This is an archive of past discussions with User:Iridescent. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I'm doing the GA review for Suwałki Agreement. When I started the review, the article was fairly stable, no signs of edit warring, just the normal editing, etc. Since I've posted the review, an edit war has sprung up. I'd like your advice on when it hits the point where it fails the stable criteria of GA. I've posted a note on the review page pointing out that the edit war isn't helping it's nomination, but it's being ignored, near as I can tell. I'm not really in the mood to get attacked for quick failing the article, but this is getting kinda silly.... Ealdgyth - Talk15:38, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
My honest advice in this particular case would be "drop everything and run away as fast as you can" unless you have a blinding urge to spend the next month scraping posts from the nutjob tendency off your talkpage; you've just unintentionally picked up Wikipedia's current hottest potato. Personally, I think that "stability" requirement is a crock; the run-up to FAC often sees the articles expanding like balloons until the moment the FAC goes live, and I don't understand why GAN should be different. My inclination would be to assume Piotrus is right whenever it comes to anything Poland-related, but that's with no knowledge of this particular case. Malleus is probably better placed to advise on what is and isn't acceptable at GAN these days. – iridescent15:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Oh, while I don't play politics, I do keep up. I knew what I was doing, but the article had sat waiting for a reviewer for over two months, I hate seeing that and it does seem less POVish than most of the Eastern European one. The edit war is over minor picky stuff, it's the removal and reinsertion of some bits in the lead about non-Polish names, near as I can tell. If it was MY article, I'd have demanded a rename to an english title, but that's not in the criteria, mores the pity. I dropped notes about this a lot of spots, so we'll see what happens. Ealdgyth - Talk16:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm going to wait a few for Geometry Guy and Dr. Cash to weigh in, but I'm leaning fail. Partly, it's because I have a monster headache too, so I'm not really motivated to do much of anything right now. Ealdgyth - Talk00:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
(pokes) I'm covering my ass here, more folks I get on the "fail" side, the less shit will stick to me. (Note I am not expecting the shit not to fly...) If I haven't heard anything by morning and it's still being warred over, well, I'll go ahead. It's not like the it's a crisis that needs fast action here. Since I'm not trying to block for civility or anything.. (yes, I have my own opinion on the civility policy and it largely accords with yours.) Ealdgyth - Talk01:01, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Go with what everyone above is saying. I no longer touch GAN reviewing – my opinions on how it ought to operate are too out of synch with current custom and practice, and I don't feel comfortable enforcing the current "oppose, spaced em dash" style which I don't feel is appropriate at that level. (The two-month backlog suggests I'm not alone here.) – iridescent23:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
And attracting vandals like it was going out of fashion, too. Maybe they know something I don't. (No idea why Raul picked that one, as of all the bridge FAs it's probably the dullest.) – iridescent21:49, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
I will never understand why people get excited when an article they worked on goes on the main page... Norman conquest of England was just on the other day for an anniversary, and it was bad enough, but FA main page day is the worst. Blech. My sympathies, Iri. Ealdgyth - Talk21:52, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
The first time, it's thrilling; after that, it's an irritation. Was it Moni who said that you know you've made it when your first thought on being selected for TFA is "fuck, not again"? – iridescent21:53, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Ha, I've had East End and (more recently) Her Majesty's Theatre on the front page - did I receive plaudits, accolades, lemonades? No, I certainly didn't - just had to deal with the usual bunch of vandals and pedantry ... The very best; you've earned your place at the top table ... and I only do it for the "roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd" .... Kbthompson (talk) 21:58, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
A damn fine article that embodies the absolute best of the cobwebbed corners of wikipedia. An absolute must for a quick PROD, or even a mergeto ... 8^)
I'm not sure I could survive another 'candidature' process ... although we should try again for Smithfield, London - that one got talked out of court while most of the problems were actively being addressed. Kbthompson (talk) 22:10, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
It may well go through this time. IIRC there weren't really any issues, it just timed out through lack of supports as nobody wanted to read that interminable FAC-hijacking discussion about Bartholomew Fair. It might be worth asking someone who knows nothing about the place (Moni is sometimes pesterable, in my experience) to read through for context before it goes ahead. – iridescent22:14, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Jaded, not made it, which potentially made it sound as if the theme song to the Mary Tyler Moore Show was ringing in my head. At any rate, good article, Iridescent. Well done and my condolences. --Moni3 (talk) 22:50, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
My personal favorite barnstar design is the (very little-used) rail transport barnstar, which was obviously a labor of love by someone. – iridescent12:18, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Iri and everyone else...
Urse d'Abetot. Obscure guy by any standard. However, are there any missing bits of context, things that a non-medievalist won't understand, etc.? (Malleus has copyedited so many bishops at this point, he'll be getting his PhD in medieval studies shortly...) I just know too much so seeing lacking context is next to impossible for me. Ealdgyth - Talk00:08, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Interesting article for what seems to be a very difficult subject matter. What an upstart, Urse; the story is strangely reminiscent of the American Frontier, where people went to make their fortune, with the difference that the English were a bit more organised than the Indians. Anyway, although I have no idea what a "sumpter horse" is, I find that the article is very clear and does not take things for granted; the few offices in the penultimate paragraph that the reader likely not to recognise are properly linked.
This is not related to context, but I was a little confused regarding the re-granting of Urse's lands to him by Henry I (it says earlier in the article that he was already tenant-in-chief of many of them, but here it is implied that he held all his lands as under-tenant—not even sub-tenant, which is the term used before). The hundred courts may also be confusing, despite the explanation; maybe I'm thinking too simplistically, but people might (?) think of the hundred courts as subdivisions of the shires, if perhaps until the reference to the juries. Apart from those, the only things that jumped at me were a few typos (which I have corrected, except for the possibly correct benefitted—I don't really know about this one) and the rather trivial issue of the use of plural for the notes. [notes 3] looks strange to me (and not because it's black). Waltham, The Duke of04:06, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
I've clarified the sentence on control of the hundred courts to "...control of the courts of the hundreds - which were subdivisions of the shires -...." which should make it clear that the hundreds are the subdivisions. Ealdgyth - Talk13:59, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
It certainly does; the sentence looks very good now. My point about the lands still stands, though (and I really am curious about the logic behind the plural for individual notes). Waltham, The Duke of11:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
Have clarified that some of the regranted lands had previously been held as an undertenant, but were regranted as tenant in chief. Not all of them, it appears, but he definitely "uprgraded" the status of some of his lands. As for the "notes", there is more than one, right? Thus there are "notes", and I've always used plurals in this situation. Ealdgyth - Talk15:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I see. I suppose I just see "this is the link to note 2" as more intuitive than "see #2 in Notes section", especially for a casual reader not consciously aware of that section. If the system—not to mention Wikipedia itself—is still in place when I nominate my first featured article around 2014, you can expect me to use singular.
The lands passage is much better now, thanks. I have nothing further to complain about, which makes me, erm, very, um, happy.
1.Is it "Domesday book" or "the Domesday Book". I've never heard it referred to without the "the", but you know more than me;
I defer to Malleus on this one, I usually see "Domesday Book" but I'm not sure what the British construction would be. It's properly both words captialized, though. Ealdgyth - Talk14:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
2."It was alleged that Wulfstan proceeded to work a miracle at Edward's tomb" - alleged by Gerald of Wales, or he reports that it was alleged?;
Clarified, to
3.<tony mode>"The majority of his lands were in Worcestershire ... most of the lands Urse held were in Worcestershire" doesn't need to be mentioned twice in the same paragraph</tony mode>;
4. I know {{inflation}} breaks down prior to 1264, but I think it would be useful if you could give some kind of equivalent for the currency measures. Measures like £23 sound meaningless today, but that was probably more than the annual wage at the time;
Most medieval historians won't even attempt a conversion this early, so I honestly have nothing I can use to convert it that's reliable. I'm currently reading a book on the Guilds and Wages in medieval Europe and the author doesn't really think wages as such were much prevelent before about 1250 or so. Ealdgyth - Talk14:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
5. 'An additional £16 or a "Norway hawk" also due from the courts' - is "Norway hawk" a Norman term of measurement, or were fines payable in cash or wildfowl in the 11th century? Either way, it ought to be explained;
6. "Urse was the most powerful layman in Worcester", "Only one other layman is recorded as having a castle in Worcester" - are we talking about Worcestershire the county (sometimes just called Worcester, particularly in early sources), or Worcester the small English town? If the latter, then that's a surprise in itself as many towns didn't have one castle, let alone two (even London itself only had Baynard's Castle and Montfichet's Castle*) – if it refers to the county, then that needs to be made clear (and other uses of the term "Worcester" checked to make clear if they refer to the city or county);
* No, the Tower of London wasn't historically in London – it's further east, and the city has grown around it over the years.
Coming from the state that may as well formally change its name to "New York No Not New York City" for convenience, I'm not sure you can hold the Brits solely to blame for this one. Try explaining to a European why Washington isn't in Washington sometime. – iridescent20:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
That ubiquitous "D.C." does seem to make the capital's name a little less impressive—especially when contrasted with the powerful simplicity of the historic names of most other capitals—though it might say something about this nation's obsessions with initialisms and abbreviations.
Our political geography bears some similarities with Britain's, in that many of Greece's prefectures use the ancient names of those areas while the rest are named after their capitals; these can serve as a convenient and grammatically close replacement for the prefectures if one is not very specific about location. The annoying thing is that the same thing happens when fellow students, upon learning where I am from, ask me whether I am from the town or a village somewhere else in the prefecture, despite the fact that the latter actually has a different name from its capital. They manage to show their lack of geographical education and imply that I am being vague at the same time. Waltham, The Duke of11:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
7."It is clear that Urse's estates grew under William II, as they were larger in 1100 than they had been in 1087" is a tautology; since William II reigned from 1087-1100, if they were larger at the end than at the start then by definition they grew;
8.How sure are you that "It is likely that the Beauchamp family's symbol, a bear, derives from their relationship to Urse"? While absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, the official history of the Bear and Ragged Staff emblem at the Warwick County Records Office doesn't mention him. William de Beauchamp was born 130 years after Urse died, England had been through the Anarchy in the meantime, and Warwick doesn't have any connection to Worcester or any strong connection to Urse, so he seems an odd choice to pick.
I'm not sure at all. This is something the sources report, specifially Mason, but it's not contested by anyone else writing about him. She's the one that's done most of the recent research on him and his connections to the Beauchamps. Ealdgyth - Talk14:20, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Not at all saying you're wrong about this - just saying that because the "official" source doesn't mention it, it needs to be from a source you're confident of. – iridescent20:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
New report shows Countdown could be solution to pedestrian confusion at traffic lights
Route P13 has been revised to improve reliability for passengers
September
Introduction of pink Oyster validators may mean cheaper fares for people avoiding Zone 1 if they touch in Midway through their journey, at some key interchanges.
TfL will launch Countdown, a new sevice which shows when and where the next bus is for mobile and internet users.
TfL's Lost Property Office celebrates 75 years
London's taxi drivers take a large group of seriously ill children on a trip of a lifetime to Disneyland Paris
Strike threat lifted as RMT leadership accepts Victoria line working patterns
New edition of 'Poems on the Underground' hits bookstores
New Travel Information Centre opens at Euston
'No reason' for Victoria line strike, says London Underground
Transport for London tightens guidelines for licensing taxi and private hire drivers in London
TfL calls on PPP Arbiter to set a fair price for Tube Lines contract
Ian Brown, the Managing Director of Transport for London's (TfL) London Rail directorate and Chairman of Docklands Light Railway received an award for making 'an outstanding personal contribution to the rail industry'
Free Guided Walks across the Capital on 26-27 September 2009
Urgent utility works in Victoria for next eight weeks
Central London roads close as weekend of cycling comes to London
Work progressing on Hanger Lane bridges
Ten rail stations to be managed by Transport for London
TfL campaign urges drivers to 'give motorcyclists a second thought' and cut road deaths
Saddle up for Cycle Fridays this week and you may end up on the winners' podium at the Tour of Britain
Mike Brown named as new Managing Director of London Underground
London Underground staff turn the Tube green, purple and pink
Giant eye warns drug drivers to stay away from the wheel
TfL agrees £1bn loan for Crossrail from European Investment Bank
Introduction of pink Oyster route validators at selected stations
Better bus information on the way
Writer Sarah Butler discovers Underground literary talent
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General
September has seen an increase in the number of articles as well as October. There was only the promotion Timeline of the London Underground to featured list status so congratulations to those involved. October so far has been eventful in other areas except for the assessment side.
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In the Church of Scotland's defense (how often do you get to type those words) St Magnus long predates the CoS; Kirkwall was part of Norway at the time. Bizarrely, the King of Norway used it as collateral against the marriage of Margaret of Denmark to the King of Scotland; Norway has yet to pay up, so Kirkwall (and the rest of Orkney) remains governed by Scotland. I can't think of anything else remotely comparable (and would love to find out what would happen if Norway were now to settle the bill). – iridescent20:44, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Norway made various attempts in the 17th and 18th centuries to redeem the islands, which were rebuffed. Goodness laddie, I think you will find it is "dreich" in Scotland rather than "dreach" (although the Orkney climate is fairly mild if you stay out of the wind). If you want further amusement on this theme I can do no better than recommend Crown Dependency of Forvik. BenMacDui21:13, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Originally the Hall of Justice above the prison had a chute to slide prisoners down, the aperture then being closed leaving the occupant in total darkness with no way to escape. After the Protestant Reformation the chute was blocked, and an opening formed into the Cathedral at high level through a former window. Clergy sat in the chapel, then sent the prisoner round into the choir and up a ladder to the opening leading into the cell. In the seventeenth century, Jane Forsyth, accused of witchcraft and sentenced to be burned at the stake, was rescued from the dungeon at night by her lover and the two escaped to remote exile in the city of Manchester.
Looks to me like they've been infected with Wikipedia's "all have won and all must have prizes" mentality. Seems like they've included everyone whose advocates could possibly raise an objection were they to be left out. Quite what the phrase "Founding fathers are usually identified as the politicians, soldiers, jurists, and legislators who held positions of leadership during the era of the American War of Independence, the confederation period, and the early republic" is doing in a work – arguably the work – in British English on British topics is another thing, since there's no earthly way that's the primary usage in BE (any of these guys are equally qualified, particularly Simon Bolivar or Eamon de Valera and co). – iridescent21:06, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm pinged Bishonen about it. Be aware that that article was written by some of Wikipedia's more – er – vocal personalities, so you may find yourself in a noisy argument. – iridescent20:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Should i make it a formal FAR? And probably not the best time to raise it i realise as i am going to be busier from tomorrow afternoon till Monday (i.e. break) Simply south (talk) 20:22, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd recommend against it, at this stage; Bishonen and Giano (Geogre is no longer with us) are two very experienced Wikipedia writers and should be able to resolve and/or explain any problems. By posting on this page, you've also effectively notified Kbthompson and Ottava Rima, the two editors probably best qualified to comment on London theatres and 17th-century English literature respectively. You'll also likely draw the attention of Ealdgyth and Malleus; if there are any problems with sourcing, they'll spot them. – iridescent20:30, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Someone had to do it. I have left where i do feel they should be addressed. Anyway, shouldn't WP be about backing up what info there is? Simply south (talk) 20:51, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
My take is that many of these FAs were written in a time when one citation per word/fact/paragraph was neither expected nor mandated. So do you trust the author? --MalleusFatuorum20:57, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Pretty much what Malleus says. The FA criteria are different today, and the FAR process is intended to remove articles that really shouldn't be there. Giano and Bishonen are – regardless of one's like or dislike of them as people – meticulous at research and verification, and I've no doubt they could source the article were they to write it today. Technically you're correct in raising issues, but there's no serious concern about the accuracy of the article, and an FAR (particularly a formal one) is likely to end up looking like this. Unless you want your talkpage to resemble User talk:Mattisse on a bad day, you're probably certainly better off informally discussing any concerns with Bishonen. – iridescent21:05, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Robert Hume is among the list of references. That is a positive. If someone is going to tackle a FAR like that, I would first contact a professor in the area and ask what they would consider as the leading experts on the topic. Then, check against the article. If any are missing, then, well, you have something to really go off of. It is always safer to have something concrete than not. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:29, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
I know nothing about restoration drama, so can't comment on the particular case, but in general I'd agree with Ottava (although maybe not to the extent of contacting a professor). My general rule would be; only start FARs (or FACs, for that matter) on a subject on which you have at least a working knowledge; it's very easy to under- or over-estimate the significance of any given source if you're not familiar with the topic, which makes it very hard to judge notability and balance. (For an example in your – SS's – area, I personally would look very askance on any putative London Transport FAC/GAC that didn't reference at least one publication by one or the other of Capital Transport, Middleton Press or Connor & Butler, as between them those three publish at least one significant work on every aspect of transport infrastructure in London and I'd take not mentioning them as prima facie evidence that someone hadn't done the necessary background research; but there's no possible way anyone not familiar with the topic would be expected to know that's something they should look out for.) – iridescent00:04, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
See what the others say. To me, it looks about as pure a non-transformative derivative work as it's possible to get, and thus a clear copyvio, but I Am Not A Lawyer. These are the only circumstances in which it's permissible to use copyright-violating images on Wikipedia (and they're never permissible on Commons, which is free-use only); this would fall into the "a photo of a copyrighted statue" example of inadmissible fair-use content. Comparing it to images used on pages about specific products isn't relevant; Wikipedia policy allows fair-use shots of distinctive branded packaging to illustrate the article about the product (see WP:Logos) – iridescent21:00, 18 October 2009 (UTC).
This image is a photo of a Roche product and a Abbott product. Which are the only two FDA approved medications for obesity. I too am not a lawyer :-) So do you think this image could be moved to Wikipedia as fair use? Or does it need to be cut in half and moved to the page about each product? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:10, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi Iridescent - I noticed a recent thread where you commented that "I no longer touch GAN reviewing – my opinions on how it ought to operate are too out of synch with current custom and practice, and I don't feel comfortable enforcing the current "oppose, spaced em dash" style which I don't feel is appropriate at that level."
Over the last year or two, several editors (EyeSerene, Malleus and myself included, I think) have made efforts to encourage GAN reviews to focus on the important points such as broadness, verifiability and neutrality, rather than side issues of formatting; the current GA criteria reflect this. Your characterization is at odds with my recent experience, and you may find that your view is now rather more in sync with custom and practice. However, if you have recent experiences of GANs which focussed on trivialities while missing the main point, please draw attention to them: you are welcome to open reassessments or comment on the GAN talk page or here. Geometry guy20:55, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
To be honest, my comments on GAN are based on the situation as it was about a year ago. I'm more than willing to give it another try, although bear in mind I'll inevitably bring my comet-tail of controversy. As you may have noticed, whatever problems I've had with GAN (many of which, it has to be said, were down to just two or three of the editors who used to dominate it), they pale into insignificance compared to the frank exchanges of views I have regarding FAC – and my views probably chime more with GA than FA in the current "GA = better than adequate article, FA = perfect article" climate. – iridescent21:05, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your open-minded response. I believe that GA will welcome multiple views and constructive disagreement; one general aim is to encourage and stimulate the production of decent (aka "acceptable") articles on as wide a scale as possible. Geometry guy21:21, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Whatever you may think of the author, that's still a damn good blood-from-a-stone article. Sheerness is arguably the dullest town I've ever been to. And I used to live in Indiana. – iridescent22:07, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
(ec) My involvement in GA dates from almost exactly the same time (Spring 2007), and in response to very similar concerns to the ones you noted. I hope you will find that GA is now a place that supports your ideals for improving the encyclopedia. Geometry guy22:03, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
I'll come back and try to clear some of the backlog. (As I've remarked there recently, it's now reached the stage where it is literally quicker to expand an article and take it to FAC than wait for a GA review, particularly on obscure or difficult subjects.) – iridescent22:07, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
I can see a problem right away with 'Though Makinti is physically tiny, [she has been described as] "very dynamic and charismatic"', which is a complete non sequitur. I don't think anyone, anywhere, has ever claimed a correlation between charisma and height. Also, some of the most significant place names aren't wikilinked; you can't expect even most Australians, let alone anyone else, to know where "Lupul rockhole in the area of Karrkurritinytja or Lake MacDonald" (all unlinked) is. At a quick skim I'd say probably GA, certainly not FA - but that is just on a quick skim. – iridescent22:56, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I have attempted to address both these issues, and one or two others that have come up. It passed GA in July. I would welcome any further input in coming days. Regards, hamiltonstone (talk) 11:15, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Strong stuff
[1], as the section title says. Still, at least you've not yet been subjected to the sentence-by-sentence trademark analysis that seems to be becoming so popular in certain circles. --MalleusFatuorum20:01, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think I've said a word there I wouldn't stand by. As you may have noticed, my patience with the "oppose, isn't written exactly as I'd have written it" brigade is not high. Nor, to put it bluntly, is my faith in FAC as a process, which is becoming dominated by an ever-shrinking clique. (Yes, the defenders are right in that a constant stream of new people still come to it. What they don't mention is that those who aren't regulars are generally either treated with "how dare you bring this non-MOS-compliant article into our hallowed sanctum" disdain, or outright bullied off, and frankly F&F is one of the worst offenders; I entirely agree with Ottava on that.) This is not a criticism of the way Sandy and co run it, but (in my opinion) of the ever-higher barriers to entry driving off all but the hardcore. I was an unusual case in that by the time I first visited FAC, I had more than two years experience and enough knowledge of policy and procedures to know which issues were genuine and what was posturing and sermonizing, plus the clout of being a high-profile admin with all that carries with it; that shouldn't make a difference, but you know it does. (Sandy and Karanacs, I assume you're watching; if you still believe FAC isn't drowning in a sea of nitpicks, the prosecution presents Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Inner German border/archive1 as the first exhibit.)
It's not just a problem with new nominators, but reviewers who aren't familiar with FAC conventions, and post (valid, as far as they're concerned, given their experience on every other part of Wikipedia) "support, I think this is interesting" comments are treated as barbarian interlopers. Sure, this is probably going to get me flamed off FAC – obviously, its just a coincidence that right after I accuse F&F of using his interminable FAC nitpicking to harass editors he doesn't like, he comments on an FAC nominated by me for the first time in all 13 FACs – but I could/couldn't care less quite frankly; a gold star in the corner makes no difference to the quality of the article, has only a marginal impact on the readership of the article, and I'm coming to believe that the time wasted in dealing with crank opposes more than outweighs any theoretical improvement to the article caused by the FAC process. – iridescent20:24, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not disagreeing with you. There's been more than one FAC that I've regretted taking there, for much the same reasons as you. --MalleusFatuorum20:37, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
You and I (and Ottava, and Moni, and Julian, and the rest of those likely to be reading this) have it better than most, because we know what Sandy's likely to ignore when it comes to closing. Imagine if FAC/Hurricane Grace, or FAC/Marshalsea, for instance, had been submitted by a newcomer to FAC who felt they needed to treat every oppose as equally valid? (Something I suggested to Sandy once was bringing an article up to shoo-in FAC standard using a sock account with no "Wikipedia points", and seeing how rough or smooth a ride it gets. Before Arbcom slams that particular stable door, I may actually do that just to see what happens.) – iridescent20:46, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
We didn't always know that though, and, for me at least, the whole GA/FA thing was a tough learning curve. I guess that's one reason why I've still got such a soft spot for GAN, at least when it's done well; it's a reality check for experienced editors and a learning experience for the not so experienced, without being too traumatising . --MalleusFatuorum21:54, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
(Sorry, didn't notice this last night.) But it's a learning curve that's steep in the wrong places. By all means, "obscure but important parts of policy compliance" such as WP:ACCESS are a learning curve that's there for a good reason, but there's no written guide – nor will there ever be – to all the unwritten guidelines to FAC as a personality-driven process, like "if Fasach Nua and Jappalang disagree over an image's copyright status, go with the latter" or "concerns raised by Tony or Ling.nut are usually valid, but don't feel obliged to follow their suggestions as long as you can justify ignoring them". Something one sees raised again and again from Wikipedia regulars of all persuasions who've taken an article through FAC and then backed away muttering "never again" (from Balloonman to Vintagekits to Mattisse to Giano himself) is that the process is a lottery based on the personalities and prejudices of whoever happens to comment – and that's something one can't expect people to learn.
As I've said before I think the insistence on arbitrary standards has a negative effect on article quality. People confronted by an ever-shifting and ever-growing row of hoops to jump through, with no obvious indication as to which hoops are necessary, are likely to decide the process isn't worth the hassle; and authors with no intention of ever taking an article through an assessment process are likely to disregard compliance requirements, leading to less standardization of formatting and less rigid sourcing.
I know it's a problem at GAN as well – I still have fond memories of Broadwater Farm's GA review with its, um, unusual interpretation of the MOS ("Make all the images 250px!", "Remove the redlinks!", "References must come after punctuation!") – but at least GAN makes an effort to address the matter, and has a relatively quick and painless appeal process. I know I sound like a broken record on the topic, but I do believe FAC is drifting away from "FAs exemplify Wikipedia's very best work" and becoming Category:Articles complying with the Manual of Style, and in so doing losing the individuality and creativity which separates Wikipedia from other projects, and instead attempting to turn us into Encarta II. – iridescent12:52, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
I went through it without looking at the reviews (or reading any specifics complained about above) to see if there were any problems. I have a major head ache and busy with a few things, but I didn't see anything of concern. I'm not going to get involved with the dispute, but I thought you might have wanted an outside opinion about your article for what its worth. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:26, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
As you know, I deliberately asked you to look at the Anglo-Catholicism side, and Ealdgyth to look at the "bishop biography" aspect, before it went anywhere (I think before it was even in mainspace). Concerns from Tony etc I'll take seriously, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over more of F&F's ramblings; I can see from my watchlist he's still posting them, but I've given up reading them let alone replying. My attitude is that if he has anything genuinely valid to raise, Tony or one of his ilk will also raise it without the accompanying mix of rambling, speculation, and demands. – iridescent21:34, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Tony is tough, but he's often right. Fowler&fowler on the other hand represents to me everything that's wrong with FAC. Personal attacks on other reviewers, insisting that everything's done his way, canvassing for support ... something needs to be done to rein him in, else he's going to chase a lot of people away. --MalleusFatuorum21:00, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, reading, but not commenting (except that I hope that you're not flamed off of FAC :) I will comment that input from F&F often results in a restart. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:05, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, well, I'm PMSing and a bit cranky so I'm fighting back. This is getting ridiculous. Iri obviously has READ the various works given and explained why she didn't use another source more. Having someone who hasn't read the book they are "championing" claim that it MUST be used is just ... annoying. And the demands for subtitles in the bibilographic listings all under an "decline" (Why the HELL can't he use the terminology everyone ELSE uses?) is just totally against the criteria. Technically, all we need is the title, publisher and page number/date accessed. MOS asks for fuller bibliographic details in order to locate/verify easier, but nothing requires a subtitle. Ealdgyth - Talk00:54, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
I think this nomination is becoming a poster child for everything that's wrong with FAC, beginning with the personal attacks made by one reviewer on everyone else he believed to be idiotic/lazy/corrupt enough to support this article. Something needs to be done. If Mattisse had made similar comments ... ?--MalleusFatuorum01:01, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
I know it's not likely to get much sympathy in a thread containing you and Sandy, but this kind of thing is what made Mattisse the way she is. She can sometimes be annoying, but she's another who's right more often than wrong, and from her point of view she comes under this kind of thing every day, whereas for me it's just a one off piece of tag-teaming by a pack of cranks; plus, I know that this makes no difference in the scheme of things and she takes things like this more personally.
I do agree with you, though. If Giano, you (Malleus) or Mattisse were to trawl FAC looking for submissions by people you don't like, fill them with reams of semi-coherent demands and rambling personal abuse of anyone disagreeing with you and blatantly canvass for support from anyone you thought might agree with you, you'd be getting an unwelcome visit from Mr Block. This one is neither the first nor the worst case (remember F&F's targeting of the hurricane articles a couple of months ago, his constant harassment of Ottava, or the lunacy of that German Border FAC?). If it derails this particular FAC the most it will do will be slightly irritating, but imagine how this kind of crap and the fact that it's tolerated looks to a newcomer to FAC. Kurt and DougsTech were site-banned for less. – iridescent 202:17, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
I tend not to keep up with most of the FAC noms during the week; I read them through on Tuesday (and I haven't read the on mentioned here yet). I encourage all reviewers and nominators to call other reviewers on bad criteria/personal attacks/etc. There's not a great way to police the process unless the regulars step up... Karanacs (talk) 02:37, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
This is an ongoing frustration; it is up to other editors to raise issues at FAC talk so that Karanacs and I can stay neutral, stay out of the scuffles. We aren't the ones who should be or can police FAC, as that compromises our neutrality. When there are issues on any FAC, other editors should bring them to WT:FAC. I just read a commentary where one nominator thought he had to comply with stylistic changes to citations, and I had to correct that. (No, this is not the kind of thing that "made Mattisse the way she is", but that's not for this page.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Bridges
As an authority on London bridges, do you have a view on the question I've raised at Talk:Westminster Bridge? It might be a particularly-noted feature of the bridge that needs a decent source, or it might just be silliness, so I'd welcome your views. BencherliteTalk23:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd say absolutely not worth mentioning. Anything in a trefoil shape will cast a shadow that looks like a cock-and-balls when the sun's at a particular angle; since the trefoil is a very common motif in Gothic architecture, there's nothing particularly remarkable about this instance. – iridescent18:31, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Hope you're still around
Hey, Iridescent. Just wanted to drop a message off here, wondering that you're still around. I hope that the whole Mandall Creighton affair over at FAC hasn't got you down or anything, because it shouldn't have; I think you did everything right, and that Creighton deserves to be an FA. Anyway, hope to see you around, doing the same damn fine FA work you have in the past. Cheers, Skinny87 (talk) 18:20, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Still here but busy at the moment. Because the Mandell Creighton saga spun out far longer than anticipated it was closed while I was away (probably just as well, as I suspect my replies to Team Mattisse would have been less than civil). – iridescent18:31, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm disgusted by this, from the Chief of Civility Police. I've tried acid myself when I was at university, and I very well know what it can do. Is there any way of getting this nutcase relieved of his tools asap? --MalleusFatuorum06:19, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
It wouldn't go anywhere. Remember, Wikipedia's run by 20-somethings (yes I'm stereotyping, but not by much); look back to what you were like at that age. You and I are old enough to know acid casualties and LSD-suicides and see just how much it wrecks its users long-term, but I'm sure when you were that age you thought you were immortal too. If this were to go anywhere, Arbcom would probably privately sympathise with you (given that Arbcom's current most prominent members are a lawyer and a Mormon respectively), but wouldn't dare take any action. – iridescent 211:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't care what substances people consume in the privacy of their own homes, but I don't want to have to factor into the stupidity that goes on here the possibility that the administrators may be tripping. It's bad enough when they're evidently and self-confessedly drunk. --MalleusFatuorum15:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Ha. I just feel, oddly, like saying "Propriety!" When you get drunk, stoned, or drop hits, propriety demands you enjoy it by staying off of Wikipedia and decreasing the probability that you edit while intoxicated. Strangeness should not have to be excused; it should not occur in the first place. Drugs are to be used as an escape...from the crap that goes on here, not as something that factors in to the bullshit that makes one want to escape in the first place. --Moni3 (talk) 13:12, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
I always wondered one day whether there'd be a sooper dooper monobook code which could remotely sense chemicals through fingertips all round the world..and the fonts would change accordingly, so alcohol --> comic sans and brown, cannabis --> green ( and some groovy hipy font but I can think of a specific one), and LSD would be...um WingDings I think...Casliber (talk·contribs) 14:22, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
That about sums it up. Since Chillum is apparently sometimes on Wikipedia while on acid, this should affect how much trust we place in him to use his tools. If someone ran for RfA and this came up in the process, they'd be laughed out. Nev1 (talk) 16:09, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
On the contrary, my drug use got a few winks and chuckles at my RfA. The only opposition had nothing to do with it. Chillum18:09, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
I learned a valuable lesson when I was 20 years old and inexperienced with drinking. My gf at the time (who was an alcoholic, though she denied it) told me that the trick to drinking is to portray yourself as never drunk. Only alcoholics and children think it's funny to be inebriated in public. When I start to teeter and am unable to keep myself upright, that lesson stuck with me so that that's my cue to go home and reel, fall, and walk into walls and chairs in the privacy of my own home. The same goes for Wikipedia. --Moni3 (talk) 16:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
[2] It appears that Chillum will not be forth coming as to how his drug use may or may not affect his judgment as an admin. As such, I think that an RfC will be necessary if he continues to refuse, as he cannot be trusted with the ops until a clear explanation is given so his judgment can be determined as correct or not. Combined with his secret secondary account, this is problematic. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:07, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
All drugs are not equal. I've got no problem with Chillum's evident use of cannabis, for instance, but powerful hallucinogenics are quite another matter, made more serious by the secrecy surrounding Chillum's secondary account. Does he only use that one when hallucinating? Why is he editing wikipedia when under the influence of hallucinegics? --MalleusFatuorum18:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
On the contrary, it's very simple. You were very evidently editing wikipedia when under the influence of a hallucinogenic. Can you be trusted when in that condition? --MalleusFatuorum18:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Chillum, stay off of drugs when editing Wikipedia. Just stay off. Seriously. I could smoke you under the table--I'm not a prude. Just don't come on Wikipedia when altered. That you advertise it as if it's something to be proud of says more about your judgment than the drugs, but it compounds the problem. Edit here. Smoke off. Very simple. --Moni3 (talk) 18:31, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
It should be noted that there is no indication that he edited Wikipedia under the influence. He made no edits and took no administrative actions between posting his beginning-of-trip and end-of-trip notifications. Malleus and Ottava are just harrassing him, despite a complete lack of evidence that he edited Wikipedia. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:34, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
That is blatantly untrue. Unless you happen to know the name of Chillums's secret secondary account you have no way of knowing whether there's any indication or not. --MalleusFatuorum18:46, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
The mere fact that Chillum may have an alternate account does not strike me as an indication that he was editing using it at any given time. He's not using his primary account, so he must be editing with his other account is certainly one possible explanation for the quiescence of his primary account. Other reasonable explanations include, he was asleep or he thought he was stuck to the wallpaper, or he was listening to Pink Floyd. Do you have any evidence-based reason to prefer the first explanation over any of the others? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:07, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
I have exactly as much evidence that he was as you do that he wasn't. Hence I challenged your claim to know that he had not done so. Do you not see any difficulty with an administrator using and undisclosed secondary account, or are you so bewitched by the idea of AGF that you cannot see what's staring you in the face? Do you believe that it demonstrates good judgement to put a message on your talk page asking for understanding over the next few hours for anything stupid you might do because you've just taken a tab of acid? If the answer to that question is "No, that seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do", then there really is no point in continuing with this discussion. --MalleusFatuorum19:54, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Why is there a presumption of guilt, particularly in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing? For that matter, why is there an assumed problem with the secondary account? Why would Chillum use his second account to engage in drug-addled abusive behaviour when he could just log out? You could seek evidence through appropriate channels (WP:RFCU or WP:ArbCom), but I agree — as long as you prefer to raise baseless accusations there isn't any point in continuing this discussion. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:08, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
There is no presumption of either guilt or innocence. There is simply common sense, which seems to be in rather short supply around here. Chillum has a secret alternate account. Chillum admits to editing while under the influence of hallucinogenics. Would he even remember if he'd used his alternate account during those episodes? Do you think it's appropriate for an administrator to be active while under the influence of hallucinogenics? Apparently you do, but I sure as hell don't. --MalleusFatuorum20:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Where did Chillum state that he edited under the influence of hallucinogens, using any account? When did he use his administrative powers while under the influence? If there were evidence to support that Chillum repeatedly misused his admin tools, I would join you in clamoring for his bit. I would take recurring misuse of tools while under the influence as an exacerbating factor, and encourage a rapid desysopping if he were adminning inappropriately while altered. You still haven't offered any evidence of these things, and you seem averse to using the appropriate channels to resolve the issue. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:31, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps you can't read. Was he also on acid 39 minutes earlier when he issued another one of his increasingly tedious civility warnings?[3] And given that we don't know the name of his secondary account, why assume that he didn't use his administrative powers while under the influence, or that he has never done so in the past? As for "appropriate channels", there are none to deal with this kind of administrative misbehaviour, or indeed any kind of administrative misbehaviour. --MalleusFatuorum20:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
You can make such requests on my talk page, I will not be engaging in this sort of debate on a third parties talk page. Chillum18:33, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Who is debating? Either stay off drugs while editing, or it should be assumed that all your edits are made under the influence, and therefore, not sober, not sound. --Moni3 (talk) 18:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Can't you tell by just looking at the edits? Saying you don't want to debate then repeating your point expecting me to accept it is self-contradictory. Now seriously take it to my talk page or let it go. Chillum18:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
I am not saying I don't wish to debate; I'm saying there is no debate. Are you unable to understand this? I cannot help myself: are you high right now? Is that what keeps you from comprehending? On Malleus' page a few days ago, you posted that name-calling is a nono, referring to Malleus characterizing either you or ... whoever else that was... as "pompous". You declined to reply when I pointed out that name calling inherently uses nouns, and no names were called. These are simple discrepancies, but you posed your comment as a warning. You warn to block although you demonstrate you do not understand. What is the root of your misunderstanding? --Moni3 (talk) 18:47, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Until you reveal the name of your secret secondary account there is no way for anyone to check your edits, so you can't be trusted. --MalleusFatuorum18:49, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Update
[4] - he goes on a wikibreak after his defenders start claiming he was joking and he refused to say either way. Then it was pointed out that he sent me a harassing email in which it made it seem like he wasn't joking. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I went on wikibreak after being harassed by you for 10 hours. If you meant to drive me off to another website then mission accomplished. Chillum01:52, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Simple questions with simple answers. People were claiming you were joking. You did not correct them or admit that it was all just a joke. You have only yourself to blame for over 7 people disrupting in your "defense" and making a mockery out of Jimbo's talk page. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
As I told you in response to your harassing email, there were at least 10 people who make blatant statements that your actions were inappropriate. If you think allowing someone to claim that you were merely "joking" and refusing to answer if you actually were or not is some how appropriate, and then attacking others for questioning you about it, then there is something really broken with your ability to process what is right or wrong. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Wow, you harass me for 10 hours then I send you an e-mail asking you to stop and it is a "harassing" e-mail? Leave me alone, you are driving me away from Wikipedia. Not just because of what you do, but because the community lets you do it. Chillum02:03, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I have only made a handful of posts to your talk page. All were directly on point and all were asking you direct questions to explain certain comments made by you. Your continual use of "harassment" is in direct violation of WP:CIVIL. Your actions have been incredibly disruptive and personalized. You have refused to explain your own inappropriateness, nor do you try to put forth simple answers to allow for people to have a sense of what you were doing. The defense made by you and made by others can only be described as hysterical, as it is saying many different things with little evidence and throwing out hyperbolic terms such as "witchhunt" and comparisons to Kafka over a simple question. Thus, this is evidence that you and your defenders believed that you have really screwed up. You have damned yourself far more than anyone opposed to you could have. The irony is that you probably can't understand that fact. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Just let it go man. These "defenders" you speak of are for the most part strangers to me. They are not disagreeing with you because they like me, they are doing so because you are acting disruptively. You sure have ruined my day. Thanks for that. Chillum02:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Lets see, the person asking a simple and straight forward question, or multiple people making incivil comments, personal attacks, and an admin that refuses to answer straight forward questions about their behavior and claim it is disruption when asked. Chillum, you are being disruptive, and if you never come back then Wikipedia is all the better. The fact that you still refuse to admit if it was a joke or not shows that you cannot be trusted. All you have to do is answer -one- simple question. One. Was it a joke? Ottava Rima (talk) 02:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Chillum is threatening me with blocks via email. One of his defenders has been making similar claims, and it is most likely that they have been in communication, as the two have been in sychronicity in most of their comments so far. Threats are probably a major statement that there is impropriety. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I find Chillum's "you are driving me away from Wikipedia" comment to be quite ironic. How many editors has his civility police driven away? --MalleusFatuorum02:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Don't lie about what I have sent over e-mail, post the entire e-mail instead of your slanted view if you must. Let is go man. Chillum02:40, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
"Please just stop or somebody is going to block you. " Hard to be more clear than that, Chillum. And your admittance that you weren't joking about doing drugs: "Take a hint, nobody gives a shit what drugs I do. The more you harp on about it the more you are going to look foolish. Wikipedia is not the place for people to wage drug wars." You think it is a "drug war". You poor victim. You bully, threaten, and what state of mind are you even in? You lack the capacity to be an effective admin, and your inappropriate attacks verify that. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I haven't accused -anyone- of being high. However, that is the second time you made the claim without proof. You are violating WP:NPA. There are many admin who watch this page, as with the other page. Please try to stay within our policies. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm surprised! Yours is another source of wisdom and chuckles :) No wonder Ottava announced the Gurchism at my page. I should put up an advertising space and collect fees! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:56, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Wouldn't that be contrary to the spirit of the wiki? :) But ya, maybe ads would be a good idea! :) (KIDDING) ++Lar: t/c23:52, 1 November 2009 (UTC) (who came here to read what the Chillum fuss was about)
Please do! I'm only 3 behind her now so every little bit helps (not that numbers matter any) :) ++Lar: t/c02:38, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Somebody somewhere in my talk archives one posted some stat about my talk page having a ridiculously high number of posts, just behind Jimbo and somebody else. I personally think that Iri and Malleus are trying to lower my "rank" in the community talk page hierarchy :)) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
It's not the number of posts, it's the number of watchers :) Anyone can have a lot of blather at their page, it's when people watch :) ++Lar: t/c02:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
By the way, that's a cool tool! FAC has 900 watchers, while FAR has only 200. But WP:FA has 1,300 (I should stop fixing errors there and leave it to others!) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:52, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
About those ad revenues ... While I'm thrilled to be included with the likes of WWE employees, I suspect they get paid much more than I do. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:05, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Four Award
I was wonder if you or any of your talk page watchers would care to look at this FAC, as it was part of London culture. There doesn't seem to be too many active Brits about in the area and it would be nice to have a few more. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 23:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, no problem. Sorry for getting snappy; Jake's apparent implication that he can't think of a bigger problem facing Wikipedia than the fact that MZMcBride and I are still technically "in good standing" by Wikipedia's bizarre definition – but of course, doesn't have the balls to come and actually ask us about it – has made me even less inclined to AGF than usual. My opinion of Shalom actually went up considerably for the way in which he handled Jake's question, which I at least half-suspect was specifically designed to provoke a flare-up from him. If Jake had actually bothered to ask, instead of uncritically believing what he reads on Wikipedia Review, he'd have noticed that MZM already went through a reconfirmation RFA, and I've explicitly said that I'll do the same if I ever wanted adminship for more than a few exceptional circumstances – a complicated history-merge that would take too long to explain to someone else, for example.
To every "you have lost all trust!!!" person, my usual suggestion, of going through my admin stats – iridescent(talk·contribs·blocks·protections·deletions·moves·rights) – and finding one single action with which you'd disagree, still stands. (Incidentally, looking at that I've actually got my timings wrong; I was still technically a sysop for a couple of months after Law's RFA, although aside from uncontroversial cleanup, cleaning out Kelly Martin's userspace, and a couple of short IP vandal-blocks I didn't take any admin actions.)
And no, it has not escaped my notice that all the current crop of crusaders against zOMG!!!evil!!11! sockpuppets!!!, including a reasonable smattering of Arbs, are turning a blind eye to PoetTaxCorn's new account despite the "anyone who knows a banned editor is currently contributing must declare it, or it's a disgraceful breach of trust" pomposity. – iridescent22:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure MZMcBride went through a reconfirmation before it all came out in the open. As for Shalom, I find it hard to say, but his statement is certainly one of the better ones, in my opinion. It's a shame he turned into a sockpuppeting troll. Majorlytalk22:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, it will teach me to be more careful. I thought I had caught all the loaded questions, guess I was too trusting on that one.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
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Your involvement in Mandell Creighton and other U.K. history topics prompt me to ask you to review Amazing Grace, which I rewrote and posted yesterday. I would like to get it to FA, so anything you can suggest I would appreciate. There is a peer review here. Thank you. --Moni3 (talk) 19:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
When I get the chance but don't hold your breath. At the moment any comments I make are going to be driveby snatched-moment comments similar to those a couple of threads up. Besides, I'm decidedly uninclined to do anything to help Wikipedia as long as the "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Jimbo" banner currently defacing every page remains in place, and am less than impressed by standard question #29 at the Arbcom elections. If you haven't already you probably ought to ask Ottava on this one; he has the Christianity-and-poetry background to comment cogently on the context, but AG isn't part of the standard RCC hymn set so he's probably more willing and able to be critical.
I can say right now that to me, on a quick skim it looks far too US-centric (fifteen entries in the "in popular culture" section, every one of which is American), and contains some outright howlers ("A military band named the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards"? The band that plays "Hail to the Chief" isn't "a military band named the US Marine Corps"). And while I'm sure it will help the article at FAC, I'm not sure it really needs two long paragraphs on the fact that Scotty once played it on the bagpipes in Star Trek. And if Elvis Presley really recorded a version of Amazing Grace in 1994, someone somewhere has got some serious explaining to do. – iridescent23:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Shall I wait for you to be in a more amenable mood then until you get a chance to read the entire thing? I know Elvis died in 1977; his estate released it in 1994. The article addresses its centrism in the U.S. and that until about the 1950s it was relatively unknown in the U.K., only one paragraph discusses Star Trek and the one following it discusses the song's foray into being overused. I understand your lack of enthusiasm for Wikipedia. I get frustrated with it too. I just deal with mine by writing articles...the wrong ones apparently... Should stick to something so obscure that it teeters on AfD. --Moni3 (talk) 23:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Looking back a week later, I'm still uncomfortable with the US-centrism. Yes, its primary cultural significance has historically been in the US; yes, it's more of a "core" piece of popular culture in the US than in the UK, Canada, Australia etc; but from the current tone of the article, one gets the strong impression that it's not well known in other countries. "Outside of the United States, the song was unknown" may well have been true in 1892, but that just isn't the case today. It's almost certainly the single best known piece of religious music in modern Britain (the most-requested hymn at Church of England weddings) and a core part of popular culture (turning up everywhere from Amazing Grace, the musical, to the – British – Amazing Grace (2006 film), to the British Lions rugby squad), and while I don't know about other English-speaking countries, this implies that there's a similar situation in Canada. Although there are a few nods to Britain in the article ("In the U.K. [Judy Collins's recording] charted eight times between 1970 and 1972, peaking at number 5 and spending a total of 75 weeks on popular music charts", "As of 2002, [[the Royal Scots Dragoons' recording] was the best-selling instrumental record in British history"*) there's little mention of Britain and no mention of any other country at all. – iridescent08:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
*I'm not convinced by "best-selling instrumental record in British history", given the all-pervasive Tubular Bells, but I've no idea what the relative sales figures are.
Baker Street and Waterloo Railway
After a long period of working on other things, I have finally finished Baker Street and Waterloo Railway, which completes the Yerkes tube set. I've nominated it for Good Article first, but, if the backlog's too great, I may send it off to FA directly. Central London Railway next I think. --DavidCane (talk) 04:07, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
(Will add to these as and when; my time is limited at the moment so will be in dribs and drabs)
I think the stretch between Bushey and Watford Junction is depicted incorrectly on File:Baker Street & Waterloo Railway.png. You've shown it as following the modern West Coast Main Line route, but the DC line via Watford High Street makes a very sharp westward bend just north of Bushey, to join the old line to Croxley Green. – iridescent23:12, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
[Slap's forehead] Of course it does. Not sure how that happened, looks like I forgot to pull the top end of the line into the correct shape. Fixed.--DavidCane (talk) 13:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
The 1906 and 1908 maps (and the "Planning the route" section) show Marylebone station, but it didn't get that name until 1917; it would have still been Great Central in this period. – iridescent23:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
It appears to have been referred to as Marylebone before it opened so I've left the pre opening maps with that name and changed to Great Central for 1906 and 1908 and added a note explaining why it wasn't named Marylebone as previously planned. Thanks --DavidCane (talk) 13:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
OK, this one's a real nitpick; "The W&CR was the only tube railway...", "The original tube railway, the C&SLR..." and so on. I know what you mean, and anyone with a background in engineering or transport knows what you mean, but to most people (as I'm always saying, Wikipedia articles are aimed at the general public, not other Wikipedia editors) a "tube train" isn't a train running in a bored as opposed to a dug tunnel; it's any train operated by the former London Transport (which, after all, has a "tube map", not a "tube, sub-surface lines, and assorted commuter lines in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire which were acquired during the Metropolitan Railway's surreal attempt to connect Manchester and Paris to London's commuter network and subsequently passed to the LPTB map"); only about 30% of what most people would consider "tube lines" are true tube lines. I think it needs some kind of idiot lecture - or at the very least a wikilink - to explain the difference between tube, sub-surface and short-distance commuter railway.
There's a definition of tube railway in note 1 in the lead which was suggested during one of the other tube articles' reviews.--DavidCane (talk) 23:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
"at the forefront of debates as to the level of regulation and public control under which transport services should be brought" may be grammatically correct, but if you take it to FAC Tony will shout at you.
The exact same sentence is already in the CS&LR, CCE&HR and GNP&BR articles and I got away with it there at least once. :) --DavidCane (talk) 23:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
"ownership was shared between with the LNWR" definitely isn't grammatically correct, and if you take it to FAC Tony will shout at you. – iridescent21:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, it's passed its GA review already. I'll be waiting a week or so before I nominate for FA as I have a lot of work to do over the next few days. If you spot any more improvements I'll add these in before I send it off for it's ritual spanking. --DavidCane (talk) 23:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
The "Extent of Railway in 1933" diagram in the Opening section shows the junction with the DC line to Euston and London Road depot. If it shows these, it ought to show the twin curves to Rickmansworth Church Street and Croxley Green, and Stonebridge Park depot as well. You've missed out a tunnel (Intersection Tunnel) between Wembley Central and Stonebridge Park, as well.
I didn't include Stonebridge Park depot as it wasn't built until the 1970s to replace the former Bakerloo Depot at Neasden lost to the line when the Jubilee line took over the Stanmore branch.
The tunnel between Stonebridge and Wembley is actually more of a very wide bridge. I left this out for clarity as I haven't shown other bridges
Ought there to be a note somewhere about South Kenton (opened two days after the transfer to LPTB, so correctly omitted from the "at the time of transfer" diagram, but nonetheless open in 1933 so slightly confusing); would it make sense to recaption the diagram "Extent of railway at the time of transfer to public ownership" or similar?
I've recaptioned it to "Extent of railway at transfer to LPTB, 1933"
"Trafalgar Square and Regent's Park stations had no surface buildings and are accessed by subways from the street" mixes tenses. I'm not sure of an obvious way to fix it, though; putting it in the past tense ("were accessed by subways") implies that it's no longer the case, and putting in in the present tense ("they have no surface buildings") reads oddly to me. You might want to run this one by someone like Malleus.
I had the same thoughts about the mixed tense. I think "...were built with subway access from the street instead of surface buildings." does the job.--DavidCane (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
If you can find one, it would really benefit from a picture of a Gate Stock carriage, as they were so distinctive. A contemporary press photo would be out of copyright under US law, so could be legitimately uploaded to en-wiki even if it weren't permissible on Commons; there's also one preserved at Acton, which someone here must have taken a photo of at some point.
Still looking. The only ones I have found to date on the internet are on the London Transport Museum collection site. Some of these might be out of copyright but its not certain if they were published at the time. --DavidCane (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
File:Compound of Piccadilly Circus Tube Station.jpg is an awful picture - blurred, unfocused, and not showing any of the period detail of the station which is relevant to this article. Additionally, the prominence of the automated barriers (which obviously wouldn't have been there in 1933) seems quite jarring to me. I can see that there's nothing better on Commons but I'd be tempted to leave it out, or recreate a free-use version of this diagram to show the effects of the reconstruction. – iridescent10:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Adding - how about this as an alternative - it's as close as it's possible to get nowadays to a view of what it would have looked like in the 1930s, as from this angle the Oyster machines, ticket barriers, and garish posters aren't visible. Shame about the buckets, but you can't have everything... – iridescent14:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Excellent! Much better and well positioned to get the famous clock in as well. I agree, the one currently on the page is absolutely dreadful. I tried both Flickr and Geographer for an image but no one seems to have taken a picture of the concourse area (lots of platform shots). I'm going to a function in Piccadilly next week and was going to grab a picture then but you've saved me the effort. --DavidCane (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Facs, bridges, whatever
I have been tossing around an idea for a while now about starting a page just to list upcoming FACs and current FACs dealing with the RGV periods of British history (Restoration, Georgian, and Victorian). Your bridges tend to fall into that rather often and I was wondering if you (and others watching this page) would want to just post notes and the rest. Mostly, it would be an ad hoc type of project devoted to just keeping people informed on things related to the empire at its most important time. History, geography, architecture, biography, literature, science, etc, doesn't really matter, as it would be all things that fall within the above imperial time period and just to allow people to know that there is an ongoing FAC or will be within the interest area. What do you think? Ottava Rima (talk) 04:33, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Meh. Although I twice made an effort to give the FAC process a fair try, my opinions both of FAC as a process and of the whole "Wikipedia's best content" conceit are no different to what they were this time last year. (NB; not a dig at Sandy, Raul etc, who do the best they can at an impossible job, but at the futility of content-ranking in the nailing-Jello-to-the-wall enviroment of open editing and shifting criteria.) Besides, British architecture is generally organic; when it comes to the major structures such as bridges, castles and the like one generally can't pigeonhole them as from a particular period as they're constantly being fiddled with (there have been seven London Bridges alone in the last 2000 years). It makes more sense to break them down regionally than by period; a 17 century Scottish castle has more in common with an 18th century Scottish castle than with a 17th century English castle. The London-related FAs are listed here and the Manchester ones are here; for the Victorian period at least, one can generally equate "London and Manchester" with "the entire country". Besides, given Wikipedia's unusual demographics, there probably aren't many England FAs that aren't about one or the other.
Besides, it's getting more obvious by the day that the Wikipedia project has either passed, or is heading unstoppably towards, the tipping point where continued maintenance ceases to have value, as the project's visibly collapsing under its own internal stresses and degenerating into squabbling factions, and the more obvious that gets the more likely it becomes that the funders pull the plug. What matters now is getting what's there as factual, accurate, relevant, timely and stable as possible in preparation for the Great Export to Knol mk.II or the like which is now looking inevitable once Microsoft, Apple or Google decides they've had enough of the buzzing from Jimbo's fly. (As has occasionally been pointed out, for all the "eighth biggest site on the web" bombast, Google could switch Wikipedia off like a light just by removing the artificial boost PageRank gives to Wikipedia pages – it was introduced on the "better a Wikipedia page as the first hit then a spammer" principle, but with the anti-spam technology so improved and a greater likelihood that there'll be a legitimate non-Wikipedia page on any given subject, it's an anachronism that's increasingly hard to justify.) I still pop by in Keeper Mode every couple of days to clean bits and pieces up anonymously, but my days of wasting time taking squabbling mentally ill people seriously are over. – iridescent01:48, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't care what the period is or if they can't be classified by a period. They still matter to what is "British" or "English" or "Londonish" (?) and many existed during important times defining the period. :) Mostly, the ad hoc project would just list what people are working on that relates to the "Empire". Ottava Rima (talk) 02:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
The wikpedia experiment is clearly failing, but the small percentage of decent content is thankfully available for a rationally run project to adopt. Sadly, the prospect of wikipedia itself ever becoming a "rationally run project" appears to be as close to zero as makes no difference. --MalleusFatuorum02:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
In retrospect, the failure of Veropedia was a real missed opportunity. A two-tier model, with an open-editing froth feeding into a relatively stable upper core, would seem the best model to get something useful from the Wiki model (and indeed was Larry's intention when he founded Wikipedia as the feeder site for the peer-reviewed Nupedia). Just a shame that Danny Wool is, well, Danny Wool. – iridescent02:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
ING direct will sponsor free travel on the Underground at New Year's Eve
Maida Vale tube station received the National Rail Heritage Award due to its modernisation
November
Blackwall Tunnel temporarily closed because a vehicle caught fire
A new ticket hall is installed at Kings Cross St Pancras station giving a 30 per cent increase in capacity with more entrances and escalators as well as lifts installed giving most of the remaining lines at this station step-free access for disabled passengers. The exception to this is the Northern Line with works still occurring until mid 2010.
New bridges installed at Limehouse station to provide easier interchange between DLR and National Rail services
A new campaign is launched warning Londoners of unbooked minicabs.
South Croydon railway station is to cut its power from the National Grid and instead have its CCTV and lighting powered by solar panels to be installed. This is part of an effort to go green and have a big cut in carbon emissions
The Docklands Light Railway celebrates 10 years of its Lewisham extension
Oyster Pay As You Go now accepted on Thames Clipper services
Oyster Pay As You Go to be accepted on all National Rail services in London from 2 January 2010
The TfL Lost Property Office has donated a lot of new toys to the Salvation Army to help disadvantaged children in south London
During the festive period, London Overground will be operating extra services on Saturdays to help Christmas shoppers
Bendy buses to be removed from route 38 to be replaced by double-decker buses
New traffic light timings in Camden Town on trial, giving green light to those within speed limit and red light to speeders
Coca-cola to sponsor LU busking over Christmas period
new Surface Transport and Traffic Operations Centre opened by Duke of York
Brixton Hill gyratory removed
Member News
No new members to report.
This WikiProject would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
General
Baker Street and Waterloo Railway was promoted to good article. Well done to DavidCane. This now also on as a candidate for featured article. Otherwise this month has been again fairly quiet. The portal went through a candidacy for featured portal with not much luck. The areas of the portal are becoming more active with the voting and changing of the selected pictures and articles. The transport news seems has started to be updated again but with the most up-to-date news being in this newsletter. Did you know is being improved.
As usual all suggestions to improving the Metropolitan are welcome so if you have one we would be happy to hear from you.
I am sorry for the previous editions for being late as well as this one due to being busy
Thank you to Sunil060902 for the gallery update
If you think there is anything else i have missed, please drop me a note or leave a message at The Metropolitan's feedback page. Also if you feel you want to do an edition, again leave me a message.
...that Belsize Park station is one of the only eight stations in London to have a deep level bomb shelter beneath it?
…that Mile End tube station is the only station on the London Underground network from which it is possible to reach any other station with only a single change of train?
If you want to stop receiving this newsletter or, if you are visiting this userpage and want to sign up for this newsletter, then please visit this page. You may also like to provide your opinions on this newsletter by visiting The Metropolitan's feedback page or the project's discussion page. Any other issues with this, don't be afraid to drop a line at Simply south's talkpage.
Please provide any suggestions for any improvements to this newsletter and any comments or anything else to include in the next issue at the place mentioned above.
Hello again! A long while after the dust has settled upon the SECR N class FA (after gaining access to a new source, I feel it still needs a bit of jiggery-pokery, but it'll do for the moment), EdJogg and I have been discussing whether or not to elevate the above article to FA status. That's a little in the future, but it still needs a peer review for current prose and clarity issues, and I am wondering if you'd like to help? Any advice or edits you can make on our behalf would be gratefully appreciated. Regards, --Bulleid Pacific (talk) 21:10, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
At the moment I'm shuttling about and only taking very occasional passing glances into Wikipedia, so may not have time any time soon. If you haven't already, you probably want to ask Malleus to look at it now; as you know, he invariably raises assorted issues with the locomotive articles at FAC, so you may as well get the objections resolved beforehand; you probably also ought to ask DavidCane to have a look. Be aware that the combination of the dip in reviewers that always happens at this time of year, and the apparent colonization of FAC by a gang of obsessive serial-opposers, means that any FAC is likely to get two or three opposes come what may; don't panic if that happens, Sandy will disregard them if they're not valid points. – iridescent00:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, having been one of the editors involved with the N class FAC, I found a fair amount of criticism subjective rather than objective, with several different views on how the prose should manifest itself. I also think I blotted the proverbial copy-book with Malleus on that one, too, and I seem to recall that he's only doing GAC and FACs rather than Peer reviews. No matter, will wait and see. --Bulleid Pacific (talk) 19:47, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if Malleus will appreciate my saying it, but don't take the grumpy old man routine too seriously. He generally is right, and when he's wrong he's usually happy to admit it as long as you can explain to him why he's wrong. 217.28.34.132 (talk) 13:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Fan mail
--YOU SSSNOBBB--
Why are you such a f.....g snob. I've seen several of your remarks and they all seem to be high and mighty, , 'facebook for ugly people', 'social network for nerds' , what wikipedia is becoming. Why not just add your brilliant content to articles, dredged up from your beautiful superlative mind, housed in your beautiful non-nerd body, and shove your nasty thoughts into the garbage can. The fact you spend so much time on talkpages is revealing. Why don't you get a life yourself instead of being mean-minded and horrible to people. Or leave wikipedia since you despise so many of the cretin contributors. 92.19.31.193 (talk) 01:15, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, editing Wikipedia isn't without real-world benefits. For example, they say laughter is the best medicine, and there is evidence that laughter can relieve the effects of stress. So if reading comments like the above does not save a pile of money, at least it saves some time spent in the doctor's office. J.delanoygabsadds04:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
"You spend all your time on talkpages" is a fair point. This account only has 82,000 mainspace edits, after all, and I have made a massive 14 edits to talkpages in the last month. (An AOL account with a grudge – that takes me right back to the Golden Age of Internet Loons. AOL nutjobs are a dying breed these days.) – iridescent12:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
The Georgetown Heckler
Iridescent, I restored an article you deleted in August 2008, and wanted to let you know. The Georgetown Heckler, whose deletion I did not contend, has received a good deal of unfortunate local press this week for a satirical article in its recent issue that some labeled as racist. I've dug up a copy of the old article, and added the new information to it. Thanks!-- Patrick {oѺ∞} 17:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Map
I thought that any photo taken on the Underground was allowed, as long as flash wasn't used. I seriously did not know i was not allowed to use this. Simply south (talk) 15:09, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Don't worry, nobody understands CDPA and even the most experienced editors get caught out by it; basically, you can take photos of anything three dimensional that's on public display, which is why Underground sign at Westminster.jpg is allowed but not a photo of one of the "flat" signs on the station walls. TfL are notorious for hassling anyone they think is violating their copyright (to the extent that people drawing their own versions of tube maps always use other angles than Beck's 45°/90° arrangement). – iridescent15:25, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
I can't as I'm no longer an admin (having spent so long arguing that admins should be limited to a two year term, I put my money where my mouth was and resigned). This talkpage is one of the most watched pages on Wikipedia; if anyone wants to delete it (or decide that it's valid to keep) File:Circle Line extension on cental London tube map.JPG is the image in question. – iridescent02:47, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Interestingly, you quoted the relevant bit in your comment on Chutznik's talk page: accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. There's nothing wrong with listing RFA votes along with a summary of the rationale; that it was slightly off in the details isn't dishonest. If Chutznik is embarrassed about his previous behavior, he has no one to blame but himself. He has no business attacking other editors because they pointed it out. Parsecboy (talk) 16:05, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Posted a couple of sources on the talkpage. The Dorset article looks pretty good for background; despite looking like a blog it's a reputable publication. He can join Almeric Paget in Wikipedia's very occasional "self-caricaturing Tory MPs" series. – iridescent22:15, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
You mentioned this article to me before, but I finally took a look at it. I'm afraid you were right, and I've delisted it as a GA. I left a few notes in the review, but you know at least as well as me where it falls down, and probably a great deal better than me. --MalleusFatuorum03:38, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
No argument at all (as you know). That article was fine three years ago, but hasn't been updated since and I have no intention of being the one to update it; their obsession with secrecy makes it almost impossible to source, and it's such a boring subject that I'm not going to spend time looking. – iridescent17:23, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Rotherhithe Tunnel to close from Sunday to Thursday nights for the next three weeks for installation of pedestrian signage, power cables and additional pollution monitoring equipment.
December 2009
Oyster Pay-as-you-go introduced across all London stations in early January
Wrightbus to build the routemaster-based new London bus design
RMT accepts London Underground's staff payment deal
Closure of Fareham Street means bus diversions. This is so that there can be construction works on the Crossrail interchange at Tottenham Court Road station.
Arbiter finds that costs of Tube Lines upgrade closer to London Underground ltd estimate than theirs.
Leigible London scheme introduced to make information more available for pedestrians. This is first being used in the borough of Richmond upon Thames
When the London cycle hire scheme is launched, the first half hour will be free
Over £3 million to be spent on improving loca transport in Merton borough and other funding allocated to ther boroughs across London for transport improvements
Borough High Street to be northbopund only untril July due to major utility and gas works
Redevelopment of Tottenham Court Road to begin in early 2010
Permits for roadworks to be introduced on January 11th 2010
ING direct sponsor free travel on the Underground at New Year's Eve
Maida Vale tube station received the National Rail Heritage Award due to its modernisation
Member News
No new members to report.
This WikiProject would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
General
Baker Street and Waterloo Railway is now a candidate for featured article. Otherwise this and the last last couple of months have again been fairly quiet. The portal went through a candidacy for featured portal with not much luck. The areas of the portal are becoming more active with the voting and changing of the selected pictures and articles. The transport news seems has started to be updated again but with the most up-to-date news being in this newsletter. Did you know is being improved.
As usual all suggestions to improving the Metropolitan are welcome so if you have one we would be happy to hear from you.
Hello and Happy New Year from me and generally the London Transport project.
Thank you to Sunil060902 for the December gallery update
If you think there is anything else i have missed, please drop me a note or leave a message at The Metropolitan's feedback page. Also if you feel you want to do an edition, again leave me a message.
Again i would like to state this newsletter is looking for anyone willing to do an issue.
Discussion arose over the addition or removal of succession boxes showing the present London Underground lines and their histories as well as former services. Another discussion arose on boxes showing stations layouts
Separate issues arose over the population of aboandoned London Undeground projects categories and categories on single station platforms
...that Belsize Park station is one of the only eight stations in London to have a deep level bomb shelter beneath it?
…that Mile End tube station is the only station on the London Underground network from which it is possible to reach any other station with only a single change of train?
If you want to stop receiving this newsletter or, if you are visiting this userpage and want to sign up for this newsletter, then please visit this page. You may also like to provide your opinions on this newsletter by visiting The Metropolitan's feedback page or the project's discussion page. Any other issues with this, don't be afraid to drop a line at Simply south's talkpage.
Please provide any suggestions for any improvements to this newsletter and any comments or anything else to include in the next issue at the place mentioned above.
I went looking for books on the rail network around Belle Vue Zoo, as per your comments, and got distracted by a lovely little book on Manchester's horse-drawn
tramcompanies. What caught my eye was a photo of a terminus outside a pub very close to me, next to which is a timber merchant. I'd often idly wondered why a timber merchant would have such a grand entrance, and now I know it's because it was originally built as a depot to store the trams for the Manchester Carriage and Tramways Company. --MalleusFatuorum02:17, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
All that remains of the former Hampton Court BridgeThe entrance to the long-abandoned Richmond Tunnel, the red-linkedness of which is a source of constant irritation to meThe unfinished Brockley Hill station
I've always liked these "echoes of the past" reminders of the old transport infrastructure; everything from bricked-up former tunnels; to earthworks for long-abandoned railway lines; to old station buildings long-since detached from their railways; to my personal favourite, the ruins of the half-built Brockley Hill tube station, built in preparation for a tube line which was cancelled following the introduction of the Green Belt legislation; because said legislation prevents the site being developed, it's been sitting there gradually decaying for the last 70 years.
There's something peculiarly British about it; in the US and Canada all traces of the railroad lines were generally wiped out by redevelopment, while in continental Europe the war pretty much wiped all the old infrastructure back to a tabula rasa.
Actually, there are plenty of traces of the railroads around. Lots of train sheds, loco sheds, abandoned lines, and right of ways. Yes, in NYC, there aren't many traces (although even there staions and the like still exist) but out of the big big cities, there is plenty. I know, because my dad was a rail fan and I spent lots of time going with him taking pictures of buildings, etc. Most of the smaller towns in the US still have a passender/frieght station building in them, sometimes empty, sometimes being used for something else. Ealdgyth - Talk16:34, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm going by personal experience of where I grew up (Goshen, NY - because of its horseyness, you may be one of the few people who actually know it), which may not be typical. In most of the towns there, the station buildings vanished (or in Goshen's case, became a police station) long ago and were replaced by strips of concrete, and the tracks themselves vanished when the Erie Lackawanna Railway closed in the 1970s. The combination of NYC commuters driving prices up, and the difficulty of building in the hills, means NY property prices are insanely high and the drive to demolish is maybe stronger then elsewhere.
That said, the "knock it down and destroy all traces" attitude to the old railroads certainly isn't unique to NY; Who Framed Roger Rabbit is actually a pretty accurate picture of California's attitude to trains and streetcars in the 50s and 60s, and even places you'd expect to have kept their connections, like San Francisco and Las Vegas, have been wiped off the Amtrak map and had the station buildings levelled. – iridescent16:51, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
In the US town where I live, the old rail depots have been turned into restaurants, stores and a farmers market, while still maintaining the "look" of a railway depot. There is also a "rails to trails" program where unused tracks are removed and the railway beds turned into hiking, biking and equestrian trails, with plaques commemorating their railway heritage. Pretty neat, IMO. That's Michigan, though. Dana boomer (talk) 16:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Where I am (central Illinois) our train station is an antique store, and they did a very nice job restoring the inside to make it look period. We have the rails to trails thing here too, but a lot of the older railroad stuff here is still in use. We're a major hub and repair spot for Norfolk-Southern, and our rail yards are huge. It's probably a function of the fact that we don't have the pressing space needs of the East Coast. Ealdgyth - Talk16:59, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
The best of these "old station conversions" I've ever seen is, bizarrely, Indianapolis Union Station, which they did a fantastic job on, converting it to modern use while retaining the "cathedral to the modern age" feel of the 19th century mega-stations. (Closing the railroad lines in Indiana was one of the dumber decisions ever taken; its location at the crossroads of the NY-CA and Illinois-and-Toronto-to-the-South lines could have made it the hub of the entire continent's freight traffic and of any future high-speed rail network.) – iridescent17:05, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
My favourite conversion is Brooklands, a nice little bar cum restaurant conveniently close to what is now the Metrolink, so easy to get home from if you've had one or two too many.[11]
I'll hazard a guess that it's either Middletown or Cuddebackville in that case. Pretty much everyplace else round there is like a set for Deliverance, and you don't seem the hillbilly type. – iridescent00:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I'd be scared to live in small town America, although I guess modern technology now makes it less risky. I was seriously impressed some years ago on hearing a (Highway Patrol?) helicopter hailing a driver in front of us, telling him to slow down, and then landing on the hard shoulder to confront him. That's Top Gun stuff. It was in the days though when California had a 50 mph speed limit. Empty roads, but you had to crawl along them. --MalleusFatuorum01:05, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
There was a reason for that speed limit; US cars were designed to be most fuel-efficient at 55mph, and that speed limit was introduced in the 1970s, when it was seriously possible that the entire Middle East could go up in flames.
Since the net result was to drive people off the road altogether for long trips in favor of planes, the whole "fuel economy" thing didn't actually work out as planned. – iridescent01:10, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
(ec) Depends where you are, I think. Certainly small-town Texas has always really given me the creeps.
Remember, small-town America has no equivalent in Britain with its ultra-high population density - a couple of Scottish islands excepted, even in the remotest outpost villages you're never more than a couple of miles from the next town, and everything is connected by frequent subsidised public transport. Additionally, the small-town gun culture has no equivalent elsewhere; while (despite what some Americans think) guns are legal here, carrying one in public would almost certainly get you hauled off by the police to explain your peculiar behaviour unless you could show you were on your way to hunt something. To someone in the UK, the midwest and west are as alien a culture as a South African township or Siberian industrial encampment. Even I feel it when I go back. – iridescent01:32, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I think you will find there are nearly 100,000 people living on Scotland's islands and that much of mainland Scotland (see map) is defined as "remote rural". It's cold in them thar hills right now. BenMacDui11:35, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I think my point still stands; "remote rural" is defined as "more than 30 minutes from the nearest large town", but I'm talking about distance from the next village. AFAIK, even in rural Caithness (or the Yorkshire Moors, or the Fens, or Powys...) there's generally another settlement of some description relatively nearby, unlike somewhere like (say) Wheatland County, Montana where there are only three towns (populations 1,062, 164 and 76 respectively) in the entire county. Aside from the remotest parts of in Orkney and Shetland, the only British equivalent would be the Falklands. – iridescent15:33, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
It's just a bit of fun at a weekend party. It is all relative of course, but some of us seem to live here. Now that's what I'd call scary. BenMacDui10:06, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
Am I missing something on that map? I'm sure there used to be some kind of town between Liverpool and Leeds at one point, not the unpopulated wasteland shown. – iridescent11:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
I believe there are one or two towns. Their principal claim to fame is apparently the excellence of the local "soccer" team as managed by an expatriate Scot. Bolton for example. BenMacDui12:26, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) Heh. Having lived for 20 years in Texas (although not small town, but in Houston) and the rest in the Midwest in a town of about 90,000... I can't say I've ever seen a handgun carried in public. I've seen some hunting rifles in pickups when deer season is on, but honestly, never ever seen a handgun out in public. Right to carry doens't mean you wear it like a old-west cowboy. I had a permit to carry a gun in Houston, mainly because I was working at stables in the evenings, but I generally left it in the glove compartment. Rarely, when it was really late and I was getting the creeps, I'd move it to the tack room. Yeah, there are guns in small towns, but they aren't like a western movie at all. Even Wyoming isn't like that.. honest! Ealdgyth - Talk 01:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Another point, when I do move to Wyoming, when I'm out in the wilderness horse-packing, I will indeed carry a gun out with me, because you never know when you're going to need it. But that's just common sense with going into the mountains with a big string of tasty looking bear treats, i.e. a pack string. Ealdgyth - Talk01:38, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Depends where you are, I think. I've certainly been in towns in Texas (Midway springs to mind) where the general vibe is like something out of Thelma and Louise.
I think my point got lost somewhere, though; it's not an anti-gun rant, but the fact that the concept of "carrying a gun" is totally alien to a European. Remember, the largest native predator in the British Isles is the badger and the crime rate even in British inner cities is negligible compared to anywhere in the US (the murder rate for the entire country is 600-700 per annum, roughly the same as New York City alone); the legitimate reasons for carrying a firearm in the US don't exist in the UK, so it makes the whole culture seem totally alien to British visitors. – iridescent02:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
We live in different worlds. That first became obvious to me when my wife's American cousin visited with her new husband. They met when she saved his life after he'd been bitten by a poisononous snake; he also had a Purple Heart. I've never even handled a gun, and I never want to, and we have no unreasonably dangerous animals here. --MalleusFatuorum02:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Belle Vue Zoo vs The Railway Company
Hi, I noticed on Nev1's page you commented on how you disbelieved that a railway company could cause money problems for the zoo. Ordinarily your assertion that they usually would have helped each other would be correct, however in this instance what caused the problem was that the proposed railway line would have cut the park in two, creating difficulties for park customers to access one side from the other. What made it worse was the bit of land that would have been cut-off had only recently been purchased by the Jennisons. What also should be understood is that this was relatively early in the zoo's history so their long-term future had neither been planned out nor even understood. They had no idea they were going to be so popular. At the time this was struggle for the Jennison family and situations like this had not been accounted for by what in effect was a family learning how to be a company. I hope that helps with your query. --The Pink Oboe (talk) 11:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
File:London Zoo map.svgLondon Zoo was and is sliced into thin strips by the road and canal, but the benefits of improved public access outweigh the inconvenience of the footbridges
Still not convinced, although I agree that's what the sources say, so verifiability not truth and all that. It may have been a new project for the Jennisons - and the first of its kind in Lancashire - but the concepts behind the design and planning of amusement parks was well understood by then; New Spring Gardens is mentioned by Pepys, so dates to at least the mid-17th century, and Ranelagh Gardens was so well established that "Ranelagh" briefly became a synonym for this kind of park, with "le Jardin Ranelagh" outside Paris and the New York Ranelagh Garden. Any landowner in the period with even the haziest knowledge of the entertainment industry would have been aware of the huge amount of time and effort the owners of Vauxhall Gardens, for example, had spent on lobbying for improved roads and bridges; presumably any family involved, or intending to become involved, in zookeeping would also have known that despite being sliced into strips by a (then) major road and the Regent's Canal, London Zoo, the granddaddy of them all and certainly the most successful zoo of the period, saw benefits from having the road and canal connections far outweighing the costs of erecting footbridges. Certainly I can see the Jennisons being annoyed at having part of their land compulsorily purchased, but even in these early days of railways they can't have actually been that disappointed at having a direct and convenient link to the then-developed part of Manchester, which would otherwise have been an inconvenient 2-3 miles away along what's now the A6 but was in those pre-asphalt days a glorified dirt track. – iridescent 220:40, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
Aah, but isn't hindsight a wonderful thing. Ultimately though the railway did help the Jennisons, but at the time please remember that they were ex-gardeners who more than likely didn't have the "haziest" idea of what they were doing. The one thing I've realised about them when doing my research is they got by on a wing and a prayer and a gift for publicity. Financial and business management was not their forte. It was only later when the Iles were brought in that the business properly became a business. Most of the time the Jennisons didn't have a clue what they were doing and were just particularly lucky when they took the chances they did. --The Pink Oboe (talk) 22:38, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
Just a few words of advice...
Leave me alone. OK? I have never even talked to you untill a few days ago and yet your past time seems to be "Hey everyone, Coldplay just screwed up another thing, let's al point and laugh!" Im asking you to stop now. You are doing the same thing that schoolyard bullies do. Did'nt anyone ever tell you that the best kind of critisism is constructive critisism?--Coldplay ExpértLet's talk03:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Maybe you should just disengage, Coldplay, and think hard about whether Iridescent's criticism is just plain harsh or harsh but true. Nathan T 03:04, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I never said it was false. But Iridescent's goal is not to help me out with those issues. Rather to make me look like an idiot and to bash on me whenever the chance arises.--Coldplay ExpértLet's talk03:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
What in the world does this have to do with you Malleus? Why don't you all go off and create the "I hate CE" Cabal. Im sure your numbers will swell in less than a day. I don't really care what you do, just get off of my back and leave me alone.--Coldplay ExpértLet's talk11:31, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I am not "bullying you", and AFAIK have made perhaps three comments about you in my entire history on Wikipedia. The post which I assume has provoked this rant from you is not a pointless attack on you, but an expression of my contempt for someone with virtually no contributions to the project, using what's at best a major misunderstanding of the facts, and at worst a deliberate distortion of the incident (if you look at Vintagekits' block log, you'll no doubt see that almost every block was immediately followed by some variation of "overturned, blocked inappropriately"), to use a pointless attack on one of Wikipedia's most prolific editors as ammunition for an attack on another of Wikipedia's most prolific editors. When you've written something of the standard of Michael Gomez, you're entitled to sneer at Vintagekits' contributions. Not before. No, I don't think "contempt" is too strong a word. It's contempt for your actions, not for you, and quite frankly from what I've seen of you you seem to have a serious problem distinguishing "criticism of your actions" from "personal attacks", as I think all the interaction I've ever had with you has been watching your massive overreactions to any and every perceived slight. And no, you don't have the right to dictate who I can and cannot reply to; as I think even those here who loathe me would concede, I won't shy away from criticising actions which in my opinion warrant criticism. Certainly not in the case of someone who's posted a string of pointless personal attacks on one of the most visible pages in Wikipedia space, but starts whining about "bullying" if someone dares to call them out for it. – iridescent20:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Forget it. You'll never stop. Why even bother? I was not attacking anyone. I was only useing Vintagekit's block(s) as an example. I never de-valued his contribution to any article.--Coldplay ExpértLet's talk20:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Much though you may find my criticism of your childish stupidity to be galling, I shall continue to call you on it whenever and wherever I please. I guess you'll either have to live with it or grow up. Your choice. --MalleusFatuorum20:18, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I'll probably regret this, but I can't let this stand. Iridescent, this just isn't true. There are a few "bad blocks" in VK's log, but they're considerably outweighed by the ones where he did something disruptive, was unblocked on conditions or promises not to do it again, and then went on to find some new way of being disruptive. He was an excellent content creator in sports areas, and even his POV-pushing did some good (like getting the Peerage and Baronetage project to wake up to the notability rules and stop littering the place with substubs), but he definitely had flaws, and quite a bit of his block log was come by honestly. If you don't trust my judgment (and why should you?), Alison and SirFozzie, both of whom did yeoman service trying to resolve "The Troubles" pre-ArbCom, can confirm this. At the time, he was ready not only to mix it up over "The Troubles" proper, but to follow his opponents to other areas of the 'pedia and go at them there as well. (It must be said for him that when he wasn't in a temper, he was always scrupulous about making sure his actions were sanction by the letter, if not perhaps the spirit, of the rules.) Should CE have invoked his name as he did? I don't think it was proper—de mortuis nil nisi bonum, and it does feel rather like kickin the man when he's down—but if you're going to object to a flip characterization of VK as just some guy with a big block log, your own characterization should be candid about the shortcomings he did have. I wish his fuse had been a bit longer, and that he'd been able to resist the temptation to return to subjects that made him lose his temper. But it wasn't so, and that's why we lost him as a contributor, not because all the admins who blocked him were thin-skinned and couldn't take a frank opinion from him. Choess (talk) 06:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I know VK was no angel; I was there when the blue touchpaper was lit and I was there when the fireworks finally burned out. He was argumentative, arrogant, prone to flare-ups and wouldn't let go on an issue once he had his ire up. However, he was also subject to a relentless campaign of harassment for years by people who should know better, and there was a small group of the same few admins who had a dislike for him and would watch his contributions for a pretext to block him. He had much the same role in 2007 as Giano had in 2008, or Malleus in 2009. However (again, like Malleus and Giano), as you say, when he wasn't involved in his scorpions-in-a-bottle routine with KB and RP - which was most of the time - he was helpful, productive, hardworking and willing to get stuck into the boring minutiae which far too many of the Grand Actors of Wikipedia think is beneath them. There's a qualitative difference between a dog which is repeatedly poked with a stick and eventually bites its pokers, and a rabid dog who attacks people at random, even if the net result of both is "people get bitten and the dog gets shot".
(In any case, length of block log is generally an awful measure of "problematicness". A truly problematic user generally only has one entry in their block log.) – iridescent16:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
I hope I hold up as well at ninety-seven.
Yeah, I'd forgotten you had a front-row seat for most of the "fun," too. Now that I think about it, I suspect part of the circumstances you describe above was the blind-men-and-elephant problem. I had no idea who he was until the bullets starting flying in the baronets/Arbuthnots walled garden, and didn't become aware of his sports-related contributions for a long while. I think a lot of the feeling against him developed because many other editors only saw him when he was exercising his "bad side". Anyway, we seem to agree on main points—he was a complicated character, and casually writing him off as just a nationalist with a long block log doesn't do him justice. (And I take your interesting point on the block log.)
Gah. Hopefully that's gotten wikipersonalities out of my system for another year or so. I'd rather debate the fate of abandoned rail infrastructure in the US vs the UK. (I tend to suspect different standards of construction and, in some cases, local property tax structures.) Choess (talk) 03:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I'll throw in:
Most abandoned rail infrastructure in the UK remained in the ownership of the (state run) British Rail and its successors, which had such a huge budget that selling the odd plot of land here-and-there was an irrelevance, while most abandoned US infrastructure was owned by the private firms rather than Amtrak, and for small private firms linear plots of urban land were valuable assets;
Most of Britain's abandoned railways were closed in the Beeching Axe program, which coincided with the start of the 40-year collapse of heavy industry in Western Europe, so the steady flow of abandoned factories, mills and warehouses provided a lot of sites for urban development that were better located than the old stations;
The extremely influential and vocal rail-obsessive John Betjeman lobbying constantly for preservation of the abandoned infrastructure as a key part of Britain's national identity;
US administrations in the 1970s and 1980s which were heavily connected with the aviation and automobile industries, and had a vested interest in making passenger rail transport non-viable (as no less a thinker than George Dubya has pointed out, the Great Plains and the Texas desert are dreadful conditions for driving but absolutely ideal conditions for high-speed rail);
Vocal lobbying in British towns which lost their railway lines for a re-opening of the lines, which in turn caused planning blight, as nobody wants to build on land which may well be compulsorily purchased straight back for a re-opening of the lines (either as rail lines, or as that peculiar only-in-Britain-and-Adelaide chimera, the guided busway).
I noticed the note you left on SuaveArt's talkpage regarding the WP:CHAT notice SA put on BlueGoblin7's talkpage. I think I may have an explanation. SA seemed to be targetting the users who posted in this thread. Another poster that posted in that thread got the chat warning. As you can see, SA also ummm...attempted to modify one respondent's user page (among several others) and brought another (American Eagle) to the inappropriate username board. Looks like BlueGoblin7 got caught in the crossfire along with some of the other project members. FYI... Auntie E. (talk) 01:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I think I found a better one. This conversation was probably the target.
SA seems to be uhhh...following Erwin Springer's edits. At least this kind of makes sense. Kind of. Auntie E. (talk) 02:23, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Happy Iridescent's Day!
User:Iridescent has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian,
and therefore, I've officially declared today as Iridescent's day!
For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian,
enjoy being the Star of the day, dear Iridescent!
Hi Iridescent. I see that last July you deleted an article called Primrose Day (I was surprised not to find such an article at Wikipedia). However, I found it on another site, which looks like it's cribbed from Wikipedia. Here's the contents from that site together with what I can only assume is the text you think it has been copied from:
Text from Wikipedia
Primrose Day is the anniversary of the death of British statesman and prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield on 19th April 1881. The primrose was his favourite flower and Queen Victoria would often send him bunches of them from Windsor and Osborne House. She sent a wreath of primroses to his funeral. On this day Beaconsfield's statue in Parliament Square, London is decorated with primroses, as is his grave in Hughenden, Buckinghamshire.
Text from website
Upon the death of the beloved British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), on April nineteenth, 1881, Primrose Day was instituted in his honor, as the English primrose was his favorite flower. Queen Victoria sent bouquets of primroses to his funeral according to a contemporary account; The coffin lies on its bier in an alcove leading out of the modest hall of Hughenden Manor. But of its material, one might almost say of its dimensions, nothing can be seen. It is literally one mass of floral beauty. Here are wreaths from every member of the Royal Family in England bouquets of primroses sent by the Queen, with an inscription attached to them, saying that they came from Osborne Hill, and that they are of the sort which Lord Beaconsfield loved. Two years later, a bronze statue of Lord Beaconsfield was erected at Parliament Square, and it became customary to decorate it with primroses every year on the anniversary of his death. Ofttimes at Easter the woodlands of England are seen carpeted with wild primroses.
I'm at a bit of a loss to see how the first could be regarded as copyright violation of the second. Could you explain a little more - maybe reinstate the article here. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Northern Arrow (talk • contribs) 09:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure where the first piece of text you quote has come from, but it's not the text of the deleted article. The only difference between the deleted Wikipedia article and the (copyrighted) website is the formatting of the date and the replacement of the archaic "ofttimes" with "often". This is about as blatant a copyright violation as it's possible to get. – iridescent15:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi. I got it from here [12] which is a version of Wikipedia. Maybe this was overwritten by the text you deleted. I don't know because the link you provided didn't work. Also, I tried to recreate the article using the text from Statemaster but couldn't do that either. Could you do it - it's definitely not in violation of copyright. Thanks, Special:Contributions/Northern Arrow
While I don't have the technical ability to perform an undelete (you need to try Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles for that) I'd still be inclined to say no, personally. Looking over every previous version, I stand by this deletion; every version is either a blatant copyright violation, or completely unreferenced and unsourced. Deletion on Wikipedia isn't a criticism of the topic and doesn't mean the topic isn't valid, but as a tertiary source Wikipedia has strict rules on sourcing and verification (basically, everything you write, you have to say where it came from so readers can check its accuracy for itself) which no version of this article complied with. – iridescent16:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
That's good! I didn't know that another website was keeping a history of Wikipedia articles. From that history I looked at the original version of the article and it seems fine. It just needs referencing to that website from which the more recent versions appear to have been copied. I tried starting a new article but I can't because you need to make 10 edits before you can create new articles. I'll make some random edits and then set up a new article for Primrose Day. Hope that's OK. Thanks, Northern Arrow. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Northern Arrow (talk • contribs) 21:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Don't get me started on LBRs. With some of these "improvements", I get the feeling people sit in a smoke-filled room at the MediaWiki Design Headquarters saying "you know, this user interface still isn't unfriendly enough, is there any way we can make it even less intuitive?". I'm very surprised to see Tony, who's usually a bastion of common sense (even when I don't agree with him), supporting what I consider arguably the most harebrained "improvement" ever made to the MediaWiki software – iridescent16:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Another thought (which I'm putting here instead of WT:FAC, so as not to prejudice the discussion), editor convenience should not trump WP:V, and those damn things make it really hard (on me, at least) to verify text. They mean: one window open to see the text you're editing, a second window open to see the sources, and a third window open to view the source. Add that to my eyesight issues, and verifying text is misery. I want to see the source in the same window I'm editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm with you two. I actually tried it out on a couple of (short) articles yesterday, just to get a feel for how it works. Admittedly it makes the editing box look a bit tidier, but the inconvenience of having to look for the citations in a different section to the one you're editing far outweighs any slight advantage in readability. It's a hare-brained idea that ought to have been strangled at birth, just like date autoformatting. What ought to be done is a modification to the editor, to allow citations to be collapsed or expanded, but of course that would mean someone doing a little bit of work, so it'll never happen. --MalleusFatuorum17:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
One thing I've learned in the years of living with and working with code-geeks is that they LOVE a new technical toy. Doesn't matter if it's helpful or useful, if it's a bit of code, it's got to be good. Ealdgyth - Talk17:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Tony, are you replying to me here? I don't think I even said a thing on the page that could be considered personal. If you're replying to Iri, it'd be nice if you made that clear, as right now it looks like you're accusing me of a personal jibe. Ealdgyth - Talk22:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Further to that, if you're replying to me here, I'm not at all sure what you're taking offence to. The only three comments I have ever made on the topic of LBRs are:
"Decloaking to strongly oppose this. At least there were legitimate arguments that could be made in favor of mandatory alt-text; this is a pure case of someone trying to foist their personal prejudices onto the process."[13]
"Not "personal" in relation to you, or Slim, or anyone else supporting; personal in the sense that – as there's no technical reason why LBR's are 'better' – making them mandatory (which in reality, "preferred option" means at FAC) is purely a case of those who support LBR insisting that we do things in a particular way. Personally, I dislike LBR intensely and find it very hard to work with – I tend to work my way through articles one section at a time, and the introduction of LBR means the references are in a separate section of their own, and thus invisible to me when editing, necessitating an irritating save text section → open reference section → edit reference section → save reference section → re-open text section routine every single time I add anything, or editing the entire article instead of a single section, with the consequent need to keep scrolling here-there-and-everywhere each time I add or amend a reference or just want to check what it says. If I were to insist that LBRs were banned (don't tempt me) I'd be just as guilty of assuming that my personal preference was automatically "right" for everyone."[14]
"Don't get me started on LBRs. With some of these "improvements", I get the feeling people sit in a smoke-filled room at the MediaWiki Design Headquarters saying "you know, this user interface still isn't unfriendly enough, is there any way we can make it even less intuitive?". I'm very surprised to see Tony, who's usually a bastion of common sense (even when I don't agree with him), supporting what I consider arguably the most harebrained "improvement" ever made to the MediaWiki software".[15]
The only one of the three that could possibly be considered any kind of personal attack by anyone is #3, and quite honestly if you're really going to consider "I'm very surprised to see Tony, who's usually a bastion of common sense (even when I don't agree with him), supporting what I consider arguably the most harebrained "improvement" ever made to the MediaWiki software" a personal jibe, then you are Chillum AICMFP. I stand by my dislike of LBR and it looks from the above – and the FAC thread – that I'm not alone; I think it's an indefensibly bad idea which is going to have a noticeable negative impact on article quality and accuracy, by making it far harder to edit existing content, to verify existing references, and to add new references, while adding no net improvement to either the appearance of the articles and no benefit in terms of editing ease other than to an (I imagine) minute minority who not only work only on editing existing text (without ever adding, removing or amending the references), but do their proof-reading in the edit window rather than in standard page view. – iridescent00:42, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict on a slow connection) Maybe this whole LBR/not-LBR business is a matter of whether an article is still under construction or can be considered more or less finished. One needs workmen to paint the house and do the heavy lifting, but then they are not really needed to re-arrange the ornaments on the mantelpiece or hang a picture on the wall, and you certainly want them out if you are to relax and make yourself at home. So one could theoretically keep in-line citations until the article is complete and has passed FAC, upon which point it will enter that phase when only occasional updates and minor improvements will be necessary, and the citations can gracefully retire to the bottom of the page.
All that having been said, FAs are probably the articles with the least need to be edited easily by anyone, so... Yeah.
I am sorry, but you'll have to try harder; the article has a reference. Or has Wikipedia really progressed so much that this is to be expected? I seriously doubt it.
Well, it has something in the reference section – I don't know if I'd go as far as to say it "has a reference". Different people have different views on what constitutes a reliable source, but I'm willing to bet that most people would agree that an advert for a lap dancing club doesn't generally qualify. – iridescent11:43, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I said "reference", not "reliable reference", but you are probably right. An unsuitable source may be worse than no source; its very presence is potentially misleading.
Motorcycling is to get safer with the creation of the London Motorcycle Policy Unit, a division of the Metropolitan Police that is a new dedicated team of motorcycle safety experts working to reduce motorcycle casualties across the Capital.
Major improvement works set for the New Cross area
Smart Travel Sutton scheme sees a 75% increase in cycling and sustainable transport usage in the brough of Sutton
Taxi fares to increase by 2.3 per cent to meet higher running costs
New Pegasus crossings intalled over A3 between Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park
Bounds Green has gained Grade II Listed status from English Heritage
January 2010
A new walking route from Covent Garden to Holborn is completed, with a public space at Great Queen Street at its centre
RMT strike planned
London Undeground celebrate's the Royal Society's 350th Anniverseary with a set of poems
DLR Bank platforms reopen in February following upgrade works
Investment Programme Advisory Group set up
Bus routes 10 and 33 will become 24 hour services
Life stories are introduced on the Jubilee Line
Average speed cameras to be trialled on the A13
Safety, lighting and communication improvement works are to begin february to bring Blackwall Tunnel to 21st century standards
Twelve Outer London boroughs are selected to become cycling havens
Grants are given to community groups to boost cycling
New posters on the Underground network help to promote face equality to help tackle stereotypes on children with disfigurements
East London Line extension nearly complete
Rotherhithe Tunnel to close from Sunday to Thursday nights for the next three weeks for installation of pedestrian signage, power cables and additional pollution monitoring equipment.
Oyster Pay-as-you-go introduced across all London stations in early January
Member News
APHST (talk·contribs) joins the project bringing our total number of participants to 78. Welcome to APHST!
This WikiProject would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
The portal went through a candidacy for featured portal with not much luck. The areas of the portal are becoming more active with the the voting and changing of the selected pictures and articles. The transport news seems has started to be updated again but with the most up-to-date news being in this newsletter. Did you know is being improved. The portal has had a new selected biography section added to bring it up to standard. Please vote at Portal:London Transport/Vote. The current biography is Charles Pearson.
As usual all suggestions to improving the Metropolitan are welcome so if you have one we would be happy to hear from you.
Please also could people submit suggestions for DYKs or does anyone want to do the next issue?
London General articulated Citaro passing Trafalgar Square on route 453.
Arriva London articulated Citaro turning in Shaftesbury Avenue, on now double-deck route 38.
Three Transdev London buses lined up, decorated for the Kingston park and ride.
A Northern Line train leaving the tunnel just north of Hendon Central station.
A Greyhound UK coach, usually running between London, Southampton and Portsmouth, seen in Cowes on the Isle of Wight on a promotional visit.
From the editor
Hello and Happy New Year from me and generally the London Transport project.
Thank you to Arriva436 for the February gallery update
If you think there is anything else i have missed, please drop me a note or leave a message at The Metropolitan's feedback page. Also if you feel you want to do an edition, again leave me a message.
Again i would like to state this newsletter is looking for anyone willing to do an issue.
Upminster Bridge tube station was promoted to good article status in early February. Well done to all those involved. This is apparently the first tube station to be accepted as a Good Article.
All articles have been assessed of their quality with only some of the articles' importance to the project yet to be determined. Well done on the assessment.
Discussion arose over the addition or removal of succession boxes showing the present London Underground lines and their histories as well as former services. Another discussion arose on boxes showing stations layouts
Separate issues arose over the population of aboandoned London Undeground projects categories and categories on single station platforms
New guidelines have been proposed for railway accidents. Please see WP:RAILCRASH.
...that Belsize Park station is one of the only eight stations in London to have a deep level bomb shelter beneath it?
…that Mile End tube station is the only station on the London Underground network from which it is possible to reach any other station with only a single change of train?
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Another issue to be adressed is, please could people indicate in the next month at the feedback page or on my talk page whether they still want to recieve issues of the metro. A lot of newsletters seem to be going to redundant pages. Simply south (talk) 20:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I noticed that; there's a hell of a lot of these (he seems to have dumped the entire Yellow Pages hotel section into Wikipedia for no good reason) so I'll wait until I've tagged the lot, then cut-and paste the entire block of warnings. – iridescent14:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
No problem - looking through them, I'm now nominating about 90% of them for deletion. This looks to be Blofeld at his most time-wastingly annoying; he appears to have taken a directory of London hotels and dumped it verbatim into Wikipedia with no sourcing whatsoever. Just because we have an article on Wal-Mart doesn't mean we need a separate article on each individual store, but despite the number of people who've tried to explain this to him over the years, the message never seems to sink in. – iridescent14:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Read my lips. I did not say they were high priority for London. I said in fact some of the boutique hotels are probably low priority for WP:London. But some of them like Park Lane, Claridges etc are obviously mid importance at least. And I disagree with you for WP:Hotels. 5 star hotels in London are amongst the worlds elite and are high priority for the hotels project even if not all. Somebody nominated Covent Garden Hotel previously and it got a unaminous keep. I did not ask for the hotels to be tagged with importance grading anyway as there is likely to be disagreements...I think it is not a good idea to grade articles using AWB as each requires its own assessment. All I asked was for them to be tagged for London and Hotels with class=stub. Its not Ser Amantio's fault, he does a great job with AWB work... There was clearly a mistake with grading them that's all.‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery14:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Have I nominated Claridges, the Ritz etc for deletion? I have not. What I am nominating are the generic branches of chains (the Radissons, the less-significant Hiltons, the Four Seasons' etc); these are generic cookie-cutter hotels and there is no earthly reason why each needs its own article, and I very much doubt you could find sources for them even if you tried. London is one of the tourism capitals of the world and has literally thousands of hotels; while the Dorchester and the like are obviously notable, there is no reason why Wikipedia should be hosting spamvertorial for totally non-notable hotels like Swissotel London, The Howard. – iridescent14:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
User talk:Keeper76. I don't rant on at you for spending so much time on his talk page at the expense of improving the London articles do I? Yes a lot of poor stubs were created as Blofeld and not all of them were "core articles" but you are wrong if you think I am a "spammer". I want this site to be improved as much as anybody. But to be honest I think the coverage of notable hotels on here is sadly lacking and had thought a good number of those started were notable landmarks. Maybe the airport hotels and some of the others are not Grade 1 notable but 5 star hotel in London would seem to be notable to the hotels project... What I'm unhappy with here is the way you insulted me and rather than kindly asking me to expand the articles you went and plastered loads of tags over them just because you dislike them in their current state. I believe we are all here to want to see content improved, so why not work together rather than against each other?‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery15:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I think we're talking at cross purposes here. I'm not saying that no hotels are notable; obviously, London is home to some genuinely historical and architecturally significant hotels. However, those aren't the ones I've tagged; of the ones I've tagged I genuinely can't see a single one that's expandable above sub-stub levels. I've asked User:DGG for a second opinion on this – while I don't always agree with him, he's one of the few people who's opinion on deletion policy I'll always take seriously – but to me, the "keep" vote in Articles for deletion/Covent Garden Hotel is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of WP:N as "anything mentioned in the press warrants an article". Middletown, NY is a notable topic and Walmart is a notable topic, but Wikipedia shouldn't have an article on Middletown Walmart, despite the fact that it's easy to find mentions of it in reliable sources; likewise, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts and Knightsbridge are notable, but to me that doesn't make Sheraton Park Tower Hotel notable, even though it has no doubt been covered by reliable sources at some point (even if the news coverage was just "New hotel opens").
London hotels aren't an equivalent of Vegas superresorts which are automatically significant; London has literally thousands of hotels, but they're all very small. "Five Star Hotel" is meaningless in a British context, as there's no rating agency and the World Hotel Rating system hasn't been implemented; the most meagre fly-infested flophouse would be perfectly within their rights to advertise themselves as a "five-star hotel", and different travel agents will give you different star ratings for the same hotel. (Googling one from the list at random, Trafalgar Hilton is described as 4-star, 5-star, 3½-star and 4-star again.) Obviously, The Ritz, Claridges etc warrant coverage, but those aren't what I've nominated; what I've nominated are absolutely generic, and almost certainly unexpandable, advertisements for utterly generic branches of national and international chains which would be far more use to the reader as one-line bullet points in the articles on their parent companies or as part of a List of hotels in London. – iridescent16:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Genuinely, what you said about "London is home to some genuinely historical and architecturally significant hotels" was exactly the way I saw it. I still believe I started a number of notable historical hotels. I also agree that a number of the boutique hotels and the airport hotels or generic branches may not be but I thought that 5 star was some indicator of notability all around,especially in a global city like London. . Notice I did not start even 4 star hotels. But based on the WP:London criteria as opposed to WP:Hotels then it is likely thay some 4 star even 3 star hotel buildings in London are more notable then say a 5 star airport hotel, I am aware of this, but please believe me when I say that I had thought a number of historic hotel buildings were missing and that was my main goal was to get them started. I am disappounted in the lack of support for hotel articles on here and that even the core hotels get neglected on here.‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery16:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I think that's the misunderstanding. While "5 star" means something on the Continent (Germany, Spain etc have official rating agencies), in Britain the star rating is purely "what the hotel chooses to describe themselves as" – thus, a hotel advertising to the rich will routinely describe themselves as 5-star while the exact same hotel advertising to attract backpackers might describe themselves as 2-star to give the appearance of cheapness. I think we're in agreement regarding the "genuinely significant hotels" part, but you seem to think I've nominated the whole of Hotels in London for deletion. I haven't; I have only tagged those which don't have any valid claim to historical or architectural significance. (As per my comments above, I think that 'keep' for Covent Garden Hotel was fundamentally misguided and based on the idea that WP:N says "anything mentioned in reliable sources automatically warrants an article". I don't know if you were around in 2007, but we had a similar problem with User:Billy Hathorn, who would routinely create a Wikipedia article on every person to receive an obituary in his local paper on the ground that they'd been covered in the press so must be notable. Something similar seems to be happening here.) – iridescent16:24, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Not intended. And actually if you were more familiar with me, especially as Himalayan Explorer you would know I've gone to quite some lengths to delete articles on non-notable people. Some people think coverage in news of the slightest events is justifications for an entire frickin biography of that individual. Like the Miriam Bunny Woman from Oregon I tried and successfuly supported to delete... Maybe some of the boutique hotels ought to be deleted if they can't be expanded I don't know but I was pretty sure at least some of them were notable landmarks, either historical buildings or notable skyscraper type landmarks along the Thames etc.
Honestly, I can't think of any London hotel which is a notable landmark; even the Ritz or the Savoy are famous for their levels of service or for events which took place there, while the buildings themselves are indistinguishable from the surrounding offices. (I can say for absolute certain that there is no "skyscraper hotel on the Thames" anywhere in central London; the only Thames-side building more than three or four floors high in Central London is King's Reach Tower. There are a couple of high-rise developments on the Isle of Dogs, but I don't think the most enthusiastic booster would call anything on the IoD architecturally or historically significant.) Remember, London has no US-style tradition of hotel-based conventions, and London hotels are tiny compared to hotels elsewhere; Tower Hotel, the biggest of them all, has only 800 rooms (and if that's a "five star hotel", so is my bathroom; even their own website doesn't claim this); for comparison, the Waldorf-Astoria in New York has over 1400 and even a small Vegas hotel like the Flamingo has over 3000.
Honestly, I wasn't tagging these articles randomly; I believe that all those I tagged for deletion are going to be unexpandable. Take something like Trafalgar Hilton, do as much digging as you can (Find sources:GBooks·A9·MSBooks·GScholar·MSAcademic·GNews recent·GNews old·NYT recent·NYT old) and see if it's possible to make something that isn't either an advert or an indiscriminate collection of trivia. As per my Walmart example above, the individual hotels in the chains really aren't important.
This isn't some kind of vendetta, or rampant deletionism; London-related articles permanently teeters on the verge of becoming unmanageable (total at the time of writing 14,726), and shovelling a large quantity of unnecessary stubs into it takes up time and energy, as they add to the length of the routine maintenance lists, add to the number of articles that need to be checked and amended every time boundaries change, and inflate the ever-growing Category:Unassessed London-related articles.
It's a miniature version of the problem mass stub creation is causing for Wikipedia as a whole; while the number of active editors remains roughly constant but some people are uploading huge numbers of stubs, it becomes impossible to watch everything. The current editor/article ratio on the project is 1/300 and the admin/article ratio is 1/35,000; at those levels it's literally impossible to keep even a semblance of control over any but the "inner core" of highly viewed pages, meaning that vandalism goes unreverted, errors go unchecked, and once-accurate pages slide more and more out-of-date. Take Thistle Tower Hotel for example; it hasn't been called this for years, but because nobody's watching the article, nobody has corrected it. And yes, as I've said to you previously I do feel that you (in your Blofeld incarnation), more than most, are directly responsible for steering Wikipedia into this particular mess. – iridescent18:28, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Look. I have not created many new articles at all for over six months. I've started more recently because there is an awful lot of transwiki work to do and new articles needing creating rather than ignoring. But you what? I've watched thousands of new stubs. many of them one liners especially about various genera/species flooding in on a daily basis and it is totalling up far beyond anything I could even manage in a years stubbing work as Blofeld. Yes you can provide the argument that we should be focusing on quality but as long as there is no mechanism in place for encouraging editors to develop content to good article status through incentives and new content within reason is free to be created it is not going to happen. If you seriously think something should be done to stop people creating new stub articles I suggest you organize something to stop them. A lot of people believe that creating stubs is sort of planting seeds for growth at a later date and see the project as a long term development rather than something that should be completed now. The problem is that the task of writing them all fully is too tremendous and even if you stop and focus on writing each one by the time you've finished we have thousands more new stubs created by others many of which get abandoned after initial creation. You are also assuming that every stub I've every created has never been touched again. Actually thousands have been expanded and are valuable articles to us now. I've had professors from various universities thanking me for my work on agricultural/forestry issues. If I've been responsible more than most for steering Wikipedia into this particular mess I am also equally responsible for steering wikipedia into development and quality coverage of some parts of the world which nobody else bothered to edit. You grossly underestimate how much I've done in improving articles on this site, and how many people are likely to take this article for grnated and be unaware of the crap that existed before I got to it. Countless articles like this now exist because of me and you know what. If it wasn't for me it would still be a 200 byte sub stub. I've done more than my fair share of quality work for this site, more than many moaners put together yet while they sit around yacking and moaning about me I'm getting decent work done. ‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery 19:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery19:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
on the basis of previous afds, hotels at this level are notable, or at least, they've always been kept, often unanimously. Iridescent, you prodded several dozen of them, but I do not think that any could really be called an uncontested deletion. I've started deprodding accordingly, not as a judgment, but because they are not uncontroversial. I suggest that if you are not convinced by the discussion above, and if you think that consensus has changed against such articles (I think it's changed, but in the opposite direction, towards keeping major local businesses that would be known outside their immediate area & that have sources. ) then the best course would be to nominate a few of them individually and see how the general consensus goes. DGG ( talk ) 00:46, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
There is a very serious problem here that neither your nor Blofeld seem to have taken on board, as exemplified by the unloved and uncared for Thistle Tower Hotel. I can't remember when it was last called that, but who cares? Wikipedia's got a stub on a subject that clearly nobody gives a shit about, else they'd have corrected the hotel's name some years ago. And that's the problem, these stubs are just abandoned to their fate, whatever that may be, because nobody's watching them. Wikipedia's current (broken admittedly) model demands that articles are watched, for better or for worse, and very few if any of Blofeld's are, not even by him. It's not a matter of "is this business locally notable", it's a matter of who gives a shit?" --MalleusFatuorum01:22, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Malleus hits the nail on the head; by definition these articles aren't of use to anyone, because they're almost content-free and what little content there is appears to mostly be inaccurate.
Of the three which I've looked at in detail, Trafalgar Hilton claims that the hotel is "5 star", which (the fact that star ratings in England are meaningless notwithstanding) even the hotel itself doesn't claim; Thistle Tower Hotel, as Malleus says, has not existed since 2005; 22 Jermyn Street was, if we're assuming good faith, based on a serious failure to understand the sources, and if we're not assuming good faith an outright fabrication – the article as written said that "the hotel was built in 1685 and has been under family ownership since 1915" whereas in fact the building was built (along with all the other completely nondescript apartment blocks in this row of buildings) in the late 19th century, and converted into a hotel in 1990, and this is what the source cited said. So far, that's a 3-out-of-three error rate and I'm willing to bet that if I were to go through the list I'd find the pattern repeated.
I don't have a problem with stubs; I don't have a problem with obscure topics; Wikipedia's great strength is that it allows coverage of topics which would never make it into print. What I do have a problem with – and as previously mentioned, the stubs Himalayan used to create as Blofeld are prime offenders here – is bulk creation of inaccurate articles on non-notable topics, which then go unwatched and uncorrected; Wikipedia's reputation for inaccuracy didn't come out of nowhere, and things like this are what fuels it. – iridescent17:47, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
No. I think you'll find that most of the stubs I ever created are not inaccurate. Quite the opposite actually. Wikipedia has a reputation for inaccuracy primarily from the articles on traditional encyclopedic subjects that we lack credibility and expert writing in because of the "it's a matter of who gives a shit?" kind of approach. There are far more editors who think baseball, Pokemon and football are way more important than many topics, even traditional encyclopedia ones. 90% of DYKs I see on the front page I think exactly the same thing actually. Could I care less that a German zoo has a pet monkey. Or that a Youtube "celebrity" notches up 400,000 views... Some people may enjoy reading about historical hotels at least or expanding them. The majority however may share your view Malleus. But if we really look at every article on wikipedia would there be over a million articles we find ourselves thinking "who gives a shit?"? I think the answer would be yes but people have different views and interests towards different subjects. It is exactly that kind of approach and outlook as to why editors like you Iridescent do nothing to improve content and sit around moaning about it everyday rather than actively improving a subject you are at least interested in. I commend your work Malleus on most Manchester topics you areinterested in but even some of your articles like "Hannah Beswick (1688 – February 1758), of Birchin Bower, Hollinwood, Oldham, England, was a wealthy woman who had a pathological fear of premature burial." I think "who gives a shit?".... In the same way you may not care less about my DYKs on monasteries in the Himalayas or articles about deforestation/agriculture. At least respect that other people have different interests... I stick by my statement that historical hotels are definately notable, even if some of the generic branches and smaller boutique hotels may be a lot less notable.. Wikipedia would be better for having a good article on say The Peninsular (Hong Kong) than to not have an article on it because "nobody gives a shit". ‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery13:13, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
You miss my point. If anyone actually cared about the Thistle Tower Hotel, for instance, the name would at least be correct. I'm not arguing that the subject is or is not of interest but that clearly nobody gives a shit about the article, else it would be accurate in the few details it contains. Like the establishment's name. --MalleusFatuorum13:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Let me just say that, as one who volunteers his time, I'm going to write/improve articles about things I find interesting. If I were to invest my time in writing and sourcing articles that I have no interest in, I'm going to eventually burn out. I am one of those editors writing about football and video games. In fact, I've written hundreds of NFL-related articles. Maybe they're looked at, maybe they're not. But the point is, as a volunteer, I'm going to write about what I want to write about. Useight (talk) 23:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd have to agree with you there!! I've admittedly create some dubious notable articles in my time but most articles I've ever started are generally on traditional encyclopedia topics which could reaosnably be fully expanded. The biggest problem is finding editors interested and helping expand them as it seems most of our editors "couldn't give a shit about the developing world". For instance you'll have hundreds working on football and Pokemon yet an article like Lusaka District which contains hundreds of thousands of people will not get much traffic even though we should have a decent article on it by now. I have steadily been trying to imporve articles and find photos for places like Natitingou, Cotonou, Parakou and Malanville, places which are lot of people "couldn't give a shit about". I am considering redirecting a lot of those London hotels, primarily because some of them indeed have sourcing problems (I already redirected the Trafalgar Hilton because of nothing but promotional cruft online) as I do not want the stubs to be in the same state in a few years time but I think several of the historical hotels I started are notable and some in notable buildings like One Aldwych etc but need a lot of work. Its best to spend time improving problematic articles/sorting out the mess than sitting around moaning and not getting anything done in my view. We are a wiki and articles can dramatically improve within short periods of time with a bit of effort..‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery14:04, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Malleus, and Iridescent, are you seriously saying that everything we have not gotten to do yet, or do do right yet, is unimportant? DGG ( talk ) 19:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I think I've stated my position very clearly here and elsewhere, but to cut to the chase, no, that's not what I'm saying; read below. Wikipedia isn't set in stone, and unwatched articles are vandal magnets. Address that issue and I'd have much less of of a problem with the production-line churning out of stubs. --MalleusFatuorum20:14, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Most people couldn't give a shit about places like Parakou, that doesn't mean they aren't notable or could be of value to the encyclopedia. They just needed work. But I agree with you Malleus that the main problem is the disproportion of editors disinterested in the developing world and hotels for example compared to those working on popular cultural related articles. But if we are to judge notability based on editor interest this encyclopedia would be grossly biased towards certain topics (and is). ‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery19:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I think we're fighting from the same corner, but with a different perspective. For instance, I spent an inordinate amount of time a week or so ago sorting out a couple of tinyplaces in Greece, but I now have them on my watch list. You can't possibly watch the stubs you create, and most times it seems that nobody else does either. The Thistle Tower Hotelstill hasn't been fixed, despite being mentioned on this talk page half a dozen times or so. The wikipedia model, rightly or wrongly, only works because of the vigilance of editors. --MalleusFatuorum20:07, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Hello Iridescent. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Rafayel on the Left Bank, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Not unambiguously promotional. Thank you. GedUK19:52, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I has been famous - it might be demolished - and will be missed. Once notable, it will be forever. Send it to AfD if you disagree. Bearian (talk) 23:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
How is it famous? The alleged "source" for it being built in 1685 says nothing of the kind; it says it was built in the late 19th century, along with virtually every other building in central London. It's a bog-standard shopping/residential block, of the kind of which there are tens of thousands in central London. – iridescent00:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Just to set the record straight. You accused me of creating loads of useless false stubs. 22 Jermyn Street was not exactly completely incorrect. 22 Jermyn Street was originally built in 1685 and was owned by various merchants and informally functioned as a hotel since that date but was rebuilt in 1870 for the house of a rich gentleman. So "The hotel was built in 1685" was not exactly true, the site was built in 1685 and has always been a form of hotel, but the ownership from 1915 is fully true. Just a phrasing error.‡ Himalayan ‡ΨMonastery18:04, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
that you based your support for King Oomie's RFA based on two editors that opposed the nomination? You might want to go check in and fix your post to not mention "Per Coldplay Expert and Keepscases" both of whom oppose the nomination. Nefariousski (talk) 22:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Additionally, if you intended the message to be "Support, I do not find the issues raised by the opposition significant", it may be better to phrase it somewhat more like that. It is slightly confusing and ambiguous currently. Hope this helps, --Taelus (talk) 22:06, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I know. I'm pretty sure that whoever the closing 'crat is, they will be well aware of my thinking here, and if they do need clarification they all know how to get hold of me. If I (or Badger Drink, who is supporting for the same reason) go into detail on the RFA itself it will, based on past experience, prompt a flare-up on the RFA from the opposers, and that's not fair to either the candidate or the closer. – iridescent22:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
(Two threads merged under a single subhead for future reference) – iridescent
Found anything better?
It's not the "free encyclopedia" concept that's fucked, it's this implementation (Wikipedia). Surely someone has created something similar that sucks far less. Have you found anything yet? --MZMcBride (talk) 04:52, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Easy enough to say what isn't it; the ones like Citizendium and Knol which put so much emphasis on ownership that it prevents people from doing the tedious but necessary drive-by cleanup, and consequently degenerate into messes. Personally, if it weren't for the fact that it's patently run by and for lunatics, in many ways Conservapedia is a model of how to run a wiki; they decide on what their line on an issue will be and stick to it, unless there's an obvious consensus to change, thus avoiding the endless editwars; they ruthlessly desysop admins for acting like assholes; they have a clear hierarchy when its necessary, but the hierarchy stays out of the way unless it's genuinely necessary to intervene; they block editors and desysop admins whose goofing around on their equivalents of ANI and the like exceed their mainspace contributions. Wikipedia could learn a lot in terms of management.
In spite of the godawful name and Greg's occasional bursts of spectacular obnoxiousness holding it back, in some ways I think MWB could be the shape of things to come. The Mainspace/Directoryspace divide clearly separates NPOV articles from spam-pieces while allowing the two to co-exist peacefully and borrow appropriate material from each other, and I think it's actually done a fine job in taking the best of Wikipedia's model (which, even in its terminal decline, does have a lot of strengths) while identifying and eliminating the systemic weaknesses which are killing Wikipedia (domination by cliques, vocal fringes dominating a silent majority in the middle, massive social inertia, an inability to control social networking, systemic failure of the article assessment processes, the cult of anti-expertism, the obsession with "civility" beyond any reasonable limit, a self-appointing and self-policing hierarchy...). If Greg changed the name, relinquished most or all of his control to a committee which wasn't selected to agree with him (I think a committee including Alison, Durova, Malleus, Moni, yourself and Shankbone, for instance, would do a fine job at covering the significant bases while avoiding personalities so toxic that debate is impossible), was willing to import content from Wikipedia under GFDL, and managed to get a "name" industry backer (Apple, Cisco or the like), I wouldn't be surprised to see MWB overtake Wikipedia within two years.
As someone (I forget who, I think it may have been Shalom) once said, Wikipedia now is worth more dead than alive, and someone able to take the existing content and improve it, instead of focusing on Jimbo's onward-and-upward drive for endless growth, could deliver the killer blow – basically what Danny tried and failed to do with Veropedia. – iridescent20:30, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I think the Wikipedia model is crippled beyond repair. I continue to contribute only on the basis that my efforts will hopefully one day be incorporated into a more rationally run site. --MalleusFatuorum00:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I have seen many depressing discussions like this, but never participated in one. (Depressing in the sense that there is no alternative to speak of at the moment, though I suppose one shouldn't worry about that too much if the information can be available in perpetuity. Maybe this is just the so-called Wikipediholism speaking.) First of all, what is MWB? I don't think I've ever heard of it; is that really its name? About Wikipedia, I share many of your concerns, but are you so sure that nothing will change until the project collapses? Perhaps once things start to tighten, consensus for improvement will be easier to reach (or harder, but I prefer the optimistic version). And what do you think about flagged revisions? The extension's implementation is bound to change a few things around here. Waltham, The Duke of17:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I suppose that the emasculated version of flagged revisions proposed is probably better than nothing, and something certainly needs to be done, but I don't trust administrators as the final arbiters of which version of an article goes public; they have no special knowledge or experience. The first time an edit of mine has to be approved by an administrator I'll be out of here. --MalleusFatuorum22:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Reading through your comments, it seems like it's all a matter of trade-offs. You can have structure, order, and a proper hierarchy, but you end up with a non-neutral product (Conservapedia). You can have decent content separation, but it comes coupled with (yet another) problematic head honcho (MyWikiBiz).
I'm curious about your views regarding things like sustainability. I'd argue that a large part of Wikipedia's success has come from the sizable user-base willing to contribute because the content is freely released and free of advertising. But this obviously comes with the trade-off of often poor content and no effective means to encourage editor participation in any meaningful sense. So the question I have is: how do you get people to participate while also maintaining sustainability so that things like the software and servers can be maintained? Do you go with Google ads? Find a corporate backer (as you suggested)? Would you, for example, be willing to contribute to an Apple-run wiki-like directory/encyclopedia? Would you be willing to for free? Would people have the same passion if they were getting paid?
It also occurs to me that, in many ways, MediaWiki sucks. The single blob storage format makes things like categories and infoboxes impossible to separate from page content, for example. Because of the various shortcomings with MediaWiki, if you were to start moving the content from Wikipedia elsewhere, I'm of the view that you'd be best to do so while putting it inside software that sucks less. Which, of course, requires capital for developers and others to create such software (unless there's software that could do it already that's well supported).
I'm curious why Veropedia and Knol failed so spectacularly and if there are any lessons to be learned from either.
With commercial sites such as Veropedia, I suspect that the commercial nature would be a deterrent in the long run. The wholesome image of a non-profit advertising free and grassroots entity is a very strong one. However, more immediate was/is a critical mass issue. I just don't think any of the others are comprehensive or detailed enough to come close to wikipedia, so for the most part editors interested in editing find the size and readership advantages of WP outweigh the problems. I also find the GA and FA are good at functioning as stable versions to refer to, which was one of the claimed advantages of veropedia. As far as knol, I haven't looked at it for a long time, but recall that the idea of ten editors each offering up an article on, say, George Bush amusing. I can't imagine the casual reader who'd be interested in reading ten separate entries to gain an overview on a subject. The collaborative nature here forces folks to come to a consensus and single article, which is how dictionaries and encyclopedias have done so well for the past few hundred years. Any commercial link might end up with an impact on content. I am a doctor so am very familiar with the impact of pharmaceutical companies on the medical industry. The influence needn't be active either but very subtle. The paid angle is interesting, but again brings in big potential for COI and the costs would be astronomical. This is pretty labour intensive...The donation angle seems to be working well for the time being in any case. Casliber (talk·contribs) 22:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree that critical mass is important; it's certainly what's keeping me here. My contributions so far have mostly been maintenance-related (you will find that many of my older mainspace edits consisted of removing expired padlocks from articles), and I often like to fix things as I find them while browsing the encyclopaedia. And the English Wikipedia is the only place where I can generally expect to find what I'm looking for, for I am a very curious person. It's the basic reason why I'm not editing the Greek Wikipedia, even though it's in my mother tongue: when I started editing here, it only had 30,000 articles and did not seem interesting to me. Now, I don't know how representative my example is, but I can assume that most people doing maintenance work like getting something out of it in terms of knowledge. (I'd say the same goes for vandal-fighting to an extent, although people doing this seem to be motivated by the work itself.) And a large database needs many users to maintain it, which relies on a large readership both indirectly—passers-by helping out—and directly—some edit because they like working with others or even enjoy working for the "biggest encyclopaedia on the Internet".
So, it may often be a problem, but I think the social-networking aspect of Wikipedia is crucial to is success. It is how editors usually get the only credit for their work, after all, and in this age we live in it is also much of a lure. For the Facebook generation, where chatting is not a means to an end but an end in itself, one cannot exclude this aspect without alienating them (even if some of them arguably have little to contribute that is not already here, considering our systemic bias). To return to my example, the relative lack of developed institutions was another reason that drove me away from the Greek Wikipedia. And I don't even chat.
I also agree on the point of free content, and on not leaving approval to administrators. I haven't followed the development of flagged revisions very closely, but I was under the impression that more people than admins would approve edits. After all, they are too few for the task.
I think the "corporate sponsorship" thing would work if it were properly targetted. As you (Casliber) say, the ad-free-charity thing is a powerful draw, but there's no reason it has to be the WMF. Picture (for instance), a hypothetical educational foundation, with the same arms-length relationship to its parent that Ronald McDonald House Charities has to McDonalds. It would benefit from the brand-recognition of its parent, while still being independent, and its parent would hopefully benefit from the association with a Wikipedia-style "place to go to find things out", while avoiding the mistakes which have made Wikipedia a dirty word in academic circles. Because the startup costs and barriers to entry are so low, this is a marketplace where it's possible for even the most established leader to collapse in weeks when something better comes along (remember Webvan? CompuServe? Boo.com? Napster?).
If I were a corporation going about it, I'd set up an independent charitable arm with enough of an endowment that server space and staffing wasn't a problem. Once done, I'd content-fork the entire existing content of Wikipedia and Citizendium; I'd then set about verifying every single article prior to putting them on the live system. It sounds daunting, but if every employee of (say) IBM were asked to verify one article a week, which isn't that unreasonable, the entire thing could be complete in a couple of months, or sooner if the more pointless Southborough, Bromley sub-stubs were deleted on sight. The end result would be a New Wikipedia with the same critical mass as the old, but with all the problems of inaccuracy, BLP etc miraculously solved. Assuming the new foundation had the same objects as the WMF ("to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally"), it could even absorb the WMF, thus keeping the (still powerful) Wikipedia name, and removing the bone-in-the-throat obstruction to competition which Wikipedia has become.
Re DoW: In fairness, while MyWikiBiz is an awful name, it was never intended to be a Wikipedia rival at first. It was established as a "feeder" site which would, for a fee, take press releases and carry out background research on companies, and write a neutral and Wikipedia-compliant article on them, which once complete would be moved under GFDL to Wikipedia itself, to give them the "legitimization" that a Wikipedia page provided, back in the days when not every company had their own website, while making it clear to them that once the article was released onto Wikipedia they'd have no further control over what anyone else did to it. It really wasn't a bad idea; WP:COI has always been a nutty policy (why is a fan of a band, for instance, "neutral", whilst the band's press agent reverting errors added by said fan "biased" and subject to immediate block-and-revert?).
Regarding "are you so sure that nothing will change until the project collapses"; yes, to be honest I am. Wikipedia's model was set up with a small group of people, all of whom knew each other, in mind, not a massive and changing group, and consequently has no checks and balances built into the system. The people who would have to take any decisions regarding radical changes on structure and governance are precisely those people who've spent years killing boars in the present setup to get to where they are, and thus have a powerful vested interest in stifling any drive to make things more accountable and controllable. There are honorable exceptions at the "top of the pile" - SandyGeorgia, Durova, Casliber, J.delanoy, Alison and the like would probably back radical reforms if they could be persuaded that it would lead to an improvement in quality - but they're always going to be outnumbered by those who've spent years carving out a niche for themselves in the current rotting tree and don't want to see it chopped down and replaced. (Cas, you've been on Arbcom; look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong.) – iridescent17:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Re last point - I think things are changing significantly in that regard. However the scale of wikipedia is such I am having trouble imagining a migration of material in the fashion you describe above - either it is large or quality based - let's just say I'd be really impressed if both were achieved..... ;) Casliber (talk·contribs) 17:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I think it's do-able. "Quality vs quantity" isn't an either-or case; especially if the endless flow of substubs from people who see WP:N as a mission statement, not a last-resort standard (you know who they are as well as I do) is throttled off. As you presumably know, the "this exists! it needs a separate page!" brigade are one of my pet peeves; there is no earthly reason why we need HMS E1, HMS E2, HMS E3 etc all the way through to HMS E56 when a single British E class submarines article would be neater, tidier, more informative and more useful. It's a symptom of the disease with which the "I have 100 DYKs!" mentality is infecting the project. On a quick flick through Special:Random, I'd estimate that 50% of Wikipedia's articles are totally unnecessary. – iridescent18:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Much thanks
Wow, a sincere and heartfelt thank you. That may well be the nicest thing I've seen written about me. Much appreciated. P.S. - if you do end up moving on from Wikipedia in the near future, I wish you the best in all your future endeavors. Useight (talk) 00:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
You're welcome... (My attitude towards moving on is much the same as Malleus's above. I do believe the Wikipedia project in its current form is in terminal decline, for all the reasons listed in the thread above; it's simultaneously become unmanageably large, so overrun with vested interests that any proposals which could help it keep pace with technological and social change are invariably stifled, and has developed such a warped cult-like style of internal logic that its conventions are becoming ever more detached from reality. However, the alternative doesn't yet exist, and the unsung key point of GFDL/CC is that when the viable alternative does come along, picking up our toys and going to play with the new kids will just be a case of ctrl-c, ctrl-v.) – iridescent02:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I'd be interested in a bullet point summary of key points that an "Ideal Wiki-pedia" would have if you can be bothered. BenMacDui19:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia II; key points
OK, I'll bite.
Preservation of "anyone can edit"; the fuel that stops Wikipedia stagnating is a flood of enthusiastic newbies;
Immediacy or near-immediacy; part of the lure of Wikipedia is that people can make changes which are visible right away. What killed Citizendium is the fact that, by the time every edit is checked and approved, whoever added it has lost interest; it also makes it hard to do the string-of-minor-edits rewrites, which is how most of Wikipedia's best writers operate. The loss of "I did that!" immediacy is why I don't think Flagged Revisions will work;
Far less focus on "civility". As has been pointed out ad nauseam, US standards of politeness are wildly at odds with the rest of the English-speaking world; what seems like politeness to an American often seems patronizing and offensive to a British/Canadian/Australian/Irish etc audience, comments which an Australian would consider friendly banter can come across to Americans and British as venomous insults; comments which a British or Canadian person would consider a blunt but accurate summary of facts can look to Americans like personal abuse; comments which an American would consider polite and respectful can appear patronizing and pompous to the rest of the world. It's not that any one group is in the wrong, but that different cultures are, well, different. What those who try to enforce "civility" don't seem to understand – and Jimbo's pet project to create an Internet Civility Police is a prime offender – is that trying to enforce the social mores of Florida and California onto the rest of the world itself seems like a patronizing and arrogant assumption of American cultural superiority (and not even American culture in general, but a particular West Coast subculture; I can't recall ever seeing any of the sizeable Illinois contingent, for instance, ever whining about "civility") and consequently extremely "uncivil" to the 95.5% of the world not living in the US. The irony of lectures on the importance of "civility" from the man who presides over one of the world's largest sources of defamation and misinformation does not escape me either;
A systematic process for checking accuracy of existing articles, instead of the existing "infinite number of monkeys clicking Special:Random" setup. Work through all high-traffic articles, from A to Z, checking them for accuracy and relevancy, and be ruthless about removing uncited material. Yes, it might mean paid staff (although I'd bet one could find plenty of interns willing to do it for nothing). Personally, I don't think BLP is as much of a problem as some of Wikipedia's critics think it is – Wikipedia's reputation for inaccuracy means people don't generally take defamatory comments here seriously, and most high-profile figures will have their articles checked by their press agents periodically and anything problematic removed – but the more general problem of inaccuracy certainly is a problem;
God help me, but I'm going to agree with the ever-annoying Fowler&fowler on something here. While I believe Wikipedia's strength lies in its ability to cover obscure topics in depth, it's nonetheless true that our coverage of key topics is generally awful, and those key topics are the ones with the most traffic and thus the ones that shape the public's perception of Wikipedia and – perhaps more importantly – shape new editors' idea of what Wikipedia articles "ought to look like". Even if it means (gasp) soliciting experts and paying them, every article listed here should be factual, accurate and comprehensive. There is no excuse whatsoever, after nine years of Wikipedia, for embarrassments like Information technology, Magazine, Dictatorship, Fiction, Oil or Worship;
A governance structure that works. For various reasons, Wikipedia's structure has evolved over time into the present squabbling hierarchy, and it's obvious that it doesn't work. While I still believe Slim and myself strangling ACPD in the cradle was the right thing to do, I recognize that it was created in response to a genuine need; Jimmy Wales's abdication and the collapse of "consensus" as a mechanism has left Wikipedia with no body able to take strategic decisions, which in turn is directly leading to the present stagnation and decline into faction-fighting;
It would never fly, but there's something to be said for the idea of professional administrators; all editors have the right to take users or pages for blocking or deleting, but a staff at the WMF (presumably the aforementioned interns) would carry out the actual actions. Yes, Wikipedia has 800 active admins, but they're really not needed; we have so many because most of them only "work" for a couple of hours a week. A dozen or so "professional" admins doing it full time could easily handle the load, and that would put a stop to the us-and-them divide. (For those who'll pop up to say such a divide doesn't exist, feel free to point out examples of admins being blocked for "incivility" for disagreeing with an admin on a talkpage; of admins having their contributions bulk-reverted as "does not appear to be here to build an encyclopedia"; of admins being issued with "cool down blocks" after getting in an argument with someone. No, thought not.);
Discourage the social networking side. I take Duke of Waltham's point above, that for kids today chatter is not a means to an end but an end in itself, but disagree with it; while I wish people would drop the "encyclopedia" pretence, we're here to build a database of relevant and accurate information; we're not here to build Facebook II. Wikipedia isn't a public hosting service, it's a charitable body with a clear and legally defined object – "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally" – and everything anyone does here should be done with that in mind. Everyone's had off-topic chats with people on occasion, but among Wikipedia's better editors, even the most off-topic tangents can generally be traced back to show some relevance to the original point; we're far too tolerant of people who treat the place as a glorified chatroom. It's not harmless fun; chit-chat clogs watchlists and RecentChanges, makes it hard to hold or follow genuinely on-topic conversations on the talkpages of those involved, and adds to the public perception of Wikipedia as a site not to be taken seriously. Sure, goofing around can sometimes help people work toward the objects, but it shouldn't ever be an end in itself;
A decent separation of neutral and non-neutral content. "Userspace" is a bodge-compromise; I do think MyWikiBiz's directoryspace/mainspace separation is a great idea. If the POV pushers and spammers were able to post their rants and ads in peace, on pages explicitly flagged as non-neutral, they'd hopefully leave the mainspace itself alone.
Agree with alot of that, especially civility and immediacy issues - you talk about reducing social aspect - how specifically would you propose to do that? How much is acceptable and how does one judge? Casliber (talk·contribs) 17:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
It's a value judgement. As Essjay was so fond of saying, every edit you make should be considered in terms of how it improves the project; every editor here should be prepared to justify how any given edit of theirs advances the WMF's objects, and if they can't do so they shouldn't be there. It's perfectly possible to justify pure chit-chat - Keeper's baseball talk or Ealdgyth's foal photos, for instance - in terms of creating an environment in which people work better. It's even possible to justify venomous flareups in terms either of letting off steam, or of "reasonable correction" to prevent people going against those objects. What it's not possible to justify is the sub-clique of users who appear to be here only to sign each others' guestbooks. The whole "vested contributors" thing is a crock of shit, quite frankly; people willing to put in the hard work to keep the site from degenerating into a morass of fanfiction and porn should be treated with more respect. – iridescent19:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I really thing there ought to be some minimum percentage of mainspace edits that an editor should have to do over a time period. If less than, I don't know, 25-30% of your edits are to mainspace, are you providing enough value to outweigh any drama that you are causing? (and it's possible we'd have to count this in bytes rather than the number of times one clicked submit, as some people do lots of work in a single edit) I don't believe it's good for the project for anyone to have the bulk of their edits to WPspace or userspace. Karanacs (talk) 19:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
The trouble is, editcount is such a blunt instrument. Something like this would have knocked my percentages haywire had I been on 1300 edits rather than 130000, and as you say it penalizes people like myself and Moni who work offline or in deletable sandboxes - this edit would only count as a single mainspace edit despite representing a good month of work. "Number of bytes" wouldn't work either; if I revert someone who's deleted a big chunk of text, it would only take the two seconds it takes to click "undo", but counts the same as a laborious rewrite in byte terms. – iridescent19:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Those are good points, and I haven't figured out the "right" formula yet. I'm just so tired of the people who are seemingly only here to chat, to make meaningless comments (how I hate ANI), to create conflict, or to spend all their time trying to mold policy (including at AfD) without having a clue what it is like today to work in mainspace. Get rid of a lot of the nonsense and we may have an easier time attracting new editors who actually care about content. Karanacs (talk) 19:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I have tried proposing something before about minimum mainspace edits and got howled down in vocal protests. I agree that editcount is a blunt instrument but it is better than none and the percentages of contribs are useful too. Casliber (talk·contribs) 19:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
A useful list, for which it would be possible to create sub-groups (such as "improving content") for user-friendliness. However, I think the most interesting question is - if you could only chose one, which would it be? For example, do you think any of the others could be sorted out without addressing no. 6? BenMacDui10:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Pretty much all of them could be summarized as "professionalism" in one form or another. Wikipedia is run by enthusiastic amateurs; in many ways that's admirable, and it's something that holds the community together, but it's not appropriate for what is to all extents and purposes a major international corporation. At the moment, we have roughly the same structure as an early communist movement, with multiple overlapping councils composed of anyone interested in joining, and no clear jurisdictions; what we don't have, any more, is Jimmy and Larry serving as Lenin and Trotsky to hold the core together and mediate between the factions. The challenge is steering the enthusiasm of the "workers" into becoming a Labour Party, not an isolationist clique of ideological purists with ACPD or its successor as a rubber-stamp politburo.
The comparison between Wikipedia's higher echelons and a religious cult isn't a new one, but it's valid; people argue over trivial policy points with the obsessiveness of theologians debating whether Adam was created with a beard, and those who "buy into" the whole belief system genuinely do see anyone who thinks the current system isn't working as a heretic. (A recent RFA candidate has the statement "It's truly shocking to me that there are people here who not only eschew the community, but actively hate it and seek to tear it down" on their userpage, which absolutely floored me, while someone with whom I've never had the slightest interaction – an admin, btw – recently appeared out of the blue for no apparent reason to describe me as "a person bitter about Wikipedia who really doesn't care anymore, and isn't afraid of breaking every civility rule because what will happen, a block?"; as has often been pointed out, Wikipedia's much-vaunted "civility rules" miraculously vanish when it's an admin doing the abusing.)
I know I sound like a broken record on the matter, but "consensus" isn't working. We have 10,000 active editors, but it's rare for even the most hotly-debated discussion to get more than a hundred participants; however, the views of whichever small group happen to turn up then becomes "consensus". If Wikipedia's not going to go down the professional route, at the very least it needs a Govcom – independent of Arbcom – to act as Congress to Arbcom's Supreme Court (or as the Commons to Arbcom's Lords, if you prefer). Almost every problem on Wikipedia ultimately traces back to the power vacuum at the top. – iridescent11:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I think we are agreed on that. I am a little tied up at present, and have very little time for any active involvement in anything new, but I am curious. I missed this unhappy cradle strangling episode (rumours of which failed to reach my rocky and distant homelands) but would I be right in thinking that you favour something along the lines of the ACPD if it were created from within the community rather than appointed from above? BenMacDui14:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
You can see the flare-out that destroyed ACPD in all its glory here. The problems with ACPD weren't that we don't need some kind of body to make decisions - we obviously do - but that ACPD appeared to be a fairly obvious power-grab by Arbcom to make themselves judge-jury-and-executioners sole governing body of the project, with ACPD (which was explicitly hand-picked to be biased in favour of the existing setup) deciding on policy and Arbcom enforcing it. I'd have no problem with a Grand Governing Council if it were explicitly separate from Arbcom (I'd say noone who'd ever been on one is permitted to ever be on the other) and genuinely accountable, with none of this "three year terms" nonsense. – iridescent15:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Some interesting points
One of which particularly caught my eye – no, not the very well made critique of wikipedia's childish and insulting "civility policy". It was the vital topics list, which I don't think I'd looked at since its expansion.
A couple of articles listed there caught my eye, one of which, Death, demonstrates for me precisely why these are so hard to write. The supporting articles, like premature burial for instance, are so poor that it just makes a nonsense of the attempt to pull them together. As for Information technology, well, it's just a disgrace. As, amazingly, are almost all of the computer-related articles. Apart from a couple of old steam-driven ones anyway. --MalleusFatuorum21:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Nothing more frustrating than the (all too common) occurrence of linking a term when one is writing an article...to find the bluelinked article needs a complete overhaul...botany..coffee related and more...Casliber (talk·contribs) 23:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Tell me about it. I long ago lost count of the articles I've worked on because I stumbled across them after making a link to what (I'd hoped) would be a decent account of at least the basic facts. After having several times been accused of being a waste of space because I don't create enough new articles, I finally realised what was going on. New articles are all that matter; let the drones sort them out. MalleusFatuorum00:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm quite taken by the "seven ages of man, Wikipedia style" diagram on this template (from the Death article). I don't know whether to be amused, or just sigh at another symptom of Wikipedia's being Wikipedia, at the idea that there are 13 key stages in life before age 20, but the only things following age 21 are "adulthood" and "death". (The accompanying text is marginally better; in that, there are 12 stages to life before age 20, but after 21 one doesn't just have "adulthood" and "death" to look forward to, one also has "middle age", "ageing", "senescence" and "old age". Is it time for Lastday yet? – iridescent00:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I feel like I'm always starting new articles or expanding old articles just to get a minimum coverage of topics for an FAC. And then, look at the FAC for Carucage, where I'm starting to feel like I'm being required to rewrite the entire medieval taxation subject ... It's funny, but you don't get those sorts of requests NEARLY as much with biographical articles, it's always the non-biography subjects that get the "link this, explain this more, more background" cries... It always amazes me I can run a Quarter horse biography through FAC with nary a call to expand on the background, but if I do s non-biographical subject, it's explain explain explain. And honestly, when we get highly technical science or math articles, are THEY required to be dumbed down to 10 year old level? It shouldn't apply to something highly technical in a non-science field either, honestly. Some things just require a LOT of background, which you cannot fit into one article. ARGH! Sorry to vent. Ealdgyth - Talk01:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps biographies are simply easier to keep focused by nature, while concepts and events are more abstract. After all, you can provide background for a riot or scientific invention, but there isn't much background to give on the birth of a person (two people happened to get rather close one night), and the circumstances that shaped them into the man or woman they eventually became are described along the course of the article.
But I do agree with everyone who complains about the need to expand on various relevant articles that one would hope would support the reader rather than cause them to despair. In Iridescent's list, #5 is one of my main grievances with Wikipedia: the lack of coverage on many subjects so general or important that they are encountered often and interest many people. And no matter how many excellent articles there are out there covering obscure subjects in such a fascinating way that one may find oneself interested in spite of expectations or desires, I still believe that one of the most exhilarating things for me as a reader is to read a perfectly written lead section on a subject I was already familiar with. The sense of memories and ideas falling into place and being incorporated into a coherent whole—while simultaneously being connected to the vast web of human knowledge and history—is more than I can describe. That we live in a world of information has only exaggerated the existing misinformation, and reading on what you (think you) know may often be more enlightening than reading on something new. Waltham, The Duke of02:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Possible solution to #5
"Anyone can edit" is a core principle, but it does bring problems. Wikipedia has somehow drifted over the last couple of years from "everyone potentially has something to add" to "everyone's opinion is equally valid". The problem is allowing everyone to edit, in general, while preventing every crank, crackpot, and just bad writer from insisting on adding their pieces.
As Sandy is so fond of saying, there's no such thing as a "perfect" or "finished" article on Wikipedia, and she's right. What there is, however, is a small but growing subset of articles which both say all they ought to say about their given topic, and which attract enough problems that it can reasonably be assumed that on the balance of probabilities, any substantial content change is likely to be a net negative.
I'd propose that for articles with this status, a new category is created and the articles are "locked into place". From then on, changes to the content need to be vetted by someone else before they go live (it would mean the creation of a new user right, but I'd suggest giving it automatically to anyone who's demonstrated they've the right amount of common sense). I'd propose getting every vital article up to GA/FA standard – even if it means paying professional writers to do it – and locking them into place in this way; I'd also at least consider "locking" those FAs where there's a clear consensus that there's no obvious scope for improvement and no realistic likelihood that new information is going to turn up necessitating a rewrite, and the more problematic biographical articles.
This all sounds anathema to the free-for-all which Wikipedia's become, but it's actually very close to Wikipedia's original plan. Jimbo and Larry never intended for Wikipedia pages to be the "definitive" articles; the plan was always that Wikipedia would serve as the incubator from which the best articles would periodically be harvested to WP:1.0 and Nupedia. Danny Wool tried something similar with Veropedia and failed, but that failure was more due to Wikipedia's overwhelming web presence (and the fact that PageRank automatically penalizes any site copying from Wikipedia) than to any flaw in the model. By keeping the material on Wikipedia, with a new class of "verified article", the "Google blindness" wouldn't be an issue, but it would vastly reduce the maintenance workload and help reduce Wikipedia's reputation for defamation and inaccuracy.
Yes, it would breach "anyone can edit", but we're talking a tiny number of articles. Even if every entry on the full Vital Articles list along with every single FA, FL and GA were locked, it would still only affect 0.801% of Wikipedia's articles, leaving 99.199% completely unaffected by the changes.
And yes, I do recognize that it would create a new level of bureaucracy and a new time sink. However, I think it would more than pay for itself. Yes, people would have to spend time vetting changes and granting user rights. However, in my opinion the time lost would be more than outweighed by the time saved through no longer having constantly to read and re-read articles to remove inaccuracy and vandalism.
This would cause such howls of protest from the "Anyone can edit" hardcore (and the non insignificant clique of boar-killers who rely on a continued flow of vandalism to give them something to revert) that it'll never be implemented on Wikipedia, but it's something that would go a long way to solving a number of Wikipedia's problems – from BLP to the reputation for amateurish inaccuracy to the failure to cover core topics well. – iridescent16:52, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I like your vision. And even if you may consider its application completely improbable, I prefer to be a little more optimistic. After all, it would seem to me that flagged revisions are also an anathema to the "anyone can edit" camp, yet I have little doubt that they will be (eventually) activated. This can pave the way to your proposal: once the new status quo has been established, the "anyone can edit anything" philosophy has been well and truly consigned to the history books and we have tangible benefits to speak of, the ground will be more fertile for your proposal, which will no longer seem so radical, but rather a logical extension of the state of affairs as it will (hopefully) be then. Is this really too much to hope for? Waltham, The Duke of22:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
The more I think about this, especially in light of the hotel saga below, I've come to think that what's needed is an fundamental shift in attitude. We're still thinking in terms of "what benefits Wikipedia?"; what we should be doing is thinking in terms of "what benefits Wikipedia's successor". Thus, we need to quit worrying about stubs, quit worrying about cruft, quit worrying about the endless internal squabbles and politics, even quit worrying about BLP violations except in blatant-libel cases. In this new view, the only articles worthy of attention are those with the potential to warrant a space on the Wikipedia 2.0 ark once the deluge sweeps Wikipedia 1 away. It's taken me a long time to realise this, but I think it's right. – iridescent17:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! Although that one's probably the lowest-traffic one of all my "Obscure Victoriana of London" series, that one and Noel Park are my personal favourites. The common theme behind all that series was an attempt to hammer home the point of how similar the values and culture of the ordinary people of the 19th century were to those of people today, and I think those two are the ones that get the point across best. (I have high hopes for this one, too, if I ever get around to finishing it; it's become one of those articles like Exploding Houses that seems doomed to sit unfinished in userspace for ever.) – iridescent09:56, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
The thing I like about your articles is how readable they are. There are lots of great articles on WP, but with the best will in the world it's hard to expect people to plow through some them (and I very much include mine in that category), but yours are always a pleasure to read to the end. It's something I keep having to tell myself when I write: "remember that people have to be able to read this". :) SlimVirginTALKcontribs11:01, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Um, thanks... Something I always try to bear in mind and am always telling others is a variation on something Giano once said; on Wikipedia, in the absence of evidence to the contrary always assume that whoever you're dealing with is a reasonably bright 14 year old and write accordingly. In talk/userspace, that means less shouting and swearing unless you're sure the person is of an age not to be offended. On articles, that means work on the assumption that they have a relatively short attention span; are better at processing images than text; won't necessarily be familiar with things most adults would take as basic concepts but are intelligent enough to look up things they don't understand; and are going to be more interested in human-interest stories, personal relationships and "wow-factor" snippets than they will be in technical information. (The latter is why even dull-as-ditchwater articles like Chelsea Bridge contain those asides about biker gangs and 18th-century sewage systems.) You'd be surprised how much an article can be improved just by chopping as many sentences as possible in half and moving the necessary-but-tedious technical detail to the footnotes. – iridescent21:08, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
It's good advice about the detail. I have a tendency to want to cram in every detail I know about the thing, but you're right, it's a mistake. That's what footnotes are for. SlimVirginTALKcontribs23:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
If it's an article on a subject I'm too familiar with, I find it's always a good idea to get someone completely unfamiliar with the topic to have a read-through, too - one can pretty much guarantee there's always at least one thing that seems obvious to you but that will be meaningless to someone else (see Moni's list of points on Talk:Alice Ayres, for example). It's also generally a good idea to wave anything substantial under Malleus's nose - he's very good at spotting bad grammar or MOS errors, and it gets whatever issues he's going to raise resolved before it goes to FAC/GAC. (Some of the serial-opposers can be safely ignored, but Sandy and Karanacs will always take opposition by Malleus seriously, generally with good reason.)
I think my delisting to keep ratio at GA Sweeps is probably one of the lowest as well ... perhaps I am a monster after all. :) --MalleusFatuorum00:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
While I haven't counted, I suspect you have the lowest support/oppose ratio of anyone at FAC (well, aside from Fifelfoo, but he doesn't count). Not an insult - you have more of a knack for spotting problems. (My FAC criteria, fairly notoriously, are "is this interesting and is it free of errors".) – iridescent00:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
I hadn't really thought about it until now, but you may be right. I do support the odd article or two though, in fact here's one that I recently initially opposed but changed my mind about and supported as a result of the improvements that were made to it. Even though I can't stand the pretentious Bono and the stupid Irish tax system that considers him to be a privileged "artist". I have occasionally wondered whether I demand too much, not just at FAC but at GAN as well, but the doubt only lasts momentarily. --MalleusFatuorum00:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Tony1 used to scare the bejesus out of me with his oppose 1a, still does. A pity he hasn't been able to find the time to spend at FAC that he used to do. --MalleusFatuorum01:00, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
In my experience, it's possible to face down Tony's 1a opposes (and Giano's, come to that), providing you can make a case for why it ought to look the way it does rather than the way he thinks it ought to look. Yours are generally a different kettle of fish, as they're usually substantive points on content rather than technical issues. Mattisse was actually very good at prompting that "shit, I never thought of that and that's going to require a complete rewrite" reaction as well. – iridescent01:49, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Contrary to popular opinion I have a very high regard for Mattisse's content work and reviewing skills, whatever she thinks about me. I very much hope that she can work through her recent troubles and get back to being productive again. --MalleusFatuorum02:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind taking a look at some of your opposes, Malleus, to see how and when you do it. I'm having real problems knowing when to oppose and when just to make a few suggestions in the hope they'll help. I know it can feel crushing to see an oppose on an article you've poured yourself into, so I hate doing it to anyone else, but it's not fair to the delegates to wimp out because they need to see some solid opinions. So I'm trying to work out when an oppose really is the only sensible option. SlimVirginTALKcontribs13:01, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Before I walked out of FAC, I almost never opposed except in the case of true no-hopers which should never have been there in the first place. My attitude was always that Sandy and Karanacs aren't stupid and will take an unresolved "comment" into account just as much as they'll take an unresolved "oppose", but avoiding that Oppose wording makes it look a lot less bitey and is less prone to start an argument with the nominator.
(That is to say, "I don't think this is ready to pass at this stage as I'm not sure that references 3, 7 and 9 are to verifiable reliable sources" and "Strong oppose; serious WP:RS issues WRT refs 3,7 & 9" are semantically the same, but the impact on a nominator of the former is likely to be a lot more positive – especially a nominator not familiar with the foul-tempered abuse, pseudo-intellectual posturing and juvenile chest-thumping that passes for "discussion" at FAC.)
It's impossible to do anything significant within the current (failing) Wikipedia structure without making some enemies along the way*, and sometimes it's right to do what's necessary rather than what's popular, but there's no point making enemies unnecessarily. – iridescent17:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
*As the pair of you have possibly noticed.
Right, that's exactly what I mostly do, and I do it for the reasons you say: no point in upsetting someone unnecessarily, and who I am to say oppose anyway? But what I've found a couple of times is that the suggestions I make (under a "comment", not an "oppose") are fixed, so then I have to make others (because the first ones were just examples, not "do this and I can support"), and so on, until I feel I'm practically rewriting the thing. :) So now I'm thinking a quick oppose to begin with is less painful, but then, as you say, the nominator is hurt and ends up hating you.
┌───────────────────────────────────────────┘
I always had severe misgivings about FAC as a process; it's so dependent on measuring compliance with arbitrary standards, sometimes at the considerable expense of actual article quality. (See this very long thread for my issues regarding FAC in detail.) After years of avoiding it, I gave it a try for Hellingly Hospital Railway because I was aiming for a mainpage appearance on the 50th anniversary of the closure, and submitted a few more after that as part of a vague drive towards getting Featured Topics on Thames bridges (Chelsea Bridge, Richmond Bridge, Albert Bridge, Battersea Bridge, Vauxhall Bridge at FA level, with most of those in between at GA level) and the buildings of the Moselle valley (Bruce Castle and Noel Park are the only completed ones there, with the nightmare of Broadwater Farm the main sticking point). Once I abandoned the idea of Featured Topics (on reflection, I couldn't see the point) I pulled out of FAC, as I dislike the pseudointellectual posturing there intensely and as previously mentioned, think it generally damages articles more than it improves them.
I came back briefly at the end of last year for a mini-FT on Postman's Park (Postman's Park, List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, Alice Ayres) and for a prospective mini-FT on Mandell Creighton; however, the Creighton FAC was hijacked by one of Mattisse's cronies with an ax to grind (who has proceeded to 'improve' the article beyond any recognition) so that was abandoned, and since then I've had no reason or desire to go back. The losing battle Realist & I fought against the tidal wave of crap on the Michael Jackson pages didn't help my already jaded attitude towards Wikipedia's dubious "quality standards", either. In all honesty, at present I'd discourage anyone from getting involved in FAC at present; I think that (through no fault of Raul and the Delegates) it's become so arbitrary and personality-driven that it's lost too much of its credibility to be worthwhile. – iridescent18:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
The fixed image size thing has gone now, if that would help you at Broadwater Farm. I agree generally about the way the MoS is applied at FAC, though I'm slowly getting used to it, the way a dog gets used to a lead. :) The thing is that if everyone who thinks that way stops nominating or reviewing FACs, it leaves no opposition to it. SlimVirginTALKcontribs18:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
See above, especially this comment. I think we (plural) are now past the point where Wikipedia's internal processes are relevant; what matters now is getting as much stable as possible in preparation for the jettisoning of the crap. – iridescent19:01, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
to Iridescent: I agree with you to the extent that one all too often sees a single reviewer sabotage a nomination because of an almost obsessive drive to "improve it", which generally means rewrite it in the way that he or she would have written. I watched one such train wreck very recently with increasing horror, then of course there was the Donnchadh fiasco, not to mention your episode with Mandell Creighton. Difficult to know what can be done about that except just wait for wikipedia's inevitable implosion I suppose.
to SV: the trouble with comments is exactly as you say, they're examples and when they're dealt with it will seem like you have no further objections to the promotion. I've come to the view that there are really only three practical options with an article you don't feel you can support. Ignore it, oppose it, or list everything you find wrong with it, preferably on the article's talk page rather than the review page, as reviewers are often put off by long talk pages. Sure, opposing makes some enemies, but probably less that failing 200 or so GAs. You get used to being one of wikipedia's most hated. --MalleusFatuorum19:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
One of the missing pieces here (since the morale at FAC was broken down by someone who is no longer with us) is reviewers supporting other reviewers and nominators. When one Oppose derails a FAC, other reviewers should step in and speak up, object to the changes demanded. Otherwise, my hands are tied. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Not everyone is strong-minded (or perhaps foolhardy) enough to do that. I think it's clear that when an FAC gets beyond a certain size it tends to get ignored, which is why if I've got a lot of points to make I've started putting them on the talk page. What I have seen an increase in lately though is reviewers trying to impose their own personal preferences on an article, over issues that are nothing to do with the FA criteria, like well-formed html, or particular citation styles. --MalleusFatuorum19:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Malleus, what you wrote above about the Piccard nomination really makes me not want to bother reviewing again. The articles as presented was in very poor condition, and shouldn't have been nominated like that. It was hard to understand in places, poorly sourced, not comprehensive, and containined original research. I should have said oppose right away. But I wanted to try to help the nominator improve it if she could do it in time. In turned out she couldn't. It wasn't a question of me wanting to see it written the way I would write it (I would approach an article about Piccard very differently), but of wanting to see professional writing, or at least writing that people could understand, and no OR, no stretching of the source material. SlimVirginTALKcontribs20:32, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I wasn't referring to you, but to another editor, with whom I exchanged sharp words at one point during the nomination (not at the FAC). --MalleusFatuorum20:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Just to clarify that, this (which spread across multiple pages) is, I presume, what Malleus is referring to, not your oppose (which was based on perfectly legitimate concerns about sourcing). – iridescent20:51, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
That was one of the early battles, I'd forgotten about that nonsense. What was in my mind was the "help" offered by this user, which would have had me tearing my hair out if I'd been the nominator. --MalleusFatuorum20:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I'm sorry for misunderstanding. It's just that you talked above about one reviewer sabotaging FACs, with Piccard as an example, and I was the only reviewer. That's exactly the kind of situation I don't want to get into again. Helping is good if the nom can realistically be fixed in time, but if not it's a huge amount of work, and you end up hated for it anyway. I find it hard to identify when I'm just prolonging the agony. SlimVirginTALKcontribs21:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Obviously my fault for being muddled, as I did imply that Piccard was sunk by a reviewer, which I want to say categorically is not my opinion. Until I just checked the review I hadn't realised that the editor I was thinking hadn't actually offered an opinion at FAC. I think I may go out and get a bottle of wine; I sheem to htink cleera after a gloss ro tow ... --MalleusFatuorum21:19, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Agree with Malleus on the "too many things that should be sorted out on the talk page not FAC" problem. Certain people made the "ridiculous nitpicky oppose" problem seem worse than it was, but even with them gone it's still a genuine problem. Leaving aside the alt-text pedantry (you know my opinions on that), there still seem to be a lot of "too many consecutive prepositional phrases" comments on the current FAC page, even with the Three Problematic Users all gone. Incidentally, the TFA queue from 3/4 to 3/9 reads: Horse, Bridge, Texas, Pop song, Anglo-Saxon, Videogame. Have you and Raul forgotten the hurricane you need to get a full house? – iridescent20:38, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Request for help
I am will shortly be posting to WP:AN with the request below. Any support would be appreciated.
Request to WP:AN
"I would like to take the article History of logic to FA. I have already sought input from a number of contributors and have cleared up the issues raised (I am sure there are more). I wrote nearly all of the article using different accounts, as follows:
I would like to continue this work but I am frustrated by the zealous activity of User:Fram who keeps making significant reverts, and blocking accounts wherever he suspects the work of a 'banned user'. (Fram claims s/he doesn't understand "the people who feel that content is more important than anything else").
Can I please be left in peace with the present account to complete this work. 'History of logic' is a flagship article for Wikipedia, and is an argument against those enemies who claim that nothing serious can ever be accomplished by the project". Logic Historian (talk) 10:02, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
The precedents here are Ottava and Mattisse, and in those cases it was ruled fairly overwhelmingly (although I didn't necessarily agree) that "being obnoxious" can outweigh "does good work" if the time wasted in arguments started by a user outweighs the benefits. You have to admit, you have a very long history of being unblocked and then wading fists-flying into fights. (See also this WR post, which is discussing Abd rather than you but is basically the same issue.) If you can convince a reasonable cross-section of people that you'll behave yourself, I'll join the chorus requesting an unblock, but after Greg, Undertow, Poetlister et al quite frankly I'm getting fed up with being the one who steps into the firing line every time someone decides that Wikipedia's rules apply to everyone except themselves. – iridescent10:14, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Abd
Thanks for this... a concise summary of the situation is that a conflicted editor kept injecting their article into pages I care about, which would have been routine cleanup were it not for Abd violating his editing restriction by throwing himself in the middle of it and creating a goat rodeo. In any case I don't appreciate the implication that I might be a "dangerous troll, abusing the project to retaliate against a real-world target" and appreciate your saying it how you see it (which is, incidentally, how I see it). -- samjinout13:52, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I have history with Abd, and as I say there I haven't followed the dispute, so don't take anything I say too seriously. After the hassle with Neutral777 I have no intention of getting involved in any dispute with the word "Linux" mentioned anywhere. – iridescent14:05, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like a sane policy. I'd defend myself against his off-wiki attacks but it seems I don't know the secret handshake to get a WR account so it's not so much to drag you in (there are already more than enough bodies in the fray) as to thank you for being candid. -- samjinout14:51, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
To create a WR account, you need a non-throwaway email address so they can verify your identity – they're (rightly) paranoid about trolls impersonating high-profile Wikipedia figures. If Somey isn't accepting the email address you're using, send me (or Alison, or Malleus, or anyone else Somey's likely to believe who has an account here) an email via Special:EmailUser (so I can confirm the address is linked to your email account) and I'll let him know that it's definitely you.
If you only want an account to engage with Abd, I'd recommend against it unless you have a lot of time to spare; he's not (yet) under any of the restrictions on WR that were imposed on him on WP, so there's a good chance any comment you make will prompt a 2000 word essay. – iridescent12:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Adminly question
Iri, what do the strikeouts here mean? Does that mean those edits were oversighted? Was this editor making attacks on me so bad they had to be oversighted? What can I do to investigate this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:02, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Hey Sandy. If you look here, you'll see that about 30 sequential edits were oversighted. This is probably because Shoemaker's Holiday introduced something that had to be oversighted in his edit of 00:19, 7 March 2010, and no one removed it until Rlevse did on 01:14, 7 March 2010. Since every revision in that time period will contain the information that Shoemaker added, all of them have to be oversighted. NW(Talk)23:43, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I can't provide an explanation to what happened, thanks to the Powers That Be. Unless and until the Commons Thought Police catch up with their Wikipedia brethren, you can reconstruct the incident from here. – iridescent10:00, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Goodness, I had so much fun today, I forgot about this, and just got back to it. Thanks to both ! Does Shoemaker still labor under the impression that his name isn't common knowledge? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:22, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I just declined a prod on this railway station(?) article, but it overall looks marginal. The PROD reason asserted a GNG failure, but the article had multiple offline refs asserted. Can you check it out and AfD it if it's insufficiently notable? Jclemens (talk) 02:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Personally, I think minor stations like this should be merged to a list within the article on the line - however, there's a very clear consensus through numerous AFDs that every railway station warrants its own article, so there's no point AFDing it. – iridescent03:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Rather than prolong what has become rather a tedious discussion elsewhere I'd like to respond to this comment of yours here: "The ... similar argument is that Wikipedia's Holocaust article rightly says "15,000 homosexuals [were executed]" and not "15,000 sex criminals", even though homosexuality was a criminal offence in Germany".
It's a rather complicated area; I've recently seen discussions suggesting that the term "homosexual" is insulting, and should be replaced by "gay". I'm not aware though that any country in the world has ever made homosexuality illegal. It's indulging in homosexual acts that has been proscribed, as the case of poor Alan Turing makes clear. The UK government in the form of Gordon Brown has issued a public apology for the way Turing was treated, so does that mean he's not a homosexual now? Was Turing really a homosexual? Was Demdike really a witch? Who can say? They both apparently believed that they were and so did the courts. --MalleusFatuorum18:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Missing the point. If there are two equally accurate wordings, one of which is causing a problem and one of which isn't, you go with the one which isn't. It doesn't matter if you personally think the former is offensive/misleading/whatever and can't see any reason to change; if there's no good reason to prefer wording (a) and someone prefers wording (b), you go with (b). You might think the people being offended are full of shit, but if there's no good reason not to do what someone wants, do it.
Re the legal position of homosexuality in Germany; yes, homosexuality in the literal sense of "being attracted to a person of the same sex" wasn't illegal—any more than being attracted to a toddler, a dog, or a length of hosepipe is illegal providing one doesn't act on it. However, regarding male homosexuality, Germany from 1935-1969 (excluding the DDR) didn't define "homosexual" in terms of a "standard" sodomy law, but with the notoriously ambiguous Paragraph 175: "mit einem anderen Mann Unzucht treibt oder sich von ihm zur Unzucht mißbrauchen läßt" ("A man who does something dirty to another man or lets another man to it to him"), which was taken by the courts (Nazi, postwar military courts, and West German civilian courts alike) to mean any activity with any sexual connotation, from kissing upwards. – iridescent02:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
We'll have to agree to disagree then. "Accurate wordings" change with the politically correct wind. I'd have more sympathy for this discussion had it focused on what I think was a real crime against morality and human decency, those who were executed as cowards during the First World War. --MalleusFatuorum02:30, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
IIRC they were posthumously pardoned, though; I deliberately chose homosexuality in Germany as it's an example of people convicted of something that's no longer a crime, but where the convictions still stand. A general Golden Rule of Wikipedia is: if someone's getting upset about something, and there's no reason not to go with what they want, then go along with them. "Unhappiness" is just another word for "not getting what one wants"; the only cures for unhappiness are (a) persuading whoever it is that they don't actually want it, or (b) giving them what they want. It's almost always easier to go with (b). – iridescent09:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Passing by, so thought I would say hi
Thought I would let you know, I plan to return to editing in early June, since I finish at university this summer. Kind of miss you guys, even Malleus ;) — R200:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Malleus is right. Although there have been a few bright moments recently, the whole culture here has taken a decided lurch for the worst. – iridescent09:56, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
TfL introduces new facility to help reduce the number of defaced Zip photocards in circulation
Vehicle testing fees will now be cheaper.
An innovative new campaign called "THINK!" is launched to cut motorcyclist deaths
February 2010
Motorcycling is to get safer with the creation of the London Motorcycle Policy Unit, a division of the Metropolitan Police that is a new dedicated team of motorcycle safety experts working to reduce motorcycle casualties across the Capital.
Major improvement works set for the New Cross area
Smart Travel Sutton scheme sees a 75% increase in cycling and sustainable transport usage in the brough of Sutton
Taxi fares to increase by 2.3 per cent to meet higher running costs
New Pegasus crossings intalled over A3 between Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park
Bounds Green has gained Grade II Listed status from English Heritage
The portal went through a candidacy for featured portal with not much luck. The areas of the portal are becoming more active with the voting and changing of the selected pictures and articles. The transport news seems has started to be updated again but with the most up-to-date news being in this newsletter. Did you know is being improved. The portal has had a new selected biography section added to bring it up to standard. Please vote at Portal:London Transport/Vote. The current biography is Charles Pearson.
As usual all suggestions to improving the Metropolitan are welcome so if you have one we would be happy to hear from you.
Please also could people submit suggestions for DYKs or does anyone want to do the next issue?
Hello and Happy New Year from me and generally the London Transport project.
Thank you to Tyw7 for doing many of the March updates
If you think there is anything else i have missed, please drop me a note or leave a message at The Metropolitan's feedback page. Also if you feel you want to do an edition, again leave me a message.
Again i would like to state this newsletter is looking for anyone willing to do an issue.
Also, i apologise for those people who have been removed from the subscrition list. However, there has been long concerns by me as to who was receiving this, if people had created an account just to receive the newsletter and other things. However, you may still receive the newsletter if you just drop a message or readd yourself. This issue however does not concern people who have recently subscribed. This will also go to people who have expressed they want to keep receiving the newsletter. Thank you.
Upminster Bridge tube station was promoted to good article status in early February. Well done to all those involved. This is apparently the first tube station to be accepted as a Good Article. Also, High Speed 1 retained its GA status.
All articles have been assessed of their quality with only some of the articles' importance to the project yet to be determined. Well done on the assessment.
Discussion arose over the addition or removal of succession boxes showing the present London Underground lines and their histories as well as former services. Another discussion arose on boxes showing stations layouts
Separate issues arose over the population of aboandoned London Undeground projects categories and categories on single station platforms
New guidelines have been proposed for railway accidents. Please see WP:RAILCRASH.
...that Belsize Park station is one of the only eight stations in London to have a deep level bomb shelter beneath it?
…that Mile End tube station is the only station on the London Underground network from which it is possible to reach any other station with only a single change of train?
If you want to stop receiving this newsletter or, if you are visiting this userpage and want to sign up for this newsletter, then please visit this page. You may also like to provide your opinions on this newsletter by visiting The Metropolitan's feedback page or the project's discussion page. Any other issues with this, don't be afraid to drop a line at Simply south's talkpage.
Please provide any suggestions for any improvements to this newsletter and any comments or anything else to include in the next issue at the place mentioned above.
Thanks for letting me know; as per conversation on the talkpage I've withdrawn to free up the slot for someone else, as I have access via the library. Note to talkpage watchers: Westminster and Wigan libraries (among others) provide this online, and all UK residents are eligible to join any library regardless of whether you live in their catchment areas; likewise, all New York State and Massachusetts residents already have a subscription through New York Public Library and Boston Public Libraries, as do most Canadians via Toronto Library, Edmonton Library etc... – iridescent11:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Joy. I give him ten days before he pops up again. Hopefully somewhere else. I hear MWB is nice this time of year. – iridescent23:43, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
IIRC, thanks in no small part to Brad and my wondrous poetical efforts, you have a magic button that would solve the problem… Just be grateful nobody's turned up whining about "the more recent usage should be considered the primary topic". Yet. (If it's any consolation, Tunnel Railway hosts possibly the most ludicrous hatnote on the whole of Wikipedia, and survived.) – iridescent20:32, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Deleting that article on notability and general crappiness would be seen (although not quite justified) as a gross misuse of my amazing powers. I think I'll do the AfD and see how that goes. --Moni3 (talk) 20:56, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
No, no, no. The WP:WikiSpeak guide to the deletion processes:
WP:CSD. Anyone can demand it be overturned. However, to do so they need to know what the text of the deleted article was, and in five days' time when it drops out of the Google cache, then unless they're an admin themselves they've no way of knowing what the content was, and thus no way of knowing whether it was worth saving.
WP:PROD. If it stays tagged for five days, it's deleted and nobody has grounds to complain. If it's contested, you're no worse off than before.
WP:AFD. Assorted people who've never expressed an interest in the subject before turn up, spouting variations of "Keep, it exists" and "Delete, never heard of it". After 7 days, a random admin turns up who arbitrarily discounts all the arguments on one side. You have a 50/50 chance of the article being deleted, but if it's kept you've then set a precedent to which people will point for the rest of eternity. (See AFD/Gay Nigger Association of America (18th nomination) for proof of the process.)
If you do go to AFD, make sure you write a good rationale for the deletion; I'll predict you'll have a horde of cranks telling you that "this is a blatant WP:IDONTLIKEIT AFD" and shouting at you. Bear in mind that for consitency, whichever way it goes people will demand it encompass the rest of Category:Ultimate teams as well. – iridescent21:09, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Who the hell thought "Donner Party" would be a good name for a professional frisbee team? In fact, who the hell thought "professional frisbee team" was a good idea? – iridescent21:09, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
No one thought it was a good idea to name a frisbee team Donner Party, including the people who created the team. --Moni3 (talk) 21:14, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Transport Select Committee confirms the London Underground's Public-Private Partnership has not been delivering value for money.
£9.2 billion approved towards the completion of several of the major transport projects in London: East London Line extension, Jubilee Line upgrade, London Cycle Hire scheme, two Cycle Superhighways and 50 per cent boost to capacity of busiest DLR route.
London Bus Awards 2010 celebrated
Scooter safety urged for drivers to join the ScooterSafe initiative advised as well as warnings for teenagers on the changes of Daylight Savings
Frameworks set up to speed up delivery of electric vehicles in London by TfL
TfL's Travel Information Centre celebrated its 70th anniversary with the opening of a new centre at King's Cross St Pancras station
£11.5 miilion to be used in six boroughs for improvements in the run up to the Olympic games
Sutton High Street closed for 10 weeks for gas maintenance
A £6 million facelift of Woolwich town centre is completed.
Vision outlined on new trains and a better system for the London Underground
A new map is launched showing coach parking close to major landmarks
A taxi rank in Cranbourne Street is to be moved to Haymarket to curb touting
Mayor and TfL: Arbiter's directions show PPP is 'not delivering for Londoners and taxpayers'
Transport for London has awarded the morning free newspaper contract to Metro
The portal went through a candidacy for featured portal with not much luck. The areas of the portal are becoming more active with the voting and changing of the selected pictures and articles. The transport news seems has started to be updated again but with the most up-to-date news being in this newsletter. Did you know is being improved. The portal has had a new selected biography section added to bring it up to standard. Please vote at Portal:London Transport/Vote. The current biography is Charles Pearson.
As usual all suggestions to improving the Metropolitan are welcome so if you have one we would be happy to hear from you.
Please also could people submit suggestions for DYKs or does anyone want to do the next issue?
Thank you to Tyw7 for doing many of the March updates
If you think there is anything else i have missed, please drop me a note or leave a message at The Metropolitan's feedback page. Also if you feel you want to do an edition, again leave me a message.
Again i would like to state this newsletter is looking for anyone willing to do an issue.
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Upminster Bridge tube station was promoted to good article status in early February. Well done to all those involved. This is apparently the first tube station to be accepted as a Good Article. Also, High Speed 1 retained its GA status.
All articles have been assessed of their quality with only some of the articles' importance to the project yet to be determined. Well done on the assessment.
Discussion arose over the addition or removal of succession boxes showing the present London Underground lines and their histories as well as former services. Another discussion arose on boxes showing stations layouts. This has reslted in many of thwe succession boxes being removed from articles.
Separate issues arose over the population of aboandoned London Undeground projects categories and categories on single station platforms
New guidelines have been proposed for railway accidents. Please see WP:RAILCRASH.
Major discussions arose over the notability of many London bus routes, which resulted in some routes being kept and some being deleted. Please leave your comments at WT:LT#London bus route articles and WT:BUS.
that at 44 tons, the locomotives of the Central London Railway's first underground trains were so heavy that they shook buildings as they passed 60 feet below and were scrapped after three years?
...that bus company London Country North East lost over £5 million in less than two years of existence before it was split up in 1989?
...that Belsize Park station is one of the only eight stations in London to have a deep level bomb shelter beneath it?
…that Mile End tube station is the only station on the London Underground network from which it is possible to reach any other station with only a single change of train?
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Regarding updating that "Thames Tunnels" image, DavidCane would probably do it if you asked nicely; he keeps the tube maps updated, and the principle is the same. – iridescent20:10, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
{Snowflakezz}
Hey, Snowflakezz happens to be a friend. I was just showing him how to undo vandalism. Thank you for the warning anyway. If you don't have any objections, I will remove the notice. --EcstacyXtcy318:29, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
Notability of stations
Clarify - notability is established through "significant coverage in secondary sources" - the original newspaper reports are primary sources. Really I don't see the point of trying to justify the notability of a subject when the encyclopedia as a whole may not agree - if articles keep coming up for deletion then it is indicative of a problem whether or not they get deleted or not. Far better to create articles that don't raise such problems.Shortfatlad (talk) 22:16, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Newspaper reports are not primary sources unless you're writing about the newspaper itself. Don't be ridiculous. – iridescent22:19, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Given that you've just posted on the fifth most-watched user-talkpage on Wikipedia, I imagine more of my friends and enemies alike than you ever wanted will chip in if they feel it's warranted :Þ. (Thread in question, to save y'all having to dig through contribs.) Just to reiterate; while I agree in theory with the principle of merging short articles into long ones, you have absolutely no consensus for doing it unilaterally, and the net result if you do it without an RFC beforehand will just be you being blocked and the edits reverted. You seem to have a misconception as to how Wikipedia's processes work; WikiProjects are places for people to discuss issues related to articles in a given area, but they have no power at all to decide notability guidelines, deletion policy, or sourcing requirements. The chance of you ever successfully getting a railway station – let alone a railway station in England, where even the most obscure rural halt will be covered by a raft of reliable sources – through AFD is zero. – iridescent08:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Congratulations on turning wikipedia into your own personal social space, maybe you can find time in your busy schedule to add content to, or create an article?87.102.87.1 (talk) 13:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Did you set aside your tools? Why not block TT for a month, or just ban him from all discussions of outlines for a month? Perhaps then an agreement could be reached... Hipocrite (talk) 02:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Long, long gone. I can't imagine I'd pass an RFA in the current "oppose, candidate once had an argument" climate – and despite the singular inability of those who complain about my "abuse" ever to actually come up with any examples other than "thinks non-disruptive sock accounts should be allowed to make clean starts", I very much doubt I'd qualify as "in good standing" – so I can't imagine it's likely I'll ever be back down that particular hole.
(Banning TT isn't the answer; like most of those who have a Vision Of How Wikipedia Ought To Be that stubbornly ignores the fact that most people don't share that vision, he'd like nothing better than to be a Martyr To The Cause. Since, from the threads below and above, at least two members of Arbcom are reading this, perhaps they'd like to comment on how well policy-topic-bans have worked in the past.) – iridescent18:54, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm not saying that you should (or shouldn't) want to, but for what it's worth, I'm not aware of any reason you couldn't be resysopped on request to a bureaucrat. While resysopping is discretionary with the 'crats, typically they are on the lookout more for "resigned the day after an arbitration case was filed against him" as opposed to "took some controversial administrator actions and disagreed with people" (or even "makes snarky comments about arbitrators"). So if you ever do want to get back into the trenches, as far as I know you are welcome to do it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:24, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
(quoting from above) "Given that you've just posted on the fifth most-watched user-talkpage on Wikipedia...." How does one locate that information? Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Dragon's Flight did compile a list once, but AFAIK it's not updated. Database reports/Most-watched pages only includes two user pages in the top 1000—Jimbo (2069 watchers) and Slimmy (663). I thought Raul (542) and Alison (523) were the only others ahead of me on 254; I now see that yourself (374) and Sandy (346) have overtaken me, while Malleus will probably overtake me fairly soon; there may be others I'm not aware of ahead of me by now as well. (I've been virtually invisible for the last few months.) MZMcBride could no doubt provide the full list if you wanted—as I understand it, either Arbcom or Sue Gardner (not sure which) asked him not to publish stats of this nature other than for high-traffic pages as it made it too easy for vandals to spot little-watched pages where they were unlikely to be reverted. – iridescent18:39, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
The other issue I'd think is that it also depends how one archives one's talk pages, as some folks cut and paste to archives, while others move their talk pages wholesale (or does the 'watched' status follow the user rather than user talk page....)Casliber (talk·contribs) 21:23, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
AFAIK, when a watched page is moved, both the original page and the new title end up on your watchlist (which makes sense when you think about it). – iridescent 222:12, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
I think it makes sense to have them both watched. If I have an interest in (say) Leigh (Greater Manchester) railway station but at some point decide that, regardless of what WP:RAIL's naming policy has to say, that looks ridiculously awkward and thus move it to Leigh railway station (Manchester), I'd want to watchlist both the new name (because it's the article in which I'm interested) and the old name (in case someone either screws about with the redirect, or starts writing a new article at the old name). – iridescent21:49, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Sure, and I imagine that was the original idea for implementing it that way. However, when April 2006 gets moved to Iridescent lives at 2536 Big Ben Tower and her phone number is 555, suddenly over 1,000 people have that information in their watchlists, pretty much forever. There's no mechanism for removing the information from the watchlist table, short of getting a system administrator to do it directly. I'm not aware of that ever being done. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:53, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
MediaWiki is a mess, but disabling watching of the old version would usher in vandal-paradise. If only the new name stayed on the watchlist, I could move Barack Obama to Barack H. Obama or something equally uncontroversial that wouldn't set off immediate alarm bells, and then have my wicked way with the original Barack Obama page – to which all the incoming links are pointing – without it showing up on anyone's watchlists. Time it to just after a MediaWiki update but before Gurch has had a chance to change Huggle to work with the new version, and it could easily stay live for an hour even on a high-traffic page, particularly if the vandal-version were subtly vandalised rather than poop-i-fied. (A Certain Other Wiki had "After McCain was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, there were three presidential debates between Obama and McCain in September and October 2008. During the first debate, McCain questioned whether the young negroid was strong enough on national security, pointing out that Obama had voted against funding for several missile systems. Obama then unzipped his pants, pulled out his penis (measuring over 13 inches in length), calmly slapped McCain across the face with his member, and then responded, "Got all the missile I need RIGHT HERE!" Polls after the debate showed Obama surging." on their main page for a full day without a single person noticing.) – iridescent22:04, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
I made Most-watched pages by namespace (configuration) today, because I got curious. For what it's worth, it was the Toolserver administrators who objected to the full watchlist data being released (they said it violated MediaWiki security, specifically Special:UnwatchedPages). I've always viewed the arguments for hiding the data as completely specious, but it caused enough of a stir that I wasn't able to regain adminship over it. One of those cases when, with the passage of time, people will look back and say "what the hell was wrong with those people, they got that worked up over something so trivial?" I think. The complete idiocy surrounding User:Kelly Martin/B has some correlation. At least one of the "senior" MediaWiki developers suggested making Special:UnwatchedPages unrestricted to all users, as it serves no use to anyone anyway. At least not on this site. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:36, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm surprised (and more than a little thankful) at how far down that list I've slipped. Some of the top names are understandable – the Toxic Personalities bulk-watchlisted by the Civility Police, the Colorful Characters watched en masse by Greg and co, the Hugglers watched by every reverted vandal ever to complain on their talkpage – but some just seem inexplicable.
I can't make it a regular report, but the full results were pretty interesting. "MZMcBride 4" is watched by 4 people, go figure. Here are the results, truncated. Richard Evans (British author) has a note in the page history from Brion about some type of corruption, so that's always been my theory there. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
One shouldn't assume people are watching to oppose, some might be watching to support. Or just to eat popcorn. If I recall correctly, Malleus announced his upcoming RFA on Review and then left us all blue, wanting. –xenotalk21:09, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Oh bugger! You've let the cat out of the bag now Iridescent! Xeno, I was at the time quite serious about a third RfA, but came to my senses in time. MalleusFatuorum21:16, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
This is about the fact that there's a severe mote/beam discrepancy going on on that talkpage. I'll be the first to admit that Malleus can be annoying, but the members of the self-proclaimed Civility Police who emerge from from the shadows every time anyone disagrees with him openly looking for pretexts to block him have a severe blind spot when it comes to the whining, sulking, and—yes—swearing from their own ranks. As has already been pointed out there, and you and your buddies are ignoring, Malleus's "you clearly haven't got a fucking clue" came after "Read the bloody page I linked you to!" from the person doing the "mummy, that nasty man was rude to me" whining, and likewise ignoring the fact that the person doing the "civility warning" has a very impressive list of warnings for disruption and POV-pushing. But hey, that doesn't fit with your agenda, right? – iridescent19:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Goodness me Iridescent, what a lot of misconceptions. As far as I am aware I have no "buddies" in the sense I think you mean. I am not a member of any "self-proclaimed Civility Police", but an admin doing my voluntary duty of enforcing our rules, of which WP:CIVIL is still one. My only agenda here is to protect our collective ability to complete the project we are working on without getting distracted with silly bickering. If there is another user you wish me to look at I will be happy to do so. --John (talk) 20:03, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Amazing how many people who cite WP:CIVIL as if it's Holy Writ handed down to Jimbo on stone tablets, haven't actually bothered to read it. Most pertinently, "Editors are generally not blocked for minor incivility. Civility is a goal rather than an objective standard. Wikipedia editors from around the world may have different cultural standards of civility, so a certain amount of tolerance is required." I assume Brad is still watching this page; perhaps he can explain exactly what's likely to happen to someone who threatens a week long block for a comment that wouldn't raise an eyebrow in a school playground if you actually tried to make it stick. It looks to me that the only people in that discussion who've actually done anything lately towards "completing the project we are working on" are myself, Malleus and Nev. Or does wasting the time of some of the few people still left who actually bother to write material for the project with pointless threads like these somehow advance the "completion of the project"? – iridescent20:12, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
I am sorry you consider I have wasted your time; it is up to you what you do and don't write here, so feel free not to answer this question. Ever been in any school playgrounds recently? I assure you the insult your friend made would have done more than raise an eyebrow in a school playground. I would have no hesitation in blocking if I saw him make a similar one again. Nice chatting to you; I'll let you get back on with your article improvement work now. --John (talk) 20:28, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
This is getting old ... this is the same John who accused Ceoil of having medical, then social issues, and then called Malleus a troll? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:12, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Re Sandy: the very same.
Serious answer to Malleus: "Annoying" can be both a good and a bad thing. When it's in the sense of "shaking up those who feel they've somehow earned a privileged position", or "sticking up for newcomers who are obviously here with good intentions, but don't quite understand how things work and thus irritate people" – both of which undoubtedly apply to you, even though the 'well intentioned newcomers' don't generally appreciate it until after the fact (cf Realist, Coldplay…) – it's a good thing. When it's "I'm right whatever anyone else says", it's a bad thing, and you do sometimes get like that; I fondly recall a full-blown shouting match between you and everyone else over the difference between free-use and fair-use where you refused to admit you were wrong even after it became obvious.
As has been pointed out ad nauseam, US standards of politeness are wildly at odds with the rest of the English-speaking world; what seems like politeness to an American often seems patronizing and offensive to a British/Canadian/Australian/Irish etc audience, comments which an Australian would consider friendly banter can come across to Americans and British as venomous insults; comments which a British or Canadian person would consider a blunt but accurate summary of facts can look to Americans like personal abuse; comments which an American would consider polite and respectful can appear patronizing and pompous to the rest of the world. It's not that any one group is in the wrong, but that different cultures are, well, different. What those who try to enforce "civility" don't seem to understand – and Jimbo's pet project to create an Internet Civility Police is a prime offender – is that trying to enforce the social mores of Florida and California onto the rest of the world itself seems like a patronizing and arrogant assumption of American cultural superiority (and not even American culture in general, but a particular West Coast subculture; I can't recall ever seeing any of the sizeable Illinois contingent, for instance, ever whining about "civility") and consequently extremely "uncivil" to the 95.5% of the world not living in the US.
That quote of mine → which (along with That Facebook Comment) is likely to be what I'm remembered for if Wikipedia survives, cuts both ways. It's true that the West-coast subculture with what seems to the rest of the world (including most of the US) a ludicrously exaggerated ideal of "respect" has an unhealthy effect on Wikipedia's internal culture, and has led to the dubious focus on community-building at the cost of content-building among many of Wikipedia's policymakers, the excesses of the Civility Police, and the kind of climate in which this nonsense could be taken as a serious vision statement, rather then as the David Brent-style parody it appears from English eyes.
But (you knew there'd be a "but") it cuts both ways; claiming that the English*/Irish/Australian/etc "be brutally honest" approach is right is just as much an assumption of cultural superiority as John & co's idea that the Californian way is the only right way, and appears just as irritating to some Americans as the knee-jerk West-coast-isms appear to most of the rest of the world.
Annoying people is sometimes necessary, but it should never be an end in itself; sometimes, cutting and running is the best option as there's no point fighting for the sake of it unless there's a core principle at stake. There's no honor in ending up like Greg or Moulton, living out a weird "what're you fighting against/what've you got?" shadow-life in which fighting against The Evils Of Wikipedia becomes an end in itself rather than a necessary means towards a vision of where you want Wikipedia to end up, and/or what you want to rise from the ashes when the sinking ship is left for the rats as the old crew steer it onto the rocks. – iridescent20:31, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
*By "English", I specifically mean England and not Britain, before anyone complains. For various reasons rooted in boring low-church history, Scotland and Wales have quite different attitudes to politeness than England, which is culturally far closer to Catholic Ireland, Italy, southern Germany, France etc than to the relative primness of Protestant Europe and the USA.
No, but remember that even the Chillums of the world presumably think the same of themselves; it's no secret that you antagonize some people (the issue is whether they deserve it). My point is, there's no point antagonizing people unnecessarily; I personally see "fuck off" verbal punctuation and not as an insult, for instance, but I realize that some people do get offended, so I try to avoid using it unless there's really no alternative. Things like that. All this could have been avoided if you'd just said "PeeJay, please stop, here's why".
You'll notice, I hope, that I count no less than four members of the current Arbcom currently on this page and you remain distinctly unblocked, which should be an indicator to both you and John as to what would happen if this nonsense actually went anywhere. Please, just let it drop. – iridescent21:32, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
I already have let it drop. There's no reason for PeeJay and I ever to encounter one another again, so John can rest easy in his bed tonight. MalleusFatuorum21:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
The tale of the tapeThanks for the above, Iridescent; it is much what I was thinking, but I suspect all of the discussants will take it more seriously from you than from me. That conversation reminded me of nothing more than a bunch of guys standing in a circle in a forest clearing, arguing over the results of a statistical analysis. And no, I have no idea why your page is on my watchlist, although it makes for an interesting read. Finally, I agree with Newyorkbrad; I cannot see any impediment to your picking up the admin tools again if and when you're ready to do so, although I am not surprised you don't really have a taste for CSD or AIV patrol. Risker (talk) 21:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
"I'll just have a little rest, then I'll get on with things..."
Thanks for the invitation to join in, but I have little real interest in Thames-related articles generally, and have no particular views on assessing relative importance. I walked nearly the whole length of the Thames Path some years ago, having said that, and added a few of my photos to articles where possible (and even wrote this bridge article, much expanded by later hands, but still not up to your standards!) Overall, though, it's probably stretching things to say that I'm working on the western part of the river, particularly as I'm London-based these days... Best wishes, BencherliteTalk11:24, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
Fair enough; if you (or anyone else watching this) does have any thoughts on how articles relating to the River Thames ought to be categorised and organised, do feel free to chime in to this discussion. – iridescent12:52, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
Talkback
Hello, Iridescent. You have new messages at Talk:Kaithal honour killing case. Message added 22:46, 14 April 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Replied there. In future you might want to consider reading policy pages before you quote them, especially when they say the complete opposite to what you're claiming. – iridescent 223:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
Replied there. As per my comments there, I don't understand the issues you raise, which appear to be based on a misinterpretation of the MOS. – iridescent10:39, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Feel free to have a crack at Metropolitan Railway. I haven't tackled this one yet because its lengthy history means it's going to be a huge exercise to take this to FA. Now that the previously combined MR and MDR article has been split, I think my next FA article after I get Central London Railway through its FAC will be on the MDR. That will also be fairly complicated. Your proposal to look at the stations first is probably a good one. There are even a couple of former MR stations on the Brill branch which don't have articles (Waddesdon Road railway station and Westcott railway station). It may also be necessary to divide an MR article into sub-parts.
My (vague) plan is to start with something insignificant like Winslow Road railway station, to get a feel for how tricky it is to blend the sources together. Although challenging the sacred cow of "one station, one article" is a colourful topic right now, I'd consider the Brill Tramway a prime candidate for the "single article on the line which includes a list of stations"; given that the architecture of each consisted of a single hut, and the opening and closing dates for all of them are identical, I really can't see the need for six identikit copies of Wotton (Metropolitan Railway) railway station in which the only thing that's different is the title. We'll see how it goes.
Regarding the general structure, my gut instinct would be to treat Inner Circle, Baker Street–Aylesbury, Aylesbury–Verney Junction, Uxbridge branch, Watford branch/Croxley Rail Link and Brill Tramway as separate articles (and leave the Stanmore branch as part of Jubilee Line); that keeps them all to a manageable size, and also means that if I cut-and-run at any point it doesn't leave a hopelessly imbalanced article. Once that's done, a broad outline general history can knit them all together, along with the other descendant lines and Watkin's various crackpot Manchester-to-Paris and relocate-London-Docks-to-Dungeness schemes. – iridescent18:56, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
"Watkin's Folly was not the last attempt to build a notable British tower. A large lattice tower, though without observation deck, was built in 1950 as the Crystal Palace Transmitter." may be the single stupidest statement I've ever seen on Wikipedia. – iridescent20:02, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Sorry about this, but per my comments at Talk:St. Mary's Church, Chesham/GA1, you're under a serious misapprehension as to what the GA criteria are. Aside from five small sections ("it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to avoid, fiction, and list incorporation") the MOS does not apply at GAC and this is explicitly made clear in the GA criteria; even at FAC level strict compliance with the MOS isn't demanded (nor could it be, as the various subpages contradict each other). I do appreciate you're putting a lot of work into what's a fairly thankless area, but demanding compliance with nonexistent criteria is liable to confuse and upset a lot of people who aren't as familiar with the GA criteria, FA criteria and which parts of the MOS are compulsory and which are vague guidelines, and won't know to call you out on it. I strongly suggest you re-familiarise yourself with the GA criteria; as per my, DavidCane, David Underwood and Sandy's comments at the St Mary's GAN while some of your points are valid they are not relevant to the GA criteria, and you're giving a strong impression that you're making criteria up as you go along. – iridescent10:33, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! Sorry the discussion got a bit frayed, but I do think the whole "MOS doesn't apply at GA" thing is an important point. – iridescent15:07, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
DYK for St. Mary's Church, Chesham
On April 21, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article St. Mary's Church, Chesham, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.
I may be an unregistered user, but I'm a user on Muppet Wiki. My edit to a Muppets christmas is repeatedly reverted. The next muppet movie is "The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made!" It's confirmed on the Muppets page on this wiki, and at the D23 Expo! So why is my edit repeatedly reverted! --67.250.89.3 (talk) 23:59, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict - was about to repeat the above) - please only add facts with an appropriate reliable source, such as a newspaper or a book. You put the details of the source between <ref> and </ref>, and the reference will automatically appear in the 'References' section. See WP:CITE for further help with it. Chzz ► 00:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
It can be frustrating, but Wikipedia's a "tertiary source"; that is, we can only repeat things that have already been published in reliable sources somewhere else. That is, once the studio send out press releases confirming the name and Variety mentions it, only then can Wikipedia include it in the article. The idea is that every word on here should be verifiable somewhere else if it's ever challenged. It can be annoying when you're not used to it, but it's necessary; Wikipedia got in serious trouble in the past for publishing material that wasn't true, and now everything has to be verifiable. There's an explanation at this page and the pages linked to it, if you want the details behind the thinking. – iridescent00:14, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
I understand. Still, if the Muppets page says that "the C..." oh, I'll say "TCMMEM"... is the next muppet movie, shouldn't we revert that edit? --67.250.89.3 (talk) 00:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
That's fine as a source; feel free to re-add it if nobody else has done it already, in that case. Even if it turns out to be wrong, the fact that it's been published in a reliable source means we can mention it, thanks Wikipedia's verifiability not truth policy (which sounds ridiculous when people first see it, but actually makes perfect sense). – iridescent06:39, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
The only Thames crossing in London not to have its own article; the Richmond Tunnel redlink has always bugged me. When I was doing the "River crossings of West London" series this was one I never got round to. Although the sky is washed out, I actually prefer this one, which seems to capture the "abandoned and forgotten for 100 years" feeling better, even though it doesn't show the bridge behind it. There aren't many of these old Victorian infrastructure projects that have remained so completely untouched; AFAIK it wasn't even used as a bomb shelter during the war. – iridescent23:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd forgotten how interesting your talk page was (and still is)! :-) (this is in reference to the rather long meta-discussions further up the page). I was dropping by here to thank you for the Credo pointer to the UK libraries (I will be going to one of those Westminster libraries, and I'm hoping this was a recent thing and I haven't been ignorant of that possibility for too long). But that is not what this section is about. This is the section about Richmond Tunnel. I live in that general area of London (I took some pictures of Richmond Bridge the other day, and was pleased to see it was a featured article). And so this bit here about a Victorian tunnel under the Thames at Richmond? Well, wild horses wouldn't keep me away (are you going to write an article on it or not?). But it is interesting how much Victorian stuff is still around and visible and mostly unremarked upon. One puzzle that I was hoping you might be able to help solve is the one here. Any idea what that is about? Carcharoth (talk) 00:49, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
I'll guess either a steam vent from an underground pump, or a sewer ventilation shaft, with an outside guess at bomb shelter (seems an odd location for one, otherwise that would be my first guess). That is just a guess, though; anything on the OS map? – iridescent09:43, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Regarding the Richmond Tunnel, it'll be a bugger to write if you're planning it. I have (or have access to) pretty much every significant book on Thames river crossings, from when I was writing that bridge series; most of them don't mention it at all, and those that do just say something like "Victorian tunnel, now disused". – iridescent11:13, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
I have now... I suspect he's in for a severe disappointment if he plans to walk through it; as with every disused Thames tunnel, I imagine it's carrying either a 380kV cable, an outfall sewer, a bundle of fibre-optics or the Thames Ring Main, none of which would make very good company. Nick Catford might have something to say about it, if someone wants to winkle him out, but I really don't think there's much of a story. I've put the bridges on hold for the moment, to try to get the mess of the Metropolitan Line into a vaguely respectable state before the 75th anniversary of the closure of the Brill Tramway. With 63 (!) subpages to clean up, don't hold your breath. – iridescent21:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Replied at the AFD. As per my previous comments on the matter, while there are certainly individual hotels which are significant in their own right, I don't believe Wikipedia should have articles on the individual branches of a chain in most cases—one can find multiple, independent, non-trivial sources for any given branch of a supermarket (there will invariably be "new supermarket opens" articles in the local paper, and ongoing coverage of events there), but it doesn't mean we should have 8500 stand-alone articles on each individual Wal-Mart, and I don't see how these are any different. – iridescent15:45, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
RfA Thanks
I wanted to thank you for participating in my RfA, which succeeded at 134/4/0. I am truly amazed but equally elated by the result and I hope I am able to serve as a good administrator. It was a surreal experience to succeed, and I will strive to meet your expectations.
More specifically, thank you for your support. The fact that an excellent content contributor such as yourself supported me is incredible for someone like me.
Surely young Ceranthor should be off somewhere deleting something rather than spending time generating spam. Is there no central "RfA Congrats and Brickbats" page we could all be watching? BenMacDui14:02, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Some people like "thankspam" especially when it's as well though out and as personal as the thanks being handed out by Ceranthor. Kind regards, SpitfireTally-ho!14:08, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
(ec) Meh. It's enough of a Wikipedia tradition to send these things out (I did as well) that getting annoyed at them is not a fight worth fighting even if you absolutely loathe them. Besides, it acts as a kind of de facto notification as to who has and hasn't passed RFA when you see these things start appearing.
Ceranthor, in your particular case, there are probably people who didn't participate in your RFA, who likely deserve more thanks than those who did, since by deliberately abstaining they prevented it degenerating into the usual shouting match. Maybe on-wiki posting wouldn't be such a good idea, as someone watching would be bound to see the threads themselves as either gloating or as the cue for an argument, but that's why we have an EmailUser button. – iridescent14:15, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
I mean no disrespect to Ceranthor, whose consideration and politeness is credit to us all. I am afraid I too was once a purveyor of such a message (in lurid pink and sporting a man in a dress) and far from having a loathing of these inoffensive communications I wonder why I did not take my own advice. Instead of mucking about it is I who could be doing something productive or providing a more useful suggestion (such as suggesting that these messages could simply be posted at Wikipedia talk:Successful requests for adminship). I should really get back to counting islands....BenMacDui15:37, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
It had nothing to do with that; it has to do with the fact that the {{harvnb}} template can't handle a book with numbered sections rather than numbered pages. – iridescent21:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
One of the less exciting books in the world, it has to be said. On reflection, I think I'll leave the citations as raw text rather than harvnb templates; it's not causing issues on these outer-reaches articles where only a few books are being used, but I want to keep the cite style consistent across the series and it'll get confusing once we get into the longer articles where the full "shared bibliography" being used for this series (see below) comes into play:
Current (working) bibliography and booklist for the MR articles
Connor, J. E. (2000). Abandoned Stations on London's Underground. Colchester: Connor & Butler. ISBN0947699309. OCLC59577006.
Connor, J. E. (2003). London's Disused Underground Stations. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport. ISBN185414250X.
Demuth, Tim (2003). The Spread of London's Underground. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport. ISBN1854142666.
Foxell, Clive (2010). The Metropolitan Line: London's first underground railway. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN0752453963. OCLC501397186.
Hornby, Frank (1999). London Commuter Lines: Main lines north of the Thames. A history of the capital's suburban railways in the BR era, 1948-95. Vol. 1. Kettering: Silver Link. ISBN1857941152. OCLC43541211.
Horne, Mike (2003). The Metropolitan Line: An illustrated history. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport. ISBN1854142755.
Leboff, David; Demuth, Tim (1999). No Need to Ask!. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport. ISBN1854142151.
Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2006a). Aylesbury to Rugby. Midhurst: Middleton Press. ISBN1904474918.
Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2006b). Baker Street to Uxbridge & Stanmore. Midhurst: Middleton Press. ISBN190447490X. OCLC171110119.
Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2005a). Marylebone to Rickmansworth. Midhurst: Middleton Press. ISBN1904474497. OCLC64118587.
Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2005b). Rickmansworth to Aylesbury. Midhurst: Middleton Press. ISBN1904474616.
Oppitz, Leslie (2000). Lost Railways of the Chilterns. Newbury: Countryside Books. ISBN1853066435. OCLC45682620.
Simpson, Bill (2003). A History of the Metropolitan Railway. Vol. 1. Witney: Lamplight Publications. ISBN189924607X.
Simpson, Bill (2004). A History of the Metropolitan Railway. Vol. 2. Witney: Lamplight Publications. ISBN1899246088.
Simpson, Bill (2005). A History of the Metropolitan Railway. Vol. 3. Witney: Lamplight Publications. ISBN1899246134.
Wolmar, Christian (2004). The Subterranean Railway. London: Atlantic. ISBN1843540231. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
It's got the potential to make a real mess, particularly if/when other people come along and want to add further material to the articles; {{harvnb}} is unintuitive at the best of times, but handling the same author writing multiple books in the same year, and a book published in volumes over a period of years, is going to be a mess. – iridescent21:55, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Not really. For the same author with multiple books in the same year just stick a letter on the end of the year, as in {{harvnb|Smith|2010a|p=256}}
Smith 2010a, p. 256 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFSmith2010a (help)
I know that (see the way they're formatted in the list above) but it's not fair to expect whoever comes along after me to know that. Simpler just to type "Mitchell & Smith, 2006, §48". I've never been entirely convinced by the utility of the harvnb template; I'm sure anyone who cares to look up the title of the book cited is capable of scrolling down the page themselves.
Given the typical cross-section of people on this page, I don't think anyone can accuse me of canvassing to friends by posting here…
As it's you, depending on how you react to the comment I'm about to make I may break my self-imposed vow of silence at FAC. ;-)
Westcott railway station was a railway station serving the village of Westcott, Buckinghamshire, and nearby buildings attached to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild's estate at Waddesdon Manor.".
Ridiculous I know, but there is a (semi) logic to that; on Wikipedia, thanks to interminable angels-on-pinhead discussions, "railway station" means it was used by "real" trains as opposed to London Underground (even if they were full-size rather than tube trains), Metrolink, Docklands Light Railway, Glasgow Subway etc etc etc. If we follow Wikipedia's policy strictly, the title ought to be "Westcott tube station" despite its being 40 miles from the nearest tube station, as London Underground were the last people to operate it, but I'll resist that one as it sounds ridiculous to talk about a "tube station" in rural Buckinghamshire that was never served by anything other than steam trains and converted traction engines. There are no existing station FAs to use as comparators, but I promise this kind of thing is standard practice with train articles; "The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway was a railway company", "John Bull (locomotive) is a railroad steam locomotive", "The Manila Light Rail Transit System is a metropolitan rail system serving the Metro Manila area"… I've reworded it slightly to make that "the station is a station" less obvious, but IMO it needs to be there; although it doesn't affect this article so much, this line has sidings that are actually stations, tube stations that are actually sidings, railway stations that are actually tube stations, a disused station that is still in use, an open station that is actually closed, and three different stations with the same name; precision is going to be more important than it seems at first glance. – iridescent23:08, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
I just knew you'd come up with something. Anyway, for several years I drove past Waddesdon Manor every week on my way to work at Bicester. (Obviously I can't tell you what I was doing in Bicester, as then I'd have to kill you.) I'm rather intrigued to discover that it once had a railway station, as it's really in the middle of nowhere, and a place less likely to have a railway is difficult to imagine. MalleusFatuorum23:31, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
There was a Certain Experimental Project developed at Westcott; in some ways I'm more surprised they didn't (re)open the railway line. (Waddeston Manor, astoundingly, had not one but two railway stations; the second one only closed in 1963, however much Wikipedia's article says it closed in 1936.) – iridescent23:48, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Well, Butt (p.239) gives 2 December 1935 for Waddesdon Road/Waddesdon/Waddesdon Road on the Tramway, and 6 July 1936 for Waddesdon Manor/Waddesdon on the main line. Douglas Rose (The London Underground: a Diagrammatic History, ISBN978-1-85414-315-0) gives 30 November 1935 and 5 July 1936 respectively; the discrepancies are due to Butt using the "first day of no service" convention, whereas Rose uses "last day of service". Where do you get your 1963 date from? --Redrose64 (talk) 12:19, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
On April 28, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Westcott railway station, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.
I didn't revert someone asking for help on your talkpage, I reverted someone vandalizing your userpage. Double-check. – iridescent22:12, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
He didn't vandalize my page. He seems to have problems either typing or getting his edits across. I have his talkpage on watch. You can see my posts there. --Morenooso (talk) 22:14, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
See this DIFF. I responded by placing the Welcome template on the anon IP talkpage. He responded to the message placed there by coming to my talkpage. It's okay if he "messes it up" a little. --Morenooso (talk) 22:16, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I am aware of them. I tracked its contributions as I a Page Patroller. This could be an IP vandal or perhaps a young teen who is trying to get help. If it continues to junk-up or vandalize pages, I can't stop that. Other users will step in and issue warnings. I place a message my talkpage about letting this IP "mess up" if necessary. --Morenooso (talk) 22:24, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Hi Iridescent,
Knowing some of the volunteers at Chesham Museum they seem to have their hands pretty full at the moment just running the newly relocated museum so as far as I am aware they are not currently involved much, if at all, in inputting directly into Wikipedia. Consequently, when I found there was no article on the museum I offered to put one together with their help in giving permission to use some of their images and access to some text etc. I am acquainted a bit with Clive and Shirley Foxell and live near Chesham so please let me know, if I can be of any help. Tmol42 (talk) 17:16, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
At the moment all the issues are discussed at Talk:St. Mary's Church, Chesham; if you can think of anything to help, please do! At the moment, the glaring problems on the St Mary's article are image-related; it really needs a better image of one of the puddingstones in the foundations (I do agree with the anonymous poster here in one respect—in the current photo used to illustrate the foundations, it isn't particularly obvious that this is a single stone and not an agglomeration of rubble.) It ideally needs some photos of the interior of the church as it is now, and of at least some of the windows. (Some pictures of the church against a backdrop of blue sky, while not essential, would be nice as well; at the moment the article gives the impression that the sky in Bucks is uniformly grey.)
To be honest, I think that, while not completely comprehensive, the article now is as complete as it's reasonable to be. It would be nice to have more on the monuments in the church, but few people will be that interested; those that are are likely to live in the area, and Waterstones (or the church itself) will happily sell them a copy of the Foxells' book.
At the moment I'm trying to clear up the Metropolitan Line subpages (see Westcott railway station for what they'll hopefully all look like when complete). I'm working inwards from the Brill/Verney extremities; once I reach Chesham and Amersham I may need to get back to you. (Do you know if Clive Foxell's Chesham Shuttle book is still available anywhere, or has it been completely superseded by his new The Metropolitan Line? I know that the London Transport Museum, Ian Allan and Buckinghamshire County Museum no longer stock it and it's no longer listed on Amazon, but don't know if Quainton or either of the Chesham bookshops still sell it.) – iridescent17:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Just came across this see after 1h.34m which is Clive been interviewed for 20mins on his new book on the Robert Elms show 22nd April. Need to be quick as its just about to be zapped this lunchtime as its a week old. There are several copies of the Chesham Shuttle Book in Chesham Library. You should be able to borrow one by an inter library loan. I've also seen them listed in some of the online second-hand bookshops. The new book is not a replacement but will be a very valuable source for your work on the station articles. Yet to follow up on the Church points you mentionedTmol42 (talk) 11:06, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that (although I missed the BBC deadline). If nothing else, it's evidence that (Clive) Foxell is taken seriously, which seems to be one of the points at issue. (I do understand where they're coming from; if one's not familiar with his railway books, "published and distributed by the author" does look to a casual reader like an amateur enthusiast publishing a pamphlet in the garden shed.) – iridescent18:14, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
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. The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needed to be addressed. If these are fixed within seven days, the article will pass, otherwise it will fail. See Talk:St. Mary's Church, Chesham for things which need to be addressed. S Masters (talk) 10:10, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
; see Talk:Westcott railway station for eventual comments about the article. Well done! S Masters (talk) 11:14, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
