User talk:47.222.203.135/Archive 1

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Happy editing! Brianhe (talk) 17:08, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, 47.222.203.135. You have new messages at In veritas's talk page.
Message added 16:14, 29 November 2016 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

In veritas (talk) 16:14, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Walls of text

No offense, but could you please do your darnedest to keep your talk page comments to about half the length you're currently making them? You have insightful points, but sadly I don't have time to read all of them, and that means it's likely many other editors don't either. Alex Kozinski once wrote that simple arguments are winning arguments while long and convoluted arguments are “sleeping pills on paper.” --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 01:14, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I can try. The WaPo thing we are discussing is hard though, because I didn't figure out that there was a WaPo screwup, until after posting my first complaint. I only noticed that you were keying off the WaPo headline, after you had already significantly cut down the prose that I was objecting to. But yes, I think I'm about to give up on trying to save the fake news controversy. There are too many people pushing for the wrong sorts of outcomes, and most of the pressure is from outside wikipedia, which means we get nutty results (gotta mirror those sources!). I think *you* are doing a good job there from what I have seen, and I don't see any bad-faith actors either (although there is definitely some using-wikipedia-to-make-a-point going on methinks though perhaps unintentionally). The usual mechanism of blocking and such just cannot fix the problem with fake news, because it is a definitional problem, bigger than wikipedia. Thanks for keeping on trying though, it is appreciated.  :-) It will get there someday. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 02:08, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

No relationship, I'm sure

The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobra snakes in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. This was a successful strategy as large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward, but eventually enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, they scrapped the reward program, causing the cobra breeders to set the now-worthless snakes free. As a result, the wild cobra population further increased. The apparent solution for the problem made the situation even worse. --Unintended_consequences#Perverse_results as of 16 Dec 2016

I wonder what would happen to the wikipedia ecology, if the arbcom restrictions were all suddenly scrapped? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:39, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

December 2016

Hello. This is a message to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions, such as the edit you made to Talk:Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016, did not appear constructive and has been undone. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at our welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make test edits, please use the sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page. Thank you. - MrX 00:50, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

If this is a shared IP address, and you did not make the edits, consider creating an account for yourself or logging in with an existing account so you can avoid further irrelevant notices.

Hi MrX... if that is your real name  :-)

Thanks for letting me know about your revert. Apparently I was a bit too terse in my request. For the record, here is what I asked for:

Semi-protected edit request on 20 December 2016

{{edit semi-protected|Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016|answered=no}}

Typo:

* Trump should insteadrun for governor of

* Trump should instead run for governor of

Thanks. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 00:24, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Which I thought was perfectly clear and to the point, but appeared to your eyeballs as 'not constructive'. So allow me to rephrase: dear fellow wikipedian, there is a typo in mainspace, the incorrect not-a-word 'insteadrun' needs to be replaced with the correct word-pair of 'instead run' but seeing as the page in question is protected against unconstructive edits I am unable to fix this problem personally. Thus, please open the page in question, and hit ctrl+f to find and replace all instances of 'insteadrun' with the proper verbiage. If you need a direct wikilink instead of using ctrl+f, the error I noticed is in this section, second sentence of the fourth paragraph thereof, in the context of "...Trump should insteadrun for governor of..." Please fix the typo, thanks. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 10:10, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

 Done, fixed independently the other day by Eric0928, thanks for catching that.[1] 47.222.203.135 (talk) 12:51, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Fractional Reserve

thx. SPECIFICO talk 15:31, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

You are certainly welcome SPECIFICO, but I disagree with you on substance most likely. My reading of WP:NOTEWORTHY says that the bank-of-england ref is legit material for the article, and the only question is one of WP:UNDUE weight -- it belongs, but whether it belongs in an explanatory footnote as a side-mention to a sentence about the mainstream position, or whether it gets a sentence in the body-prose, or whether it gets a paragraph and the formerly-mainstream-but-not-historical-take gets a single sentence, is the discussion. I disagree that deleting reliably sourced material, just because it is not the majority view of the mainstream economists of a few years ago, is kosher. If something is undue weight for the lead, put it in the body. if it is undue weight for the body, use an WP:EXPLNOTE. But outright WP:REMOVAL of reliably-sourced content is not an improvement, it just leads to talkpage-threads that never end. Find the article where the material belongs, and then give it the same emphasis as the sources give it, but don't worry about "too many" sources geting used, or about "too many" views getting neutrally covered (with proper weight relative to the their coverage in the reliable sources), because WP:NOTPAPER. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 12:51, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Response

See Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#can_someone_please_take_a_peek_at_Draft:List_of_economic_advisors_to_Donald_Trump. TimothyJosephWood 15:00, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions notice Correction: Implied Threat Of Imminent Smackdown By Serioux Adminz

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

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

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

Just meant as a notification, nothing more, nothing less. Sagecandor (talk) 16:48, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, Sagecandor. I already knew this, which you were aware of, since I commented on the template at YOUR talkpage. But in case you haven't figured it out from my earlier comments, and from the reaction you got at JFG's userpage and at SPECIFICO's userpage (courtesy pings only so they will know they are being discussed here), these notices are allowed to be handed out like candy, but are considered to be insulting when you give them to people that either already know about them, or are doing nothing wrong, or both. See WP:DTTR, which is an ironclad unwritten rule, that merely happens to not YET be a legally binding part of the wikipedia terms of service, although I keep hoping. See WP:DTA, which is seemingly paradoxical, but in practice is excellent advice. If that is too extreme for you, see instead the original 2007 version of WP:DTTR (but not the current crippled version).

In short, if I'm doing anything wrong, just leave a note on my talkpage that says, hey I noticed this and thought it was wrong can you please explain. Wouldn't that be nicer? Than the template? Remember that WP:5P4 stuff, and consider whether or not you *want* to become that-wikipedian-who-keeps-passing-out-form-letters. Most people -- note that weasel wording is allowed on talkpages and this 'most people' does NOT refer to yourself Sagecandor but to what I've seen in prior years -- that hand out these notices, are doing so with an implied threat carefully concealed beneath the 'friendly' text of the notification itself. Does that make sense? Quit handing them out, until and unless you see somebody that is acting in good faith, but also acting a bit clueless about wikipedia policies generally, and if you want my advice, do NOT hand them out at all, just start a nice plain-english user-talkpage conversation with them, and explain that wikipedia has some rules and such (WITHOUT immediately hammering them over the head will allllll the rullzzzzz), then seeing how they respond. Most people will respond well to a wikilink which explains the five pillars. Most people will respond poorly to a big template written in bureaucrateze that is carefully polite on the surface, but has the unmistakeable undercurrent of You Are Being Watched And If You Screw Up You Are Gonna Get It. Make sense?

And on that note, although you say it is 'just a notification no more no less' when you posted it, I'm obligated by my honor to ask, is there something you saw me doing, that you think is wrong or possibly wrong or just merely sub-optimal? If so, just tell me, I don't bite -- it is actually the unwritten law around here as well, see WP:BITE. How else will I improve, or if I'm already behaving optimally, how else will you learn to recognize it and understand the rationale behind such inscrutable activity? But no more template-messages pleeeez!  :-) There is a time for everything under the wiki-sun, but give the template-spamming a rest, por favor. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 17:10, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

It is not spam at all. It's good housekeeping so that editors do not inadvertently breach the special restrictions on these articles. The only reason for my reaction, which you can confirm by reviewing my talk page, is that editors should only be notified one time with each template and there is a software device to ensure that duplicates are not posted. There's no insult implied -- as the template states. In fact, some editors post the template on their own talk pages to show that they are aware of the DS. SPECIFICO talk 17:28, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I saw the thread, and your reaction was correct, SPECIFICO. I'm just trying to let Sagecandor know about not templating the regulars (which would have avoided them posting the template incorrectly to your page in the first place). And templating me, when I just commented over at his page ABOUT the template, is also the incorrect way to do things, hence my own reaction above.  :-) So although it is not spam, and it is theoretically supposed to be a way to pre-emptively avoid editors getting themselves into hot water by breaching the arbcom rules, in practice it is mostly used as a way to ire a warning shot in an ongoing edit-war, with the subtext which says if-you-keep-annoying-me-I'm-gonna-take-you-to-the-notiecboards. Sagecandor is NOT using the template in that way, obviously, and neither are you SPECIFICO, but I still submit that Sagecandor would be well-served by starting a usertalk conversation first and then as a formality providing the template (*if* necessary and desireable on a case-by-case basis) later if ever. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 17:36, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Well I think self-templating should be more common practice. Then everyone will know that an editor is aware. I don't think don't template the regulars applies in this case, because there's a specific requirement that editors be templated. SPECIFICO talk 17:47, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

What are you... hey, you are correct. Apparently I need to actually read the essay myself, before I go telling Sagecandor to read it. Seems arbcom saw fit to materially alter the essay! "Mandated templates like {{Alert}} are excluded."[2] Which was added to the essay, fundamentally changing the meaning of the contents thereof. But, if you read the paragraph added simultaneously, it is internally contradictory, namely that it say templates must be place unmodified "for an alert to be valid." Now, the only *reason* it would matter whether the alert was 'valid' or not, is if the person being made 'aware' of the arbcom restrictions on some topic area, was about to be dragged to the noticeboards.

So my advice to Sagecandor is still unchanged, and I will repeat what the WP:DTTR used to say without qualification, before it got screwed up in 2014: "When dealing with experienced users, it is generally more effective to write them a short personal message than to apply a standardized template." That is still the case, if the goal is to halt undesired behavior. It *is* generally more effective to write a short personal message. On the other hand, if the goal is to formally file a 'valid' warning which the wikipedia judiciary recognizes as 'counting' in future noticeboard proceedings, then of course only an unmodified template will do! But those are different goals.

I suppose my newly-modified advice to Sagecandor is therefore this: first, decide whether you want wikipedia to be run like a miniature judicial system, filled with form letters delivered by process servers and subpoenas to the jurisdiction of specific court-circuits, or whether instead you want wikipedia to be run like a system where persuasion is always the first resort (and if necessary there are plenty of admins who speak softly but carry a big stick). And I guess I would urge the same of you SPECIFICO... why do you care if the *first* time you tell somebody they breached an arbcom restriction, that you can take them to the noticeboards the second time? Seems just as good -- maybe better aka 'generally more effective' as DTTR says -- to leave a personalized user-talkpage message the first time, and then if and only if necessary, leave the formal template the second time, after which on the third and subsequent breach the noticeboards would be a 'valid' option... although of course, noticeboards are never the ONLY valid option. In any case, SPECIFICO, sincerely appreciate you giving me some clue that DTTR no longer means what I thought it meant. At first I thought you were just misreading the essay, but luckily I first verified *I* was not misreading the essay... and turns out I was. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:13, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Ahh, there is a new link in the see-also section to WP:DTA, which is pretty a reasonable replacement for the no-longer-what-I-mean WP:DTTR. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:28, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

ctrl brk

As a matter of fact this template, verbatim, is supposed to be given to anyone who posts at affected articles and might not be aware of the DS. It can be regarded as a friendly heads-up, a way to help the person stay out of trouble. It's my undertanding that this template, verbatim, must be given before they can be sanctioned for violating the DS. The template creates a log to show that the person was notified. I usually add a personalized paragraph explaining what it means or why I am posting it. But this is a case where templating is not just permitted - it is required. In fact even if someone STARTS to post this notice - and then doesn't because they realize the person has already been notified - that attempted addition is also logged. The Discretionary Sanctions are serious business, requiring a kind of "due process", and there is no need for you to feel insulted by this notice. --MelanieN (talk) 02:49, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I do not disagree with the factual parts of what you wrote. Hidden html comment explains, blow-by-blow. And I agree there is no *need* to be insulted, by receiving such a formal bit of boilerplate.

Nothing you said is wrong, in other words. But are there any unintended consequences? Is the template regarded as friendly? Are sanctions imposed a high percentage of the time, justifying the bureaucracy? Or is the template seen as 'friendly' meaning polite-on-the-surface, but in fact, nobody that receives one is confused that there is an administrative sanction, now one bureaucratic step closer to their edit-button? And does the bureaucracy itself, which seems to cover an ever-expanding number of topic areas, tend to justify *itself* rather than use some kind of effectiveness-metric? I stand by the original language of WP:DTTR, and the current language of WP:DTA, which is simple but not simplistic: it is generally more effective to write a short personal message, than to apply a standardized template... albeit only if improving collaborative behavior amongst good-faith wikipedians (as opposed to imposing sanctions on the baddies) is the end-goal.

I'm not some kind of idealist, who believes wikipedia can survive long without admins. (Another hidden html comment, since this is tangential...)

Handing out templates *does not work* well. It just causes inefficient friction. Conversations *work better*. They lead (sometimes) to understanding, and well, when they fail to do so, there is always the block-button. Which any admin can use without going through the misnamed 'discretionary' sanctions stuff (use of the block-button is actually up to the discretion of an individual admin -- whereas imposing the Template:alert sort of sanctions is not up to the discretion of the person who gave out the warning-shot template, even if that person is an admin!), as far as I can tell.

At the end of the day, as a pragmatic decision about what gives the best outcomes, long-term, I definitely think that a talkpage-conversation which says

Thanks for contributing to wikipedia, I appreciate it, and as you can probably tell politics-articles are a touchy subject, so please try to...[snip]...yours sincerely 'MelanieN'

will just Work Waaay Better, than the currently-fashionable use of

Dear $$INSERT_LUSER_NAME: The WP:ARBCOM has authorised WP:AC/DS to be used for pages regarding all edits about, and all pages related to $$INSERT_CATEGORY_NAME which you have edited, ...[snip actually-friendly suffix-paragraph you handwrote]...yours sincerely MelanieN

Call me crazy, I guess.  :-) And as I mentioned to SPECIFICO, it is possible to have one's cake and also consume one's cake, by starting with tactic one, and if tactic one fails, then resorting to tactic two in the form of the template... but only if it turns out to be necessary. Pre-emptive templating is like hard-nosed diplomacy, whereas I think T.R. had the better idea. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 12:15, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

something completely different

MelanieN, continued followup-to-the-followup reply -- what you are saying is almost so common-sense-ical as to be tautological: "We don't have to include everything, even if it is verifiable and impartial. We can and must exercise judgement, as encyclopedists, about what information is worth including here." (Which is fine when worth is determined strictly by what-is-in-the-RS and also simultaneously when here means specifically 'here in this article' but becomes far more susceptible to abuse when worth is not RS-defined and especially when here means 'anywhere in wikipedia'.) And when you, aka you-MelanieN-personally-not-the-generic-you, are using the policies thataway, then I have no fear that a bad outcome will result. You know what you are doing, and might make mistakes, but only unintentionally.

But by doing so, by using that logic regularly I mean, you are setting a bad example, is what I'm trying to point out, because other people will follow your lead, and not necessarily have your experience/morals/ethics/sense-of-the-wiki-culture. Here is an easy surefire way to make a given wikipedia article into a battleground: whenever a new editor shows up (actual beginner), and tries to insert something into mainspace, the page-owner reverts them because . Later, when they bring a tweet or a facebook post or a youtube which 'backs' their insertion up, the same page-owner reverts them again because WP:RS. Now most people are gonna quit trying to help at that point. But some of them, one in a hundred or one in a million, hard to say, will actually figure out that 'reliable' sources is shorthand for cnn/nyt/randomHouse/stanfordProf/similar, and then do the research to find such a thing. Or even, as is the case with Trump's opinions on various historical politicians and films, literally dozens and dozens of impeccably-RS sources. If the page-owner is a good-faith wikipedian with the five pillars firmly ingrained in their behavior, the sources will convince them, or they will made a very good argument as to why in this specific case, IAR applies (or some other policy-backed reason) and the sources that would usually be just fine are not needed. Either of which is just fine!

I'm not saying that anybody who argues to delete reliably-sourced material is wrong (it depends on what reason they give -- 'just one passing mention in one questionable source' is a lot more convincing than 'my gut says this is not truly important even though dozens of top-notch sources give it in-depth coverage'). I'm certainly not saying that anybody who argues against inclusion of specific reliably-sourced material within any specific article (e.g. BLP vs stances vs term(s) vs all the various other lower-profile spinoff articles we have) is in the wrong. Finding proper placing _is_ essential. All that being said, I submit to you, that in the hands of a POV-pusher the ability to delete reliably-sourced material, and thus slant mainspace further and further towards your POV, by means of a war of attrition on two fronts (killing off the sources which are used to back non-slanted parts of mainspace one by one... and discouraging or baiting new editors with the ladder-of-impossibility one by one) is the end result. I'm specifically thinking here of small leaf-articles related to South China Sea, Cyberterrorism, Crimea, Israel, but also of Gun control, Keynesianism, Abortion, Climate change... though in practice the worst abuses that I've seen tend to happen in small out-of-the-way articles that have two or three page-owners, which strive to set their POV in stone, yet usually that I've seen, the battleground-topic has nothing in particular to do with politics or another traditional axe-grinding theme but becomes nevertheless a place for epic axe-grinding.

Now, in our particular discussion, about the goldfinger ref I'm pretty indifferent to whether we add it to Donald Trump in popular culture#Opinions_thereon, or give it more credibility and add it to Political positions of Donald Trump#Background_influences. It does not belong in the Donald Trump#Personal_life_and_influences subsection, unless there are a lot more sources than what I turned up. And because it is just a fictional movie character, with extremely sparse refs on the bottom end of WP:NOTEWORTHY for certain, we could even elide it from mainspace entirely, per IAR, and that would be okay by me. (By comparison, I don't think there is any serious question that Trump picked Mattis for secdef, at least *partly* because that was the contender who most reminded Trump of George C. Scott's portrayal of a fictional movie character -- and several in-depth sources back that view up.) But I've seen people try to abuse 'WP:DUE' as shorthand for WP:IDLI, and thereby ruin mainspace articles, plus drive away a steady stream of good-faith contributors with the poisonous tactics such abuse requires (mainspace is POV! nope! insert this true statement for balance then. nope because {{cn}}. here is a blog that says I'm correct. nope because WP:RS. holy moly you are stonewalling me here is CNN. nope that is only one RS. here are fifty sources damn you. nope that is undue weight and your irrelevant material will be deleted plus you have been blocked for tendentious editing.) Now, that quasi-hypothetical scenario is not a worry at the Trump page, because it is extremely high-visibility and lots of eyeballs will tend to keep that from happening.

But I would urge you to consider please, whether, because the common-sense approach you describe is almost guaranteed to be abused when put into practice by somebody that has conscious or unconscious bias/POV/worldview/whatever, as a means to delete the sources of the people on the other side of a content-dispute by citing numerical superiority (which in turn encourages off-wiki coordination and sockpuppetry and all kinds of bad stuff), whether it is long-term beneficial to the encyclopedia as a whole, to use such tactics during the normal course of wiki-business. You aren't using the policy wrongly, but other people do so, and maybe therefore it would make sense to work towards the end-goal in an altered fashion that avoids making regular use of an easy-to-be-abused policy, is what I'm saying. IAR is similar: easy to abuse, in the wrong hands, and thus best reserved for the rarest cases. I cannot speak for Drbogdan, but I can definitely say that having thought this conundrum over, I have landed firmly on the side of deleting-reliably-sourced-material-is-BAD, and I always try very hard to locate an appropriate place somewhere in mainspace for the factoids in question (though usually in an out-of-the-way article such as Music at Trump rallies rather than in the lede of Donald Trump).

Obviously, this is not because the music-picks are THAT super-important (though I was surprised at the breadth of genres used), but more as a general principle that wikipedians should stick to sources, like glue, whenever it is possible to do so, and avoid exercising their individually !voted judgement-calls as encyclopedists (as easy-to-abuse rather than 'wrong' in some fundamental fashion). This never-delete-RS-unless-no-other-option-exists approach is nicer to beginning contributors, because if they do the hard work of digging up reliable sources then their sentence does get mainspaced or there is a very good reason why it doesn't. Plus, it could also theoretically cut down on bickering amongst established contributors, over differences of opinion on what is and is not Truly Deeply Relevant/Encyclopedic/Important/Whatever, that seem to crop up fairly regularly. My understanding is that the epic compromise made amongst deletionists and inclusionists, back in the day, was that anything not reliably sourced MAY be challenged at any time regardless of how many inclusionists were !voting keep-per-I-like-it (at first it was often tagged citation needed but more common nowadays is outright deletion)... but the check-n-balance of the grand bargain, was that anything which was reliably sourced could NOT be deleted, no matter how many deletionists !voted delete-per-I-don't-like-it. We are sliding towards an encyclopedia where delete-because-most-active-editor-on-page-said-so, is a common happenstance. Dangerous to the mission methinks. Appreciate you listening, 47.222.203.135 (talk) 23:21, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for moving this to your talk page. This will be my last comment on this subject. Just to say once again that there doesn't seem to be any basis in Wikipedia policy, or in common sense, for your claim that material with a RS attached should (almost) never be deleted - and its corollary that everything ever published by any Reliable Source on any subject should be included somewhere at Wikipedia. Your history of a so-called Grand Bargain, the "epic compromise" under which anything that is reliably sourced cannot be deleted, has no basis in fact that I am aware of, and I have been here for 10 years. Quite the contrary, Wikipedia specifically says in multiple places that things which are Reliably Sourced can still be excluded. I already pointed out WP:BALASP, or balanced aspects, which says that whether to include something depends on its significance in addition to it being verified by sources and neutral. In addition there is WP:What Wikipedia is not, particularly WP:INDISCRIMINATE, which says that "merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia," and WP:NOTEVERYTHING, which says "A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject. Verifiable and sourced statements should be treated with appropriate weight." I hope this settles the matter, but maybe not; you are free to continue to believe in your never-delete-RS-material rule if you wish. But you should realize that this "rule" has no support in WP policy, and that most Wikipedians do not recognize this "rule" and have probably never heard of it. --MelanieN (talk) 18:19, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Saleh v. Bush

The neutrality of Saleh v. Bush is in dispute, appearing to echo your own concerns here. There's a discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Saleh_v._Bush, where I brought up your hidden comment. I hope you'll consider helping with the situation. --Ronz (talk) 19:05, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Goldfinger v. Feintuch (January 5)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Timothyjosephwood was: Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

• If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Goldfinger v. Feintuch and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
• If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk or on the reviewer's talk page.
• You can also use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

TimothyJosephWood 18:26, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello! 47.222.203.135, I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! TimothyJosephWood 18:26, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Glenn Hubbard

Please see my talk page for a reply to your post there: Noyster (talk), 13:08, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	I really liked your idea to use the WP:OUTBOX approach for the Donald Trump infobox. It was a creative way to address concerns raised during the RfC. Thanks for the great idea, and I hope that we can get closer to achieving consensus regarding his infobox! Edge3 (talk) 15:59, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Edge3, much appreciated. Especially poignant given the juxtaposition with the 'vandalism' template warning below  :-) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 22:50, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

January 2017

Please refrain from attempting to make unconstructive edits to Wikipedia. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been disallowed by an edit filter. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. WNYY98 (talk) 22:35, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Edits were fine, WNYY98, please look again to be positive if they really appeared to be unconstructive to your eyes. I filed a false-positive report on the borked regex of the WP:ABUSEFILTER that was keeping me from posting Politico-cited quotation-snippets. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 22:46, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Why did you delete other's talk? Not acceptable.
Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, talk pages are meant to be a record of a discussion; deleting or editing legitimate comments, as you did at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Communists for Kerry, is considered bad practice, even if you meant well. Even making spelling and grammatical corrections in others' comments is generally frowned upon, as it tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Jim1138 (talk) 07:37, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Jim1138, as you can see on the bottom of their user-talkpage User_talk:Atbashian, it was with permission from Atbashian, who has only a dozen edits to wikipedia, and does not understand wikipedia markup yet. If you will examine what I did, you can see that I deleted only a partial sentence (which was a violation of Godwin's Law by somebody who has never read WP:NICE), and that most of my other changes were formatting-improvements to the references. Can you please put the AfD page back as I had modified it, by undoing your revert, so that the AfD is cleaner? Thanks 47.222.203.135 (talk) 07:41, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

The diff is quite a mess and I really don't want to wade through it, let alone make determine if you kept the essence of Atbashian's original content. Sorry, but no. Jim1138 (talk) 07:49, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jim1138:, of course you need not wade through the diff, if you do not wish to, obviously. WP:VOLUNTEER is the law around here, and by that I mean in my own eyes as well as in the wiki-policies. So what do you suggest we do? Did you verify that Atbashian has given me permission, to modify their comments so as to conform with the wikiculture and wikitradition, as well as switching to cite_web templates? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 08:02, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

diff of the permission is here 47.222.203.135 (talk) 08:04, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, overwhelmed as usual. The primary policy is WP:TPO: Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning, even on your own talk page. That's all I have to go on. I can't change policy myself. I won't restore your edit, nor will I be around. I suspect anyone else seeing it would object. Perhaps you could write it on Atbashian's page and have Atbashian copy it over. That should be OK. Cheers and goodnight. Jim1138 (talk) 09:16, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, I know the feeling :-)

And I appreciate the vandal-fighters like yourself. I'm not changing Atbashian's meaning, I'm just deleting an unfortunate personal attack, that I'm sure was meant as pointing-out-the-irony in their own mind as a beginning wikipedian, but I'm just as sure will be absolutely positively interpreted as WP:NPA by the closing admin. So here is what I'll do: first of all, in an attempt to make the diffs 'cleaner' (and it is NOT my fault that WP:DIFF sucks... but I do feel your pain in trying to wade through such things), if I have to do it myself I will redo my work in ~4 smaller chunks which have cleaner diffs. But what I suggest is that, rather than asking Atbashian to let me write-it-on-his-talkpage-and-then-have-him-copy-it-over, which as a beginner he is likely to either not understand or just mangle the overwrite-this-afd-minutiae...

...@Jim1138:, is it okay with you Jim1138 if I just ask Atbashian to revert-your-revert-of-my-change, thus reinstating the modifications? I have already posted a message for him, explaining *what* I changed, and links so he can *see* visually what I did. If he likes it, and if I accept full responsibility per WP:IAR for my blatant override of WP:TPO ... which is a guideline not a policy and is definitely subservient to the pillar... is that okay? Please say yes :-) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 12:42, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Good idea. Go ahead. Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 20:04, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, appreciated. Not sure if he can still do that (one-click-easy-undo), since several other people have edited in the meanwhile, but if he runs into trouble I will try to walk him through it. Comes with having a 1990s-era website technology I suppose  :-) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:29, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, it is too late now. I tested it out in edit-preview, and immediately got this error message. "The edit could not be undone due to conflicting intermediate edits; if you wish to undo the change, it must be done manually." Which I'm not thinking will be easy for Atbashian, since he has 4 live edits from June 26th, and six live edits from yesterday, plus one from today. No way his #12 edit as a logged-in-user, and third non-consecutive-day of editing as a logged-in-user, should be so complex.

So instead, I'm going to go with plan B, and start re-inserting my exact same edits from yesterday, myself, but piecewise this time, after assuring Atbashian (again since I already did this before starting my IAR effort) that he is free to undo any of my changes. Or he can ask me and I will undo them to exactly what was there before. But please Jim1138 don't you revert me again, now that you understand what is going on here a bit better. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:41, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Jim1138 and 47.222.203.135 - This is to confirm my permission to edit my contributions as long as they don't alter the meaning and the scope of what I posted. You are correct, I'm not experienced with Wikiediting and its culture (and given my current workload elsewhere, I'm not likely to become a pro here). So I would appreciate any friendly help I can get, especially given how much time and effort is involved in fixing my non-compliant formatting. --Atbashian (talk) 20:59, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. If you dislike any changes I make to your prose, you are free to undo my change (just click 'view history' and find the one you want to undo and then click 'undo' over on the righthand side which will confirm what you are about to make happen). I just finished saving an analysis of the sources for TPC over at Draft_talk:Oleg Atbashian, please glance over that so you understand roughly what "counts" towards WP:GOLDENRULE, and I will fix up the first three sources in the AfD in a similar fashion. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 21:13, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

See wp:talk page guidelines for policy. I don't set policy. You can edit your talk per the guidelines. Essentially, if someone has replied to your talk, you should not change the meaning. Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 23:40, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

This is good advice, and I recommend Atbashian follow it without deviation, at least for the next couple of years. Many wikipedians will get extremely touchy if you mess with their comments, and that is why the guideline says NOT to do such things. It is a good rule. But in some rare cases, such as at the AfD, the rule was screwing up my ability to see whether the sources were good or not, and the comment-formatting needed serious revisions. So in a nutshell, the rule is never to touch another person's comments, but once you've been editing for a few years, if you firmly understand the WP:PAG then sometimes you can ignore them with impunity. Unless another wikipedian objects, of course, in which case sometimes it takes a little longer to IAR, but eventually everything gets worked out. I had to redo my changes the next day, in three chunks rather than one ugly complex one, but nobody has reverted me so far. And in the process, Atbashian is learning some good lessons about how to be a solid wikipedian, which may help someday in the future, if he decides to stick around? Time will tell. In any case, I'm not unhappy at being reverted, it was a good-faith Huggle move, and nine out of ten of the cases you will see as a vandal-monitor are gonna be against policy. In this case it was the one out of ten, or maybe more like three out of WP:9000, when the anon deleting other people's talkpage comments at AfD was not being ornery. Well, at least not TOO very ;-) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 00:46, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

The People's cube: merge with Atbashian?

Dear editor, regarding your idea to merge the people's cube and atbashian page, i'm afraid with the new TPC draft this will become a "monster of a page" with too much content. Do you agree? I have no experience with merging, so if you think it could work i'm willing to help with the merging, but need some advice on how to structure it. Thanks a lot.Powderday (talk) 11:36, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Powderday, if we write Oleg Atbashian, scrupulously following the sources, and the end result is WP:TOOBIG then the correct thing to do will be WP:SPINOFF of whatever portion of the content will reduce the pageload. So, no, there is no worry that size will be a problem; if it does become a problem, we can simply create a subsidiary article, if and when. But at the moment, the problem is not TOO MUCH in the way of sources, the problem is needing to find enough sources to satisfy WP:GOLDENRULE. That is why I suggested upmerging from TPC, and also from CFK, into a new target-topic Draft:Oleg Atbashian... because that title allows us to *combine* the refs for TPC plus the refs for CFK plus the recent refs for George Mason University... and unless my WP:NAVEL detector is faulty, I expect some WP:RS to note the irony of People's Cube getting erased from history during an AfD, albeit only temporarily until the proper collection of WP:RS is identified to justify the dedicated article. Does that answer your question? My advice is that we should proceed to write Draft:Oleg Atbashian and Draft:People's Cube in parallel, and then discuss further whether to mainspace one or both or neither, once we have done our legwork hunting up sources. Make sense? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 12:42, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. So if understand correctly I'll just keep editing the TPC entry, and we will await further arbitration. If I can help with any edits please let me know. Kind regards. Powderday (talk) 13:00, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes Powderday, that is fine, but while you are working on TPC, you are very likely to run across sources which mention the precursor organization Communists for Kerry, and also sources that mention the founder/owner Draft:Oleg Atbashian. Please, if you find WP:RS sources on those topics, please drop the URLs onto the talkpage of Draft:Oleg Atbashian, even if you are NOT using them in TPC... actually, especially if you are not using them! If you are using a ref in your draft, I will see it there, and copy it over myself. But while you are hunting refs for TPC, please keep an eye out for WP:SOURCES which mention the related subject-matter of Oleg and of CFK. I will do the same, in reverse. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 13:06, 15 January 2017 (UTC)