User talk:Per Honor et Gloria/Archives4

France-Japan relations (19th century) More text

France also participated in the Bombardment of Kagoshima, aimed at quelling discontent against foreigner and the killing of several foreign residents in Japan.

Military missions and collaboration in the Boshin war

The first French military mission to Japan in 1867. Jules Brunet in front, second from right.

The Japanese Bakufu government, challenged at home by factions which desired the expulsion of foreign powers and the restoration of Imperial rule, also wished to develop military skills as soon as possible. Negociations with Napoleon III started through Shibata Takenaka as soon as 1865. In 1867, the first French Military Mission to Japan arrived in Yokohama, among them Captain Jules Brunet. The military mission would engage into a training program to modernize the armies of the Shogunate, until the Boshin war broke out a year later leading to a full-scale civil war between the Shogunate and the pro-Imperial forces. There is a well-known photograph of the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu in French uniform, taken during that period.^[1]

File:Tokugawa Yoshinobu.JPG

The Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu in French military uniform, c.1867.

Foreign powers agreed to take a neutral stance in the conflict, but a large portion of the French mission resigned and joined the forces they had trained in their conflict against Imperial forces. French forces would become a target of Imperial forces, leading to the Kobe incident on January 11th, 1868, in which a fight erupts in Akashi between 450 samurai of the Okayama fief and French sailors, leading to the occupation of central Kobe by foreign troops. Also in 1868 eleven French sailors from the Dupleix were killed in the Sakai incident, in Sakai, near Osaka, by southern rebel forces.^[2]

The French military advisers and their Japanese allies in Hokkaido. Back row: Cazeneuve, Marlin, Fukushima Tokinosuke, Fortant. Front row: Hosoya Yasutaro, Jules Brunet, Matsudaira Taro (vice-president of the Ezo Republic), Tajima Kintaro.

Jules Brunet would become a leader of the military effort of the Shogunate, reorganizing its defensive efforts and accompanying it to Hokkaido until the ultimate defeat. After the fall of Edo, Jules Brunet fled north with Enomoto Takeaki, the leader of the Japanese Shogunate's navy, and helped set up the Ezo Republic, with Enomoto Takeaki, as the President. He also helped organize the defense of Hokkaidō in the Battle of Hakodate. Troops were structured under a hybrid Franco-Japanese leadership, with Otori Keisuke as Commander-in-chief, and Jules Brunet as second in command.^[3] Each of the four brigades were commanded by a French officer (Fortant, Marlin, Cazeneuve, Bouffier), with eight Japanese commanders as second in command of each half-brigade.^[4]

Collaboration during the Meiji period

Despite its support of the losing side of the conflict during the Boshin war, France continued to play a key role in introducing modern technologies in Japan, whether in the economic or military fields.

Technologies

File:TomiokaFactory.jpg

Japan's first large-scale silk-reeling factory at Tomioka, 1872.

In 1870, Henri Pelegrin was invited to direct the construction of Japan's first gas-lightning system in the streets of Nihonbashi, Ginza and Yokohama. In 1872, Paul Brunat opened the first modern Japanese silk spinning factory at Tomioka. Three craftsmen from the Nishijin weaving district in Kyoto, Sakura tsuneshichi, Inoue Ihee and Yoshida Chushichi travel to Lyon. They travel back to Japan in 1873, importing a Jacquard loom. Tomioka became Japan's first large-scale silk-reeling factory, and an example for the industrialization of the country.

The first automobile to be introduced in Japan, a French Panhard-Levassor, in 1898.

France was also highly regarded for the quality of its Legal system, and was used as an example to establish the country's legal code. The legal expert Gustave Emile Boissonade was sent to Japan in 1873 to help build a modern legal system.

Everytime France was deemed to have a specific expertise, its technologies were introduced. In 1882, the first tramways were introduced from France and started to function at Asakusa, and between Shinbashi and Ueno. In 1898, the first automobile is introduced in Japan, a French Panhard-Levassor.

Military collaboration

Reception by the Meiji Emperor of the Second French Military Mission to Japan, 1872.

Despite the French defeat during the Franco-Prussian war, France was still considered as an example in the military field as well, and was used as a model for the development of the Imperial Japanese Army.^[5] As soon as 1872, a second French Military Mission to Japan (1872-1880) was invited, with the objective of organizing the army and establishing a military educational system. The mission established the Ichigaya Military Academy (市ヶ谷陸軍士官校), built in 1874, on the ground of today's Ministry of Defense.^[6]

A third French Military Mission to Japan (1884-1889) composed of five men started in 1884,^[7] but this time the Japanese also involved some German officers for military advice from 1886 to 1889 (the Meckel Mission).

Formation of the Imperial Japanese Navy

The Bertin-designed French-built Matsushima, flagship of the Japanese Navy up to the Sino-Japanese conflict.

The French Navy leading engineer Emile Bertin was invited to Japan for three years to reinforce the Imperial Japanese Navy, and direct the construction of the arsenals of Kure and Sasebo. For the first time, with French assistance, the Japanese were able to build a full fleet, some of it built in Japan, some of it in France and a few other European nations. These efforts contributed to the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese war.^[8]

This period also allowed Japan "to embrace the revolutionary new technologies embodied in torpedoes, torpedo-boats and mines, of which the French at the time were probably the world's best exponents".^[9]

Notes

^ Okada, p.82
^ Okada, p.7
^ Okada, p.62
^ Okada, p.62-63
^ Polak 2005, p.12
^ Polak 2005, p.12-40
^ Polak 2005, p.48
^ Polak 2005, p.62-75
^ Howe, p.281

References

Polak, Christian (2001) Soie et Lumieres. L'Age d'or des échanges franco-japonais (des origines aux années 1950), 日仏交流の黄金期（江戸時代～１９５０年代）, (French and Japanese), Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie Française du Japon, Hachette Fujingaho.
Polak, Christian (2005) Sabre et pinceau. Par d'autre Francais au Japon. 1872-1960, 筆と刀・日本の中のもうひとつのフランス（１８７２－１９６０）, (French and Japanese), Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie Française du Japon, Hachette Fujingaho.
Howe, Christopher (1996) The origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy, Development and technology in Asia from 1540 to the Pacific War, The University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-35485-7
Okada Shinichi, Polak Christian (1988), End of the Bakufu and Restoration in Hakodate., 函館の幕末・維新　フランス士官ブリュネのスケッチ１００枚 (Japanese), Chuo Kouronsha, ISBN 4120016994

Mongols

Hey, PHG. I have placed another response on Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance that you should see. Also, I think you should cease editing the article (like everybody) until we get discussion going on the talk page. This article is wrapped up in too many disputes to be helped by any editing whatsoever. Everything hinges on dispute resolution, so all editing ought to just be halted until that occurs. I am trying to work out an acceptable process that all involved/interested parties will accept. Your help would be appreciated and remember: consensus will be necessary to get that annoying accuracy tag removed and to stop a recurring edit war. Srnec (talk) 05:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello PHG, I concur with Srnec. I would really like to get down to resolving some of my concerns.-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 21:05, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Franco-Mongol alliance

I've noticed that the recent discussion on the talk page seems to be upsetting to you. I understand how difficult it is to see others condense a great deal of what you've written; I know I've had a few gut wrenching moments when I've looked back at articles where I contributed the majority of the original text. After careful consideration though, I've realized that other editors aren't trying to destroy what I've created, they're trying to improve it. Sometimes, I've needed to go back and engage the editors about some errors in the changes they made or discuss further improvements to the article, but I've done that by talking things out with them, not reverting their edits.

What can we do to help you feel comfortable discussing the article and changes with other editors? The past few days of edits by both sides of the dispute just haven't been productive as they could have been and I hate to see everyone spinning their wheels waiting for this to play out. Shell ^babelfish 23:14, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've been asked to take a look at this; if it were a group on each side, or doing so wouldn't hamper ongoing work on the article, I'd probably just protect and force discussion. As is, this seems to be kinda disruptive. It's regrettable that a more mutual compromise hasn't been reached, but is there something that could be done to stop this edit war? Perhaps we could create two subpages, one to continue work on each version, while the debate continues? (Currently my talk page is under a bit of a vandal attack, so feel free to reply here.) – Luna Santin (talk) 08:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I already added a RFPP request, so if you do protect the page you might want to update my request. That being said, I think both Elonka and PHG are being a bit disruptive. I really don't feel Elonka had a consensus to make the change to the shorter article, especially given how decisive this has gotten, and PHG has probably made the problem worse by making the article even larger. I really like your idea of sub pages to work out differences, but I think a page protect might be a good idea to "force" the editors to work on the sub pages. But that's just my opinion :). Justin ^chat 08:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Per Honor et Gloria. You have new messages at Kafka Liz's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Blocked for 24 hours

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 24 hours in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for the reasons listed below. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make constructive contributions. If you believe this block is unjustified, you may contest the block by adding the text {{unblock|your reason here}} below. Ioeth _{(talk contribs friendly)} 14:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, I am sorry that it has had to come to this given your history of quality contributions, but it appears that you did not heed my earlier warning about your conduct at Franco-Mongol alliance. The issue was called to my attention again yesterday by two separate editors, and after having reviewed the article and talk page history, as well as the AFDs of the POV forks you created, it is apparent that you do not wish to work with other editors to improve the article. Your recent actions there have been deceptive, biased, antagonistic, generally disruptive, and show that you are increasingly trying to express ownership of and manipulate the content. It is for those reasons I have decided that a 24 hour block is in order. If you, or a reviewing administrator wishes to know exact instances of these charges, please post here as I will have your talk page on my watchlist. Ioeth _{(talk contribs friendly)} 14:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ioeth. It's just unbelievable that you can let a user such as Elonka impose her personal version of an article inspite of the fact that she has no consensus whatsoever (Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#False claim of consensus). I am only upholding Wikipedia's rules here that if there is no consensus for a change, the status quo should prevail. Please take action against the initiator of this disruption, not the one who is trying to correct it. Regards PHG (talk) 20:46, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, once you come back from your 24-hour block I hope you'll investigate ourdispute resolution procedures. I think it would really help out the process! Have a great day. Wjhonson (talk) 21:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, if you are not the initiator of the disruption, I doubt that multiple users would have come to me yesterday independently to bring the situation back to my attention. Elonka, as it turns out, was the last one to do so. Ioeth _{(talk contribs friendly)} 21:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Those editors were not neutral parties.-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 21:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Without looking at the situation very closely, I don't think that an unannounced block against a well-established and normally highly productive and valued editor is the right approach. This is exactly what WP:RFCs and page protection are for. It's weirdness of the highest degree that we actually allow SPA's and purely disruptive editors multiple chances until they are finally dragged before the ArbCom, but do not extend the same consideration to someone like PHG. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. This is unacceptable.-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 21:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG has been recreating deleted content after AfDs, and he's been adding unverifiable, original research to the encyclopedia at an alarming pace. He's been on notice for a long time that this behavior is unacceptable. Jehochman ^Talk 21:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can you elaborate on "...notice for a long time that this behavior is unacceptable", because everything else you mentioned is highly subjective.-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 21:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I can elaborate by showing any administrator all of PHG's deleted contributions. It will be evident that he is gaming the system to get around consensus. Jehochman ^Talk 21:47, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Elonka is hardly the only editor to have trouble working with PHG. Other users and I have tried talking to him on several occasions and met with initially with polite stonewalling, then evasive answers that fail to address the points raised, next accusations of "being polemical and systematically banding together, [1]" and finally silence. I have been hesitant to edit the article itself because a glance through the history show that PHG not only began the article but has made dozens of edits almost every single day from its inception on 26 August 2007. All major edits by other editors or attempts at condensation have been speedily reverted. I see a severe ownership issue here, even apart from PHG's remark here [2] reminding us that "I created this article and most of its content." Kafka Liz (talk) 23:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Outdent) I agree that there is a possible failure to strive for consensus. An RfC on this issue would be most productive to the project. If PHG does not want to create one, than other involved editors should. The situation should be presented *neutrally* and not with bias toward any editor. Wjhonson (talk) 21:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. An RfC is needed to stop the pattern of adding unverifiable information to Wikipedia. Jehochman ^Talk 21:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly, and I'm sure all editors will agree that if such a blank assertion were presented as an accurate intro-summary, they would be poisoning the well. The entire RfC would be pointless. So hopefully there is some editor who thinks they can present a truly *neutral* view of the situation as the RfC opener. Wjhonson (talk) 22:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We have already tried multiple steps in WP:DR, without effect. RfC,[3] talkpage consensus-building, polite messages to PHG's talkpage from multiple editors (see above threads, and talkpage history), ANI threads, and even a try at mediation.[4] Even with all these efforts, PHG's behavior just continued to either stonewall or escalate, including camping on "his" article in violation of WP:OWN. He has also inserted biased information into about 50 other articles,[5] which is going to require weeks of cleanup effort. Most recently PHG was creating multiple POV forks, nearly all of which were deleted by overwhelming consensus at AfDs.[6] But instead of heeding the AfDs, PHG responded by creating other POV forks (which have also been deleted), continuing to edit war, and he has most recently been flat-out using deceptive edit summaries, such as saying he's "reverting" an article when he's actually inserting more and more biased information that was never in the article in the first place (50K of information!).[7] He's been doing these reverts every day for about a week now, around 5-6 a.m. GMT.

It saddens me, because I agree that PHG has indeed done a lot of good work on Wikipedia in the past. But over the last few months his behavior has become, for lack of a better word, bizarre. So we can't deal with him based on what he used to do -- instead, we have to deal with him in terms of how he is behaving now. When all other good-faith efforts to deal with a disruptive editor have failed, it is unfortunately necessary that we just have to remove the disruptive editor from the project. Now, if PHG could acknowledge that his behavior has been a problem, apologize and promise to do better, meaning no more deception, no more edit-warring, and a promise that he's going to seek talkpage consensus before inserting controversial information into articles, then I would be willing to give another try at working with him. But so far his actions over the last few months have shown a pattern of someone who is completely unwilling to work in a good-faith fashion with other editors towards compromise. In which case, Wikipedia really isn't the right place for him. --El on ka 22:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot agree that your above is necessarily an accurate presentation. Any RfC or Mediation should be broadcast for uninvolved parties to review. It certainly appears like there are broader guideline and policy issues here which should be brought forward to a larger community. As for consensus building, multiple parties are at fault. Attempts to pin the blame on a single editor are not going to achieve a wide acceptance.Wjhonson (talk) 23:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) While I agree User:PHG was being disruptive, I think the consecutive reverts by User:Aramgar, User:WJBscribe, User:Shell Kinney and User:Elonka weren't helpful either. I truly don't feel there was a consensus to revert to Elonka's shorter version of the article (although, I've stated a more concise version would likely be better).

What I'm failing to understand here, is why my request for page protection was ignored until another admin blocked PHG. Then an involved admin responded to my WP:RFPP commenting that the issue was "one disruptive editor that has been blocked," resulting in denial of the page protect. The blocking admin noted that he read the talk page, which should have clearly indicated that this controversial issue has no standing consensus. Clearly, User:PHG is guilty of POV pushing with his reverts, but I think that (to a lesser degree) Elonka's version of the article is also POV.

IMHO, this could have been handled much better. The WP:RFPP should have been granted, and User:PHG (among others) should have been warned about baiting, flaming and ownership. The fundamental problem here, is that neither side is willing to compromise on anything, and it's resulted in discussion turning into a flame war, turning into a revert war. It's clear that PHG was disruptive here, but I have to question the validity of the claim that he's the only disruptive editor involved in this.

So, I must again ask that the article be protected (in it's current version, whatever that is) and those editors wishing to, may create subpages and work on their versions from there. The current action has done nothing more than make a heated debate more heated. I doubt that was the intent, but it's clearly the outcome. Justin ^chat 00:18, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps people who are a bit more involved (for the record, I've touched the article *once*) and understand what's been going on for the last four months have a bit of a clearer picture of what the problem really is. For instance, see the last reply to Wjhonson on my talk which goes in to detail about some of the problems, or the message I left for Ioeth that resulted in the block. The other "side" is compromising, collaborating and has made scads of improvements to "Elonka"'s version since it was put in place and we all managed to get along just fine. Elonka has been perfectly happy to even make suggested changes herself and hunt down source improvements when requested. Other editors are waiting on some reference material to help flesh out or tighten up other sections. There's even a strategy to hammer out any remaining disputes over the article. All of this looks rather productive and its going along in a congenial manner.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that everyone else is actively working on the article, PHG walks in every day and reverts all the work to his preferred version. He is the only editor who is refusing to compromise and has been unable to join in the discussion productively. Somehow, when I'm looking at 6 or more editors working in one direction and one editor reverting any and all changes for four straight months, I don't see a two sided problem. Why would we full protect an article actively being worked on in good faith when stopping one editor will stop the revert war? That's certainly what the protection policy suggests for these sort of situations. Shell ^babelfish 00:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I also question this block since it appears this was an editorial dispute with stubbornness on PHG's part offset by stubbornness on the other side. There does appears to be a lack of consensus extending beyond just PHG, although PHG's comments on the article talk page seems to overstate the extent of the lack of consensus. When I compare PHG's behaviour with our Blocking Policy's requirements, I just don't see disruption anywhere close to the sort of stuff the policy describes. Furthermore, this block appears to be a one-sided step since no opposing editors were sanctioned.

I submit that the appropriate way to address this is through our dispute resolution mechanisms, not the stigmatization and marginalization of one side of a content dispute. An RFC bringing in outside editors might be a good start. Note that I "don't have a dog in this fight" and I am not saying PHG is right or has always done the right thing; I just want to see the proper processes followed here. --A. B. ^(talk) 00:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's been an article RfC, discussion on the talk page, discussion on PHG's talk page, warnings on PHG's talk page from uninvolved admins and even a stab at formal mediation. What area of dispute resolution would you suggest? Formal restrictions from the community or ArbCom would certainly be more restrictive than a 24 hour block... Shell ^babelfish 00:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Shell, the very fact that two other editors involved with this article, Justin and Eupator (Ευπάτωρ), disagree with this block:

Tells me he problem extends beyond one problematic editor.
Indicates that there's more than one side to this story.
Confirms for me my assessment that this block was a mistake.

Please read WP:BLOCK again -- I do not see "failure to come to consensus" as one of the allowable reasons for blocking (unless arbitration's involved).

--A. B. ^(talk) 01:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll also add that blocks are supposed to be preventive, not punitive. I don't see how this 24 hour block has prevented much of anything. "Cool-down" blocks are specifically precluded by our policy. --A. B. ^(talk) 01:35, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A.B. thanks for the outside opinion, but let me try and get you to look at it from a different perspective.

First, WP:BLOCK does cover this, specifically the section on "Disruption." PHG has been coming in to do a revert every 24 hours, like clockwork. The block prevents him from continuing with that practice, for at least one day. The block is also a useful deterrent, per WP:BLOCK, to try and prevent such behavior in the future: "Blocks sometimes are used as a deterrent, to discourage whatever behavior led to the block and encourage a productive editing environment."
Justin is only peripherally involved with the article. He's posted a few times on the talkpage over the last week, but I do not feel that he understands the extent of the situation
Eupator is also a newly-involved editor in the situation, and I would point out both that he is already under ArbCom restrictions for this topic area, and that he was specifically (and recently) canvassed to come in by PHG.[8] So I would take Eupator's comments with a grain of salt.

Elonka, just letting you know that I reserve the right to use your continued personal attacks directed towards me against you in the future.-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 23:07, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG's behavior has been in clear violation of WP:OWN for months now. He has been editing tendentiously, and fighting a battle against anyone else who would edit what he often refers to as "his" article. We can supply multiple diffs which show PHG saying things like, "I am the primary editor. I created most of the content." Which "most" was often true, because he would be systematically deleting anything that anyone else added.
Good faith is gone, because PHG was deliberately lying in edit summaries.[9] See WP:AGF, and that's one of the specific examples of where good faith no longer has to be applied, is as soon as a user starts blatantly lying: "Actions inconsistent with good faith include repeated vandalism, confirmed malicious sockpuppetry, and lying."
When all other attempts at dealing with a disruptive editor have failed, and it is clear that the editor has every intention of continuing with the disruptive behavior, then a block is appropriate. --El on ka 01:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Outdent) I do not feel that the above summary is an entirely accurate view on the situation. Regardless, there appears to be a breakdown on any attempt to reach consensus, to such an extent as to involve peripheral editors in the spillover. In that situation, an RfC is what is called for to elicit wider community involvement. Warnings, blocks and other forms of focus on one editor with a productive history, make the situation look, to outsiders, as a concerted attack to silence an opponent. Surely you would have no issue with a wider community RfC where all side could present the situation in a fair and non-threatening venue. Wjhonson (talk) 02:05, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wjhonson, I find your presence here highly suspicious, considering that you have never edited in this topic area, and that I was recently cautioning you about unethical behavior in a different dispute. It is my feeling that your suggestion for an RfC is not a genuine attempt to help resolve things, but because you want to escalate this dispute.

Right now the article talkpage is humming along just fine, with multiple editors working together in a cooperative manner to resolve any last remaining issues with the article. I don't see that another RfC is needed, and indeed, I think that an RfC would just become the "Dispute du Jour" and bring no actual benefit. It is instead my hope that when PHG returns, that he will opt to work in a good-faith and cooperative manner with other editors, towards the goal of providing a neutral article which accurately depicts the consensus of modern scholarship. Which is why we're here, right? As long as he does that, no further escalation of dispute resolution should be required. --El on ka 02:16, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect. Right now the article is the basis for escalation which is counter-productive to the project. In that situation an RfC is standard operating procedure. My call for an RfC is not because I want to escalate the situation, but because the situation calls for impartial observers to comment on it. And contrary to your assertion, you had an opinion that something I had done off-Wiki was unethical, and I had the opinion that it was not. None of which has any bearing on the issue at hand. PHG may have been working all along in a good-faith manner. Characterizing the situation here is not working toward the betterment of the project and serves no purpose except to drag other uninvolved editors into it because it has gotten this far without finding common ground. I really don't think you of all people, want to pull out the history drawer. I suggest that the focus should be on this article, so I don't have to wander across driblets spilling over into other areas on a daily basis.Wjhonson (talk) 02:27, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Franco-Mongol alliance

I have filed a request for arbitration where you are named as a party. Please feel free to make a statement. Jehochman ^Talk 15:13, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, I think your best bet right now, is rather than going to multiple user talkpages with demands, that instead you focus on preparing a statement for the ArbCom case, which you can post at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Franco-Mongol alliance in your own section. Right now the Committee is debating whether or not to accept the case, and your statement would probably be useful to them. For examples of statements, you can read what other editors are posting. If you are unclear on ArbCom procedures, please let us know, and assistance can be provided. --El on ka 10:36, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RE: Elnoka recall request

Hi. Please rephrase or withdraw the word "perjury"; it is not an acceptable term here, on several fronts. Thx. El_C 18:07, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed - "perjury" isn't mentioned anywhere in policy, and Wikipedia is not a courtroom. Frivolous recall requests like this undermine the entire process. Orderinchaos 23:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion of Template:EducationalScores2003

A tag has been placed on Template:EducationalScores2003 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:44, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Poverty in India

PHG, in your talk page this user has made wild accusations on me. I will request you please read the relevant sections on Talk:Poverty in India to give you an inside in this user and to understand who is incivil. You please read the texts like these [10], [11], [12]. The Bodggaya beggar image is more appropriate than others because:

You may know, many beggars live a condition like this, many of them have various disabilities.

There is no "typical" definition of poverty, or beggar. There are abled beggar, disabled beggar. The purpose of the article is depicting poverty. The other beggar images which this user want to place deleting the Bodhgaya beggar image are not good quality, one is B&W, and the other depicting a beggar girl in Ladakh. But my objection here is that Ladakh is quite different from rest of the country because of its geographics. Majority Indians live in plain. And this Bodhgaya beggar image is showing poverty at its most extreme level. It is not right to conceal the situation of poor men like this, it is the truth, the reality. This image touches the heart of the reader, which is a real situation. Yes not all beggars are disabled, but is this an argument? On the other hand it also can be said that not all beggars are abled. Our job here is not to understand who is abled, or who is not. But to find a good image which is representative of many.

This user is repeatating his arguments and has taken a densive position by his ad hominem attack on me. Any one do not agree with him, here I am trying to depict poverty, and he is labelling me as Indophobic. There are other editors who honoured me for my contributions. The only reason given against this image that "since all beggars have not messed up legs, this image is undue". But it is an anti-individualistic argument. So what if not all beggars do not have messed up legs? The fact is that such secenes is a reality and it would not be right to conceal it. Such scenes exists, it is the truth. If it is reality, if such scenes exits, then an article depicting poverty i.e. "the condition of lacking full economic access to fundamental human needs such as food, shelter and safe drinking water", only those images should remain which clearly illustrate this fact.
This user has informed many partisan editors, like User:Bakasuprman about the image. This user also informed this to banned Hkelkar socks. I will also request you check this user's contributions. Please remember the article is not about India, but the article is about poverty. This article is not depicting India, depicting poverty in India. So such image is not deriding India, it is illustrating the poverty in India. This image, I think, will be very appropriate. Your right judgement will be appreciated. I have told you why I am supporting the includsion of this image. Regards. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 06:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Licensing issues

Hi, after reviewing about three dozen of your pencil sketches I've found a serious problem that appears to apply to just about the whole collection. Fortunately it's a solveable problem. Multiple levels of copyright are involved so I'll address this with bullet points.

Original historic artworks - all public domain.
Photographs of those historic artworks - copyrightable. Since the original artworks were three dimensional, angle and lighting and resulting shadows/tonal balance comprise a significant creative contribution on the part of the photographer. (Photographs of two-dimensional artworks are non-copyrightable reproductions, but your sketches were all based upon coins with raised surfaces, bas reliefs, and other three dimensional works).
Sketches based upon those photographs - derivative works of the photographs, unless multiple original photographs were drawn upon as inspiration to create a sketch that's significantly different from all of them.

Out of 30+ sketches of yours reviewed so far, every one I've been able to verify fully is a derivative work of a copyrighted photograph. Nearly all of the rest are sourced to photographs in copyrighted books. A couple of instances are indeterminate, such as this author where your description is incomplete and it isn't possible to tell which of two similarly titled books by the same author served as the basis for your sketch: the public domain 1921 work or the copyrighted 1951 book.

So unless I'm very mistaken, these sketches of yours should all (or nearly all) be transferred from Commons to Wikipedia where fair use material may be hosted, and have the license tags changed to copyright/fair use. Things are tense onsite right now so I'm coming directly to you; this looks pretty straightforward to regularize. Best wishes, Durova^Charge! 21:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again. You've made dozens of edits since I posted this query. Do you intend to respond? Durova^Charge! 19:50, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have blocked you on Commons for 3 days as a result of this. Please take that time to re-upload the images to Wikipedia, so that they can be deleted when this is done. Regards, ^{commons:user:giggy} dihydrogen monoxide (H₂0) 05:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Archive Your Page

Seriously my friend. You're going for the world's record on number of sections! Have a great day! Wjhonson (talk) 23:59, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cilician Armenia

Thanks. I already had some info prepared in my user sandbox and when I saw you at work I decided I'd finally add it. I'll try not to read on your toes though and I'll let you do your stuff first. Then I'll see if I can add anything else from Hovannisian. Cheers. --Folantin (talk) 17:43, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Misinterpretation of sources

PHG, I am concerned with your recent creation of the article Viam agnoscere veritatis, as you appear to be using it once again as a Coatrack to push this POV about a Franco-Mongol alliance. The sources that you have listed on the article do not make any mention of Viam agnoscere veritatis, and the description that you posted of the document does not have any resemblance to what is actually in the Latin!

As I am sure you know, many editors have expressed strong concerns about your editing in the topic area of the Mongols, and the relations between the Mongols and Europe:

Many of the articles that you have created, have been deleted as POV forks
You have engaged in edit wars to maintain your preferred version of the Franco-Mongol alliance article, which edits have been reverted by multiple other editors
You have been cherry-picking and misquoting sources
Many other articles that you have edited, have also been identified as containing biased information, and now other editors are having to waste time cleaning things up: Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#List of articles for review
You have engaged in deceptive editing practices, such as saying you were "reinstating" an older version of an article, when in actuality you were using the revert to insert new biased information which had never been in the article in the first place.
Many editors have issued statements saying that something needs to be done about you, as you may have seen at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Franco-Mongol alliance

But even despite all the concerns that have been expressed, you are still continuing to add more controversial and biased information to Wikipedia.

PHG, I didn't want to take this step, but I feel it necessary to ask you to stop editing in the topic area of the Mongols. You have engaged in many valuable endeavors on Wikipedia in the past, and I do not want to see you completely leave Wikipedia, but I think it is best if you just stop editinnything related to Western-Mongol relations for awhile. Will you please voluntarily abide by my request? If not, I am afraid that there may be further consequences, such as further sanctions on your behavior and editing privileges. Please, stop this before it gets to that point. --El on ka 01:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Elonka. Just because I have discussions with you surely doesn't mean I should stop edit on a given topic. Just evaluate articles for what they are. Viam agnoscere veritatis is fully referenced and legitimate. Stop slandering and making false accusations, just discuss specific facts you would like to challenge. I'll be glad to have the discussion. PHG (talk) 11:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, this has gone beyond Elonka's request. I assume you've read the comments on the Arbitration request; there are many editors who feel that you are having difficulty following Wikipedia's editing policies when it comes to this topic. You have been very unwilling to heed the concerns of other editors and engage productively on the topic; you seem unable to consider that if this many editors feel there is something wrong, perhaps there really is something wrong. Wikipedia is a collaborative project which requires editors to work together and if you can't do that due to your strong feelings on this topic area, it would be better if you chose to work on other topics where you do not have similar problems. Ignoring other editors and their discussions simply isn't an option. Shell ^babelfish 11:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, it is very clear by the talkpage discussion that there is absolutely no consensus to revert back to your longer version with serious source and POV problems. Please revert yourself instead of continuing to disrupt the article. Shell ^babelfish 14:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you please tell me which rule you keep referencing to justify your reverts? Shell ^babelfish 14:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So in other words, there is no such rule. The status quo is maintained in deletion discussions when no consensus can be reached, however, this method does not extend to editorial decisions. The other major problem I see is that there is certainly no consensus to revert to the version you prefer, in fact, even those who do not specifically suggest keeping the shorter version mention that perhaps an entire rewrite is necessary. Continuing to revert to your version is not going to change the fact that editorial work on the article is going forward. Please stop trying to force your will on all of the other involved editors and work with us. Shell ^babelfish 14:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm sorry, but what is happening to the article is not a deletion; article deletion is clearly defined in our deletion policies. What is happening is simply ongoing editorial work and improvement. It is very clear that you are upset at having your work edited, but this editing is part and parcel of submitting content to Wikipedia. There is absolutely no standing in Wikipedia policy or other community consensus which allows you to continue reverting against all other involved editors. Shell ^babelfish 14:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Viam agnoscere veritatis

PHG: There are two serious problems with the abbreviated Latin letter you have posted at Viam agnoscere veritatis. I have transcribed the full text of the letter on the talk page. How do you account for the discrepancy of date between the citation of the letter and the text of the article? How do you account for the fact that this letter mentions neither persecution nor an alliance? It should be clear even to those with no Latin that this letter was carried by a certain Laurentius of Portugal. This Laurentius departed Rome in 1245 about the same time as Ascelin of Lombardia and Simon of St Quentin left for the East by another route. Aramgar (talk) 23:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I echo Aramgar's concerns. And there are already multiple editors complaining at the article talkpage, but for the record I'll say it again here. PHG, what you did was take bits and pieces from different history books, and because of your innate bias, you made the assumption that they were talking about the same thing, and then you wrote a Wikipedia article as though they were talking about the same thing, and in the process you wrote an article that not only violated WP:NOR and WP:UNDUE, it was just plain wrong. This is not the first time that you have done this. Further, as should be painfully obvious to you and anyone else following your activities, you are deliberately ignoring everyone's good-faith cautions to you. I am also disappointed to see that despite a clear consensus at Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#Consensus poll, that you are still trying to edit-war there in defiance of the talkpage.[13]

It is my opinion that you should be blocked from Wikipedia, and that the block should be kept in place until you can at least acknowledge that you understand the problems that your behavior has caused. It is also my opinion that unless you can promise to stop disrupting, that the block should not be lifted. However, that's not my call. I'm obviously involved in this dispute, and as such, I should not use my admin tools. But I can and will make recommendations. In short, I am really tired of having to follow along behind you and clean up your messes. You are damaging Wikipedia, you are expressing every indication of someone who's going to keep on damaging Wikipedia, and since you will not stop voluntarily, you will have to be stopped by force. --El on ka 01:27, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will be on the opposite side, seeking every means available to stop the application of force to silence dissent. Our goal is not to smother editors with whom we disagree, but to find common ground. Some editors refuse to make a significant attempt to seek common ground and instead throw out threats whenever there is disagreement. That is disruptive to the project and cannot be tolerated. Wjhonson (talk) 02:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wjhonson, you are not a neutral observer, can you please stick to your own disputes, rather than stalking my edits to find someplace else that you can stir the pot? PHG's actions have been enormously destructive to the project, and I'm disappointed that you would be willing to tolerate such behavior. We have tried every possible means of finding common ground. Request for comment, mediation, and months of talkpage discussions. PHG refuses to compromise, refuses to acknowledge any consensus that disagrees with his own opinion, and further, continues to insert false information into Wikipedia. Enough is enough. --El on ka 02:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wjhonson, I respectfully disagree with your assessment of the situation. I don't think Elonka is trying to stifle dissent: numerous editors have tried hard to work with PHG and met with absolute inflexibility. His ownership issues seem to have made it impossible for him to collaborate with other editors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kafka Liz (talk • contribs) 02:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kafka as you can see Elonka claims I'm "stalking" her, which is completely untrue as you can see from my own contribs list. She claims falsely that I'm stirring the pot, when it's herself that starting throwing out threats. She claims falsely that PHG's edits are "enormously destructive". That kind of language is prima facie evidence that she is unable to find any common ground with PHG and will not. The claim that "every possible means" is false. I do not see that occurring. That PHG refuses to compromise is false. That there is such a thing as "false information" is not in accord with project guidelines. We do not report the truth because we report sources, not truth. Reviewing PHG's comments to others, it's fairly plain that he can work with others, he just chooses not to work with others who resort to attacks and abuse and insults. I think Elonka should leave these pages, her approach is not helping the situation. I've been monitoring this page, not all of Elonka's contribs. I'm monitoring this page in order to stop the very sort of attacking that was posted. Period. I don't have a care about the content issue, but I'm not going to sit by and let a valued editor be addressed by threats.Wjhonson (talk) 03:02, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Elonka is grasping for a way to describe a host of issues in a small space. I'm not sure what you should call it when an editor misrepresents sources, attempts to disrupt consensus building activities, creates POV forks, reverts instead of discussion, reverts against consensus... the list goes on. Whatever you'd personally like to call it, feel free, but don't defend it without knowing the full extent of the last 6 months worth of history on these issues.

Wjhonson, you are developing a habit of defending editors despite their poor behavior, like the recent ANI thread in which you argued against many administrators that a spammer and troll didn't deserve a block. Its always a good thing to make sure that the little guy isn't getting picked on, but please take a bit more care to know the back-story before making your choices. Shell ^babelfish 03:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm developing a habit of preventing useful editors from being attacked by threats. Turning around, when I defend PHG and attacking me on baseless charges, is no way to try to win my sympathy. It is however reminescent of a few choice events from the past. This has to stop. User talk is not the place to issue threats over these sort-of long running content issues. I have seen talk of his behaviour, but no specific diffs are presented to highlight exactly where he did anything wrong. We have RfC/U as I've mentioned several times, issued over a user's conduct should be taken there, not here. The wider community can then weigh in, while few people watch any particular user talk page. I've been following the back story a bit, I commented on it, in the recent ArbCom case. My perception of what occurred matches some editors, and not others. That does not make my perception wrong, nor others right, just different. Dickering this out on user talk is not the appropriate venue imho. If Elonka or anyone else wants to file a RfC/U on PHG then they should do so.Wjhonson (talk) 03:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thanks to Elonka, you have a great deal of material to peruse below and as you should be aware, if you're reading things like you say, there is a case before the ArbCom about PHG's behavior, so dispute resolution is being followed. If the fact that we have the courtesy to discuss matters with him and try to stop him from further hurting himself is to be held against us in your opinion, then so be it. Shell ^babelfish 08:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No Shell, I'm all for discussion and courtesy. That is how wikisociety should ideally operate. His behaviour on content issues should be brought before the relevant boards and mediators if that's an issue and then all sides can be given a fair and impartial hearing. Thank you for maintaining a cordial atmosphere and I will try to read through the diffs that Elonka has so graciously provided. They would probably do more good however in an RfC/U or at the ArbCom Evidence page.Wjhonson (talk) 09:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent)Hi Wjhonson, I stand by my comments regarding the difficulty of working with PHG. To respond to your remarks above, can I ask that we set aside whatever tension there may be between you and Elonka? I don’t have any comments to offer regarding ”stalking” or “stirring the pot;” I just wanted to point out that Elonka is not the only editor to have had trouble working with PHG. :) Are you really claiming that every single editor who has voiced concern with PHG’s tactics has “resort[ed] to attacks and abuse and insults?” My observation of his interactions with others and my own personal experience has shown me that his offers of compromise and collaboration seldom bear fruit. This conversation, for example, started with a good faith question by Aramgar regarding factual inaccuracies in the Viam agnoscere veritatis article. All other comments by Elonka, Shell, you and me aside, I think it’s telling that Aramgar never received an answer.Kafka Liz (talk) 21:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Kafka Liz for your cordial remarks. I have no problem setting aside any past issue between myself and Elonka. In point-of-fact, I'm not actually watchlisting any of the articles with which she is involved, to my knowledge. I am however watchlisting this page, and a few other editors talk pages, with the sole intent of keeping the DR system on-track. I do agree that other editors have had problems with PHG, as you do agree that other editors have had problems with Elonka. This is not a one-way street, it never was. Every editor has their own way of approaching DR. The job of mediators is to ensure that no one editor strays too far off the approved path. I do not dispute that scholarly questions might arise, as Aramgar posted above, in a cordial manner. In fact I'd be willing to review it and submit it to soc.genealogy.medieval where several experts there can actually read Latin and understand nuances like this. The additional response however was a little too rough-edged. I'm sure Aramgar would have no problem backing up his own position by citing sources and we can work with that situation. Dredging up all old battles and positions on each and every question, is not helping reach consensus — I suggest that approach stop. Each new question should be treatly newly, from a scholarly perspective, not as a new battle in a long war.Wjhonson (talk) 21:59, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Wjhonson. Thanks for getting back to me. Your comments seem fair, although I suspect Aramgar may be a bit miffed by the implication that he can’t read Latin, since he is paid to teach it. You are certainly welcome to submit it to the soc.genealogy.medieval list for outside opinions if you wish. :) The source is the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and although I don’t have the specific page or manuscript numbers on me, I do know that there is more than one letter known as the Viam agnoscere veritatis. Kafka Liz (talk) 22:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Wjhonson: I have posted two of the letters at Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis. When I first asked PHG the questions above, he was making inaccurate claims about letter #102, which is also known as "Dei patris inmensa." Since that time, I have located and transcribed letter #105, "Cum non solum," to the same talk page. I am still looking for a third letter in the series. You are of course welcome to show them to other Latinists not involved with the Franco-Mongol walled garden. Aramgar (talk) 23:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the remarks. I have no knowledge of Aramgar's credentials and we should not be examining credentials in the debate. I'm not implying that Aramgar can or can't read Latin, as I myself can only read every third word, and that badly, and I have no knowledge of Aramgar. I think it's fairly common for partly-literate people to badly interpret Latin, esp. if some other source is their intermediate source. I see it quite a lot, and that's why I check with other experts on certain tendentious issues, like always translating "nepos" as nephew, when we now know that it's meaning has changed over time, for example. By the way, I would highly recommend that Aramgar consider posting his transcription's to Wikisource. We are badly in need of more material, it's a very underused wiki.Wjhonson (talk) 20:38, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I didn't thow in enough smiles to establish a light-hearted tone there. :) It wasn't intended as an attempt to establish credentials or anything quite so formal. I just wanted to express that although he is well-versed in Latin, I understand why you might want to check with uninvolved sources. That's all. :) Kafka Liz (talk) 20:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Diffs

For anyone reviewing this page, who for some reason has neither the time nor inclination to actually review the related talkpages for themselves, here are relevant diffs which indicate some of the problems with PHG's behavior over the last few months. For a few paragraphs that summarize the content dispute, see User:Elonka/Mongol quickref. For the user conduct issues, see below:

PHG has been exhibiting WP:OWN behavior on multiple articles, most notably at Franco-Mongol alliance, an article which he has increased in size to around 200K. He has been systematically reverting anyone who attempts to condense it. He never violates 3RR, but instead does reverts every 24 hours:
- January 20, 06:17 (reverted by Shell Kinney)[14]
- January 21, 05:33 (reverted by Elonka)[15]
- January 22, 06:07 (reverted by Elonka)[16]
- January 23, 06:00 (reverted by WJBscribe)[17]
- January 24, 05:16 (reverted by Aramgar)[18]
- January 25, 05:07 (reverted by Aramgar)[19]
(page protected from January 26 - February 3)
- February 3, 13:57 (reverted by Kafka Liz)[20]

A clear consensus has been confirmed at the article talkpage to condense the article: Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#Consensus poll. PHG, however, continues to deny that there is consensus, and continues to edit-war, trying to revert the article to his 200K version.[21]
PHG has been creating many POV forks and WP:COATRACK articles, into which he is continuing to put biased and highly questionable information. See Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#List of articles for review.
PHG ignored the results of an article RfC
PHG ignored the consensus about the article's introduction sentence
Several of PHG's POV forks have had to be put through XfD to be deleted:
- Franco-Mongol alliance (1258-1265) (includes "Franco-Mongol alliance (1265-1282)" and "Franco-Mongol alliance (1297-1304)")
- Mongol alliances in the Middle East
- Template:Mongol alliances
- Franco-Mongol alliance (modern interpretations)
- Mongol conquests and Jerusalem
- Mongol raids on Jerusalem (1300) (new title created by PHG in an attempt to dodge an earlier AfD)
Many editors have taken the time to post at PHG's talkpage, expressing concerns about his behavior: (Elonka)(Geogre)(Adam Bishop)[22](WJBscribe) (Ioeth)[23] (Aramgar) (Kafka Liz)[24](Srnec) (Eupator) (Shell Kinney)[25] (Luna Santin) (Jehochman) (Orderinchaos) (Durova) (Dihydrogen Monoxide)
PHG has engaged in deceptive behavior, such as saying he was "reinstating" an article, when in actuality he was using the edit to insert information that had never been in the article in the first place (inserting nearly 50K of information).[26]
PHG was blocked for 24 hours for disruption and edit-warring.[27][28]
Many editors expressed strong concerns about PHG's behavior, in statements at a Request for Arbitration: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Franco-Mongol alliance

We now have dozens of articles which need complex cleanup, and PHG is continuing to cause more problems on a near daily basis. Most recently, see Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis, where he is being criticized for original research and misinterpretation of sources. An attempt was made to cleanup the article, but PHG simply added the information right back in.

All other appropriate dispute resolution techniques have been tried, without success. PHG refuses to even acknowledge that his behavior has been a problem, and he simply continues to argue and edit-war.

The thing that is of most concern about all this, is the longterm damage that PHG is causing to Wikipedia. The really dangerous part to Wikipedia, is not just that PHG is defying other editors, but that he seems to have a talent for inserting biased and false information into Wikipedia, and making it look well-sourced. With all of these problems that we have discovered just in his work about the Mongols, I think it is very likely that similar problems will be found in other of PHG's efforts as well, but it is going to require someone actually digging in and looking at the sources to find the truth and identify the areas that need cleanup. For example, it was recently discovered that he has been uploading dozens of images which are copyright violations. Again, this is going to require hours of cleanup time.

In summary: PHG is one of the more dangerous types of editors that we can have on Wikipedia. He inserts false information into the project, in ways that make the information difficult to identify, and difficult to remove. He refuses to work towards consensus. He ignores all good-faith warnings. He wastes the time of many other good editors, who could be spending time on far more productive pursuits than having to clean up after him. I do appreciate that PHG has done some good work on Wikipedia, but I do not think that this balances out all the damage that he is causing at the same time. It is my opinion that unless he agrees to change his behavior, that he should be removed from the project. --El on ka 07:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at the first set of diffs and they are disappointing. From the beginning, the short-version vs long-version has been a content issue. This sort of reverting is not bad behaviour. It represents a long-standing content issue, which should be taken to a wider community level if the editors cannot find common ground. That is standard procedure, we have many boards for it. There is an awful lot of WP:KETTLE in the above which doesn't help your argument, it hampers it. I'm certain you could come to some sort of agreement if you really think about putting the project first. I'll take a look at the rest of the diffs in a bit. Wjhonson (talk) 09:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you seek PHG's permission to use his talk page to showcase this? It's unconventional, also speaking about him in third person, etc. El_C 09:51, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a most unhelpful line to take and I'm surprised to see you not only commented here, but felt necessary to bring it up in the arbitration request. I suppose you didn't read above where those editors talking with PHG had been specifically asked for diffs to evidence their claims? As for unconventional, full RfCs have been held on user talk pages before, so while not incredibly common, its certainly not unique. Shell ^babelfish 15:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No matter how guilty all of you maintain PHG is, he nonetheless deserve a say about his talk page being used in this way, for such lengthy expositions that are not directed to him but are about him. I reiterate that it's highly unusual and just looks bad. Thx. El_C 21:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just a few days away, but Elonka's mad circus of accusations continues... Oh dear, have you seen this "PHG is one of the more dangerous types of editors that we can have on Wikipedia"??? This is simply ridiculous. I just think she is beyond her mind at not having her way for once. PHG (talk) 09:55, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break

I looked at the next issue which was related to the list of articles for review. It's quite exemplary that a list of interconnected articles was created. It makes the whole process easier to track. In regards to the section on whether the Mongols captured Jerusalem, I found the involved discussion very interesting. We can all see that Peter Jackson's remarks can be paraphrased in several ways. Saying according to Peter Jackson... is certainly one way of stating it. That is not deception, bias, or destructive behaviour, it's just one way. It is quite common in scholarly debate, to start with a statement that may not quite be acceptable to all sides, and work toward a statement that is more acceptable. To state, from the outset that a person is behaving badly, when they possibly are not, doesn't help. The statement could be expanded to "Peter Jackson, while discussing current rumours and reports, states that some of these say blah blah blah". Focusing on the content issues and not on bashing the editors should always remain of paramount import.Wjhonson (talk) 22:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One issue I've not really understood about this whole situation, is why some editors are so resistent to the simple idea of splitting the article into pieces. Obviously some editors have so much detail that they want to go into minutiae. I don't see that as a problem. I see that as a great boon to our project. If there really are a great number of sources, giving greatly different testimony, I see no reason not to create mountains of data if it's really that interesting that we have a team of 12 editors working on it. Saying that some of the existent article is so highly biased as to be useless seems to be, in effect saying, that some scholars are worthless to the project. I will never believe that. Each editor involved here has contributed greatly to the project. Each one. Not just some. There is a way, no matter how difficult it might be to perceive it today, for all scholars to live together. The easy way is to find reasons to exclude some. The hard way is to find ways to co-exist. What I've seen so far is normal scholarly debate on sources. The fights at soc.genealogy.medieval can get much more aggressive than anything I've seen here. And yet we're all still alive. Wjhonson (talk) 22:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to go further into content issues, because I want to remain as uninvolved as possible in this situation. I would note however that issues regarding what is, or isn't a reliable source, what is or isn't undue weight, what is or isn't neutral point of view, what is or isn't verifiable — should each be taken to the respective Talk page of that policy. Re-running multiple times, the same under-current of issues through the same list of editors, who have formed competing armies (if you will allow me that characterization), doesn't actually assist the editors to come to consensus on the basic issues. (Please forgive me for that long run-on sentence.) I would suggest that the editors, in a situation where say an Armenian source might be considered non-neutral, seek outside input from editors who spend most of their time monitoring just such issues. It's a much more productive situation, than bickering at each other over the same points.Wjhonson (talk) 22:39, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, — Rlevse • Talk • 22:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC), note User:Thatcher is the clerk, not me, I'm just opening for him. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quo usque tandem abutere, PHG, patientia nostra?

PHG: for three days I have been raising questions about the accuracy of the article Viam agnoscere veritatis that you created. Since then you have continued to edit the article, and I have heard no response from you nor received any acknowledgement of my concerns. This morning I awoke to find that you had once again reverted Franco-Mongol alliance to your prefered version. Your action ignores the consensus at Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance, suggests that your edits have priority in the article, and overwrites recent work by good faith editors. Moreover your prefered version includes pages of disputed material rejected by the other editors. My concerns about Viam agnoscere veritatis are but one small part of this. PHG, it is time to engage with the other participants in the Franco-Mongol discussions or withdraw from this area completely. Aramgar (talk) 13:50, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Block 1

I have blocked you for edit warring at Franco-Mongol alliance. I warned you about this. The two votes you added to the poll would be vote stacking--the talk history clearly shows the two people did not participate and you offerred no proof thereof when I asked it. The poll had a consensus for the short version; and you more than double the size to almost 200k in one edit, way beyond normal article length. This diff show you are openly not acknowledgeing other editors' opinions. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

japanese painting

Hi, as I see, you put Image:DejimaAstronomy.jpg on commons. Do you have additional information about it? Because on de.WP it was claimed that it depicts Philipp Franz von Siebold and his family, and I don't know how to verify this. -- 790 (talk) 10:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mediation and ArbCom

PHG, I see that you want to list certain of our conversations in mediation, in the ArbCom case. This is generally considered bad form, but I wanted to suggest a solution. Even though all communications in mediation are supposed to be privileged, I would be willing to waive this right and allow the mediation discussion to be public, if both you and our mediator agree. However, this would also mean that I would be able to provide diffs of things that you had said in mediation, where I felt that you had said things that were misleading (such as about a certain passage in Latin). It's up to you though. My first reaction is to avoid any mention of what happened in mediation. But, if you want to open things up (and Tariq is okay on it), then we can lay it out on the table for everyone to see. Let me know what you think, --El on ka 18:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your arbitration evidence

Your evidence includes the statement: There is currently a discussion with Durova (another of Elonka's friends?) about handdrawings from picture of ancient artefacts. References to my policy objections regarding another Wikimedia website are, at best, premature. Your suggestion that I act upon partisanship rather than policy is inappropriate. I do not manufacture imaginary objections to please Elonka.

Please weigh the possibility that I may know what I'm talking about. I have 15 featured pictures at Commons and I operate a restoration workshop for vintage images. An impartial administrator took my concerns seriously enough to block you for three days there, which is a strong indication that those 54 uploads of yours probably are policy violations and not business as usual by Commons norms. You could pursue the reasonable solution of transwiki that would let you continue to use all of these sketches at Wikipedia legitimately.

Since part of the arbitration case against you concerns the legitimacy of your use of sources, it is to your advantage to take a conservative approach. Instead you have refused to cooperate and named me in your formal evidence in a way that invites rebuttal, and I have a rebuttal drafted. I would very much prefer if you withdrew the reference to me from your statement, so that there isn't any need to post what I've written. I will wait one day. Durova^Charge! 22:25, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just as a small note in PHG's defense, he is currently blocked, so couldn't change his evidence even if he wanted to. You might want to give him more than a day. --El on ka 23:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I hadn't noticed. Then I'll wait 24 hours after the block expires. Also, to PHG, I have asked Elonka to modify her evidence statement also. To the best of my knowledge, those sketches of yours weren't copyright violations, but were uploaded to the wrong site under the wrong license statement. Per commons: Commons:Derivative_works#Casebook:

Photographs of three-dimensional objects are always copyrighted, even if the object itself is in the public domain. If you did not take the photograph yourself, you need permission from the owner of the photographic copyright (unless of course the photograph itself is in the public domain).

Durova^Charge! 00:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dispute tag

Hi PHG. Sorry about the delay - the phone rang before I got to post on the talk page. :) Regarding the Latin of the texts, there are several Wikipedians who read Latin, so perhaps you could find one you trust to confirm the letters' contents for you. Kafka Liz (talk) 14:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Aïbeg and Serkis, yet another coatrack

Your article Aïbeg and Serkis seems to be yet another coatrack for your Franco-Mongol enthusiasms. Aïbeg and Serkis are historical figures associated with Franco-Mongol diplomacy, certainly. The problem rests in the repetition of these problematic statements:

In his communications to the envoys, the Pope...in the response he remitted to them deplored the delays in establishing a general alliance between the Christians and the Mongols. Runciman also states that Aibeg and Sarkis returned to the Mongol realm in November 1248, "with complaints that nothing further was happening about the alliance".

Similar statements have been removed from Franco-Mongol alliance and Viam agnoscere veritatis, and the secondary sources to which you refer have been questioned by other users (Talk:Viam_agnoscere_veritatis#1248_letter). Furthermore, the Latin of the letter in question says nothing at all about an alliance (Talk:Viam_agnoscere_veritatis#22_November_1248:_Viam_cognoscere_veritatis). If what Grousset and Runciman have to say about the letter is demonstrably untrue, we should cease to invoke them on this issue. Aramgar (talk) 17:46, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, neither Runciman nor Grousset do specifically mention Viam_agnoscere_veritatis, and they just mention communications and responses to the envoys. Therefore your argument does not stand Aramgar. You can't have it both ways, since you already insisted that Grousset and Runciman's statements should not be connected to Viam_agnoscere_veritatis. I am getting tired of your partisan accusations. PHG (talk) 18:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On what if not the letter are the statements of Grousset and Runciman based. Come on, PHG, are you not a little curious? In addition, I do not see how an interest in the subject matter, a regard for factual accuracy, and respect for Wikipedia consensus can be construed as partisan. Please refrain from ad hominem attacts. Aramgar (talk) 18:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Come on. Don't talk about ad hominem attacks, you have proven a master at them. These quotes from Grousset and Runciman were specifically deleted by you and your friends from the Viam agnoscere veritatis article because they were not formally connected to Viam_agnoscere_veritatis. They are, however formally connected to Aibeg and Serkis, that's why they fully deserve to be in this article. PHG (talk) 18:52, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On what if not the letter are the statements of Grousset and Runciman based. Aramgar (talk) 18:58, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, and I have no intention to do original research to second-guess the statements of reputable historians such as Grousset and Runciman. PHG (talk) 18:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did not delete referenced material: I substituted a better and less controversial reference (Rachewiltz) for the suspect ones you so cling to. Aramgar (talk) 19:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia:NPOV, all significant views should be mentionned, and this is non-negotiable. You cannot delete proper secondary sources because of your own interpretations, or your wish to privilege only one point of view. This is a strong disservice to Wikipedia and goes against Wikipedia editing rules.PHG (talk) 08:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Motion at arbitration

FYI, I have filed a motion at the Arbitration case, that you should cease creating articles in Franco-Mongol related topics while the case is open. If you would like to participate at the thread, the link is here. The general consensus is that you should stop voluntarily, so that a formal motion does not need to proceed. Will you agree to this, to voluntarily avoid creating any further articles in this topic area for awhile? Thanks, El on ka 01:21, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is the best solution. Nobody should ever feel forced to stop editing wikipedia unless they are a blatant vandal. If content and accuracy is questionable it should be discussed rationally and an effort to produce an article or series of articles which people can basically agree on. I don't know all the details but it looks like the situation has been blown out of proportion but I urge you to try to remain calm and remember that there are editors who have seen a lot of good work from you in the past of which you should remain proud of, Just hang in there ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC).[reply]

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Mediation

Hi Tariq. I just notified Elonka that I gladly agree to her proposal to open up the content of the Mediation about the Franco-Mongol alliance. Best regards. PHG (talk) 15:43, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not quite ready to agree to that. -- tariqabjotu 04:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop the personal attacks

I know that Arbitration can be a difficult thing, but please say your piece there instead of attacking Elonka across a number of talk pages. Spend some time finding diffs that support the accusations you're making and present those in the arbitration case. Shell ^babelfish 08:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

What she got back to me about tallies with what you found. Thanks! Ealdgyth | Talk 16:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion of Template:BuddhaEvolution

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Non-events

Hi PHG. I am aware of how she uses the phrase. My use of it was merely a sly reference to the subtitle of her 1979 article. My apologies if this was unclear. On a side note, I am touched by your confidence in my dedication to pursuing you. :) Kafka Liz (talk) 14:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A Great Work with the Point of view of the Buddhists about the Crusades

Hello PHG ! You did a Great Work concerning the Battle of Baghdad and the franco-mongols alliance ! Dont considerate the bad reactions of these Catholics from Poland who dont have a scholar background and know nothing about the real history of the Buddhist Hulagu. Dr. Dominique Boubouleix, Dr. EPHE in Sorbonne, Dr. Litt. CIU, Chancellor of the CIU London. My page : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Boubouleix PS forget Please my poor english which sounds bad —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr Boubouleix (talk • contribs) 15:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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RFAR

Please respond to Brad's request for information in a separate section. Interweaving comments in Elonka's section, especially when you are splitting one comment by her into several, so that they are not signed, is confusing. Do not edit another party's evidence; use your own section. I tried once to fix this but you either did not notice or ignored me so now fix it yourself. For long, detailed analysis you may wish to instead add a section to the evidence page and link to it from the workshop. Thatcher 19:58, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see that Thatcher just mentioned this to you. Please stop commenting in other people's sections. Thanks. Shell ^babelfish 21:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG that is my user space you're editing and evidence at that. Either abide by my wishes or comment elsewhere. Shell ^babelfish 21:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Buddhist content of Battle of Baghdad (1258) deleted twice in one day

Hello,

My name is Geir (Gehrhardt).

Only the Buddhist material of the article has been deleted massively, without any explanation.

Urgently come to it's talkpage, kindly, so as to prevent the whole page being emptied. Thank you, you will find my entry there.

Geir Smith (talk) 09:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My version of Wikipedia gives clear reasons for its removal, eg "Removing personal essay, original research, gibberish." and "deep revert of off-topic unencyclopedic essayistic rambling" -- its basically stuff from Geir Smith's personal website, pushing his personal version of reality (his words from his talk page). Clearly POV and Original Research. Geir Smith is also actively recruiting other people to join Wikipedia to push his views.--Dougweller (talk) 12:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello PGH,

I saw your contributions on Buddhism, and thank you for it all. I'm French from the last forty last years of living here, and am shocked at the mob-lynching going on at Franco-Mongol Alliance's Arbit. page. I talked about it at the Buddhist forum where the Dalai Lama has his followers at Phayul.com and said that a scholar being dragged through the mud by the people on the street was really shocking. I saw that you lack support: and at that forum there are many scholars reading so I hope to bring you support shortly. I also made a straw vote with you and Sponsianus's votes and we came up to a five majority. I thus hope to attract many more than this. I'm sending this to several places now as this letter will reveal the extent of the problem by it's explicitness and be useful, I think.

I have also written a lengthy explaining letter to the Buddhist French forum of Buddhaline that is close to my own lineage of Buddhism Ngor, the main sect of Sakya, as you must know what is, what with your being a well-read person on Buddhism, as I'm sure you are. The article that was the reason for my removing from Wiki and the deleting of all its Buddhist material is now up and running and can be consulted for all purposes at http://geirsmith.org/ShambhalaBaghdad1.html Please feel free to contact me at geir.smith@yahoo.fr I'll be ready to make the problem of underrepresentation of Buddhist voices on the Arbitration page be made known on all Buddhist forums, if this seems interesting to you, and this we can talk about between us if you kindly contact me.

Geir Smith —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.138.39.105 (talk) 18:27, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

http://forums.phayul.com/index.php?showtopic=1895&st=120&start=120 will give you a better idea of what Geir wants.--Doug Weller (talk) 19:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Current conduct

Hi,

A quick comment, please read and digest.

At Arbitration, all conduct is taken into account. That includes noting that you are spamming a hostile note against another user to multiple people's talk pages, for example, as you have done today.

Whether right or whether wrong, your conduct is what is at consideration at RFAR. Whatever the other issues may be, this is clearly within the bounds of what we would consider "disruptive conduct". This is not a view on the content or the issue, but purely that it is not okay, whoever does it and for whatever reason they do it. I suggest cordially, you take advice and desist, now and permanently, from it.

Written as a personal note.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:04, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quick check... should one read your comment to mean, "I don't see anything I've done wrong", then? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Viam agnoscere veritatis

I'm not sure who is making up what anymore. In fact I'm pretty much convinced you are perpetrating an elaborate hoax, so I'm not going to retract anything, I think I'll just ignore the whole thing from now on. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Personal attacks

PHG, your comment here to Aramgar was out of line, a violation of Wikipedia's policy on "No personal attacks", where you implied that his edits are destructive.[29] That is absolutely not the case -- Aramgar is one of the more constructive editors that we have in this topic area, and his ability to translate medieval Latin is extremely valuable. That you would say anything to try and antagonize him off the project is appalling to me. Please try to adopt a better standard of behavior. --El on ka 20:58, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image source

PHG, regarding this image that you uploaded it in November, I see that you neglected to indicate where that you got it from. Could you please let me know the source? I would like to verify the title. According to my records, Baldwin did not "cede the Temple of Solomon" to the Templars. Instead, he allowed them to setup their quarters in part of his royal palace, including the Al Aqsa Mosque, which the Crusaders referred to as the Temple of Solomon since it was built atop the ruins. But it wasn't the actual Temple. --El on ka 06:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. The book where this reproduction can be found is Les Templiers, Patrick Huchet, p.21, ISBN 9782737338526. The French caption is "Baudoin II, roi de Jerusalem, cede l'emplacement du Temple de Salomon a Hugues de Payns et Godefroy de Saint-Omer", which indeed would mean that the location of the Temple was given to the Templars rather than the Temple itself. I let you find the proper English expression which could reflect that. PHG (talk) 20:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, will do. BTW, I was just curious about something. Though you live in France, and use French sources, it seems that most of your work is on the English Wikipedia, not the French. If you don't mind my asking, why is that? Especially for complex topics, wouldn't it make sense to work in your native language first? --El on ka 20:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A stupid and a good reason. The stupid one: my computer doesn't have accents, so it is nearly impossible to type French. A good one: the English Wikipedia is much more developed, and therefore much more interesting to work on. Regards PHG (talk) 21:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. One other question... Any idea what's up with this? Do you know any of these people?[30] They seem to be referring to both of us quite a bit. --El on ka 21:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've started to see these messages a few days ago (I received a post above). I had no knowledge of them before that. PHG (talk) 22:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I re-read these threads... it does seem that some people are getting really pissed about the way you have been bullying me these pages, Elonka... PHG (talk) 10:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So, just checking, you don't see anything wrong with what they're saying? --El on ka 19:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm certainly not saying that, but I do believe there is a lot wrong with your own ways. Cheers :) PHG (talk) 19:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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Re PHG Arbcom

Hi FayssalF. I would like to share with you some updates about Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Proposed decision. It has just been made clear that a large part of the accusations made against me were based on a false claim being made by Elonka and Aramgar about a name "Viam agnoscere veritatis" being used for a multiplicity of Papal bulls Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis#Untangling (arbitrary section break). Both were making a false claim, intentionally of not, and have been using this claim to motivate a multiplicity of editors to make depositions against me (here, here and the numerous "Viam agnoscere depositions of the Workshop page such as [31]). It's clear that the discussion heated up (on both sides) but it turns out I was right to dispute their misrepresentation of historical facts. I challenge judgements which are based on such false evidence and manipulation. Another recent case of Elonka obviously misrepresenting sources has been exposed here Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#Introduction. All my contributions are properly referenced from published sources, and if sometimes we can have differences in interpretation, nobody has been able to identify a single case of fabrication of sources or whatever (as demonstrated in User:Ealdgyth/Crusades quotes testbed, embedded responses [32]). I am asking you to think twice before believing the accusations of such editors. Elonka is well known for throwing endless accusation at someone and spinning the truth in order to get support [33]. Please view Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Proposed decision for a update of these issues. Regards PHG (talk) 16:44, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am discussing this case with some of my colleagues arbitrators. Thanks. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance

This Arbitration case is closed and the final decision has been published at the link above. PHG (talk · contribs) is prohibited from editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year. He is permitted to make suggestions on talk pages, provided that he interacts with other editors in a civil fashion. PHG is reminded that in contributing to Wikipedia (including his talkpage contributions, contributions in other subject-matter areas, and contributions after the one-year editing restriction has expired), it is important that all sourced edits must fairly and accurately reflect the content of the cited work taken as a whole. PHG is also reminded that Wikipedia is a collaborative project and it is essential that all editors work towards compromise and a neutral point of view in a good-faith fashion. When one editor finds themselves at odds with most other editors on a topic, it can be disruptive to continue repeating the same argument. After suggestions have been properly considered and debated, and possible options considered, if a consensus is clear, the collegial and cooperative thing to do is to acknowledge the consensus, and move on to other debates.

PHG is encouraged to continue contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in other ways, including by suggesting topics for articles, making well-sourced suggestions on talkpages, and continuing to contribute free-content images to Wikimedia Commons.

For the Arbitration committee, Thatcher 01:06, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

TfD nomination of Template:Franco-Mongol alliance

Template:Franco-Mongol alliance has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Kafka Liz (talk) 16:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version)

Another editor has added the {{prod}} template to the article User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version), suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the editor doesn't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and has explained why in the article (see also Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Notability). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia or discuss the relevant issues at [[Talk:User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version)|its talk page]]. If you remove the {{prod}} template, the article will not be deleted, but note that it may still be sent to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. BJBot (talk) 17:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version)

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version), suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version)|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version). Kafka Liz (talk) 17:02, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/Mongol alliances in the Middle-East

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article User:PHG/Mongol alliances in the Middle-East, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:PHG/Mongol alliances in the Middle-East|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of User:PHG/Mongol alliances in the Middle-East. Kafka Liz (talk) 17:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/1297-1304

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article User:PHG/1297-1304, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:PHG/1297-1304|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of User:PHG/1297-1304. Kafka Liz (talk) 18:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/ID

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article User:PHG/ID, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:PHG/ID|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of User:PHG/ID. Kafka Liz (talk) 19:24, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/East-West contacts

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article User:PHG/East-West contacts, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:PHG/East-West contacts|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of User:PHG/East-West contacts. Kafka Liz (talk) 19:28, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/HID

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article User:PHG/HID, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:PHG/HID|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of User:PHG/HID. Kafka Liz (talk) 21:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/Indo-Corynthian capital

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article User:PHG/Indo-Corynthian capital, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:PHG/Indo-Corynthian capital|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of User:PHG/Indo-Corynthian capital. Kafka Liz (talk) 21:10, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:PHG/Stair riser

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article User:PHG/Stair riser, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:PHG/Stair riser|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of User:PHG/Stair riser. Kafka Liz (talk) 21:12, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

TfD nomination of Template:East-West relations

Template:East-West relations has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Kafka Liz (talk) 21:22, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MfD nomination of User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version)

User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version)‎, a page you created, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/PHG's archived articles and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (Kafka Liz (talk) 19:08, 15 March 2008 (UTC)). You are free to edit the content of User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version)‎ during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such removal will not end the deletion discussion. User:PHG/Mongol alliances in the Middle-East and User:PHG/East-West contacts have been nominated for deletion as well. Thank you. Kafka Liz (talk) 19:08, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Block

user:PHG is under a restriction that he "is prohibited from editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year. He is permitted to make suggestions on talk pages, provided that he interacts with other editors in a civil fashion". This restriction became active on the morning of 14 March, which PHG surely knew (being a close follower of the case). It was brought in the context of articles that covered a wide range of historical topics, sevarl of which focussed on the core dispute area of Franco-Mongol alliance and other related history.

Jean-Paul Roux is a historian specializing in medieval history. He is a "specialist of Turkish and Islamic culture" who has written widely on Turkish and Mongol historical topics. On 14 March between 10.35 - 10.57 PHG made edits to his article. Jean-Paul Roux is undeniably an article "related to medieval history" in the sense that (for example) World of Warcraft is not. The aim of the edits was to insert a point of view specifically related to Mongol history, and glowingly positive towards Roux' work as a source.

David Morgan (historian) is an article created by PHG at 10:44, March 14. It reads "David Morgan is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He wrote several books on Medieval history, particularly the subject of the Mongol Empire." This is also an article "related to medieval history". It was created in relation to the writings on the Mongol Empire, and to support the Medieval history edit added to Jean-Paul Roux. (Additionally, it is not clear whether Morgan was notable or meets WP:PROF, or just added because he was a favorable reviewer.)

Turning to other matters, I am concerned by this edit. It represents the case in bad faith. It describes it as "Some users indeed managed to impose edit restrictions on me"... "a few users banding together"... "huge on-Wiki and off-Wiki lobbying) to throw false accusations"... "witch hunt". In fact this was a case where your view was in a clear extreme of minority, and the Arbitrators who are independent and checked the source data themselves formed a view on your conduct. It is disturbing that you have not comprehended that your view was not forced out by "a few users" so much as agreed in error by a wide part of the neutral community and its most senior dispute panel.

I reviewed your talk page contributions at Talk:Edward I of England, Talk:Louis IX of France and Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis (1248). At present they are fine, but be careful to respect consensus if one forms, per remedy 4 "PHG reminded: collaborative consensus". I cannot judge if these "fairly and accurately reflect the content of the cited work taken as a whole" but they discuss removed texts and at present I am willing to condone them on that basis. The discussion is mostly reasonable. The one exception is at Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis (1248) where you describe an edit by Elonka as a "blatant untruth" and state to her that "I am afraid you keep inserting untruths in Wikipedia just to try to make a point that you are right" [34]. This is uncivil and bad faith. Someone asks you whether "obvious untruth" would be better and you then comment "Certainly not. 'Obvious untruth' is a comment related to the content, not to the user" [35] (although in fact you have corrected it), indicating the original comment was directed at the user not the content. You then repeat your view several times over.

PHG - this breaches several points of your ruling. It is in breach of Remedy 1 (do not edit topics related to medieval history), in breach of Remedy 1 again (permitted to make suggestions on talk pages, provided that he interacts with other editors in a civil fashion), I have not evaluated Remedy 2 (must fairly and accurately reflect the content of the cited work taken as a whole) but note others have found this not complied with in the past, and hope that you will not seek to breach Remedy 4 (it can be disruptive to continue repeating the same argument. After suggestions have been properly considered and debated, and possible options considered, if a consensus is clear, the collegial and cooperative thing to do is to acknowledge the consensus, and move on).

As a result of your multiple breaches of remedy 1, I have blocked you for 48 hours, and noted this at the Arbitration page.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FT2, you misread the edits (your point No4) and are making a false accusation against me. It is me (not "somebody") who asked if "Obvious untruth" would be better. Then, after Shell's accusation of Personal attacks, I simply denied and explained that this was not the case because I was commenting on content, not on the user: "Certainly not. 'Obvious untruth' is a comment related to the content, not to the user" [36]. Please check again: your analysis and conclusions are erroneous. Please kindly correct your accusation.

I also think you are making a very narrow interpretation of Remedy 1: Jean-Paul Roux and David Morgan are modern historians: these articles are about the modern people in question, not about ancient history or Medieval History in themselves. I think it is quite unfair that you should take such a drastic measure for such a disputable case.

In view of these issues, I am asking you to cancel your block and remove it from the log. PHG (talk) 20:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see, considerable thought went into the review. The expression "related to" is not accidental in the remedy. Given the edits, these mainspace matters were not just about the historian, but were also "related to" editing on "medieval history". you did not, for example, add articles on modern historians specializing in Aztec history, or Modern Indian history. These were specifically related to medieval history - one was to add a glowing review of Mongol related matters, the other related to the first. The incivilities were plainly uncivil. You "sort of corrected" one of them after being asked. This does not change that you were uncivil multiple times in breach of the ruling. The other points are concerns that I have noted so that you do not infringe those too.

In short - it's well founded.

As I said, rather presciently I fear... "It is disturbing that you have not comprehended (etc)". It seems the same pattern you showed on the article, is the same pattern you showed in our last discussion when I warned you that you would hit problems, is the same problem you hit now. Please pause and digest this. I feel, myself I have explained as best I can, what seems self evident. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi FT2. Since you are an Administrator of high standing, could you kindly just check Elonka's long-standing claim that "The name Viam agnoscere veritatis may refer to one of the following papal communications from Pope Innocent IV to the Mongols in the 13th century: Dei patris immensa, Cum non solum, Viam agnoscere veritatis (1248)" in the Viam agnoscere veritatis article? This claim is unreferenced, and its proponents have been incapable of providing a single source for it. As far as I know, it is unsupported by any scholarly source, and Viam agnoscere veritatis is only used for the 1248 letter. I am taking this to heart because I have been attacked extensively for my creation of the Viam agnoscere veritatis article on the ground that it refered to several Papal bulls rather than one, which, as far as I know is totally unsupported. I have always known that on Wikipedia unreferenced statements can be removed, and I think this should be the case. Could you intervene so that Wikipedia rules be applied to all in a fair manner? Please see [37] for a similar view by a user of good standing. PHG (talk) 22:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Short answer - I don't think that's the best idea. My concern here is conduct. I note that a bare 3 days ago, a restriction was set on what you might edit, and how you might conduct yourself. ArbCom rulings are usually fairly tightly enforced, as the last resort in a dispute. I get the strong impression that the view of the community as a whole (which includes myself and ArbCom) on the content matters was that your representation of cites, and factual balancing and interpretation in the articles concerned, was often problematic. Apologies. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 05:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am afraid your interpretation of issues with content matter is mistaken. I was wrongly accused of creating refs that did not exist, and proved that all I referenced indeed existed. I was wrongly accused of misrepresenting sources, when all I did was merely quote what the sources say, and claims of "misrepresentation" are at best a matter of disputable interpretation. I was wrongly attacked for creating Viam agnoscere veritatis, based on the false claim that it designated several bulls, which it does not. What's wrong with calling "untrue" a statement which is actually untrue? There's nothing incivil in that. It is only normal that I react to false claims being written on Wikipedia. Conduct is not independent of content matter: standing against the false statements of a few, even if sometimes vocally, is not a bad thing, especially when the falsity is obvious: this is for the sake of Wikipedia. It is not because a few editors agree to say something that it makes it true, when it is obviously not (that is the definition of Wikiality). Please kindly review the issue at hand. PHG (talk) 06:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, whether you agree or not, you are under remedies and restrictions which will affect your permitted editing. You are under these because as a community and committee the consensus is that your editing has led to it. You may agree, or disagree, and that's fine. But you may not breach them, even if you disagree.

Last, Remedy 4 is important too ("It can be disruptive to continue repeating the same argument. After suggestions have been properly considered and debated, and possible options considered, if a consensus is clear, the collegial and cooperative thing to do is to acknowledge the consensus, and move on".)

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:09, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So, basically, you are knowingly turning a blind eye on a group of users agreeing to write untruths on Wikipedia? The claim that "The name Viam agnoscere veritatis may refer to one of the following papal communications from Pope Innocent IV to the Mongols in the 13th century: Dei patris immensa, Cum non solum, Viam agnoscere veritatis (1248)" in the Viam agnoscere veritatis article is simply untrue and is not supported by a single reference, and you accept that it remains in this encyclopedia? (see Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis (1248)) This is obvious Wikiality and you are condonning it? This was used to attack a user unjustly, and you don't even try to redress the wrong that has been done? This is a very sad thing for Wikipedia really. PHG (talk) 20:53, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request to amend Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance

This is a courtesy notification to alert you that I have filed a request to amend the above-linked case. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Request to amend prior case: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance for more details. Daniel (talk) 10:03, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request for further ArbCom sanctions

Since you are still violating ArbCom sanctions, I have requested another block. You can see my report at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement#User:PHG. --El on ka 23:36, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

False accusations, misrepresentations and harassment again. Responded to on the relevant page. PHG (talk) 08:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Greco-Bactrian Kingdom

Please see Talk:Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. 82.20.19.200 (talk) 12:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG - apologies for bothering you about BCE/BC issues at a time when you seem to be under pressure from other editors (possibly for no good reason, I haven't looked in detail at the sitaution). It seems to me that you shouldn't be banned from editing history articles. What a childish proposition. Good luck. 82.20.19.200 (talk) 15:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are problems that arose, regardless of blame or fault, that made collaboration in editing far too disruptive. The user is allowed to make suggestions on Talk, and any user who verifies his sources and suggested use of them can then incorporate them in the article, so, really, all that has happened, in theory, is that a writer now has an editor or editors. This could be a good thing. However, it does appear that there is a deep reservoir of bad feelings about this editor, so implementing the theory may be difficult. --Abd (talk) 20:16, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You have been blocked from editing

As you are fully aware, an Arbitration ruling at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance, you are prohibited from creating or editing Wikipedia articles related to medieval history for a period of one year:

PHG (talk · contribs) is prohibited from editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year. He is permitted to make suggestions on talk pages, provided that he interacts with other editors in a civil fashion.

PHG, you are simply not permitted to edit articles related to medieval history—that is a simple fact. It is imperative that you refrain from doing so, and similarly from creating such articles: the end result, as you have discovered several times now, will be a withdrawal of your editing privileges as a response. Please do not try other's patience again on this matter. AGK § 19:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That article, on the face of it, was not related to "medieval or ancient history," so I fail to see how it was a violation of the ruling, but was, instead, an example of what ArbComm actually encouraged. As a non-admin, I cannot read the deleted article. If the article contained references to ancient history, the remedy would have been to remove those references to Talk and warn PHG about using new articles on history -- not ancient or medieval history per se -- as a device for inserting comment on ancient history bypassing Talk. (The offense would then have been marginal, thus a warning instead of a block, becoming a block if repeated.) Accordingly, I request that PHG be unblocked.--Abd (talk) 20:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is ridiculous! What has France-Japan relations (19th century) to do with Medieval History?? The 19th century has nothing to do with Medieval History as far as I know! Even the background material mentionned in the article only starts in 1545, with the first contacts between Japan and the West, which is not Medieval but Renaissance (the Medieval period typically end in 1492). Please revert this delete immediately, cancel the block and clear the block log, as this is totally unfair and against the Arbcom ruling. Thank you. PHG (talk) 20:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Per Honor et Gloria (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

Totally inadequate block. I am restricted from editing Ancient History or Medieval History article, but France-Japan relations (19th century) has nothing to do with that!! Since when is 19th century Medieval history?? Please cancel immediately this unfair block, reinstate the deleted article, and clear the block log from this totally unwarranted action. PHG (talk) 20:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Decline reason:

See the section "Block review" below. — Sandstein (talk) 08:23, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

The block is appropriate. PHG, the ArbCom ruling is clear, you have to stop working on history articles. You are allowed to participate at talk. What you could have done in this case, was to post at Talk:France-Japan relations (which I'm sure you knew about, since you created that one too) and say that you wanted to suggest an addition to the article. But instead, you created a new article, which though it said "19th century" in the title, was obviously just a WP:COATRACK. You inserted information about medieval history into the article, and then copy/pasted a bunch of information from other places to flesh it out. You've also done multiple other things which were block-worthy:

You re-created one of the pages that had been deleted via MfD: User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version),
You are continuing to argue at multiple article talkpages, in defiance of consensus (see WP:AE#User:PHG)

This kind of behavior is disruptive, PHG. You have to stop. Please, can't you find some non-history area of Wikipedia to help out in? --El on ka 20:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Elonka, you are being totally unfair: I am restricted from editing Ancient History and Medieval history: what has France-Japan relations (19th century) to do with that!

Your other reasons are similarly wrong. As explained on WP:AE#User:PHG, I am not arguing against consensus at all. Actually numerous users are of the same opinion as mine. I am simply exercising my right to discuss on Talk Page. You have absolutely no right to harass me for that. PHG (talk) 20:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, if you will look at the ArbCom page where the arbitrators were discussing the decision, you can easily see that they were unanimous on the principles and remedies. These arbitrators are not random editors, they are experienced Wikipedians who had to pass a rigorous review and community-election process to get where they are. They have the trust of the community. They are our best and wisest. And they deal with arbitration cases every day, so are quite experienced in filtering through evidence, determining who is telling the truth, who is lying, who is exaggerating, who is misinterpreting. And after each of them independently reviewed the evidence, and reviewed the analysis of the sources, they still all came to a unanimous decision about your behavior. They unanimously agreed that you needed to be topic-banned. They unanimously agreed that there were problems in how you worked with other editors. They unanimously agreed that you were not respecting consensus. So are you saying that you genuinely believe that every single arbitrator there was wrong, or somehow mis-led? Or are you even capable of acknowledging any flaws whatsoever in your own behavior? I would genuinely like to see you take a hard look at your own behavior, and try to figure out how you might be able to do better in the future. If you could do that, it would be far more helpful than you simply continuing to insist that you are right, and everyone else is wrong. --El on ka 21:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is much more simple than that, I am only asking that the Arbcom ruling be respected and not abused: I am currently being blocked for creating France-Japan relations (19th century) on the ground that I am restricted from editing Ancient History and Medieval history: but 19th century history has nothing to do with ancient or medieval history! The block is therefore totally illegitimate, and it is quite amazing that you would condone something like that (although I'm not suprised). I should be unblocked immediately and the article should be un-deleted so that I can go on working on it. PHG (talk) 21:11, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, without comment as to the merits of this block, I'd also like to see things work out. As I stated at arbitration, for instance, you're a talented amateur photographer with highly encyclopedic tastes. Maybe it's hard to trust Elonka after all that's passed between you (or even hard to trust me); would you be willing to seek formal mentorship with an impartial Wikipedian? I'm mentoring an editor who's been through arbitration under a completely unrelated case and he often bounces ideas off me in advance of posting--it's a way to help keep things productive and on track. He's not perfect and neither am I, but it helps. And when he has a bad idea (occasionally we all have bad ideas) he knows I don't have any other agenda when I tell him so. If this is an idea that interests you, I'll start a noticeboard query and see who responds. You'd choose whoever you think is the best match. No obligations, just a positive suggestion that might help move things forward. What do you think of it? Durova^Charge! 21:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, please stand by as I contact the blocking administrator about this block. Sandstein (talk) 22:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How long is this going to go on? Both sides are interpreting the decision narrowly. PHG is going to go on creating and editing articles that are technically not covered by it, and those opposed to him will jump on any reason, no matter how tiny, to block him, until he is blocked for good. Is that the goal here? Or is everyone trying to make him so frustrated that he leaves on his own? Adam Bishop (talk) 23:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Adam, I'd have a lot more patience for PHG, if he wasn't creating new problems, as fast as we were cleaning up the old ones. We still have dozens of other biased articles that are in the process of cleanup. Also, Adam, take a look at what PHG created. We weren't jumping on it for a "tiny reason". It was another coatrack, that was effectively a copy/paste of information that was already in France-Japan relations, plus some "context" about 15th century Christian persecution in Japan, which does not appear to be backed up by reliable sources. There was no need for a new article in the first place, and per the ArbCom ruling, instead of creating a new article, PHG should have just made a suggestion for new content at Talk:France-Japan relations. Further, if you take a look at the existing France-Japan relations article as it stands, you'll see another article (created by PHG) which is full of original research and unsourced information. This isn't just us nitpicking about his content, this is us trying to reduce the flow of bad information into Wikipedia. And I'm getting pretty tired of having to spend half my wiki-time on "PHG cleanup" duty. There are other things I'd rather be doing. If you'd like to help with that task, be my guest. You know where the list is. How about merging PHG's duplicated articles Christianity in Asia and Roman Catholicism in Asia? --El on ka 00:18, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have looked over two articles from the list at Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance and neither had wrong information in it that I could find and all major points were backed up by my independent review of sources (all of them available online for 3rd party review). "PHG cleanup" duty isn't that hard. I'm afraid that legitimate concerns with some of PHG's editing patterns have morphed into belief that everything he has ever done must be tainted with inaccuracy and unreliable sourcing. I refused to support PHG at the ArbComm because of the former, but I could not support the other side because of the latter. Srnec (talk) 05:04, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement from the blocking administrator

Hi folks. My apologies to all, especially PHG, for the delay in getting back: I'd went offline before seeing Sandstein's message on my talk page, essentially missing this thread. I will firstly state that the specific boundaries of the ArbCom ruling—"medieval" or "ancient" history articles—which is probably why I've had some prodding as to why this block was made.

My primary platform was thus: PHG has been shown to duck under the ruling, by editing in history-related areas, whilst simultaneously gaming by editing in the renaissance period—technically, just after the medieval time frame. The purpose of the ArbCom ruling was to send out a clear message to PHG: your approach to editing needs to change.

PHG has edited in completely the opposite direction of this: a quick look at the WP:AE thread shows rehashing of expired disputes, which is serving no purpose but to disrupt the improvement of articles. My block was a counter-disruption measure (see the blocking policy), and I truly hope PHG heeds that message.

Hopefully this clears up some of the confusion.
AGK § 00:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Renaissance period is not covered by the ban imposed by ArbComm and so should not be used against PHG. Let's keep to the letter of the ruling.

The purpose of an ArbComm ruling is to "send a message"? They should have just used PHG's talk page, instead of laying out a policy on enforcement of an editing ban...

With regards to some of the issues brought up at AE, the direction of discussion at Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis (1248) seems to be moving a different direction thanks to PHG's harping.

We who are not the object of intense scrutiny should be less hasty to judge. Srnec (talk) 05:04, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is totally disgracefull AGK. I am not "gaming" the system at all! On the contrary, I am precisely following the Arbcom ruling by making contributions outside of the my Arbcom restrictions: Renaissance is completly OK, and of course 19th century is completly OK. Please remove this meaningless ban NOW, reinstate the deleted article France-Japan relations (19th century), and clean my block log. Please also note that I am an important contributor to this encyclopedia: there is a lot I will continue to write on outside of my restrictions, I will make important Talk Page contributions, I will contribute a large amount of images, and I have been encouraged to do so by Arbcom. Your block is an obvious abuse and misinterpretation of Arbcom ruling. PHG (talk) 06:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do have to take issue with one thing here; you state "[the article]...only starts in 1545, with the first contacts between Japan and the West, which is not Medieval but Renaissance (the Medieval period typically end in 1492)." Historian's certainly don't all agree on this and in fact, there's no "standard" set of dates (see Middle_Ages#Periodisation_issues for example), so neither date is really concrete proof of anything. In fact, our article on the Renaissance even defines the term as "a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th through the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages". I don't really want to get into an argument over whether or not that particular article was a violation, because I'm sure I can't come to a clear decision where historians have failed to find agreement. Perhaps given that ancient and medieval are ambiguous terms when applied to history, we should ask for clarification to avoid similar confusions in the future? Shell ^babelfish 06:38, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are writing about the definition of Renaissance, but the definition of Medieval is much clearer. As far as I know, the general agreement is that Medieval times end in 1492 with the discovery of the New World, although some historians may have slightly different definitions. I think what is important is when Medieval Times are generally considered to have ended with the 15th century. What I wrote in the article was that "Japanese relations with the West started in the second half of the 16th century", which I think would never mean "Medieval times" to anyone of common sense. I maintain that I am clear of the Arbcom restrictions here. PHG (talk) 06:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, regardless of this particular problem, I believe there were other valid block reasons such as your recreation of an item deleted through MfD just the day before and your continuation of several arguments on Franco-Mongol alliance one of which has had numerous threads on it already; both show that you still believe that you can discard consensus when it doesn't suit you. I know that I feel totally worn out by some of your discussion tactics, and I'm usually pretty darn patient. You can do good work elsewhere; you've shown that -- there must be something else on Wikipedia that would interest you for a short time, just to show that you can do so. Something that doesn't need an expert to decide if you're following the restrictions :)

Also, I do find it rather odd that the article you created appears to be a copy/paste of the France-Japan relations with only that problematic top section added. And again, unless our articles on Middle Ages and Renaissance are way off the mark (The Middle Ages are commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (or by some scholars, before that) in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century), I can see how editors would have felt you were stretching the bounds.Shell ^babelfish 06:38, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am currently being blocked on the claim that France-Japan relations (19th century) is related to Medieval History, which is totally unfair. The introduction of the article mentionned that relations between the West and Japan started in the second half of the 16th, which is basically never considered as the Middle-Ages, so the case is clear, and this block should be suspended.

You are claiming that my article France-Japan relations (19th century) is a copy-paste of France-Japan relations, which is totally untrue: it is an expansion of it, as France-Japan relations is basically just a timeline. I had already contributed large paragraphs about context, development of commercial and diplomatic relations, embassies, military collaboration, which I had spent hours on, and I was in the process of building a rich and complete article on the subject. It is totally illegitimate to delete it, and it should be reinstated right away so that I can continue my work on it. Please somebody (Admin I guess), just reinstate the article, so that everybody can see it is indeed a proper article, in the process of expansion, and it has nothing to do with "just a copy/ paste". PHG (talk) 07:24, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you missed the point that there were several more reasons given for suggesting your block. I'm pretty sure that arguing over when "Medieval" was isn't going to get us anywhere; the article's pretty clear that there is no bright line. I guess that's why I suggested spending a bit of time in the other subject areas you enjoy where you won't run in to similar confusion.

Also, you're correct about the article; I'm afraid that I only saw your first revision which contained mostly timeline; looking at the deleted version, you added in a great deal of prose after the initial creation. Maybe DRV would be a good idea? But again, I'm not suggesting that the article was a clear reason to give you a block, I'm pointing out that there were other reasons given for suggesting your restrictions be enforced. Shell ^babelfish 07:37, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As you are an Admin, please reinstate France-Japan relations (19th century) indeed, and I will be gratefull if you can <strike></strike> your mistaken accusations above. The ground for my block was clearly and only that France-Japan relations (19th century) was related to Medieval History, which is fondamentally untrue. The block should therefore be lifted.

Now, if you wish to argue that I should be blocked for other reasons, let's discuss that, but the first block should be lifted. I strongly dispute that my Talk Page edits were done "against consensus": we have only been having civil discussions on content, with numerous editors actually taking my side and the discussions moving forward.

Also, the claim that I "recreated" the User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version) is also quite a misrepresentation: I accepted the ruling that the 200k version was illegitimate and that it took unnecessary space, and instead I replaced it with a minute "Long version here" phrase, which I think fully complies with the meaning of the deletion ruling. Please note that I am not prohibited from creating User subpages or from providing a link to the longer version of the Franco-Mongol alliance article for anyone's review, so blocking me for it would be illegitimate as well. PHG (talk) 07:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, you seem to be arguing with your block, the same way that you were editing, the same way that you were arguing at Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance, and in the same way that led to the ArbCom case. You are focusing in on one particular detail, and completely ignoring all of the surrounding context. You were blocked for multiple reasons, not just the quibble of whether the article had "medieval" history or "renaissance" history. You are putting far too much weight on the definition of "medieval". ArbCom is a collection of people from varied backgrounds, not PhD historians. They are laypeople, and the layperson definition of medieval easily encompasses other terms such as "middle ages" "dark ages" "renaissance", etc. It is really splitting hairs to try and argue that they meant you could edit on articles up to such and such a year but not beyond. If they would have meant that, they would have put it in the ruling, like "PHG shall not work on any article that discusses matters prior to 1700." But that's not the point. The point is, that the ArbCom ruling found that you were editing articles in a problematic way. But you can't seem to acknowledge this. You continue to cry "harassment", and you argue against the ruling, and you refuse to acknowledge any validity to the case whatsoever. You keep disagreeing with consensus, which is in itself a violation of your restrictions.

If you want to steer clear of the ruling, when your block is up, go work on something else. Avoid history articles. Go work on French canals, or Japanese mountains, or pick some other non-history topic from WP:CORE. Or if you have to work on history, pick something that is completely and unambiguously non-medieval, not something that has to be measured with a magnifying glass. And instead of creating new articles, how about expanding an existing one? I see that you used to enjoy working on articles about French and Japanese battleships, why not go back to that for awhile? Show us that you can work on an article, and that you can do good work, where your research accurately represents sources. Show that you are genuinely able to write in a neutral manner, rather than pushing a particular pet theory. I know that you're capable of it, so why not prove that you still have that capacity? It would help a lot towards rebuilding trust. --El on ka 07:59, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

France-Japan relations (19th century) is unambiguously non-Medieval, and the unsubstanciated claim that it is related to Medieval Historical is the only reason used to block me (above). Just reinstate the article, and cancel the block, instead of harassing a well-meaning user who is actually following the Arbcom guidelines to the letter. PHG (talk) 08:06, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Completely random section break

(un-dent) *sigh* No PHG, the report at the AE noticeboard contained more than just the single block reason you're focusing on; it would be incredibly pointless for someone to unblock and reblock you :( (see, this is where I start to get worn out again). And again (the fact that I have to keep saying again is not any fun and indicative of the fact that we're covering the same ground), more than one editor feels that you were stretching the limits of the history related restriction and more than one editor feels you were not; since that is the case and I'm not an expert, I'm not comfortable with simply over-turning another admin's deletion (in fact, I'm not a big fan of undoing other admins actions at all without community discussion), which is why I suggested DRV - I would even be happy to post the report there for you if you'd outline what you would like to say. You can post it here, email me or even hit me up over instant messenger if that's more convenient -- I think though, it at least deserves some discussion outside of the small group of people who've been so wound up in all these goings on.

I know you feel that your talk page edits aren't against consensus, but honestly, one of the things you're bringing up again has had 8 threads and spanned two different talk pages. I do want to clarify though that I don't think all of your talk page contributions are problematic and I've actually added things to articles you brought up on talk since your restrictions started, but I do think you tend to be very repetitive when you differ in opinion and you seem to be unable to let things drop when you disagree.

If we really have to go over the "recreation" again, I suppose I can point this out again. The prevailing notion at MfD was that you don't get to keep your preferred version in article space; this notion is based on user space policy. Re-creating the page to link directly to the historical version that is your preferred version does precisely the same thing in the end. It's simply disingenuous to insist you were in the right in causing the same problem again immediately after the MfD closed (there's again, again several times :( ).

I think I could do with a cup of tea, so please understand if there's something I don't reply to right away. Thanks :) Shell ^babelfish 08:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Then Shell, could you please post the following message on DRV:

"The France-Japan relations (19th century) article was abusively deleted by Administrator AGK on the ground that it was related to "Medieval history", an area which the creator User:PHG is currently restricted from editing. However, the 19th century has nothing to do with Medieval History, neither does backgroung material mentionning the second half of the 16th century as the beginning of Japan-Western relations (For most historians the "Medieval" period typically end with the 15th century, or the 1492 discovery of the New World). It is requested that the article be immediately reinstated, so that the author (User:PHG) can continue his legitimate work on it. The creation of this article was also used as a justification to block User:PHG for 60 hours, a decision which is currently highly contested by numerous users on User talk:PHG. This seems to be part of a pattern of harassment following PHG's Arbcom restrictions. Besides his restrictions from editing Ancient History and Medieval History articles, PHG was actually encouraged by the Arbcom commity to contribute in other areas, an example of which is France-Japan relations (19th century). Please reinstate the last version of this article. Regards. PHG (talk) 09:28, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Gotcha; you can find it at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2008_March_23#France-Japan_relations_.2819th_century.29 Shell ^babelfish 09:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Block review

(Edit conflict with Elonka and Shell above) After reviewing the unblock request, Elonka's comment on my talk page and AGK's reply above, I cannot agree with the block based on most of the reasons that are currently given for it:

The relevant remedy prohibits PHG from writing about medieval history. However, "the second half of the 16th century" is the earliest time period mentioned in his deleted article, [38]. According to Middle Ages#Periodisation issues, the medieval period ended somewhen between 1450-1550. In view of this, I fail to see how this deleted article violates the relevant remedy.
If the article was deficient in some other manner, then WP:AFD or deleting/editing of the problematic passages would have been more appropriate, IMHO, than speedy deleting the whole article.
It may be that PHG may have deserved a block for his talk page edits detailed at WP:AE#User:PHG, but these were not really discussed as the block reason, and I can't at a first glance understand how these edits are supposed to violate the relevant ArbCom restrictions. It appears that the ArbCom encouraged PHG to contribute to talk pages, so I would be very reluctant to block him for doing this, unless his talk page edits are obviously disruptive, which the cited edits do not appear to be. "Defying consensus" or "continuing to disagree" is not a disruption of talk pages, since the very purpose of talk pages is to be a venue for changing consensus through discussion.
However, PHG did recreate User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version) in violation of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/PHG's archived articles. I endorse the block solely for his recreation of previously deleted material.

Accordingly, I suggest that the blocking administrator reduce the block to a time span that is appropriate for sanctioning PHG's recreation of deleted content, or lift the block if he agrees not to do this again. So as not to wheel-war, I won't do it unilaterally. (As a note to PHG, the block log cannot be edited, and if you want to restore the article, you need to ask at WP:DRV if the deleting administrator won't do it.) Sandstein (talk) 08:23, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Sandstein for your intervention! May I just point out that even for your last point, I am unjustly accused of having "Recreated deleted content" at User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version). However I did not "recreate" the 200k deleted content at all, but instead I only inserted a minute sentence ""Long version here" to allow for people to consult the older version of the article. May I remind that I am not prohibited from creating User subpages or from providing a link to the longer version of the Franco-Mongol alliance article for anyone's review, so blocking me for it would be illegitimate as well. The User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version) page is linked from a multiplicity of pages in numerous discussions, so it is only legitimate that people could still access the older version of the article through a link. For these reasons, I am asking for the block to be totally lifted, and of course for the article France-Japan relations (19th century) to be reinstated immediately. I would also appreciate apologies from the blocking Admin and others for undue harassment. Regards. PHG (talk) 09:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion to undelete the France-Japan relations (19th century) article is accessible here. PHG (talk) 09:57, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am concerned that a lifting of this block is being called for—PHG's conduct during this block review has been far from impressive: he has went from stating that this is "totally disgraceful" (with all due respect, I am not the one that is totally disgraceful, PHG), that my action was "abusive", and that my observation that he is clearly gaming the arbitration ruling is absurd. Whilst I would not be opposed to a block reduction on the basis of "good behaviour", PHG has not exactly conducted himself in an impressive manner—far from it.

As a note to Sanstein, I would not interpret any reversals of my actions on your part as wheel warring (check out User:AGK/Activities), so you're free to lift or tweak my actions as you see fit. However, I believe that any modification of the disruption-limitation measures currently on PHG's account (i.e., the block) should be very much dependant on a statement from him, regarding whether he is going to continue to rehash old disputes, recreate deleted material, and violate the spirit of the AC restriction (that is, he needs to overhaul his editing habits, which are currently in the category of disruptive/unhelpful). AGK § 17:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AGK, your block is indeed outrageous. You blocked me on the claim that France-Japan relations (19th century) was related to Medieval History, which is an absurdity. Regarding other issues: I did not recreate deleted material, I only inserted a short link "Long version here" rather than reinstate the 200k article that was deleted (and I respect the decision to delete this content, even if I don't approve of it). I have the right to create User subpages as I want, and I totally have the right to put a link to an old version of Franco-Mongol alliance on it if I wish to. My Talk Page discussions have not been "against consensus", but on the contrary have simply been addressing various issues, with numerous users supporting me. I am scandalized by this sort of harassment, and I have the right to be so. I understand you may have been misled by a few users, and I have nothing against you, but please do the right thing and revert your block. PHG (talk) 20:14, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With all due respect, give it a rest, PHG. You've already stated that you find the block "outrageous"; it has been shown that it is not. Keep a check on your editing attitude, please—it is going to get you into trouble one day. AGK § 20:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, no, it's not been shown that it is not, you and a couple of other people just declared it wasn't and expect everyone else to buy into it. When an admin takes it upon him- or herself a severe action like this that has no basis in any policy or ruling they should immediately apologize and forever remove themselves from interaction with this user (to prevent any chance for any further improper actions based upon your mistakes) or have their admin status removed. DreamGuy (talk) 21:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As someone not involved with the original content dispute or the Arbitration, it is clear to me that PHG has been improperly harried, and was blocked for behavior that he was permitted to continue under the ArbComm decision. If it is marginal, as has been asserted above, then the appropriate remedy would be a credible warning and discussion, clarifying the boundaries. The block was improper on its face, and should be lifted, and if there are marginal behaviors, as may be the case, they should be specifically addressed to tighten the limitations or otherwise clarify what is permitted and what is not. For PHG to claim that a block is outrageous, on his Talk page, is not a sanctionable offense at all, and I, frankly, tend to agree with him. Behind all this, I'm aware that this editor has what might be called social problems. We should help resolve those problems, not take sides. It is not just him.--Abd (talk) 18:14, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For those interested I have started to expand the France-Japan relations (19th century) on my Talk Page above (here). This is will give you a good feel of the kind of article I am writing :). I will add this content as soon as the article is undeleted. Regarding your last comment Abd, I have been so much harassed for the last few months in relation to the Franco-Mongol alliance article, that indeed I may come out as rather defensive sometimes. I am generally extremely peaceful and civil however, but I just have to speak out when confronted with the sort of unfair practices I have been seeing from some users. Best regards. PHG (talk) 20:29, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unblocked

There's been extensive discussion on this topic, and I think that's healthy: it's sending a clear signal, that behavioural issues from PHG will be scrutinised deeply; also, it just goes to show that I can't make abusive blocks! :) However, I do not think this block was unwarranted. Granted, the actual block summary—that PHG was blocked for editing medieval history pages—was technically not correct. However, it has been shown that PHG is continuing to duck under the specific boundaries of the remedy.

I am concerned that PHG will continue to ignore the general message of the restriction remedy—that he needs to change his attitude to editing. I cannot stress this enough, PHG: you need to radically overhaul your editing habits. Please cease re-hashing disputes, tenacious contributions, etc. Your behaviour really needs to change, and I very much hope it does: you've made some good history contributions, but it's your attitude whilst editing that is of concern.

I am reducing this block to 20-hours. To that end, I have unblocked your account; although blocks are not penal, I find the description that I am unblocking on "time served" to be most informative. Please use your second chance well, PHG. AGK § 20:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you AGK. I dispute the assertion that I have been "continuing to duck under the specific boundaries of the remedy": I have created an article (France-Japan relations (19th century)) which is completely beyond the Medieval period, my Talk Page contributions have been correct, and I have been unfairly accused of "recreating content" in the User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version). I am a dedicated Wikipedia contributor and I am asking everyone to be very cautious with the kind of misrepresentation and slandering I have been covered with by some users. AGK, could you also kindly revert your deletion of France-Japan relations (19th century), so that I can start working at last. Regards. PHG (talk) 21:00, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're headed in the right direction

This comment at my talk page struck me as surprisingly friendly and civil. You're heading along the right paths—I hope you keep it up, PHG. BTW, I've restored the article. Kind regards, Anthøny 22:41, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

Thanks. I just get a bit bothered when I see editors ganging up to shut out legitimate edits by other users, but I didn't seem to get much support at the page in question so your barnstar is much appreciated :) Gatoclass (talk) 13:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some advice.

You have two direction in which you can go, and you probably cannot go in both directions. You can continue to contribute to articles of interest to you, subject to scrupulous and discussed adherence to the terms of your ArbComm restrictions, or you can struggle for justice, personal justice, and, as well, general justice. While the choice is yours, the timing of the latter may be unfortunate. If you try to do both, the former situation will vastly complicate the latter, and vice-versa.

Please see my edit to another AN/AE case for DreamGuy, which refers to you. If you are interested in working for a saner community, please watch my notices page, User:Abd/Notices. At this point, because of your restrictions, mostly passive involvement, only, would be advisable. Unless you are willing to immolate yourself for "the cause," a path I do not recommend, at least not at this time. I suggest you conduct yourself like a total saint. If someone attacks you, turn the other cheek. Do not respond, don't even complain. Let others defend you, if they will, and if they don't, understand that the time is then not ripe for you to find justice. And, also note, if it happens that you are wrong, you'll be saving yourself a lot of trouble. And wait and watch. If you do, your restrictions will be lifted, and you will have some degree of increased freedom. The situation which has afflicted you is common on Wikipedia, in fact, and it is going to take patient work to address it. It may take years of patient work. The immediate situations distract us from this, because the problem is not this jerk or that jerk, the problem is the system, a system which actually encourages, in spite of formal policies, jerkiness.

The problem is not the policies. The problem is what I just called the "system," which means the real operating structure, mostly informally set up, not essential Wikipedia and, in fact, often operating contrary to policy, but because it is not explicit and there is no structure restraining it, providing a means for true, informed, community consensus to arise, local participation bias allows resentments and other poison to accumulate. Countless users, in your situation, have either left in disgust or been banned. So, first of all, understand that you are not alone. And, second, understand that to build the real project is going to meet, and is already meeting, severe opposition, from an ancient enemy, whose favorite device is inducing us to fight with each other, to hate each other, to have contempt for each other. All of us, when we fall into these traps, are serving that ancient enemy. This enemy does not want true NPOV knowledge to be generally available. Increasingly, the specific battles to prevent this are being won by the people of truth (NPOV *is* truth, truth is not a POV, rather it is closer to the *sum* of POVs), but the enemy has retreated to inhibiting the completion of the project and the creation of devices to make it truly accessible. And this is a huge issue, how to proceed. My tactic is to create the institutions which can plan and guide our activities toward this, I will be increasingly less involved with content, including the "content" of the actual policies and practices. Metastructure. My outside work is developing systems that communities can use to communicate, cooperate, and coordinate, to find consensus and act on it, efficiently.

I just happened upon your situation though the MfD. You do understand that nothing I've said condones incivility on your part, nor do I approve of even mild misrepresentation of sources. However, I also know that those who are earnestly working for the project can easily fall into both errors, and reprimand and warning should generally be enough. The exercise of avoiding even the smallest incivility, such as is easy when complaining, may help you in the future to avoid major lapses.

Thank you Abd for your advice. PHG (talk) 14:38, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Admin misconduct

I can't comment on the whole of your edit history, but certainly any admin who can't tell the difference between Medieval History and the 19th century and blocks you over it ought to have their admin status revoked immediately (as should anyone rationalizing it away instead of telling the admin he was ought of line). There's a point when they aren't even pretending to follow policies and just go around and make whatever actions they want. Admin status is sold to the general Wikipedia public as if it were some janitor-type service where anyone should be able to be trusted with it, yet there's a lot of them treating it as if it gave them the right to act like a sheriff in the wild west. DreamGuy (talk) 21:08, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong, DreamGuy. The block was primarily due to inappropriate editing, and was extended to take in a violation of the AC remedy. When it was later discovered that the article technically fell outside of the boundaries of the Committee remedy, the block was reduced; since PHG had already been blocked for a considerable time, I released the block on the basis of "time served". Your comment above—that I am acting unilaterally, and that I ought to have my admin. status revoked—is out of order. You will refrain from trolling, please. Anthøny 16:55, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pls shorten stmt

See [[39]], please shorten your statement to within the 500 word guideline. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another point: please keep your comments and responses entirely within your own section. — Coren ^(talk) for the Arbitration Committee 17:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, there are indeed those seeking to have you generally edit banned and perhaps blocked. By doing anything resembling edit warring or stubborn argument you are playing into their hands. Stop it. You made your complaint. I would have advised against it. However, it was your right, and I think you are basically correct in *substance* though not necessarily in details. The problem is that you are going into a forum that is limited in certain ways, and that may not, with a request such as yours, be as willing to investigate as it was in the original arbitration. If you argue tenaciously for your position, even if it is your right to do so, you will then appear tendentious and disruptive. Keep it simple. Follow the request above, and promptly. Narrow the focus. Take it away from specific editors toward the problem of the atmosphere that you face. Let the facts speak for themselves. ArbComm, at this point, is actually not the proper forum to address editor misbehavior, so ArbComm may decline to act. If you want to pursue remedies against other editors, I would think that RfC or Mediation should precede any attempt to go to ArbComm. Further, as you know, you are under civility parole. There are those who will consider any complaint from you uncivil. I just read a situation where an editor was considered "uncivil" because he had reverted one change by another editor without discussing it and obtaining consensus first, which is certainly a major extension of incivility rules. In the argument, it was said that doing this was not incivility, though it was not necessarily "nice." And the rejoinder was, "Not nice is incivility!" Yet, of course, the people asserting the incivility charge were being far from nice!

So you are in a tricky position. It's unfair. Unfortunately, "Fair" is not a policy. I'd actually like to change that, but .... easy, it is not.

My point is that the behavior of this group of editors, except in one way that I will get to, was not a subject of the ArbComm decision in your case. Given that ArbComm will not want to go through the excruciating process of developing all the evidence, etc., that would allow them to properly sanction other editors, I would expect them to not extend this case in the way you are requesting, though I could certainly be wrong. And it is possible that, now, the case will be extended in the other direction, where those editors previously failed in that.

Rather, improper editor behavior with regard to you and your contributions would be more appropriately the subject of an RfC/U, if I am correct. I have no experience with that process, and, as I think you might know, it can be grueling. But so can an arbitration. If it is at all possible, some settlement should be negotiated. I may try, but ... Jehochman has already essentially attacked me over this, which is sad. Tell, me, PHG, is there some editor, preferably an administrator, but at least a very experienced Wikipedian, whom you trust?

The one point for ArbComm to possibly reaffirm (or, I suppose, revoke) was what I've asserted all along was the thrust of the decision, reflected in its precise language. I am disturbed by the misrepresentation of the ArbComm decision in the MfD that I first found, in the previous request for clarification that they filed attempting to get the sanctions against you intensified, and now in what has been presented here.

As I read the decision, you were encouraged to continue working on articles, and only prohibited from directly editing articles on medieval history. You were encouraged to discuss articles in that field on Talk, which would really allow you to continue your work; it is as if you have been required to have your work fact-checked first, which, as I've said, isn't a bad idea for *everyone*. Instead, your work has been presented and described as if it were seriously unreliable, overall. That's not what ArbComm found. It used language indicating that a few problems were found with presentation of sources. When I looked at the evidence, I found that this, indeed, was going to be quite tedious to review in detail, but the substance was, at most, the kind of error that scholars often make in their enthusiasm for what they have found: they present information from sources interpreted according to their POV. It's an error, and good scholarship will avoid it as much as possible, but good scholars remain human. It might be useful at some point to review the exact errors which were verified by ArbComm; until then, I'm simply assuming this, because it is consistent with what I have seen and we are, in fact, required to assume good faith. Given that ArbComm affirmed this for you, it stands as a requirement for all of us, unless clearly controverted.

You have two reasonable choices here: first, withdraw the case -- or attempt to withdraw -- as not requiring action by ArbComm at this time, and attempt to resolve issues short of ArbComm. If remedies from lower levels don't work (they may well not, given what appears to be the intensity of feelings involved), then it would go back to ArbComm. Possibly as a new case.

The other choice is to edit down your presentation as requested above, make it as simple as possible, and scrupulously avoid anything like an assumption of bad faith on the part of those who have been engaged in what looked like harassment to me. Elonka may believe that what she is doing is for the good of the encyclopedia, and she is merely mistaken. (Or not, but my opinion is that she has become over-involved, she should not be the one following you around to keep you in line. Bad job for her.)

In the future, before you take any drastic action like filing with ArbComm, I'd suggest consulting with those who might support you. If you can't find such, then you should realize that your position is untenable. But if you look around, there have been those. Make sure you have their support before you go ahead, and be, as well, careful of those who will encourage you to fight and then step out of the way as you are torn to pieces. Some of those who may be opposing you now have made enemies, and those enemies, who might love to see their enemy harrassed and fighting, are not necessarily your friends.--Abd (talk) 21:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:PolakSoieEtLumieres.JPG

Thanks for uploading or contributing to Image:PolakSoieEtLumieres.JPG. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia constitutes fair use. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 06:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christian Polak

You are invited to comment on this discussion. Jehochman ^Talk 14:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AfD nomination of Christian Polak

An editor has nominated Christian Polak, an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christian Polak and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 14:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration statement

Hello.

I have removed the discussion and refactored your statement of WP:RFAR as it was much longer than permitted (500 words). I believe I've left the substance of your arguments intact; but feel free to correct it if I've made errors.

Do not make your statement any longer. It is currently already slightly over the limit, and you have been previously warned about its length. — Coren ^(talk) for the Arbitration Committee 14:22, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re User Page

Hi FayssalF. You seem to be arguing on Arbcom for my User Subpages to be included in my restrictions from editing Ancient History or Medieval History articles. Please note that I manage vast quantities of images from museums around the world (such as User:PHG/Metropolitan Museum of Art), which indeed could be interpretated as "related to ancient history". I have however been "encouraged" by the commity to keep contributing such images, as well as material for Talk page discussions and suggestions, and User Subpages are an essential means of achieving this. Could you kindly reconsider? Regards; PHG (talk) 17:12, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is something which happens most of the time here -every side of the debate interprets policies the way they see it fit for their arguments. This natural process can be both harmful and beneficial to the project. Well, while I personally don't see any problem in people interpreting policies, as that is part of consensus building and discussions to improve articles -depending in which context one puts it, I consider strict and stubborn interpretations of policies as disruptive and unproductive.

This is how I see it. You haven't violated anything when you created a 19th century's article while being restricted from editing ancient and medieval history articles. But there was no doubt that you used very weak and unknown references. Remember that the arbitration case concerned the use of references. You already know how I take the issue of reliability of references to heart.

I don't have to reconsider but probably to clarify instead. You've got excellent images on that particular subpage and I see no single reason to delete it at all under the provision that they should not be used to advance POVs based on questionable sources. If I am interpreting policy in a strict manner I'd ask you to delete the subpage. However, of course not assuming bad faith, I'd like to be assured of the verifiability of the description of the images. In the abscence of the contrary, I would like to see the subpage being kept as I consider it a place where you can organize and work on them. Any violations of the above terms would lead to the deletion of the subpage while keeping the images on Commons. I congratulate you and thank you for your images' work.

Which talk page material and suggestions you are referring to? Could you please provide me with some diffs of the community's support? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 18:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fayssal, at risk of answering too light-heartedly, and recognizing your listening ear on this case, he means this significant diff, and probably also the diff of the edit I'm making now. John J. Bulten (talk) 21:22, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bajaur casket

PHG, you need to insert a real citation from the "Metropolitan notice". The casket seems to really exist according to some papers[40][41] but I can't find any photography of the object except your photo. Your credibility on photography is challenged by Durova and maybe she is right unless you don't provide "exact source" for this picture.

P.S, you can't edit the article per your probation under Arbicom, so just give your reference here. --Appletrees (talk) 13:17, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

thumb|Casket notice at the MET I am delighted to help. Please find hereafter the Metropolitan Museum of Art notice to the casket in the article. You will notice that the environment of the two photographs is different, but that's because the casket had been removed to a separate exhibition (in another room) when I visited. You will also notice however that there is only 4 minutes between the two photographs (time to move from one room to the other). Hope you like it. PS: I uploaded under Fair Use, hope this will do. Please help if there's a better solution. Cheers. PHG (talk) 19:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Itty bitty font

Hey, I had the same problem with the text but I held down ctrl and scrolled the mouse (which makes the text bigger in most browsers) until I could finally read the thing; not sure if you know about that trick, so I thought I'd pass it along. I can't imagine why they would have archived their newletters in such an unreadable format. Shell ^babelfish 17:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Papal bull

PHG, I have read the papal bull issue carefully, so I have the background, but I am wondering about it. It seems that you (of course mistakenly) first posted text from Dei patris immensa (1245-03-05) as if it were from Viam agnoscere veritatis (1248). My questions are: (1) Did the original source known as the "German dissertation" give any name for the 1245 letter it quoted? (2) What actually led you to believe the 1245 letter was the 1248 letter? (3) Can you understand that, since you and perhaps other editors confused the two letters, someone might jump to the conclusion that the two names authoritatively given to the two letters might also be confused? That's really the whole knee-jerk reason for the controversial disambiguation right now. If you are able to understand the concerns that other editors might have, it might lead them to see your concern that neither 1245 letter has never (apparently) been authoritatively named Viam agnoscere veritatis like the 1248 letter. It appears clear that you have no other evidence for their proposition than your own error and any documentation that might have led you to it, and they have not presented any other evidence for it, so there may be hope yet. Let me know here please.

I definitely understand the messes that poor communication about disambiguation can get you into. One day "moneybomb" redirected from here to here; compare that article to the current moneybomb article. Note two different redirection methods between these two edits.

I understand the ArbCom remedies, but I believe that there is no problem with you answering, as this is your talk page and there is no risk of any tendentiousness resulting from your answer to me. Thank you. John J. Bulten (talk) 21:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked.

Hello PHG.

It would appear that you are again introducing deliberately false or inaccurate information into articles despite repeated admonitions (and a topic ban from the Arbitration Committee).

This is extremely destructive to the encyclopedia, and appears to be a recurrent pattern of behavior, so I have blocked you until, at the least, arrangements can be made to find a mentor for you that will be able to guide your editing back to a level that is acceptable to the community. Patience is wearing very thin about your behavior, and I would recommend you take (and don't squander) this last olive branch seriously. — Coren ^(talk) 21:31, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Coren, I have nothing against you, but this block is ridiculous, as I will demonstrate within minutes. John J. Bulten (talk) 23:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I saw the whole thing here. PHG made a simple error about this medal. Because PHG had been pressured by an AFD made only 7 hours after article creation, he (and I and others) decided to scramble for sources which we believed would prove notability. Among them was a Japanese source stating Polak had won a "Chevalier" medal. It is a natural mistake for PHG to suppose that the intended medal was the Légion d'honneur, which has a "Chevalier" class. When others questioned this like Jehochman (also the AFD nominator, also in the recent ArbCom case which got PHG restricted), PHG very rapidly acknowledged the correct citation, the lesser Ordre national du Mérite. Using an official French source, he also noted that after obtaining the "Chevalier" class Polak received the next class, "Officier". He did this very graciously, I think. User:Appletrees has also protested the block at that link.

I have not yet reviewed the claims that PHG's new second source for the Chevalier medal has been impeached by another "official" source, but as it stands there's certainly enough to prove good faith in the initial medal confusion and the prompt correction. If another correction is necessary I'm sure PHG is up to it. The difficulty sourcing arises not from bad faith or POV pushing but the pressure PHG has faced from having his every step community-peer-reviewed in what is probably not his native language. Simple errors are to be expected.

Also, PHG is not under a topic ban pertaining to this topic (unless you subscribe to the extremist class that has argued that since Polak occasionally mentions the 16th century, he is related to medieval history which presumably extends into the 16th century-- that argument was rejected by consensus). Nor has PHG deliberately inserted false or misleading information, as I demonstrate. In fact, PHG has specifically requested remedy from ArbCom for people making false statements about his topic ban and for charging him with deliberate bad behavior.

By the way, I was the editor who mistakenly inserted into the article about M. Christian P. Polak, the French aeroscience businessman, one sentence that described instead M. Christian C. Polak, the French energy businessman. I hope you understand. I did not advocate for its retention when Slp1 made me swiftly aware of its doubtfulness, and I applauded Slp1 for telling me once the facts and my error were clear. Do I get indef block too?

I trust you too, like PHG and I, are able to admit error on occasion. John J. Bulten (talk) 23:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unless there are objections, I am lifting this block in a little while. Proposals for mentorship are all well and good, but there is no compelling reason to have this user blocked in the interim. Not if the claim that gaming has taken place in this instance remain uncertain (i.e. the AfD is still open). El_C 23:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Go ahead. I do not think this situation can be resolved with blocks. Mentorship might be a good option, if PHG agrees, and if a mentor can be found. Jehochman ^Talk 23:39, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

El C, thanks!

All, I will take Slp1's word for it that the info is now correct in the article (though the less favorable source is still used and I will not be taking time to improve it just now) and leave it there. Again, I have nothing against Coren, and this is probably all just a poetic providence, which I hope Coren will find as poetic as the facts that the block still needs logging on the ArbCom page, and that the block occurred only 9 minutes after this edit. French time zone perhaps? John J. Bulten (talk) 00:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to log the block yet if only because it has not yet been established by consensus that it should stick. See my comments on the AE thread for details. — Coren ^(talk) 00:49, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by PHG

Dear all, thank you for your kind support on this. I'm just waking up (Paris time). I do read and write Japanese quite fluently (I spent quite a few years there), and I basically never use a translation tool such as Google for Japanese. Unfortunately, I am not an expert of the Japanese names for French medals though. When I saw the information I did think that 国家功労賞 was Japanese for "Legion d'honneur". I asked a Japanese national (who speaks fluent French), who could not give me the French name for 国家功労賞 either. The Japanese site used for the source is an online publishing house [42], which should be fair enough as a source. A few hours later and some Googling, I realized 国家功労賞 was Ordre National du Merite. I was wrong with the denomination of the medal, so I corrected it right away ("Ahhh, 国家功労賞 seems to be Ordre national du Mérite. シュバリエ is Chevalier (the first rank), オフィシエ is Officier (Officer, the second rank). Would somebody have access to the list of recipients of the Ordre national du Mérite? PHG (talk) 20:00, 4 April 2008 (UTC)" [43]). By the way, the information from the Japanese site was confirmed by French official sites [44]. Sorry for the mistake, but sometimes Japanese/French/English translations can be tricky, although I think I would rank as quite good at it. Best regards to all. PHG (talk) 04:44, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I undid your edits, both to the AE report and to the AfD talk page, because you duplicated the same comment there as the one directly above. Please, either write an original comment or just link to this one. Duplicating comments (especially somewhat lengthy ones) across pages is a problematic practice. Many thanks in advance for your attention and cooperation. El_C 05:02, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I linked to this page accordingly. PHG (talk) 05:17, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I recognize that my feedback is not particularly convincing to you. Please consider finding a guide, another experienced editor, to check your sourcing and provide trustworthy feedback. Believe me, I would much rather see you editing successfully. Jehochman ^Talk 05:32, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unacceptable use of nonfree images

I would suggest you have a close look at the nonfree image use restrictions, as you are widely violating them. For example, it is not acceptable to use a DVD cover in a general article about a war, just because the movie also happens to be about the war, as you did in Boshin War, especially when the article is already stuffed full of free imagery. Nonfree images are not allowed when they are nonessential or replaceable by a free image. Similarly, it is never acceptable to use nonfree images in non-article space, such as article or user talk pages, as you did with Image:METCasketNotice.JPG. Nor, generally, would images like that ever be acceptable at all, since the image is only of text, and the text can simply be cited as a source rather than depicted. Having the photo is certainly not critical to understanding, another requirement. If you wish to call attention to a nonfree image on a discussion page or link to it, you may do so by placing a colon (:) before the image's title, as I have done in this message. This will cause a wikilink to the image to appear rather than the image itself; this practice is acceptable. Accordingly, I have orphaned the above-mentioned casket inscription, as well as Image:GoryokakuVideo.jpg, and tagged them accordingly for deletion. Please carefully review the nonfree content policies before uploading any more nonfree images. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have also tagged several other of your image uploads for deletion. I'm going to presume that you are simply not familiar with the nonfree image policy and are not trying to make a point after your ArbCom case, but the practice of uploading nonessential nonfree images as "sources" needs to stop at once. Now that you've been warned, that consideration will not be extended a second time. Rather than spam you with a notice each time an image you uploaded is tagged, I'm notifying you here, and will provide a full list of images so tagged upon your request. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:36, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Seraphimblade. No problem really. I think I am going to stop uploading fair use images, as it is so much of a hassle anyway. Best regards. PHG (talk) 19:07, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned non-free media (Image:PallavaCoins.jpg)

Thanks for uploading Image:PallavaCoins.jpg. 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 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).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 12:15, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned non-free media (Image:AgatokleiaG.jpg)

Thanks for uploading Image:AgatokleiaG.jpg. 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 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).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 12:27, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image:AnnalsOfHisTime.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:AnnalsOfHisTime.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Ptcamn (talk) 11:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked

You have been blocked 1 week for arbcom restriction violations and are strongly encouraged to accept a mentor. See [45]. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked for a mentor here. I'm also asking Shell Kinney directly. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:24, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am uncertain on how you feel about my offering given my previous block, but I'd be willing to give you a guiding hand if you'll accept it. — Coren ^(talk) 02:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Like Coren I'm uncertain if you would accept my help given my involvement in the ArbCom case, by I'd like to extend an offer as well. Since I speak and read quite a few languages, I would also be willing to help confirm translations in the case that you don't feel I would be an acceptable mentor. Shell ^babelfish 03:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by PHG

I was away for business for a few days, and now find that I am again being blocked. The reasons given are again quite slim [46]:

Qualifying critics of the Franco-Mongol alliance as "seemingly Midwest Christians" in a personal post to User:Appletrees. This is taking things out of context (a discussion about the possible reactions of Korean Christians, as already explained by User:Appletrees [47]), but I already apologized several times and did strike my comments in case anybody felt offended.
Sourcing and accuracy issues with Louis XIV of France??? This is I guess a reference to a sentence about Louis XIV's Chinese librarian Arcadio Huang, but there is already full referencing about that in the Arcadio Huang article (which I created a day before). Normally, if you wish a reference you just put a {{cn}} tag, but you do not block a user for 1 week.
Issues at Talk:Christian_Polak#Phillipe_Pons_and_Le_Monde:_Needs_to_be_Verified ?? It has been made clear that some other well-meaning user had modified my quote of the source, so that its meaning was changed: it has been clearly shown that my personal edit on the subject was totally straightforward.
Talk:Christian_Polak#Latest_edits? I simply added references given by another user (User:Slp1) who had done some research on the subject. When she pointed out this should not be done, I removed the references, and waited until she mailed them to me, to reinsert them properly.
Regarding [48] I believe any doubts have been cleared, and that the article stands strong and well-documented.

This essentially represents proper editorial work and discussions. I am asking for this 1 week block to be removed as the reasons given fail to justify such a penalty. Best regards to all. PHG (talk) 18:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Per Honor et Gloria (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

Reasons given do not justify 1 week block (see my preceding post).

Decline reason:

Block is within the parameters set by the Franco-Mongol alliance ArbCom decision. PHG needs to listen to community input from this talk page and on WP:AE, and take responsibility for his actions. Accepting a mentor has been highly recommended by virtually everyone commenting on this situation. Dreadstar † 20:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

PHG, I would like to see you unblocked, but first, would you be willing to accept either of the above offers of mentorship. Two editors have volunteered to help you overcome past problems. Would you accept their help? Jehochman ^Talk 18:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG is intelligent enough to be editing highly academic topics; he can understand what's on the table. He refuses to acknowledge that he created any problems in the first place and refuses to acknowledge the offers of mentorship. I'll be pleasantly surprised if he changes his mind, but the ball's in his court. We've done our best. Durova^Charge! 18:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe it to be quite a proper procedure to effectively blackmail me into "accepting mentorship" by using a block against me. If Arbcom so decides, I will take a mentor, but it is illegitimate for a few isolated users to abuse Administrator powers to force me into accepting one. I am formally requesting this block to be lifted. PHG (talk) 19:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With that as a response, I seriously doubt a mentorship would work. We'd all like to find a workable solution, but if it has to be your way or the highway the onramp is right here. Durova^Charge! 19:47, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will refrain from handling this unblock request, as my prior involvement as an administrator, with a previous violation on PHG's part of arbcom restrictions would suggest to me that it would be imprudent to do so. However, I do wish to note: I am very firmly in opposition to PHG being unblocked at this moment in time. This editor has shown himself to repeatedly be unwilling to abide by Wikipedia policy, through

His consistent incivility (one example)
Disregard for the project and the Wikimedia Foundation's licensing policy ([49] essentially was a comment by PHG, indicating that in the past, he has broken the image copyrights policy, and that in the future, he will continue to do so, but take measures to ensure those violations are harder to identify),
His disregard to empathise with others' points of view (e.g., by refusing to accept a mentor)
His gaming of the system, as seen in his creation of history articles that were technically not covered by the AC restrictions, but were flagrantly against the spirit of that policy.

PHG is very much a negative influence on this project, and this block should remain in place for its full course, to minimise the disruption Wikipedia has to endure. It is regretable to say, that I am actively endorsing a lengthy block on an established contributor; I do hope that this marks the gravity of PHG's disruption to date.

Until such times as the current request for amendment in prior cases (#thread in question) is processed by the Committee, and the proposed measures to prevent his disruption are implemented (as I hope they are), unblocking PHG is very much a bad move, and I strongly suggest that such an unblock is not undertaken. Anthøny 21:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Anthony.

I strongly deny that precisely following Arbcom restricitions is "Gaming the system": quite the contrary. I have been editing articles outside of my restrictions from "Ancient history" and "Medieval history": following these rules precisely is not gaming, it is simply abiding by them.
I strongly deny your claims of "incivility". My responses have always been quite mild under high pressure and relentless attacks.
I strongly deny your suggestion that I would intend to break Wikipedia copyright policies. For several years I made quite a few drawings, spending a lot of my personal time, without knowing that they could create an issue for being derivative work, and without this risk being mentioned by anybody. When Durova raised the issue, I totally accepted that they should be deleted, once I did understand the rules. Following that, it was discussed with others that drawings to be OK should be made in a way that does not follow the original. This was just a suggestion by regular and knowledgeable users about ways to handle drawings of archaeological artifacts on Wikipedia.
I am entitled to believing that my handling of sources is proper, I have a lot of real-life and educational experience, and it is why I will not take a mentor spontaneously, or forced by a few on this page. As I already said, if Arbcom decides I should have one, I will follow the decision, but I consider only Arbcom can force such a thing, and I think it my right to do so. Best regards. PHG (talk) 20:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I too am opposed to an unblock. However, if for some reason PHG is unblocked and is assigned a mentor (assuming that he accepts one), I would request that a further restriction be placed on PHG that he not be allowed to create any new articles until the old ones are cleaned up.

Since as early as 2004, PHG has been creating new articles at a rapid rate. Now, it is true that in many cases the articles have naturally worked their way into the Wikipedia community review process and already received attention and editing from other editors to further strengthen them. However, many other of PHG's articles appear to have been created in infrequently-visited areas of Wikipedia, and have not received any other substantial attention. Based on my own spot-checking, a number of those articles have errors and bias, and some have no sources whatsoever. This problem has been compounded by the way that PHG has "reinforced" many of the articles by linking to them from other established articles, putting in biased information, but again with no sources. PHG has also often inserted maps (created by PHG) into the articles. Many of these maps have drawn criticism for bias (example), and again, I would like to see previous creations reviewed, before PHG be allowed to continue with creation of new maps.

On the subject of the Franco-Mongol alliance, we have compiled a List of articles affected by PHG, but it is taking several editor months of time to handle cleanup. Many of us have other things that we would rather be doing on Wikipedia, than spending hours cleaning up after PHG. Better, would be if PHG could go back and clean up his own work.

To reduce the workload on other editors, I would like to see every single one of PHG's articles revisited. If the article doesn't have sources, PHG should be required to list his sources on that article's talkpage. Every single one of his unreviewed articles should also get at least a spotcheck review by an uninvolved editor who has access to at least one of the sources, to verify that the article accurately reflects what is in those sources. Or at a very minimum, a template such as {{citecheck}} or {{unref}} should be placed on each of these articles, with a note on the talkpage which links to the ArbCom case and explains the need for review.

After PHG and his mentor have assisted with cleanup of all of his previous work, then and only then should he be allowed to continue with creation of new articles. --El on ka 00:03, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese Red seal trade in the early 17th century. Ref: "Histoire du Japon", p. 72, Michel Vie, ISBN 2130528937

This is pure Elonka at her nicest again, endlessly showering accusations and threats at an enthousiastic and well-meaning user (me :), who has actually been encouraged by the Arbcom to contribute more material outside of his restrictions and whose good faith has been reasserted by the same. Just look at some of my newest articles: Sabatino de Ursis, Arcadio Huang, France-Japan relations (19th century), Battle of Palikao, François de Casembroot, Tokugawa Akitake, Guillaume Courtet, Gustave Duchesne de Bellecourt: great, highly referenced stuff about cultural interaction through the ages. I also recently created a great (and referenced!) map of Red seal ships trade (attached). I don't know if it is misunterdanding of world history and cultures, or intellectual bias that can lead one to deny the value of such contributions, which have all been done with the highest respect for Arbcom's decisions. Such endless and meaningless accusations have to stop: they are highly damaging to Wikipedia's ambition as a universal, multi-national and multi-cultural tool of knowledge. Best regards to all. PHG (talk) 20:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, regardless of whether or not you feel that I have a point, other editors here have also presented their concerns. Do you have any reply to their questions? --El on ka 20:22, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done above (response to Anthony especially). PHG (talk) 18:48, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not so, PHG. Twice I've raised objections to your allegations of bigotry and you've never replied. And if you ever accepted that your copyright violations should be deleted, please show me the diff. As I recall, you fought tooth and nail for weeks about that and had to be blocked on Commons for three days, and insinuated I was both incompetent and a shill of Elonka. Durova^Charge! 19:06, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not so, Durova. I never ever accused anybody of "bigotry". Could stop such misrepresentation and explain what you are talking about? PHG (talk) 19:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course Durova I did defend hundred hours of work, but once I understood that it had to go I graciously accepted. Here is the diff: [50]. And I never ever said that you were "incompetent" or that you were a "shill". Again misrepresentations. PHG (talk) 19:14, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, if you somehow missed both of my complaints about this post then it's hard to understand how you missed Anthony's link to it on this thread. And the diff you call gracious is actually a declaration of intent to place the Wikimedia Foundation at risk for a copyright infringement lawsuit through further violations. The rest isn't even worth a reply; I'm very disappointed in you. Durova^Charge! 19:24, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Durova, I do believe that Hollywood movies can have a pernicious effect on some people's understanding of history, in short a highly manichean and simplified perception of the world. I can garantee you that this has nothing with a personal attack on yourself, but more a reference to the apparent perceptions of some users in respect to the Mongols. As to the rest, you are systematically putting in my mouth words I never uttured ("bigotry", "incompetent", "shill"): this is quite an ugly behaviour, and since I know you will never apologize, I simply urge you to refrain from such untruths and misrepresentations. Cheers. PHG (talk) 19:35, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

These are paraphrasings, which I hope your further conduct never raises the need to substantiate with additional diffs. I certainly can, and your extraordinary reply relieves me of any misgivings I might have felt about doing so. You have already received more chances to reform than most of this site's problematic editors get. Now you insinuate that I'm a simpleton who cannot distinguish between fiction and history and you suppose I owe you an apology? I don't think so. Durova^Charge! 19:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No Durova. You are accusing me of saying words I never said: this is simply misrepresenting things and telling untruths. Neither do I imply that you are a "simpleton" when I say that Hollywood movies are manichean. And I would appreciate if you could stop building fantasist and slanderous accusations against me [51]. I also notice you've recently been blamed by the Arbitration Commity for undue harassment, and seem to be a very close friend of User:Jehochman, which doesn't surprise me (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova). Cheers. PHG (talk) 20:00, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Motion

I made the following motion and wanted to let you know in case that you do not have the page on your watchlist. The Committee is voting on it and if it passes then it will be announced on your talk page. FloNight ♥♥♥ 23:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed motions and voting

PHG is required to provide a means for the Community to verify his sources. For the next year:

PHG is required to use sources that are in English and widely available.

and/or

PHG is required to use a mentor to assist with sourcing the articles that he edits. The mentors selected must be approved by the Arbitration Committee.

Could someone kindly provide a link to where this motion has been introduced? Thanks PHG (talk) 19:20, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure (now added the link to my first post). Apology for not adding it from the start, I thought that I did. FloNight ♥♥♥ 12:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi FloNight. Please note that I am fluent in French (native), and near-fluent in Japanese, and many topics I write on have a lot of sources in these two languages. I don't think it is reasonable for a universal encyclopedia to only accept English-language sources, when research in other languages can be so rich, and when there are so many contributors around who can check other languages (such as French and Japanese) easily. Just look at an article such as Arcadio Huang, the Chinese librarian of Louis XIV, or France-Japan relations (19th century), in which it is most appropriate to mix sources from various languages. Only accepting English sources on Wikipedia sounds like an act of cultural xenophobia, and is actually very damaging to Wikipedia's ambition to be a universal tool and "the sum of all knowledge". Just a personal opinion. Cheers. PHG (talk) 19:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My dear PHG, there are Wikipedias in French, Japanese and many other languages. The problem could not possibly be xenophobia. When told many times that your sourcing methodology is cause for concern, you evade that issue and cast aspersions at other editors, as you have done right here to none other than Wikipedia's incarnation of Florence Nightingale. Jehochman ^Talk 20:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My dear Jehochman. Could you imagine the French Wikipedia only accepting French sources and rejecting English-language ones? Or the Japanese Wikipedia only accepting Japanese sources? That would be downright ridiculous and completely counter-productive. And it is just as ridiculous for the English-language Wikipedia to ask that a user only uses English-language sources. Knowledge knows no boundaries. There are plenty remarkable sources in other languages that deserve referencing on the English Wikipedia, plenty of users who have the language capability to read and check them; there are even Google translators that can help you check content. Knowledge is not limited to a specific language, and there's no way it should be. How about some openness and multi-cultural thinking here? Cheers. PHG (talk) 21:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, please understand that this is not a move away from international openness. The remedy applies only to your editing; the requirement to stick with widely available English sources is designed to allow more editors to review your sources due to your ongoing problems. Also, you have the option of choosing a mentor instead and assuming you chose someone who could speak the language of the sources you wish to use, you could then use those sources as well. I can't speak for the Arbitrators, but that's my understanding of the remedies proposed. Shell ^babelfish 21:45, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG: you make some very good points about the use of reliable sources in languages other than English here on Wikipedia. We are in complete agreement about the value and frequent necessity of such sources. Unfortunately, you are once again not hearing what others have said about your use of sources in languages other than English. The problem rests with how you have used such sources. Please do not misrepresent the reasons for the proposed motions. Aramgar (talk) 22:03, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the precise meaning of the rather "legalistic" and/or, and as long as it appears as an alternative (either I use English sources, or I can work with the garantee of a mentor for non-English ones, or do both as an option), I guess it can make sense for the sake of verifiability without damaging referencing from non-English sources. I believe, and it has been recognized by Arbcom, that I have always used non-English sources in good faith (just as English ones) but I wouldn't mind somebody's help in their interpretation. If this is the crux of the issue, I think my restrictions from editing Ancient History and Medieval History articles should be lifted accordingly. PHG (talk) 05:47, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, PHG, I intended it to be an option for you to choose to use either (1) Widely available sources written in English or the option of using (2) Either (a) non-English sources or (b) English language sources that are not easily available with the assistance of another editor/mentor. Thank you for seeing the benefit of having a second or third opinion of another editor. Personally, the quality of my work usually improves when I collaborate with other users. I think most editors find this to be true. Hopefully, you will not find this to be a burden but a benefit in the long run. Take care, FloNight ♥♥♥ 14:53, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned non-free media (Image:AnnalsOfHisTime.jpg)

Thanks for uploading Image:AnnalsOfHisTime.jpg. 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 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).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. NotifyBot (talk) 13:35, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DYK

On 18 April, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Arcadio Huang, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Bobet 11:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DYK

On 18 April, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Sabatino de Ursis, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Cirt (talk) 18:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RFCU

Hi PHG, I'm just dropping you a note to let you know I've filed an RFCU on you here. Kafka Liz (talk) 15:11, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kafka Liz. I have absolutely nothing to do with the edits of User:86.207.128.215 (your suggestion), nor User:Vpopescu (Elonka's suggestion). And I don't think I've ever used another account to evade a block (by the way, I don't have any other registered account). Cheers PHG (talk) 09:23, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:Thatcher just confirmed here that User:Vpopescu has nothing to do with me (Elonka's accusations proving false again), and that User:86.207.128.215 is not one of my IPs. I can only reaffirm that I have nothing to do with the edits of User:86.207.128.215. The account seems French, but it is not mine, and I had no knowledge of it until Kafka Liz's accusations. Please note that one of the edits of that anonymous user (time 21:38: [52]) was almost simultaneous with mine (PHG, time 21:37 [53]), although that anonymous user works with a different provider and in a different location (Wanadoo in Bayonne [54]), about 500 miles from Paris where I live and made the 21:37 edit. Cheers. PHG (talk) 12:36, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll leave your statement to the RFCU file on you in order to to notify the checkuser Thatcher of this. And done.[55] --Appletrees (talk) 13:26, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Appletrees! I truely appreciate. PHG (talk) 13:37, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. Honestly, I knew you would be accused of using sockpuppetry by these people after the appearance of the anon user with a French ISP. So I checked to see if the ip is an open Proxy, in turn which is not. However, Kafka Liz've got your IP address info and known you and the other did not edit with same ISP in one location almost at the same time, so his/her bad faith on this bothered me a bit. --Appletrees (talk) 13:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is no bad faith here, Appletrees. Regrettably, PHG has utterly ignored previous feedback about editing problems. Consequently, you have no basis to fault editors who choose to discount PHG's denials. Reputation matters. Jehochman ^Talk 15:51, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reputation matter can not prove PHG's alleged sockpuppetry. Only convincing evidences are mattered at this time whcih you know too well per your long-time experience in the field. I appreciate your previous help to me but already saw your bad-faith report at the AFD on Polak and your relation with Durova Gate incident even surprise me more. PHG has problems in editing. Yes, I acknowledge that he tend to overjoy whenever he finds something advantageous for his claim without carefully looking into citations. However, the sockpuppetry accusation is really ridiculous.--Appletrees (talk) 16:23, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The results for User:86.207.128.215 was

Possible. I recommend filing WP:SSP so the matter can be decided by analyzing the behavior of the two accounts. Jehochman ^Talk 13:51, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, still Thatcher has not answered for the latest request yet.--Appletrees (talk) 13:54, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's crazy I now have to defend myself for edits I never even made. Could anybody actually look at the nature of the reference that has been repeatedly added by the Bayonne [56] anon contributor User:86.207.128.215?:
"* Bernard, Hervé. L'ingénieur général du Génie maritime Louis, Emile Bertin (1840-1924) créateur de la marine militaire du Japon à l'époque de Meiji Tenno (en quadrichromie 84 pages, autoédition 2007, imprimerie Biarritz) (in French)."
This is self-published material ("autoédition") printed by a printer in Biarritz (a city, guess what... near Bayonne, where the IP address is located). This is basically self-promotion by someone from southern France (maybe Hervé Bernard himself, or a relative or a local fan). Finally, I really don't think it is credible to claim that someone contributing in Paris could have at the same minute a Wanadoo IP adress in Bayonne, a small provincial city 500 miles away.
Please note that User:86.207.128.215 has also been adding similar references on the French Wikipedia, under the same IP address [57]. He also made similar edits last year to Japan-related articles under the IP address User:86.207.198.49 [58], with again several edits regarding local celebrities in Biarritz. Cheers PHG (talk) 14:51, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added every time stamps of you and the french anon from English and French Wikipedia. [59] 58 second gap can prove your sockpuppetry? Nope. --Appletrees (talk) 16:23, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Appletrees, the basic situation here is that certain facts raise a reasonable suspicion of connection between PHG and the other account and IP edits, most notably the content. As noted in the RF/CU report, checkuser is not a crystal ball. There are techniques which could be used to make it appear that accounts are unrelated, so even an "unrelated" checkuser result could have been a result of detection evasion, as was explained. The environment that PHG faces currently is fairly toxic; the level of connection asserted here would not normally raise an eyebrow, but there is intense scrutiny of PHG's edits, and small problems (or even merely alleged problems, not real) can result in substantial effort against him. To you, I suggest WP:AGF on all sides. I know it's difficult, sometimes. To PHG, I urge patience, truth will out. PHG is a researcher and writer, and Wikipedia has been, in my view, unkind to writers. Writers almost always need editors; usually the only self-edited writers are also self-published, and we all know about that. Sane publishers don't fire writers because they fail to source something in English, or because they misinterpret a source. That's what editors and fact-checkers are for. There is an ancient war between editors and writers, and we see it played out here. Normally publishers mediate these battles, but .... there is no publisher here, except for one who usually stays completely out of these disputes.

I have my own theory of why the IP edits would seem similar to PHG"s work. They are, quite possibly, derived from PHG's work, by another editor, perhaps together with other research. This is not meat puppetry if the other editor takes responsibility for the edits, and it is entirely possible, even likely, that PHG knows nothing about this other editor. PHG's work is quite visible, and the fuss over it, and the insistence on English-language sources, may have attracted someone else, perhaps French -- consistent with the IP -- who doesn't consider that this restriction applies to him or her. Essentially, sock-puppetry, from the evidence seen so far, is a very thin charge leveled at PHG, and this level of evidence would not normally result in an RF/CU. Those tracking PHG, though, may have hoped that the checkuser would uncover some smoking gun, thus saving them, from their own point of view, lots of trouble. It's an unfortunate situation. --Abd (talk) 21:07, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thatcher has kindly concluded [60] that "those edits do not appear to have been made from PHG's usual method of connecting to the internet, and [he] can probably rule out that he used the simple strategy of resetting his modem in between edits." Let me point out that it also seems impossible to reset a computer from my PHG IP to the anon IP back and forth several times: from the little I know several resets would have to either give identical or randomly different IP adresses [61]. Thatcher said however that he "can not rule out the possibility that these edits were made by some unknown technical means, or were coordinated with a friend.". I can only say that "unknown technical means" is not a possibility for me, as I'm not an Internet maverick. And I don't think I would resort to such extraordinary means to just insert three references about a self-published historian from Biarritz [62]. As for the "friend" option, well, no, I just don't know about User:86.207.128.215. Finally, let me remind that I usually operate from an ISP located in Paris, whereas User:86.207.128.215 operates at the same time from an ISP located in Bayonne [63], a small city on the frontier with Spain, 500 miles away, interestingly the same urban area from where the self-published historian in question (a certain Hervé Bernard) happens to be publishing his work (in Biarritz) [64]. PHG (talk) 01:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that I will be away for the next two-three days without means of connecting to the Internet. Cheers. PHG (talk) 01:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have a good trip. While gone, you may wish to give some thought to who you would like to accept (or invite, with ArbCom approval) as a mentor. --El on ka 01:51, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusion

If anybody is still interested, I was cruising at 25,000 feet onboard a long-distance flight when User:86.207.128.215 made his edits on the French Wikipedia on April 19th [65]. I have a boarding pass and a Customs stamp available should a Sysop wish to investigate, and my current IP address would also confirm my current location :). I thus consider myself fully cleared of the accusations that have been made here. As a conclusion, I would appreciate if several contributors would refrain from their systematic attacks and assume good faith in my actions, a stance clearly affirmed by the Arbitration Commity, which also actually encouraged me to continue with contributions outside of my restrictions. Please kindly follow the Arbcom stance instead of using its ruling as an excuse to corner me and try to block me for any possible reason. Cheers. PHG (talk) 11:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DYK

On 19 April, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Battle of Palikao, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Cirt (talk) 19:50, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

John Cabot

Here's a nice painting of John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) in Venetian garb (sourced from "Historic Maritime maps" by Donald Wigal, p.58). Could someone kindly insert the painting in the article dedicated to him? Thanks. PHG (talk) 13:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And to think it didn't have an image before now. Thanks. Srnec (talk) 02:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unspecified source for Image:AshokaMap.gif

Thanks for uploading Image:AshokaMap.gif. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, then you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 14:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Kelly ^hi! 14:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The map was created by me in 2004. I added the information together with the image file. PHG (talk) 03:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unspecified source for Image:AurelSteinWithDog.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AurelSteinWithDog.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, then you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 15:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Kelly ^hi! 15:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHG, suggest you change this tag to PD-US. Durova^Charge! 05:08, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I updated the file. PHG (talk) 05:22, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

History of Buddhism review

History of Buddhism has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Marskell (talk) 12:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbcom clarification passed

The arbcom passed a clarification affecting you. The ruling is here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Franco-Mongol_alliance#PHG_is_required_to_provide_a_means_for_the_Community_to_verify_his_sources. and the whole thread is on the talk page thereof. You may choose either or both options. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:28, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mentor

Regarding Coren, I sent a post to the rest of the Committee so we're all on the same page. I'll get back with you soon to let you know. FloNight ♥♥♥ 11:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There were no objections to Coren being your mentor. I'll leave a post on his talk page, as well. FloNight ♥♥♥ 14:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, PHG, I was away for the weekend. Give me a day to catch up then I'm all yours. — Coren ^(talk) 12:44, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

China

Hello, PHG

You might be interested in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Christianity in China work group that recently formed. Your knowledge of the Jesuit history would be helpful. Just wanted to send a friendly invite to get more folks involved. Thanks.Brian0324 (talk) 14:36, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:Sapalbizes.jpg

Thanks for uploading or contributing to Image:Sapalbizes.jpg. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia constitutes fair use. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. (ESkog)^(Talk) 18:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

5/7 DYK

On 7 May, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Jean-Baptiste Cécille, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Bedford 18:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image copyright problem with Image:AgathoclesSquareCoin.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AgathoclesSquareCoin.jpg. You've indicated that the image is being used under a claim of fair use, but you have not provided an adequate explanation for why it meets Wikipedia's requirements for such images. In particular, for each page the image is used on, the image must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Can you please check

That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's escription page for each article the image is used in.
That every article it is used on is linked to from its description page.

The following images also have this problem:

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --23:39, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Philippe Couplet

On 9 May, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Philippe Couplet, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--BorgQueen (talk) 02:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Guy Tachard

On 9 May, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Guy Tachard, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--BorgQueen (talk) 10:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

5/9 DYK

On 9 May, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Bedford 16:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:AgathoclesNickel.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AgathoclesNickel.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 16:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:AgathoclesSquareCoin.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AgathoclesSquareCoin.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 16:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:AgathokleiaBenediction.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AgathokleiaBenediction.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 16:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kosa Pan, France-Thailand relations

On 21 May, 2008, Did you know? was updated with facts from the articles Kosa Pan, and France-Thailand relations, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--BorgQueen (talk) 05:06, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:Antialkidas.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Antialkidas.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 05:24, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:AntimachosElephant.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AntimachosElephant.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 05:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:ApollodotosShiva.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:ApollodotosShiva.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 06:09, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:ApollodotusBuddhism.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:ApollodotusBuddhism.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 06:09, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:ApollodotusII4J.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:ApollodotusII4J.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 06:09, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Replaceable fair use Image:Euthydemus Theou.jpg

Replaceable fair use

Thanks for uploading Image:Euthydemus Theou.jpg. I noticed the description page specifies that the media is being used under a claim of fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first non-free content criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed media could reasonably be found or created that provides substantially the same information. If you believe this media is not replaceable, please:

Go to the media description page and edit it to add {{di-replaceable fair use disputed}}, without deleting the original replaceable fair use template.
On the image discussion page, write the reason why this image is not replaceable at all.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace this non-free media by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by taking a picture of it yourself.

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these images fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if uploaded before 13 July 2006), per our non-free content policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:17, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Ashokavadana.jpg}

Thank you for uploading Image:Ashokavadana.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale provided for using this image under "fair use" may not meet the criteria required by Wikipedia:Non-free content. This can be corrected by going to the image description page and add or clarify the reason why the image qualifies for fair use. In particular, for each page the image is used on, the image must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Can you please check:

That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's escription page for each article the image is used in.
That every article it is used on is linked to from its description page.

Please be aware that a fair use rationale is not the same as an image copyright tag; descriptions for images used under the fair use policy require both a copyright tag and a fair use rationale.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it might be deleted by adminstrator within a few days in accordance with our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions, please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 09:40, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:AzesI.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AzesI.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 14:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:AzesICamel.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AzesICamel.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 14:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:AzesIIBullCoin.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AzesIIBullCoin.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 14:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:AzesIPoseidon.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:AzesIPoseidon.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 14:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Siamese revolution of 1688

I've nominated your article for a DYK. My entry at Template_talk:Did_you_know#Articles_created.2Fexpanded_on_June_1 is:

... that as a consequence of the Siamese revolution of 1688, Siam (modern day Thailand) severed virtually all ties with the West for nearly 200 years?

--74.13.130.46 asked: Not sure if 1688 is the appropriate name for this Siamese item. The Gregorian calendar was unlikely to be in use by the locals. "1688" was probably only used by historians from the West. What's the local name for this event?

Do you have an answer? I googled and all I could find was "western" accounts that call it the Siamese revolution of 1688.--Work permit (talk) 15:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again. I agree with what you say on my talk page. I think the precise statement you gave to me would be helpful on the DYK page I quoted. Personally, I found your article very useful to me, meaning I really learned something and so I think the rest of the community would benefit from seeing it there. As a side note, I found the question asked sort of strange. I found nothing on google that would lead me to think the thai would be offended by the reference. To give one example, the franco-prussian war (in english) is known by the french and the germans as the german-french war. No one is offended. Best again, please do keep up the great work.--Work permit (talk) 23:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Okada, p.82

[2] Okada, p.7

[3] Okada, p.62

[4] Okada, p.62-63

[5] Polak 2005, p.12

[6] Polak 2005, p.12-40

[7] Polak 2005, p.48

[8] Polak 2005, p.62-75

[9] Howe, p.281

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