantime.
Proposing that different text be added.
Saying nothing, which would be far better than responding with a personal attack.
To be blunt, seriously believing that there aren't complete and definitive sources for the chairmanships of Senate committees brings into serious question your competence to edit this article. Seriously. Did you even try? [35] EEng 05:15, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
Given that the sources provided by another editor failed to verify the challenged material, a reasonable inference is that it might be hard to find such a source. (Though that did not turn out to be true in the end.) As I pointed out earlier, Surtsicna had no obligation to try to find such a source, and it is unfair to conclude that failing to identify the requested sources when that burden does not fall on this editor is a demonstration that this editor lacks the skill to do so. There isn't even a requirement that editors who do the useful work of challenging unreferenced, unobvious material have any familiarity with sources relevant to a topic. Attacking the competence or intelligence of another editor in this way is unacceptable. Productive responses to errors by other editors include fixing partial errors, reverting large errors, politely pointing out mistakes on talk pages, and allowing that even the most brilliant people make mistakes sometimes. If an editor is chronically and grossly incompetent, eventually it will be worth discussing that as a problem, but not until these more productive responses have not worked, and not in an uncivil fashion. Verbal abuse is not a productive way to notify volunteers about their mistakes, and verbally abusing a volunteer over a mistake they haven't even made, which is what happened here, is even more demoralizing.
I'm considering pinning a little box to the top of this page: "It has been X hours since Surtsicna falsely claimed that everything in an infobox needs to be in the article as well." EEng 15:15, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
This is another unacceptable comment which is snarkily attacking another editor. Assuming good faith on the part of two editors who have completely opposite interpretations of a guideline leads me to conclude that either one has made an honest error, the guideline is unclear, or there is some other complexity yet to be uncovered. A productive, AGF response might be to quote the part of the policy you are relying on, explain your logic, and ask the other editor if you are missing anything. Another AGF response might be to ask the other editor to quote the part of the policy they are relying on, or to clarify their reasoning if they have already quoted. In this case, if you had done either, I think you would have found that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes has two sections which say different things about the disputed question. MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE says that infoboxes should not have any facts which are not in the text of the article, and WP:INFOBOXREF (which you quoted) encourages that but implies that there will also be some cases where editors do legitimately decide to include facts in the infobox but not the article. Instead of identifying this contradiction and bringing it to the attention of other editors for resolution, your response instead demoralized an editor who is being productive and trying to build consensus and improve the reader experience, whether or not you or I agree with that editor's suggestions.
(added) I should also note that one of your comments cites WP:CIR, which specifically says in WP:CIRNOT not to label someone as incompetent, as this is a personal attack.
I hope that in the future instead of tearing into other editors, you can express disagreement in a more productive and civil manner. I hope that you will use the "assume good faith" guideline as a reason to stop and calmly consider the possible legitimate reasons for an editor's actions, including miscommunication and that you yourself might not have a complete picture. I usually find the latter is true for myself. You are clearly a smart person and like the rest of the community of volunteers I'm trying to keep motivated, have many valuable contributions yet to make. Thanks for reading, Beland (talk) 07:13, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Beland, I'm sad you wrote too. Mostly TLDR, but in passing:
I think you would have found that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes has two sections which say different things about the disputed question – No, actually,I would not have found that, as you yourself discovered after posting here (see [44]), although you strangely omitted to return here to post the traditional Oops! My bad! Maybe next time you should more carefully consider that you yourself might not have a complete picture.
Surtsicna was told over and over and over and over and over, with links to the guideline and/or quoting it, that not everything in an infobox needs to be in the article. Nonetheless he or she stubbornly insisted on repeating that idea. And repeating it. And repeating it (in multiple threads, as I recall). AGF doesn't require us to close our eyes to what is obviously either a CIR failure or just plain willful blindness.
My comments about the chairmanships weren't about whether sources were in the article, but rather whether they exist at all. Surtsicna said I do seriously believe it is not possible to find published reliable sources about all these people preceding or succeeding Joe Biden in the given date ranges, and I said (yes) To be blunt, seriously believing that there aren't complete and definitive sources for the chairmanships of Senate committees brings into serious question your competence to edit this article, because that's true. And, frankly, if you can't see how absurd it is to imagine that there aren't definitive sources for Senate chairmanships, then you aren't competent to be sticking your nose into this matter. Really.
specifically says in WP:CIRNOT not to label someone as incompetent – No, it says it's generally inadvisable to call a person incompetent. I applied my judgment. And look! It worked: [45]! Too bad S., like you, was unable to bring himself/herself to come out and say, "Oh, now I see. I guess you were right. Sorry I didn't read more carefully."
You are correct that I misread MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE; perhaps Surtsicna and I made the same mistake. I didn't mention that here because I wanted to read your response first. As you can see, Bondegezou used a productive technique to resolve the disagreement over the interpretation of that section, by quoting the part that I had missed. This resulted in two improvements to the section; I clarified the sentence I had been relying on, and RexxS noticed that one of the examples was outdated and updated it. The suggestions I made above include conversational techniques that I hope would have helped you and Surtsicna resolve your disagreement more quickly, if you are concerned about not wasting time, and would have entirely avoided this one. Frankly, I'm more concerned about the editor time we are losing when editors are uncivil to each other and some of them stop editing entirely. My concern is not about who is right or wrong, as you were clearly correct in your interpretation of this guideline, for example. I am much more concerned with your language and your treatment of other editors. In response to this complaint, you might have said nothing, or you might have defended the correctness of your position without implicating matters of civility, or you might have apologized for your words and promised to be more civil in the future. Instead, you have demonstrated that you aren't interested in adopting more productive conflict-resolution techniques, especially when you defended your behavior as having been effective, and labelled yet another editor as incompetent. Given your continued incivility, and because you have been blocked for disruptive editing before, you are blocked from editing for one week. Please reconsider your commitment to civil discourse. -- Beland (talk) 19:55, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
EEng, I've just advocated against this block at Beland's talk page and at AN. Now I'm going to say to you: please be nicer to people who are being dimwitted, as the person at the Biden talkpage was being. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are, yet again, the recipient of a WTF Block‼️⁉️
Remember how much fun you had playing with blocks as a kid? Well, now that you're mature an adult, you can collect blocks with adult letters. They're not only stackable, they're reusable.
I swar!! Can't I leave you alone even for a minute without you getting in trouble with the Wiki police!?
Memories of our past replaced by decades of, uhm... misunderstandings?
For the record the AN discussion is here [47]. The closing summary reads, in part: EEng has been unblocked by overwhelming consensus, Beland is reminded of the dangers and standards of adminship as well as the nature of blocks. Whether that admonishment sank in is open to question, though [48]. The alert reader, on encountering an admin who deletes uncomplimentary messages without archiving them [49], might wonder what else is being hidden. EEng08:06, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I do accept the unblock and the reason for it. I have always deleted all my incoming user talk page messages without archiving when I'm done with them, except for the compliments. So you might say everything is being hidden, or nothing...as it used to say there, if anyone cares they can look in the page history. -- Beland (talk) 02:05, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The question isn't whether you accept the unblock and the reason for it; you don't have a choice since the score at AN was Endorse block – 0, Overturn egregiously wrongheaded block and severely trout the admin who imposed it – 20. The question is whether you'll be able to adhere to the standards of adminship as well as the nature of blocks in the future; time will tell, I guess.As for not archiving your talk page, well, I have always deleted all my incoming user talk page messages without archiving when I'm done with them, except for the compliments (italcis added) is nothing like everything is being hidden, or nothing – rather, it's I feature the good stuff and hide the bad. One of the reasons I delay archiving is to dramatize that I fear no scrutiny. You are, of course, joking in your implication that look in the page history is any kind of effective way to find and review past threads. EEng02:58, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and I also "hide" the neutral and the boring. The compliments are mostly for myself, to keep motivated when I'm having a bad day. I was inspired by the famous line, "Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements", which used to be quoted on my user talk page. Back in the day before pings, I would actually move conversations to the talk page of the other person so all of it would be in one place and they would get notified about my reply. That would leave nothing on my talk page to archive in some cases. I guess looking through the page history is more annoying than reading archives, but when I started doing it I didn't imagine anyone would actually care about old messages about article updates and bots and Wikiprojects and editing mistakes. If you're saying distant-past-me was planning ahead so if someone said something bad about my rarely used admin powers in ten years I'd be able to delete it and make it harder to find, OK. If I'm making myself look better by doing this, then well, great. Who doesn't like to look better. It sounds like you're angry at me, and I can see why you would want to try to trash the reputation of someone who makes you angry. I applaud your embrace of transparency, though personally I find this page unmanageably long.
You previously wrote: even when the truth is rubbed in your face over and over, and even after a score of editors vociferously denounce your judgment as completely out of calibration, you're either incapable of absorbing it or just can't bring yourself to acknowledge it. You seem to have been expecting a personal message from me saying "oh hey, I messed up, sorry" or something. It's not something that's really required to resolve this case; the block has been reversed and admonishment has been delivered to everyone that needed one, including me. I do see why the overturn was in line with Wikipedia policy, though there also seems to be consensus that the existing system has not resulted in a culture of satisfactory civility. Not saying my solution is better. Though I've never seen the district judge apologize to a defendant when an appeals court overturns a sentence, sure, here in a less formal setting someone might do that anyway just to be friendly. With due respect, in this case, your past hurtful insults and continued insulting tone make it extremely difficult to feel a desire to be friendly and go out of my way to say nice things, though I remain committed to being civil and not unfriendly. Though I don't expect much more than to be insulted for having said even this, I bring it up in the hope that in the future it will help you more accurately understand interactions with other people, and as an example of how gratuitous incivility has negative consequences. -- Beland (talk) 04:19, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Do you never post anything under 1000 words?
If you're saying distant-past-me was planning ahead so if someone said something bad about my rarely used admin powers in ten years I'd be able to delete it and make it harder to find, OK – No, I'm saying today-you doesn't care about transparency, whether in your administrative work or general editing.
admonishment has been delivered to everyone that needed one, including me – Actually only you.
It sounds like you're angry at me – Not in the slightest. You've provided amusement to the masses while contributing a beautiful illustration of my longstanding thesis that 97% of admins do important work in return for little recognition, while the other 3% are simply bossy, preachy, hypocritical, and/or just plain out of their depth. It is interesting to note how densely my block log (which – I guess I need to point out since you seem unable to read a block log – consists largely of overturned blocks and a joke block) is studded with the names of admins who are no longer admins – something you might want to think about.
You seem to have been expecting a personal message from me saying "oh hey, I messed up, sorry" or something. It's not something that's really required to resolve this case – And therein lies the difference between us. When someone else is screwing up, I try to tell them so in terms matched to where they're coming from, the history of their receptiveness, and so on; and when I screw up – if I've caused trouble or inconvenience – I apologize. That's civility far more than your prissy parsing of posts for forbidden words and phrases. You, on the other hand, are so committed to your empty, formal civility that you can't even bring yourself to hurt your own feelings by acknowledging your mistakes.
help you more accurately understand interactions with other people – I require no advice from you on how to win friends and influence people. You stick to gnoming character codes and let us adults police our own interactions.
Inspired by [50]. With enough material an amusing essay may be possible.
"The blather control aisle – so embarrassing! If you're a Wikipedia editor struggling with incompetence issues, now there's a better way. We home-deliver blather control products directly to you in plain, unmarked boxes..."
"The blather control aisle – so embarrassing! If you're a Wikipedia editor struggling with incompetence issues, now there's a better way. We home-deliver blather control products directly to you in plain, unmarked userboxes. Or, if other editors complain you're full of hot air ..."
"You are not alone. This problem has a name: WikiLeaks. Minor leaks can be controlled by using appropriate garments, and padding can be added as needed. Normally, this kind of output is directed to the WP:CESSPIT. However, some WP:DICKS have leaked all over the internet, causing the internet to blow up. Should this happen to you, please call for a WP:MOP." --Tryptofish (talk) 20:29, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
First of all: holy shit the page loaded in under ten seconds! All right! :-D
But more importantly, you'll recall the ANI haikus of years past. Today, I learned that there's a bot on reddit called "haikusbot" that goes around detecting haikus in other people's comments and pointing them out. I was reading this /r/madden thread (don't judge) [51] and someone wrote:
Did they fix this game, or is it the same trash they shit out every year?
...and the bot posted:
Did they fix this game, Or is it the same trash they Shit out every year? - haterrage I detect haikus. Sometimes, successfully. Learn more about me
Preliminary note: The Curator offers this quotation (from the NYT via our colleague Crossroads) as the key to understanding the events in this thread:
Mr. Pegler [a trans man] specified that his beef is not with gender-neutral neopronouns. He felt like elevating objects and animals to human pronoun levels was dismissive. "I couldn’t stomach why anyone would want to identify as an object?" Mr. Pegler wrote in an Instagram direct message. "They dehumanize us as trans people," he added. "We are people! Not objects or animals. So that’s why I stated that they are out of hand, because they make us look like a bit of a joke."
(So far no outrage from animal rights activists condemning Mr. Pegler for his vicous and hateful speciesism.) EEng14:42, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop denigrating Lonsdale and those who use neopronouns. I understand that you don't like the pronoun, nor believe it is a genuine preference, but this is becoming cruel. GorillaWarfare(talk)01:13, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Our visitor, an otherwise very sensible and respected admin and former arb, refers to a discussion of the idea that tree is a pronoun -- links below.
You'd think someone who so constantly is having to defend that everyone else work around their Comedic Interjections into discussions they personally find dull and demanding idiosyncratic exceptions be made for them (I had more than enough time to add a couple five dollar words here when scrolling to the bottom of your internet replication of a Hoarders episode here) would have the self awareness to not describe anyone else as having "fey pretensions," but life is, as always, a true surprise. Parabolist (talk) 06:21, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Parabolist, as I live and breathe! How the hell are you? I'm not against fey pretension; I'm against people refusing to recognize it for what it is and insisting articles be based on it. EEng07:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I understand this has become a little more stressful and strenuous, what with the Troubles below, but I'd like to set all that aside and respond honestly to you here, man. Despite going in on you a bit last night, I want you to know this comes from a place within spitting distance of the heart, and all. But whenever someone comes to me and says, in whatever fun or polite they want to, 'hey, stop being an asshole,' I've learned to just...stop being an asshole. Even when I absolutely wasn't being one. Doubling down when you should be cashing out is the way into the gutter, and all. And so, what struck me last night into saying something was seeing someone come to you in the most polite fashion, asking you to just cool your jets, and getting a full blast of unleaded kerosene in return. Putting your comment back in the way you did, with the edits you did, I find it hard to believe you didn't know you were being kind of an asshole. Which, whatever, who isn't sometimes? But come by it honestly, I think. Anyway, sorry if this hits you in a bad mood, as you might rightfully be in one. Being blocked is never fun. Just sleep on it. Parabolist (talk) 07:48, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@GorillaWarfare: Do you have any reliable sources indicating that the BLP has used neopronouns outside of that one statement in 2018? (The one where he said, "At the end of the day, everyone’s a tree. I want to call my friends 'tree' and me 'tree' and everyone 'tree.'") If not, you may be on the wrong side of BLP yourself in stating that the BLP "uses neopronous" (present tense) as you did in that AN/I header. ~Awilley (talk)22:08, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That seems prudent. I had thought of doing something like that myself, but didn't want to cause drama. I was thinking of the bad press Wikipedia could get if we were the ones falsely stating that someone uses alternate pronouns when they don't. (And looking at some of the sources people are bringing at AN/I that seems likely.) ~Awilley (talk)22:47, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have blocked you for a week in relation to this ANI thread. While the point you are making may have some validity, making it by insulting and denigrating the subject of a BLP is not acceptable. You have been around long enough to know this. Restoring such comments after they were removed by an admin as BLP violations, and after you were (very politely, I might add) asked to stop is doubly unacceptable and that in particular is the reason for this block. The duration takes into account your familiarity with the relevant polices and your previous block log. You may of course appeal this action by using the {{unblock}} template or by asking for your comments to be copied over to ANI. Regards, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?14:40, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, for the record:
This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.
You have shown interest in articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.
For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.
This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.
You have shown interest in any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.
For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.
No, Roxy! No!. This is just getting worse. Taking the piss out of other editors was more than bad enough. Taking it out of a BLP subject is just too muc. And there is no way to accept or condone it. --Deepfriedokra(talk)15:22, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, Roxy, taking the piss out of the real, living subject of a Wikipedia article, on the talk page of the article, is not fine. It's not what Wikipedia is about and it risks bringing Wikipedia into disrepute. Feel free to take the piss out of ideas, in general terms, so far as is within the project scope, or out of whatever you like on some other corner of the Internet. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?15:45, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Except taking the piss out of the real, living subject of a Wikipedia article, on the talk page of the article is not what I was doing, and your comment shows you didn't actually read the discussion on the article's talk page and the earlier ones linked from it.
What I was doing was taking the piss out of the people who actually believe Lonsdale wants to be called tree, when (as is perfectly obvious) he has no such desire; I point out for the millionth time that Lonsdale's own PR firm continues to refer to him as he[54]. Floquenbeam has it spot on:
treating a request for everyone to use the pronoun "tree" the same as we treat a request to use xe/xem/xyr or similar makes it easier for people to think the mocking attitude of the essay was reasonable. Thinking that using "tree" as a pronoun is dumb is not in the same category as the attitude expressed in the essay. I read the subject's "tree" quote as a kind of philosophical "imagine there's no heaven" kind of statement, not as a genuine request that this pronoun be used. It's fine if people want to interpret it as an actual request, and reword the article to avoid pronouns altogether, as long as we don't actually use "tree" in the article. But I don't think criticizing that is nearly in the same ballpark. IMHO, there was no need for EEng continuing to beat that objection to death, and there was no need for GW to keep it alive, so to speak, by over-reacting to it, and there was no need for a block.
There's definitely a place (though not on WP) for discussion about whether there's liberation value in a thoughtful campaign to get people to understand and use xe/xem/xyr – very much like the movement to bring Ms. into common use 50 years ago. Such a consciousness-raising campaign around a considered addition to the language is completely different from random individuals picking random words to be their "pronouns". If people want to do that, that's not my business. If other people want to invest their mental energy in referring to their friends by tree or bunny pronouns [55], that's also not my business. But when people show up at Wikipedia insisting that articles refer to people that way, that is my business, and I'm going to say something about it.
I wasn't denigrating Lonsdale for any choice of pronouns, because it's patently obvious that he made no such choice; my disdain is for those who keep insisting that we actually refer to Lonsdale as tree in his article when (as linked at the start of this post) Lonsdale himself doesn't do that. But we have editors so focused on falling all over themselves in the RIGHTGREATWRONGS department that they can't see the forest for the, um, trees.
EEng, Sorry, not today. You don't get to use terms like "lunacy" on a BLP talk page, then restore it after you were asked not to (the problem with it having been pointed out), then pretend you weren't talking about the LP. Had you not restored it after GW removed it, I would have just chalked it up to silliness but you tipped it over into malice, or at least making a point at the subject's expense. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?16:19, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
HJ Mitchell, I care little about being blocked, as most people know, since it's one of the hazards of the job. But I do care about having my words and actions misrepresented, and I'm getting pretty fucking sick and tired of your continuing to say that my, er, criticism was directed at the subject of the article. As now repeatedly requested, please read the thread at [56] get back to me. And I guess it wasn't obvious, but yes please to copy my post above to the ANI thread. EEng19:53, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ritchie333, I'm disappointed in the comparison. Johnson is a household name and a national politician whose policies have been widely criticised, and who has got to the position he holds by playing the "court jester". While calling him a "nincompoop" on Wikipedia is not entirely appropriate, nobody is likely to be offended by it. It's a lot milder than how I might describe him in the pub when those finally reopen. Describing the way somebody refers to themselves as "lunacy" on a BLP talk page is clearly inappropriate and liable to cause unnecessary offence. EEng knows this. Restoring it after this is pointed out to them is doubly inappropriate. EEng knows this as well. The block is lenient with all things considered, and for just about any other editor would the inevitable consequence of restoring a BLP violation after being asked to stop. He's lucky I didn't spend more than a couple of minutes looking for evidence of "awareness" or this would be a discretionary sanction, probably accompanied by a topic ban. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?16:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the heart of the issue here is not so much that the comment was restored on Talk:Keiynan Lonsdale, as to how it was done, with inflammatory comments faux struck-out and replaced, as opposed to just rewriting the comment to be less disruptive. To me, that reads in the same manner as a child being asked to apologise and doing so in a sarcastic manner eg: "You called her stupid. Apologise." / "I'm sorry you're so stupid". That's just asking for trouble and I can't really criticise the block here if it was done for that reason. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)18:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@HJ Mitchell: Since one important issue here seems to be whether EEng's criticism was directed at the subject of the article, and so possibly a BLP violation, something EEng specifically denies above, are there diffs that, in your view, show that he did? Thanks, Paul August☎20:26, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There being no respionse by HJM, nor by GW (who is obviously following here), I'd like some kind person to post the following just below the ANI post by HJM seen in this link:
*:I realize you're dancing as fast as you can, but that's nothing but handwaving until you answer the challenge -- issued to you twice now [57][58], and twice ignored by you even as you were posting the above exercise in alternative reality -- to provide actual, specific diffs for my alleged BLP violation. Or maybe Gorilla Warfare can help you out with that? EEng01:11, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's no space in my username so if you ping me with that I don't get it, just as a heads up. I do have your page temporarily watchlisted, but was away from my computer this evening. I see someone else has already gotten to posting it. If you are asking me to provide the specific BLP violations, I linked them in the first ANI post. 04:35, 23 March 2021 and 00:57, 25 March 2021 are the two I would consider the actual violations, most of the other stuff was just rude. GorillaWarfare(talk)02:45, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia Editor Temporarily Banned for Criticizing Use of 'Tree' as Pronoun
Holy unintended consequences, Batman!I can hardly bring my fingers to type these words, but... by the standards of typical in-the-moment coverage of this kind of thing, the Breitbart piece is actually a pretty good summary. And they did note that I think Trump's a sociopathic-narcissist-racist criminal moron, so I don't feel entirely misrepresented. The one significant fact which I suspect they'd have included, had they known it, is that I'm gay too; I feel it's a bit unfair that I get implicitly cast as the big bad straight-by-default guy vs. queer-speaking-truth-to-power Gorilla Warfare. (Of course, I'm a white male cisgendered gay, so that imposes a 50% discount on my victimhood credit, presumed wokeness, and authority to lecture from the moral high ground.) And I want to correct a definite error – the assertion that I did express support for using other pronouns, including "xe/xem/xyr" pronouns. No, what I said is there's a place ... for discussion about whether there's liberation value in a thoughtful campaign to get people to understand and use xe/xem/xyr (underlining added).EEng01:04, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still undecided whether you're actually a straight, homophobic, right-wing asshole masquerading as a gay, left-wing intellectual for reasons unknown.[FBDB]nagualdesign01:18, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What a very good summary. T. D. Adler gets in a lot of details, all the right order. It must be very boring for most Breitbart readers? But really... that caption for Melania saying "C'mon Donald, light my fire!" Is that the "worst" insult he could find on your page? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
EEng, I have a bunch of things to say. First, for purposes of this talk page section only, my preferred pronoun is "lawnmower". Second, I am never going to let you live this down. If you'd like, I'll see if I can set up a date for you with Lindsay Graham. I think the two of you would make a cute couple. (Anyone who thinks I just violated BLP can kiss my lawnmower.)
And now that I've had my requisite fun, I want to say something serious. In my opinion, my dear friend Bishonen did the wrong thing, although it's clearly a matter of opinion in which fish, lizards, and lawnmowers can have legitimate differences of opinion. As I said at ANI, I believe that you ridiculed other editors, and that you were wrong to have done so. I'm aware that you went to some high falutin' university like Yale or something, which makes you smarter than the average person hit by lightening. In my experience, you are very frequently correct in your evaluations of editorial judgements here. But the fact that you are right and someone else is wrong does not entitle you to show off what a smarty-pants you are by making fun of them. It's really ugly. I mean it. Stop doing it. Bish wasn't wrong in terms of enacting consensus, but she was wrong in making it psychologically easier for you to figure that you were vindicated. She did you, personally, no favor. And you really, really need to get the message that you have every right to explain why you are correct about something, but no right to ridicule other editors who are wrong. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:35, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Hasn't it occurred to you that being shamed and berated for being a 'trender' during your exploration year might not have been the most helpful thing?...The stigma you perpetuate against gender confusion and experimentation keeps trans people in the closet and delays transition. It alienates 'baby trans' from the community that should be welcoming them instead of publicly humiliating them."[60]
EEng—for the avoidance of doubt—you should know that, although I don't think you violated BLP policy, and I argued strongly for a reduction of your block, or unblock, I hardly think you are blameless in all this. You have such talent, I really wish you would use your superpowers only for good. Paul August☎12:45, 27 March 2021 (UTC) P.S. Perhaps I'm partly to blame also, since I seem to have fallen down on my chosen task of being your Socratic gadfly, I will hope to be a better scold in the future.[reply]
For some reason this thread reminded me of a novel that I read a few years ago written by John Kennedy Toole, and the provenace of its title. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:35, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Phil Bridger, surely you don't think I picked that phrase by accident? From the lead of the relevant article: Its central character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is an educated but slothful 30-year-old man living with his mother ... eccentric, idealistic, and creative, sometimes to the point of delusion. (Note, however, that I do not live with my mother. Nor am I 30 years old. Nor is my name Ignatius J. Reilly, though if I could do it all over again that'd be a great Wikipeda handle.) EEng03:52, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I can see him sprucing up. Maple he will consider it, or more likely he'll birch about it. From little nuts big oaks grow...or something like that...so there's hope, even for coneheads like me. We're at the age when we can no longer bear fruit, but some of us still have dates. Well...fig it, I'll just make like a tree and leave. Atsme💬📧18:22, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I keep hearing about this "EEng Brigand". Where do I apply? I have a lot of experience as a minion and as a henchman and want to move up. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:23, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, no, Guy, you misunderstand – really and truly! What I was saying is that I'm glad we're still friends despite a past misunderstanding (i.e. you've "come around to the dark side" – you know, because some people think I'm Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine) and bear you no ill will. Please tell me I've cleared that up and you'll un-unwatch; I can't bear to think there will be no more of this kind of thing. EEng13:50, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Back because of notice on my talk page.) OK, it looks like I completely misread the intent of the above. And for the record, I misjudged the consensus on civility. Turns out that "but what you just said is idiotic" is perfectly OK, but not "you are an idiot". (I am still unsure whether I can write "OK, let's assume for the sake of argument that you are an idiot.") Rewatching page, unstriking comments, going back to trying to be friendly. Let's forget this ever happened. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpAvcGcEc0k ]. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:33, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I actually think it's a good idea to not forget, since it's a useful reminder that misunderstandings happen. Let me do you the compliment of saying that in my estimation your "trying" to be friendly has always been successful. I meant it when I said I don't begrudge you the trip to ANI; many who have dragged me there have, once the community recalibrated their naughty detector for them, become active and valued participants on this very page (another example of what the "dark side" comment referred to).The idiotic–idiot distinction really is important. When someone says "You're acting like an idiot", the speaker is taking extra care to show that, despite your moment of temporary idiocy, he doesn't think you are an idiot – if he wanted to say that he could do so with less trouble: "You're an idiot". As I said in the discussion I linked above:
This potentially irrevocable misunderstanding (say if Guy had instead simply said, sotto voce, "fuck you", and walked away never to return), to me, points out the dangers of trying to be too witty/clever/subtle/nuanced, a mistake, in my view, that witty, clever, subtle, and nuanced people like EEng often make. I generally prefer to be boringly direct, at the expense of humor (as a famous philosopher once said there's a fine line between clever and stupid), or when subtlety or nuance is required (say in arguments over personal pronouns), to be painfully detailed. Paul August☎16:20, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes EEng's humor is often not particularly subtle or nuanced. But—in serious discussion—he is often quite so, because subtlety and nuance are needed when discussing things that are subtle and nuanced (and all things are to a mind that thinks deeply). Paul August☎17:03, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Let me explain what I was thinking/feeling because human interaction is an interesting topic. First off, I am a high-functioning autistic (what they called Asperger's syndrome before the latest rejiggering of the categories). I have the typical attributes of that condition; high IQ, ability to concentrate on a problem, inability to detect emotional nuances or sarcasm, a love of wordplay, and a tendency to be overly-literal. Like many people with Asperger's I am usually able to successfully mimic someone without the condition, but it requires a conscious effort instead of coming naturally.
I am also having a lot of trouble with alt-med practitioners, mostly because of WP:YWAB. Unrelated, but it has been stressing me a bit.
I felt that EEng was criticizing me over past events, when -- as became clear later -- that was not the intent. And yes, I seriously considered leaving silently, unwatching the page and muting notifications. Posting a goodbye message often results in abuse. I would have left silently if not for the other editors who I have been engaging with friendly bantering with on this page. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:21, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I hope that you take this as a compliment, because that is how I intend it. I would never have guessed that, because I've always been impressed with your sense of humor and use of emotional nuance. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Anteater runs into a bar. Bartender says, "Want a drink"? Anteater says, "Nooooo". Bartender says, "Maybe you'd like a sandwich." Anteater says, "Noooooooooooo". Bartender says:
"Why the long noes?"
Rabbi goes into a bar with a frog on his shoulder. Bartender says, "Where'd you get that?"
Frog says: "Brooklyn ... They're all over the place."
Three-legged dog goes into a bar. He says:
"Ahm lookin' for the man that SHOT MY PAW!"
A skeleton walks into a bar. Bartender says: "Hello stranger, what would you like?" Skeleton says:
Bar jokes always remind me of Bernard Right-On. Considering the recent brouhaha it seems doubly appropriate somehow. I'd transcribe the joke in question here, but out of context it would undoubtedly cause some people fits of hand wringing/pearl clutching. For those who are intrigued, it's the opening joke to this performance. nagualdesign17:22, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a brilliant caption for the (soon to be replaced) main image at Woman! Yeah, John's legendary. And coincidentally the spitting image of my friend, also called John and with a very similar and brilliant sense of humour, who died in 2018. nagualdesign20:16, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How about this non-bar joke:
"We've just found out that my grandad's addicted to Viagra" "Oh no! How's your grandma taking it?"
It seems that "clever" has become a dirty word on Wikipedia. I haven't seen the word so denigrated since bullies used to use it against people when I was at school half a century ago. I would remind those who think that they are being fashionable by supporting anti-intellectual populism that that attitude is so 2019. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:58, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Arrgghhh. Don't get me started. EEng is just too clever for his own good (especially in a place like this). It's a shame he's so witty, or most folk like me could just ignore him. But I'm not sure I'll ever see the day when he's "bullied". ClevorTrever123 (talk) 21:26, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"This year's Jimbo Celebration Egg features a delicious layer of prefamulated amulite" -- MRE123
"One day" last year in my old advisor's course on "Classic Papers in Computer Science", I took a few minutes to tell the class about how Konrad Zuse had invented an early retroencabulator but couldn't get funding to develop it before the war ended, sold the patents to Rockwell, competition from bubble memory eventually forced it off the market, etc etc and so on an so forth. Then I played the video (the last one on GM's list above). I had the pleasure of watching all the faces on Zoom as realization dawned. April Fools! EEng03:29, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Funnily enough, 2 new versions of the retroencambulator sketch have showed up in my recommendations over the past week. I saw the original a few years ago and was amazed that no one fluffed their lines - not that you'd be able to tell without comparing! So the first thing I thought about when I read your post above was prefamulated amulite. (For the sake of completeness, here's the other version.) nagualdesign03:34, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I find most of the me-too versions not so good, but I like this one [65] because Ms. Explainer comes across as genuine even if Mr. Introducer is somewhat wooden (although there's a certain charm there too). There's another one that's appeared recently -- quite extended with a lot of new material and a skilled pitchman -- but I can't find it now. EEng04:36, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Here is one without the annoying American accents.[66](...says the Guy who lives where the TMZ crosses the Orange Curtain...) "Fog to cloud, cloud to cloud, and cloud to cirrus cumulonimbus stratus cloud communications are available as standard!" --Guy Macon (talk) 05:26, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! I just saw your last message on the Santos Dumont article discussion and I'd like to bring the discussion her, if I may:
I took a long time working in the Portuguese article (that currently is featured thanks to my and more editors efforts) and articles like João Goulart (this one was hard, since it needed expansion in both languages and I had to cheat my way with Deepl). On the HBO work, did you found time to watch? It seems really close with his history (considering all the time contracting due the small number of episodes) but of course, I can't suggest it as a source. But is really well made, some moments are directly brought from his books and all the crew had to master French, English and Spanish. I just waved a little of the Portuguese version from this source in the original article and tomorrow I will start with this bilingual work.
I don't know how to deal with the English article thanks to the "heavier than air" subject: personally I like the interpretation that the airplane had "several fathers" or paraphrasing a talk that Dumont had with Edison: "this science have so many contributors that how I could invent and patent anything for real?" --in "O que eu vi..." (1918) Dumont even highlighted that the new generation should learn about the researchers that came before his generation and died while pursuing the dream of flight. I understand that the US aviation industry took some time to take off due some legal issues, while the "open source" Demoiselle made the European industries advanced quite fast.
But anyway, Santos Dumont, together with Ayrton Senna, is such an object of national proundness here in Brazil (even if just a few bothers to learn about their history) that the article could turn into a "editions war" quite fast ---and today we really need something to be proud of...
Seems that two of the works in your collection is up on Internet Archive, what is great to references: Wings of Madness and Man Flies.
This is probably the third or fourth time I've had to apologize for having made no progress at all on this, though I continue to be determined to make the English Wikipedia article as good as can be. He's a wonderful figure and deserves to be fully recognized. It's going to be a huge project, though, and I'll need to devote six months to it, which right now I just don't have. Clearly there are conflicts among the sources, and many (including most of the newest ones) are in Portuguese, which I neither speak nor read. Maybe I'm crazy to think I can take this on. But perhaps together we can ... when I find the time.
I haven't looked at the HBO special, because I assumed it's in Portuguese only. Is it in available in English as well, or with English subtitles? It's looks like an excellent production.
I am very impressed with the pt.wiki article – so much new material, so many excellent photos! But I'm confused. One of the photo captions refers to two men as "great-grandchildren of Santos Dumont". Did he have children??? EEng07:30, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng: Is okay! I completely agree that he deserves to be more recognized and the Portuguese language sources are an interesting case because many biographies are criticized for its lack of historical care. The first work to be acknowledged as complete is "Wings of Madness", but it also raised controversy on the representation of Santos-Dumont sexuality --it isn't a consensus among the researchers. On the links above, this one is mere 24 pages and the English side of this one is about 18. Other thing to do, maybe, would try to find English articles (like this) and newspapers from the time, since Santos was a pretty public figure in Europe.
The HBO production was filmed in Portuguese (scenes in Brazil), French (scenes in Paris), some dialogues in Spanish, European Portuguese and in English (scenes set in England and US), but is seems that they completely dubbed the series in English, what is quite sad, since the actors worked so hard to master these languages.
Well, thanks! I think you mistranslated: the term is "sobrinho-bisneto", something like as "newphew-grandcrildren", the grandchildren from his brothers and/or sisters.
Do you know any English language publisher and/or translator who might be interested on Santos public domain work? It seems that only My Airships received an English edition, while "O Que Eu Vi, O que Nós Veremos" never got any translations. Thanks, Erick Soares3 (talk) 14:07, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng: I translated the legend in the image with this term. Is possible to watch the series there? 6, 50 minutes episodes. On the Wikipedia article, I think that it would need to be redone from start (is easier to retranslate than just reference what is in the article). I might attempt to bring this to any Aviation community on the Portuguese Wikipedia on this subject, because the language barrier is a problem --but your collection might also have something of interest to the Portuguese article. Erick Soares3 (talk) 02:42, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng:, since I recently finished the "Olympic Hero" book, I brought the subject about the English article in the WikiProject Aviation in the pt.wiki - is a good place to add your opinion and there's no problem if you write in English. Erick Soares3 (talk) 20:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
September
@EEng: hi again! Few days ago I found this rare audio and video footage during an award ceremony in France (receiving the National Order of the Legion of Honour). Sadly the quality isn't great and should be quite hard to find the original film - I uploaded here, on Internet Archive and Youtube due it's historical importance (probably the only recording of his voice) and it seems to be in public domain since the 1980s. I'm working a little more in the Portuguese article (Henrique Lins de Barros wrote a lot about him and his articles are online/creative commons) and I think that the only way for the English version is to translate from PT with DeepL like what I did with the far less known Luís Gama. I don't want to turn the article in a edit warring like it was in the past, but the Portuguese version already developed so much about his life and work... Cheers, Erick Soares3 (talk) 01:00, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What tremendous work you're doing! And just by coincidence, I went to the library Saturday for the first time in almost two years (because ... you know) and renewed all my Santos Dumont books. And I thought of you! Now remind me -- what was the edit war? Just send me a link to the discussion or a diff to the start of the edits, or something. I'm very very busy and won't be editing much for another month, maybe, but at some point we'll use what you've done at PT to improve the article here at EN. EEng04:14, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng: Hi, thanks!!! Since I didn't want to let the article die, I Boldly translated the entirety of the Portuguese page to English (diff). I know that the articles aren't supposed to be replicas from each other, the the PT version was so developed that I just went for it even if it was tiring and kind of hurt my fingers hahaha - everything that the English version had, the Portuguese had with more information and sources.
On the edit war: it probably was a thing from years ago, but is on "Dumont vs Wright Brothers" discussion - I personally think that his discussion is quite boring, because everyone only thinks about this and never learns who Dumont really was (but I believe that I managed to source everything on this matter).
Now, with the updates/translation, I've finished with 310 inline citations and 53 footnotes explaining/giving context. On the books books, good! I think that would be necessary to link "{{sfn|Hoffman|" ("Wings of Madness") on the English version and do the same with the English language part of Olympic hero book. By now, only the article Open Source Philosophy and the Dawn of Aviation is completely in English - and gives some contrast on the development of aeronautics in the US and Europe ("patent and monetize everything" vs "open source and "steals" anything that could be useful for your project"). I'm only worried if happens to someone revert everything, but I have the work saved offline.
I even brought the death certificate (it was adulterated to occult his suicide) to the Wikisource and I'm transcribing this Cc-by-3.0 article by Henrique Lins de Barros - his research is superb, but I think that only this really short book is available in English (in another article Barros gives a lot of good motives of why Dumont should be thought as an scientist - but we just don't think about him in this way even if he was brillant).
Some days ago I also converted the List of Santos-Dumont aircraft into a table. Could you see if in your books if there any image from the Amérique? And in there are, could digitize it and send to Commons? Could you also look for any reference to the Fatum balloon? A few Portuguese language sources says that Santos Dumont designed it as a passing note, but I couldn't find it in any more reliable source - only that he flew 3 times on it according this Cronology. The cabangu website have a lot of public domain images from SD (much supplied by his family) and I have already sent some to Commons. Erick Soares3 (talk) 03:13, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well it's just terrific what you're doing. Still, though, I'm very very busy. Here's what I have on the shelf for when I get to this:
Alberto Santos-Dumont / texto de Henrique Lins de Barros. Barros, Henrique Lins de.
Desafio de voar : brasileiros e a conquista do ar, 1709-1914 Henrique Lins de Barros.
Santos-Dumont, "o pai de aviação." Villares, Henrique Dumont.
Santos-Dumont and the conquest of the air, tr. by Luiz Victor Le Cocq d'Oliveira. Napoleão, Aluízio, 1914-
My airships; the story of my life. With a new introd. by Sir Peter Wykeham. Santos-Dumont, Alberto, 1873-1932
Man flies : the story of Alberto Santos-Dumont, master of the balloon, conqueror of the air / Nancy Winters.
Wings of madness : Alberto Santos-Dumont and the invention of flight / Paul Hoffman.
Santos-Dumont; a study in obsession. Wykeham, Peter.
Santos Dumont, inventor Barbosa, Francisco de Assis, 1914-
(I don't read Pt but my boyfriend's Brazilian.) When the time comes there may be photos in some of those, and in fact there are many, many books on S-D that I have access to which aren't listed above because they're in Pt -- but I could still look through them for images. Also, I recently ran into THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR: THE SANTOS-DUMONT AEROPLANE. Lees, Frederic. The Pall mall magazine, May 1893-Sept. 1914; London Vol. 39, Iss. 166, (Feb 1907): 130-134, which has a lot of good images. EEng19:29, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng:, thanks! Well, I would love to read these books. By the sinopise, "Desafio de voar : brasileiros e a conquista do ar" is not just about Santos Dumont, but about all Brazilians who took part in the aeronautics development since Bartolomeu de Gusmão (who may be the first in recorded history to demonstrate a small scale hot air balloon model back in 1700s - at least from where the mostly authoritative sources goes (the legend says that he flew before the Montgolfier brothers, but there's no evidence to back this up)) until early 20th century. My Airships is the same in Wikisource. The article already connects with the Portuguese translation (non Public Domain, since the translator only died in the 1960s), but would be interesting to link the "Sfn" with the English version. The "Santos-Dumont; a study in obsession" was used as a source before I sent my translation, but only in a general way in moments cited by several sources - but the title is intriguing. The Nancy Winters work is in on Internet Archive.
If possible, could you ask for your boyfriend to read some of these books? I believe that they could also be quite useful in the Portuguese article.
Since THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR: THE SANTOS-DUMONT AEROPLANE. is public domain and just 4 pages, there's any way for you to digitize it and send to Wikisource? On the images: the list only needs are one for the Amérique and Nº17.
For now I will only foccus on the Wikisource article. I read so much to develop the article and to translate it, that my mind needs to take a little "vacation" from this subject haha
Finally, I hope to find a way for the Wikisource community to translate Dumont's 2th book and Barros article to English and maybe French - that would help to make these works more accessible.
The strength of our relationship (my boyfriend and mine, I mean) is division of responsibility: I haunt the library and write the Wikipedia articles, he scouts the farmer's marked and makes the moqueca. I could get him to sit still long enough to skim something for its general sense, but that's probably about it. EEng15:11, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again! A Chilean Museum has just released an Spanish language book about Santos Dumont (free download - official source). I also started to translate Dumont's second work at Wikisource. I'm using DeepL and while it isn't totally right all the time, I thought that it would be fair to make this work available in English (it was translated into French early this year). Erick Soares3 (talk) 17:36, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What you are doing (the translation, I mean) is a tremendous contribution. Someday we'll really pull that article together. Regarding the Chilean book: does it have anything really new? EEng17:42, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I'm not replying much here because my laptop almost can't handle your talk page. On the new book: I don't know (I'm planning to read it in the following days) - I only know that it is about his relationship with Chile. In general is hard for any new book to bring anything new to the table and we still need for a historian to write a biography about him (or at least something like what Walter Isaacson does). There's still a lot to discover about him (like the history of this balloon that, it seems, no biography talks about).
I have returned to this topic since in the last few days marked both the 149 anniversary of his birth and 90th years since his death. I have just did some edits in the article in both languages, including a topic on his mental health (with a 2013 and a 2022 English language articles). I have also found one about the 14-Bis, but it seems quite technical. Erick Soares3 (talk) 22:05, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would you know about any publisher who would be interested on Santos Dumont? Researcher Rodrigo Moura Visoni translated all the known Santos Dumont articles, but he doesn't have the budget to publish it (is my opinion that this would should be available in Portuguese, English and French). As an example, he created a work about Augusto Severo, but his crowdfunding is far from the mark. Erick Soares3 (talk) 12:38, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As a side question: could you see in your books if there's any use of Dumont's articles as sources? I'm attempting to gather everything on Wikisource (he entered in the Brazilian Public Domain way back in 1993) and I found that he wrote about 16 articles in English, French and German. Is not exactly for use in his Wiki page, but to compile everything for public access (apparently there's one here, but it is impossible to search). Erick Soares3 (talk) 12:49, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's one thing I can actually do. Bug me once in a while until I get the answer back to you. Also, I see you asked me earlier about photos of the Amérique, and I never answered that. EEng13:36, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
All right! I already found out one from the Amérique. For your collection, I just found out a 1970s biographical 4 parts series (1, 2, 3 and 4). I don't know if there's anything new for the article here (I found out that Santos actually met Jules Verne, what is neat), but it seems an interesting reading (the author was also the first to reveal, back in 1944, that Santos had committed suicide) - but I can't find this article anywhere. This website have also preserved articles predating his death (1928 onward). Erick Soares3 (talk) 19:20, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks and I think that you will like this one: someone restored, colorized and upscaled some videos from SD with AI. I have also found the original article that publicized Dumont's cause of death (there's nothing beyond you can read in the bios, but I have linked it in the footnotes for historical reference). Erick Soares3 (talk) 17:06, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My god, those are FANTASTIC. In general I feel colorization falsifies historic documents, but here the results are so impressive I'll overlook my usual purism. Do you think there's any chance of getting that video released under a Creative Commons license? EEng18:06, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is really fantastic and this channel have even more restorations (including from this film). Since they had to reupload all the videos with a narration track to avoid demonetization, I don't think so. For much I would like to recover the original black & white public domain videos for Commons - once I attempt to contact Pathé (since they filmed the originals), but it seems that they don't have the videos anymore. This documentary recovered about 16 minutes of footage (including long thought lost footage) and my dream project would be a "Apollo in Real Time" style recreation for the Archdeacon prize. Erick Soares3 (talk) 10:57, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again! I have just made an article for the balloon Brésil and you may like to see it (I wonder if it still is the smallest crewed balloon ever build or if anyone has surpassed it...). Erick Soares3 (talk) 11:00, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that you will like those two new projects: Dumont's World is developing a new deep-researched book on Alberto Santos Dumont (the author has found out that the Nº9 airship is stored at the Smithsonian) and PetitDumont is a thematic shop at Santos Dumont with souvenirs, books, clothing... The Brazilian Air Force has also published a website to mark his 150th birthday (mostly in Portuguese, but there's a Spanish and English language videos) and 3 free e-books (I'm planning to read E o Brasil falava de Santos-Dumont..., a compilation of newspaper articles from the early 20th century, to see if it has anything new for his bio). Erick Soares3 (talk) 11:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Great photos! I appreciate your keeping me informed, and someday we'll partner up to expand and improve the treatment of SD on Wikipedia. I just don't know when that will be. EEng14:56, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Since I'm a retired intellectual property consultant I don't need any tutorials on the legalities, and I'm fairly well versed in WP's policies in this area as well; what I don't invest my time in is the minutiae of all our little licensing and permissions templates. But I know for sure that presenting the file (as you have) as simply CC-licensed, with no mention of the trademark status, is utterly inappropriate. Feel free to tinker with the templates about copyright or free/nonfree status to your heart's content, as long as the trademark status is acknowledged. While you're deciding what you want to do along those lines I've restored the current licensing. EEng19:21, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Coming soon to a theater near you! The next great action blockbuster! The Incredible Shrinking President Or The Incredible Gigantic President
But if I could shrink former Presidents, or even shrink them down to non-existence, I'd definitely make other choices. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:00, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ooh, yeah. I would enlarge a recent one so much that he collapsed into a quivvering, oozing mass under the weight of his own blubber. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:21, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My wife once asked me why I've never sent her a dick pic. I promptly sent her a photo of me giving my son a noogie. She doesn't ask me anymore. Which is good because the wide angle lens on my phone isn't wide angle enough. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.20:03, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Lucky for me the UCOC doesn't consider viruses a protected class or we'd be at ANI right now discussing my 27th block. EEng17:07, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's funny how some religious people think that if you denounce the soul as mythical, effectively 'removing' it, you'll turn into some sort of monster. Even today there are lots of devout Christians who believe that people without religion have no morals, as if the only thing keeping them from immorality is the fear of God's wrath. Notwithstanding the fact that there are many social animals that display moral judgment. The Golden Rule is pretty straightforward. nagualdesign21:30, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It was interesting reading. The connection from Gage to David Ferrier is an interesting one (maybe worth adding to the page(s)), although I think that the connection from Gage (the impalee) to Vlad (the impaler) is a stretch. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:34, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously, I do like to think that, after all those years you and I and others spent hashing it out, the Gage article is something like 9944/100% comprehensive; while one can never be certain just how much detail should be included on any one particular point, it seems hard to conceive that there's any relevant point that isn't at least touched upon, with pointers to where the reader can learn more if he wants. As one reviewer wrote about Macmillan's book: "... provides one of those rare occasions on which one can truly say that further research is not necessary." EEng19:56, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nagualdesign, but the fear of God's wrath is the only thing keeping devout Christians from turning into some sort of monster, right? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:51, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, @Nagualdesign, Christianity is scarcely unique in that respect—although it and Islam seem to put a peculiar emphasis on belief. AFAICT most other religions are mainly interested in regulating behaviour, leaving what’s in one’s heart of hearts to be judged at the Weighing-In (whatever form that is conceived to take). And while I’m a fan of the Golden Rule it has its limitations, insofar as our understanding of even our own desires—let alone others’—is imperfect.—Odysseus147902:34, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. What I never get over is how many articles (including this one) are clearly based on the WP article and/or Macmillan's Odd Kind of Fame, and yet nonetheless say stuff both those sources go to pains to falsify:
Gage was not laying track, just preparing the roadbed.
The "recording the event in his notebook" incident is probably fiction.
Not Boston Medical Surgery Journal but Boston Medical & Surgical Journal (a nitpick I realize, but I'm in the mood).
I know of no evidence that Gage "inspired" Ferrier's localization experiments.
Ferrier experimented on monkey and dog brains, not human brains.
For those who are wondering, Bram Stoker's reference to David Ferrier is likely (IMHO) simply due to Ferrier's notoriety as a vivisectionist; in the same breath he mentions Burdon-Sanderson, who was well known to the public for exactly the same thing.Some years ago I spent a full week in London trying to find Ferrier's papers. I even tracked down the lawyers who had handled his estate. No luck, dammit. EEng06:46, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for participating in the recent discretionary sanctions community consultation. We are truly appreciative of the range of feedback we received and the high quality discussion which occurred during the process. We have now posted a summary of the feedback we've received and also a preview of some of what we expect to happen next. We hope that the second phase, a presentation of draft recommendations, will proceed on time in June or early July. You will be notified when this phase begins, unless you choose to to opt-out of future mailings by removing your name here.
--Barkeep49 & KevinL (aka L235) 21:05, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With all those pearls you're constantly handing out it's no wonder that so many people tend to clutch theirs whenever you're around. nagualdesign23:07, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You somehow managed to be snarky to me, and be educational, and make me smile all at once in just a few words. In my world, you have earned this token of appreciation. 92.24.246.11 (talk) 17:01, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. It appears your talk page is becoming quite lengthy and is in need of archiving. According to Wikipedia's user talk page guidelines; "Large talk pages are difficult to read and load slowly over slow connections. As a rule of thumb, archive closed discussions when a talk page exceeds 75 KB or has multiple resolved or stale discussions." – this talk page is 683.1 KB. See Help:Archiving a talk page for instructions on how to manually archive your talk page, or to arrange for automatic archiving using a bot. If you have any questions, place a {{help me}} notice on your talk page, or go to the help desk. Thank you. 92.40.188.227 (talk) 15:18, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Have you ever browsed through their contributions? They're a troll, who occasionally makes okay-ish edits, likely to disguise their trolling. Obviously a static IP as well, as their interests haven't changed over several months, with decent and trolling edits on articles in the exact same topic. They even tried to edit a WP policy page to say something very different in what appears to be a WP:POINTY edit, and then edit warred over it. Back in 2018, they used a dynamic IP, but are pretty clearly on a static one now, making their trolling easier to discern.
I recently broke my vow to avoid ANI for another IP who was making hundreds of edits to a noticeboard. I'm wondering if it's worth breaking again to end this one's tendentiousness. I've a list of trolling edits of theirs at User:MjolnirPants/sandbox#section_2 if you want to give it a read. I'm curious as to your thoughts on this. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.16:48, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest I've lost track of what we're arguing about, with whom, and I'll be traveling for a few days so I'm afraid you'll have to take the lead on this. But I'm behind you all the way [74]. EEng09:32, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are the technical wizard here so I thought it wise to ask you, I’ve asked this question to a sysop and their reply although plausible I still need a technical editor to answer this for me so yup, your name came to my mind first. You see my question is how do people dig really old diffs fast? I’ve seen people dig up diffs from 2009 and very fast as well, Is there a special technical or way of digging up diffs fast? For example if I warned an editor of UPE in 2019 or wanted to dig up other diffs pertaining their conduct and whatnot is there a special way of doing so? is there a script for that purpose? I barely can dig up diffs from last week, whereas some editors could dig up a diff from 2009 and relatively fast as well, how do they achieve that feat? Celestina007 (talk) 21:00, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The key is to have the sort of personality that nurses grudges and mentally rehearses revenge scenarios over and over. This cements the locus of the original humiliation or offense in the mind so that it's immediately at hand (mentally speaking) when the moment for payback comes. Seriously, there's no magic bullet, but one very powerful tool is the editor interaction analyzer [75], which works very well if you vaguely remember that you and X (or X and Y) discussed such-and-such, but you can't really remember when or where. Most talk pages (including ANI and other noticeboards) have search boxes, in case you think what you're looking for happened on a particular talk page. Both techniques take some practice before you understand their peculiarities. I hope this helps. EEng21:23, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Right, but don't discount the value of nursing grudges and mentally rehearsing revenge scenarios. You'll get my bill. EEng11:02, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the changes you made were constructive but it would've been helpful to clear them in advance with ArbCom – the page does constitute instructions from the Arbitration Committee on rules in proceedings so ArbCom should probably know about changes KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 19:47, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Way back in September 2012, when I created Wikipedia:Don't throw your toys out of the pram, I thought a stereotypical toy-chucking unblock request would be "This is evil censorship and bullying. I am right and they are wrong. You cannot allow lies and slander to appear on Wikipedia articles!". Today, I hear Trump's response to a two-year Facebook ban : ""They shouldn't be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our country can't take this abuse anymore!"" Can I sue the Orange Oaf for plagiarising my cliches? Ritchie333(talk)(cont)19:12, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I sort of went down a rabbithole after reading the essay Ritchie mentioned: This user created a series of articles about his pet rabbit Frisco Coakley. I would prefer discussing this animal to thinking about the last four years. Mr.choppers | ✎ 22:00, 6 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have always referred to the town as "Frisco", ever since I read it being referenced in a Swedish book about American Truckers when I was eight. Proudly a rube. Mr.choppers | ✎ 22:13, 6 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's funny, when I was eight I read an American book about Swedish truckers. Must be some kind of series: "The Boys Adventure Book of Foreign Truckers". EEng22:50, 6 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! I'd like to buy that one. It must be very fun to author those books, getting to ride along with truckers in foreign locales. My cousin just got her commercial trucker's license in Sweden, after a career as a lunch lady (all true) and I can't wait to shadow her at work for a day. Mr.choppers | ✎ 01:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for attending this year's EEng Home for the Bewildered Literary Recital and Talent Show. On your way out remember not to feed or provoke the inmates. EEng14:41, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK - thank you. I didn't think it was intentional, but I've had a bad couple days of having to fix, strike-through, re-edit, change, and apologize for things, so I just wanted to make sure I didn't somehow screwup again. — Ched (talk) 11:32, 19 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just wanted to say thank you, for being one of the few users who seems to have some common sense in the sea of bullshittery that is our modern culture. The moronic, absurdist, toxic (and sometimes frankly, dangerous) culture that seems to be permeating everything, everywhere, including Wikipaedia.
I know it can be a thankless task sometimes, being just so utterly BASED and reasonable on Wikipedia talk pages. Especially since most readers dont even know talk pages exist, let alone understand the complex politics going on behind the scenes by the unbased and cringe editors and admins. So just know that someone, somewhere is genuinely thankful that users like you exist, who are a little beacon of hope that, maybe, all signs of intelligent life are not yet lost on this planet. 92.41.96.241 (talk) 03:20, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your comment as User talk:Guy Macon brought to my attention that, somehow, we did not have a redirect for the wonderful phrase hanged on a comma. I've created the redirect, so, let no one say that nothing good has come of all this. I was going to make a joke there about whether any Wikipedian has ever been "indeffed on a colon", but decided it best to not compare execution to blocking on a page where tensions are high. I'm sure, though, that the answer is yes.-- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi.19:48, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For those of y'all in the audience who write actual articles, I do wonder if there's room for a Trial of Roger Casement / R. v. Casement. You've got an interesting legal angle, interesting historical/political angle, and just a dash of sex to keep things interesting. (And as a bonus you get to deal with two DS areas at once!)-- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi.20:30, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Does it include punctuation marks not used qua punctuation marks? If so, I assume the list would be 99% programmers. Tom Scott, for instance. Or just about anyone to ever edit a MediaWiki template. (For me it's always the pipe in {{#if:{{{1|}}}}} that gets me.)-- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi.00:40, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure people did question whether Italian printers were quite the right people to legislate on the meaning of everything; but on the other hand, resistance was obviously useless against a family that could invent italics.
I was just reading Roger Casement again, and came (ahem) across this:
the British government secretly circulated some excerpts from Casement's journals, exposing Casement as a "sexual deviant". These included numerous explicit accounts of sexual activity. This aroused ...
I find myself in the position of defending an editor at ANI whose edits are (for the most part) productive, but whose attitude pisses people off. You (and TRM for that matter) might relate. Paul August☎01:16, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Huh. I don't know any editors like that. Anyway, in the spirit of giving the guy another chance I randomly grabbed a few things from his contribs, which turned out to be [82] (fixing a minor stylistic flaw by making the sentence factually incorrect); [83] (worsening the flow in obedience to an idiosyncratic idea); and finally [84] (misusing a mathematical term) just before [85] (pontificating on mathematics). From these I conclude your efforts may be misplaced. Sic.Look, if he'd acknowledge that he's got problems, and agree to listen, that would be one thing. But he's just laying low until it blows over. He can always get back from an indef by speaking up. EEng02:55, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well I might be all wrong about this. But I agree acknowledging their problems and agreeing to listen—not an easy thing for some editors (know any of those?)—is what they should do here. Although, of course, just silently changing their editorial behavior would be sufficient for the purposes of the encyclopedia. But that won't fly now. ANI needs its pound of flesh. If some sort of recognition of their problems and a willingness to try to fix them is not forthcoming, an indef will likely follow. Paul August☎11:57, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I said at ANI that TRM certainly should have handled this better, and been more forthcoming about what was wrong with Autod.'s edits, but I guess it's like this: there's IDHT, there's supercilious self-certainty, and there's not knowing what you're talking about. My experience is the community will tolerate up to two out of three, but not all three, which is what we have here. EEng13:53, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm laughing that you'd think I have any idea how that whole Rube Goldberg machine manages to keep plugging along and would therefore be able to check anyone's work. I have been trying to figure out how to simplify instructions there, but between the number of them and the number of times they're transcluded to various places, it's a bit daunting. —valereee (talk) 12:37, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You completely misunderstand. I'm using you as a sort of stress test -- if you can understand the instructions, anyone can.[FBDB]EEng14:02, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"O let us love our occupations, Bless the squire and his relations, Live upon our daily rations, And always know our proper stations." EEng15:10, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure I'd run you out of a job if I did. My capacity for idiocy knows no bounds:
When I was a teenager, me and a group of friends stole a dump truck from the local landfill and took it for a drunken joyride. Past the police station.
Later on in my teens, I gave a police officer the name "Bong T. Drueler". To be fair, that cop was even more of an idiot, because he believed me.
I once hip-fired a Light Fifty. While standing on the roof of a building. With my back to the edge. In combat.
My wife once asked me if her outfit made her look fat, and my half-listening ass responded "Yeah, a lot, actually," because I assumed she was asking me how I was liking the book I was reading.
I've brought my kids to the park with no pants on. On more than one occasion.
I once sent EEng's talk page to the printer at my (former) job.
Heh. I actually answered that question in my edit summary. I was able to cancel the job before it finished spooling. Of course, I probably could have gone home, slept in late the next day and then taken an early lunch, and still had time to cancel it before it finished spooling. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.19:45, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Umm... thank you for your service?
About your kids in the park, were they pantsless, or were you? (Or both?)
Thinking about your mishaps, I remember that when I was a young child (I mean, fish), my mother took me to a toy store wanting to buy me a ball to play with. She walked up to a salesman, and asked him: "Do you have balls?" True story. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:12, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm glad someone appreciates my service. There were a bunch of bastards trying to kill me for it for a while there.
The kids were pants-less. I haven't stepped out of my house without a pair of blue jeans on since 2006, excepting a few occasions on which I was -horror of horrors- force to wear a suit.
In Iraq, it was fashionable for a bit to teach young ladies how to properly greet an American soldier. There was a day when me and two buddies cornered our interpreter to ask him what "Allah kabeg dek," means, as several young women had greeted us with the phrase, but young men never seemed to use it.
Much to our amusement and (and a bit to our chagrin), rather than a straightforward translation, we got a brief lesson on the effects of speaking unfamiliar English phrases with a regional Arabic accent, and an impromptu education in rural Iraqi toilet humor. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.19:40, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Allah kabeg dek! --Tryptoidiot
I ran that phrase through Google Translate, and they think the language of it is Malay. Interesting, sort of, but not an RS. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:25, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's English, I assure you. You've got to say it out loud to understand. Preferably loudly, and in public. You'll know you're saying it right if a woman or a well-dressed man agrees with you.
Facepalm . You got me! But once Google decided that it was Malay, they simply translated it into the standard kind of blessing. Perhaps Google has beg dek envy. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:48, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Didn't you several years ago swear to turn your back on Wikipedia, never to return? What happened to that? EEng17:32, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! Several years? No, it was more recently than that. Actually, I've also said repeatedly that I don't wanna be an admin. But maybe it would be worth changing my mind about that too, just so I can join the club and block you.[FBDB] --Tryptofish (talk) 17:36, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding your comment in this discussion, I honestly had considered that possibility after someone else raised it to me.
I asked Bishonen to take a look days ago, and didn't notice she was on vacation until after hit "save". But before reverting myself and asking someone else about it, I had a brief conversation with an employee who had seen the edit that prompted me to go to Bish, and she mentioned that he might just be a very conservative gay person, offended not by the thought of the "Gay agenda", but by nominally straight characters and people "intruding" into gay space.
It was strictly a case of Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I'm intrigued, however, by your reference to "an employee". Your employee? You discuss your WP editing with your employee? Is that part of their assigned duties or what? EEng05:45, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've got to be honest, the last virulently homophobic guy I met IRL ended up married to a another man, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.
About my employee: I'm the lead software developer, in charge of hiring my own team. She's technically a coworker, but I can fire her if I want to. Of course, she's the only one of us with any qualifications in UI design, so that's not likely to happen anytime soon.
As for WPing at work: No, it's nothing official. She just happened to be sitting with me while we waited for a rather large chunk of code to compile. We'd be chatting about WP, so I hopped on while we waited. That was her first experience with Wikipedia's processes, unfortunately, and she was not impressed (I've tried to stress how uncommon that sort of thing is, but you know how first impressions are).
I dated a few US Marines in the 1980s so I know a closet case when I see one. Nice boys when you got them alone, though. EEng16:24, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't speak to that, but I can analogize to "Christian women", from whom I learned that repression can be a great enhancement to the libido, and a powerful motivator to treat one's partner right. I can certainly recognize a "closeted libertine" as it were from a mile off. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.16:39, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"The repercussions of not providing adequate foraging and scratching opportunities to hens are that agnostic behaviors increase." - [86] I'm guessing they meant agonistic behavior, but it made me wonder: what does agnostic behavior in hens look like? Levivich03:25, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, according to [87] agnostic behaviors include "head pecks, steps, pushes, threats, and chases", so that's what you can expect when the seeds of doubt are sown in the coop. I suppose you want us to believe you just happened to be reading Chapter 8, ("Enrichments in Cages") in Egg Innovations and Strategies for Improvements.
Anyway, that rooster did deny Him three times, or something. Also:
"The hens in our charter flock turned me from chicken agnostic to borderline obsessed." [88]
"But what does the American Egg Board think? ... 'We are agnostic in that respect,' said Dresner, the group’s spokesman." [89]
First JS Mill, now Clarence Darrow? We need to renew our wedding vows before you start quoting Bradbury or e e cummings to me. And of course no one just happens to be reading Chapter 8, ("Enrichments in Cages") in Egg Innovations and Strategies for Improvements. I happened to be reading Chapter 7 and went too far. Levivich13:49, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Re the Talk:Grigori Rasputin archive page size I'll admit 100K seems fine to me but ok. Keeping your edit summary of jumping around from one little page to another little page to another little page serves no one. This is the modern age -- 500K is nothing. in mind I moved it back to 700K and am assuming that will be more agreeable going forward. Cheers.Shearonink (talk) 17:10, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well I carefully thought about the size of archive pages and I decided if someone else finds a different size better-suited to their enjoyment of Wikipedia, more power to them. Shearonink (talk) 21:47, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As per the talk section immediately above, it may not necessarily be impeckable. (And whatever you do, never say "your pecker is discernable.") --Tryptofish (talk) 21:03, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I was gonna say (or at least try to say) "Peter Piper picked a pep of pickled peckers", but Marty beat me to it. Stop beating me! Help! Help! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Peter Piper plumbed a pot of pickled pecker. A pickled pecker poked a part of Peter Piper. If Peter Piper poked a popsy with a pickled pecker, where's the pot of pickled peckers Peter Piper plumbed? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.21:47, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MPants Piper popped a plot of POV pushers. MPants pecker poo-pooed Rasputin's pickled pee-pee. Pickled plumbing pecked at Panties... oh, nevermind. --Pipefish (American pickerel) 21:54, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
Hi there. My edit brought about a fix to the RfC listing entry; your revert caused it to break again, along with the full listing (see WP:RFC/A from that point down to the bottom of the page). Nothing was falsified: it's a brief statement of the matter at hand, mostly copypasted from what you had already written. Please undo your revert so that the RfC listings are no longer broken; if you like, you can omit the signature but the timestamp does need to stay. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:48, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There really is something seriously wrong with you. Pasting my signature onto something that I did not write is falsification, even if it's "mostly copypasted" from something I actually did write (well, half of it anyway – the other half was stuff you just pulled out of your ass) .Every interaction I have with you is over your apparent belief that editors should twist themselves into pretzels to accommodate some broken bot, or that an article must omit something it ought to include because someone's spellchecking kiddiescript can't handle it, or something like that. Editors and readers outrank software. It exists for us, not we for it. Fix the software, don't harangue people to bend to the robot's mindless demands. Get that through your head. EEng01:26, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wait a second, Ritchie. Did you write that, or did someone paste your signature onto something mostly copypasted from what you had already written? [90][91]EEng14:15, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You must have some kind of hi-tech exoskeleton that block entry of any kind of clue. I've known you for years, and every time you "explain where problems lie", you always, automatically, implicitly, and unfailingly blame humans for not conforming to some technical stupidity, as you did in your OP here and are now doing again. It's incredible. I have no "problem with how the bot operates", you have a problem with how it operates, you are upset that it's not doing what you feel it should do, but for some reason you came here to complain to me about what it was doing, and wanted me to fix it. You go talk to the bot operator. I don't give a shit. Do you get it now? EEng22:07, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, now we've discussed my sexual preferences for jam, the serious point. I've met Redrose in real life and he's a nice guy, and not the sort of chap to bite your head off, so I think "the other half was stuff you just pulled out of your ass" is misguided. More to the point, if you haven't seen the recent drama on ANI and Arbcom (and to be honest those of us who have wish we hadn't), there's a bit of a push to take WP:CIVIL a bit more seriously, and I'd hate for you to be caught in the crossfire. Even though I know that a "you have been blocked for personal attacks for 24 hours / 1 week / 6 months / 47 years / the age of the universe" message here from an obliging admin doesn't defuse drama, it diffuses it. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)20:06, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ritchie, he fabricated a post (out of stuff he made up -- i.e. "pulled out of his ass") and forged my sig to make it look like I had written it, all because he couldn't sleep at night knowing that some bot's output had unbalanced braces. Did you miss that? I'm glad he's sweet in person but stupid sweetness is not enough. He has yet to give even the slightest acknowledgement of that wrongness of what he did, so instead of talking to me how 'bout you try to get him to do that? Good seeing you, BTW. EEng22:07, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I went to look at what happened, and here is what I think. EEng wrote the top part of an RfC, the part that appears on the list(s) of active RfCs, with his signature and timestamp at the end. It's an incredibly verbose and lengthy RfC introduction an RfC introduction written in EEng's unmistakable style. As a result, when the bot listed it on the RfC list page, the lengthy RfC introduction appeared with a correct link to the talk page where the RfC is. As is supposed to happen. But it was difficult (maybe impossible, but I didn't try very hard) to find EEng's autograph at the end of the introduction. As is not supposed to happen, not to mention a grievous loss for everyone who breathlessly waits to see EEng's wonderful username.
So Redrose added some text at the top of the talk page section, to create a brief RfC question, and put EEng's signature at the end. And the bot did whatever it did at the RfC list page.
And EEng objects to having something written by someone else, but over his signature, when he, in fact, did not write it. I'd object to that, too. EEng was right to take offense at it, and Redrose should not have done it that way, even though Redrose was acting in good faith and sincerely believed that he was making the RfC work better.
So, Redrose, please don't do that again. You can ask the RfC-initiating editor to make it shorter, or you can just let it go and not worry about. The world does not come to an end if the RfC list page looks messy. (Probably, fewer editors will respond to the messy-looking RfC, which has a certain poetic justice to it.)
And EEng, calm the fuck down.[FBDB] You're usually such a sweetie pie.[dubious – discuss] And nobody needs a yelling match. And Ritchie is right about the recent spate of ANI clusterfucks over being nice and not using "fuck" in a sentence. It wouldn't be worth having an ANI experience over that. I've just spent the last few days dealing with a couple of those ANI threads, and I'm getting too old for this shit. (I used to be an old fart, but I ran out of gas). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:57, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for taking the time. For the record, it's not that my RfC intro was long, but rather that it incorporated a collapse box containing the discussion of the prior proposal, and that confuses the bot (details on request). EEng00:23, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway: you're welcome. No need for any bot-ly details. And it's good to know that you did not, in fact, suffer a loss of blather control. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I came across something that might be useful to the curator of museums.
From our article on Catshark: "Catsharks are ground sharks of the familyScyliorhinidae. They are one of the largest families of sharks with around 160 species placed in 17 genera. Although they are generally known as catsharks, many species are commonly called dogfish..."
For those unfamiliar with the topic, in a typical pod of sharks, there are (1) the positive (or "hot") shark, (2) the negative shark, and (3) the ground shark. Together, they form what is called a "plug". When met by another group of sharks, those other sharks are called a "receptacle". The combination of a plug and a receptacle results in a "circuit". --Electric fish (talk) 20:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"The stuff about goalposts and "misdescribing" is just shit you made up."
When someone asked "if we have a speedy consensus to remove the above mentioned phrase", you set the goalpost by saying "Give it a couple of days." So we gave it a couple days, something closer to a week, during which there were no fresh objections to the edit... at which point you reverted the edit. Having met passed the original goalposts you set was not sufficient.
in your reversion summary, you said "A couple of people saying they don't get the point isn't enough to remove it". It was more than two people, and they were saying more than that they don't get the point. It was a consensus in a discussion that you were choosing to misdescribe.
You addressed me as "pilgrim" in that reversion summary, in a manner that reflects the way racist John Wayne would use in on-screen personas to address those he felt superior to . When I took offense at that, you seem to have reckoned that you had found a way under my skin and chose to, like some second grade playground bully, use it repeatedly to refer to me in a little harassment campaign.
I ask that you retract the claim about me making shit up. I warn that if you continue your harassment campaign, I am willing to take it to ANI. --Nat Gertler (talk) 12:48, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Pilgrim" could easily be seen as addressing you as a farsighted explorer and adventurer, an honorable name although with puritan overtones. And call John Wayne a racist to his face, double dare you! Randy Kryn (talk) 14:49, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Martinevens, with your racist film clip you are obviously mocking me because I stutter, you goddamned mean son of a bitch. If you continue your harassment campaign I am willing to take you to ANI (where I will buy you a drink...hell, why not, a round for everyone). Randy Kryn (talk) 15:08, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
[for those humor impaired and/or Code Enforcement Officer wannabbes, 1) what the heck are you doing on this talk page?, 2) watch the whole John Wayne clip linked by Martinevans which explains my code-unenforced language.] Randy Kryn (talk) 22:41, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Couple is an elastic term. In Islam, pilgrim is title of honor. And what does John Wayne's racism have to do with anything? In the old days racism was all the rage, just as indignant demands for apologies are today. Now begone before I denounce you as an Islamophobe. Pilgrim. EEng15:03, 1 September 2021 (UTC)BTW, second-grade has a hyphen.[reply]
The holes in Wiki-seedier dramahboards elicit feelings of discomfort or repulsion in some people. --Lotus eater 123.
I made the mistake of looking (but at least not commenting) at ANI per the notice below, and I had the misfortune of looking up higher on the page, where there is a now-closed thread about Trypophobia. And it contains a whiny comment about some talk page posts from several years ago: However, some users, such as one editor called Tryptofish, took the time to mock the concept of the disorder, and tried to have the image enlarged. The ping didn't go through to me, so I only saw it today, after closure. Apparently, I'm an SPA who adopted a name similar to the page name so that I could make fun of it. (In fact, I responded to an RfC, and asked about the strength of sourcing for the page. Obviously, I needed to be canceled.) Thanks for letting me vent. Anyway, it seems that WP has long been a place for people who get offended by stuff that shouldn't have offended them so much. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:13, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I like GoodDay, and I like EEng, and I also think there is something going on here that EEng would do well to learn from. I saw the exchange between the two of you at ANI. Basically, GoodDay said, in a supportive way, that worse things have been said about him, and EEng replied that that's because he's a worse person. When I read it at the time, I found it funny, and understood it to be a joke. But it sounds like GoodDay took it seriously. And neither one of us (GoodDay and I) is right or wrong in how we interpreted it. That's the limitation of online humor, where affect is not apparent in text. And frankly, that's similar to what happened with Nat and "pilgrim". EEng thought it was no big deal, and Nat did not. So EEng, as much as I personally like your sense of humor, don't give up your day job. You aren't as clever as you think you are. It's not the other person's fault if they don't get your joke. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:09, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot to add: if you look here (towards the end of the section), you will see EEng telling me that I'm better than a root canal. I took that as humorous, too, and that's the way that I took the comment to GoodDay. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:13, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have asked you before to stop being aggressive yet you choose to continue being belligerent there with disrespectful and unnecessary wording like "your own damn fault". I am asking you again to stop that and to be civil. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 15:17, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(talk page watcher) I frequently check on the background behind these sorts of complaints, and far be it from me to object to requests for EEng to be nicer to people, but – good grief! This is over a fringey claim, where the talk page discussion has, by my count, six editors telling SW to back down, and zero agreeing with him. Looks to me like it's his own damn fault. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:56, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I asked a question on an article talk page. Only this user addressed the matter with an abundance of personal scolding. That's what I wrote about here, not article content. On that page, I have already given up on the question I asked, yet the scolding only continues and worsens. If several of you wish to enable and support and reinforce that kind of behavior, that's your prerogative. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 13:36, 7 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Atsme, good to see you around again! As for the dirty underwear, I don't get the joke, either, so please do tell. Of course, EEng doubtless knows his way around the dungeon museum better than I do. But what I remember from Dr Chrissy's passing was that EEng commented that the impalement image Dr Chrissy had put on their page looked... something, in the context of the note about his being deceased. Of course, if you're just telling EEng to change his underwear... --Tryptofish (talk) 20:41, 10 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've been called arch from time to time (but no, my name is not Archie). But I can honestly say that no one (except, maybe, my mother) has ever called me an angel. I'm finally moving up in the world! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:08, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am rarely ever smitten by celebrity as it appears Harry & Meghan must be, and even less so smited, at least not in the way Tryp presented it (no offense intended to the god of thunder & lightening). My most recent smitings have been brought on by this seemingly never ending move with all the accompanying memories. Oh, and the last link I included in my post will take you to an interesting bit of music history. Atsme💬📧21:08, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, our curator just ignored my dig at him. And this from someone who once went ballistic when I admitted that Yale has better architecture than Harvard does. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:08, 20 October 2021 (UTC) (Harvard, '78)[reply]
Not sure what you mean by "how did you [i.e. me, EEng] get access", because I don't recall ever having seen the title before. But if there's something you need from it I can get it. EEng00:51, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, just to be clear, you're looking for stuff about Cwmhiraeth, not Cwmhiraeth, right? Because I don't think there will be much about the latter in there. It may be a week or more, but I'll take a look and see what's there. EEng04:08, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Cwmhiraeth the hamlet is just an innocuous little place that sprang up as part of the development of the woollen industry in Wales in the nineteenth century. I doubt you will find much about it online. My only association with the hamlet is that a relation used to live there and I liked the evocative name. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:10, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I love your user page, eg. the Museum of Stable Geniuses. In fact, it rivals only Martin's talk page for that welcome combination of a) sanity-restoring absurdist humour and b) the potential for making an editor completely forget the reason they went to the page in the first place. JG66 (talk) 04:27, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The credit is all yours. The sad part, though (and take this from me), is that you will probably never do anything that good ever again in your life, and when you're 70 you'll be saying "Did I ever tell you about the time I coined the Wikinym vexbysterang?" And immediately people will remember that they promised to change the catbox or pick up their mother-in-law at the airport, and before you know it the room will be clear. EEng05:23, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For a while I've mused... Electrical Engineer? No... has a sense of humor. Mmm...So?
Let me offer la bonne juste... ETA is in the arrivals column.
Thanks for the use of your talk page. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 02:14, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what those are. One of my very first paperback books was Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. I also kept a collection of Mark Twain short stories in paperback form. I believe I have a paperback copy of Edgar Allen Poe poems I picked up on my travels. I don't keep much but books I will keep. --ARoseWolf19:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Paperback Writer is a song written by Paul McCartney for the last Beatles tour; Ghost Rider is one of Nicholas Cage's more awful films — way back, as a kid, visiting grandparents in a small town, I spent summer afternoons sitting on the town library floor, reading every science fiction work, book by book, shelf by shelf. When I began to purchase books for myself, paperback books were $0.35 new—turn in two old ones and get one back. Heaven—I grew up on a farm & had little interest and further helpings of outdoors. Now, penitential, I caretake novelist's bios here. William Gibson, whose first novel, Neuromancer started the cyberpunk genre as an ACE paperback for under a dollar. The Peripheral, the first of a new trilogy-two published so far, is set in the near future. He's talked of as an important modern author of novels in English—genre or no. Usually has a resourceful woman in the foreground—sort of as I'd wanted my daughter to be in similar situations (she's 35 now and handles any situation well.) Try an Apple Books sample if you're in that ecology. Well, I run on, but so happy to meet a rose wolf in this wild party—All Tomorrow's Parties is another Gibson title. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 22:38, 26 October 2021 (UTC)@ARoseWolf:^ Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 22:57, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the explanation, Neonorange. I don't mind wordy explanations. The more information the better. I am so happy to meet an...orange...that is neon (lol). Its a peculiar name but I like it. My parents bought me a used set of encyclopedias of the world when I was younger and I spent so much time just reading its pages. I was both thrilled and scared when I went to visit some of those locations years ago. The encyclopedias weren't entirely correct but they were close enough it didn't bother me too much. Most every language I know, with exception of Hebrew, Italian and Yiddish, I learned on my own from books and such. I didn't do much else growing up. I love reading from a book and still find time to do it. --ARoseWolf16:52, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This looks much better than what's currently in Wikipedia:Contact us/Article subjects. However, I think this needs to be tested on the mobile, Android and iOS Wikipedia apps first to make sure it is factually correct. I've never tried using them (like Cullen328, I use the desktop browser on mobile and it works fine, though not as practical as an actual desktop PC) but I'd need to double check that the image of a "Talk" header is actually what they see. The subject of the latest ANI thread is using a mobile app, and was complaining about not finding out how to appeal a block, which might be related. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)16:44, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if there are any problems along those lines, they were there already; all I did was cut stuff out and a little copyediting -- nothing new added. So the issues you're talking about (which are valid concerns, of course) aren't affected one way or the other, so you may as well move my sandbox over and deal with what you're talking about after that. EEng17:19, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Great, thanks. But I hasten to point out that -- though it may seem unjust -- I have yet to reach the point where I have my own WP: shortcut -- see edit summary at [104] ;P . EEng18:21, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I just noticed (belatedly) that User talk:EEng/Editnotice has some stuff in it that resembles some vandalism that was recently reverted ([105]). (The stuff about "new things at bottom" with blurry stuff superimposed.) I don't want to change it myself, but EEng, you may want to repair it if it's not intended. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it just appeared one day and since crazy things are always happening around here it seemed like just one more nutso thing. EEng22:47, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Worse and worse. The Starship Enterprise didn't "lift off"; it was built in space. Honestly, one would think you were born in the 19th century or something. EEng15:06, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not regular dashes but hyphens. A hyphen is not a dash. My GOD, what are they teaching in the schools these days? EEng12:36, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In all seriousness, User:Valereee, dashes have a myriad of uses, and in most of them it really does matter which one is which, the different sizes communicating slightly different relationships between whatever's on either side. However, there is one very prominent use – the "interrupting" dash, such as in this very sentence – in which it doesn't matter which one you use, and from that people get the idea that they're interchangeable in all uses—which they're not. (That was two ens followed by one em, either one of which was acceptable in that use -- except that I shouldn't have used a mix in a single sentence or indeed in a single work. And just now, BTW, I gave an example of what's called a "typewriter dash".) EEng00:09, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In most uses? Color me ignorant. :D I would not have thought that. And I'll probably never do the required research unless someone says something that makes it actually sound interesting. —valereee (talk) 21:05, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Valereee, I was kidding around, so please don't feel like you have to do anything just because I said so. (And it made me realize that the way that I do my own signature – for which I just use the default WP format, with nothing personalized – uses a double-hyphen ( -- ), which I like the least of all. So, there you go!) Anyway, the shorter one is an "n-dash" and the longer one is an "m-dash". If your edit window looks like my edit window, just below where the text being edited appears, there is a drop-down menu starting with "Insert". Just to the right of that are two dashes, the first one being the "n" and the second being the "m", and you can click on the one you want, to insert it where you are editing. You can change from one to the other on the first page of your user preferences. But you don't have to unless you want to. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:02, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On American roads, yellow lines separate lanes of traffic going in opposing directions, and white lines separate lanes going in the same direction; you should never find yourself with a yellow line to your right (except when passing). Perhaps not 1 driver in 100 could tell you that, and yet if you put drivers in a simulator going down a lane with a yellow line on their right, most will immediately realize something's wrong, even if they can't tell you exactly what it is. Dashes are the same (sayeth the dash pedant). EEng22:53, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thus speaks someone who obviously has not dealt with Southern California freeway carpool lanes and the double-yellows that often separate them from the rest of traffic, to their right. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:18, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On British roads, traffic going in opposing directions is often separated by Insulate Britain protestors with their faces super-glued to the road. You should never find yourself with a climate activist under your wheels. Perhaps not 1 driver in 100 could tell you that, and yet if you put drivers in a simulator with realistic bone-crunching sounds, most will immediately realize something's wrong, even if they can't tell you exactly what it is. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:48, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, but I fear we're already living on borrowed time with the changes I've made (with remarkably little pushback) to WP:SIZE, because (I suspect) there are many more watchers are over at WP:SPLIT. So really we've got three different loci for changes; we need to bring those interested in all three pages (SIZE, SPLIT, Summary style) together for a come-to-Jesus. And like I've said, but keep forgetting to remind myself, I've really got some important IRL stuff to do that demands I conserve the kind of concentration needed for a policy overhaul like this. EEng21:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! How did you find a picture of me, if I had blonde hair, if I had long hair, if I had any hair? And it was Summer and I was sitting on a dock wearing a red dress. --ARoseWolf12:32, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's not far off. You can have my hair if you like, Rose, I'm not exactly short of it and it was especially bad when the barbers were all shut during lockdown. And my dad's still got a full head of hair going into his mid 70s, so it's not going to change. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)16:46, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sweetness, my girls used to braid wild flowers into my hair (lol). It was three and half to four feet long. Hopefully I'll get there again one day. --ARoseWolf17:02, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't interpret it as someone being pissed at me. Quite the opposite: I'm being held up as a beacon of hope to downtrodden talk-page owners. EEng17:11, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why should the mobile app automatically send a mobile-app-centric diff? I use the desktop version when on my iPad and Celestina007's diff flipped the display on Safari from desktop to mobile version. Seem's the version chosen for the displaying device ought to be dispositive. (I favor a third choice—an acolyte currying flavor) — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 13:37, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ritchie333, since you and I are Facebook friends, you know my real thoughts about Trump (which are sharply negative for those who don't read my Facebook posts). That being said, I am uncomfortable using DYK and the main page for political digs against the guys with really bad haircuts. Cullen328Let's discuss it01:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So I take it you wouldn't be happy about
Did you know ... that donaldtrumpi has a scaly yellowish head and small genitalia?
Not sure, but could possibly be the J.K. Rowling flap, in this VPP discussion where GoodDay participated, and where I had made a failed ping to you and came here to remedy it, finding when I got here that GoodDay had gotten here first. Mathglot (talk) 03:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What going on at Rowling's BLP is a tragic-comedy. But, that's not what's got be foolish. 2021 has been an interesting year on Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 03:30, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm seeing rather too many examples of WP:DUH recently. Is my awareness of spotting the blatantly obvious getting better, or am I just reading articles that haven't had a good oversight on them for some years (or, indeed now, decades)? Ritchie333(talk)(cont)16:17, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
According to the latest figures from the United States Department of Defense CounterDUH Field Activity Interagency Joint Monitoring Taskforce, incidents of WikiDUH are up 387% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. So it's not your imagination. EEng16:53, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.
This template presents prepackaged notices in the form of the Burma-shave ads once seen on American highways. It is intended to be used as a humorous notification to experienced editors. It should be used for editors who you have a good relationship with to give them a friendly nudge. With new or grumpy editors (or if you're not sure the editor will take the joke well), just use a standard message or warning template.
As an alternative, the {{burma-shave}} template can be used to create your own custom Burma-Shave poem.
I didn't like your "Baseless ass persians" edit on AN/I. Now, don't get me wrong, I hate that guy as much as you do, but at the same time, AN/I is not the place to advance a political agenda IMO.
Could you please change the word "ass" to something else? I agree with the "baseless" being a stop the steal protester, and the persians part wasn't of any concern at all, but I feel like it's just a bad idea (Plus we might lose right-leaning users to the clusterfuck that is Conservapedia if we express such bias). ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ01:44, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, indeed, up his Arses! But we should all just live and let live. And yet, some people insist on sticking their noses into EEng's ass. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A man walks in to a Persian rug store. He approaches the rugs to inspect the material they are made of. He lets out a fart and then hurriedly looks around to see if anyone heard; he sees no one looking his way and relaxes a little. Interested in purchasing a rug, he approaches a sales clerk and asks for the price of the rug. The sales clerk says, "Sir, if you farted just touching it, you're gonna sh** your pants when you hear the price." Martinevans123 (talk) 20:36, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
EEng,
I sincerely hope your holiday season goes well this year especially with what we went through last year. I'm optimistic that 2022 will be a better year for all of us: both in real life and on Wikipedia. Wishing you the best from, Interstellarity (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Moral lesson:John Vanderlyn was an American painter who studied in Paris, and his life-sized Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos was one of the first large nudes exhibited in the United States. Peddling the poison as well as the cure, this overtly sensuous work was presented to the public as a moral lesson on the consequences of lascivious behavior. Visible in the distance is the ship of Princess Ariadne's secret lover, Theseus, for whom she has betrayed her people by helping him to escape the Labyrinth and slay the Minotaur. Ariadne's bliss will come to an end when she awakens from her post-coital reverie, only to discover that the faithless Theseus has sailed away without her.
The curator has added an edit filter blocking future posts simultaneously containing the words premature and post-coital. Also see right. EEng23:51, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"I was walking along the street the other day when I slipped on some dog shit. A minute later, some guy did exactly the same thing. I said to him, "I just did that." So, he punched me in the face and called me a dirty bastard." Martinevans123 (talk) 21:20, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I am contacting you because I have seen your involvement at the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article size#Clarification needed for "article splitting activists" and saw you did not have previous experience interacting with this user before this. Basically, I have been engaging with Onetwothreeip for three days already at Talk:Opinion polling for the next Spanish general election#January 2022 discussion and in my own talk page, who keeps exhibiting the same behavioural pattern as reported at Wikipedia talk:Article size and keeps using their own re-interpretation of that guideline to either enforce or block alternative solutions that do not suit their own view, and who keeps throwing and recycling the same arguments over and over again in an obvious effort to wear me down.
Personally, it is not the first time I have had a similar incident with this user; previous interactions in past years saw me simply accepting most of their demands just to stop the never-ending discussions. However, this is now coming over the top, since this user keeps requiring for their selected articles to be split and/or mutilated their own view, causing a large strain into other users' efforts to improve Wikipedia. Since you have been involved in a review effort at WP:SIZE resulting, precisely, from this and other users in-wiki "activism" against what they perceive as "large articles", I would like to seek some input from you on whether this issue should be brought to SIZE's talk page (to make this user conform to it and stop biased re-interpretations of the guideline) or even to ANI, or to point to whowever is more suited to address this situation, so that this kind of situations and behaviours are brought to an end once and for all.
I feel your pain, because this preoccupation with "size" by people who apparently don't even understand the technical fundamentals (confusing wiki source size with bandwidth consumption with any number of other things) is the worst kind of moronic gnoming by people who want to pretend they're improving things but are just wasting everyone's time. Unfortunately, in this situation there are two things that make it hard for me to get involved: (1) Most of these controversies are just about splitting, with reduction of content not part of the discussion; but here it looks like there's some question as to what content should be retained at all, and I'm not familiar enough with the subject matter to make sense of that question. And (2) I just haven't got time right now. I hate to turn down requests for help, but sometimes I just have to. Perhaps some of my glittering salon of (talk page stalker)s will take an interest. Good luck. EEng17:19, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh no, I am not seeking for you to get involved, just on some advice on how to proceed. The discussion has been ongoing for three days and all points have been already made, but resolution is impossible because no effort has been made on their part to put up a reasoning for their changes other than some apparent "need" to reduce "download size" (then "browser size"). Normally, dispute resolution should be the next step, but in this case I am already aware of the methods of this user in particular; it is not a true dispute over content, but rather, a dispute over size and which content should be removed to get that size reduced (usually making exaggerated arguments to depict a perceived "need" for reduction, which they themselves cannot properly back in any policy or guideline or reasoning different than their own opinion). This has been like this for years and, seemingly, has affected other users as well. But it is not that he would deserve to being brought to ANI ASAP (I think he is really well-intentioned, but is basically causing a lot of trouble and wasting a lot of time and is unable to get it).
It's certainly not an ANI situation, but you're wrong that it's outside the domain of the usual dispute channels just because this dumb "download size" argument is being raised. EEng19:03, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You have been blocked from editing from certain pages (Wikipedia:ANI) for a period of 72 hours for making a joke out of someone's predicatment. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions.
I was tempted to site block you, but this should be warning enough. You've got quite a block record and this seems to be part of a pattern with you. Doug Wellertalk14:04, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd quibble whether EEng's previous blocks should really be at issue in this instance: either the comment at ANI is restriction-worthy on its own, or it isn't (WP:NOTPUNITIVE and all that). And a site block would have been a serious administrative misjudgment. I also think that the edit cited is far from the most insensitive thing EEng has posted on the noticeboard. But that said, I've lost count of all the times that I've told my friend EEng to tone it down. So I'd have no objection to changing it from 72 hours to indefinite (with exceptions for self-defense, which would probably make a tban more appropriate than a pblock). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
the edit cited is far from the most insensitive thing EEng has posted on the noticeboard – I should certainly hope so. EEng23:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not that I care about being blocked, but as anyone can see I was talking about a Supreme Court justice, not anyone's "predicament" [116] (except maybe Brett Karanaugh's, and what I said is absolutely true – I really did think for a moment that an editor was saying he was being harassed by Brett Kavanaugh). As for my block log, as someone pointed out recently it actually consists of a bunch of overturned block, one INVOLVED butthurt block by an admin who's no longer an admin, one joke block, and one actual, real block. Since you're normally clueful I can only assume you haven't hadn't had your morning coffee yet. EEng23:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC) P.S. Next time, please actually link the diff to my post in the block message, so people can judge for themselves. Just sayin'.[reply]
Well let's see. I have 80K+ edits and a block log showing numerous encounters with trigger-happy admins who got their fingers burned; and I got blocked because you apparently misinterpreted my mention [117] of my genuine experience of thinking for a moment that the Twitter user harassing one of our editors is a US Supreme Court justice (at least I hope you misinterpreted it). The IP has two edits and got blocked for making a death threat. So sure, yeah, I'm definitely equating the two of us.
Before you block someone for a post made twelve hours earlier at one of the most-watched pages on the project, try asking yourself: "How come I have see a problem here when no other admin does?" EEng12:02, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, User:Throast posted at 9:19 UTC.[118] Your response, which wasn't an attempt to help, was at 10:04.[119] I removed it at 13:54[120], offered some advice, and blocked you shortly after that. So it went unnoticed for about 4 hours, not 12. And of course that was more or less the middle of the night in America and many of the usual posters at ANI would have been asleep. No surprise that your post wasn't noticed or that the next post after mine wasn't until morning on the East coast. Doug Wellertalk16:05, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
EEng knows that I respect him and often appreciate his sense of humor. But I find it difficult to see why anyone would really be interested to learn that EEng had briefly thought that Ryan Kavanaugh was Brett Kavanaugh. (Oh, EEng briefly misunderstood the original post – let's alert the news media.) ANI is an unpleasant place, dealing with things that unfortunately have to be dealt with. I can see the argument that, sometimes, it would be helpful to lighten the mood with a bit of humor. But I don't think it's helpful to post humor in a way that (1) says "look at me!", and (2) finds humor at the expense of someone else. The someone else may very well be doing something that can be seen ironically, and may very well be deserving of being told that they are in the wrong, but they can be told those things in a simple, businesslike, manner. Other times, someone may be raising a legitimate concern, and it doesn't help to sidetrack the discussion. That said, bad cases make bad law, not-so-bad conduct makes bad blocks, and this particular post by EEng was pretty innocuous by the standards of most of the things that he posts (he was mostly just making a joke at his own expense, not anyone else's). I can understand why EEng believes that this particular post of his did not rise to the level of deserving a block, I really can. But overall, he needs to rethink his participation at ANI, and yes, I've said that numerous times before. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:53, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
humor at the expense of someone else – Cmon, you know it wasn't that (unless you mean it was at the expense of Brett K, which I'm sure you'll agree doesn't count). You have it right with lighten the mood, though of course this was far from my best effort. I get regular thanks for that -- see all over this page -- and somewhere recently (which I'll dig up if you like) an editor said to me (from memory) Even though I ended up blocked, you made me laugh during the ANI discussion and that softened the blow.EEng09:42, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to hurt your feelings, so I want to clarify something. I was, in part, discussing the way you act at ANI in general, and not just the specific diff here. I agree that, for the specific diff here, you were not making humor at the expense of the editor who started the complaint. The specific diff here was more in the vein of someone may be raising a legitimate concern, and it doesn't help to sidetrack the discussion. The harassment of the OP was a very real concern, and certainly a legitimate (and unfunny) issue to report. Contrary to what you attribute to me below, I don't think that lightening the mood was a good thing in this particular case. As for thanks, I got thanks notifications after posting what I said. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My feelings certainly aren't hurt.
doesn't help to sidetrack the discussion – Well of course it doesn't help to sidetrack the discussion, if that's what happens. In this case there was nothing to sidetrack, because there had been no discussion at all. An initial post (in whatever vein) often is the catalyst for getting things going.
Since you are sticking to your guns, I'll reply. Yes, it was sidetracking, not permanently, but at least for the moment. (1) The initial post from a sincere user describes a problem with harassment, which is a serious matter. (2) You interject with a comment to tell everyone listening that you thought for a moment that the "Kavanaugh" referred to was the one on the Supreme Court, ha ha. On one level, yes, it is rather amusing that it sounded like it could have been ill-tempered Brett. But did it really lighten the mood, in the sense of relieving the unpleasant situation of someone being harassed, and making it easier for editors to now buckle down and work through the problem? May it please the court, nuh-uh. It came across as insensitive, as saying "look at me!". It interrupted the proceedings, rather than greasing the wheels. It shifted the thread, even if only briefly, from "something real bad is happening to this user, what can we do to help", to... something else. You said above that it was far from your best effort, and you got that right. Personally, I don't think it was a hanging offense, but it wasn't helpful. Of all the things you've ever posted at ANI, I, personally, would not have blocked you for it. But there have been other times when nobody blocked you, where I, personally, was more bothered than I was by this. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:31, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thus showing how subjective the whole thing is. Look, I can't be brilliantly funny every time, and there's no way of knowing in advance. What's more important is we're not getting any answer on the WP:NOTPUNATIVE question, and it looks like we're never going to. EEng08:42, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My mistake about the timing, sorry, though the point remains: forty editors posted, and undoubtedly several times that many visited without posting, before you came along. There's no basis whatsoever to your idea that my post went unnoticed; indeed, it's certain that it was noticed, but only you saw yourself as johnny-on-the-spot burdened with the duty to take urgent action for prevention of further injury to supreme court justices.Anyway, you've responded to a minor point but ignored the real one, which is what Tfish raised near the beginning of this thread: NOTPUNITIVE. I mean really... what future disruption were you preventing? As for wasn't an attempt to help: as Tryptofish recognizes above, lightening the mood certainly can help. And I'm serious about that. (I'd appreciate a response to these points, BTW.) EEng09:42, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This really has become a pattern with you: you're an absolute magnet for bad blocks, it's literally happened every year for the last eight years in a row. So I think we should turn it into a holiday. Each year, we should celebrate the first bad block with traditional songs and the exchanging of gifts. Not sure what to call it though... Levivich00:15, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's like the accretion of planets: as my block log grows it becomes a bigger and bigger target, attracting new blocks through a combination of direct collision and gravitational attraction.
The great thing about these newfangled page blocks is that no one really cares about them: an admin can signal his virtue, I can go about my business elsewhere for the duration, and there's no drama. Everyone's happy. EEng09:42, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could we have a 72-hour bad block every three days (apart from Thanksgiving and Christmas, when no one's bothered anyway)? Might be a big time saver. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:13, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hadn't actually even recognized that upside. Must file that away for future virtue-signaling value. There aren't two l's in signaling? How does that make sense? Now my brain is pronouncing it sigNAILing. valereee (talk) 17:10, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
EEng, is this the earliest you have been blocked since the start of the year? Given your propensity for provoking proroguing of your productivity, I wouldn't be surprised if someone chose to block you on New Year's Day. WaltCip-(talk)17:36, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It certainly sounds like it could be. I kind of like Hindershoddy better because it's so musical. A bit Hogmanay. But Bumthwart, yes. That's probably what the Durmstrangs called it. valereee (talk) 17:47, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hinders, not hind(ers). Hinder: create difficulties for (someone or something), resulting in delay or obstruction. This all reminds me of discovering my 8-yo and a buddy giggling over butts.com. valereee (talk) 17:58, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's me, here to hinder everyone else (or at least bum you out)! I'm very pleased that anyone would see me as being that young at heart – kind of like being carded at a bar! --Tryptofish (talk) 18:02, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, it coulda been worse. At least I didn't go on and on about iron rods. And I'm very disappointed to find that butts.com isn't a thing (at least according to Google, although there are certainly a lot of related hits that come in above the ones about barbecue). --Tryptofish (talk) 21:29, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I got carded yesterday, which I'm old enough to enjoy. The clerk tried to scan my driver's license and it wouldn't scan. He tried again, and again, until finally the store manager says, "Oh, give it a rest, he's obviously old enough," which kind of killed the joy of being carded. Levivich18:06, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I got carded at 40. I immediately called a friend to crow. While I was on the phone, the server, clearly attempting to make sure she killed her tip, explained it was new policy to card everyone. valereee (talk) 20:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is the Columbia admissions office still telling kids that? Shameful. Well, you've certainly risen above your humble beginnings. EEng03:11, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! I was participating in ongoing discussion in section "Racism and Xenophobia ..." on Talk:2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and you archived it here [125], apparently by accident. I'm not sure if you also accidentally archived a couple of other sections too, or not. If it was unintentional, could you please put it back? And if intentional, I'd appreciate it if you'd explain the reason. Thanks! Thanks for editing Wikipedia and keeping things neat by archiving. All the best. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:02, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Coppertwig, indeed accidental. 1-click archiver sometimes picks up the wrong section. (You'll notice there edit summary didn't match the heading the section actually archived.) EEng05:11, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I regret having posted a message that wasn't funny on your talk page. However, I don't mind if people laugh about it for not being funny, which would make it funny retroactively, so to speak ... ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:32, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For that matter, you don't have to go around, as you are, adding auto-updating ages to the infobox for aviation accidents ("xx years ago", like anyone needs that), and then restore them when other editors remove them. EEng13:23, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I kind of liked the non-thumb version. Made more of a visual impact. Kind of in-your-face, which is how it works in real life. No comment on your misreading of footy :-) -- RoySmith(talk)20:35, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've amplified your yellow. As a technical matter, however, there's essentially no place ever for images that don't include the thumb parameter (which, remember, can be blown up by using e.g. upright=2), because it makes the rendered size be whatever the original uploaded photo happens to be (which can change over time). It's a dumb interface design. EEng20:49, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Automatically scale the image, and put a box around it. Show a caption if specified. Float the image on the right unless overridden with the location attribute.
frameless
Automatically scale the image up or down. Place it inline with the text unless overridden with the location attribute.
Nothing specified
Preserve the original image size, and do not add a border around the image. Do not show a caption. If no alt text is specifically requested, use the requested caption as alt text. This option is almost exclusively used in templates.
The joke placement reduces the seriousness of whatever statement RoySmith is trying to make in the close summary. It could just as well have been written on RoySmith's talk page. ANI's purpose is not to serve as the audience for your comedy. An admin "happy with" buttocks jokes cluttering their close makes me mildly question their judgment as well. But this is a petty matter to war over, so do as you like. Modulus12 (talk) 23:20, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but I wasn't looking for your permission. Let me quote from the great Leander Hamilton McCormick:
One should beware of those who cannot or will not laugh when others are merry, for if not mentally defective they are spiteful, selfish or abnormally conceited ... Great men of all nations and of all times have possessed a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, as wisdom and wit are closely allied.
That quote probably wasn't intended to apply in the context of serious discussions of human behavior and the consequences that can result. Butt jokes are hardly "wit". And insults veiled in the cloak of a quotation are still insults. You're right; you don't need my permission. I guess "do as you like" is a colloquial synonym for "I won't continue reverting". Modulus12 (talk) 00:20, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Brad, you're making my carefree prankster pose increasingly difficult to maintain. You crossed my path on the 4th of January. On the 23d you incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans. The situation is becoming an impossible one. EEng06:57, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Perspective, EEng, perspective. While we correctly see and adore you as the class clown/prankster, others may see you as a different kind of clown (not necessarily that one) that doesn't even come close to who you are as a person. I can say with conviction that the reason I believe such dichotomies in perspectives exist is based on empirical knowledge. Most of my WikiFriends see me as an adventurous editor, whereas a handful of admins/editors see me as someone entirely different, the latter being an epistemic summation that obviously originated on planet Mars. All we can do at this point is trust the system with distrusting eyes, and hopefully, things will change for the better - be it our perspectives or theirs. How is that for NPOV? Atsme💬📧17:50, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Somehow, I think this image should be worked into the images above, but I don't know where. But I think we all know that EEng is out of the water-closet. Anyway, I think that EEng's mistake in taking "footy" as "booty" could have been avoided if he just said that he wanted to soccer. On the other foot, we do have a policy against socking her, so maybe that's a bad idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A personal hero of mine, now sadly forgotten, is Konrad Zuse. Working essentially alone in World War II Germany, he built the Z3, the first Turing-complete programmable computer, in his parents' living room in 1941 – several years before anything even close was built in England or America. It was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943.
To earn money for the Z3, Zuse also developed a prototype retroencabulator (German: Rückwärtsencabulatsapparat), which became a key component in German anti-aircraft fire-control systems. Ironically, he got the idea from a 1944 article (about the more primitive turboencabulator) in a British student engineer's magazine which had somehow got past British war censors.
After the war work on the retroencabulator was abandoned, but in the 1970s Rockwell Automation bought Zuse's patents and brought the device to market. Unfortunately, problems with reactive capacitance, and competition from bubble memory, inhibited sales and the product was eventually withdrawn. I learned about it when I was at McDonnell-Douglas in the early 1980s, because they used one in the test jig for their Winchester discs.
I first heard of quantum computing about 1985, in a colloquium given by some MIT guy. Much of the discussion regarded the decoherence problem, and it struck me right then that an inverted retroencabulator could be the solution they were looking for. My advisor said I should write my idea up, but I never paid attention to anything he said so I didn't. Forty years later, the inverted retroencabulator is fundamental to quantum computing. I could have been a millionaire, dammit.
If my memory serves, you once talked to a class about retroencabulators, didn't you? For those who don't know, EEng actually did his senior thesis at Harvard by demonstrating how to invert one: [128]. He received an award for his work, and I found this lovely video of the award ceremony: [129]. For those who would like to read more about the subject, please see here. Your pal, --Tryptofish (talk) 21:03, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nice work, EEng. Tryp - re: the award ceremony, is EEng the guy in the lime green shirt in the elevator - obviously going up or down to receive his just rewards? Atsme💬📧23:26, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What you said there at the end gives me a great idea. I'm going to become a serial killer in a state that has capital punishment. For my last meal I'll ask for cake and ice cream only. That way the headline the next morning will be:
Well, you can eat the ice cream, but you can't have your cake and eat it, too. As far as just...just make sure to wear clean underwear. Atsme💬📧04:38, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What I want to know is why, in the photo of EEng demonstrating inversion (and doesn't he look so young there!), why is he wearing a Yale-blue tee-shirt? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I've always been happy with the classic one-click archiver. What I do is work from the bottom of the page up. Yes, when I click to archive one thread there's a few seconds' delay to carry that out, but during that time I just scroll up to review other threads, so that when the archiving process underway is complete, I'm usually ready to click the next one. So it all works out. EEng03:05, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Gotta love Wikipedia where an editor will wait two years to prove a point, and then another editor will wait another year to prove a counterpoint. Old-timers have the patience of gods. Levivich[block]21:01, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for helping me on Wikipedia talk:Article size. Although it looks like my proposal to scrap the size guideline may not pass :( (currently there are 3 in favour; 6 not in favour). My next proposal is to reform the size guideline and compromise (e.g. "May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size)" should be 75kB; "Probably should be divided" should be 100kB; and "Almost certainly should be divided" should be 150kB) because I think there are some moderate editors who believe the current guideline is BS but do not want to scrap it altogether. Thanks for being outspoken against this ridiculous rule.
Emerald Nuts? Must come from Emerald City. I'll bet it was EEng who said size doesn't matter. As for attention span, a safer bet would be as long it takes to read a tweet and watch a TikTok video. Atsme💬📧19:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There are a lot of tiny food establishments in the world that one might call restaurants. Does a food truck with a single two-person camp table sitting outside it count? (Ramen Ciro in Portland, if I remember correctly.) I've seen conflicting size estimates for Fan’er in Beijing but it may be smaller. And apparently much of Kuappi's food is cooked elsewhere rather than in-house. Anyway I guess our article doesn't actually say it is the smallest, only that it has been labeled the smallest by Guinness. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:38, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What I thought you might find amusing was the statement that the restaurant has a "surface area" of 8 sq meters. That translates to a cube roughly a 4 x 4 x 4 feet. EEng22:49, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I did find that amusing. But it's a hollow structure, not a solid; shouldn't the surface area count the inside floors, ceiling, and walls, separately from the outside? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:56, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You have a good point. But there has to been some dividing line. I suggest we count only the paintable surfaces. EEng01:15, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your edit war against the normal mention of notable reactions is dubious and disruptive. Let things develop and sort it out later. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:39, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The stupidity of many "normal" features of certain kinds of articles is well known, a particularly good example being articles on mass murders boring the reader with the more-than-predictable information that the pope condemned it, that the head of state of the nation didn't finish his second helping of ice cream on hearing of it, and that a concert 1 km away was cancelled. Really? You really think the reader is somehow informed by such junk? EEng23:50, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree with EEng here. Upon reading it the first time my thought was "really? who cares". It seems gauche at best to mention a cancelled concert in an article on Denmark's deadliest mass shooting ever. And it certainly isn't normal to mention any ol' cancellation unless it was done so by someone like the mayor or something (cf. Akron, Ohio, police shooting a guy 90 times and the cancellation of 4th of July celebrations by the mayor as a result). EvergreenFir(talk)01:45, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My main concern was the edit warring against multiple editors, regardless of any personal opinions about the (un)worthiness of the content. Those are two different issues, and discussion is better than edit warring by a highly esteemed (at least by me) editor like EEng. It sets a bad example.
Reaction sections are pretty standard content, and it's often largely a matter of opinion which notable reactions from RS that we choose to include. THAT is worth discussing on the talk page. RS, for some reason, have decided that those two reactions are not trivial, so they have mentioned them, and it is RS coverage that tells us what to consider for inclusion.
With time, I suspect pruning will be warranted, but not by heated edit warring. There is no rush. The one about the royal family is of more worth than the canceled concert, IMO. Now if you want (glee!) a "good" reaction, try Lauren Boebert's tweet. (Play Looney Tunes theme.) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:28, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Especially early in an incident's development, news sources report whatever they can because ... there's nothing else to report. You're right that there's WP:NODEADLINE, and the right application of that would be to not have articles on breaking news at all -- I'd advocate waiting 30 days before even starting an article on certain kinds of topics [which admittedly I'm at a loss to define right now]. The there'd be some perspective.
Boebert's right, of course, that gun laws don't stop mass shootings. They just cut them by a factor of 100. I'd say it's incredible that someone that stupid could be in Congress, but then there are a lot of stupid voters. EEng17:18, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A subject that was not previously notable (or, possibly, that didn't even exist) suddenly becomes notable; at that point a 15-day (or 10-, or 20-, or 30-day) clock starts during which there's an embargo on creating the corresponding article. That gives sources a chance to settle down, shake out the rumors, get some perspective. In the meantime, readers can get their news from ... the news. Which is the way it should be. A placeholder here at WP could simple say: "Since Wikipedia's goal is to [something something], it is ill-suited to [something something]. An article on this topic will likely be created on [date]."
Now, that can't be quite right, because under such a rule we'd be forced to wait X days before creating an article on an obscure scientist who suddenly wins a Nobel. (I think that's happened -- correct me if I'm wrong.) Beyond that I see plenty of other issues with such an idea -- trust me I do -- but it's food for thought. Imagine the editor time saved in wrangling over early trivia and confused sources -- the ANI threads avoided! EEng20:45, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A mandatory waiting period would infringe upon our constitutional writes.
But seriously, the world relies on us to get accurate, reliable information, including accurate, reliable information about things that just happened, like the Copenhagen mall shooting. We would do the world a disservice by not providing timely information. For all the difficulties that we encounter with these current events articles, we still provide a better summary than most newsmedia. I know we say we're WP:NOTNEWS, but the rest of the world has decided that they're gonna use Wikipedia to get reliable information about events in the news; this platform is not news, but it is a reliable summary of the news. Coronavirus coverage placed that beyond dispute, in my never humble opinion.
As an example, I recently made time to expand Killing of Jayland Walker because I saw that people were taking to the streets over it, and our article didn't have all the important information in it, and I literally wanted for people who googled the person's name to get the latest, most reliable information about what happened. It's important they have that now, not in two weeks, and Wikipedia is the best place for them to get it, because they'll sooner read what comes up in a Google search than read AP, Reuters, NBC News, NYTimes, and WaPo, and if they rely on headlines and social media and cable news, they're gonna be misinformed. Levivich[block]21:01, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, 48 hours is a palatable compromise. I'd say on the one hand, how do you even know if something is going to be "notable" in less than 48 hours (with the rare obvious exception)? But on the other hand, if RSes are out there within 48 hrs, what is gained by the delay? How much disruption could there possibly be in 48hrs? (Yes, this is a challenge: a barnstar for whomever can disrupt Wikipedia the most in the next 48hrs.) To state the obvious, I bet 24hrs (one news cycle) would get more support than 48. Levivich[block]21:48, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The ratio (time wasted tussling over ultimately unimportant details / value to readers of having an article at this point in time) starts out extremely high and then rapidly drops off. And that's especially true of your rare obvious exceptions, such as obviously notable crimes. Even 24 hours would help. During that time, instead of arguing over an actual, created article, editors could prepare to create an article by listing sources and quoting them, trimming old ones from the list in favor of newer, more up-to-date ones, etc. However, I'm not quite sure what happens when the 24 hours runs out. I realize this is all pie-in-the-sky, but I'm just sick of seeing so much time wasted on trivia and misinformation about breaking events. EEng22:09, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't mean to imply there was a problem. I was just interested in why admins are hyenas instead of, say, lions or tigers or some more noble creature like that. EEng19:08, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In light of the above amusing responses this has generated, I have decided I do not regret the hyena comment after all, nor the apology on behalf of it. 🌈WaltCip-(talk)22:50, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My glittering salon of talk-page stalkers and I are thrilled to learn that your sojourn here has allayed your anxiety. EEng05:37, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So I just looked at ANI, and found my new all-time favorite ANI topic: [135]! Like an editor who commented there, I'm looking forward eagerly to the movie version. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:54, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid you missed the point about "Richard M. Nixon." Throughout his active career, he was referred to in all media including campaign posters and television and radio references as "Richard M. Nixon", never under any circumstances as simply "Richard Nixon." At some point he went along with the modern trend to drop the middle initial but I don't believe that happened until after his resignation. For those of us old enough to vividly remember his vice presidency and whisker-close elections against Kennedy and Humphrey (both less than 1% difference in popular vote despite electoral votes to the contrary!), it's a bit jarring to see that omnipresent middle initial abruptly disappear after several decades. The point of citing the name with his middle initial in the article wasn't to establish that Milhous starts with the letter M, it was to mention that he always used the middle initial during the lion's share, so to speak, of his life and career. Racing Forward (talk) 20:48, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So you found an exception. Believe me, he was "Richard M. Nixon" for most of his career to the point that it's odd to leave the initial out now or not at least refer to it in the wikipedia article despite Nixon's eventual wishes. I know he dropped it altogether at some point and wanted people to refer to him as "RN" (almost nobody did) but he was definitely still using it religiously during the '68 election, along with practically every minute of his lengthy and eventful career prior to that. I imagine that you must be comparatively young or you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. ("Richard M. Nixon" was jammed down everyone's throat for decade after decade.) Racing Forward (talk) 21:28, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You did say never under any circumstances as simply "Richard Nixon." I mean, you pretty much begged someone to find an exception. valereee (talk) 21:42, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Even if your ideas about how he styled his name are correct, so the fuck what? What in the world is that doing in the second sentence of the lead -- the second sentence of the entire article? So someone of your age finds it odd to see his name sans middle initial -- again, so what? Who cares? What does the reader learn from this? I'll note, BTW, that this assertion seems to be unsourced (searching the article body for the strings name, style, and knows as) so that's reason enough right there to omit it; and even if there actually is some source on this, we'd need to hear what the source says about the significance of it, before we can judge whether, where, and how to include it.
Now, if you have a source saying known for most of his career as "Tricky Dick", that would tell the reader something and be worth including. EEng01:38, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I find it a little odd that the article mentions him being called "Tricky Dick" (or occasionally "Dirty Dick") by his enemies, but not being called "Dick" by his friends (see e.g. Saturday Evening Post link above). Also, the jokes write themselves, so let's consider them as read. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:43, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, if you look back a bit, you'll see that I recently put into the wikipedia article that he introduced himself to and was referred to by politicians and such, and other presidents, as Dick Nixon but someone removed that immediately, claiming that he abandoned it after the 1960 election but he actually didn't. He was Dick Nixon like Kennedy was Jack Kennedy and Eisenhower was Ike. If you listen to his phone conversations with then-President Johnson, he jauntily says that he's "Dick Nixon," but he always made his personal friends whom he didn't consider to be on his level, like Bebe Rebozo, address him by his current title, Senator Nixon or Vice President Nixon or (of course) Mr. President. He was definitely more well known as "Tricky Dick" by the general public than by any other name, though: most people back then almost always referred to him as "Tricky Dick" in conversation. As for the importance of the middle initial, it just looks odd and weird for it not to be there, more or less exactly like saying "John Kennedy" without that Fitzgeraldian "F." As I noted earlier in this thread, the White House website absolutely calls him "Richard M. Nixon" on their Nixon page, and I wish wikipedia would do the same thing since the absence of the M seems like such a jarring affectation in the wake of him using it for so long. Changing the topic, one of the most interesting aspects of Nixon, though, is the existence in his life of his great mentor Thomas E. Dewey, who finagled the vice presidential nomination for him from Eisenhower in 1952. If you watch Dewey interviews on youtube, you'll be floored by how much Dewey's and Nixon's voices resembled each other, to the point that radio listeners usually couldn't tell which was which. Racing Forward (talk) 04:29, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As Nixon himself would have morosely pontificated, let me say this about that: I think we've exhausted the topic and I appreciate the conversation. EEng, you have a lively Talk page. I've actually never been much of an adherent regarding middle initials myself and I've been happy to see them fall from favor except in this case. Let's all be glad that RMN doesn't have the same ring as FDR, JFK or LBJ and that the triple initial abbreviation has finally faded completely away. Now, about Hubert H. Humphrey..... Racing Forward (talk) 18:36, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention "HHH." Wonder if the press would've labeled him "3H" had he won the requisite few votes that it would've taken in various states to reverse the electoral totals and been elected instead of Nixon in '68. The electoral map looked like a landslide for Nixon but the popular vote was less than 1% apart, almost as close as Jack Kennedy's controversial win over Nixon in 1960. Racing Forward (talk) 20:10, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just for the record… I (Blueboar) doubled the word count (for clarity)… ButwhatamIdoing cut what I wrote down (for brevity). Blueboar (talk) 15:34, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What's My Line is tied with Password as the best game shows ever. Fun fact: Three years before he was elected President of the United States, Jimmy Carter was sufficiently obscure that he appeared on What's My Line, and stumped the panel -- who were not wearing blindfolds. EEng09:21, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This phenomenon makes me MURDEROUS. It's like people think they're narrating a Forensic Files episode. Seriously, why is this such a thing all of a sudden? Was this something people learned through, like, Common Core? - Julietdeltalima(talk)19:47, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Forensic Files are the result of years of homicidal proclivities combined with the experience of years. —scs (talk) 22:21, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That would be the argument were it not for the possibility that years of experience would fail verification, and EEng would be disturbed. It would bring to mind a meme I once read: the past, the present, and the future would walk into a bar. It was tense. I would also note that you cannot run through a campground. You can only ran because it's past tents. Atsme💬📧11:26, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You say I am spamming every article with a link, but firstly I created that article today so was trying to build links to it and secondly Michael Weir was re-convicted, which is strongly comparable to a case where a person was acquitted only to go on to offend again. Also the same with James Hanratty, since he was convicted once, subject to a high-profile miscarriage of justice campaign then proven guilty again years later. Classic Middlesex (talk) 19:23, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
People are acquitted because there isn't the evidence to convict them, or to sustain a conviction on review. That doesn't mean they're angels, pure of heart, or incapable of offending later. You imply that Ernest Barrie was "acquitted only to go on on to offend again" (emphasis mine), when in fact there's no "again" here since as far as the law's concerned he wasn't guilty of the first crime -- that's what acquitted means. EEng19:41, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well yes but that doesn't mean that articles like the Stephen Downing case, where he committed notable crimes after he was released on appeal after a high-profile miscarriage of justice case and campaign, are not comparable to Ernest Barrie, who committed notable crimes after he was released on appeal after a high-profile miscarriage of justice case and campaign. Classic Middlesex (talk) 19:45, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What's the point -- to show that people unjustly convicted should be left in prison anyway because sometimes they later actually do commit a crime? EEng20:03, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, maybe among the ten articles to which you added this link, one of them is comparable. But that got lost among the nine that have no particular relationship, other than that a conviction was overturned or something. I mean, what in the world does Ernest Barrie have to do with Ruth Ellis? EEng20:48, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well fine perhaps I went a bit too far with the links, I have been on the computer far too long today, but I think there is still a case for a few of the links to be made. Classic Middlesex (talk) 20:51, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There have been ANI discussions in which the text What we have here is the underside of a groin vault showing the arris would certainly have come in handy. EEng06:12, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the hook correction at DYK for the Webb telescope launch. I wanted to impose upon you to look at the Murder of Alexis Sharkey article. I heavily copyedited the article before my DYK review and approval. I saw that you had commented on a previous discussion regarding the nomination and I could use another copyeditor with experience. It was quite a mess IMO. Bruxton (talk) 21:36, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate it. I went through and cleaned up dates etc. in the problematic areas you found. It is informative and presentable now. Bruxton (talk) 15:49, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have a special list for those of us who cannot say you never did anything for us? Surely it is small in comparison to your list for those who cannot say you never did anything to us. Atsme💬📧20:50, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Update: Phase II of DS reform now open for comment
Hump-winged grigs are known for their unique breeding system. Males call at night by sitting on a tree trunk with their head down and emitting a short, high-pitched trill. When a female mounts the male, the male uses two hooks on its back to hold onto the underside of the female's abdomen while transfering spermatophore. During copulation, the female eats the male's hind wings and drinks the male's blood for energy, causing permanent but nonfatal damage to the male. Hungry females are more likely to mate, will mount males sooner, and are less selective when choosing mating partners. "Virgin" males, with no hind wing damage, are generally more successful at mating than non-virgin males.
Oh great. None of us can un-see this now.Your post led to me brush up on the praying mantis's mating habits, described by National Geographic at [140] thus:
Praying mantis courtship can be a dangerous affair; females have been well-documented biting off the heads and eating other body parts of the males that they mate with. However, the frequency of such violence may be just a tad overstated. "First of all, not all praying mantis species cannibalize their mates," says Brannoch. "Maybe if the female is starving or if the male irritates her, she might engage in that behavior. But they don’t always do it." Interestingly, getting eaten may not be as bad as it sounds.
I'm too lazy to register in order to find out just where that last bit was going, but if anyone wants to go to the trouble and fill the rest of us in, that would be just ducky. EEng16:16, 23 September 2022 (UTC) P.S. I wonder what a male praying mantis does to irritate a female -- leave the seat up?[reply]
Hello, you recently reverted my edit on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch. In this edit I made two changes, but both were reverted by you with the edit summary linking to the Wikipedia:Lies Miss Snodgrass told you essay. You stated in your edit summary that "both of these are" aligned with the tips in that essay. I have found from reading the essay that beginning a sentence with "But" is not exactly prohibited (perhaps informal), but I failed to see the reasoning in reverting the other change to the comma in the following sentence: "The "survived by" phrasing is a common way to end newspaper obituaries and legal death notices, and is relevant at the time of death or for inheritance purposes." Nowhere in that essay you linked could I find a rationale for the comma's inclusion in a sentence with a compound predicate, so I can only hope this was in error. It is my belief that the comma after "notices" be excluded due to the lack of a subject in an otherwise compound sentence. I also disagree with the inclusion of the word 'But' as the beginning word of a sentence in a formal manual of style. I feel like this usage could be avoided and would improve readability, especially for pessimistic users like me.
I appreciate your taking the time to contact me,Comma! and am gratified to be presented with another opportunity to help a fellow editor throw off the Snodgrassian shackles.
Re But: First of all, MOS isn't a "formal manual of style" No comma! but is, rather, deliberately informal in its own style of presentation. ButI'm so evil! even in formal writing, starting a sentence with a conjunction has its place now and then and (formal situation or not) this is one of those places.
Re commas: No, my change was deliberate and not an error. Miss Snodgrass has no faith that her students will acquire good judgment of their own in stylistic matters, and therefore drills rigid rules into them. (And by doing so she tends to ensure that her students will never develop good stylistic judgment, because all their brainpower is wasted on avoiding the specter of her red-correcting-pen-of-doom.) She particularly delights in dispensing rules for the placement of commas, but the fact is that in really good writing there are very few places where a comma absolutely must, or absolutely must not, be used – restrictive versus nonrestrictive clauses is a particularly good example. In most cases it comes down to a question of rhythm and pacing. See here [142] for a Snograssian blogger telling you that you must do things this way or must do things that way, period, but see here [143] for quite a good discussion of the subtle considerations that can arise. (I can also highly recommend this post [144] on a similar subject.)My little superscripts higher up in this post note where I've applied judgment, instead of rote rules, to "compound predicate" situations – in one case omitting the comma (according to the general rule), but in another case including one (in defiance).A third superscript highlights where I've devilishly started a sentence with a conjunction.
Hi EEng! It's good to talk to you again, as usual. :-) Thanks for the ping with your edit to the protection table! I've modified the description of "another editor's user space" to be more clear. One specific thing I made sure to fix was the placement of the apostrophe (Example: Boy's vs Boys' - "Boys' Restroom" means that it's for all boys; "Boy's restroom" means that it's for one boy). Let me know what you think. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk)(contribs)17:03, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your attention to comma placement warms' this old pedants's heart. How come we haven't been running into each other lately? EEng22:54, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed it has been awhile! The reason we haven't bump into each other much lately is likely my fault. I've been very busy lately with work, bills, life... Ugh. I'm glad you appreciate the comma and apostrophe care and placement. My primary skill is, of course, computers (as you know) - but I did do very well in English, too. One of my English teachers even encouraged me to study English in college because of my "knack for it", but... no thanks. I already had my interests long set. Computers have a good paying career. English? Not so much. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk)(contribs)16:55, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm on mobile for a while longer, if you (or any page watchers) have a moment, would you consider coding this as a new {{burma-shave-notice}}, which I think could be useful now and in the future:
INCLUSIVENESS WE REALLY DIG IT DON'T BE SUCH AN F'ING BIGOT Burma-shave
One-click Archiver is hardly bulletproof, and now and then various oddities happen. In this case I suspect (though I'm too lazy to look) that just at the moment the archiver was operating, a section was added to or removed from the page, confusing it as to which section should be extracted. EEng22:52, 1 July 2023 (UTC) P.S. Sorry to take a year to respond. I've been in prison.[reply]
Hmmm, well you'll admit it's a bit obscure. But not to worry -- my glittering array of talk page stalkers will no doubt build on your foundation. EEng02:48, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Multichannel disruption - quite substantial - good faith - a large gamble - drop an anvil - on the vandal" Moving up to six. Not sure why I keep trying, I still don't feel I'm any good at these. Inomyabcs (talk) 21:56, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's very interesting, especially in the context of all the noise that surrounded #January 2024, below. An awful lot of the problems some editors have with long talk pages are a function of the system that those editors are using to access them. As for whether, as a policy matter, we should give weight to that, or take the position that "anyone can edit" is an absolute, or somewhere in between, well, that's open to debate. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey there,
I noticed you trimmed down the description from pictures in the Apostrophe page with the reason “the reader can see what the sign says”. I would just like to clarify that we can't assume that. Many people use browsers without image support. They may work in very secure places and have restrictions, or only have access to a computer terminal, have very limited Internet speeds, or just want to browse that way—many famous tools have you do that, browsers sometimes have that option, but also extensions like uBlock (formerly μBlock), NoScript, etc.
Other people download the entirety of Wikipedia for use in areas without Internet access, but obviously don't have the space to hold the media in their (usually) mobile devices, or the time to download it. Perhaps more importantly, *blind people use screen readers with support for image descriptions but that obviously can't read the image out loud*.
There's a movement in social media to make image alt tags and image descriptions much more detailed for that reason, including in all the details that may help them have an experience as close as possible to the original. They use hashtags such as #PhotoDescription and language-specific ones.
Anyway, hope I helped somewhat. I wonder what we can do to make this more widely known on Wikipedia. It's clearly a great cause.
Captions are meant to complement an image, not obviate it. The |alt= parameter can be used to describe the image for those who, for whatever reason, can't actually access or see it. EEng13:41, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Of course. Then perhaps when finding an image with an excessively specific description and no alt text, the proper course of action would be to move its obviating details over to the alt text, instead of removing the text altogether. ~victorsouza (talk) 12:43, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I tried that for a while, but then I found myself in the crossfire of a lot of people arguing over what exactly alts should say, so I gave up. EEng22:06, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A row of 37 white pixels in the upper right corner. Next to them, 16 more pixels, in an even gradation from off-white to a light blue-grey. Then... —David Eppstein (talk) 22:13, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure Phineas would be proud. One thing we can be sure of: it won't go to his head.
I set thumbsize=300 and didn't see (using Chrome) where in the article there's any gap in the text flow on the left (or on the right, for that matter). However, the window width must surely come into play, and I don't see that specified in your test case.
Anyway, thank you for the undeserved praise of the article, and good luck tracking down that excruciatingly trivial edge-case bug. EEng01:44, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please avoid edit warring and respect the civility policy
Hi. On 16:05, 30 October 2022, you added wording that had been removed for 4 years to the talk page guideline, with a comment directed at me in the edit summary. I reverted said addition because of the lack of objectivity. The user Butwhatdoiknow moved to a more prominent place a hidden note, which contains the message "Please don't change it [the general rule you edited] without consensus to do so".[a]
For some reason, you decided to add again without any talk page discussion the content that I had reverted. Certainly it is practically a minor addition, but given the context, not an objective addition. Per WP:EDITWAR, "Editors engaged in a dispute should reach consensus or pursue dispute resolution rather than edit war. Edit warring is unconstructive, creates animosity between editors, makes consensus harder to reach, and causes confusion for readers."
In your addition, you wrote in the edit summary, "Sorry, Charlie, it's not aimed at you. It's just your foolishness elsewhere ( https://wiki.eso.workers.dev/?oldid=1118978010#Not_rude ) drew my attention to it." It is unclear who Charlie is or if you directed the edit again to me given the link of a discussion I had elsewhere. It is unclear also why you decided to make such a comment without regard for the civility policy. Per WP:CIVIL, "editors should always treat each other with consideration and respect".
^Content in the brackets is an explanation I added to clarify what "it" refers to, but it's not in the hidden note.
Sigh.
I was pinged to a discussion [146] in which you argued -- repeatedly, riculously, and at length -- that your "research on copyediting paragraphs" justifies your inserting paragraph breaks into others' discussion posts -- that you sometimes "try to facilitate the reading of someone's post by splitting paragraphs".
That led me to an edit you made several years ago to WP:TPO [147] changing there is no need to correct others' spelling errors, grammar, etc., and doing so can be quite irritating --> ... doing so can be irritating, which seemed ironic to say the least. So I restored quite[148].
You removed quite again, claiming that my restoring it had been "a message directed at me' (i.e. you) [149].
And so I put quite back yet again, my edit summary being (as you have already mentioned) Sorry, Charlie, it's not aimed at you[150]. Which it's not; it's just the right word.
All I can tell you is to read the civility policy because editors with ten times the number of edits you have actually have found themselves in hot water and you don't seem that mindful of policies and guidelines. Sad that you engage in such uncollegial behavior.
I won't be paying attention to this thread anymore. If you act this way because you are facing hardship in your life, I hope everything resolves in a good manner. But understand that other editors also have difficult times, if that's the case. Thinker78(talk)02:58, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Those of us who know and love EEng recognize that he is an unattractive nuisance. But I have a feeling that perhaps the origins of this dispute have more to do with being on or off the spectrum. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize, but it sounds that way to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:53, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh dear, I'm afraid this was my fault for the ping. Thank you again, EEng, for taking the trouble to respond; I hadn't realized the editor had pursued you to your own talk page. or even, until you pointed it out, that they'd been editing PAG pages. I'd wondered whether my particularly turgid style triggered them to whip out their ruler and scissors and they are not so impolite toward other fellow editors. But I clearly owe you one at this point, and I apologize. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:12, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Having followed the debate over years, by last Thursday I was days away from pointing a gun to my head over the rename. Your solution was genius; everybody happy. Let's see how long it lasts.[152]Ceoil (talk) 10:01, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of your strength and wisdom, I was sure when I read it today that this hook was your work, but surprised to see you apparently had nothing to do with it? If so, your strength and wisdom are spreading. Like a contagion. Levivich (talk) 21:43, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My commitment to multicultural intercourse veritably demands that I quote, in full, that article's rendering via Google Chrome's "Translate to English" feature. Warning: Hatnote contains potentially disturbing reference to "the clip".
Schematic drawing explaining the course of the helicopter.
The helicobite, portmanteau word formed from helicopter and dick is a sexual or playful practice, generally with a humorous aim, consisting in giving a rotary movement to one's own penis without using one's hands, but by a movement of the appropriate pool. Sex is then in its flaccid state 1 . This occupation is sometimes referred to by the term zizicopter 1 or by the phrase “ playing the helicopter 2 ”.
Sometimes practiced in public by men under the influence of alcohol, it is worth fines or prison sentences for exhibitionists who indulge in it 2 . In the context of non-conformist management companies, this sexually provocative gesture can be a subversive and theatrical means of restoring the power of management by humiliating the employees 3 .
In 2011, the expression " helicopter dick " was mentioned in the humorous song 3-Way (The Golden Rule) , about threesomes , by the American group The Lonely Island , and interpreted by Andy Samberg with the participation of Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga 4 . In 2012, the Russian artist Aleksandr Pistoletov became known on the Internet as DongCopter Pirate (the "helicopter pirate"), by a video where he sang and danced naked while shaking his penis on a techno version from the soundtrack of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga. In 2013, American comedy trio The Lonely Island released the song Helicopter Dick! on this particular practice. The same year, Sébastien Patoche , an animator parodying Patrick Sébastien , released a song called Zizicoptere .
In one of the scenes from the film Et la tendresse? Mess ! from 1979, François ( Jean-Luc Bideau ) practiced the helicopter.
According to Liberation , the Australian artist Pricasso , who paints with his genitals and his buttocks, "seems to make the helicopter with his sex" , one way among others to make art with his sex 5 , 6 .
In March 2015, Victoria Bedos says in an interview that her brother Nicolas Bedos took part in this practice when he was a teenager 7 . In 2016, Aymeric Bonnery confides that he also delivered such a performance during his participation in the eighth season of Secret Story in 2014 8 .
In 2022, the third episode of season 10 of Nus et culottés entitled Objectif Hautes-Alpes: concerto pour un glacier (episode 2/2) ends with a humorous helicopter session, where the protagonists Nans Thomassey and Guillaume Tisserand -Mouton say they do "helicopter on the glacier" 9 .
In 2015 Miss Karensac imagines in a comic strip what she would do if she were a man, mentioning the helicobite 10 .
Éric Bouhier, The golden mean , Editors’ Square,2018, 178 p. ( ISBN 9782259276641 )
" Pas-de-Calais: He makes the helicopter with his sex and gets 4 months in prison ", 20 Minutes ,9 November 15
Bent Meier Sørensen and Kaspar Villadsen , " Penis-whirling and pie-throwing: Norm-defying and norm-setting drama in the creative industries " , Human Relations , vol. 71, No. 8 ,August 2018, p. 1049–1071 ( ISSN 0018-7267 , DOI 10.1177/0018726717733310 )
" Is 'dick helicoptering' bad for your sexual health? » , on MEL Magazine (en) , July 2, 2018 (consulted theFebruary 23, 2019) .
Quentin Girard, " Jimmy Wales, face redone with penis strokes " , Liberation ,July 2, 2013 (consulted theJanuary 6, 2018) .
“ Five ways to make art with your sex ” , France Info ,June 8, 2014 (consulted theJanuary 6, 2018) .
" Nicolas Bedos and the "helicobite" told by his sister " , C à vous ,March 4, 2015.
" When Aymeric made a "zizicopter" in Secret Story ... " , Télé Loisirs ,October 21, 2016.
S10: Objective Hautes-Alpes: concerto for a glacier, from 48:20 to 48:33
Mllekarensac , " And if I were a man? “imagine Miss Karensac in drawings ” , on Madmoizelle ,December 3, 2015 (consulted the July 27, 2022)
As a matter of linguistic interest, I would suggest:
"a movement of the appropriate pool" -> "pelvic gyrations"
"sex" -> "member" (to maintain an encyclopedic level of discourse)
"In the context of non-conformist management companies, this sexually provocative gesture can be a subversive and theatrical means of restoring the power of management by humiliating the employees" -> "As a deliberate refusal to conform, this blatant sexually provocative gesture may constitute a subversive means of reasserting agency while humiliating enforcers of the status quo" or more briefly and more clearly "This is one way to stick it to the man." Yngvadottir (talk) 05:58, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Further to the translation effort: noting that from reference [3], it really is about real companies (e.g., "Zentropa") and real employees (and not, e.g., entreprises as a metaphor for society). So, with apingologies to @Yngvadottir and Tryptofish:, here's my best effort for the lead (and I'll spare you the rest):
The helicobite, a portmanteau word formed from helicopter and dick, is a sexual practice or a playful one, generally with humorous intent, which consists in giving a whirling movement to the penis without using one's hands, but by appropriate gyrations of the pelvis. One's member must be in a flaccid state.[1] This procedure is sometimes referred to by the term weeweecopter[1] or by the phrase, doing a helicopter.[2]
Sometimes practiced in public by men under the influence of alcohol, it is punishable by fines or prison sentences for the exhibitionists who indulge in it.[2] In the context of companies of a non-conformist nature, this sexually provocative gesture can be a subversive and theatrical means of re-establishing the power of management by humiliating the employees.[2]
Which, by the way, brings to mind a key scene in The Graduate (film). Which scene is not, mind you, about helicobite at all, but about what might be termed an analogous practice with a similar, rotational motif. There, and now we've ended this on a high note about art film, and can claim pretensions of serious purpose. Mathglot (talk) 08:30, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Coral bleaching employs the word dinoflagellates, which sounds like something involving masochistic paleontologists. EEng20:34, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was just giving you a hard time about all that talk about blood in the sand and subduing other editors. Don't worry. We cool. EEng05:33, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How right you are. In my defense I'll point out that the adult part of me immediately took control and I instantly reverted myself, so all's well that ends well. EEng04:43, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh my God, EEng. Many of us appreciate your sense of humor, but that was WAY out of line in article space. Do not ever do anything like that in an article again. You crossed a line. Cullen328 (talk) 05:32, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
EEng, don't do that sort of thing in mainspace. Namespaces that are not reader-facing are a different matter, but not in mainspace. Even if quickly self-reverting, just don't. And everyone else, there's no need for virtue signalling. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:25, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to assume good faith on this one, that EEng vandalised an article with the intent of only looking at it via "Show Preview" (which I think a number of us have all done at one point or another to alleviate some of the tedium around here) and hit "Publish changes" by accident. As for Play-Do / Plato, did you see what came next? Ritchie333(talk)(cont)14:33, 9 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As amusing as some of those are, if you want to actually see a preview of how the page would look it's best to just edit the html in your browser (you can even screenshot it and everything) which won't bother anyone else, or you know just mess around in your own userspace or some of the other pages that no one cares about. I don't think you should be blocked over this which wouldn't prevent anything anyway, but community consensus has drifted strongly against this kind of shenanigans over the years. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 18:38, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I get it. You are very smart. Until very recently, I thought you were really funny as well. Now I'm not so sure. Sad because I was really looking forward to working on Commission on Training Camp Activities with you. (It has a bit more...historical context now compared to before. But we haven't even gotten to fully explaining the "good part" yet.) Cielquiparle (talk) 22:45, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry, I'll get back to being funny just as soon as we've disposed of WP:Articles_for_deletion/Daily_Dozen_Doughnut_Company_(2nd_nomination). And I'm sure we'll have a gay old time working on the Commission article, as long as you'll stick to actually reading the sources and reporting their content faithfully. (For the benefit of my glittering salon of talk page stalkers, here's a link: Template:Did you know nominations/Commission on Training Camp Activities. On top of everything else I just realized that the article was created by an editor named Whizz40. The hits just keep on coming -- so to speak.)
Let me tell you why I'm so hot under the collar about Daily Dozen: it's a case study in how an article on a nonnotable becomes a crap magnet -- when there's nothing worth saying about a subject, things not worth saying get magnified and hyperbolized, to Wikipedia's embarrassment. A good example is the Bon Appetit nonsense. The article [156] grandly proclaimed that Andrew Knowlton included the shop in Bon Appétit's 2010 overview of "America's best donuts", and the casual reader might be forgiven for thinking that the citation to Knowlton, Andrew (2010-03-12). "America's Best Donuts, Part 2". Bon Appétit likely supports that. But it doesn't -- in fact quite the opposite. "Part 1" did not list Daily Dozen as one of the "Top 10 Best Places for Donuts", and "Part 2" was just a list of 57 "recommendations from our readers" received by email, and that's where we find Daily Dozen. Oh please. This is the kind of thing that happens when editors struggle to find something impressive to say about a nonnotable subject.
Since you were nice enough to drop by, I've changed [157]you're blatantly lying (about which, I confess, I had some regrets about the moment I hit SAVE -- but I'm really tired of this Daily Dozen bullshit) to you appear to have examined the sources without benefit of your reading glasses.EEng05:16, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Totally agree about Bon Appétit! And appreciate the correction. I think when I initially added that weeks ago during the first deletion discussion, I thought the two articles were the same, hadn't read it carefully enough, and that AB or someone would correct it if was wrong. Which is obviously not a good approach, and I'm usually more careful than that. Cielquiparle (talk) 07:57, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Don't be ridiculous. The pixels are reusable. Maybe you're one of those people who thinks that escalator steps pile up in the basement and have to be trucked away. EEng22:28, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, what... they don't pile up there? Are you sure? I saw on the internet that they do, right next to the useful information about that pizza parlor. And it's only the ones on the down escalator that pile up in the basement. The ones on the up escalator pile up in the attic. Everyone knows that. You're such an ogre! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah and they obviously don't have to be trucked away, I saw on YouTube that they're carried back by workers overnight to be reused the next day. Levivich (talk) 22:38, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nuh-huh! They pile up in the attic, and pile down in the basement. And those "workers" are illegal immigrants! Don't believe the mainstream media. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think you agree with the close? Just not me being the closer? I feel that I am saving the community time with a reasonable close when this multi was headed nowhere. I think that reverting my close is not appropriate, but you can contest the NAC at DRV. I appreciate your concern about it and I am sure we will get to the correct result. Bruxton (talk) 18:07, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree with the result (which I think is where the discussion will likely go if it's allowed to run its course), which puts me in an especially good position to point out that you've closed the discussion prematurely with what is essentially a supervote. Liz, Valereee, can one of you have a little talk with Bruxton about overanxious {nac}ing at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Acadia:_A_New_Orleans_Bistro? EEng18:17, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have no opinion about the notability of the individual articles. I saw this as clearing the table for what is likely to be "less confusing AfD nominations". The editors were all over the place in the AfD: there were personal attacks, page blocks, general drama and then yourself reverting my NAC several times. If you agree that it is the right close, then we should all move on. If you disagree then WP:DRV is the venue to get relief. Bruxton (talk) 18:33, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's not about whether it's the result I personally prefer (it is, in a way) or the result I think will probably result in the end (I do); rather, it's about you closing the discussion two days in while people are still actively commenting and the outcome is far from clear, particularly since an important issue still open was how to proceed after any close -- you cut that discussion off. EEng19:02, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There are many other editors and administrators who can deal with the NAC. There is also a venue for you to challenge the close. You are edit warring WP:3RR and I will have to report it if you do not undo your last revert of the close EEng. Correction - we are both at 3rr now after I reverted again. I do not want to war with you over this close, so it is best to let others weigh in. Bruxton (talk) 19:43, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Best to let others weigh in – Duh, too bad you didn't take that attitude WRT the AfD itself, instead of closing it. Because of your ham-fisted meddling we now have a mess of a talk page about a mess of an AfD about a bunch of mess articles. Great going, genius. EEng20:11, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Saw you were editing the George Santos page. Just wanted to say that everyone should do our utmost to humanity to make sure that the opening photo stays the same, probably one of the great photo descriptors of an entry on Wikipedia. This fellow is quickly becoming a legend in his own mind, ah, time, and will go down in history as going down in history. And, of course, Merry Christmas and happy everything to you and the folks here. Randy Kryn (talk) 05:52, 24 December 2022 (UTC) p.s. Everytime you post on EEng's talk page a Wikipedian gets their pings.[reply]
For those wondering, we're talking about this image -- indeed one of the great all-time WP lead images: . EEng22:42, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi EEng. I saw you undid my contribution to the Monty Hall problem direct calculation section with the comment, "how amusing". Thank you for your insight—this comment was a hallmark piece of constructive criticism.
I came here to ask: why did you undo my changes? I wanted to contribute to Wikipedia by improving the intuitiveness of the proof. I am new and eager to learn. But what you said does not help me to learn; toxic, condescending comments are not conducive to improvement and do not explain what I purportedly did that was so "amusing".
I was curious what type of person might leave this kind of comment. So curiosity killed the cat. I peaked beneath the rock, read through your page, and I noticed a bit of a trend...
"Is the Columbia admissions office still telling kids that? Shameful. Well, you've certainly risen above your humble beginnings." - EEng
"Is this debate restricted to the Ivy League or can any old riff-raff join in?" — "At Harvard the polite term is hoi polloi. We feel it's less hurtful." - EEng
Rampant anti-wokeism
"Behold the sermonizing social justice warrior on her high horse." - EEng
"Being born and bred in Berkeley I knew what a woke-scold was decades before the term was coined, and you are a woke-scold." - EEng
"Mr. Eater, I hereby award you the EEng Irony Cross (with Oak Leaves, Platinum Rivets, and Emerald Chips)." - EEng
"[Referring to other editors:] there are no signs of intelligent life." - EEng
"It is I who am honored to work with so many easily confused editors." - EEng
"Please remain civil." — "Keep it up and I'll show you some real civility." - EEng
"Christ, you lack even the modesty to qualify your opinions – phrases such as I think and it seems to me are traditional ways of reminding yourself that maybe, just maybe, you're just one editor among many, though of course they're unnecessary if you know you're always right. Maybe that's it." - EEng
Well... no need to tell me why you undid my changes—I don't know if I could get an explanation that doesn't diss my intelligence and allude to your illuminating time at Harvard and Berkeley. I am clearly not going to reach you.
Also, dude, I'm 21. I'm new to Wikipedia. So when it comes to me making mistakes due to my lack of status as a Wikipedia editor, give me a break. The idea that you're self-righteously, indiscriminately degrading the intelligence of everyone around you reeks of those Facebook minion memes seething on in contempt for the woke left and the younger generation. You may honestly want to check out the page on narcissistic personality disorder... and not just to undo changes.
Some of your changes at Monty Hall problem seem fine, but I suspect EEng might have thought the edit was a joke because it ended with the phrase "the Monty Python problem" - Monty Python being an unrelated British comedy troupe.
I suspect EEng might have thought the edit was a joke because it ended with the phrase "the Monty Python problem"
That's funny, I didn't realize I had made that mistake—that explains the whole situation. Thank you for pointing that out.
With this new perspective, I'm definitely noticing quite a bit more sarcasm in the sin list upon a second reading. I think I was being a bit obtuse since I was very upset by his comment. I still definitely get some sense of a superiority complex from the Ivy League high table talk and characterization of wokeism. But you're correct that all of that is irrelevant when it comes to the article dispute.
Regardless, thanks for collectedly clearing things up—I appreciate it.
GabeTucker, I only have a humble bachelor's degree from the humble University of San Francisco (although I dated a young woman who was a Berkeley student at the time, which was 45 years ago). When I write something intelligent and useful, EEng will often support my point. When I stray occasionally and write something not so brilliant, EEng will quickly bring me back to my senses. EEng has a unique sense of humor, and does not tolerate foolishness. Cullen328 (talk) 07:51, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your comment. This is useful to know, and I am getting the sense that I misjudged him. I think that I conflated A) a miscommunication and B) a very, very (very) dry sense of humor with narcissism, but I am coming to realize I was wrong. GabeTucker (talk) 07:57, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, we would like to remind you not to link to any rendition of the "Major-General's Song", as you did here. Doing so can result in users being unable to get the song out of their heads, which may be considered detrimental to Wikipedia and its users. Thank you. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM00:22, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And I linked two of them, so I must be doubly evil. My plan to destroy Wikipedia by hollowing it out from the inside is working quite well, don't you think? EEng21:34, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I was surprised you didn't also link to the Tom Lehrer version. (I think the fact that I know you're a Lehrer fan means that I've spent too much time around here.) The situation is actually even worse than first reported: I was sure that Sideshow Bob had sung it, so I found and watched the clip of him performing the entire score of H.M.S Pinafore. When that didn't include the song, I discovered that Penzance and Pinafore are different (yes, I'm a philistine), but now some of the Pinafore songs are also stuck in my head. (I wasn't completely wrong about The Simpsons, as Barney did sing a bit of "Major-General" in another episode.) MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM10:22, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You're just asking for a level 2 warning! It's too bad Gleason wasn't around earlier, so he could have served as a useful resource for Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky.BTW, here's a tip I've been meaning to share with your fanbase: For anyone who's come to this page only to have your device litterally blow up like it was a spy balloon, I highly recommend that you install User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/DiffOnly. With this tool, many places where you'd find a diff, such as watchlist, history, contributions, etc., you'll be presented with a "diff only" link; click on it, and you'll get, as expected, just the diff, without loading the entire page. This saves a lot of time and bandwidth, and your smoke alarm won't go off every time you visit this talk page. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM20:42, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You probably already know about it, but somewhere (I forget) someone made a version beginning "I am the very model of a modern Wikipedian...." --Tryptofish (talk) 21:41, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That song is beyond brilliant. It leaves me speechless (which, as all gathered here know, is saying a lot). I've suggested The Signpost do an article on it (WP:POST/S). EEng19:30, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I realize that a thread about reliable sources regarding a nursery rhyme about farting has long sense descended into the absurd, but given sensibilities and sensitivities around Wikipedia, you might want to consider striking this comment, even though obviously in jest. [160]Banks Irk (talk) 00:00, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you can find some time, I'd appreciate your advice, please.
Would you have a look at Talk:List of country calling codes#Removal of off-topic material and advise whether I'm wasting my time. It seems clear that two editors have spent a lot of time constructing the article as it stands and can't or won't see anything wrong with it. If it really is just a content dispute, then it is already clear that the outcome will be "no consensus" and wp:status quo, so I may well drop it now. But if it is a policy issue, as I believe, then I will have to make an incident of it. Is there any prospect that ANI will consider it of any significance? Is time to just give up and walk away, whatever the merits of the case? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:54, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry to hear that logic prevailed [161] and apologize for not responding to your query in time to prevent that. (Really busy IRL recently.) I'll try to do do better next time. EEng18:21, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know what a Power law is? I'm asking because you wrote, as a reason for your reverting of sentence about Moore's law being a power law, that it was unenlightening.--Gciriani (talk) 20:49, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've got a degree in applied math, computer science, and statistics from [name of breathtakingly prestigious institution redacted], so yeah, I know what a power law is. That Moore's Law is a power law (to the extent it's actually a law) is a trivial observation. The proof of that? I can't find any RS bothering to mention it. I suppose Power law wouldn't be out of place as a See also, however. EEng22:41, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Studies have shown that for those who retain their sanity, the answer is yes.I'd be interested to hear more about your astatine affinity. EEng18:15, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
None of these can be bought on Soviet surplus. I tried Stalinium, and it was WAY too salty. Also can we move this to my talk page? My poor chromebook is gonna explode if I keep coming here. I like Astatine (Talk to me) 15:26, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've added Power law to the See also section of Moore's law, per your input. I still think that for people who do not have a background in the subject, it would be useful and encyclopedic to see the connection higher up in the article, but follow your suggestion, since you feel so strongly about it. Thanks for interacting.--Gciriani (talk) 18:53, 26 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Someone put a notice about the NOR noticeboard on your user page, and I reverted it because it should have been here in talk. Since they never re-posted it here, I'm letting you know about it: [162]. Still that stuff about Grant being indicted for paying Ms. Daniels? Oh, wait, never mind. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:50, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've often thought that to complement the NOR noticeboard, we should also a have NAND (Nexus of Absolutely Nutty Disputes) noticeboard. EEng23:47, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Btw, I spent a great deal of time today reading over the discussion at Talk:Arrest of Ulysses S. Grant and the related threads. I must say, I'm deeply impressed with your dedication to source-gathering, that you'd go so far to visit an actual physical public library to track down books on Grant. Seriously, kudos for that.
As I marvel at that, I realize that even if you had gotten the citation information for those, could they even be used in the article to source a negative - that the arrest never happened? If not, could those sources be used to benefit that article at all? PhotogenicScientist (talk) 21:12, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm a vanishing breed. Unfortunately, there's no way we can somehow turn my OR into any kind of assertion in the article: "A Wikipedia editor search scores of sources and found no indication of this story whatsoever." All we can use that kind of research for is to help us judge source reliability.For the record, it's not a public library. (And I wrote that article, BTW.) EEng00:16, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A remarkably similar discussion, with a remarkably similar arguments on both sides (Future Perfect playing the role of EEng), happened at Talk:Bijeljina massacre/Archive 4, centered around media reports based on a "widely circulated photograph" (nowhere to be found) of a politician stepping over a dead body of a war victim. Luckily, common sense prevailed in that case. No such user (talk) 17:15, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
T's already hired the last lawyers who can't understand or spell legal terms. It's safe to assume that message came from a bar member.
In Georgia, lawyers were given the courtesy title of 'colonel' (probably 'cause their legal forbearers raised regiments against the Union).
In the early 1970s, a young woman lawyer friend of mine, bailing out a client, overheard the desk sergeant "she can't be a real lawyer, she didn't turn around when I called her colonel".
If you check the recent page history, I believe you'll see a Cast Ass Persians plus a periodic periodic table dispute. Isn't that enough? EEng11:03, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I saw you say a few days ago that you were about to be away, while traveling to Croatia. I couldn't tell whether you were Sirius or not. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:05, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Don't do what? Don't tell a humorless busybody that removing a bit of decoration, which gives some fun recognition to Johnuniq for his tireless work on the impossibly complicated Template:Convert, is not on? Don't tell him to think before removing something that's been there for years, and with which apparently no one else has a problem? Don't push back on his imposing on the rest of us the consequences of his inability to focus in the presence of "distraction" [163]? Sorry, I decline. EEng18:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is it also a personal attack if I request that you please stick to obsessing about named railroad cars and train livery and other dumb stuff, and let grownups handle their own interactions without your clueless and unwelcome nannying? Either way, we'd really appreciate it if you'd do that. Thank you. EEng23:06, 14 June 2023 (UTC) P.S. If you tell me it's a personal attack then I won't say it.[reply]
That's so good of you! I'd really appreciate it if you took note that somebody does have a problem with your doubling-down on personal attacks, lest – based on the absence of clearly-stated objection – you inadvertently come to feel that they're acceptable. XAM2175(T)11:55, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Look, I shouldn't have come down so hard on you, but after years of DePiep I've run out of patience with civility enforcers. Surely you know that I'm old and set in my ways. I do appreciate that you mean well. EEng05:23, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, dealing with DePiep for more than a couple of minutes would sour anybody, but I'm sure you understand that just because he was singularly hopeless in the 'role' doesn't mean that you're not going to encounter people who have genuine concerns, and the whole "well nobody said anything about it" silence-is-consensus thing is the reason that some of them are going to try to voice those concerns to you. Anyway, that's that. I'm off back to my niche now. XAM2175(T)18:25, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To keep it simply, I have talked (although limited to only an opening and a reply) to the first editor involved in the no-template-transclusion thing and complied with the second editor's summary about not having special treatment in my header (implied formatting, which is why I chose to change the plaintext). Please explain why you have reverted my last compromise, which should not have any other problems. I would also quote your summary here:
Will you stop it? It's just a section head on a talk page
The issue of appropriately showing that my section header has examples attracting four separate editors shouldn't warrant the word "just" here. DeeDeeEn (talk) 09:59, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Um, well, yes, and I'm glad I was able to help with that. BTW I've been meaning to tell you that you've become one of my favorite people recently. EEng21:15, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ahh, Thanks EEng--that's an awfully kind (and honestly flattering) thing to say/hear. :) I'm glad to know that my mixed commentary in the ANI thread did not rub you too much in the wrong way. SnowRise let's rap01:26, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, you'll appreciate this: because I was making an effort not to joke too much myself (so I didn't give the support !voters another reason to feel like the issue/they were not being taken seriously by other respondents--or at least not this one), I had to sit on the phrase "Actually, I think most community members are largely eengnostic as to that particular question.", which occurred to me early on in response to one comment. It was like holding in my wind for three full days! SnowRise let's rap02:29, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, but ironically enough, not one "eggnostic"; I mean phonetically, that's even better. The most perplexing of Eeng oversights, or just too low hanging a fruit? SnowRise let's rap07:21, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
i was perhaps a bit nonplussed by the recent photo you added at village pump. I was curious as to the provenance of this item, so I decided to drop by here. ok, so it all makes sense now. your talk page is quite an interesting forum. quite a happening place. carry on! Sm8900 (talk) 14:20, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"I don't think you need alarm yourself," said I. "I have usually found that there was method in his madness."
"Some folks might say there was madness in his method," muttered the Inspector.
My friend, I removed one of your statements from ANI out of concern (for you) as it may be seen negatively by others. Let me know if I did okay (if not, please go ahead and revert me). Love, Lourdes10:42, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Lourdes have mercy. Well, if I had the energy I'd reword it as "Anyone who thinks it's OK to use AI to generate article text and talk-page posts..." but I gotta get to bed. Thanks for looking out for me. EEng10:55, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comments like this - even if they are replying to comments that are as unpleasant as those of Dorglord really don't help. Please think before making comments that could be seen as Xenophobic.Nigel Ish (talk) 08:00, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
People reading the page won't see the edit summary - they will just see your original comment "Like anyone cares about France anyway". Remember that the Nahel M case is a result of someone being killed - would you have made a similar snarky comment about edits to articles about police killing in the United States?Nigel Ish (talk) 09:21, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The edit summary was for the benefit of one or two people arrogant enough to assume that if they don't comprehend something, no one else can either. Normal people, who realize that we all have moments of clue-lack, and that an inward gaze should precede an outward accusation, didn't need it.
If you think the answer to your question is no then you clearly don't know me. Check out, for example, this edit [166].
Non-templated notice: since you admitted to losing count of your reverts before your fourth one, and the material at issue does not come under 3RRNO, I blocked you from that article for 24 hours, because a bright-line rule is a bright-line rule. (The other editor did not get off so easily: they were on a range that had been used for sockpuppetry and just got off a month block, so now they're blocked sitewide for six months). Whatever your other issues (and I have interacted with you enough to understand where those come from, although I feel that I've learned to interact with you without making them a problem), a hardcore edit warrior you are not, as your apology demonstrated. Daniel Case (talk) 17:21, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
While this doesn't really fit with blocks being preventative instead of punitive, I accept that since we're secret lovers in real life you have to make a show of being evenhanded. EEng 18:19, 30 June 2023 (UTC) P.S. Your boss called. Something about the dirigible. EEng18:19, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Damn, I must really be getting old. The name sounds familiar, but... I had a feeling that there had been such a building there, but when I Googled it I got the Northeastern one. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:42, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Class of '78? Well at least you're making me feel at least a little young by comparison, Tryp, which is not exactly the most common occurrence of late. I'm sure you'll be very buoyed by that knowledge. Actually, better speak a little 'louder':Tryp, I said "I'm sure you'll be very buoyed by that knowledge!". SnowRise let's rap01:54, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, those warning messages that fire when you start a topic deserves the Humour Barnstar in themselves. Anyway, just popped in to say the formatting change is appreciated, and, despite my vote, I get your approach, which is why I’d oppose any sanctions if not for the RFC. Your humour is like food. ;) [Joke]MM(Give me info.)(Victories)19:26, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Gotta love the Stalin meme. As for that RfC, it's decidedly a dead letter. I'd bet there are 20 editors with posts in violation of it on ANI right now. EEng22:29, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My mentors pray-told that once a generation the humble EEng archives his talk page. A rare event indeed! Well, this July I bore witness to the miracle myself. Oh what joyous occasion to be a Wikipedian! [FBDB] –MJL‐Talk‐☖20:53, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You're an MOS guru, aren't you? I mean when you're not getting in trouble for being funny. I'm curious what you think of Talk:Eric André#Academic titles. Psst: don't tell the other editor that if he restores his change, I won't battle over it. Might embolden him. Anyway, if you feel like chiming in... Perhaps you could add an image of some famous bachelor (or Bachelor) playing a harp or something.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is a discussion that apparently concerns you at the little-used and largely pointless ANI talkpage. While notification of posts there isn't compulsory, I think it's in order. Acroterion(talk)12:33, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How perceptive of you to have noticed. If you open User:EEng for editing, you'll notice there's an {anchor|s} buried in there somewhere. Thus when you click on my sig, you get taken to that specific point in the page. That's what the #s is for -- so that, if I choose, I can have that happen, and I can move that specific point around according to my whims. Now, why in the world I placed the anchor at the point it seems to have been at for some time, I have no recollection at all. Just for fun I've moved it now. EEng17:25, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They say there's no such thing as telepathy, but how else to explain how Thincat wandered into a discussion of SMALLCAT? MORE THAT A COINCIDENCE??? EEng20:23, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Since you seem to be looking for something to do...
Jesus, that's exhausting. There seems to be a lot of detail about the twists and turns of land acquisition, don't you think? EEng03:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To me, it is pretty important stuff. There is a lot in it. Land acquisition was an important aspect of the Manhattan Project. There is a common myth about "the good war" and how the American people were so firmly behind the war effort. But supporting the troops did not extend to letting the government acquire their land! This was a process process repeated across the US where army and air bases were established, but the reader wanting to know about it can come here. I've also seen some accounts that inferred that people must have been eager to sell, which was not the case. There is also the bit about Truman finding out about it. Some people guessed that the Truman committee found out about the expenditure on the Manhattan Project. This article sets the record straight. Hawkeye7(discuss)09:49, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to respond to your post, but suddenly I'm confused: there's Hanford Engineer Works and also Hanford Site, between which there's a lot of overlap -- certainly in the Acquisition stuff. Shouldn't there be better coordination between those articles? EEng23:54, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The main ones were the one you already looked at. The other is the Personnel section. I already had a go at the one though. Thanks for a job well done! I wrote the whole article from scratch. Hawkeye7(discuss)09:49, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's simple: all usernames are random keysmashes, no matter what. Any resemblance to real words is purely coincidental. The meaning of "EEng" is clearly that the E key on his keyboard must be unusually large, such that randomly pressing keys resulted in it too many times.[FBDB]Vaticidalprophet10:22, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can't you guys read? Right at the top of my userpage [168] it says Welcome to the user page of Edwin Engelbarth, Esquire. EEng23:58, 24 July 2023 (UTC) The u is silent.[reply]
Somehow I'd never seen this, and for eight years I've called you "Eric Engelland" in my mind, just like Bbb23 is Brian B. Brubaker in the JDL-iverse (his "last name" changes but he's always Brian). I feel more than mildly disillusioned. - Julietdeltalima(talk)23:24, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Imagine you confusing the Engelbarths with the Engellands. Outrageous. 02:34, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
I guess EEng also likes the letter E a lot that he highlighted one of them red in his signature. E is awesome, it is the most used consonant in the English language and it is the frequency of 329.628 Hz. But then EEEng sounds like someone showing their teeth at a dentist, and Eng sounds like someone mistyped "English" or "Engineer" so EEng might be better than EEEng or Eng. Maybe this is one motivator for the username.[Humor]Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 00:58, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This really could not be more obvious. It's the sound one makes when, while trying to lecture a second party about something serious (that they probably do deserve to be lectured about), they say something so funny that you hurt yourself a little trying to stifle the laugh to maintain some credibility: "EEng!" SnowRise let's rap01:54, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Heh. I am happy that my contributions to your username confusion are enshrined in the museum. Truly yours, Mr. Engelbarth, esquire; I remain, Jip Orlando (talk) 14:13, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The God's honest truth is that after a few months of occasional IP editing I decided to register, the name popped into my head, and I went with it. Turns out it's brief and memorable, and as seen above it lends an air of enigmatic mystery, so I'm happy with it. EEng00:03, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think you just described how 99.9% of Wikipedians choose a username.
I am part of the 0.1% that had my username changed after halfway through high school I realized how cringe the username I chose was. You probably remember me as the one who shattered Wikipedia into a million pieces because I was young and thought editing other's user pages and all this cringe was a good idea. Although if someone can't load a kilobyte userpage it probably is a skill issue. Hope it does not give flashbacks. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 23:15, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your mother wears army boots. We're having a little fun on the page [169], and if you're incapable of joining in, please just go wing your piggy way somewhere else without bothering the rest of us. Thank you, and have a pleasant fucking day, busybody. EEng23:50, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid it's again time to please reassess your approach to adding images on talk and project pages. "Miners under ten" was an unnecessary distraction in a serious discussion (and not especially funny), and the other image I just removed elsewhere was clearly inappropriate on that page. Please give this some thought. Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:30, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not being especially funny is a big part of what's funny about it [170]; I can't believe I have to explain that to you. Same with [171] (not that I'm the first person to think of it [172]). EEng05:28, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep going, your images almost always make a point that needs to be made (pictures worth 1000 birds or something) and you are selective in their use. Imaged editorial comments do not need to be 100% serious although they usually make a point which actually is, and Wikipedia is far from a boat of grumbling sailors down with scurvy although you'd think so sometimes. So no, please continue and give 'em hell when they need to be shown a bit of it in order to heavenize Wikipedia. I've added an image at the Barbenheimer RfC which is trying to remove that valued caption - it seems to be becoming overrun by the serious, but at least the images seem to be set in stone (maybe on RfC on if the caption should be 'Barbie and Oppie'). Randy Kryn (talk) 22:54, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I had intended to put this in the thread where IP editing was brought up (here), but I'm already on thin ice when it comes to adding useless stuff to ANI so here I am, posting it on your talk page instead. LilianaUwU(talk / contributions)10:13, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Huh. I would have figured your picture is Wikipedia when I did register, and this [175] would be Wikipedia if I'd never registered. EEng16:39, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. While personally I still think my wording was loose enough to cover the nuances of interpretation in the Benchley passage, I appreciate your rigor and agree that it's best to err on the side of caution when it comes to any possible misconstruing. I will say that it would have to be quite a special secondary source indeed that could really add further insight into what exactly was in RB's head when he wrote that--someone who had, for instance, dug up a letter he wrote the same day, in which he elaborated on the theme. Anyway, thanks for your attention to detail. Jcejhay (talk) 12:39, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone has the time to go into the source of this page and change all of EEng's signatures to something hilarious, I'll give you a barnstar Z!t!@n«T@1k»15:28, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes thanks, see [177]. If you have a source giving the locale, occasion, and more about the bust, can you add those to the file desc? EEng06:51, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hello there. I've again removed the citations from the lead section of J. Robert Oppenheimer. However, I have not removed the note and it's references. Instead, I rewrote the first paragraph of his early years section and placed the note there.
I've been given some grief for adding citations in leads when I began edited. Now, I'm quite strict about it myself, especially when it comes to featured articles. I hope you understand.
Edit to add: Forgot to mention. To address your (rightful) concern about the "father of the atomic bomb" references, I've written them into the article as well. -- Omnis Scientia (talk) 22:12, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need to fall all over ourselves to satisfy the LEADCITE bullies. Cites are OK in the lead now and then. The lead of Phineas Gage has a handful of them, mostly because it employs a series of quotations which, while they illustrate and summarize material in the article body, do no themselves appear later in the article.I've move the name-note back to the lead. It's needed when the full name is first introduced, and frankly, IMHO, the accessory changes you made along with the move didn't improve the overall exposition of JRO's early life. EEng01:31, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you think I wrote something incorrect in the first paragraph of 'Early life' (I merely rearranged the sentences and added a small tidbit from the note itself, by the way, to fit it in) then please help me out in rewriting it because it is far too long for an opening paragraph of a section.
As for the note, LEADCITE is not the only reason I want it removed from the lead line. It looks very out of place and distracting right next to the name and, frankly, it isn't SUCH important/vital information as to be necessarily mentioned in the opening line of the article. Oppenheimer was not the first person to use his middle name. And, as with most well-written articles, information about the birth name belongs in the paragraph discussing the person's birth.
I should also note that you have no objection with the other citations I have moved to the main body. So please cooperate with the note as well. -- Omnis Scientia
Edit: Please note that I mean all this in a polite way. I know from experience some passionate people can get incredibly rude. I also agree with you about LEADCITE bullies. Personally, I don't like removing ALL citations from lead (exceptions can be made, after all) but I would prefer them not being in the opening paragraph.
As of now, I have moved the note back to "Early life". I've touched nothing else and have merely put in front of his name in the opening line of the section. Beyond the LEADCITE thing, I just think that information fits better there, simple as that. -- (talk) 07:52, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not undo my work. I have not removed anything. I have not made any radical changes. If you don't like how I have worded something then reword it but don't erase ALL my work. Editing takes up time. And I really don't like how rude you are being about my edits as well. Constructive criticism is more than welcome - and I have welcomed it and have compromised as well - but I don't appreciate rude words like "YUCK" or your dismissiveness to my protests in the edit summaries. -- Omnis Scientia (talk) 23:26, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't undone all your work. I've reverted some of it, built on the rest. I didn't say simply "YUCK", but rather "Sorry, but YUCK" (and I didn't know it was you). And some of the ideas you have, like "Captions can't read like a story" (meaning, I gather, that they can only identify what you're looking at, rather than placing it in the context of surrounding events) are just flat-out wrong -- see, for example, any number of the captions in Phineas_Gage. EEng23:44, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
About the image captions, I know the guidelines as well. My only issue with your captions is that they are too wordy - that is what I meant when I said "by a story". And that is why I rewrote and, frankly, I don't see anything wrong with my caption.
My main point is that you HAVE been dismissive of my edits. I would never have said a word if I did not feel like this. If I am doing something wrong, I would like to know so I don't do it again. But I would like you to show a little more tact while doing so. -- Omnis Scientia (talk) 06:48, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You're not doing anything wrong, but we all have to be prepared for others to reject or modify our work; you're going to have to grow a thicker skin. In point of fact your caption was slightly longer than mine [178]. EEng07:16, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mind longer captions, I have an issue with the words - hence "wordy" - used in said captions. It reads like a paragraph you have lifted from the article, not like an image caption.
And surely you can see the double standard here? You expect me to just accept your rewording of my work but you cannot handle when I reword your work to make it flow more seamlessly and to remove non-neutral language; you've undone it a few times for no reason other than "mine is better, sorry".
I'm simply trying to help better the article and you are being unreasonable.
In any case, I'm done here. Clearly you can't see where you are wrong or are purposefully ignoring the issue I am trying to raise. I wish you well. -- Omnis Scientia (talk) 08:24, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For those playing along at home, we're talking about the edits to the J. Rob Opp article over the last few days, seen here [179]
My only issue with your captions is that they are too wordy ... I don't mind longer captions, I have an issue with the words - hence "wordy" - used in said captions. – Huh?
Look, the way WP works is that almost anything you do is likely to be modified, built on, or (sometimes) even rejected by others. A great example is here [180]: What you say in your edit summary ("they are sitting") is clearly wrong, and while mentioning the pipe isn't a bad idea (I'd thought of it myself) it's too tiny a detail in the thumbnail to function as the only identifier. Further, it's almost certain that JRO's not (as your version of the caption asserts) actually "smoking" it. My original edit + your edit + my subsequent edit = a much improved caption. Interpreting this in personal terms will only bring you grief.
For what it's worth, I checked those last edits for myself, and I agree with EEng about the pipe, and about the combined edits having improved the caption. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:40, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mind the edits, I truly don't. I just think that the captions can be much better written than how they are at the moment. Some of them just seem, in my opinion, awkwardly worded and read more like wikipedia paragraph and not an image caption. You get what I mean? -- Omnis Scientia (talk) 21:49, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You can't tell Oppenheimer is a "tall figure" in that photo. And he is clearly smoking a pipe so you don't have specify "tobacco pipe" either. That is what I meant by "wordy". -- Omnis Scientia (talk) 21:41, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I looked carefully at the photo after enlarging it. Oppenheimer is clearly taller-looking in comparison to the other people in the back row, so that's a useful descriptor for readers to pick him out of the crowd. As for the pipe, when enlarged, it shows his finger over the opening of the pipe, and no smoke coming out of it. That probably means that it wasn't lit at the moment the photo was taken. But it might be an improvement to delete the word "tobacco", since he obviously wasn't working on the plumbing. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(BTW, what you call the pipe's "opening" is technically termed, in pipe anatomy, the bowl.) The problem with identifying JRO as the tall figure with a pipe is that the pipe can't actually be used to identify him, because you can't see it until you know which figure is him (via his height) and then click-to-enlarge. Furthermore, despite what you say "pipe" really is ambiguous -- not because someone might think JRO was smoking weed, but because the reader might quite reasonably think they should be looking in the photo for pipes like, ya know, this , and in fact there are pipes in the photo (near the ceiling) that the reader might spend some time puzzling over. Saying he was "smoking a pipe" avoided that problem, except for the problem that it wasn't lit; that's why I switched to tobacco pipe.My first choice was to just drop reference to the pipe entirely, but I didn't want to hurt O.S.'s feelings. No good turn goes unpunished, I guess. I've changed "with a pipe" to "holding a pipe", which helps by being slightly more specific. EEng02:32, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Very good edit. The original "advice" there was clearly out-of-step with how a majority (probably supermajority) of editors write here, and has no objective (e.g. Wikipedia technical, or accuracy-protecting, or landslide-RfC-decided) basis, so it was just prescriptive anti-comma opinion mongering that did not belong in the guideline. While in simple cases, writing something like "In 2017 they moved to France" isn't likely to confuse many readers, I nearly every day run into more complex-sentences instances that require the reader to go over the sentence two or more times to make sense of it because of the missing punctuation. I would have removed that punditry myself if I'd noticed it. I was wondering why I was seeing an up-tick in commas missing from, and even being removed from, introductory clauses on sentences, especially those containing a date, and that snippet was surely the cause. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:21, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I must have read that story thirty years ago. The word stuck in my mind at the time. Don't expect any more, I suspect the overlap in the Venn diagram of 'words that Girth Summit knows' and 'words that EEng doesn't know' is quite limited. Unless it's expanded to include Glaswegian vernacular. GirthSummit (blether)17:01, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You know which RfC I'm referring to. The one about your capacious caption, of course. I know you feel that some editors (like me!) are killjoys. So I thought I should cheer you up with your own special double-image:
I wasn't talking about you. You made a post or two expressing your opinion (though admittedly misguided) and left it at that. I was talking about the killjoys who thought, for example, that the RfC would set some sort of precedent about humor in articles <rolls eyes>. EEng20:06, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I found that file by looking at the deletion discussion. It's a pity, because there's something... I'm not sure what to call it... about it. I avoid Commons like the plague. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the story's true. (I'd pull up the diffs, but there's some privacy implications that go beyond just me.) And I think in terms of the hierarchy of humor it's legitimately probably funnier. Got a strong Millennial humor[WTF, redlink??] vibe to it, for two kids raised on The Whitest Kids U' Know. And surreal comedy is a few rungs above wordplay, which outranks only simple sarcasm and simple puns. On the other hand, wordplay stands perhaps alone as the one kind of humor that can be justified in mainspace, so I'll give it to you on that point. (List of cetaceans my beloved...)
Now, the blocking suggestion? Well, let's just say, there is a difference between a suggestion one knows no one will take seriously, and one that is not intended seriously. (And if I ever start such an RfC myself, you can hold me to being the change I want to see.)
My post was poorly worded. I didn't mean to suggest the anecdote wasn't true. I just didn't want any casual readers getting the impression you'd been a SUPPORT on removal.In all seriousness, if we can think of wording discouraging RfCs on strictly matter-of-taste stylistic questions, I'd be all for it. I just can't think what that wording would be. EEng18:22, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I seem to have doubled down too hard here. I was just riffing. :) As to a viable policy change, I dunno. The hard thing would be defining what counts as not worth an RfC. Suppose an article uses some dated term to refer to a group of people. The author says it's correct for the time period and the alternative would be anachronistic; an objecting party says it's offensive and the contemporary term can be used without misrepresenting anything. That could lead to an RfC over a single word, but one where both sides would have colorable arguments that go beyond "I like it" and "I don't". Maybe what's really needed is less a change to RfCs and rather something in policy solemnizing the fact that, as we've both said in differing phrasings, good writing is allowed! I'm guessing you've also had the experience, even outside of outright wordplay, of someone coming to an article you've written and literally just making the prose worse, with a summary like "tone", when it's entirely within the norms for actual encyclopedias' tones. Guessing based on the fact that you've written more articles than me and I've had this happen multiple times, often with people being unable to justify, when challenged, why exactly the wording is problematic.One contributing factor is a lot of essays about making good writing better, which some more gnomish types then treat as black-letter law and base "corrections" on as matter-of-factly as they would typos or formatting issues. WP:ELVAR is perhaps the biggest offender (to be honest, I think just a bad essay, but often cited as if it were policy, by people not generally in the business of writing articles themselves); your own WP:INTOTHEWOULDS falls victim to this, invoked (not by you AFAIK) against entirely reasonable uses of "X would later"; and, while technically not an essay, User:Ohconfucius/script/Common Terms.js is used by a number of editors who treat its highly opinionated output—which extends to, say, unlinking all instances of New York City, Jewish, and Facebook—as synonymous with the fairly flexible and context-dependent guideline MOS:OVERLINK. Frankly, it's a cultural problem of editors who see article-writing as some mechanistic thing that can be done objectively right or wrong, rather than, at its core, an artistic process, where changing part of the artistry of an article for no reason other than personal preference, and especially pursuing such a change after a revert, is usually to be considered a net-negative activity for the community. I don't think any policy change can fix that. I've thought about writing Wikipedia:Articles are allowed to be good, though. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she|they|xe) 18:51, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. A few days ago I was paging through a list of original Star Trek episodes. As the titles scrolled by, my eye caught season 1, episode 17, "The Squirrel of Gothos". I'll bet you don't remember that one. Certainly I didn't. I thought... a squirrel? Really? There's a Star Trek episode about a squirrel? Where in its travels would the Starship Enterprise encounter squirrels? Did flying squirrels evolve the capacity for interstellar travel? I mean, there are S.T. plotlines in which the adversaries are, variously, a giant lizard, three brains-in-a-vat with a gambling problem, and a papier-mâché rock. So why not a squirrel? But when I scrolled back it turned out the title is actually "The Squire of Gothos". Very disappointing.
Ah yes, I should have known that your not-so-grubby fingerprints would have been there already. Yes, I knew about that original pagename. The whole thing is... only on Wikipedia. Lots of nuts. As for Star Trek, my good squire, I'm definitely not a trekkie, but it doesn't surprise me that you are. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I hesitated before writing this, because I wondered if it could be considered grave dancing, but then I decided it was okay, because it's here, not on their TP, and secondly, because it involves praise and not criticism. So, let's get to it: I wanted to thank you for the time you spent at ANI reporting your interactions and assessments of the "bad penny" editor (discussion). It gave me valuable insight into general behavioral issues beyond just the particular editor under discussion. Your incisive, self-analytical comments about why you disagreed with your own, earlier gambit about a one-way IBan impressed me. I've never banned anyone from my page either, but now I have a mental "guideline" establishing a reasoned position why not, and something worth sticking to, instead of it being merely situational. And, there was this:
[An IBan] would solve my problem, but not that of the teeming millions who suffer [bad penny editor]'s inscrutable, infuriating ministrations year in and year out.
That's one thing that made me realize how you were doing much of the heavy lifting there, to my benefit, without my having to lift a finger. (With contributions and community input, of course, but it was your comments that best helped crystallize my view of the chaos while reading it just now, and I can't help thinking must have done as well for other editors in the discussion at the time.) The point being, I'm one of the teeming millions who may have been spared future trouble, and probably would have been among the 999,000 blissfully unaware that my clear path was partly due to your efforts, but for some chance link-hopscotch that brought me to that old discussion months later. So, lest you wonder if all those words and time were worth it, or even noticed by anybody outside that discussion, they were, and it was. Thank you. Mathglot (talk) 22:43, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This will definitely come in handy the next time someone wants me banned from ANI because my participation there is counterproductive. Good job, thanks. Shall I wire the money to the usual numbered account? EEng02:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And I didn't get blocked for it, so I'm sure there are tears here and there around WP for that, too. EEng00:36, 1 October 2023 (UTC) You do realize that the word [183] is broached, right?[reply]
Plus you're an awful fucking droplet of shit flaming turdbag with no life and probably still sucking on your granny's titty [184]. EEng06:35, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Today I read "Blinn's seminal work on implicit surface modeling is known through his popular blobby model"[186] and thought, I wish I had a popular blobby model! Had to look up "blobby model," which according to Oxford is "A model where objects have a basic shape that can be perturbed by interactions with neighbors or the environment. Such objects are described as soft and include muscles and the human body."[187] Elsewhere I learned they're "built from simple primitive shapes (ellipsoids and sausage-like cylinders with rounded ends in the current implementation) ..."[188], "By a blobby object we mean a nonrigid object."[189], and that blobby objects are also known as metaballs. Blinn's blobby model, despite its popularity, remains a redlink. Levivich (talk) 02:11, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Only if you're interested, no pressure. Today I encountered the article W. Somerset Maugham (obviously I've seen the name before), and I don't think I've ever seen an FA with so much fustian. My efforts to trim a couple of the most egregious pieces of it back were immediately reverted, and you're familiar enough with both good writing and my style of writing to know whether I'm being sane here; think of it as the copyeditor's version of r/AITA. If you want you can join the talkpage discussion too. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:15, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Re "his homosexuality may have militated against his receiving the higher honour": this reads to me as a passive-aggressive way of blaming the victim for the injustice against him: we would have given this honour to him, but his own homosexuality stepped out of his body and took up arms to force us not to do it. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:12, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you care, the current discussion has gone far past what I could have possibly imagined. At least I did finally get through an unrelated copyedit (with some help) that made the lead a bit more readable, so progress is possible. And you were around when I was at my peak Genie editing, I don't get the defensiveness on display. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:08, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Listen User talk:The Blade of the Northern Lights, I've been meaning to say I feel guilty for having left you twisting in the wind on that. I was just overwhelmed with IRL stuff to take on one of those crazy discussions a la Moors Murders (if you know what I'm talking about). EEng04:49, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Respectfully, if you do not understand how talk page threading and lists work, it would be better to just use the [ reply ] button for making replies. There is nothing about your reply that deserves special prominence above people who have replied prior to you, or that justifies breaking the lists for people who rely on them, for example those with screen readers. Thanks. —DIYeditor (talk) 17:00, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but with my 33,000 talk-page contributions to your 3,000, I don't need any schooling from you on how to do stuff, nor am I cowed by lame complaints about broken screenreaders from the 1990s. You misrepresented my views and I responded as I saw fit. Don't ever fuck with my posts again. You'd do better to spend your time answering the challenge I posed to you. [193] Toodles! EEng18:48, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand. You are formatting your replies improperly as far as I know. Software of various types relies on the formatting. That's why the [ reply ] button was added, so people could conform to the canonical list/indentation format even if they didn't understand it. Or am I confused about something? I'm not sure it is your prerogative to ignore the list order, nor why you'd want it to be. —DIYeditor (talk) 14:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not exactly sure what it is that EEng did that upset you, but I can guess. But WP:THREAD is quite clear in its instructions for using talk pages, and threading is not 100% enforced: Add your comment below the last entry in the discussion. If you want to respond to a specific comment, you can place your response directly below it.PhotogenicScientist (talk) 14:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think we ought to look at that some more. Even if placed out of time order (which I don't agree should be allowed), it is violation of MOS:LISTGAP and following sections, or their spirit, to double indent or otherwise break the list hierarchy, IMO. —DIYeditor (talk) 04:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you actually cared about standardized formats, rather than about telling people to obey rules, you wouldn't indent your talk-page comments in this way at all. Each level of indentation (visible in wiki-markup by one more colon character at the start of each paragraph) ends up getting translated into html as the text of a definition without a term being defined, violating the principle that html markup should be semantically meaningful. In proper wiki-markup, you should only use semicolon-colon pairs, not bare colons.
In any case, invoking WP:LISTGAP is definitely erroneous. The MOS is for articles, not talk pages, and LISTGAP only applies to unnumbered lists, numbered lists, and definition lists, none of which describe the indentation formatting in talk pages. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Anything that is non-conforming about the talk pages should be addressed, so they can be automated fully. I was not aware of what you are talking about as far as proper HTML. By LISTGAP I mean it and the following sections with examples about lists, but you are right, I just habitually quote that when I am correcting blank spaces in the lists which is very common. How can you, out of time order, "indent" twice from what you are replying to and put it before all the other replies to that comment? That doesn't make sense to me. One isn't just free to make an art project of the talk pages or are you? —DIYeditor (talk) 06:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I told you already: you grotesquely misrepresented my views, so I made it my business to forthrightly set the record straight [194]. And BTW, you never answered the challenge (in the link I just posted) to explain why certain enumerated bits of in-article humor are unacceptable. I even made it easier for you by extending the list [195] Nor did you answer the question here [196]. Now either defend your stick-in-the-mud views or put a sock in it. EEng06:40, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This reminds me of how a number of people felt they have the prerogative to intersperse their replies with someone else's and carve up the other person's post to insert them, before it was made clear that it is not ok. There's no kind of exigency that justifies putting your reply to me up above everything else out of time order.
As to why you feel entitled to screw around with Wikipedia articles (vs. talk pages) to make jokes, I'll leave that up to someone other than me, because to be honest I have no real interest in dealing with you. —DIYeditor (talk) 06:52, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re "One isn't just free to make an art project of the talk pages or are you?": surely that would be a more constructive use of your time than haranguing people on the proper level of indentation of their posts. An art project might actually make some people smile. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:10, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Truth hurts sometimes, and it especially hurts those who stand in the road begging for it to run them over. Repeatedly. EEng23:24, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, then, here's the truth. You're being very uncivil. If you carry on, you may well be blocked. Again. Take a deep breath and instead of running them over, take your foot off the gas. 🎄Cremastra 🎄 (talk) 23:27, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Look, I really appreciate the concern -- really I do -- but civility requires indulging the clueless only so long. As mentioned elsewhere, I'm not the only one telling voorts he needs to cut out closing discussions until he's got more experience. EEng23:39, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are not the only editor, correct. Only one other editor has said that, and the extent of his feedback was: For the record I too believe that your close was incorrect. That's hardly helpful feedback in terms of what I could be doing better. As for others who you have claimed have repeatedly told me that my close was wrong, all of those editors (except for one, who was polite and reasonable and has never suggested I should stop closing discussions) were involved because they !voted in the original discussion. As I explained at Wikipedia talk:Closure requests#Close peer review:
I've asked for feedback here because I'd like to an objective view from people who regularly determine consensus and are not involved in the discussion at issue. That's why, from the beginning, I've asked people to take this to AN for a close review, and I was disappointed when Levivich, and then you, unilaterally overturned my close outside of the established process that we have to discuss and potentially overturn bad closes. If the people here think my close was bad, I will take that into account in my future closes and learn from that.
Since I've got a marionette fetish that ad's always, well, been a favorite of mine. Shame the seagoing mammal didn't splash her, so he could run his paws rapidly and clumsily up and down that nice lady's, um, bosom. "How did you and daddy meet, mommy?" "Well, Billy, whenever I felt lonely I'd seek the companionship of the animals in the zoo..." EEng02:57, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You have been blocked from editing for a period of 72 hours for a pattern of incivility towards other editors. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions.
I always figure that if I don't get blocked once in a while, I'm not doing my job. I stand by my comments, obviously.After the bot operator was repeatedly asked to slow the thing down, and David Eppsteinspecifically explained why hiding all bot edits wasn't a feasible solution[198], these two geniuses showed up to high-handedly smirk to each other about how dumb David and I are for not realizing we had unhidden all bot edits [199]. So while some might think me uncivil, at least I'm not uncivil and clueless -- a deadly combination. EEng23:31, 7 January 2024 (UTC) P.S. I'd appreciate someone copying this over to ANI, for the record.[reply]
I always figure that if I don't get blocked once in a while, I'm not doing my job. Frankly, I'm appalled. I know I shouldn't take your comments, but right now you are not being remotely constructive to the project.
Incivility is not excusable. I've asked you before. It isn't a game called "how can I get blocked?" which is how you seem to treat it. Frankly, you're being a WP:JERK, and going against WP:5P4
You completely misunderstand. I have no desire to be blocked, but I got over being ashamed of blocks long ago since, as everyone knows, a block only requires that one trigger-happy admin get high and mighty over something that others aren't exercised about. I'll admit that in this particular case I went from 0 to 100 pretty fast, but (as described above) being lectured by a couple of script kiddies two editors who didn't bother to even read the thread so far (David Eppstein's point in particular -- which he's now reiterated, BTW [200]) does bring out the worst in me. EEng23:53, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, thanks. You know, I'm really a very nice person when you get to know me (at least that's what I'm told). BTW, when this is all over I'd be interested to know what the subtle difference is here [201]. EEng00:03, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
EEng, there is currently some support in the ANI towards extending your block, up until the time you agree that what you said was incivil and agree not to continue being needlessly rude towards other editors. I don't think calling other editors "script kiddies" is helpful. Isabelle Belato🏳🌈00:19, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to visit me here in my holding cell, and to show my good faith I've modified my post per your suggestion. But let me explain a little. I'm a technical person myself, and many were the years during which my technical prowess put me in a position where the quality of people's lives was very much in my hands. And one thing I always despised was a high-handed attitude, on the part of some of my technical colleagues, toward people not as in-the-know as they were. And that's the attitude I detected in that discussion when those two presumed to inform me (a computer scientist and systems engineer for 45 years) and David Eppstein (a professor of computer science) that the flooding of our watchlists was somehow our fault, because we'd overridden the option to hid bots edits -- like we didn't know what we were doing or something. That fact is, they don't know what they were doing, because if they did they'd have realized they need to run that bot task in some different way to avoid much annoyance to many people. So I blew my stack a bit. To be honest I thought better of it just after hitting <Publish changes>, but just then the dog vomited on the rug so my priorities suddenly shifted. EEng00:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, but I think that for now it's best to just let the discussion take its course. However, for some odd reason the string <Publish changes> (in my comment above) doesn't come across over at ANI (probably something about the enclosing template?) -- maybe change it to [Publish changes] instead. And you didn't make the strike/insert to the earlier post, without which people won't know what I'm talking about. EEng01:09, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The original message shows correctly in full here, but I've changed "<>" to "[]" in case it's some sort of bug with some browsers. I've added the context, and struck/inserted the text of the original message there, as well. Isabelle Belato🏳🌈01:20, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very likely the issue with <Publish changes> is that it is a pseudo-html tag because of balanced angle brackets in the expression. Either encose that in <nowiki>..</nowiki> tags, or do what I did in this comment, and escape the left angle bracket using the Html entity<. Note for example in the 01:09 and 01:20 comments above, that the balanced angle brackets have screwed up syntax highlighting on this page for all text following. That will be fixed, in my next edit (so you can still see it, in this revision (diff)). Mathglot (talk) 02:47, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Having my talk page all in order is like having a nice suit ready for your burial when you're about to be executed (or while the jury's deciding your fate, I guess). Since I'm posting here anyway, I want to make a comment, not for copying to ANI, but just for the select few who bother to come and read.
About the claims that I've been repeatedly blocked for incivility: that's completely untrue -- not if you count only valid blocks that weren't immediately overturned. As someone wrote once:
In some cases "unblockable" has meant "behaves inappropriately but has too many supporters to keep blocked". But in some cases it may mean "repeatedly triggers others to behave with inappropriate authoritarianism and is unblocked when it becomes apparent that the authoritarianism was inappropriate".
If you look at my past blocks, almost all of them have been of the second kind -- that's why they were overturned. In fact, the one entry for civility (before this one) was overturned because (a) there wasn't agreement the comment was uncivil and (b) more importantly, the comment at issue was a criticism of an admin's behavior -- the admin that then blocked me! Same goes for the block advertised as "Personal attacks or harassment" -- that was an admin blocking for criticism of himself, so naturally the block was overturned. There's also a mistaken block in there, a block that the blocking admin apologized for because he'd taken too much cough syrup, a block because I made a joke about Brett Kavanaugh, a block marked "joke block", etc.
So while I may be this prickly old guy that people can rely on to gnarl at them, it's simply false to say that I've been blocked over and over for incivility -- or anything else blockworthy beyond two or three for editwarring.
And since some have misinterpreted it: When I said If I don't get blocked once in a while, I'm not doing my job, I mean that pushing back on overzealous admins (a tiny percentage of all admins, I rush to say) is a duty that all of us little people should take seriously, and if that means getting blocked once in a while by an admin who can't tolerate criticism, so be it. (I'm not saying that the present case is such a one: I've already said that I regretted what I said today after I said it, but got sidetracked before I could withdraw it by, ya know, that dog vomiting.) It's an interesting exercise to count up how many of the admins who've blocked me are no longer admins.
For the record, when I said bot edits were hidden by default, I wasn't trying to suggest that it was your fault, just that it wouldn't affect the 10,000 other editors (though what do I know, maybe there's a large number of talk page watchers who look out for bot edits). FWIW. — Qwerfjkltalk08:38, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On closer inspection I see that you're right, sort of. You said, "Bot edits are hidden from the watchlist by default", which did sort of ignore David Eppstein's key point already made; but as you phrased it it was just an observation. It was Martin MSGJ who then said, "Yes, I know, and the people are complaining have deliberately overridden that setting. And then they complain about seeing bot edits?!", which made it sound like getting our watchlists flooded for days was our fault because we had stupidly un-hidden bot edits.One other point. You mention "talk page watchers". The problem is, there's no such thing because there's no way (no easy way, anyhow) to watch only an article proper without also watching its talk page -- you can only be an article-AND-talkpage watcher.Let me make a suggestion. What this bot is doing is far from urgent, and there's no reason the task can't be spread out over a year. If the bot did 1/365 of pages on its list per day (spread evenly throughout the day) then I'd be getting about 5 of these edits on my watchlist per day, not the 80 I'm on track for today. EEng11:26, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
there's no such thing because there's no way ... to watch only an article proper without also watching its talk page oops, I forgot about that. My mistake. Re the bot editing, I can't really comment on how Kanashimi will handle this with Cewbot, but there are millions of talk pages that need to be (or "should be", if you prefer) edited. Editing 3 million pages over the course of a year would mean one edit every 10 seconds, which isn't great for your (or anyone's) watchlist. Sure, a decent chunk of these would be talk pages that most people won't watchlist (like talk pages of redirects), but given the large number of pages, spreading out the edits becomes less feasible. Currently I'm only running my bot on a thousand or so pages per day, in order to avoid any unexpected issues that I've missed, and I'm planning on increasing the rate later. — Qwerfjkltalk16:14, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nah. Thanks, but let's skip it for now. We've already got people twisting it into dark meanings not actually there. (I've made some clarifications above.)
But this does bring up another point. WP:CIV says In cases where you believe that taking admin action against someone who was uncivil might be contentious, it is expected that discussion will be opened on the matter, via WP:ANI, before any admin action is taken, so this block really was out of process. I'm not saying I don't deserve this one, but the effect of blocking right off the bat is that I'm unable to defend myself against misinformation and misrepresentation in the discussion. This copy-over-to-ANI approach is worse than a poor substitute, because some people twist what I said but I'm unable to point that out timely. Recent comments in particular have taken phrases I've written out of context to make them look 180 degrees from what I actually said. (I'm willing to believe this is just unintentional sloppiness, but the effect is the same: I'm made to seem to have said evil-sounding things I did not say. EEng14:57, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Look, I'm going to work, but something needs to be said about the distorted "evidence" now being adduced at ANI. First we've got someone saying, 'This isn't the first time EEng has been blocked for "doing an incivility", it's the 11th'. No, it's not the 11th, but anyway the problem with my block log is you have to actually look at what happened. Just two off the top of my head:
[202] Admin warned that repeating such a block in future might lead to desysopping
[203] Admin is "reminded of the dangers and standards of adminship as well as the nature of blocks"
Not just many but most of my blocks have ended like that.
Then we've got someone posting an impressive list of ANI section headers that happen to have my name in them, characterized as 'In most cases, it's agreed that there's a problem but that "sanctions are unnecessary".' Let's take a few randomly:
[205] User accusing me of "blasphemy" because I said "Jesus Christ!" in a post
[206] Report by editor trolling with stuff like "I'm a 70 year old professor in the MIT system, with a JD in IP and a PhD in molecular biology and supercomputing. ... I've got dozens of young stallions working for me here that are avid Wiki types, contributors and fans.." (link just given) and "I spend summers on the West Coast in CA and AZ with fellow old researchers and younger students, and can often be found hanging around the supercomputing lab at UCSD." [207]
[208] Editor Edoktor complaining that by addressing him playfully as "Herr Doktor", I was comparing him to Nazis.
[209] Editor complaining about my edit summary reverting a MOS change: "Whoa there, pilgrim! This is a longstanding provision that is consistent with many (I'm not saying all) major style guides."
That's not 'In most cases, it's agreed that there's a problem but that "sanctions are unnecessary".' That's not to say that I'm not out of line more than occasionally, and I do apologize for that, but just listing out every ANI thread with my name in it isn't any way to gauge that.
It's also been said that I've made 6,761 edits to ANI. Well yeah, if you count the many thousands of edits (literally) that were the archiving of old threads.
This is really becoming a kangaroo court, with wild misstatements being piled in left and right which I'm not able to counter in a timely manner. And as the wise man said (paraphrasing and extending here) [211] the incivility of misrepresenting facts, events, and others' positions should be taken as or more seriously than the incivility of intemperate words. EEng19:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One more thing: I really bristle at inclusion of something about AGF in the proposed restriction. You will never see me assuming that anyone here isn't acting in good faith, except the occasional obvious sockpuppet or PROMO account. It's one thing for the record to reflect that I can be prickly -- I'll own that -- but it's really not right to imply I haven't always applied AGF. Just something that seems to matter to me for some reason.
OK, and now something else. Until now IRL stuff prevented me from having quiet time to think about this, but on the train just now I had that time, and wrote the following:
I do recognize that sometimes I'm out of line in my dealings with other editors, and I regret that (even if sometimes I say I don't -- natural human instinct). We can argue about how much that matters, and the knock-on effects, and the positives and negatives and the net, but I hate to see everyone spending so much time in a tussle over this. So I think at this point it's best I get the indefinite block. I do enjoy editing – it's relaxing and satisfying, and in some cases I believe it even does some good in the world – but I also have other things to do (believe it or not) so I'll survive.
Don't misinterpret this as "I QUIT!", because it's not that. In the fullness of time (weeks? months?) I'll make a unblock request, which I hope will be to everyone's satisfaction. And I know myself. I will miss editing during that time – there will be that periodic pang – and perhaps the memory of that pang will remind me, when I return to editing, to think twice more often before hitting [Publish changes].
I know it's not usually the procedure for the convict to propose his own punishment, but I think an indef will be more effective than the civility restriction proposed. (Remember, we're talking about me, and I do know me, believe it or not.) A civility restriction put a target on the editor's back, and leads to baiting. I think a (fairly long) break from editing, and coming back with a fresh if chastened perspective, would have better effects in the end.
In the meantime, I will miss you all. Even you, [redacted], and you, [redacted], and yes, EVEN YOU, [redacted].
Your pal in fun editing,
EEng
P.S. Actually, if you'll unblock me for a few hours first I'll archive my talk page. Or if that's too complicated I'll promise to do it straight away when I get back.
Sure, from "Look, I'm going to work" on. I think right above ===Incivility by City of Silver=== is the appropriate place. EEng21:25, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've taken the liberty of doing so. I was working on this specific problem for 10 minutes! TQB has some really weird shenanigans with the second bullet point of yours, and then an edit conflict with your "Sure" comment when I was going to say that I've done so froze my browser for some reason. Anyways, cheers. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Aaron Liu, I appreciate your doing that, but you seem to have copied from some prior version of the page, not the current one, so you missed some of the text. Could you re-copy using the text right here above? Actually, I've now added to it (down to the P.S. just above). EEng21:52, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very weird how you worded it as if it was part of the original reply instead of being an entirely new letter, but it'st ehre now. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:14, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well I'm doing all this by phone, so it's a bit like working (as Mr. Spock put it) in a zinc-plated, vacuum tube culture. I'm surprised I can get this done at all. EEng22:22, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly encourage you to do any talk page editing/archiving from a desktop. People may be put out with your talk page but nobody would wish archiving something this size with a mobile browser. "zinc-plated, vacuum tube culture" is an apt description! --A. B.(talk • contribs • global count)22:48, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, Ravenswing but please either support or withdraw your claim that "not only does EEng not give a damn what we think in re: civility, but he's said as much outright" [212]. This is a very serious personal attack. (In the old days I would have stated my indignation in much stronger terms, but since my lobotomy I'm much calmer.) EEng23:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An admin finding consensus to "prune" EEng's talk page72 hours?? Pfffft. A mere trifle for you! (Note: not too much cough syrup.) Warning: may contain prunes.An administrator prepares an editor's skin for mounting. "Darn if we didn't get this one with a ricochet" he proclaims.
And to show my deep respect for you I said to myself, "Well, since I can't do other editing I may as well spend time cutting down the ol' talkpage like Ritchie says", but it turns out I can't because the block extends to subpages of this one. Sorry. EEng10:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you want, I'm happy to do the archiving for you; just be advised I might do it to what I think is an acceptable level, which may be a different one to yours. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)13:26, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What do you think of someone's proposal for you to add an automatic archiving template in the scheme that you'd like and then remove that template when the bot finishes archiving? Aaron Liu (talk) 22:26, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let's please keep this separate from current events. I prefer to do my own archiving -- I'm just lazy about it. In the past all that's been necessary is a few gentle cracks of the whip. Once, just to please Ritchie, I even got it down to 200K (IIRC)! EEng23:17, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm lazy about stuff too, which is why I get a bot to do mine. I've had it running for well over ten years with no issues. The code is at the top of my talk page. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)09:41, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I see you've said that you want to be able to archive this talk page. As you can't while blocked, I'm happy to do it for you if you like. Maybe archive the current contents to a new Archive 15? Up to what date? Let me know - I'll watch this page. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:02, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then again, it's not long before this block expires, so you might prefer to wait until then and do it yourself - assuming the indef doesn't happen, and it's looking like it probably won't. Or, archiving now might help people to see this page while the ongoing discussion is still going? Up to you. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:06, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the offer, but I'd prefer to do it myself, and I'll get right on it as soon as my editing privileges have been return. To be clear, I always want to archive my talk page. Just like I always want to clean the garage and fix that leaky faucet. Every Saturday I wake up and say, "Dammit! Today I'm gonna fix that leaky faucet, clean the garage, and archive my talk page!" But then I hit the snooze button. EEng14:47, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, I have a great idea! Why don't we all post as many messages as we can telling EEng how we think he should think about managing the issue of having too many messages on his talk page! He'll be back up over 1M bytes in no time! —David Eppstein (talk) 18:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have an even better idea! Why don't we all post as many messages as we can telling EEng how we think he should think about managing the issue of having too many messages on his talk page! He'll be back up over 1M bytes in no time! --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I used to think you were a massive arsehole. Sometimes, I still think you are a massive arsehole. But there are other times when I know you are literally the most righteous dude ever to bestride this MMORPG for self-indulgent, self-satisfied juvenile delinquency free online project like a colossus. ——Serial17:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And now I fear that EEng's arsehole is going to get blocked. Which is most definitely not something that I want hanging over me. Especially if someone brings some pruning/prunes to this talk page. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:39, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! Genuine question, I see that you removed my comment on ANI at Special:Diff/1195203250, was it an accident? The question I was asking was sincere, there was no ill intentions behind it. The topic is closed now so it isn't a big deal, I was just wondering because it looked like I missed a pretty big thing so I was genuinely asking for context. ChaotıċEnby(t · c)20:07, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS: Finally got to load your talk page, although I'm realizing it's more ConvenientDiscussion's fault for making long talk pages take forever to load... ChaotıċEnby(t · c)20:09, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See??? And I get blamed. Can you imagine the nerve of the guy who said that I keep a long talk page so as to intentionally prevent people from contacting me, when it's so fun for everyone here? EEng20:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC) (It was Ravenswing, actually.)[reply]
To be fair, I wouldn't call the lag a fun experience, but I don't see any bad intention in it. Again, no ill will towards you in this, especially since I don't have the intention of restart a debate that has already been well-covered. Hope that both you and Ravenswing will move on peacefully and not die on a talkpage-sized hill! 😁 ChaotıċEnby(t · c)21:12, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My sincere apologies to both of you. Both goofs happened in the same edit. Must have been the confusion of edit conflicts. EEng20:47, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Happens to the best of us, no worries! (And that's why I have CD although that also brings its whole other load of mishaps sometimes...) ChaotıċEnby(t · c)21:08, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I work long days and literally just now saw your comments at ANI. Me not replying was not me intentionally ignoring your requests for clarification, it's me having a life outside of Wikipedia and only being able to respond after work.
Now, to actually respond to your comment: I will admit that the only block explicitly made due to "incivility" was the one that just expired. However, the number I got were for blocks for incivil-like blocks, more precisely:
The partial block on 12 January 2022 for what is essentially an incivil mark
The blocks on 25 March 2021 for BLP violations, as well as the block on 22 July 2019 for "adding and repeatedly restoring tasteless mockery of a living person, even after warning"
The blocks on 7 February 2021, 7 May 2017, 27 May 2016, 12 June 2015, 14 January 2015, and 30 August 2014 for personal attacks
I will concede two things: that I was indeed wrong on the number of incivility blocks (doing a count after all was typed out only totaled 9 blocks), and that all but two of those blocks were not served out in full. But still, you were still blocked 9 times for various acts of incivility, which is still something to note. SkyWarrior03:42, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Something that is genuinely uncivil: Coming to an editor's personal talk page to try to re-fan a heated debate elsewhere that was recently closed. What do you think you are trying to accomplish? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:53, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, wait, everyone. Over at ANI I askedSkyWarrior (well, challenged would really be more accurate) to have a closer look at my block log and report back, so to speak. My intention was for that to happen at ANI, but that discussion really needs to stay closed now, so here's fine.
This was one of three challenges I issued, to three different editors. I expected one of three things to happen with each:
Embarrassed (or heedless) silence. That's what one challenged editor has chosen, despite doing substantial editing elsewhere.
Shameless that's-my-story-and-I'm-sticking-to-it, hoping no one will notice the continued lying. That's what a second editor has chosen (though on further consideration, Hanlon's razor is a another possibility in that case).
An actual reply that could act as the start of a clarifying experience for all concerned. That's what we have here, and I appreciate SkyWarrior's taking the time. I actually think something useful will come out of this.
I only got up just now to tend to my sick boyfriend (he's doing fine, don't worry) so I need to get back to sleep, but I'll continue in the morning. EEng09:53, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I spent about 5 hours at the meetup, which was more than I planned, as everyone was quite talkative. I could relate many details but picked up a copy of Wetherspoon News, which I was looking at just now. The editorial by its outspoken proprietor, Tim Martin, advocates brevity and cites a memo of Churchill's. EEng may appreciate this particular tip:
Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase...
I was late to the meetup, having discovered at the last minute that PMT had moved their flagship store from Old Street to Eastern Avenue, which I can't actually find a reliable source for anywhere so I can add this to the company's article. I did, however remove this and could just picture EEng saying "If the anniversary was accompanied by a parade of dancing hula girls and a 20-piece "guitar orchestra", that would be worth mentioning". Ritchie333(talk)(cont)12:30, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re: that confused discussion seems to have been about using {r} to define references, not invoke them, so a blanket condemnation isn't appropriate. I'm against the stuffing of every conceivable feature into an all-singing, all-dancing {r} as has been done recently, but for the simple cases of {r|smith} or {r|smith|p=5} it's great – There's already a replacement template for that purpose for many years now: {{sfnp}} (and its {{sfn}} variant for use with Vancouver and other citation styles that don't put parentheses/round-brackets around dates). {{R}} is problematic for other reasons, including dependency on {{rp}}, which is a form of inline parenthetical referencing, all of which was deprecated as a class by the community in 2022. So, {{r}} is basically double-deprecated at this point. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 16:59, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WTF no. R is VERY USEFUL for stringing together named references: {{r|smith|jones|dolenz|tork}} There is absolutely nothing problematic about this use. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:04, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
+1. Stanton, I don't know what you think you're talking about, but {r} is nothing like sfnp or sfn, and has nothing to do with parenthetical referencing. Please don't go on a crusade about this. I just don't have the time. EEng18:24, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{rp}} is parenthetical referencing, and needs ultimately to be replaced; I'm working on a lot of crufty tech stuff in the background to make that feasible. {{R}} has many features, and when it's not being used to generate {{rp}}, then it's not problematic, but when it is, then another solution needs to be found, either by replacing that instance with another means (e.g. {{sfnp}} or {{harvp}}) for citing the same source at different in-source locations, or ultimately improving {{R}} itself to stop doing this via {{rp}}. "I like it" isn't a valid denial of the underlying problem, nor is "sometimes some particular uses are not problematic". Some of them are. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 18:53, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The main functionality of {{r}} is to provide a shortcut to re-use of named references: {{r|smith}} is a convenient and easier-to-type shorthand for <ref name=smith/>. I agree that {{rp}} is bad. I don't use the functionality of {{r}} that produces {{rp}} and would not be sad to see it go. I doubt there is any way of changing the functionality of {{r}} to avoid this while still keeping the ability to specify page numbers in it, though. Manually, one could use something like {{sfnp}}, and maybe a smart-enough bot could also do that, but it involves knowing the author and publication year of a reference, something that {{r}} does not have access to. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:28, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Stanton, what is the "underlying problem" to which you refer? {rp} does not, by default, generate parens, although apparently it can (and to my knowledge when {r} calls {rp} it doesn't do so in a way that generates parens -- or at least that's true the way I use {r}). If you want to crusade to remove the parens functionality of {rp} I don't care, but I'm still waiting to hear what this "underlying problem" is. Here, look, here's a use of {r}:
{{tq|Smith says the earth is flat throughout his book.<ref name=smith>{{cite book|first=John|last=Smith|title=Astronomy|year=2002}}</ref> In particular, he said it in his description of the moon landing!{{r|smith|p=437}} }}
Smith says the earth is flat throughout his book.[1] In particular, he said it in his description of the moon landing![1]: 437
And I hope I'm not coming across testy, SM -- I'm just under a lot of pressure right now. You know I love you. EEng18:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do not actually see any way of generating parenthetical referencing, whether in the deprecated inline-to-text style or in the non-deprecated inside-a-footnote style, using {{r}}. At best you can use {{r}} to repeat a named footnote defined elsewhere using the non-deprecated inside-a-footnote style. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:13, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Parenthetical referencing doesn't have anything to do with parentheses (round brackets); it's the other meaning of the word. Parenthetical referencing is the placing of some of the citation information inline in the text instead of inside a citation at the bottom of the page (as far as the rendered view goes; this has nothing to do with where in the wikicode it is). In 2022, a community RfC deprecated all parenthetical referencing, so {{rp}} ultimately needs to be replaced with citation methods that keep the page numbering in the citations instead of jammed into the article body and divorced from the rest of the citation. Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page). used with page numbers produces output that amounts to <ref ...>...</ref>{{rp|...}}; specifically, its |p= parameter (with aliases |pp=, |page=, |pages=, |at=) is an invocation of {{rp}}. The most conventionalized replacement is using {{sfnp}} (and variants of it: {{sfn}}, {{harv}}, {{harvnb}}); this uses the citation data (author surnames and publication year) instead of the ref name, so it is a conversion that takes some effort. I'm working on tools to make this easier. For the example above, the replacement would be {{sfnp|Smith|2002|p=437}}; if there were two authors, then {{sfnp|Smith|Zhiang|2002|p=437}}, up to 4 authors (if 5 or more, the others are ignored). Because the template documentation is geeky, I've written a short tutorial on it at User:SMcCandlish/How to use the sfnp family of templates. Using this has a variety of benefits, including automatic merging of duplicate citations, very simple syntax (compare {{R}}'s 168 parameters, plus numerous aliases, most of them simply partially duplicative of the functionality already provided by <ref> and the regular CS1/CS2 templates), hoverable short footnotes that show the short cite and hovering over that shows the full one, which use of {{R}} does not (this only applies on a desktop browser; most mobile devices don't really have a mouse-over function), etc. Articles like Aristotle are complete trainwrecks, using at least four different citation methods, including a lot of mixing in of {{rp}} and {{r}}, with the result that various citations are not found at the bottom of the page (except as "general references" with no page numbers), numerous specific page-number cites are scattered all over the text, inline for no reason, and so on. It appears that the article is moving toward {{sfn}} and its {{harvnb}} variant, but really should be using {{sfnp}} and {{harvp}} to have a consistent WP:CITESTYLE with the underlying CS1 citations ({{sfn}} (AKA {{sfnnb}}) and {{harvnb}} are really for use with Vancouver referencing, but people mistakenly think that {{sfn}} is "the default" or "normal" simply because its name is shorter). {{Rp}} is something I created to fill a need back in 2007, but it has been completely obsolete since the introduction of Lua modules in 2013 allowed us to create templates that are sophisticated scripts. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 18:52, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a gross overreach. What was deprecated was citations to sources, formatted in parenthetical style, in the inline text of an article. What was not deprecated was any format of footnoting (including {{rp}}, much as I dislike {{rp}}), the use of long spelled out footnote markers, the use of parenthetical style anywhere but the text of an article, and the use of author names and parenthesized years for other purposes than citations. There is nothing in that RFC that deprecates rp. It is a completely unrelated issue, involving footnote format. If you want to deprecate rp you need a new RFC for that, with a lot more clarity than the previous one, since the previous one seems to have led to such enormous confusion in experienced editors like you. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:51, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.
Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you do not violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.. You have wwo reverts within an hour and 9 minutes:
Up the Walls, you've been reverted by two editors, and another has said they don't know the point of what you're doing. Smarten up. Johnuniq, maybe you can keep an eye on this. I've got midterms to grade. EEng17:33, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not about the drive by reverts. It's all about the content of the discussion in the talk page, a discussion that you have refused to engage. You are welcome to discuss in the talk page why you think rarity of the office protection means that it does not belong in the table. So far you haven't made that case. All you've done is engage in an edit war. Up the Walls (talk) 17:48, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have to make my case. You're the one who wants to change things, so you need to get others on board. Two weeks in, the count of editors supporting your change is zero. Now stop wasting my time. EEng18:08, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The flashing "Warning! Flashing lights!" lights are certainly a nice touch, but it lacks scale. Scale is important. And Levivich, don't be a stranger. EEng12:59, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously, it's a shocking indictment of Oxford, especially in his statement on the talk page that It is the only play of Shakespeare's that I know. I mean ... have things really come to that? If you look very, very closely at his contribution history closely, though, there's a possible clue to something deeper going on. EEng12:04, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ye gods! That link! I hadn't seen that particular stuff. It takes your breath away, it's so vapid. Like being lectured by a high school kid high on marijuana. EEng13:08, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't even know that was possible. Next he'll be appealing to the International Court of Justice. It really is awful what's happening to him, given that he's right and everyone else in the world is wrong. Shame no one listens. EEng12:02, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are things other than academic merit gets people in, I think, or is that just the American Unis? You know, I almost published something like "this is not what they meant when they told you to go to Wikipedia to polish your debating skills" but thought better of it. They even had talk page access at the time. Maybe I'm just too chicken. — Usedtobecool☎️13:01, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's good WP-instinct not to fan the flames etc. I recently got a little riled up and called someone a WP:ADVOCACY editor, but the general consensus on that seems to be "well, duh." On our debater, we'll see if socking follows, but hopefully not. Perhaps they'll take my suggestion and write a blogpost we get to see. EEng, saving comments on this page takes time. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:48, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of reverting 6 separate times on the "History and traditions of Harvard commencements" can we actually have a conversation about what you didn't like about my edits? No interest in getting in an edit war but genuinely looking to improve articles on Wikipedia, as you can see from my post history. Happy to continue the conversation on the Talk pages but please don't just revert the editing work I've done. It doesn't help to building an encyclopedia which we are all here to do. Thanks and have a great day! Jjazz76 Jjazz76 (talk) 22:25, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You appear to like replacing descriptions of the specific functions of organizations and the specific properties of pieces of furniture with vague and uninformative blandness, calling anything else "puffery". Specificity is not puffery. Vagueness is not encyclopedicness. Learn the difference. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:08, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What David Eppstein said. My edit summaries are self-explanatory. You seem to be going around blindly removing things you don't understand. EEng00:04, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How is a chair treacherous? Looking at your profile you seem to have a number of blocks over many years. It is just a simple question. Why is a chair treacherous? You have reverted my edit. I'm trying to understand why? Jjazz76 (talk) 02:05, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I love it when they try the blocks gambit. See wikt:treacherous (sense 3) or [218] (sense 1c). Next time, please consult a dictionary yourself (as previously suggested [219]) before wasting others' time. EEng02:42, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But is the chair 'dangerous'? That seems to be the sense that 'treacherous' implies? Uncomfortable? Sure. Prone to tipping? Fine. But treacherous/unreliable/dangerous? Doubtful! And your sources don't support it. Again, I'm here to build an encyclopedia, and a good one. Describing a chair as treacherous isn't supported by the sources. Jjazz76 (talk) 02:47, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Treacherous", in a description of a chair, means that it is likely not to do what you depend on it to do, support you when you sit on it. Possibly it will tip. Possibly it will collapse. Possibly it has sharp edges that will snag your skin. It is not a chair you can depend on. The meaning is subtly different than dangerous: it might not pose an actual danger to you, merely threaten to seriously annoy you. It is also colorful with a slight hint of humor, without straying so far into humor that it loses its informativeness, because of the way it attributes human motivations to an inanimate object. That style of writing can help our readers by making articles more pleasant to read. But you seem to dislike subtle distinctions in wording, color, and humor, wanting everything to be as plain and simple as possible. Editing this version of Wikipedia may not be for you. May I suggest https://simple.wikipedia.org ? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:11, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
honestly, this long explanation, discussions of "a slight hint of humor", a torturous explanation of "why you are right" makes me more convinced that "treacherous" is absolutely the wrong word describe this chair. this is an encyclopedia, not a slightly humorous blog. honestly, the article just isn't very good, because you and EEng seem to want to gatekeep. Fine, whatever, but I'm going to continue to edit all the out of date/incorrect stuff in it. Also, both you and EEng seem to immediately resort to ad hominum attacks, which, is not in the spirit of wikipedia. happy continued editing! Jjazz76 (talk) 06:11, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But you seem to dislike subtle distinctions in wording, color, and humor, wanting everything to be as plain and simple as possible.
@Ltbdl - feel free to look at the article we are discussing. History and traditions of Harvard commencements. Is there some good stuff in the article? Sure. But the back-end is a total mess, there is plenty of stuff is out of date and you leave with the impression that harvard graduations haven't changed since about 1950 or so. Lots of puffery that could be trimmed. Including the TREACHEROUS (lol!) chair. It is a chair with three legs. It isn't treacherous. It a simple three legged chair. This sort of language doesn't educate, but rather completely obfuscates. Jjazz76 (talk) 06:22, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You keep using that word puffery. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Also, I was thinking rather that it was an old chair, and likely rickety. But I haven't seen it, let alone tried to use it, so what do I know?
Also, no. Simple and plain means dry. It means dropping detail. It means readers learn less. Maybe they get bored. Maybe they go away. It is not the goal. We are made all things to all people that by all means they might learn something. Being as boring as we can is one of those things, I'm sure, but not the best of them. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:46, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ok. so let's get back the substantive debate. Is treacherous the best word? I would say no. I think honestly you'd have to agree. Uncomfortable and rickety sounds great to me! Let's make the change! Jjazz76 (talk) 06:48, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, now I'm going to be tedious, but: if you want to make the description of the chair more specific rather than less, do you have a published source for that specificity? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:54, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
do we have a published source for treacherous? no we don't. this is why it should be just eliminated all together. in fact going through the article i found three or four places where the cited sources said things completely unrelated to what was being cited. Which doesn't give me tons of confidence for the the veracity of the cites. I've seen this on Wikipedia before, well-cited articles, where the cites didn't match in a number of cases. Jjazz76 (talk) 07:02, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And on the issue of Puffery, this is actually super important. Wikipedia needs to be NPOV. Some of the articles particularly in more niche corners of academia, read more like booster articles for X or Y college. That doesn't help the reader learn, it instead becomes an advertisement. Jjazz76 (talk) 06:51, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously you need to stop what you are doing which is now basically vandalism. I have made numerous good faith edits to Harvard articles and you are rolling back more than 50 percent of them because you just don't like them. My edits are 1) well sourced and I 2) only removed unsourced and wrong information. I've now been an editor at Wikipedia for years, and frankly "It doesn't seem like you are here to build an encyclopedia" at least not anymore. Going to ping@ElKevbo and @GuardianH who I trust and respect on this site. But frankly you are hold back many articles about Harvard by continuing to re-insert incorrect and outdated information despite clear and convincing evidence that what you are claiming is wrong and oudated. Jjazz76 (talk) 18:09, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to WP:CANVASS by definitively siding with one side or another after being summoned here. I haven't reviewed the page History and traditions of Harvard commencements, although it is no secret that EEng extensively edits pages related to Harvard University—which apparently he is an employee of the university [?]. A cursory review of the page reveals some sourcing issues, WP:SYNTH, and issues with tone — i.e., "To curb unseemly sartorial displays of wealth and social status." There does not seem to be a better way to sort out this issues than for Jjazz76 to voice his concerns out on the talk page and for both they and EEng to review them one-by-one until a consensus is reached. One ignoring the other won't get anyone anywhere. GuardianH (talk) 18:32, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks @GuardianH for weighing in. I'm totally fine with working with EEng. However, learning that they might be a Harvard employee certainly makes me wonder if they should take a step back and frankly should take a break from editing the Harvard articles completely for a while. (But honestly I don't know if EEng has a conflict of interest with respect to Harvard articles. That's for them to answer.) I've done the same for institutions I've had connections with, even very limited ones.
And I think GuardianH you are pointing to the precise issue I have, many of these older (written before 2015) Harvard articles have a sort of flowery grandiose tone that obfuscates and hides rather than reveals as an encyclopedia would. They just in my view continue to need an editor. Which I plan on continuing to do.
Again, I'm happy to try and continue to work with EEng on these articles, but I would really appreciate if the civility of the conversations could be improved. And I've asked that since the beginning. EEng has asked me too consult a dictionary a number of times (which I have!) and has ridiculed me for asking for sources for quotes. Frankly that's what Wikipedia should be doing, making sure that EVERY quote is well and correctly sourced. Ultimately I'm here to build an encyclopedia, but I want to do it collaboratively and productively. Happy editing everyone! Jjazz76 (talk) 18:43, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't ridicule you for asking for quotes. But it is certainly ridiculous of you to persist in claiming sources don't say what they clearly do say, even after I actually quote the sources to your face. Then, after you finally grasp what the sources say, you claim they're wrong because you know better because something mumble about Harvard's tax returns. Ridiculous indeed. EEng23:13, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Collaboration is a two-way street. I see lots of long replies by you, to every single comment, repeating the same positions you have already expressed. I see less evidence that you have taken in any criticism. At a certain point this behavior is likely to cause other editors to view attempts at engagement with you as not worth the time. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:19, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your go-to move, after realizing you've made a fool of yourself, seems to be coyly dribbling platitudinous non sequiturs. EEng09:23, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have reverted almost all (not half) of your recent edits to Harvard-related articles because, as noted elsewhere, almost every one of them is pointless or flat-out wrong. I have explained my reasons in my edit summaries, but you just keep repeating your misreading of sources, original research about IRS regulations and tax filings, and rigid conceptions of what articles should be like. EEng19:42, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng - Hi EEng - Do you have a potential conflict of interest with Harvard related articles? Are you currently or recently an employee of the university? Or maybe an alumnus? Or are you unaffiliated with them? Jjazz76 (talk) 19:50, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Like many alums, Tryptofish and I spend a lot of time flocculating. We've tried cutting out legumes but it doesn't seem to help. EEng I'm the larger one, on the left (of course). At least, we both smell nice. Or at least, I do. Especially for a compulsive flocculator. --Tryptofish How to cut legumes: [1]. --T
You are free to edit that page. In fact it could use your help. It is a mess! And to be fair I literally disclose that COI and don't recall any issues with edits I've made over there. Jjazz76 (talk) 02:43, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I have a COI I'll declare it. How about you? Are you currently or recently an employee of Harvard? Or maybe an alumnus? EEng22:48, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No subtantive connection to Harvard. Never worked there. Never studied there. I do a reading card because I visited the library once. Seems like a nice enough place. Just interested in the history of education broadly. Jjazz76 (talk) 02:46, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
nah I don't think alumnus is a COI by nature but it certainly makes me think that I would check myself particularly around issues of puffery and boosterism. Jjazz76 (talk) 02:49, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Jjazz76, could you please pack up your cluelessness act and go pester people on some Yale article's talk page? You'd fit right in there. I rarely say this, but please stop posting here. You're beyond tiresome, and you lower the IQs of everyone you come into contact with (except Yale graduates, of course). EEng18:00, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
now that I've confirmed you aren't here to build an encyclopedia, I'll go back back doing that. Have a great day! Jjazz76 (talk) 19:19, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The incredibly petty passive-aggressiveness, coupled with the facetiousness, clearly has made no progress towards anything resembling consensus here — on both sides. Coming back and reading this thread goes to show how counterproductive it has evolved. The COI question is worth clarification, and it only seriously concerns one question: whether EEng is an employee of the university, and thus is extensively editing his employer. That is a clear conflict of interest. It is only decent for EEng to give an answer to that particular question, then to proceed to the substantive questions about the article’s material. GuardianH (talk) 21:47, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but GuardianH was called in to exert all the authority a high-schooler can muster and will not consider their authority respected until their question has been answered explicitly, without forcing GuardianH to do any tedious logical reasoning. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:11, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So unexplicitly are the questions answered no wonder a high schooler can see through it. Sorry, but is this pettiness among professors the reason why all the textbooks are so horrendous? GuardianH (talk) 01:30, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well then, I won't link to anything explicit here, at least not without parental guidance. One of my professorial pet(ty) peeves was when college textbooks were written at the literacy level of high school students.
But, all facetiousness aside, I have a bit of advice for those editors who are so scandalized by what they read here. Go read something else. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:07, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very bold of you to assume that if they were written at the level of a kindergartener they would not be horrendous even then. In any case, it seems like until EEng answers the employer question, we will all be here grimacing. GuardianH (talk) 06:53, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@GuardianH: On second thought, I apologize to you for making a joke about you being (per your user page) a high school student. That was a cheap shot, and not the standard to which I usually try to hold myself. But the fact remains that you took it on yourself to come and tut-tut at someone else's talk page where you knew ahead of time that your comments would not be welcome, and you did so in defense of someone who was editing against consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apology accepted - of course, I do not hold it against you (words here are often given far too much weight when they shouldn't). I differ with the point you made — that I came in defense of someone who was editing against consensus; on the contrary, I made the opposite clear from the beginning [220]. This naturally followed with [221], expounding only on the COI issue — a separate, previously unraised point — which, as per my message, would undermine consensus, rather than progress it, for how then could this thread be in good faith if there had been a COI all along? GuardianH (talk) 02:09, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It took me a moment to figure out how David's formulation of "top-forward" and "butt-forward" at the same time would be anatomically possible (although I have no doubt it works just fine in pure mathematics), but then I figured out that "forward" meant "facing the reader". See how petty academics can be! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:13, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed that even if I make dozens of edits on a topic related to Harvard you'll end up mass reverting them. Just making a note of it for other editors to see. You also never answered yourself @GuardianH's question if you are currently on the payroll of Harvard University. Are you? Jjazz76 (talk) 00:26, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The answer to your question is No, so there must be something else that explains why I keep reverting your edits -- like maybe you don't know what you're doing. For those playing along at home, we're talking about [223]. Happy editing! EEng07:57, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for specifically answering the question and asserting that you are not currently on the payroll of Harvard University. I raised three specific issues on the mass revert you did without really checking the changes I made and I look forward to discussing them further with you on the talk page of the article. I look forward to making it a better article and it needs work. Let's do it together!
I'm not required to answer your questions about my personal life but I found it pleasant to puncture your simpleminded suspicion balloon.Please stop saying stupid things like "the mass revert you did without really checking the changes I made" because you're not fooling anyone. EEng09:12, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, you did a mass revert, without checking the changes. So yeah you did do that!
Also you are required to disclose any COIs, so your mass editing of Harvard related articles (in a particular positive light in most cases) if you were on the Harvard payroll, either as an employee or a pension, would be a big problem. Jjazz76 (talk) 16:25, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Editors are required to disclose COIs. Editors are not required to disclose all the non-COIs that they might also have. In demanding that they do so you are skirting with a violation of WP:OUTING. And when you assert that reverts were made "without checking the changes" you are violating WP:AGF. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:54, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein - @EEng didn't check all the changes. They admitted that.
And I haven't outed anyone. Nor even gotten anywhere close to it. I simply asked about a COI, and @EEng responded. I consider that matter closed, given the response in the negative.
I do my best to follow the rules of Wikipedia, and have for the past 3 and a half years. If you have any issues with my editing or my behavior, take them up with whoever you want. I'm here to build an encyclopedia, and I'm going to keep doing that.
@David Eppstein - You and @EEng have also clearly violated WP: AGF in pretty much every interaction with me. I have multiple years of hard work on this site, and basically from both of you I get nothing but grief, name calling, and belittling. I'm not going to do anything more about it because it seems both of you are well protected on this site by those who enable your bullying, but I'm living this note here as a matter of the public record, which will remain into the future. Jjazz76 (talk) 04:58, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
David Eppstein, to be fair to Mr. Jazz the precise truth (as explained to him over and over, including in edit summaries and at the article talk-page post I linked earlier) is that I indeed did not individually examine each of his edits to this particular article before reverting them all. What I did do is examine three random ones, every one of which turned out to be completely wrong; the combination of this and the mess he made in another article (which required multiple editors to set right [224][225]) left me disinclined to invest my time slogging through all his edits looking for one that might be actually be an improvement. Furthermore, because of the way Mr. Jazz's edits overlap one another all over the source text, it was technically impossible to revert only the "bad" edits to leave the good one, so even were I able to identify a useful edit, I would then have to had to figure out how to untangle it from the mess in the source text created by all the clearly erroneous ones.
Thus I asked him to propose his changes on the article's talk page. Unfortunately, so far all he's done in response to that request is to keep asking over and over why I reverted -- a question answered n times heretofore, and now for the (n+1)th time. EEng09:05, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose it is good to keep up a cheerful attitude, but when all you can do is to display your cheerfulness over and over after being told over and over that your edits are bad and you should stop doing them, it comes across as artificial and even as a display of not listening to what you're being told. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:36, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein - feel free to check my edits. 99.6% of my edits are live edits. Do I make mistakes? Sure we all do. Sometimes I'll do an edit, and there will be a spelling error, or a misformatted cite. And thankfully other editors are here to collaboratively work on articles. Again if you have a specific criticism of a specific edit that we haven't already discussed, I'm all ears, but I'm not going to get lost in the weeds. I am always happy to take conversations to the talk page for further discussion and consensus building. And sometimes we don't get a consensus. That's ok too! There's lots of editing to do on this Wikipedia. As I mentioned to you before, I would 100 percent welcome your contributions on any of the articles I've edit over the past 3 and a half years. I almost never work on FA or A articles because they are precisely that. I work in the weeds sometimes with article that haven't gotten much attention in 5 or 10 years. As always, happy editing! Jjazz76 (talk) 20:18, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop telling other editors to feel free to do stuff; we don't need your permission. Your reference to your percentage of "live" edits is a great example of your false confidence born of not understanding what you're talking about; all that your "live" edit percentage means is that you've rarely edited pages that, for whatever reason, are subsequently deleted. It in no way measures the extent to which your contributions live on in the articles you've edited or have otherwise been helpful. EEng09:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, you reverted my edit on this article (which was about what belongs in the "alma mater" parameter of an infobox) but your edit summary suggests you were referring to something else entirely. I think you may have reverted the wrong edit, but I didn't want to re-revert an experienced editor - could you please check. Thanks Melcous (talk) 07:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right you are; I've undone my blunder. Your deferential approach does me honor, but in this case a re-reversion with edit summary What do you think you're doing, knucklehead? would have been entirely appropriate. EEng07:53, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make sure you see it: you shouldn't feel bad for that for a single moment, after a certain point I knew perfectly well that I was Icarus waxing his wings. Remsense诉06:37, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We are of like mind as to avoiding the actual characters for dashes etc. I recently went into this with an editor who was going around mass-changing articles to use the actual characters, using a script to make that easier. I was defending the HTML entities &ndash and &mdash, but the templates would be at least as good. I think it's outrageous that an editor can do what this editor was (still is??) doing without a community mandate in the form of a guideline. I would support strengthening the guidance in this area, but in my semi-retirement I avoid spearheading such things. ―Mandruss☎07:04, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's a perfectly normal Chinese name, E. E. Ng, except for the unusual capitalization of the surname Ng, maybe modeled after E. E. cummings. So "Ee ee ing". —David Eppstein (talk) 19:53, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhere in the ancient history of this talk page, this question has been discussed before. And here is the correct answer (sez me, and I don't care what EEng says). It's two syllables. The first is a long E, and is pronounced just like the letter E. The second syllable is pronounced like the first syllable of Englebert Humperdinck (or however that's spelled, and I don't care about that, either). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's right, tryptophan + fish. For reasons that I will leave obscure, I wanted to do a variation on tryptophan – and I got the idea by looking across my desk at my (first) fish tank. Other editors have asked me whether it has anything to do with religious imagery, (tryptic, ichthys...), but that never crossed my mind. In the end, though, it's just a red herring. (And I also don't know where that other name came from.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nice. Trp is a funny amino acid. I think its one-letter symbol is "W" because those witty biochemists had some form of rhotacism? ("tWptophan") Or it could just as equally be an early form of uwu-speak.
I pronounce it Ee-ing, which with my drawl comes out as ee-ang some time. this is how I pronounce the degree track when I don't call it EE. Thanks,L3X1◊distænt write◊02:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So that'd be the word "fleeing" without the "f" and "L"! (or, alternatively, "eating" without the "T"). And a drawl you say, @L3X1? I saw through your talk page that you're probably Central Time, so I'd wager you're a Texan around these parts. — ThatCopticGuyping me! (talk) (contribs) 02:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes That Coptic Guy, it can mind-lodge, the key is not to play it too often. The Roches seem to be one of the most underrated groups of the last forty-five years or so, probably 46 years ahead of their time. Randy Kryn (talk) 08:19, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng: I hope you understand I'll have to charge the new 2024 hourly for this one. I know back in January we were able to get you in under the old 2023 rates, but we're too far along in the year now, and the boys in accounting won't have it. Levivich (talk) 16:02, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What, again? Having been pinged to the discussion that led to this, I'm going to say that, after reading it, I'm not going to defend EEng, and I'm fine with this block. In the meantime, maybe we can recognize that a cod and a gar are two different things. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:15, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, at least he didn't block me before I'd had a chance to say anything [228], or impose his own supervote while discussion was ongoing, or anything like that. EEng23:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But listen, Tryptofish (or whoever gets this first), since I don't think my ping will work, someone please pass this on to Cpotisch:
Cpotisch, either back up your claim here [229] that EEng has bragged about getting blocked before for the same problems ASAP, or withdraw it. Please respond here on User talk:EEng. If you fail to do that, then you're likely to find yourself the subject of an ANI subthread to the thread already ongoing.
I take responsibility for my own words and actions (including apologizing where I go overboard -- and I certainly do that sometimes), but I'm sick and tired of being the subject of bogeyman stories ascribing to me things I didn't do and didn't say. EEng23:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do remember you saying somewhere that you regard your block log as something like a badge of honor, or something to that effect. I think you should let it go. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:47, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, Tryptofish, I expect better from you! What I've said is that I'm not embarrassed by my blocks because almost every one has been overturned decisively by the community, without my having groveled to some admin to confess the wrongness of something I'd done which wasn't wrong -- thereby demonstrating that my sense of what is and is not appropriate is more in line with the community's than is that of that the trigger-happy 3% of admins who appoint themselves supervoting enforcers. (Not talking about you here, ScottishFinnishRadish -- I'm really not. On the record as it stood I don't blame you for blocking me, though I do blame you for not waiting to see what I had to say. That was really wrong of you.) That's not "bragging about getting blocked", it's being clear about how the community has seen fit to deal with my blocks. EEng01:20, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then you expect too little from me. That's wikilawyering. Saying one is not embarrassed by something differs from bragging about something, in the way that saying "very good" differs from saying "excellent". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:49, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Happily! You said it right here: "I always figure that if I don't get blocked once in a while, I'm not doing my job. I stand by my comments, obviously." Cpotisch (talk) 23:58, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh boy oh boy oh goody, I was hoping you'd pick that one. Stand by, this may take a day or two. (Still got that IRL responsibilities, you know.) EEng01:20, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote a comment out at ANI and lost it in an edit-conflict: as the thread is closed, I'll say my piece here. EEng, I find your low bullshit tolerance to generally be an asset. But we require everyone to keep their patience in the face of provocation. You may sometimes be justified in telling someone to fuck off, but I can't think of any provocation that justifies constructing an elaborate and sexual simile like this one. SFR didn't need consensus to block for that; and even if he did, there is quite clearly agreement that you were over the line. That said: Cpotisch, the fact that EEng was blocked doesn't in the least vindicate you on the substance, and in fact several people noted at ANI that you were being difficult. It wouldn't hurt for you to try to understand why (don't reply to me here, please, if you have something to say to me go to my talk). Also, why am I unsurprised to see that yet again, this is the only page on Wikipedia besides WP:FAC that has a noticeable load time? . Just food for thought. Vanamonde93 (talk) 03:13, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For a while I was archiving this page, I really was, and then out of nowhere one-click archiver stopped working. I think you know me well enough to believe what I'm about to tell you, in it's full bizarreness... If you control-F the discussion [230] to trace its use of the word boner, you'll see that everything was hunky-dory until -- after I'd pointed you-know-who over and over and over to two different places which state explicitly that MOS compliance is not a GA requirement -- he again asserted that MOS is required and challenged me to Care to explain how I’m wrong? Be specific as to how this constitutes a “boner”.
So as everyone and his brother knows by now, I got specific -- vividly specific:
Cpotisch, in the name of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints and apostles, do I need to draw you a picture? In the criteria, where the guideline says, b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation, CLICK THE GODDAM WORDS 'Lead sections' AND SEE WHERE YOU END UP. This, specifically, constitutes a boner in that it's very much like when you got an erection in class and everyone could see it and you were very embarrassed and ashamed, as you should be now.
Now, I knew I shouldn't post that last bit. I knew it. <tearfully>I KNEW IT.</tearfully> And I swear to God I was about to backspace it out, when something fateful happened. And what was that fateful happening, you ask? Well, it was this: the footnote popped into my mind:
Note: I'm actually mixing two meanings here. In reality, boner in the sense of a cock-up does not have the same meaning as boner in the sense of a cock up.
So my fate was sealed. It was too good to give up. Beat me, whip me, make me write bad checks -- but that darling I could never kill. My fate was sealed, like a moth to the flame. And the rest is history. EEng04:51, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't that worse though? Posting something you admittedly knew shouldn't be posted because you "can't help it"? Please help me understand as someone way less experienced than you. Closhund/talk/06:56, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don't you understand? It's a DISEASE! Like Tourette's, but for puns. We're so close to a cure, but more money is needed. Won't you help? Think of the children! Donate by sending your bank account number or credit card data to me via the Email this user feature. Thank you. EEng15:01, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Donations are not tax-deductible. No guarantee is made that donated funds will be used for curing Tourette's, puns, or any other diseases. Image is for illustrative purposes only; no affiliation is claimed with the persons or places referenced therein. Additional restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Levivich (talk) 15:14, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, you cannot tip fish scales, but as for the Church of Tryptofish, anyone who is a true believer ought to be burnt at the steak. I am not now, nor ever have been, an Elmer Gantry. Or a Republican politician.
As for the cod puns, I prefer meatballs, especially when reliably sauced. This whole mess began when someone mixed up cod with gar. And I'm pretty sure that I saw someone at ANI refer to a red herring. I also see today that some people reopened and then reclosed the ANI thread, which I'm sure accomplished a whole lot of good things.
I want to, seriously, echo what Vanamonde93 said to Cpotisch. And EEng, while you think of the children, do think also of other editors who aren't as, now, what's the word I'm looking for, oh, yes, who aren't as Harvard as you. When someone wants to un-GA a GA that you hold dear, remember that other editors can come to the page's defense, before you go and shoot off your mouth. (Besides, shooting off your mouth will make your mouth hurt, and someone will have to reattach it.)
Sad that they’re not mentioned there, WP:DUE be damned. Their motto was, of course, “In Cod We Trust”. (Logo depicted here—too bad they couldn’t manage a complementary French pun.)—Odysseus147909:49, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, damn! Somebody had the idea for the joke long before I did. Medieval mensware notwithstanding. (Or not standing, or something.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:43, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, kudos to you for the independent discovery! I thought you were merely making an allusion. There was clearly a genius behind that campaign: their purported taking the Great Seal hostage was simply brilliant.—Odysseus147919:19, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just came here to say that yes, I do enjoy this kind of thing, and sorry to be late to the party. It's maybe worth pointing out that when we're writing about a subject that has its own natural drollery, and much of that drollery is in the actual quotes, it's not unencyclopedic to use those quotes rather than paraphrase them and lose what I would argue is of value to the reader. Dillegrout, for instance, is just a soup no living person can actually claim to have eaten. The article says
According to the coronation records, the procession by which the dillegrout is presented starts after the king enters the hall:
The first dish of hot meat is now brought into the hall preceded by two clerks controllers, two clerks of the green cloth, the Master of the Household, the Cofferer, six sergeants-at-arms, the Lord High Steward, with the Earl Marshal on his left, and the High Constable on his right hand. These three dignitaries are on horseback. They are followed by six sergeants-at-arms, then by the Comptroller of the Household, and the Treasurer of the Household, the Assistant to the Queen's Sewer and the Queen's Sewer, the Assistant to the King's Sewer and the King's Sewer. The course of meat is carried either by Gentlemen Pensioners two and two, or, as is more proper, by the new made Knights of the Bath. After them comes the Lord of the manor of Addington carrying the "mess called dillegrout," and the procession is ended by two clerks of the kitchen.
— English Coronation Records
Cpotisch, I could simply have written that it was presented with much pomp and circumstance. IMO that's not better. (Like Vanamonde, happy to discuss this at my talk rather than here.) Valereee (talk) 11:31, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely here, so I can participate. It's a single and important point -- indeed the heart of the matter. EEng18:11, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, good. This was exactly what I was interpreting the ping in your edit summary at the article to mean. Some things are just funny, and we don't need to unfunny them in the name of encyclopedic language, which I don't interpret to mean 'as dry and boring as you can make it'. Valereee (talk) 12:05, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I got 17 notifications for my last comment despite there not being 17 comments on my comment, so I'm posting a new topic to make sure whatever is happening on your talk page doesn't happen to me again. No idea if that will work. While doing so, I'm being confronted with Cthulu text. What the fuck is this.
I asked a genuine question and you responded in a way that I've seen people get blocked over. You compared your blockable behavior with having Tourette's. Out of your control! You apparently agree the block is warranted. So thanks for answering my question by not answering it, and for not helping at all. I'll be sure to never venture near this again. Closhund/talk/07:11, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Watch out using the word fuck 'cause Beland might block you.
Sorry, I missed your question (Isn't that worse though? Posting something you admittedly knew shouldn't be posted because you "can't help it"?) until now. Answer: I don't know whether it makes things better or worse. But for the record, I don't really have a Tourette's -like condition. EEng04:23, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure it means as much to you, but I felt on a whim like expressing my appreciation: every time we chat, I learn something. Moreover, as far as my taste goes, you're rather good at being snarky without being obnoxious. Shockingly rare, that.
—On the other hand, it should mean a little bit more to you, as this page threatens to crash my browser each time I visit. But that's a me problem. Remsense诉02:07, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at the history of this page since about the beginning of the year, you'll be able to see where (a) I went through the trouble of figuring out why One-Click Archiver wasn't working for me, and actually got it working again, then (b) I did a lot of archiving (OK, maybe not a LOT, but some), and then (c) One-Click stopped working again. Someday... EEng23:10, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To my glittering salon of talk-page stalkers: There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you're probably not involved. The thread is Personal attack by Beland. You can thank me later. EEng17:02, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am so coming back to your Talk Page down the line, to read it all. If I ever figure out how to modify your messages that show up when you go to edit it, I’m adding something. ’were added by my crazed talk-page stalkers.’ Tells me you’re cool with that? MM(Give me info.)(Victories)21:45, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After complaining about "Ass Persians" you turned around and made a flagrantly false accusation at ANI. Whoever told you I called you a douchebag is simply wrong. I suggest you fact-check anything they tell you in future, and certainly before repeating it at ANI. No link and no attribution? You must know this isn't right. I would like an apology, if you please. Elinruby (talk) 08:14, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For those playing along at home, our benighted visitor is complaining about [[232]]. -- Your Host
You might want to put that shovel back in the rack and stop digging this particular hole
Except that EEng never said that (your accusation here is "flagrantly false"). a user with a name coincidentally exactly the same as yours has found time to endorse a post labeling me a "douchebag".Andy Dingley (talk) 10:22, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Today being the Lord's day, some people may be resting and therefore not feel like clicking on the link Andy Dingley just gave. So here's the interaction they'd find there:
Someone namedThe Garbage Scow:Apparently we need a new behavioral guideline to let everyone know that bullying and generally being a douchebag is totally cool if you make a few people laugh.
Someone namedElinruby:Exactly.
So what I said at ANI -- a user with a name coincidentally exactly the same as yours has found time to endorse a post labeling me a "douchebag" -- is 100% accurate.
I didn't link to the post itself because I wasn't sure that wouldn't run afoul of WP's WP:DOXING policy ("Personal information includes ... profiles on external sites"); I figured you'd be able to find it for yourself. And I'll repeat that I have no way of knowing whether that "Elinruby" is actually you, and I'm not asking you to confirm or deny it. All I'm asking is: if it's you, you might want to think about the irony of your lecturing about civility. (And in light of your post above, you might want to think about lecturing on fact-checking, too. Maybe people at Wikipediocracy make so many nasty comments behind people's backs in the course of congratulating one another on their own civility, that they can't remember it all.)
Speaking only for myself, I'll go a few steps farther than EEng is doing. Denizens of Wikipediocracy need to learn that if you're gonna dish it out, you'd better be able to take it. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:39, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not interested in debating DOX with you. "Someone coincidentally named Elinruby" did not call you a douchebag. Someone else did. I am assuming that the person who told otherwise doesn't understand how the reply-to function works on phpBB. But this still leaves us with a false accusation at ANI. I gather that you admit no responsibility for not checking this for yourself, any more than you do for not archiving your talk page. That is up to you. But you have now been given the opportunity to rectify the error and have declined to do so. Do you mind telling me who told you this and where? I don't see it on your talk page. Elinruby (talk) 23:18, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Repeating your claims of false accusation, when it has been debunked with a link, and repeating your now-deliberate omission of "endorse" to make EEng's statement appear less accurate than it was, are not a good look. And talking of doxxing while asking others to dox people for you is also not a good look. Care to try again? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:40, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Smdh how am I asking anyone to dox for me???? He said a friend told him this. I asked who and where, since it wasn't on his talk page. Doxing doesn't enter into it. I am asking for a Wikipedia user name. Also, are you acting as an admin at the moment? Elinruby (talk) 02:33, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
None of your fucking business who told me. What matters is it's true, as evidenced by THE LINK GIVEN TWICE IN THIS THREAD, WHICH SHOWS YOU DOING EXACTLY WHAT I SAID YOU DID. Now why don't you be an adult and own up to it, instead of demanding to know how exactly your civility-cop hypocrisy came to be exposed?
To be clear, I care not a whit about being called a douchebag, but the hypocrisy and self-certainty of your kind is nauseating. All the most truly awful things done in this world are done by self-certain hypocrites. EEng04:27, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A hint: adding a reply to a user talk page discussion does not involve the use of admin privileges or tools. Why would you think it does?
I act as an admin when I act. Talking is not acting.
I'm also not one of those admins who particularly cares whether people respect my admin authority. I will use it or not, as I see appropriate, regardless of whether it's respected. But an instance of incivility to other editors would have to be quite severe (much more than is visible yet here) for me to act unilaterally rather than merely posting to a drama board like anyone else can. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ok. So have we established that asking for the Wikipedia user name of a Wikipedia editor is not doxxing? That seemed a little unclear earlier. I am taking it that the answer is yes. I don't want to go through the ordeal of loading this talk page again. 08:27, 19 August 2024 (UTC) Elinruby (talk) 08:27, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) It's true what you say, Elin: the user coincidentally named Elinruby did not call me a douchebag; but then, I didn't say they did. What I said is that they found time to endorse a post labeling me a "douchebag", and that's absolutely true, as seen by following the link Link to "User named Elinruby's" comment on another site near the top of this thread.
So there's no false accusation. And I want to stress that I'm still not asserting that this Wikipediocracy "Elinruby" is actually you. But if you're not, you're sure spending a lot of time defending him or her.
I'm going to cling to AGF and assume that you're just having trouble following the conversation, but if you deny one more time what's there at that link, in black and white for all to see, after it's been explained to you know by multiple editors and an admin, I'll be forced to assume that you're just trying to gaslight the rest of us by playing dumb (not doing it well, of course, but still -- trying).
For the record, my name is not Elin, and I would appreciate it if you did not call me that. That is a female name. If you don't want to type out all the syllables I can understand that, and "El" is acceptable. I am going to leave you to whatever it is you do here, having established that you are not an adult who appreciates having his misapprehensions pointed out. Generally one does not threaten people with admins when open to receiving feedback. You might want to check that link by the way; the Streisand effect applies. But hey, you made your buddies laugh. Will they laugh at the way the post got undeleted? Only the shadow knows. The part I was agreeing with, btw, is the last part, and all i asked was that they send me the text so I could review it, but hey. You are definitely getting a laugh so it's all good, right? Elinruby (talk) 08:20, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per EEng's request above, Elinruby: you need to drop this, because you are losing this argument on the merits. EEng has actually been quite reasonable with you, even to the point of not assuming that the WPO account is the same person as you. I, on the other hand, am quite ready to make such an assumption. In a thread about what a cesspit ANI is (a characterization with which I agree), you posted first about the EEng thread at ANI: "In other news EEng (T-C-L) isback (sic) at ANI for more unfunny alleged jokes." Then The Garbage Scow replied: "And the usual gang of apologists are there to say it's all nonsense and he's just a comedian. Apparently we need a new behavioral guideline to let everyone know that bullying and generally being a douchebag is totally cool if you make a few people laugh." And you replied: "Exactly. To be clear, the admins saying these latest remarks aren't enough to block are probably right, I guess. But I don't think his remarks are a plus for Wikipedia". Unpacking that, I'll start by saying that I have told EEng repeatedly in the past that I, too, find some of his ANI humor to be counterproductive and a net negative. But when you used the reply-to function, you said, quote, "Exactly", to the douchebag characterization. That's not automatic in any reply-to function. Now I'll add that a WPO moderator posted a disclaimer that the "douchebag" comment was intended to be humorous, and should not be "misinterpreted to suggest that Wikipedia's User:EEng (T-C-L) is, to some degree at least, a feminine-hygeine product." The Garbage Scow apologized to you, saying that the comment was about EEng's conduct and not about EEng as a person, and when you thanked him for the apology, you went on to say that you would have, instead, called EEng "an asshole or better yet a small petulant child."
Above, I said that if the denizens of WPO want to dish it out, they better learn how to take it. Here, we have EEng making the subjective case that what he said was humorous, and some people disagreeing. I can see both sides of those perceptions. At WPO, you, The Garbage Scow, and the moderator are making the case that the douchebag comment was humorous, and some people here are disagreeing. So if you're gonna dish it out, you really shouldn't be clutching your pearls by demanding an explanation of how EEng came to object to your statement of "Exactly". --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
if the denizens of WPO want to dish it out, they better learn how to take it – Don't hold your breath; remember, we're talking about civility hypocrites after all. To repeat what I said above: I care not at all about being called a douchebag, but the hypocrisy and self-certainty of these people is nauseating. As is the playing dumb. EEng22:46, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As of the time I post this, Phantom has reproduced, in full, what I just said above. And Gh0st has disapprovingly added a quote of David's. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:53, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why is that website so impossible to use/read/follow along? Ive been on many forums int he past 15 years and this one takes the cake for confusing format and UI. Am I that dumb? Its possible. Thanks,L3X1◊distænt write◊00:49, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rest assured it's not just you. But over a Wikipediocracy confusion is prevailing state of mind, so they don't notice. EEng02:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Duelling updates! Folks. May I politely suggest ... calling this episode over and/or anyone still interested, getting a WPO account? (The interface isn't as bad as it could be.) Yngvadottir (talk) 02:26, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tryptofish's comment above brought to mind a vision of a group of ascetics in white linen robes, gathered in a stark desert temple and grouped in a rough circle around a handful of scraps of paper, all that remains of the sacred writ of User talk:EEng. They are frowning, as if in deep concentration or maybe disapproval. But now I don't want to get a WPO account and spoil that image. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am noticing consistent odd formatting in your edits. While your enthusiasm is appreciated, a few things to consider: 1.) What is "shy", which you consistently use to divide words? What led you to think that was warranted? It leads to spacing and other issues. Unless I am missing something, don't use it, and try to remove it from the edits you have already made; 2.) It is not your role to add your commentary on the subject in edit notes, or even to issue emphatic edit notes saying what should or should not be done with edits. The site is guided by guidelines that make that unnecessary; 3.) Do not project ownership over pages, which you are doing in systematically reversing the edits of others, which appear often constructive and designed to standardize page formats; 4.) As a matter of general practice, images should be neither enlarged nor diminished from standard size and generally placed on the right; and 5.) Open yourself to collaboration with other editors, and consider their input, since almost all are only trying to improve pages. When you routinely revert edits that are reasonable, you set yourself up for conflict, which serves no higher good. Keystone18 (talk) 20:47, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Keystone18: Your intentions are undoubtedly good, but consistent formatting in Wikipedia articles is not an absolute good, and in any case many of the guidelines, such as in general placing images on the right, are very much defaults rather than guidelines to be observed whenever humanly possible. As to shy, nobody can remember all the TLAs, but you could have looked it up, and that page explains how the template is intended to forestall spacing issues. Your own note tends to illustrate how the guidelines do not, in fact, make edit notes and other discussion unnecessary :-) Remember, there's a difference between page ownership and guardianship; I'm sure you also have pages watchlisted where you examine changes to make sure they are not disimprovements. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:02, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ETA: I'm sorry to be blunt, but this was a mess of repetition (of text and an entire block of 4 images) and broken formatting. If you're going to move things around like that, especially in an article with complex formatting like Memorial Hall (Harvard University) (I tried to keep as many as possible of your changes, but had to throw up my hands after 3 tries at the quote box), you need to preview the entire article, not just the section. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:33, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Memorial Hall is, in the opinion of the President and Fellows, the most valuable gift the University has ever received, with respect alike to cost, daily usefulness, and moral significance.
— President's Report for 1877–78
The Memorial Transept [2,600 square feet (240 m2)] serves as a vestibule for Sanders Theatre. It consists of a 60-foot-high (18 m) gothic vault above a marble floor, with black walnut paneling and stenciled walls, a large stained glass window over each of two exterior doors, and—commemorating the 136 Harvard men who died fighting for the Union—28 white tablets,
tablets to one after another of the many who thus died—a thrilling list. One sees such old New England names as Peabody, Wadsworth, and Bowditch; one sees the name of Fletcher Webster; one sees that an Edward Revere died at Antietam and a Paul Revere at Gettysburg.
This happy commemorative creation of the Union ... the great bristling brick Valhalla of the early "seventies," that house of honor and of hospitality which [dispenses] laurels to the dead and dinners to the living.
— Henry James (1905)
A huge Victorian Gothic barn.
— Life (1941)
Ironic, isn't it, that they made that mess just 30 minutes before coming here to lecture me. And that was hours after making the mess in another article reverted here [233]. For the entertainment of those playing along at home, at right is the article's infobox quote box as Keystone18 left it. EEng06:33, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What you call "odd formatting" is (in some cases) careful formatting tailored to the needs of a particular article or (in other cases) just ways of doing things that you happen not to have seen before. Someone seems to have taught you that all articles have to look alike, and that's flat-out wrong.
As a matter of general practice, images should be neither enlarged nor diminished from standard size – No, that's just a delusion you have. MOS:IMAGE:
For example: upright=1.3 might be used for an image with fine detail ... upright=0.6 might be used for an image with little detail ... Short, wide images often call for upright of 1 or greater; tall, narrow images may look best with upright of 1 or less.
... and generally placed on the right – Again, you have no idea what you're talking about. MOS:IMAGE again:
Most images should be on the right side of the page but Multiple images can be staggered right and left.
Yet in article after article you have mindlessly shoved all images to the right, and made them all the default size, turning them into a monotonous stack in which most images are far from their relevant text e.g. the mess you made here [234], in which you also somehow managed to move 1/3 of the article(images and all) into a footnote.
It is not your role to add your commentary on the subject in edit notes, or even to issue emphatic edit notes saying what should or should not be done with edits – Again, you don't know what you're talking about -- see WP:HIDDEN.
designed to standardize page formats – This is the root of your problem. The idea that all pages must look the same is popular among editors who have no judgment of their own and find comfort in running around imposing their hallucinatory formatting and copywriting "rules" on articles about whose histories they know nothing, and about whose subjects they know nothing.
This could well have been written with you in mind: One area the hit and run editor gets involved in is the formatting... The quality of work has increased in some areas, which makes it harder to contribute without good knowledge in the subject matter and sources. Fiddling with the formatting seems to be a suitable alternative passtime.[235]
This too: The flip side of "ownership" is the problem of editors who come to an article with a particular agenda, make the changes they want to the page according to their preconceived notions of what should be, and then flit off to their next victim, without ever considering whether the page really needed the change they made, or whether the change improved the article... Their editing is an off-the-rack, one-size-fits-all proposition, premised on the idea that what improves one article, or one type of article, will automatically improve every other article or type of article... Wikipedians should worry more about those who hit-and-run, and less about those who feel stewardship towards the articles they work so hard on.[236]
What is "shy" ... don't use it, and try to remove it – In other words, you've been going around removing {shy}s even though you don't even know what they do. Honestly, how can you possibly think that's OK? Because anything outside your tiny radius of experience is foreign matter that must be expelled? Shoot first, ask questions later? This truly epitomizes your bull-in-a-china-shop editing.
you routinely revert edits that are reasonable – No, I revert edits which either screw things up or have such chaotic, scattershot diffs that it's impossible to discern what they're trying to do, much less what they actually do -- and those two descriptions cover pretty much every one of your edits. You're a one-editor wrecking crew.
Open yourself to collaboration with other editors, and consider their input – Don't make me laugh. What input? I've opened talk discussions on three different pages ([237], [238], [239]) listing the many, many problems with your edits, and given extensive edit summaries explaining the problems [240][241]. You've ignored all this, instead returning to the same articles over and over, attempting to editwar your changes in.
You preach collaboration but you mark almost all your edits minor when they're not, almost never use edit summaries, with few exceptions edit article talk pages only to fiddle with their headers [242], and continue making the same errors even after you've had your faced rubbed in them repeatedly. You think you're some kind of cleanup superhero when you're really an inexperienced, overconfident, careless editor who needs to slow their roll. EEng06:33, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, EEng, the above Exhibit A is the quotebox from this version of the article, not the infobox. Lest it not be an obvious enough example of inadvertently messing up the article while trying to improve it, lemme point out the first paragraph of the first section after the intro:
, a Union Army soldier killed during the American Civil War. In total, 28 marble tablets honor Harvard's Union dead.]]
and the repetition of 4 pictures as a column on the right of that section and as a gallery, with the column version including captions A marble tablet honor Robert Gould Shaw (Class of 1860 and Memorial Hall's the tower following its 1996 restoration to its 1877–1897 appearance; the originals can be seen in the gallery. This is a salutary example of what happens when one changes multiple things in a complex article and doesn't preview adequately. And I speak as someone who tends to make a lot of changes at once in a holistic manner. ... and I see you've been looking again today at whether there were any improvements that can be kept, or things that do need fixing. Keystone18, did you save from the wrong tab, or what? Yngvadottir (talk) 21:12, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant quotebox, of course (now corrected above). This isn't anything about the wrong tab; all of Keystone's editing is like this. I'll repeat here [243] a link I gave earlier to one of Keystone's article "improvements". First look at the ridiculous effect of putting all images to the right and making them all the same size -- including the fearsomely brobdignagian Harry Widener staring at us. Then scroll down to Note 14 -- Keystone somehow copy-pasted 1/3 of the article -- images and all -- into that note. That there's something wrong is perfectly obvious at a glance, but Keystone's too busy to actually look at what they do before rushing off to turn some other article into shit.
A few random examples of other destruction they've wrought on various articles (full story in the three-in-a-row links a bit above from here):
He left one article reading
Gore Hall, constructed in 1841 as Harvard's library, which was describes as "disgracefully inadequate" library, Gore Hall, completed in 1841 and Widener Library houses approximately 3.5 million books is the centerpiece of the libraries
In the John Harvard article, they left the very first sentence of the article reading
John Harvard (Nover 29, 1607–September 14, 1638) was an English dissenting minister ...
(Putting aside the "Nover" fuckup, November 29 isn't even John Harvard's birtdate.)
In the following passage in the John Harvard statue article ...
French used a Harvard student collaterally descended from an early Harvard president as inspiration
... they removed the word collaterally. Apparently Keystone doesn't know what it means, and couldn't be bothered to click the link to find out the difference, so they just figured it didn't matter and took out the word they don't understand.
The competition for the most absurd of his edits is fierce, but my personal nomination is their changing the statement that The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library
was built by Eleanor Elkins Widener, his mother
to
its building was oveseen by Eleanor Elkins Widener, his mother
because (according to Keystone's edit summary) "mom wasn't a construction worker". This is WP:CIR territory. (Mom wasn't an overseer either, but don't expect logic from this kind of mentality.)
I repeat: all their editing is like this. They obviously pay no attention to what they're doing. As you mentioned, even given their abysmal track record I have, until now, gone through every one of their edits looking for any nugget of a useful change amid all the fecal matter. And I've found maybe three -- out of their literally hundreds of edits to articles on my watchlist in past days. But I'll do that no more. AGF isn't a suicide pact. I opened discussion threads on three article several days ago, and they've not bothered to participate. Given that, I'm justified in simply reverting him from here out.
And it has now been brought to my attention that they've been warned before to stop trying to enforcing their idiosyncratic ideas about image sizes and placement [244]. A block may be needed if behavior like this keeps up. EEng14:41, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for pointing me to that article, because otherwise I wouldn't have known Keystone had left another mess there for someone to clean up. Here are two highlights from Keystone's work on that article [245]:
Widener donated $3.5 million (equivalent to $80 million in 2023), to the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, from which Widener Library, named for her son, was established at Harvard University. – WHAAAT???
Changed
That particular trip "was abandoned on the advice of Indian guides, but the Rices ventured several more times into the jungles."
to
On this trip, she "was abandoned on the advice of Indian guides, but the Rices ventured several more times into the jungles."
... as if one of the world's richest women was abandoned for some reason in the Amazon jungle.
They literally left it saying that Mrs Widener was abandoned in the jungle. Wow. I also note that that article has another instance of their ineptly moving a block of text between the article text and somewhere else: the note text about the circumvention of the 5-day waiting period has been shoved into the main text. The blockquote ends incongruously with the sentence about another string of pearls—presumably that at least was inadvertent, since that was a parenthetical sentence in wiki-voice, and the other part of the parenthetical, about a headline, was left in the main text and retained the closing parenthesis. Not as messed up as the Memorial Hall article, but I'd glanced at their more recent work and not seen breakage. So I wonder whether (along with the obession with stacking all the photos and imposing equally large sizes) they simply can't handle certain kinds of markup, the way I couldn't handle that multi-quote quotebox. But for a member of the Guild of Copyeditors to leave silly meaning changes and stray )'s and }}'s sitting in the text is shocking in itself. I suppose it's possible they have notifications turned off and haven't been seeing these responses. It may be time for a note on their user talk to make sure they are aware that it's more than a difference of opinion over formatting. There's a section there where two friends thank them for their formatting work on Harvard-related articles; none of the three appears to have noticed the sentence mangling at Widener Library. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:36, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Those friends are close to as incompetent as Keystone is. They've done similar things in other articles -- don't know what words mean, reverse the sense of the text, screw up the formatting, project their naive ideas into articles. It's the Dunning-Kruger effect. See for example [246]. Another great example I just noticed is [247] -- a "planning illustration"? What are you talking about? That's just made up. Here [248] we're told that Harvard had the first printing press "in the nation". What nation? Huh? And here [249] we're told that the Harvard Corporation charter was "adopted" in 1650. No, it wasn't "adopted", it was granted by the Colony; that may seem a trivial difference but it's not -- the story of how that Charter was obtained from the authorities-that-be is a critical chapter in Harvard history, but not knowing what they're talking about, one of these bunch figured "adopted" sounded impressive so they stuck it in. The foregoing are, of course, just a few of a string of many scores of edits that others have to slog through to find out what the hell they've done to that one article -- and there are scores of articles! EEng22:45, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After disappearing for several days, Keystone have returned to editing -- with no sign of acknowledgement of the problems discussed above. I've given them a warning [250]. EEng
Your edits are systematically problematic in the ways I described. I have described them as "suggestions", and your response should not be attempting to shift blame or respond defensively. Many others (above) have attempted to address these with you. Keystone18 (talk) 22:17, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, one of us is making systematically problematic edits, that's for sure. I see you've removed my warning from your talk page, though without archiving it. Color me surprised. EEng23:18, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(EEng, thanks for the pings.) Keystone18, that's not a very collegial response—no one is required to obey your instructions, whether or not they are couched as "suggestions"—nor is it a satisfactory one. Have you read the material above about how you have left some articles broken in both formatting (formatting brackets in the text, chunks of text misplaced in captions and quote boxes, things repeated in different sections of the article ... ) and syntax? And I see EEng raised the issues with you of your chronic misuse of the "minor" flag and chronic failure to add an edit summary. I have been extending good faith to you, but it appears I was wrong. You have years of experience on Wikipedia and more edits than me; you are expected to know by now that edit summaries and engagement in talk spaces (such as the three sections on article talk that EEng started and that you have ignored) are required. You are also presumed by now to be aware that misuse of the "minor" flag is a serious behavioral problem. You are now wilfully ignoring serious issues raised with your editing. Please read through the section, click the links, and respond to your fellow editors' concerns. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:39, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Experience suggests we not hold our breaths; but we dwell in hope. As a backstop, however, I'm going to ask Tryptofish to get his Solomon robes out of mothballs in case Chapter 2 requires him to enter dramatically, stage right. EEng23:18, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know you have your own style of editing, but when you do things like this it disrupts everyone else's watchlist and probably doesn't make it any clearer to the user you're talking to? While I'm not advocating it on their Talk, it would be less disruptive than side scrolling a watch list. Just my .02. Nothing I'm taking further, just asking as a fellow editor who was trying to navigate a watchlist. Thanks either way. StarMississippi12:47, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it wasn't a matter of being clear, but rather just a bit of humor based on the topic I was discussing (maybe you didn't open the link). But it's true, I didn't think of the watchlists. My bad.BTW, thanks for you close. Don't know if you followed the link one of my comments at the bottom of that thread [251], but there really is a group of editors who talk openly about how to get me site-banned. Because, ya know, they're super civil and AGF runs thick in their veins and they know what's best for the project and stuff. EEng16:51, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. I know you weren't trying to be disruptive and with the new skins (themes? I suck at the tech stuff) it looks different for different editors.
We (en wiki as a whole) have a bad habit of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what will stick, and it really needs to stop. My personal opinion as an editor is that if you believe someone should be blocked, make one good case not seven hoping you'll finally get the preferred outcome. I wasn't going to close that thread as I'd closed one sub thread and I think one prior, but there was no merit to the report IMO* and once the other editor decided not to edit for a week, it was time for some resolution.
"So and so responded more strongly than I'd like to a discussion I'm not party to" is not necessarily incivility nor a reason to take it to ANI. If prior threads hadn't gained traction there was 0% that the subsection to sanction you was going to since there was really no case made besides "See, EEng is at ANI again"
Today I learned that the only close study of the darkest moon of Uranus was in 1986, when 40% was photographed. I think it's about time we got the other 60%. Levivich (talk) 01:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just to set everyone's mind at rest... When Mr and Mrs King [please note that the preceding was shamelessly stolen from The Madness of King George] came to visit us last month, you'll be pleased to know that (despite living on the other side of the planet) they had no problems making themselves understood, as they both speak perfectly fluent American. Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 08:59, 2 November 2024 (UTC) ps:"新的東西" in your page notice literally means "New (adjectival particle) East West"[reply]
Y'all better watch out, or the soon-to-be Secretary of Education in the US will take away your diplomas. (And here I thought I was about to see yet another ANI thread about EEng...) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:00, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well then perhaps you mean where I changed navigated the mission flight path to just plain navigated[253]. Unless you can explain how the former is actually different from the latter, then it's just longwinded military jargon dressing something simple up to sound more impressive, and there's no reason to use it. EEng22:55, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No let's not, because MOS:JARGON says not to. Wikipedia articles are written not for jetfanboys, but for a general audience, and to the extent possible should use ordinary language. So I'll say it again: unless someone can explain how navigated the mission flight path serves the reader's understanding better than does just plain navigated, the former is puffed up jargon and the article should use the latter instead. EEng23:24, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Except it was editor BilCat who removed the "Retired" [254] -- not you, editor FlightTime. And it was editor BilCat -- not you, editor FlightTime -- that I reverted with an edit summary querying that removal [255], and yet above you responded to that query as if you were BilCat. Are you, in fact, the same person as BilCat? If not, how do you explain what's just happened? EEng00:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do understand that all my discussing and reasoning and invoking guidelines and policies is causing you stress. This incident has all the earmarks of someone operating two accounts and getting mixed up about which one he was logged in as. I was considering taking it to SPI, but on reflection I think it's more likely that you're just incoherent much of the time. You can't possibly be BilCat. EEng00:55, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OMG, if you're that fucking paranoid, take it wherever, but I warn you, you'll be a laughing stock. I'm FlightTime for last 20 some years, and please request CU and be done, your loosing it. - FlightTime (open channel)01:15, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Didn't you just say you were done here? Anyway, as I just explained -- do try to keep up with the conversation -- no SPI or CU will be necessary since I've realized that even an editor as multitalented as BilCat would find it impossible to feign the incoherent lunacy you regularly display. EEng02:39, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I decided to take a look for myself, and I see the net change, as of this time: [256], as a clear improvement. I'm OK with using specialized jargon if it adds to the precision of the text, but these net changes simply tighten up the language into better writing, without dumbing it down. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:42, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can I once again share my experience of having an SR-71 literally fly over my head? I was at an elevation of about 8k feet in the Sierra Nevada in 1987 or so, perhaps a year earlier, I don't recall. This thing came right over the peak of the mountain, maybe several hundred feet over our heads. Viriditas (talk) 20:38, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I used to work in a building hard adjacent to Orange County (CA) Airport -- I mean right up against the fence -- right under a flight path. Up on the roof I could almost reach up and touch the planes as they came in to land. They seemed to move so very, very slowly. My conclusion: heavier-than-air flight just isn't possible. It just isn't. Can't be. It's some sort of illusion. EEng00:01, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of things go over my head. I think we all agree about "tandem"; it's in the diff I cited approvingly, above. EEng, about the thing you pinged me about, I think you've got it figured out correctly. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:04, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi EEng, I tweaked the phrasing on JFK's article by adding the initials part since this is how FDR's article (a good article) was styled, which I have noticed you edited in the meantime. I have seen other good articles make use of this phrasing too (see AOC). I am not really pushing for one style or another, but I am interested in consistency. Would you agree with "commonly known as" without the redundant initials precision in all cases? Bernard Lee (talk) 02:01, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For those playing along at home, we're talking about [258] and [259].
I certainly would be happy to see the briefer phrasing used everywhere, because our readers are not, on the whole, mentally defective, but I do not recommend you go around trying to make that happen. Such campaigns almost always end in tears. EEng02:07, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thanks for the warning ;-) As far as I know, there are only three US presidents in that case—FDR, JFK, and LBJ—so it would be great to at least have harmonized phrasing in the ledes for those. It is only a minor change, so I will see how it goes... ~~~~ Bernard Lee (talk) 02:56, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My youngest son has recently (recency being relative: this has been going on since the COVID lockdown) become a fan of several educational channels on Youtube and is quite fond of relaying the information gleaned from them to me, to see if I'm already aware of it, and to, perhaps, listen as I expound upon it abit.
He recently informed me of the strange case of one Phineas Gage and went into some detail on it. When he was done gushing, I asked him if he was aware that an entire genre of jokes had originated with him. My son, of course, was not aware of any such thing. Naturally, I offered to tell him the first such joke, one which I originally read right here.
I'm so, so glad. Now I know what great Tom Lehrer meant when he said, "If after hearing my songs just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or perhaps to strike a loved one it will all have been worth the while." EEng22:13, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, who doesn't want to sow a little chaos from time to time? I recently told a very homophobic and transphobic young man that he'd never be able to hack my computer the way he kept threatening to, even if I generously provided him with my IP address: 192.168.0.1. Strangely, he logged off the internet and hasn't been back online in a few days. Still no signs of a l33t h4x0r on my end, however. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.01:56, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 19:40, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard regarding incivility at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#MOS:GENDERID_and_death. The thread is Incivility_from_EEng. .
Hello, I'm Liz. I noticed that you made a comment on the page Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style that didn't seem very civil. Wikipedia is built on collaboration, so it's one of our core principles to interact with one another in a polite and respectful manner. If you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. This feuding between you and Fae has to stop tonight before it goes too far. Please refrain from responding to bait. Liz Read! Talk! 04:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
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Atsme Talk 📧 20:13, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
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Of course I may get you back some day. 
- Alexis Jazz 04:21, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Personal attack by EEng. Thank you. Guy Macon (talk) 14:53, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
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Facepalm --Deepfriedokra (talk) 03:49, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
Buttinsky) ... but your special user page also has explicitly partisan affectations: 
WTF Block‼️⁉️
replaced by decades of, uhm... ,_21.10.2013,_Praha_(cropped).jpg)
misunderstandings?
Done nagualdesign 01:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
. I guess those droopy eyes run in the family. EEng 05:10, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
EEng 11:02, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:47, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
--ARoseWolf 21:26, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
--Tryptofish (talk) 22:08, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
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21:21, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
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I release you from the commode!
I free you from the convenience!
You are no longer hampered!_(part_of_a_set)_MET_DP109178.jpg)
Atsme 💬 📧 19:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Atsme 💬 📧 19:03, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
. EEng 22:42, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Don't call it "Wiki", a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Don't call it "Wiki" and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Don't call it "Wiki" during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. JeffUK 16:47, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, we would like to remind you not to link to any rendition of the "Major-General's Song", as you did here. Doing so can result in users being unable to get the song out of their heads, which may be considered detrimental to Wikipedia and its users. Thank you. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 00:22, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
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. EEng 23:23, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:12, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
. EEng 23:28, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:49, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
–MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 16:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
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, and in fact there are pipes in the photo (near the ceiling) that the reader might spend some time puzzling over. Saying he was "smoking a pipe" avoided that problem, except for the problem that it wasn't lit; that's why I switched to tobacco pipe.My first choice was to just drop reference to the pipe entirely, but I didn't want to hurt O.S.'s feelings. No good turn goes unpunished, I guess. I've changed "with a pipe" to "holding a pipe", which helps by being slightly more specific. EEng 02:32, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
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is for old ladies. EEng 00:57, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Remsense诉 06:37, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
E.E.N.G. phone home?
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