User talk:Nick Levinson/Archive 1

(Five topics/sections, titled Barnstar, Mensch Barnstar, A Brownie For You!, National Collegiate Women's Ice Hockey Championship, and Thanks (the one dated January 6, 2013), and part of one, Thanks For Your Edits to Feminist Effects on Society, were deleted during the time period encompassed by or subsequent to this archive and can be found via the history of the current talk page.)

Archive 1

Archive 2

Please review lead section discussion

Hello! Thanks for taking initiative to post to Wikipedia. I found your contribution to Sexual orientation. While I think what you wrote has a place in the article, I would like for you to consider whether you feel that it best goes in the article lead. If you would, please review WP:LEAD and think about whether your lead is longer than typical leads. Thanks! Blue Rasberry 17:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Good point. Over the next few days I'll try to reconsider, since a little reorganizing, including streamlining the lead, would seem to be helpful. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

(Resolved with discussion elsewhere. Thanx.) Nick Levinson (talk) 15:46, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

similar to Kiva

Nick - you asked for organisations similar to Kiva - the charity I'm a trustee of, MicroAid, actually predates Kiva but is grants rather than loans - http://www.microaid.org - Cheers Toby Beresford

(This item was appreciated back when it was received. Thanks. And I've added the section title now. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC))

your last change on "kiva"

hello nick

your last change on "kiva" with the link in the "Lending process" doesn't work. i don't know how to change it. please correct it. thanks --KurtR (talk) 10:58, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

fixed it today! --KurtR (talk) 09:48, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

(Indeed, it was done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC))

Password strength

Could you please go back and add reliable sources to back up the information you added? Wikipedia should not include any original research or personal opinion. Fences&Windows 22:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

(Taken care of, I think at roughly that time. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC))

Sexual orientation

I can't get to the full text of your reference, and I suppose most readers can't. Do you have another source for this information, or a way to access that citation without a paid subscription?

The abstract does not seem to support what you are saying in any way. The article only seems to be tangentially related to sexual orientation based on that abstract.

Also, that part of the article is speaking about whether sexual orientation is a choice or not. What you are saying that your source says is that some women "perceive" a choice. This does not clarify whether they have always been attracted to other women, and they perceive a choice to follow their inborn desires, or whether the choice is to pursue a lesbian lifestyle. Of course many women have a choice as to whether to "conform" to the biases of society, or whether to follow their inborn desires. But the article is not about that, it is about whether they are innately born homosexual or heterosexual. Saying that some people perceive that they have a choice of following their sexual orientation, or denying it is not the same thing. Do you see my point?

I don't think it is sensible to place your conflicting viewpoint right in the middle of a section that states that research on sexual orientation says that it is largely inborn, and not significantly influenced by an environmental factors. The paragraph you placed it in is trying to make the point that sexual orientation is thought to not be a matter of choice. If you want to offer a differing or alternative viewpoint (NPOV) it needs to be in a follow on paragraph, in my opinion. Whatever goes there though must have reliable citations that discuss research that shows sexual orientation (not choice of conforming or not) is a choice, and not just that some people are thought to perceive that it is a choice.

Atom (talk) 18:06, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I got to the article via my public library card, which is free and gives me access to many library databases for free. The abstract doesn't say much but the article does. I don't want to post the whole article, since that would likely violate copyright, but some libraries are willing to get single copies of single articles for library users even if they don't have the database, for example, from hard copy. Ask your public, academic, and specialty libraries. If your nearest public library isn't much help, they should be able to refer you to more advanced libraries. So far, over many years, the most I've had to pay to borrow anything is a dollar and I don't think I've ever had to pay for a copy of an article.

Sexual orientation is partly inborn but not entirely. The key is in how we know of someone's sexual orientation; if we knew it was always inborn, we wouldn't need to ask folks for their perceptions, because we'd simply extract the relevant physical evidence, such as a gene. Almost none of the research does that; we depend mostly on verbal self-reports. More than one source, including research, has shown that sexual orientation changes over time for individuals or communities, and the relative stability of sexual orientation does not alter its sources.

Article organization is helpful, and someone else also raised it regarding the lead. I plan to consider it over the next few days, at home. Related points should be together but with each point left clear. This is NPOV. I've been citing research and some of the research was already in WP.

Thanks.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Quoting the applicable section, if you give correct attribution is fair use, and not a violation of copyright. I will have to try with my library card. Good idea!

Since there are many traits that we do have yet associate specific genes to, that we have not identified a gene, or series of genes that affect sexual orientation that is not useful. As I understand it there has been little research that has supported sexual orientation changing substantially. I would not be surprised if the sexual orientation that a person reports could change over time. Their are many factors that affect what orientation someone may report, including religious and soliologic factors. What they report is not necessarily the same as what orientation they are. It is likely that it is primarily determined by genetics, and then influenced by the environment somewhat during maturation and to a lesser degree after maturation.

Whatever we feel about it isn't really important. I understand that there are advocates of both views, and researchers who have research of some kind or another that indicates both. I think it is fair that the article represent all viewpoints that can be documented using reliable sources. I think it is wise to keep those viewpoints distinct from one another though, and not in the same paragraph. Atom (talk) 21:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Where I live, I qualify for library cards in various places in the state, because I only have to live, work, or study in the state, not necessarily in the same county or city. Some libraries provide more services to county residents than to out-of-county in-state residents, but some draw no distinction as long as I'm from somewhere in the state, and even some of those libraries permit me to access some selected databases from outside a physical library, e.g., from home.

Some URLs into limited-access databases only work from particular outside locations, but I can't usually tell that from the URL itself, and it's possible you have access to a database but the URL still won't work. In that case, try a persistent URL or go through the usual user interface and enter search terms, in this case, for the article title. The ProQuest databases that include the Suicide . . . periodical for the year, according to the library I used, include ProQuest Platinum and ProQuest Research Library.

Fair use has a limit relative to the article's length. It's not relative to the size of the journal or book but to the article, so that the part that can be copied without asking becomes shorter. I've forgotten the four-part test but it includes whether it could interfere with sales of the whole. I can paraphrase but I'm not sure if that's what you want, so let me know if the library search is a problem.

I don't think sexual orientation changes very often, either; I agree with the research on that. It's deep within us, which makes it resistant to change, so, while it's possible it'll change, if someone's sexual orientation changes every week then that person probably has a more general, and therefore more durable and more stable, sexual orientation, such as bisexuality or the proposed pansexuality/polysexuality. Experimentation and fluidity are likelier in youth (youth are much in demand for sex anyway, so many will have many invitations, not to mention high rape rates, which tells us rapists' sexual orientations) and uncertainty is likelier then; because young people are more subject to social pressures, they'll likely answer queries either with more variability or with a more socially accepted answer, namely, heterosexuality. And research looking at SOCE programs' success rates would be befuddled by people being forced into SOCE, thus increasing the resistance factor, since resistance can be concealed. But a relatively small proportion of adults changing once or twice in their post-teen lifetimes is plausible.

Thanks.

Nick Levinson (talk) 01:05, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I urge you to stop distrupting articles as in your edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sexual_orientation&diff=prev&oldid=351045184 where you added nonsenses about "not usually a choice" and "limited" evidence where is none. You simply cannot write to encyclopedia what you want, what sources don't say! --Destinero (talk) 05:08, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

No disruption. Name any citation I gave that did not support what I wrote. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:20, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

You obviously don't underestand you have to edit in compliance with more, more reliable and recent sources which others gave. --Destinero (talk) 19:16, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Name any source I cited that is not valid for the main text I wrote as supported by it. The source's date matters insofar as it has been replaced; plenty of old research remains valid until contradicted by newer research. Reliability of a source is determined not by the source's conclusion but by such things as scientific method. Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:19, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Quote the applicable section. Phoenix of9 02:12, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you asking me or another commentator? If me, which section are you interested in?

Please keep in mind copyright restrictions on copying. It is permissible and encouraged to write in your own words in order to convey the same information without infringing copyright.

Nick Levinson (talk) 02:35, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Quoting copyrighted material, with attribution is perfectly legal "fair use". You could not quote an entire book -- but a sentence or a paragraph is fine. Atom (talk) 22:41, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

How much you can quote within fair use varies by such things as sales. Copying a few paragraphs from a book can indeed infringe, and expensively. If someone reprints from WP, the copyright holder may be able to sue the final author, WP, and WP's editor (the one posting the part of the work) as infringers. At any rate, the requester on this page has not replied as to specifically what copying was being requested, so the issue is moot and presumably abandoned or resolved. Thanx. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

(The upper part of this topic, with Atom, is resolved with discussion elsewhere. Thanks.) Nick Levinson (talk) 15:46, 9 April 2010 (UTC) Corrected to remove premature statement: Nick Levinson (talk) 15:56, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

March 2010

Please do not add original research or novel syntheses of previously published material to our articles as you apparently did to Homosexuality. Please cite a reliable source for all of your information. In your edits, you quoted individual responses and made OR conclusions. Stick to the conclusions of researchers. Do not quote individual responses (unless researchers single them out as being particularly important), there are tens of thousands of such responses to such surveys. Which ones are we gonna pick? Phoenix of9 01:24, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not doing OR or synthesis in articles. Be specific about what you are criticizing in an edit or I may not know what you are talking about, as in this case. I did cite reliable sources. If you didn't agree with their conclusions, that is not what makes a source reliable. In one case, I quoted individual responses that were published by the researcher who collected them in methodical research that is available in book form, and thus it is not out of place to provide them in WP; since I gave page numbers in that case, you do know which ones to pick and it is not OR to do so. But if that's not the case you meant to discuss, please tell me which one you meant. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:35, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

(Resolved with discussion elsewhere. Thanx.) Nick Levinson (talk) 15:46, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Hite

I do have some newer material, which will take me a while to process, but I want to ensure it stays put so that when it is updated it will not get prevented in some other way. Better to update with newer material than try and introduce it afresh. Mish (talk) 21:24, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to seeing it. Thank you for the work. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:46, 9 April 2010 (UTC) Corrected indent: Nick Levinson (talk) 15:56, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

I hadn't noticed it. But it was very inappropriate. I do not want to get into a stupid argument with this edito, and I left a note at WP:AN/I asking if an admin would communicat with him/her. I do not think that any of us should ever edit what another member of the community writes on a talk page, unless there is a blatant violation of policy (e.g. outing someone). I actually think this is a serious matter. Again, thanks for letting me know. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:12, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Feminists Fighting Pornography

I have nominated Feminists Fighting Pornography, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Feminists Fighting Pornography. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 05:41, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The link to the explanation is wrong. The apparently correct link is Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2010_April_25#Feminists_Fighting_Pornography. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:23, 25 April 2010 (UTC) Corrected my link: Nick Levinson (talk) 17:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Apparently, both links now work, with the relevant content on the FFP article apparently duplicated. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:24, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Lucy Stone League article

Nick, I'm glad to meet you on your talk page. I'm Frank as you can see on my User page. Anyway, I just finished a major re-write of the Lucy Stone League (LSL) article, which you improved on 27 May. And while I was able to keep and enjoy most of your improvements, I did have to change your definition of Lucy Stoners. Una Stannard, my source, would never forgive me otherwise, I'm sure... For example, in the 1960s, almost none of the LSL members were Lucy Stoners, but there were many Lucy Stoners (ie, married women still using their birth names) – almost none of whom had even heard of the LSL (to say nothing of actually being members), she said in her book Mrs Man. Thus, you and I can both see that we need a term for married women still using their birth names – and Lucy Stoners is that term (that's how Una used the term, which isn't exactly her definition.) My dictionary does agree with her definition.

Your improvements doubled the article's number of source refs, and now I've (unintentionally) blown it sky high. I greatly enjoyed your very fun quote from Jane Grant, located in Married and maiden names, and the cute way you got the reader over to see it. Let me close by saying that I'm sure you and I both want to help WP readers. Enjoy doing that, For7thGen (talk) 22:13, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Replied to at article's talk page. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:41, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback

Hi Nick, Thanks for your feedback. Would you suggest that I add another message about the potential of COI or just leave it alone and see what happens? Also what do you mean by WP? I am not familiar with the WIki lingo. sorry Angela Hope Theklabast (talk) 22:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

(Answered on the poster's talk page.) Nick Levinson (talk) 01:20, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Just a note

Just to say, I hope I haven't offended you with any of my nit-picking. I really think your contribution to the feminism article have been incredibly good. And I hope it doesn't seem like I'm arguing for the sake of it over the lede - I just want the articles I work on to the be best that they can be and I can see that's your goal here too. So if occassionally I take a contrary position please don't take it the wrong way--Cailil ^talk 14:57, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Not a problem. I think we'll arrive at something. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:31, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Question

So at what point do the tags get taken down? I am not familiar with the protocols at WIkipedia....so how does one propose that certain tags get removed...

Angela HopeTheklabast (talk) 04:01, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

(Responded to on the poster's talk page.) Nick Levinson (talk) 09:58, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Feminists Fighting Pornography

You reverted me saying "existing information was right". It wasn't right. We have an email to the Foundation (VRTS ticket # 2010042010031009 from one of the actual participants pointing out that it's wrong and giving corrected information. Please don't revert it again. Thank you. Guy (Help!) 16:31, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't find the email as cited; please see the same issue on the article's talk page. Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

This issue has been expanding. See FFP talk. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

(Done. See the article and elsewhere for developments up to this time. The matter appears to be settled. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:04, 4 October 2010 (UTC))

Commons

Just to clarify Commons is an entirely separate project so the English Wikipedia has no jurisdiction in this request.Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:56, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

sockpuppetry and Sonicyouth86 and Cybermud

You are suspected of sockpuppetry, which means that someone suspects you of using multiple Wikipedia accounts for prohibited purposes. Please make yourself familiar with the notes for the suspect, then respond to the evidence at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sonicyouth86. Thank you.

(I moved this down the talk page and created the section title. Cybermud is the complainant. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:21, 20 October 2010 (UTC))

For the benefit others reading this page all accusations relating to Nick operating multiple accounts were withdrawn by Cybermud and there are no suggestions of any misconduct on his part.--Shakehandsman (talk) 04:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing

Hi,

This is in regards Feminists Fighting Pornography. I've made a couple edits to just a single section, to try to address a couple issues I see. The first is the way you integrate citations. Have you heard of Citation templates? I really like citation templates - they are a useful tool to ensure standard citations. Yours are...headache inducing would be one way to put it. If you have a digital object identifier or PMID, you can use {{cite doi}} or {{cite pmid}} to automatically generate a template which is a bit easier. If you are citing a book or pubmed indexed article, you can also use the pubmed/isbn template generator to generate them automatically. There are actually a variety of tools that can be used to generate citations.

Also, your inclusion of things like proquest urls and "commentary" isn't really that helpful - I don't have access to proquest, don't plan on getting it, and if I had it but were not logged in, the url wouldn't help anyway. DOI or other forms of permalinks are much, much preferred. Though proquest is probably a great tool, google scholar leads to a citation that is more permanent and sometimes includes a free PDF that can be included for readers. It would be that url, and that url alone, that should be used in the template, using the "url =" field. Plus, using google scholar doesn't give away the fact that you are doing your research from Brooklyn. You may not care, but if privacy is a concern, you're leaking some. "Commentary" refers to things like "alternative link on X website" or "To estimate a beginning date, see the Newsletter and Press section of this article." I personally hate stuff like that, but footnotes are sometimes used to provide commentary - but it should be rare. In my mind a reference either stands on its own, or shouldn't be used. You also don't normally have to cite specific pages in articles - if it's a 20 page article, cite the whole thing. Books are different, and there you are encouraged to give the range of pages including the information verified in the citation. By filling out as many of the fields as you can in a citation template, but nothing more (particularly the normally-deprecated "quote =" field which is usually only used when the citation is controversial and requires exact quotations to settle a disagreement) you're ensuring a complete, but not overly-complicated citation with three different urls that could be clicked on (and in this case, none of them went to an actually useful page). It doesn't matter that you used proquest to find something, and this shouldn't be used in the citation.

You may also want to read WP:SS and WP:COAT - if a page is a header article, a top level summary of a larger topic, then context and whatnot is important. If it's about a very specific thing like FFP, then there shouldn't be a lot of tangents about related, but not directly relevant issues. For instance, in the FFP article it makes sense to briefly discuss the Pornography Victims Compensation Act, but not much sense to refer to the research behind Mellish's opposition to pornography, which may be appropriate for the Feminist views on pornography article, but less so for the FFP article which should simply note the FFP position. To do otherwise creates a WP:COATRACK that turns the page itself into a tangential discussion regarding the harms of pornography.

Also, in general, you might want to read WP:TLDR. Long postings are more likely to get ignored. I'm a huge hypocrite in this regard because I tend to post lengthy topics, but still. Anyway, if you have any comments feel free to post them here, I will monitor your page for a while. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

All are interesting points. I hope I don't disappoint you with my response, but I've at least tried to be informative, and I am using some of your edits.

On citations:

• In my experience, if citations are anything less than thorough, especially when some editors would prefer to delete whole articles, an editor will complain that they can't find the passage or even that an entire source is nonexistent. That includes 20-page and 5-page articles: without a page citation and maybe a column citation within a page, editors sometimes don't find passages and they delete, especially when paraphrased as recommended by WP. The radio transcript is probably a primary source and doesn't have time-based segments, so I provided a quote and a quick way to find the passage I was relying on. The citations templates, when I looked a while back, didn't allow the degree of precision needed (e.g., {{cite book}} still doesn't have printing number and printing year parameters, although publishers sometimes change text between printings of an edition), so I didn't learn the template style and I stick with nontemplating. If someone templates a citation and no information is lost, that's fine.

The article survived the AFD, so there's no worry about it being deleted now. If a source is provided, it is up to the "challenging" editor to demonstrate it was not cited accurately; that's a dialogue that should happen on the talk page. Cite book does allow for ISBN and edition, and most parameters can be filled with enough flexibility to allow precision. Year can include things like year = 1944/1990 (first/reprint), pages can include mulitple pages and urls to google books, title can indicate which edition, and I think there's even an edition parameter. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• I cite the source I read. If parallel citations are available, including permalinks, I supply them, too, so that a visitor can use whichever works best for them. (Parallel citations are common in U.S. legal writing, especially for U.S. Supreme Court cases.) Thank you where you've provided citations that can be cited in parallel. Sometimes scanning errors by database publishers can lead to discrepancies, so making the primary citation other than the one I read is risky, so I don't, but including multiple cites in one ref element sidesteps that problem.

This is wikipedia, not legal writing, so it's expected to use our citation formats. It should be a single url to a single permanent citation (ideal is a doi), the proquest links are actually unhelpful because they do not go anywhere. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• Some nearly parallel citations are also useful. For example, Congressional Record is published in at least two versions with different paginations. For the dates I researched, my local library keeps only one version and I asked the Library of Congress to find one date's cite in the other pagination. WP readers may have access to one edition only, so I supply both paginations, even though there's no guarantee that the texts are identical or even predictably close.

You should be providing the link you used; if there are two forms of citing that could be incorporated (possibly with a slash indicating the second form) but when verifying, one should say where one got it. Of course, common sense applies. If your "parallel citations" refer to things like "alternative link", you aren't actually providing anything with that link. That link when I, and most readers click on it, takes me here. If you can't link to a doi or something with an abstract, you shouldn't link to a database dump because it's not helpful to anyone but you. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• Free online sources are preferred, all else equal. But when a more informative article can be achieved only with sources that are hardcopy or nonfree, they can be used. They can be used anyway, but if I have them as free or online I supply those.

Free sources (particularly convenience links) are great when availalbe, and should use the url = parameter. Non-free and hardcopy can be used (when I was able to verify that the Backlash Times existed, I left it in where I couldn't find a better citation) but it's much, much better to cite more convenient sources than a 25 year old paper news service of exteremly limited circulation. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• Granted LexisNexis is very nonfree (although I accessed it at a public library for free), the gpo.gov link was only to a search engine. It led to a record about the publication, but not to the text; and the URL for the publication record was different from the search engine's, so I'm substituting that and providing it as a nearly parallel cite. I didn't find the hearings online at USGPO; I think they were published in hardcopy and microfiche only and sent to depository libraries, so LexisNexis is also useful.

Again, like proquest, you aren't really helping anyone with a citation that doesn't take them somewhere meaningful. A url to a government citation where you can buy it is more useful than a note saying you got it from LexisNexis but can't provide the url. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• Commentary within a ref element is to clarify the citation, such as when a periodical has had a name change and the proper name would likely be unrecognized by WP readers or when a point is relevant to the source's credibility. It's not intended that a reader of the main text be required to read the footnote if they don't want to know the citation, so I don't generally use footnotes discursively. There's no other place for that commentary, so the footnote is its place.

The second footnote is used discursively to say "To estimate a beginning date, see the Newsletter and Press section of this article." That footnote is unnecessary - either the citations in the body are adequate to source the lead and can therefore be reused if contested, or they aren't and the information shouldn't be included in the article at all. It's OK to say "operating in the 1980s" and leave it at that rather than filling in an estimate which is original research. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• You improved the BundyRevenge references. Thanks.
• Thanks for the privacy concern. In that case, it's not a problem.
• DOIs are fine but I don't often see DOIs cited in sources and some have the drawback of being even harder to access than ProQuest and EbscoHost citations. Some DOIs require access to JStor. All three databases are free to some users via a library card, which is free where I live, and I think is free in most of the U.S., although I don't know about other nations. Whether a library subscribes to a database is up to the library. Locally for me, accessing a full text in JStor requires visiting a library in person but EbscoHost and ProQuest can be accessed via library websites from home. Logging in under those conditions is free.

DOIs give unambiguous links to the source's citation information, which is why they are useful - more useful than proquest. Proquest takes me nowhere useful, with a DOI I have unambiguous access to the article in question's citation information (provided the DOI and citation are correct) and can therefore look it up at any paper library that's nearby. That is far, far more useful than the Proquest. I realize I'm hammering the point, but after 4 years and 40,000+ edits here I can't see any reason to use a link to proquest. If an article has a DOI, it should be used. If it doesn't, that's OK. But a DOI is recognized as a standard and has a minimal use to everyone. A Proquest citation is useless to me, the DOI is far better. It matters less where you got something than if you have an accurate citation. You can then use that citation to access a copy in any database of your choice. That is useful to everyone. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• Medical citations are often to abstracts. If I read the full article, I prefer to cite that; I may also cite the abstract if it's separate.

You never cite an abstract, an abstract is just a summary. Citations are always to the full citation, abstracts are just handy to have and PMID has the same advantages as a DOI - unique identifier for medical aritcles. Chances are this article won't use articles with a PMID. It's more a comment in case you do use pubmed elsewhere. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• I haven't explored Google Scholar enough, and not much lately. I'll take a look in it to see if it cites the same sources, and see if it can be cited in parallel.

Proper citation information means you can look it up on whatever search engine you have available - google scholar, pubmed, proquest, whatever. The tool doesn't matter, the information does. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• Some citations were dropped but did support the statements, so I'm readding them. If they were deleted because they're self-publications, they're allowed because they're authoritative for the organization's own positions.

If they're redundant to better, more reliable sources, they should be replaced. Secondary sources are preferred to primary. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• I see I didn't insert a URL that I referred to, and you found one elsewhere. My stupidity. I'm including both. Thank you.
• First and middle names and periods for initials are more precise. They're also part of feminist tradition, as a response to the presumption that "A. B. Smith" is likely a man. (Harry Truman's entire middle name was "S", so whether that gets a period varies by who's writing. He didn't care.)
• What did you mean by "it'd be nice if the Backlash Times had a more meaningful citation" (edit summary)? If you meant you'd like an online citation to it, there probably isn't any. Several libraries have hard copies.

The citations don't provide authors or other citation information making it harder to figure out what kind of a citation it is, who wrote it, where to find it, how much credibility to give it. The "Newsletter and press" section helps by identifying it, it'd just be nicer if it was easier to locate it - which more information always helps with. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

Substantive edits:

• I agree with shortening that FFP had also supported earlier versions of the bill. However, it should not appear that the group's support was only of the 1991 bill, so I'm editing to fit FFP's history more concisely.
• The rewrite about the bill's support implies that no feminists supported it, only nonfeminists did. Not so. While nonfeminists did support it, so did many feminists. Feminists split their support between the FFP-favored bill and the Dworkin-MacKinnon bill (and others opposed both bills and probably some supported both bills), so I'm rewording back to include feminist support for the FFP-backed bill. But if there's a different point you wanted made, please post it.

For both these points, the issue could be that you're not making the links clear enough. All of those elipses and quotes interrupt reading, are unnecessary (you're better off with a simple summary unless it's controversial enough that the original words are required), are interrupted by tangential and distracting citations, the use of quotations is often unnecessary (rule of thumb here is three words or more I believe, see WP:QUOTE for more info) and can look like scare quotes. I'll try re-reading it, but often it's simply unclear and I lack the background knowledge and citations to make it any clearer. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• The Congressional testimony is necessary because it is very helpful in making clear FFP's position, was a key step in FFP's work toward its legislative goal, and is something most leaders on any issue never get to give. If the article was too long, that might be an issue, but the article isn't too long to include it. The revision of about a month ago was only 32 KiB long. There was criticism from editor/s that testimony by her wasn't necessarily by FFP, so the passage has to show the connection to FFP, and another criticism by an editor was that what the testimony purported to prove scientifically wasn't scientifically valid, so the passage has to show the basis legally necessary for the bill's passage insofar as FFP submitted support for that basis, especially since even if the science was in dispute or not rigorous it can be part of a legal basis for a bill. The hearings record would probably be considered a primary source, so it requires that we not replace it with a short paraphrase, but provide enough of the original to let an educated person verify that the original supports what WP says about it. I'll take a look at whether parts of it should be copied into the WP article on feminist views on pornography.

The fact that the FFP thought their beliefs were scientifically valid should be noted in the text, but shouldn't be explored. Make their position clear, but don't make their position as that strays towards non-neutrality, undue weight, coatracking and advocacy. I think the section can be shorter, the quotes can be replaced with a simple summary, and we're not here to judge the scientific accuracy of the statement, only that the FFP cited science. If their testimony was criticized for lacking an adequate scientific background, then the source that makes this criticism should be noted and summarized. So long as the summary is accurate, and that's a debate between editors, then that should be enough. That paragraph is currently painful to read, unnecessarily detailed and contains a lot of information the FFP uses to justify their statements when all we're really interested in is the statements themselves. As an editor, it simply reads badly to me. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• Two deleted items aren't tangential (I think those are what you meant as tangential). They distinguish FFP's positions on closely-related legislative matters: support for the Dworkin-MacKinnon bill, which was against porn but on different grounds, and going beyond legislation to eliminate a "need" for porn are both issues important to the anti-porn movement and were specifically and explicitly part of FFP's agenda or explicitly omitted from it. Listing them in the FFP article makes clear where FFP stood relative to porn law and does not bias or deneutralize the article. They are not explained, e.g., the major provisions of the Dworkin-MacKinnon bill are not described; instead, there are links to appropriate WP articles. In total, the items took very little length; the article is not dominated by these items. Thus, the policy against turning the article into a coatrack was adhered to. On the other hand, if FFP's leader had commented at length on Buick transmissions and I had quoted that, and it was hardly relevant to FFP, that probably would be coatracking.
• That Ted Bundy killed women and not just people in general is important to his claim that he was influenced by porn, which is part of FFP's position.
• One or more editors thought there wasn't enough criticism of FFP's work, so I'm restoring a link to a criticism.

Copyediting:

• The ABA Journal is not named the American Bar Association Journal, as of the date cited. I think the ABA changed the journal's name.

I would suggest including both, separated by a slash, and here it's probably a good idea to use the normally unused issn = since that would probably capture the name migration across titles. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• When the bill's title includes an apostrophe and a year and its article title does not, a piped link allows correct titling without redirection, and WP prefers that we not link to a redirect. The article about the bill is about several iterations of the bill, so I haven't renamed that article, which would require editing whatever links to it, too.

My links normally go directly to the wikipedia article rather than a redirect, it's a pet peve of mine, but I could have made a mistake. Meh. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:01, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

• En-dashes are preferred over hyphens for number ranges and if we use a hyphen there another editor will come along and change it. I see those changes from time to time.
• In ". . . a Larry King show where . . .", a comma belongs.
• A serial comma is being added in a group of three or more and a disappeared period is being restored.
• For page range style "15–6" vs. "15–16", each has adherents. The longer is more formal and avoids confusion for those media, such as some books, that use a new pagination within each chapter, in which case "15–6" would mean chapter 15's 6th page. Your edits eliminate a need to deal with that, but I probably should look for WP style on point, although if I don't find it I'll go with the longer.

Meh, I don't really care either way and probably swap between the two. I am not aware of any guidance, but it might exist. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

• I'm simplifying the discussion of the 1987 bill support. You had deleted most of it but it probably wasn't clear that the deleted portions were about FFP's work in support of the bill, thus relevant to FFP and not just to the bill's history elsewhere. A rewrite is helpful.
• I italicized one title we both missed.

Thanks for fixing the duplicate archive mention on the talk page. I think this was the first page for which I had created archives, and I hadn't gotten around to getting that excess out of there.

TLDR has come up for me in two contexts and both involved strong disagreements (one's pending and one's settled). When someone makes half a dozen or more charges with little or no support and is wrong, a reply has to be specific, thus TLDR can't apply, and it doesn't to talk. If I don't want to read what someone says, I don't get involved in their issue. But if I'm involved in the issue, I should read their response and do. What TLDR should restrict, including in talk, is repetition and I avoid that unless someone repeats a charge without acknowledging what came before and not answering is more consequential. Besides, answering with specificity is an act of respect. And often I agree with a critique or statement and hardly any answer is needed.

TLDR most referred to your comment at the FRM talk page. I didn't read it for two reasons - one, it was long and two, it incorporated the words "I'm not planning to edit this article". Sometimes overall observations are interesting and useful, but sometimes those two statements will result in editors like me ignoring them - not because I'm a rude dickhead (though I am more than a bit of that) but because I'm busy and if you're not going to edit, if there aren't any sources, I don't see it as impacting the important part of wikipedia, the acutal article. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex

Thank you very much. Nick Levinson (talk) 07:19, 29 October 2010 (UTC) (Merged two lists items re testimony and clarified re Ted Bundy and re the bill's WP article: 07:46, 29 October 2010 (UTC))

More items:

If by tangential coatracking you meant the explanation about rational basis in the Congressional Testimony subsection, it responds to an editor's objection that the scientific testimony lacked scientific validity, in that it describes the standard applicable to rational-basis judicial review. It is also short and not deneutralizing, thus within the coatrack policy. And most of the explanation on rational basis is in another WP article, linked to in the FFP article.

I added a link to anti-obscenity law, since FFP distinguished it for their legislative goal.

Nick Levinson (talk) 09:22, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't know if I'll get back to this or not, it's time consuming and tangential to most of my interests. So you can take, or ignore my comments and you may or may not hear from me again. One thing I would really, really suggest would be getting rid of those proquest links and replacing them with urls that are independent of any database requiring sign-in (i.e. direct to the journal's own abstract and summary of the article itself). Must go. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:01, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Just a comment, based on a brief survey of the talk page and archive, a lot of my issues appear to have been raised by previous editors. Choppy writing, excessive use of quotes, opinions masquerading as facts, the use of proquest links, etc. Several editors have mentioned them and you have made what appears to be good faith efforts to resolve them, but they obviously are still lingering. I'm going to make a couple small changes that I see as reasonable to things like the citation templates - please take them as the opinions of an experienced editor. For now I won't touch the prose, but I really, really would rather you discussed them before reverting. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:34, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

This is risking article deletion, although some is good. The defeat of the one nomination was without consensus and renomination has been hinted at. Much of the anti-article argument was that FFP was not notable despite 8–9 third-party sources, thus even more third-party reporting had to be included (a much higher standard than applies to, say, articles on Playboy models), and deleting sources risks removal of the entire article. Removing criticisms of FFP almost guarantees criticism of the article for POV; one editor sort of compared FFP to Stalin; so I'm restoring links to criticisms about definitions and effects of porn. Turning a statement from supported into unsupported risks the entire article's existence; if one support is unsatisfactory, better to find other support. Turning quotes into paraphrases is fine with secondary sources but self-publications, while authoritative, are generally primary, so quoting is preferred. Removing a word from being quoted to not means it becomes apparently OR (viz., "employed" in the Senate testimony). Changing a quotation to be inexact (and beyond what WP tolerates), roughly the gist being retained but making what is between quotation marks be inaccurate, risks a charge of being (in precise terms) unsupported by the source and of interpreting a primary source beyond what is allowed under WP policy, risking wholesale deletion. When quoting, the policy is to "[p]reserve the original text, spelling, and punctuation." Omissions require ellipses, although I now see that "..." is recommended over ". . ." and I'll use the former. WP supports use for research; so, as to accuracy and simplicity, while both are commendable, when we must choose between them, accuracy is preferred. It is often not the practice of editors to correct a word here and there when deleting entire sections or most of an article is more to their liking, especially when their type of discussion is uninformative, forcing me to do hours of work they refuse to do so I can guess what they may have meant, find support for what they may have wanted, and restore what belongs. That may not be what they're supposed to do, but it's what I've encountered in controversial subjects, and I'd like to not invite that kind of behavior here, either.

The Activism list is good.

If you're recommending Google Scholar in lieu of other sources, i.e., that only sources listed by Google Scholar should be cited, I think we'd be very limited throughout WP. It appears that many sources are not available there, via either Canadian or U.S. Google. A comparison of Google's Scholar search yielded about 22 results. Going to the "more" menu for Books got about 231 results. Selecting the Web in the top navbar got about 1,120 results. These are for the same terms and all within a few minutes on Sunday. Many of the resulting links probably won't be much good, but limiting ourselves to the Scholar search isn't adequate for WP. Scholar is likely a good additional search resource but it should not be used alone.

The proper citation style is what I used: the nontemplated reference element. According to WP:CITEHOW, "Citations in Wikipedia articles should be internally consistent. You should follow the style already established in an article if it has one; where there is disagreement, the style used by the first editor to use one should be respected." For some sources, {{cite}} templates are too restrictive. Per WP:CITE (the section on citation templates and tools), "[t]he use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged."

Template parameters probably should be filled in only as specified in the documentation, or editors or bots may edit them to conform to norms. So, if bibliographic information is force-fitted into a template not adequately designed for it, we risk losing the bibliographic information and the statement it supports. {{Cite book}} supports ISBN and edition but, as noted, not printing number or printing year (which differs from copyright year or reprint year), and specifically the edition parameter cannot be used for a printing, so because of bibliographic incompleteness a challenging editor may show that a quote is apparently wrong and then it's much harder to defend since the full information is missing from the template and we're unlikely to ask a library or elsewhere for the proper printing. One solution is to bury the additional information in a nondisplaying comment visible only to editors, but I'm not happy about hiding it from ordinary users.

I will look into the problem of more than one URL per source. I agree that if the URL isn't useful to anyone else it probably shouldn't be provided but since, under WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, we're supposed to cite what we used for a source there's an inconsistency affecting policy, extending to where a URL is usable by some others but not by many others, and I'll look for a solution.

Limiting to one source per point saves space but is not critical. The WP:CITEKILL essay proposes a limit of three. Letting people find information in either one source or another is permissible and widely practiced in WP. Where sources are nonparallel, it solves a question of authoritativeness; people doing research using WP likely have different standards for what they need and, within reason, we can meet them.

I don't think the Senate hearings record can be bought from the government, since it's likely out of print, although your link is still useful bibliographically. (Correction: Possibly, one could buy a photocopy of the hearings or a printout from a microfiche, although that likely would be pricey compared to buying a book of similar size; if so, probably one can select pages and probably the supplier would be a different agency or publisher, not USGPO.)

Between the two of us doing research, it appears only one DOI turned up. I'm happy to have them. Not every citable publication has a uniform identifier of any kind.

I have cited an abstract for one WP article in science because it was going to take a while to get a copy of the full article in hardcopy and only the abstract was online yet. But in general I agree that abstracts should not be cited in lieu of full articles. And if an abstract is cited it should be labeled as such.

Backlash Times citations weren't more detailed because the paper issues themselves often didn't supply more. That lack is part of its editorial style. As I recall, there often was just a paragraph stating something without a headline. Besides the Newsletter and Press section identifying it as a self-publication, the first footnote citing it also says so. However, in response to your suggestion, I'll add "(FFP)" to other footnotes citing it.

I seem to cite ISSNs more than most editors do, but I'm not sure they're used much. I suspect readers simply use the stated title of a periodical to search whatever database or hardcopy collection they are accessing.

For the dates when FFP was active, I'm replacing the apparent OR (although the inception was written to allow the reader to infer, so the OR would be by readers, not in WP, but nonetheless I'll be cautious); the solution is to link the dates to article sections that discuss what FFP was doing when.

I didn't write in the article whether anything in the Senate testimony was science and neither is she quoted saying so. The critic of the passage as not scientifically valid was an editor, not a source, so there's no criticism to cite on that point. Criticisms about similar research being invalid belong in articles about porn in general. While it's likely someone responded to her testimony by countering that what she said on behalf of FFP wasn't valid, I don't have a source specifically for that.

You wrote, "My links normally .... I could have made a mistake." I didn't mean you had, regarding the link you set up. I was discussing my correcting punctuation so that if it wasn't piped it would go to a redirect.

On whether "pp. 15–6" or "pp. 15–16" is the preferred style for a page range, so far I don't see anything.

Other edits:

• I'm moving the Observer article cite and reducing the quotation. It is an additional third-party source about her work, and her antiporn work in the time frame is very relevant to FFP.
• The Village Voice bibliographic particulars were in the article. You probably didn't notice when you deleted some of them during editing. I'm adding the missing details into the template you set up and correcting the parameter "wokr" which caused the publication title not to display.
• If a quoted original didn't include a link already, we're not to add a link within the quote. Re the Penthouse ads destruction, I'm delinking the quote and re-adding the sentence explaining what Penthouse is and where it advertised, since the latter sentence is nonquoted and is linked. I imagine lots of non-U.S. readers know that N.Y.C. has a subway but, if not, explaining that takes only a few words and it's relevant.
• I'm replacing {{cite doi}} with {{cite journal}} in the one case and copying the DOI into it, mainly so specific pages can be cited (the article's long), and doing it twice for the two different sets of pages within the journal article (the appendix once and the journal's main text for other cites).
• I'm detemplating the cite to the Wall St. Journal letter to the editor because the newspaper's edition is probably relevant (it's regional) and the template doesn't support a parameter for the edition. However, at least for now, I'm moving the ProQuest links into a comment for editors.
• I'm restoring the decapitalization of the periodical off our backs, since that's the publisher's preferred title style.
• I assume you edited "the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause" because the serial genitive seemed clumsy. But "the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause" implies that Constitution's equal protection clause has had 14 amendments. It has not. So I'm devising yet another wording, which should solve that one: "the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment".
• I'm adding a comma for consistency, to a list item about tabling in 1984, and a comma I forgot, in a footnote to the Congressional testimony, deleting my erroneous comma from a footnote re Modern Times, and writing "14th" for "Fourteenth".

Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:26, 1 November 2010 (UTC) (Corrected as to buying a hearings copy, a capitalization, and wording about a parameter (couldn't do these corrections soon after posting due to loss of a network connection): 09:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC))

Do {{cite}} templates offer advantages over nontemplating? I'm tempted to never use them again. See, for example, the result of the template for the Village Voice cites: the newspaper's name is almost the last item in the footnote, and that's not proper or close to it. And the two Virginia Law Review cites are not showing their access dates, regardless of which of two date formats was used. Other tweaks were required that wouldn't be needed without templating. And, to me, it's not easier to template than to nontemplate. (Personal preference only.) Best wishes. Nick Levinson (talk) 11:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I've opened a policy question on citations with problematic URLs. Nick Levinson (talk) 13:55, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

FRM article

You are right, your view on this topic does surprise me. In my last edit there, I actually came very close to writing out, as a numbered priority list, what you said with "I want Wikipedia articles to reflect what a movement is about from its own distinct and informative statements plus well-grounded, thoughtful, and informative third-party analyses plus criticisms, in about that order of priority." Thank you for taking the time to offer your well-thought out, insightful and constructive opinion. Though my intentions have been much maligned in the linked SPI, I was once quite pro-feminist myself subscribing to mailing lists for groups like NOW and NARAL. Even today I'm sure I could pick a feminist flavor for myself such as pro-sex feminism, equity feminism or liberal feminism which would be pretty accurate, but I strongly prefer to disassociate myself with the term altogether as I see the thrust of the modern-day movement (notwithstanding the prior mentioned fringe variants) as trying to implement an oppressive and coercive system every bit as bad, or worse, as the one it originally responded to (rigid gender roles didn't just limit women after all.) Perhaps one day, if you get married, have children and divorce you will find you are now something of an expert on the FRM article and want to edit it after all. I hope you will continue to contribute to the article (though not for those reasons).--Cybermud (talk) 15:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Feminist superiority

I've begun a discussion of your new article Feminist superiority. You might want to head over to the talkpage, if you have time - as I mention over there, it has some fundamental problems that will lead me to recommend it for deletion in a few days if changes are not made. Roscelese (talk) 01:38, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

(Addressed there; done here. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 13:47, 18 December 2010 (UTC))

Nomination of Women's superiority for deletion

The article Women's superiority is being discussed concerning whether it is suitable for inclusion as an article according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Women's superiority until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article.

-- Roscelese (talk) 05:03, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

The remains of your article

I suggest you do what you can to add the content to matriarchy, separatist feminism, Andrea Dworkin, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, etc. You had a lot of good writing there - it was just that it couldn't all be in one article. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

You may, if you wish (and if you don't have access to the article text I can send it). I have an idea for off-Wiki use. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Gynocracy

I have placed the userified page at User:Nick Levinson/Gynocracy. Regards, --dab (𒁳) 21:44, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very kindly. I replied at your talk page. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:26, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I am not very sure about restoring talk history. I could restore it and userify it, but you should leave the page blanked. You can then link to diffs in the page history. Also, regarding the workpage, you should not leave it up in your user space indefinitely. It is within proper use of your user talk space to use this page as a sandbox for your contributions to Matriarchy or related issues, but if you stop working on the topic, I suggest you should blank the workpage so as to avoid being accused of WP:NOTBLOG. I don't mind too much about this, I just want to tell you it makes sense to go out of your way to show good faith in complying with WP:User pages to avoid hassle after controversial AfDs. --dab (𒁳) 13:53, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the Gynocracy talk page.

I'm using the userfied article as a base from which to edit elsewhere, so the userfied article itself may not show any edits by me since userfication. But I am using it and it's saving editorial time.

Hopefully, we'll figure out a way to keep the two histories so users of the Matriarchy article can trace back as needed. I realize the statement that the deleted article's content "should not necessarily be considered factual or authoritative" is boilerplate, but, while Wikipedia does not accept it in the Talk subpage, what I wrote in it is accurate and thus factual for the facts it states and authoritative.

Nick Levinson (talk) 22:34, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Andrea Dworkin photo

Thanks. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 05:33, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to have messed with your contribution...

...at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Feminism - I'm grateful to you for circulating the NYT piece for wider consideration. (I changed the link to make the appearance of the copy like the thing copied, which I thought would be easier to understand.) Again, sorry to have silently changed your contribution away from your intentions. Best, Dsp13 (talk) 08:41, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Intent was good and I'll add the other link. Hopefully, as a result of the executive director's work and the Times article, something will change for the better. Best wishes and thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:06, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Problems with your most recent edits to Matriarchy

"Gynecocracy" and "gynaecocracy" are merely spelling variants, with no difference in meaning. "Gyneocracy" is a somewhat unusual (and some would say incorrect) form, and is not really worth listing in the same place as the others. "Gynocracy" shows haplology from "gynecocracy", but probably no consistent meaning difference. Etc... AnonMoos (talk) 01:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I've copied the above post to Talk:Matriarchy#words problem of variant spellings and meanings and replied in substance there. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:12, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Just saying hey

Just wondering what you are up to, and decided I would say hey. Flyer22 (talk) 06:08, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Not doing a whole lot. My experience editing seems affected by other editors' genderal imbalance, so I toss in my 2 cents about it. Of two articles I created that were nominated for deletion, my outcome is 1–1, although the deleted article's content has basically survived. Controversies are especially annoying when they're chewing up hours mainly to re-research the same points. I'm trying to cut down on editing and probably try my hand at publishing in print again, developing my own websites, and adding to Wikipedia occasionally. But it's an interesting experience, and more women being into it is important. Nick Levinson (talk) 06:35, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I understand what you mean. This site has definitely stressed me out enough to last a lifetime. Good to see you still around and helping, though. You are definitely appreciated around here; by more than just me I would say. Flyer22 (talk) 00:52, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Bisexuality#Bailey -- "Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited"

Nick, would you mind weighing in on this? It has to do with having a section on the belief that people must be equally sexually to both sexes in order to be bisexual, and whether or not the controversial study by Bailey should be mentioned. Flyer22 (talk) 16:13, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Done; thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:57, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Matriarchy

Hello Nick Levinson. I see that you've been working very hard on the article matriarchy. I removed certain parts of the content per talk where I also questioned the neutrality of certain parts of the article. Also, am I being too optimistic to hope that you will devote as much time to the article patriarchy, and to the (as of yet non-existent section) "advocacy of patriarchy"? --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 15:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

On your first, I'm answering at Talk:Matriarchy. On your second, yes, although it's a reasonable wish, as there's likely about as much material; I'll leave that to editors who have studied that subject better, other than, to that end, I have some material to add shortly arguing that men should lead governments to add to the criticisms already present to that effect. Discussions on point are continued at the matriarchy article/talk. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:53, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Nick, I appreciate it. There is more material (meaning, in the course of history, so many more people have advocated patriarchy than matriarchy) and it's a shame that the articles give the impression that the reverse is true. But this is Wikipedia, after all, so I shouldn't be surprised. Thanks anyway. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 19:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Your comment on Cailil's talk page about me

Nick Levinson, please be so kind (and honest) and either clarify or apologize for this comment about me on Cailil's talk page. As you've mentioned I am not an admin. What my not being an admin has to do with my insistence that you provide reliable sources for your interpretations and speculations about books, I do not know. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 00:08, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

You've lectured me on my "damaged credibility," now you call me a "flamethrower" and accuse me of wanting to "destroy" the article. Yes, I am a veritable monster for asking you to provide sources instead of your own thoughts and feelings... --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 00:20, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

No apology, asking advice and referring to the background are legitimate, and my disagreement with your behavior was already stated in the discussion with you, which, at the time, you refused to continue. Speculating irrelevantly and falsifying for charges is assuming bad faith. If this is being rectified, and perhaps it is, thank you. The matter is now continued on either or both pages, instead of here, or discontinued altogether as unnecessary. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:09, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Re: picture discussion on Template talk:Feminism sidebar

Could you send me an email so we can discuss scanning the stamps you mentioned at Template talk:Feminism sidebar? Thanks --Aronoel (talk) 15:18, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

(Emailing done. Scanning is done, I think; image prep is underway. This topic/section is finished on this page; the image may still be discussed elsewhere as needed.) Nick Levinson (talk) 01:17, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

DA/RD

"Disambiguation" to "redirect". Just FYI. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:33, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. In that case, it doesn't change my preference for that page. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:06, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) On a related note, I wholeheartedly agree that stubs invite expansion, I certainly didn't redirect in a crafty attempt to stem article improvement. But the Wife selling (English custom) page is 1) a featured article 2) gets 7x more traffic 3) Has more internal links (though still very few; Wife selling (Chinese custom) is an orphan) 4) They both already have {{about}} templates. The traffic statistics alone show that generally, one searching for 'Wife selling' is looking for information on the English custom, if you still don't believe me check PageRank's opinion. It's pretty convincing evidence of a primary topic. And finally, you realise having a DAB page for two articles mean a user who types 'Wife selling' wanting to read about chinese custom still has two clicks to make either way, while it saves a whole click for the majority of readers looking up english custom? Jebus989^✰ 16:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't doubt the relative frequency of visits, but see the Wife Selling topic on this page. There was a mention of an Indian custom, too (probably on the English custom talk page), probably warranting a third article; the separation by nationality was, it was argued, necessary because the customs were too significantly different to fit into one article. The English article was, I think, previously titled without a national reference; it was renamed, creating the redirect page, and it was from that page that a disambiguation page was made. I agree that orphanage should be fixed.

Would it be better to say, on the redirect page, something like "featured article" for one or "stub" for the other? That's unconventional and I'm not sure of doing that, but would it be better?

I'll probably be back this weekend; I have to leave now. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:43, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

(Done. See the Wife Selling topic/section.) Nick Levinson (talk) 17:20, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Wife selling

I think in that alpabettispaghetti of an edit summary, s/he was referring to WP:PRIME. It's a pretty clear-cut case of it. --Dweller (talk) 16:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Could well be, but I suspect the reason the English custom would be primary over the Chinese custom is that readers of the English Wikipedia will tend to be more interested in the English-speaking part of the world, whereas the English Wikipedia tries to be worldwide in its coverage (it even has a template to tag a page for lack of worldwide coverage). I don't think that's what's mainly meant by the WP:PRIME guideline. There are articles where that more clearly applies. So I think I'll leave the redirect as it is, so readers don't have to click through the English custom article to find the Chinese custom article. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

DAB pages are just for navigation purposes, they're not a judgement that readers should be thinking more globally. It's simply about giving people what they want/expect in the most efficient way, which in this case is the English custom page (per the evidence above) Jebus989^✰ 17:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay; although I favor the present way, I'll leave it alone on point either way; if it stays, fine; if it becomes a redirect again, fine. If the number of destinations grows, that may increasingly warrant disambiguation instead of redirection, but that's for later. I'll leave this to other editors. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:20, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

email

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(Done.) Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:14, 25 May 2011 (UTC) (I added the topic/section title and line spacing.)

Femininity

Hey Nick, I thought you might be interested in this article. I found it yesterday and it was in really bad shape. I've been trying to fix it and expand it, but if you are interested I could really use some help/feedback. --Aronoel (talk) 14:20, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll take a look. Thanks. It may be next week before I get to it; I'm cleaning up another article now and can't get online over the weekend but kept a copy. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:01, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer: Help on reversion

Hi there! I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. Recently, you reverted my fix to Pornography Victims Compensation Act.

If you did this because the references should be removed from the article, you have misunderstood the situation. Most likely, the article originally contained both <ref name="foo">...</ref> and one or more <ref name="foo"/> referring to it. Someone then removed the <ref name="foo">...</ref> but left the <ref name="foo"/>, which results in a in the article. I replaced one of the remaining <ref name="foo"/> with a copy of the <ref name="foo">...</ref>; I did not re-insert the reference to where it was deleted, I just replaced one of the remaining instances. What you need to do to fix it is to make sure you remove all instances of the named reference so as to not leave any .

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Neither, essentially. You had fixed a reference error that resulted from an editor's deletion of content and I was reverting both, as explained in the edit summaries. I've learned that serial reversions may have to be done separately, thus the time gap in which you saw one reversion but probably not the other. Thanx. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:59, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Sexual orientation#Zoosexuality

He's at it again. Flyer22 (talk) 06:38, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I replied at Template talk:Sexual orientation#Zoosexuality. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the input. Just beware of Alusky trying to get it into the Sexual orientation article. It seems he will never let up on that. Flyer22 (talk) 23:09, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Sexual orientation#Definition in the lead

Your help is needed again. Though a newly-registered user, this is the second recent user to object to simply describing sexual orientation as "subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and asexuality." I explained it well enough to him or her on his talk page, I feel, and the user seemed to have grasped this. But even so, still made a slightly OR and unnecessary change to the lead, which I reverted. Flyer22 (talk) 23:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Near the top of Talk:Feminism is a box that says that by consensus, guideline, or policy some things are pretty much settled for that article. It seems to have worked; we used to periodically get complaints that feminism is biased and so on, and I think there has not been a single post like that since. A premise of the box is that the people who post such comments can be dealt with in good faith despite the scale of their differences. You might find it useful to adapt that box for the sexual orientation talk page. If so, tailor the box's content to the repeated misunderstandings that are particular to the sexual orientation article.

It seems there's some redundancy within the lede, but I found in another article that being redundant resolved someone's complaint and being briefly repetitive may save much time later.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:47, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Nick. For the suggestion, too. I replied to your proposals on the talk page, not that you need to be told (LOL). I disagree with some of it, but not all of it. And, yes, as can be seen in my discussion (or rather sort of-discussion) with the above mentioned editor, I left a redundant line in the lead (though I moved it lower, beside its redundancy). I'll likely be removing that later or rewording it in a way that it's not a repeat. Any other redundancy you spot, I'm open to being alerted of it. Flyer22 (talk) 19:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanx. Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:35, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Asexuality#Low sexual desire/libido is not asexuality

I won't mind much if you don't weigh in on the above linked discussion. I just wanted to inform you of this since you have been heavily involved with the article and you offer good information and/or advice on sexual orientation topics. The user who started the discussion is a newly-registered user of Wikipedia and somewhat disagrees with how the article defines asexuality. Flyer22 (talk) 22:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. Thanx. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:14, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Asexuality GA nomination

You probably already know this, if you're still watching the article. It was nominated for GA, despite my feeling that it was/is not ready. If you have the time to help out with the demands made in the GA review, it would of course be greatly appreciated. Flyer22 (talk) 22:38, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I didn't know; it's watchlisted but there's so much editing traffic on a few of my watchlisted pages I usually skip them except when I recognize a Talk topic. Hope what I did for the article helps. Nick Levinson (talk) 07:54, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Of course it helps the article. Thank you. Flyer22 (talk) 23:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

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Not my error, but thanks for bringing it up. The problem may be with the way the disambiguation page is written, because it does not link to a destination page on point. Perhaps the disambiguation page needs editing, but I'm not sure exactly how it should read. I mentioned this issue in the edit summary for my edit to the Sexism article. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:14, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Asexuality a sexual orientation

Please comment. Talk:Sexual orientation#Asexuality as a sexual orientation.2C with regard to WP:MEDRS and other things. 50.78.12.41 (talk) 23:28, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

(Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:56, 23 January 2012 (UTC))

You commented in a different discussion, about politics and experts' definitions on the Asexuality talk page, but thanks anyways. 50.78.12.41 (talk) 17:31, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know how I did that. I guess both pages came up on my watchlist with similarities and I went to the wrong one. Whatever; I'm glad it worked out. Thanks for telling me. My error. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Heads up

Letting you know about this, in case you want to weigh in. Flyer22 (talk) 22:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

(Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:34, 28 January 2012 (UTC))

Thanks for your edits to feminist effects on society

Thanks for doing what I should have done RE Talk:Feminism, I wish people would stick up for newbies more though, whenever I talk about these kind of things a lot of people here seem to only be able to look at things hyperliterally when there's a bigger picture, the aggressive atmosphere even if on the surface civil throws off a lot of people, I wish more people could see that, people should talk to people before reverting and especially before deleting stuff.... that said it looks like Paintedxbird (talk · contribs) is happy to carry on editing so it's cool... just kind of reminds of how I was treated when I was younger too I just ended up giving up on the place for years

(Above post was from Mistress_Selina_Kyle (talk) 20:00, 12 February 2012‎ (UTC) (per diff & time zone).)

Thank you very kindly. Deletionism is bothersome and I wish more people went to the trouble of trying to fix things. I try not to receive awards because of the civil rights implication since I'm not a constituent, so I'll delete it shortly, but thank you very much for the thought. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

(Replaced part of this topic/section with paragraph about who from. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:55, 22 February 2012 (UTC))

Wife selling, again

I noticed your comments there. Why not take this to project talk, or otherwise invite further comment? It seems unlikely you will make headway by further discussing this in the article talk page. Just a suggestion. --John (talk) 04:09, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I'm preparing for the next larger stage, but in the meantime I'm doing what I can to give the editors concerned plenty of opportunities to understand the situation and do what Wikipedia calls for. It's less likely they will, but I don't want them to say they didn't know. The matter has extended into coverture, where the Misogyny category and then the Sexism category were removed, so I plan to open a discussion there, probably Saturday. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:31, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Following a keep

(I've retitled and edited this topic/section. Following a decision to keep the wife selling article after its second AfD nomination, editor SarahStierch said on this page, "It's historically fascinating and relevant in the contemporary landscape...." (Oct. 23, 2011, 4:48a UTC.) In my reply, I said, "I'm glad about what's happening. This seems to come out of the effort, not begun by me but for which I'm currently the most outspoken proponent and a lightning rod, to recognize wife selling as misogynist or sexist. I'm preparing to address article ownership by several editors and an admin, unless, of course, said individuals acknowledge the error of their ways. I'm collecting diffs, and that'll take time. Best wishes." (Oct. 23, 2011, 6:20a UTC.)) (This editing: Nick Levinson (talk) 21:24, 23 October 2011 (UTC))

Good luck with that, you'll need it. Malleus Fatuorum 16:22, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Public Interest Research Group

New eyes and opinions would be useful in the article on PIRGs. In particular, a single-purpose (IP) account has been adding material on a labor dispute and litigation, using one side's lawyers' website.

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:21, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Not my area of expertise, although I edited long ago from a source.

I looked at your last edit (last as of yesterday) for the deleted text. My first impressions:

• I assume the litigation has not come to a legal conclusion, either a judgment or a settlement (which, technically, when approved by the court, is part of a judgment). Litigation against an organization, especially a small organization, implicates its CEO and perhaps other individuals associated with the sued PIRG. Unless policy has changed, reporting on incomplete litigation, especially only the accusations, may violate the BLP standard.

• If BLP is inapplicable, it's possible the law firm's website should be treated as a primary source, and then, in a very limited way, perhaps only as an external link with just a short phrase indicating relevance, as knowing what the lawyer/s say would seem relevant to readers' questions. The Wikipedia's article's statement based on the source should be more limited if the source is primary.

• The radio station may be okay as a source if the program segment is available (it seems to be), for verifiability. For me to hear the audio would be complicated and time-consuming (I'd have to travel with headphones), so I have to leave checking the audio content to someone else. In a very incomplete search, I didn't see an accusation of unreliability against the station. Advocacy reporting, if that's what KBOO does, is not always unreliable: reliability would vary by the decisions of the station and its departments. It is probably not a major source in their city, but that is not determinative.

• If the blog is The Portland Mercury staff's own, that's different from anyone starting a personal blog on the Mercury website. The former case might imply more reliability. I have not checked the relationship between the blogger and the website.

• I don't know about the Mercury itself, either what it is or its reliability.

• I don't like different reference links having the same name.

Caution: The above is not final as to how I would edit. I didn't have time to go into that level of depth. These are first thoughts and noncommittal and noncommittal first thoughts are subject to changing of mind by the thinker without notice. I'm responding now to save you time, since otherwise there'd be a delay. Don't edit just on my say-so from this reply unless you agree with it. Thanks for posting.

Nick Levinson (talk) 03:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

radical feminism

regarding your inclusion of monica wittig as an advocate for matriarchy. are you saying that because there's a secondary source (reliable?) which claims she supported it in fiction, that it's conclusive? that sounds like appeal to authority. perhaps it can be alleged, but it's not the same as if she clearly made a statement on it. it's disingenuous. please reply on this page. 86.178.211.142 (talk) 20:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

If what you’re saying is that a suitable source says that Monique Wittig took a contrary position or a source affirmatively denies that she took the position described in the Matriarchy article (affirmative denial differing from silence), that sourcing can be added to the article, alongside the sourcing presently in the article about her work. I don't know of such a contradiction or denial. Nothing is disingenuous and there’s no evident reason to doubt the reliability of the sourcing cited. Whether Wittig advocated via fiction or nonfiction is not critical to the article, since advocacy can be via fiction and evidently in this case was and the article does not rely solely on her work to describe her work, as that would be reliance on fiction in this case, thus on a primary source. Instead, the article relies on secondary sourcing, and what the secondary sourcing says on point is given in the article. However, there can be more than one nonfringe published view on a subject and all such views can be reported in the article, subject to the usual limits on weight and length, which have not been reached in the article so far. If there's a particular source you have in mind you'd like me to check, let me know and I can try to find it, even if you have only incomplete citational information. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC) (Corrected by adding "from": 02:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC))

it sounds like there's no high quality source and that it's alleged by a third-party rather than stated by the individual. which is kind of weak considering it's a contentious claim for a controversial subject. also, i think it's misleading, if not biased that they aren't clearly presented as unfounded allegations rather than conclusive points. 86.178.214.110 (talk) 09:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Many Wikipedia articles are about works of fiction or include descriptions of works of fiction and those works, especially when contentiousness is a risk, are best described via secondary sources, that being Wikipedia's preference. That's what was done in this article. And at least three of the cited sources besides Wittig's are by professors, including professors of literature. They are quality sources. And it is incorrect to say that only one source was provided; there were several.

Alternatives are conceivable but problematic:

• If we editors were to write our own summary, that could be unwanted original research, although there is an allowance for writing plot summaries, and if you think we should try that then please propose a good summary.
• If we editors were to quote the Wittig fiction instead of presenting secondary sourcing about it, that might belong in Wikiquote rather than in Wikipedia. A short quotation would be okay in Wikipedia, but I don't recall anything suitable and short enough (besides what's already in the article, a two-word quotation of Wittig's work), and a longer quotation would likely cause undue weight.

If we should call her work's content "unfounded", since that's a judgment on her work or her view, we'd need a source for that characterization as "unfounded", either secondary or her own description to that effect. I don't know of such a source. If you find one, please post it.

While the article already says that the work is fiction, perhaps that should be clarified. So I did.

Nick Levinson (talk) 19:39, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

hi, that was me before. my problem is that i think the claims over matriarchy should be separated into two parts; one being where there's primary and secondary sources which confirm the person in question's support of matriarchy and the other clearly stating where the subject is alleged by others. currently, i think the way it's written makes it appear like definitive judgements when they're subjective. Paintedxbird (talk) 06:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you mean by objective vs. subjective is whether the societies actually exist and thus are objectively described or don't exist and thus are only subjectively conceptualized. If so, the division is already present, in that the whole section is about feminist thinking with very little on actual practice (e.g., various people "introduced the concept of matriarchy", "called for men to", "argued for", "wanted", "envisions", and "imagined", a utopia is defined conditionally (not absolutely) as "where ... women would like to ...", and some statements are described as "advocacies" and "myth"), and the little practice is described as such (e.g., "efforts at implementation"). Nonfictional advocacies need not have concrete implementations to be nonfictional advocacies; for example, an author can analyze nonfictionally and conclude or suggest that a matriarchy is a good idea without stating that a matriarchy has actually been set up. A source being secondary permits analysis by the source's author.

Both primary and secondary sources, when both are present, are generally adjacent in a statement because Wikipedia does not want articles organized by source type but rather by topic and subtopic.

If you think more clarification would be helpful to readers, please let me know.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Please help edit our School's wiki page

Hi Nick,

I see you are the one who has been editing and monitoring our Wiki page. I am the Marketing Assistant here at Success Academy and need help changing some things on this page. I am not too familiar with the wiki modules and would love your assistance.

1- Image: you removed the image we had but this is indeed copyright approved. Please visit http://www.facebook.com/SuccessAcademies to see the image displayed as the profile image. (I actually created this file for the page itself)

2- Page title: The title should NOT be Harlem Success Academy. We have changed all of our branding earlier this year and the name of the page should be Success Academy Charter Schools (you can also link Success Academies to it as well)

3- Content: We recently updated our website with the latest results, curriculum and much more (I did this all last month with the help of others here at the network). It would be great if I can send you what to change so that we can be consistent and up to date.

4-Acronyms: We no longer use HSA as an acronym. Because of our new branding, any reference to a school will be SA(area)(number). So for example HSA2 and BKSA1 are now SA Harlem 2 (or SAH2) and SA Bed-Stuy 1 (or SABS1).

Please email me if you have any questions or concerns. ... Jessiediaz22 (talk) 19:50, 31 January 2012 (UTC) (Email address at school organization deleted (replaced by ellipsis) for privacy reason by different editor: Nick Levinson (talk) 17:21, 1 February 2012 (UTC))

I have to be selective about editing; if I'm connected with SA or acting like it I'd need to declare a conflict of interest myself. But I'll keep my eyes open.

Renaming the article makes sense. I'll want to check the procedure, but probably one of us would edit the article's lede to put the new official name before other names and edit the balance of the article to conform and then begin a Talk topic stating the intent to rename the article and see if anyone objects (unlikely, but if anyone does then consensus can be developed). If there's no reply in a week or so or there's consensus, one of us would probably move (rename) the article and its Talk page or ask a Wikipedia administrator to do so. The old name, either automatically or manually, would become a redirect to the new name. (Redirects send users who type the old name to the new article.) Then, all other articles and redirects linking or redirecting to the old name should be updated, although not everyone remembers to do that (they still work properly and they may get updated by other editors or bots later anyway). To find the other articles and redirects, go to the full article (the one that today is called Harlem Success Academy or that is renamed later) and, in the left navigation bar, I think under Toolbox, click on something like What Clicks Here. You'll see a list of pages, all as links, and some of them probably can be ignored, like talk and log pages. For instance, some articles on neighborhoods may include your schools, e.g., Education in Harlem.

Preferred sources are third-party sources, such as news articles and academic studies. Self-statements may be used but only with more care and only for some content.

I have some editing coming up for the SA article anyway (before or near renaming) and a critique to aid future editing. There's a history of adverse editing that I usually don't get to fix fast enough. It seems some people dislike charters or this charter or are afraid Eva will run for office again, but that's just my interpretation and we're supposed to edit Wikipedia on the basis of what's in or not in the articles and not based on what we think of other editors' motives. After an editor posted about Steven Brill's book, I read the book and now I'm about a third of the way through my notes for likely edits to several related Wikipedia articles. Hopefully, I'll get to all this within a few weeks.

It may be tempting to create separate articles for other Success Academy schools. We can't for any school unless it's notable, meaning at least one independent third-party source has nontrivially discussed that other school. Articles on nonnotable subjects get deleted by the hundreds every week. Redirects already exist for some of them to the HSA article and more can be created for other schools in the group, and redirects can also be added for misspellings, abbreviations, and colloquial names users are likely to try in Wikipedia; redirects don't say anything but don't require notability. Even if there's enough content available, maintenance of multiple articles takes time and whether to start new articles should be considered in light of that burden (or benefit).

The more obvious forms of vandalism usually get reverted within minutes. Most of the adverse edits are done somewhat anonymously, through IP addresses, and usually are not repeated. Your students are getting older and it's a fair guess someone will play pranks; you may recognize a school's IP address, and most IP addresses can be traced part way.

When you check your watchlist, consider clicking diff links, since diffs make obvious the exact edits so you don't have to eyeball an entire article to find a word change, and consider using the history or View History link to see a list of recent edits to a page. Watchlists look back seven days by default and can be set to look back about a month.

Wikipedia has several related projects that students or teachers might like to edit to add content. I don't recall if there's an age minimum to have a username account. They can edit Wikipedia but also Wiktionary (a dictionary), Wikisource (full-text source documents), Wikiquote, Simple English Wikipedia, and non-English Wikipedias, among others.

Best wishes and thanks. I'm glad someone from the school finds it worthwhile. I wasn't sure if anyone did. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 5

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It was intentional, as indicated in a comment in the article (not visible to most readers), and I don't know the proper destination. If someone else knows, I hope someone edits accordingly or lets me know. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:48, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Human trafficking in the United States Edits

Nick. Thanks for your edits and proposed edits to the article. I just recently made some major edits with regard to the structure and content of the article in order to provide a more scholarly and cohesive point of view on this issue. I have looked at your suggestions about sentence structure and phrasing for the content that is already there and will begin working on that this week. If you have time to look at my changes, however, I would appreciate feedback. I have not currently edited anything about anti-trafficking policies but I hope to make the amendments to the TVPA 2000 a little more comprehensive. Also, what do you think about the history section? I didn't work on that at all, I just changed its order. Hope to hear from you soon. Cyoung530 (talk) 01:54, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

(Copied to the Talk page at Human Trafficking in the United States (in the topic/section Edits of March 25, 2012). Responses should go there. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:12, 27 March 2012 (UTC))

Thanks

For the clarification edit on matriarchy.

Cheers, CircularReason (talk) 17:22, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Asexuality as a main sexual orientation

Nick, please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sexology and sexuality#Asexuality as a main sexual orientation about the validity of User:Pass a Method adding that asexuality is "a main category of sexual orientation" to the Heterosexuality, Homosexuality and Bisexuality articles. Obviously, comments on the matter are needed. Flyer22 (talk) 14:27, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:19, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

resource request

Hi Nick,

I've uploaded the law journal article that you requested at the resource exchange. You can find a link to the article at that page. GabrielF (talk) 15:44, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:56, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for Matrifocal family

User:AnonMoos thanked me on my talk page for creating the stub. The credit's all yours, of course. Have you considered putting the page up for Did You Know? It has to be done within a few days of the article being created or substantially expanded? Itsmejudith (talk) 07:54, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Nice thought, but I haven't looked into it and don't think I want to pursue that. It only has two sources, so I downloaded a couple more possible sources and plan to add what they say, if apropos, and I don't know when that will be. Your work on this article inspired me and I mostly kept what you did; if you hadn't started it, I probably wouldn't have gotten to it. And I have a major task ahead in preparing for a disagreement regarding sexism and some Wikipedia content and want to devote time to that. However, feel free to pursue DYK, if you wish, and anyone else interested may also. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:12, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Query

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Done. I was delayed partly by public libraries mostly blocking access to the pages in question. Also, I would have answered at Gender talk but decided not to reopen what seems to have settled into a good solution. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:43, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Kerri Lyon (disambiguation) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Kerri Lyon (disambiguation) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kerri Lyon (disambiguation) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:56, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:37, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Nick Levinson. You have new messages at DRAGON BOOSTER's talk page.
Message added 22:25, 10 August 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 22:25, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:41, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

feminism fist logo

Hi Nick, I left a message on your Commons talk page. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:50, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Replied at Commons and done here. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:44, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:Success Academy Charter Schools logo.png

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If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. Stefan2 (talk) 20:47, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:31, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Nick Levinson. You have new messages at Stefan2's talk page.
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Stefan2 (talk) 22:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:31, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Template talk:Sexual orientation#Pansexuality and polysexuality

Your input is needed with regard to the above linked discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 18:37, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:31, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

The new template proposal is up. I emailed you about it, but never got a reply. So it seemed best that I alert you here on your talk page. Flyer22 (talk) 11:25, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I added my opinion. I did not address length, since I could argue either way on that.

I generally check my email twice a week and had already on Saturday before you emailed. I thought I had the template on my watchlist but maybe I didn't, and thought no one had done anything on it in a while, so I missed it. At any rate, it's watchlisted now.

Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:22, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, Nick. Flyer22 (talk) 18:23, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Done here. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:02, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

"how do I know, jim?"

hi,

did you know that @ Warren_G._Harding#African-American_lineage_contention there is a quote from prez harding where he's asked about his possible black lineage and grants that it was possible? idk if you wanna research & make sure that that's accurate. I am not gonna mess w/ harding article. this is all to say: I am adding that "the presidents or thier campaigns denied the claims" @ black president. thx hmu if any problems skakEL 15:00, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

This discussion is closed here and continued at the Black president talk page. Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:21, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Categories

Hi, Nick. No complaints from me yet, I'm just a bit confused as to what you were trying to say in your last edits in the Image use policy. At present, all policies are meant to be listed in both Category:Wikipedia policies (which is done automatically through the template) and only one of the specific ones. WIth your re-addition of Category:Wikipedia legal policies, the Image use policy is now in two of the specific cats, which is the only one of our 50+ that is. NTox · talk 18:47, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

If the limit is just one, I don't know that, and that should be specified in the guideline I know of, which now says, "each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs." Perhaps specifying a limit of one should be discussed first at WP Categorization Talk, including why policies should be under a different guideline provision than nonpolicies. I think it is more informative to categorize a page into more rather than fewer in order to make finding the page easier for a reader looking in a reasonably relevant category. That's my opinion but other editors may not agree. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:20, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. That category scheme was largely created as a way of organizing comprehensive lists of policies, like WP:LOP, to make them easier to remember. You're right that it's a kind of IAR situation; I just try to do some cleanup as things go astray every now and again, to keep related pages more-or-less consistent with the established practices on the other ones. As always, consensus can change on these matters. Have a good one. NTox · talk 18:34, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Done here. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:34, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 21

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I prefer linking to a disambiguation page over not linking to any page. I'm relying on a source that is not more specific and therefore am unable to offer a more specific Wikipedia destination. However, to anticipate a similar response in the future, I plan to add a comment to the article to explain the link. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I found the preferred method for such cases and applied it, deleting the comment as no longer useful. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:00, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

re I don't have sources or time in a week

How much more time would you require? Perhaps we could work something out like an extension after revisiting to see if there's been any progress in a week? — Cirt (talk) 16:10, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Far too long to be practicable, I think. A quick superficial guess is that getting some sources will take weeks, maybe months if I have to go through interlibrary loan. I hope someone else has the sources, which is why I posted.

I'll cross-reference this post where I posted at Talk:Valerie Solanas#I don't have sources or time in a week, so anyone can weigh in. On this page, it's done. Thanks for asking. Some sources I have at home, but not these. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:37, 25 October 2012 (UTC) (Clarified with a link: 16:45, 25 October 2012 (UTC))

You as a source

Nick, I just noticed a little bit ago that you are used as a reference in the Asexuality article (as a source at the end of the Sexual orientation and etiology section). I'm certain that it's referencing you, given your interest in feminism and that you've heavily edited the article in the past. I suppose, and of course without any offense intended (you that know I very much respect you), my only question is how reliable is it with regard to Wikipedia's sourcing policy/guidelines? I also know that some editors object to other editors adding sources based on their own research. And although I stated "my only question," my other would be to know your profession. I'm not sure if you told me before, and I'm okay with you not divulging that information if you don't want to. Flyer22 (talk) 08:28, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Copied and replied to at Talk:Asexuality and done here. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:10, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Merger

Why was "Gynarchy" merged with "Matrifocal family‎" when we discussed Matrifocality in a reasonably detailed manner earlier, and everybody seemed to conclude that it was not the same as matriarchy?? -- AnonMoos (talk) 03:44, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

This discussion is moved to Talk:Gynarchy#IP's proposal to merge with Matriarchy and is done here. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:43, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not too sure whether I understand all that, or whether it's worth trying to understand, but what I do know very clearly is that "gynarchy" is not a valid synonym for "matrifocality", and that you seem to have gone back on what you said in the previous discussion, when it was agreed that matrifocality is not the same thing as matriarchy... AnonMoos (talk) 17:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I have to go now but I should be back online tomorrow or Friday. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:58, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Continuing this discussion at Gynarchy's Talk (IP's Proposal to Merge with Matriarchy (Reopening)), not here, because I try to stay within the spirit of transparency about article editing. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:07, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Nomination of Eva Moskowitz for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Eva Moskowitz is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eva Moskowitz until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. --☥NEO (talk) 09:01, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:21, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:For publicists publicizing a client's work

I made a rather extensive comment there. Perhaps you may want to incorporate some or all of it your draft. I bas the advice on the current trend of discussions. I personally support direct editing, but it seems that almost nobody else does, and I do not feel it fair to give advice to people that is different from current practice. DGG ( talk ) 22:35, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Done, in that this discussion is continued at the talk page for that essay. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:27, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

February 2013

This is a warning; if you use Wikipedia for promotion, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. with respect to Success Academy Charter Schools and Eva Moskowitz DGG ( talk ) 01:14, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I am saying this as an editor, not an admin; I cannot myself now take admin action, because I am actively editing the articles. I'd always rather edit than act as an admin. But I think your editing is way out of WP norms--as was explained by other people on the relevant talk pages. There was another course open to be, but one I am reluctant to take: which was to have speedy deleted both articles as G11 on the grounds that they cannot be fixed without normal editing. My advice is generally that the original editor fix the problems themselves, but as you have shown total resistance to doing so, others will have to do it for you. You do not own the articles. :I assume you are acting as a paid editor (though the articles would be equally promotional regardless of motivation); I support the rights of paid editors when they edit properly, but the sort of editing you are doing is likely to jeopardize them by its effect on opinion here. You are obviously a skilled writer, as your essay I mention just above demonstrates (though I cannot say the same for the excessively wordy and over-personalized one WP:Creating controversial content--consider whether it would be more effective if shortened. DGG ( talk ) 01:23, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

btw, i am one of the relatively few WP admins willing to work at helping paid editors both on and off-wiki. If you want to contact me, please do. DGG ( talk ) 02:32, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Flatly: I am not paid a penny by anyone to do anything with anything in Wikimedia Foundation properties, including any article on Wikipedia, never have been, have never asked for it, have never been offered it, and did not receive a copy of the education book coauthored by Moskowitz and cited in the article although it appears some bloggers did (I borrowed a copy from a library, by interlibrary loan). The Success Academy Charter Schools article, even under its preceding name, Harlem Success Academy, was never about an organization that had not yet started a school teaching students and it had always been about one or more open schools it runs (the individual schools in the group do not have their own articles so they have always been covered by the article about the group); within the group, while some schools were aready open, some more schools have been proposed and controversy arose over those, which was reported. The reverting to a much older version omits much criticism. The article did not discuss general educational philosophies applicable to most schools; it discussed what was particular to this group of schools, some of which is similar to other schools' philosophies and some of which differs; for example, some people think that good schools focus on reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, but this group has a different philosophy. I have indeed moved some content to more general articles in past years. Linking to the schools group website does not substitute for discussing what secondary sources discuss when secondary sources are available, partly because the schools group website does not, and is not expected to, present controversies. Precisely because both Moskowitz and the schools group are controversial, as the deleted content and the talk topics showed, there is a demand that criticisms be present, and they were; therefore, neutrality requires that both sides be presented, requiring more content. The External Links section was of links about the schools group. It is false that I, as you say on my talk page, "have shown total resistance" to editing; I have left some edits intact even when I disagreed. I have solicited input; I do not own any article and never have. I will review where you say I have violated standards. I don't mind deleting some citational detail but I provide it because of claims over the years for various articles that sources are not appropriate or do not support statements; however, that can be solved by providing and then trimming the detail, as I have done for some kinds of detail in the past, so that it can be recovered by any editor via the article's history and edit summaries. To save time now, I am posting this at both my user talk page and at the schools group talk page. I have to do some of my work offline and return to where I can access the Internet, so I can't respond to everything now, but will act. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:30, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

If the warning is inappropriate, then I give you my apologies. But the coincidence of over-detailed editing, the strong defense of this editing in even its most questionable aspects on the talk pages involved, and a decision to write detailed instructions for PR people woking on WP, would seem to indicate this as the most likely explanation. If not , fine, but the editing still is in my opinion very questionable, for reasons which I have explained, and others have explained, at the articles involved.

But the rules about promotionalism apply equally to those who are proponents of a subject without money being involved. Money is not in my opinion he key factor, it is a very common cause of overly committed editing, but not the only one. There are a great many reasons why one might choose such a particular firm and its founder to edit, some of which are more likely to cause difficulties than others. But we judge by the results. Covering a subject in excessive detail can be done for many reasons. I personally think money is if anything the easiest one to deal with: an outside PR agent who is working for money will stop when it becomes unprofitable. A PR agent employed by an organization, may have no choice but to keep going. A close friend or associate of someone may edit inappropriately for motives that are not always rational, and be even more difficult to convince to edit in the accepted way. I do not know the nature of your own conflict of interest, but I continue to assume it is present. As you rightly said in your essays, I can not and do not ask what it is. But as I said above, I myself have no bias against COI editors, paid or unpaid, though I know that others do. I have a definite opinion, however, about COI editing. I can indeed ask you if you have previously edited here under other names, but i can not and do not hold it against you if you do not wish to answer. I am, in particular, aware of the problems at the other, unconnnected and much more controversial area where you have edited, and certainly would not push further about this.

Any really good COI editor knows to keep in criticisms and controversy, not white-wash it. Whitewashing and the suppression of negative material is in my opinion a particularly stupid device, though one I am told by some paid editors is often a request of their clients.

this is not the place for specifics--they belong on the articles in question. But some of what you say is worth responding to here. What a company or anyone else plans to do is not appropriate content until it becomes the subject of significant outside discussion--I personally am more flexible here than many in WP, band i would include a school under construction in an article on the group or district, but I think almost nobody here would include one on which no physical work has yet been made unless that particular plan one had extensive public controversy, which does happen. All US public charter schools, teach the same basic group of subjects, though the emphases can differ. The reason is fairly simply: there's in the US and almost all other countries a legally required curriculum for public support or approval. The general curriculum orientation of a school is of encyclopedic interest--but not the details. A school which quite literally taught only the 3Rs and still had public funding in the US would indeed be worth a more extended discussion on the curriculum. The question is not the avoidance of the topic, but the degree of detail. The usual rule is that a WP article should include only material that would be of interest to a general reader coming across the mention of the subject and wanting the sort of information that would be found in an encyclopedia, not material that would be of interest only to those associated with the subject, or to prospective clients or students--that sort of content is considered promotional.

We can go into this in more detail on the article talk page. I just mention I did not revert the version of the schools article, but only the one on the founder, and in doing so, i said specifically that additional material needs to be restored. But the duplication of content in the article on a person and their organization is generally not a good idea. For the schools article, what I have done so far is remove large portions of what I am certain is regarded here as inappropriate content, and some streamlining.Perhaps it too should be reverted to an earlier version and supplemented from there, but I'm trying the opposite approach. DGG ( talk ) 02:20, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

My reason for writing Wikipedia:For publicists publicizing a client's work is reflected in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Feminism#new how-to for publicists writing in Wikipedia. I try to understand other people's views and to empathize with their legitimate needs and sometimes act on them, and in this case that meant helping those in the field and helping Wikipedia at the same time. I have not had any other username in any Wikimedia project, including Wikipedia; only rarely have I edited an an IP editor and I acknowledged all of those under my username (I think they were all due to login/logout errors and I think my acknwledging was by subsequent edit summaries). I do not do PR for anyone for any purpose in any medium; while I would in limited circumstances, no one has asked me to do anything like it in a long time, probably years. I have no conflict of interest in editing Wikipedia. I think the schools group is doing a remarkably good job, with some criticisms probably deserved at least in the past (a common problem with most institutions starting out), but the time working on just this one is large and I don't have the time to research and write articles on other charter schools, although I'd like to. I think it's pretty clear the schools group's people would write a very different article, likely one without a criticism. Their website does not have this article's level of information (although it has much other information that's not in the article and shouldn't be).

WP:CSD#G11 applies to nonneutral articles only. We apparently disagree on whether the article as last edited by me adequately covered both sides of controversies, so pointing to specifics of where you see nonneutrality would be helpful. One editor made an interesting comment about it after your post, which I will consider. I have not whitewashed, unless you believe that criticism should not be accompanied by that which is criticized even when sourcing supports the latter, and if we disagree then I'd like to know of specific cases of what you consider a whitewash. I assume that discussion will be at article talk page/s. I'll probably be online daily for a while, fitting around my other time obligations.

In articles generally, I try to edit for a level of accuracy when various editors have indicated that such a level is not necessary or when they edited to a less accurate level before or after my editing. The disagreement is not usually the other way. I'm used to reading scholarship and try to apply its principles. For example, I bracketed initials beginning quotations when the capitalization was changed because that is done in scholarship and it promotes accuracy, an editor debracketed, we disagreed, the editor found a Wikipedia guideline calling for debracketing in cases like it, and I then agreed for Wikipedia's purposes and have applied nonbracketing elsewhere since, even though I disagree with the guideline for off-Wikipedia writing. If my objecting to debracketing as causing inaccuracy even though the other editor found the guideline and presented it and I then agreed is inappropriate discussion by me, please tell me how.

You allude to an unspecified other area where I edit. I don't know if we're thinking of the same area or specifics, but I am working offline on another article and plan, when ready to proceed, to proceed and not before. Because of that plan, I am extramotivated to be extra careful in all of my editing, and am concerned when edits I do not make, including some that precede my first edit on an article, is likely to be held against me because I edit frequently and a question might arise about why I had not changed something since I edited so frequently. I try to preserve existing edits for the sake of comity. In some cases, I was glad when a source turned up to support an otherwise-unsupported and not-well-written point already in an article; I could simultaneously respect comity and source the statement without rewriting another editor's contribution.

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:02, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Some of this reads as if the guiding premise is that if two editors disagree and I'm one then I must be wrong. That is not the case and I hope we are going to put this behind us; I'm responding here to specifics you raise to assist in that process. You wrote of my "strong defense of this editing [of the Moskowitz and SA schools group articles] in even its most questionable aspects on the talk pages involved". Please state which are the "most questionable aspects" I wrongly defended, if that's what you meant, so I can clarify or withdraw my defense, if that's what it was. Editors did state views about the editing but that does not mean they were always right, such as the suggestion by one editor that I had deleted all criticisms of Moskowitz when no one ever had or ever proposed to anytime since I began editing either article. If my editing is within policies and guidelines and if the critique of it is not, my editing should stand; if my editing is outside and the critique is within, my editing should fall. I repeatedly sought input and response, conceded where appropriate, and did not respond where what another editor did was at least acceptable and did not need a response. Dialogue includes thinking things through.

You wrote, "the suppression of negative material is in my opinion a particularly stupid device". It's worse than you wrote: Unless it has undue weight, it generally violates NPOV. I did no such suppression unless for undue weight and I left intact some or all that may not deserve even the weight they have. I challenge anyone who thinks I supressed anything negative and deserving of weight to show any instance of my misquoting or misparaphrasing a source.

Overlappingly, you also wrote, "Whitewashing ... negative material is in my opinion a particularly stupid device". If a statement presented as a criticism does not substantively qualify as one, it should be stated neutrally or in accordance with sourcing. I challenge anyone to find any instance of my failing to do so.

Some of this I'm discussing here but will also copy to the relevant article's talk page for talk continuation there. You are correct in this, your statement: "What a company or anyone else plans to do is not appropriate content until it becomes the subject of significant outside discussion". I think almost every plan I stated in the article met that requirement; exceptions are rare, as in listing particular schools before secondary sources listed them but most of the yet-unopened schools were already controversial in secondary sourcing. I accept your point that a small number of the particular schools, not being in secondary sources, can be omitted until they are in secondary sources, although that doesn't change reporting on them even before construction (construction does not take long, being largely renovation rather than ground-up construction, since they collocate in existing biuldings, as reported in the article). You wrote, "I think almost nobody here would include one [a particular school] on which no physical work has yet been made unless that particular plan one had extensive public controversy, which does happen." That controversy did happen and the article gave sourcing for it. You wrote: "All US public charter schools, teach the same basic group of subjects, though the emphases can differ." Correct; listing what this group teaches shows those differences in emphasis as well as the sources do. You wrote: "The reason ["all US public charter schools, teach the same basic group of subjects, though the emphases can differ"] is fairly simply: there's in the US and almost all other countries a legally required curriculum for public support or approval. The general curriculum orientation of a school is of encyclopedic interest--but not the details." That's self-contradictory. To the extent the U.S. imposes common standards, "the general curriculum orientation" would go into a more general article about U.S. education; and likewise for other or all nations. But if "a school" (your singular) has differences in its "general curriculum orientation", "the details" may very much matter. Judging from sourcing, the inclusion of, e.g., yoga, robotics, and block-building in a lab may be just such details, especially if no national curriculum includes them (and maybe, in the case of two of these, shouldn't). I don't know how common the 3R model (reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic) is in curricula, but it's probably common in parents' thoughts and should be implicitly acknowledged at least as an unwritten contrast in discussing other general curricula.

You wrote: "The usual rule is that a WP article should include only material that would be of interest to a general reader coming across the mention of the subject and wanting the sort of information that would be found in an encyclopedia, not material that would be of interest only to those associated with the subject, or to prospective clients or students--that sort of content is considered promotional." That misdefines promotionality in Wikipedia and that is not how vast numbers of articles are edited. An article's content may be for readers with in-depth background, although it has to be understandable to people at a lower level (and some articles are over my head if I don't get reference works like dictionaries out, but we shouldn't delete them). Therefore, while we should write for clarity, we should not omit content so as to exclude readers who are knowledgeable in the subject. See the essay on readers first, which, to my knowledge, is uncontradicted by any policy or guideline. It is legitimate to include content for prospective students and their families, prospective teachers and managers, prospective union organizers (referring to the criticism of this and many other charter schools as nonunion), people involved with other schools who might want to study models either positive or negative, and people interested in educational policy (because particular charters' success or failure is important in selecting or illustrating policy needs) because promotionality is not defined by who might become a reader (cf. articles about musical albums) but by content and style (see on being like advertising). The Simple English Wikipedia is possibly only for readers with limited cognitive ability if that's due to language limitations, but I doubt even that. I have not found any statement about Wikipedia that directs editing so as to limit its audience to what you posit. If there were, a lot of articles would have to be deleted, such as many in the sciences. I have not seen a proposal to delete articles for overcomplexity of content. I have not included content of interest only to people already inside the schools group; they may be interested but so would outsiders be.

Clarity, of course, is laudable as a goal. I'm happy to look for ways to make what I write easier to understand without omitting substantive content. Some of the new critiques of the Moskowitz and schools group articles seem to suggest a need for clearer identification of content to show its relevance to the article it's in.

You wrote, "the duplication of content in the article on a person and their organization is generally not a good idea." Agreed; and it did not happen. Moskowitz spoke of education before founding the schools group; her earlier views belong in the Moskowitz article unless we're to add to the schools group article a section on the founder's history, an unusual approach in Wikipedia, especially given that she is notable even without having founded any schools. And anything Moskowitz said on education even after the founding but while not in her capacity with the schools group probably would belong in the Moskowitz article, and I edited by that principle, based on sourcing. If anyone knows of even one failure to assign content to the proper article, please point to it.

I have seen the editing but have not completed reviewing it. Some I have no intention of changing. Some I may question. And I plan to continue editing per useful suggestions.

I plan to copy some of the above paragraphs to article-relevant talk pages shortly for continuation there.

You refer to "overly committed editing". Whether I'm "overly committed" is a matter of my time and other factors in my life and is not for Wikimedia to judge about any editor. I've seen nothing saying that Wikimedia places a cap on commitment. I certainly don't have the time to be, say, an admin. Wikimedia probably wants more commitment from most of us if it's available. I do a few things besides edit. I don't have much more to offer at this time.

You wrote that "an outside PR agent who is working for money will stop when it becomes unprofitable. A PR agent employed by an organization, may have no choice but to keep going." An outsider/insider distinction is not quite the relevant one; it's between someone with much authority and someone with less, such as between manager and assistant, whether in the staff or at a contracted consultancy being irrelevant. Between high and low authorities, one and not the other is expected to judge whether continuing an effort has enough benefit to justify its cost, including a wage.

I'm also a published author in other media, where I have written about subjects that probably don't fit in Wikipedia and from perspectives that also don't fit here. It is not Wikimedia's obligation to provide me with a forum and it does not. However, I and all other editors are permitted to choose on what we edit for any reason (or none) where notability or weight applies, the major constraints being in other ways, such as against original research in Wikipedia, but with freedom to delve into any notable or weighty subjects we wish (weight being for noncoatracked subjects that are within other subjects notable enough for their own articles). In the past there have been a significant number of criticisms that did not belong there and that presumably came from editors with commitments of their own, about which we do not care, and so we did not chase those editors away. Instead, I moved some criticisms to more relevant articles, deleted at least one that was unsourced, and kept others in the Moskowitz article. As far as I know, every one of the criticizing editors was free continuously from the time of their criticism/s through today to edit any article without even a warning. We disagreed and I explained when it came up. I did not tell them to stop editing.

I tend to edit in areas that are controversial even outside of Wikipedia. Necessarily, I accept controversy as part of the territory in Wikipedia, even though it's time-consuming.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:03, 2 March 2013 (UTC) (Replaced post of 17:33, 2 March 2013 (UTC).)

No ownership is occurring. I discuss. If an edit results in the article being less accurate, for example, that's a legitimate discussion topic. Simply ignoring issues is not the only way to avoid being an owner.

On Wikipedia:Creating controversial content, I copied that part of your comment here to Wikipedia talk:Creating controversial content#.22excessively wordy and over-personalized.22 and replied to it there.

Nick Levinson (talk) 19:58, 2 March 2013 (UTC) (Corrected excess bracketing of link: 20:03, 2 March 2013 (UTC))

On Wikipedia's intended audience, I looked in the last few days for stated limits, including looking in Wikimedia Foundation's latest annual report online. I didn't find intentional linits or, for that matter, unintentional ones. If you find something like that, such that editing should be for a limted audience, please cite. Without that, given that the Foundation has touted being the fifth most popular website (I think in the world, else in the U.S.), a source I saw about a month ago said it's the sixth, and results positions in Google and Bing searches are frequently very high, I think we should assume the Foundation wants Wikipedia to be visited by as many people as possible regardless of their qualifications and therefore wants Wikipedia to be edited to be attractive to as many readers as possible. That does favor writing for a reading level compatible with most readers' abilities, thus a below-average level, as many magazines for well-educated people nonobviously do (I think generally 6th–8th grade levels, reputedly such as in The New Yorker). And, in Wikipedia, reducing the degree of editorial detail may help. But that does not mean eliminating so much information that only readers who have hardly even heard of an article's subject would find the article worth reading. That would unduly constrain its audience. Cf. the string theory article for a hatnote referring readers to a more accessible treatment of the same subject within Wikipedia, the latter having a hatnote linking back to the former as the main article, implying that two levels of readership for one subject are acceptable (granted that bad cross-linking in one article is not a model elsewhere, I offer that the readership split for that subject is good for Wikipedia). I am working on the issue of detail and I trust others are considering the issue of whether to provide more or fewer criticisms (and the neutralizing content), which will affect the amount of detail to report. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Public relations

Hi Nick! I wanted to draw your attention to several resources we have and have been developing relating to this subject.

• WP:COI, the guideline for this subject
• WP:PSCOI, a one page introduction and how-to guide for COI editors
• WP:CO-OP, a WikiProject for assisting paid editors
• Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement, a Facebook group composed of editors and public relations pros who try and work together and discuss issues
• WP:COI+ a proposal for a kind of PR/paid editor/COI editor certification and best practices protocol

There's been lots of discussion about this controversial issue and I'd like to bring you into it to further clarify and improve our guidance in this area. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the list.

In case this is about the essay Wikipedia:For publicists publicizing a client's work, I'm planning to copy your post to the talk page there shortly or in the next few days (when I can be online) and may reply there.

If it's about the accusation about my being paid stated above on my talk page (and therefore not disclosing a COI), the charge about being paid is false and was answered and thus the need to declare a COI does not apply to me, because I don't have a COI related to any of the subjects now under discussion (I have a COI for an unrelated article and said so, I think years ago, and did not edit the article myself).

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:11, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Done here. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:09, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Mail

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Flyer22 (talk) 18:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:12, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Sexual orientation article again

I'm never sure if you are still watching this article. So here's a notification about this in case you want to temporarily watch the article because of it or weigh in on it. Flyer22 (talk) 18:06, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Nick Levinson. You have new messages at WP:MCQ.
Message added 23:50, 30 March 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

ww2censor (talk) 23:50, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Done Nick Levinson (talk) 16:27, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Deletion discussion about Multigarchy

Hello, Nick Levinson,

I wanted to let you know that there's a discussion about whether Multigarchy should be deleted. Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Multigarchy .

If you're new to the process, articles for deletion is a group discussion (not a vote!) that usually lasts seven days. If you need it, there is a guide on how to contribute. Last but not least, you are highly encouraged to continue improving the article; just be sure not to remove the tag about the deletion nomination from the top.

Thanks, Barney the barney barney (talk) 19:22, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Please see wikt:multigarch, which might be a better place for this term than a wikipedia article. Reviewers on wiktionary are requesting verification, which I hope you are able to provide. - tucoxn\^talk 22:50, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Done here. Discussion is continued at the AfD page and perhaps at the Wiktionary multigarch entry's talk page. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:46, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Evan Mandery

Hi Nick. I saw your suggestion on the talk page of Evan Mandery to get a neutral editor to check out the article. I probably can't help there, but I gather that Sourov0000 is likely to have a COI, so I wanted to suggest that having a third party check things out when Sourov0000 is complete was a good idea. - Bilby (talk) 09:45, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Followup is underway. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:13, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:14, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

"Wikipedia has an article on..."

Hello! Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#"Wikipedia has an article on...". Thanks! —David Levy 19:26, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Done here and continued there. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Notice of Neutral point of view noticeboard discussion

Hello, Nick Levinson. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Evan Mandery.The discussion is about the topic Evan Mandery. Thank you.

I'm posting to this to myself merely for the purpose of precise compliance.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:35, 1 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected paragraph break: 16:38, 1 May 2013 (UTC))

Hi Nick - can you elaborate to me the nature of your COI on the Evan Mandery article? Feel free to email me if you do not wish to disclose on-wiki (or just point me to where you've discussed it elsewhere, in case I missed it). Regards Manning (talk) 06:25, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Emailed. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:16, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I've reviewed it and am now satisfied that the COI tag can be removed. Regards Manning (talk) 22:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:11, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Multigarch on Wiktionary

Hello Nick, I remember participating with you on an AfD about Multigarchy. I set up a page here for the term on Wiktionary but it's having problems with its request for verification. Could you provide a helping hand? (Perhaps the word should be moved from "multigarch" to "multigarchy" ... your thoughts?) Thanks! - tucoxn\^talk 23:46, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Continued at Wiktionary (where I replied) and done on this talk page. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:33, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Eva Moskowitz draft started

I've been working on the new draft of the Eva Moskowitz article. It is based on my last revision of the live article rather than on the revision produced by reverting during the AfD discussion and the editing is being done largely in parallel and subsequent to the editing of the Success Academy Charter Schools article.

The citations should now be satisfactory. I deleted some details, many of them locational. Citations containing quotations justifiably do (I spot-checked them), such as to support challengeable statements or, in bundled citations, to clarify which statement is supported by which citation. If there is further trimming that should be performed, please edit or post to here. I'm glad to help.

More editing is planned.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:48, 10 March 2013 (UTC) (Corrected a link: 18:53, 10 March 2013 (UTC))

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you tried to give User:Nick Levinson/Eva Moskowitz draft a different title by copying its content and pasting either the same content, or an edited version of it, into Eva Moskowitz. This is known as a "cut and paste move", and it is undesirable because it splits the page history, which is legally required for attribution. Instead, the software used by Wikipedia has a feature that allows pages to be moved to a new title together with their edit history.

In most cases, once your account is four days old and has ten edits, you should be able to move an article yourself using the "Move" tab at the top of the page. This both preserves the page history intact and automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new. If you cannot perform a particular page move yourself this way (e.g. because a page already exists at the target title), please follow the instructions at requested moves to have it moved by someone else. Also, if there are any other pages that you moved by copying and pasting, even if it was a long time ago, please list them at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen. Thank you. Technical 13 (talk) 19:16, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I had forgotten that histories can be merged. I had linked from the Eva Moskowitz Edit Summary to the draft's history so that all attributions could be found anyway. I wanted to avoid a confusion about what work was done where when there was discussion about the editing of the article and I had left the live article as it was so as not to interfere with another editor's planned efforts. Since I proposed editing the live article per my userspace draft and no one responded, I carried it out.

I think the only other article relevant to moving a large amount of content was gynocracy as userfied around when it was deleted from the article namespace; matriarchy was a or the principal destination. I have copied or moved lesser amounts of content numerous times and, I think, preserved attributions by linking in Edit Summaries, for example, by doing so from the Eva Moskowitz article to Success Academy Charter Schools in past years, mainly when creating the latter article partly from content in the former. Soon, I will look and see if I need to do anything regarding histories.

Technologically, the method this time (as in general) was copy-and-paste, not cut-and-paste; separately, I edited the source page to delete content no longer belonging there. I have done page moves but, I think, only within the article namespace.

Nick Levinson (talk) 20:28, 5 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected a misspelling, commas, and a capitalization and deleted an excess word: 20:35, 5 May 2013 (UTC))

Are you asking me to go through and apply the {{Histmerge|User:Nick Levinson/Draftname}} to those other articles for you? I don't mind, just need to know if that is what you are asking. Technical 13 (talk) 20:55, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

No, I said "I will look...." I'll be back online, probably tomorrow or Tuesday. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:42, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

 Works for me and to be honest, your response above was tl;dr. Technical 13 (talk) 21:54, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

It's different when length is due not to content but to bloat. I think you had used a substitution template and perhaps hadn't recognized all it would say, needing responses. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:16, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I posted a process question, so it may take some more days. If there's no answer in a week or so, I'll proceed. For anyone interested, the attribution history for matriarchy was provided since early 2011 through an edit summary and, in general, editors like me are told that for "merging two articles – make a request at Wikipedia:Proposed mergers, or be bold and do it yourself." Since content being moved from the userfied gynocracy article into the article namespace matriarchy article was into only a part of the latter article (and may have involved parts and wholes of both pages), my being the one to combine the content made more sense than asking an admin to make the editorial judgments. I recently moved a sentence or a few from Success Academy Charter Schools into charter school (New York), both in the article namespace, where the sending article named the receiving article in the edit summary but the receiving article did not name the sending article in its edit summary; I can correct that in a few days. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:01, 6 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected misspelling & syntax & added links: 17:07, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

 No mergers to do.

Mergers should not be performed when both pages have been sumultaneously edited, because merging is simply overwriting of one with the other, not a true merger. I've requested an undo or a userfication. No other work in which I've edited should be merged, as I know of no pair of pages that does not have simultaneous editing including by me for at least one page in such a pair and for which I have not done (or had done by someone else) a page move without a need for a merger.

This only leaves something for me to write in an edit summary and I'll get to that soon.

Thank you very much. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Done. There was a copying on March 22, 2013, and the destination's edit summary credited the article it came from (in a copying we don't usually edit the source to add the fact of copying from it into that edit summary) and there was a move on November 30, 2011, and for that both articles credited each other in the edit summaries (charter school (New York) and Success Academy Charter Schools). Attribution histories are thus preserved. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:02, 19 May 2013 (UTC) (Deleted redundancy and conformed other text: 18:07, 19 May 2013 (UTC))

Nomination of Success Academy Charter Schools for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Success Academy Charter Schools is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Success Academy Charter Schools until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. DGG ( talk ) 00:38, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Please do not filibuster the Article for Deletion process. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:24, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I invite anyone to take one of my responses considered filibusterish and, on my talk page, draft a rewrite saying the same content but persuasively and not too densely and yet more concisely. What I wrote is not filibustering unless I'm supposed to stay silent against charges or agree with them regardless of what is said. I try to make a point of reading responses even where I think I'm likely to disagree, and try to keep an open mind by looking for where we'd agree, within matters where I participate in decision-making. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:53, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

May 2013

Please stop using talk pages such as Wikipedia: Help Desk for general discussion of the topic. They are for discussion related to improving the article; not for use as a forum or chat room. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. See here for more information. Thank you. Please do not rant or filibuster to try to interfere with deletion discussions, as you did at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Success Academy Charter Schools. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:18, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The recent help desk topic/section was Wikipedia:Help desk#linking from inside a quote, was a question for the help desk because it was about a method of linking articles and thus not for the reference desk, and was raised in response to MOS talk of May 12–15, 2013. At the AfD, my last post was an on-point response to an apparent charge and thus was and is appropriate and caused no interference nor could it nor was intended to. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:06, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:Success Academy Charter Schools logo.png)

Thanks for uploading File:Success Academy Charter Schools logo.png. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

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Done here; notice was shared and apparently the logo is being retained in the live article, at least temporarily. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected misspelling: 16:52, 24 May 2013 (UTC))

Disambiguation link notification for June 11

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Trafficking of children, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Xiaogang (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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That was my intent, since I didn't know which destination article to select, but I've now created Xiaogang (disambiguation) as a redirect to Xiaogang and updated the trafficking of children article's link, which I think solves the problem until a specific destination article can be selected, probably by using another source. If that's not a good solution, please let me know. Thanks.

(Done with this topic/section.)

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:24, 12 June 2013 (UTC) (Corrected tense: 16:27, 12 June 2013 (UTC))

canvassing

Thanks for the correction. I don't think this needs to go up on every wikiproject - for example, it wouldn't make sense at wikiproject politics as there isn't a particular "politics" POV one might be looking for - but conservativism, liberalism, libertarianism, socialism, etc would be good targets. Feel free to add it to any relevant projects you find, I added it to a few already. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:35, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Probably not every, but many. For example, an article might be relevant to a few WikiProjects of which only one has this caution against posting while the others appear to be open. WP:Canvassing applies equally to all of them, but the notice would likely be read as a restriction where posted and as not where not posted. Where a dispute between editors portends escalation, conflicting editors might perceive different WikiProjects as sites of likely allies, and it's hard to predict which ones those would be without first picking articles likely to be disputed. (Consider a hypothetical article on math and liberalism (not an impossible combination)). If one of those editors posts this notice, that by itself could be seen as trying to skew the results in their favor.

The latest edit is fine. Perhaps the notice could be converted into a template to make adding it to pages easier and reduce the likelihood of different WikiProjects getting different notices? However, I don't know how to make a template.

Nick Levinson (talk) 14:28, 18 June 2013 (UTC) (Corrected spacing and edited generally: 14:35, 18 June 2013 (UTC)) (Corrected paragraphing: 14:38, 18 June 2013 (UTC))

I created a template once, it wasn't very fun... Lots of counting of parentheses. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

A proposal for a consistent message on all relevant pages is pending at the WT:Canvassing talk page. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:06, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Change to WP:Logos from November 2012

Hey Nick. I would like to challenge a recent addition to WP:LOGOS. Specifically, the addition of wording : "but in most cases of non-free use it must be in the infobox although the infobox is inaccessible to visually-impaired users" and believe it should read: "but in most cases of non-free use the info box is inaccessible to visually-impaired users".

I strongly feel that the policy page gives allowance for use in info boxes but that it is not a requirement, nor written in any wording to be construed as such. The full policy page makes it clear that the use of non free logos should be treated as portraits. There is no wording that restricts their use in sections or in articles without an info box. I do need to mention that I am in a lengthy discussion at Non free content review on this subject and that a recent Teahouse discussion does give the guidance that non free logos may be used without an info box. Is it possible this subject needs a wider discussion?--Amadscientist (talk) 22:05, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Done here. I edited the guideline and joined the discussion at the WT:Logos topic/section, to centralize discussion there. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:06, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Category recreation

Re Category:Wikipedia sandboxes, you can go right ahead as far as I'm concerned - I deleted some random notes that weren't an attempt at a category, just a misplaced attempt at a sandbox! Bencherlite^Talk 15:13, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Done, although I have no idea what you were referring to as random noncategory notes. I made an error with the new redirect but an editor fixed that, so all's well now. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:27, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Nick Levinson. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical).
Message added 16:02, 12 August 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Fiddle Faddle 16:02, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:37, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Category:Terms for females

Category:Terms for females, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:49, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about the second link not working. I am not sure why this happened.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:51, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. The link probably didn't work because the link included the word "DATE" instead of the date or a way of retrieving the date. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:46, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Karen Silkwood Article

Greetings Nick I just have 1 question, are you an editor of Wikipedia articles ? If not do you know of any persons that are articulate in building Wikipedia sites ? Thank you for your ear, time and patience.

Done here and answered at the next topic/section with the same title. (Please identify yourself on your posts by using four tildes ("~~~~"); on my laptop's keyboard, the tilde key is above the tab key and needs the Shift key, but if you don't have a tilde on your keyboard there's a clickable four-tilde string on the talk edit page, just below the main editing field, where it says "Sign your posts on talk pages".) Nick Levinson (talk) 19:49, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Karen Silkwood Article

Greetings Nick I just have 1 question, are you an editor of Wikipedia articles ? If not do you know of any persons that are articulate in building Wikipedia sites ? Thank you for your ear, time and patience. Qui Tam Relator 20:34, 23 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qui Tam Relator (talk • contribs)

I do edit articles. Given your first question, I'm not sure what you mean by "building Wikipedia sites", which is far more complicated than editing articles and for which I don't know experts by name, although they can be found. If you don't want to build a site all the way from nothing to completion, if you're more specific about what you do want to do it'll be easier to find someone who can help with what you're looking for. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:44, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Sources in list

Re this, see WP:Source list: "Lists, whether they are embedded lists or stand-alone lists, are encyclopedic content as are paragraphs and articles, and they are equally subject to Wikipedia's content policies such as Verifiability, No original research, Neutral point of view, and others." for a sensitive topic such as this one. Every entry should have an inline reference. VQuakr (talk) 03:23, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Done here and continued at Talk:List of rape victims from modern history#propose deleting the Unreferenced tag. Please feel free to participate there. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Category:Terms for males

Category:Terms for males, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:34, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Done here. I have no strong opinion on this; treating like the female parallel is probably fine and that'll likely happen, so I don't need to weigh in. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:35, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of List of rape victims from modern history for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of rape victims from modern history is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of rape victims from modern history until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Secret ^account 02:00, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Done here but discussion may continue at an appropriate page. Deletion occurred before I logged in and knew of this. I've since responded at the closer's talk page, per the procedure. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Proposed change to Consensus for a unified approach to bias categories at Category:Antisemitism

Due to your involvement in the 2011 CFD that decided on a unified approach to bias categories, you may be interested in a current proposal to change that approach with regard to the Category:Antisemitism. Dlv999 (talk) 15:38, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Done on this page. See the linked-to page for a response and respond there if desired. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:11, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

New word for you to chew over

"Gynecism" / "Gynecist" has received some media coverage over the past few days. (Please don't apply your dictionary triangulation method to it, however.) AnonMoos (talk) 05:58, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks and it's rather funny (I Googled both), but too trivial either to add to Wikipedia or to dig into for general or feminist interest anytime soon. A glance through Google results leads me to guess it originated or was renewed with a blogger criticizing a candidate. I haven't checked dictionaries and perhaps an online dictionary of neologisms will have them but no other dictionary is likely to carry either form. This kind of invention occurs often and in many fields and most of those forms don't last or are limited to contexts like newspaper headlines or a few writers. Proportionately few neologisms in any field grow to be significant in usage. Thanks again. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:50, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

On "what links here" being overpopulated by template entries

I am curious. Was there a solution to this problem you raised in Wikipump? I was working on entries for churches in Naples, and some had orphan problems. Now I can't tell if any do because they have all been subsumed into templates. Rococo1700 (talk) 23:32, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

So far, no, and it may be a while, if ever, but the discussion has been continuing. Participate there, if you wish. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:03, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Matrilineality article, on Sri Lanka

Hi Nick, if you don't have the article Matrilineality (and thus its Talk page) on your watchlist, then I need to ask you here if you can find time to improve that article again. A few days ago I got a surprise when I noticed your new-to-me section in that article, the section Feminism and patriarchy relationship, concerning Sri Lanka. It is entirely my own screw-up that I failed to notice it for more than a year (I rely on my watchlist, and things were chaotic for me then, and I missed it). I feel like I'm subhuman or maybe even sub-subhuman.

Anyway, please look at what I've written in your Nov 2013 entry (the last entry) on the article's Talk page, where I've already written what 2 improvements you could do if you can afford the time. Thanks much (for at least considering it, and maybe even for your kind help in doing it). –– always trying to help our readers, For7thGen (talk) 20:47, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Responded to at that talk page. Done here. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:17, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I clarified a couple of apparent misunderstandings, if you want to go back there to see my clarifications. For7thGen (talk) 01:31, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

mea culpa

Sorry about that. Collect (talk) 18:05, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

No sweat. Thanks. (Done. This follows edits at WP:SHAM.) Nick Levinson (talk) 21:01, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Feminism and Equality

Hi, sry to disturb you in the weekend ... I have a question in the talk pages of the above article, and thought it might perhaps be polite to mention it to its author. Hereby which etc.

T 88.89.219.147 (talk) 19:48, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Done here; the discussion was continued at the article's talk page. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:59, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Paul Fucaloro listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Paul Fucaloro. Since you had some involvement with the Paul Fucaloro redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 03:10, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Redirect categorization

Hi Nick Levinson! You've been interested in redirect categorization and the This is a redirect template in the past, so I wanted to let you know that there is a discussion at Template talk:This is a redirect#One parameter that might interest you.  Good faith! Paine  20:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

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Hello, Nick Levinson. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Matrilineality article, again

Greetings to you, Nick,

I've finally found the time to work on the Matrilineality article again. Almost 2 years, already! Anyway, your adding your section about the relationship between matrilineality and patriarchy, is great, absolutely necessary.

Please see my talk page, in its new entry with the same title, "Matrilineality article, again", for more working together on changes to your great section, hopefully within a week?

For7thGen (talk) 22:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Replied to there and done here. Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:45, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Nick. And now I've replied to your reply, on my own Talk page again.

For7thGen (talk) 01:54, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

And again. For7thGen (talk) 15:04, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

And again. For7thGen (talk) 04:51, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I need to and want to apologize for such a long delay, more than 3 weeks. There was a personal problem which I was absolutely forced to handle. I'm very sorry.... But now I'm replying, back on my own Talk page. For7thGen (talk) 23:07, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

And again. Well, I finally clarified the whole subsection to help our readers. I hope you'll agree that readers will be able to understand it better now. I'll be working on the rape quote, still to do. For7thGen (talk) 00:09, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

And again. For7thGen (talk) 01:23, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Just saying hi

Saying hi because I see that you are active today and it's been a long time since I have talked with you. Hope all is well. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:36, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine. I don't have as much time as I used to for Wikimedia and I regret that, but that's life. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:35, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Success Academy Charter Schools logo.png

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Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:39, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Nick Levinson. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

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