User talk:Crossroads/2022, 2nd half

TERF

I'm not seeing a 1RR restriction posted. Is a notice hiding somewhere? Newimpartial (talk) 12:38, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Not on the talk page. Doug Weller talk 16:32, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

It's an edit notice. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:07, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Can confirm the edit notice, and I've added it now to the banner at the top of the talk page. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:13, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

@Sideswipe9th thanks. Doug Weller talk 18:17, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I admire your determination to establish & maintain NPoV, in a certain topic area. GoodDay (talk) 21:50, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Um

[1] - I'm wondering if there's any pattern here. Doug Weller talk 16:36, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@Doug Weller, Crossroads, I have blocked that account. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 19:39, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@Moneytrees and 19:35, 7 July 2022 TheresNoTime talk contribs changed status for global account "User:Epistemologicalbiker@global": set locked; unset (none) (Cross-wiki abuse: Per policy pending report) I’m not sure what that last bit means. But thanks. Doug Weller talk 20:28, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, it stood out to me too. I had hoped that getting wider attention to the dispute at the noticeboard would make that pattern even more clear and help others notice it, which is what happened. Thanks to both of you. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:08, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Helen Joyce

Hi! Allegations of antisemitism were made against Helen Joyce by Aaaron Rabinowitz, a lecturer at the prestigious Rutgers University. This allegation was published in The Skeptic, a respected publication. I don't think it's a good idea to delete the details of these allegations + their contextualizing information from her article. The article needs to include details of the allegations + Joyce's response to the allegations in a balanced and neutral manner.

I think we could edit the "allegations of antisemitism" section on her page to include more of her rebuttal, but removing it entirely feels like a case of depriving readers of information about criticisms that have been made by respected figures. Camcguffin (talk) 04:16, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Will reply on article talk page. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:19, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Requested a third opinion per WP:3 since the consensus-building conversation went cold. Camcguffin (talk) 06:06, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Gray asexuality edits

Hi! You trimmed an edit I made to the gray asexuality article earlier. I understand I either lacked a reliable source or included an unreliable source for that edit. I just made the same edit with what should be a reliable source. I just wanted to let you know, because I'm not very active on here and I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing. If you have any feedback on this new/re edit, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise, thanks for the opportunity to improve my citation game. PrometheusNowUnbound (talk) 00:38, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

You were right

Apoligies - I didn't check the block log, or read the talk page - remiss of me. I have changed the block to indef. Cheers Girth Summit _(blether) 16:51, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

No problem, thanks. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:23, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Social constructs

Re: this comment, we're well away from any relevant discussion about the link, but I thought your comment was interesting and I'd share my response.

Animal reproduction is not a human social construct, nor is variation among humans, but sex is not simply a categorisation of animal reproduction. It includes, for instance, a choice of sex assignment to intersex people and the choice to categorise, for instance, a young menstruating woman as the same sex as a postmenopausal woman, when the two do not have the same capacity to reproduce. And of course we see differing views on whether sex reassignment surgery is anything of the sort. There are philosophy of medicine choices about which categories of sex best allow society to provide healthcare.

Non-arbitrary underlying material realities exist for social constructs like money—take the gold standard as an example (and there are many physical reasons why particular metals were the correct choice for money in the particular societies that began using them). And I'd like to hear the argument that the socially constructed borders of Madagascar have no basis in material reality.

Species is another interesting example, and my first thought is to see whether it's comparable to planets—something with a strict, objective, scientific definition... that changed in 2006 due to the fact that human scientific advancements rendered it more useful to have a different definition. With the whole taxonomic rank system, though, the analogy may not be so strong.

All this being said, I'm not too convinced that "social construct" is a particularly useful term in the first place. That there is a bidirectional connection between human ideas and the material world can be expressed through other frameworks. — Bilorv (talk) 21:40, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Your thoughts on the journal "Intelligence"

I used this journal on the article Spearman's hypothesis, but an editor seemed to think it was unreliable. Looking online, it seems to me that it's a good quality journal by Elsevier. I looked to see if it had been discussed on Wikipedia before, and I saw that you participated in that discussion. What do you think the consensus of the discussion was, if any? I am not using articles in the same topic matter that was previously discussed, but I figured I'd seek your input to get another opinion on the citing of Intelligence in the Spearman's hypothesis article. BooleanQuackery (talk) 19:06, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Your edits there look more complex than I have the time to deal with, and the other editor's objections don't seem to be particularly about the journal. Best for you to open discussion on the talk page. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:04, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Female (gender)

Hey man. You suggested that I change my vote on the AfD, so I thought you might be interested to know that I have done - see [2] and [3] in particular. Thanks for helping to clarify my thoughts. Clicriffhard (talk) 18:36, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

@Crossroads might be better for your mental health to take a break. I think everyone values and appreciates your comments, but engaging nonstop with the same topic for so long can't be healthy. Theheezy (talk) 12:54, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

LOL! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Theheezy. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 07:55, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey Crossroads, I just want to say thank you for your contributions. You're fighting the good fight for common sense. Masterhatch (talk) 22:42, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Update: Phase II of DS reform now open for comment

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Maya Forstater revert

Would you please self-revert this edit? WP:BLPRESTORE quite clearly states When material about living persons has been deleted on good-faith BLP objections, any editor wishing to add, restore, or undelete it must ensure it complies with Wikipedia's content policies. If it is to be restored without significant change, consensus must be obtained first. Looking at the edit history of this sequence, a good faith objection to this content has been made. While you may disagree with that objection, it is nonetheless a good faith objection to the edit, and a preference for one biased source (The Times) over another (PinkNews) is not a valid reason to ignore BLPRESTORE by restoring the content without significant change and without any attempt at discussing it on the talk page to gain consensus. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:35, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Glossing the quote as about "gender identity" is the sort of thing I deleted as a good-faith BLP objection. You and Newimpartial decided to revert to PinkNews' gloss rather than the actual quote that they themselves included right after and is also included in The Times. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:39, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I haven't heard a single policy-relevant rationale for including the quote rather than the paraphrase. With caps or without. Newimpartial (talk) 23:40, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Unless you're claiming to be the IPv6 editor who started this, that doesn't seem to jive with the page history or with what was said in the edit summaries. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:44, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not (any checkuser can check if they want) - if an IP makes a good edit I will support them - but I pointed to BLPRESTORE here. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:54, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Which as can clearly be seen in the side by side edit summaries was after I pointed to it first, which when read in sequence looks only like a reaction to my edit. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes thank you for reminding me of that bit of policy. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:09, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Edits to Queer

Hi. I saw that you reverted my recent edit to the Queer article. I read your comment about why you reverted the edit but I believe that grammatically my edit is correct.

The article before my edit read: Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender.

I believe the use of “are not” twice is redundant and makes it more difficult to read, so I changed it to the following: Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender.

You wrote in your edit comment that my edit makes it sound like “the term is only for people who are neither, when it is only one or the other that is sufficient,” but I believe that would only be the case in English if I wrote it using “and” instead of “or.” So I’m going to redo the edit with the updated language for the sake of improving readability. If you still want to discuss this, please feel free to revert again and we can discuss on the talk page. Rosedaler (talk) 00:52, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Now that I’m thinking about it, I guess if I wrote “neither heterosexual nor cisgender” that would be the correct way of saying the wrong thing, rather than using “and”. Rosedaler (talk) 01:12, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Edit to Neopronoun

Hey. Are you sure that the citation you just inserted to removed the {{failed verification}} tag is the correct one? I've read and searched through that source, and cannot find any content that supports neopronouns as being clunky or difficult to use. If it is there, what is the quotation that supports it? Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:20, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the pre-existing text of "clunky, unfamiliar, and difficult to use" is a fair paraphrase of the criticisms listed in [4] and [5]. Regarding the latter specifically: Critics persist. “I’m not going to call u kitty/kittyself or doll/dollself just bc u think its cool,” one TikToker wrote in a video caption. “Pronouns are a form of identity not an aesthetic.”...I think this is weird or not OK! That’s OK. Horror at noun-self pronoun usage is so common that it has spurred a meme in the neopronoun community....In some cases, neopronouns are met with frustration because their use shows people divorcing themselves from continuing, unfinished gender business between men and women....“As a trans man, I think neopronouns are getting way out of hand,” Asa Pegler, 17, said in a TikTok from November. In an interview, Mr. Pegler specified that his beef is not with gender-neutral neopronouns. He felt like elevating objects and animals to human pronoun levels was dismissive. “I couldn’t stomach why anyone would want to identify as an object?” Mr. Pegler wrote in an Instagram direct message. “They dehumanize us as trans people,” he added. “We are people! Not objects or animals. So that’s why I stated that they are out of hand, because they make us look like a bit of a joke.”...facing down criticism and mockery. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:36, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure we can use vox pops, even from reliable sources, in this manner. How do you even go about assessing comments from random people, that are included in a source, for weight and balance? And while those could fairly be described as criticisms and objections of neopronouns, none support them as being clunky or difficult to use. Pegler's commentary is directed towards the use of neopronouns like leaf or bee because he feels as though "they dehumanize trans people", not because they difficult to use. Same for the TikToker, who seems more to be objecting to neopronouns in general, than making commentary on how hard it is to actually use them. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:44, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

While I will leave the new citation in place, I'm going to restore the failed verification tag. I just can't see content in either source supporting clunky or difficult to use. Unfamiliar yes, attracting some criticism yes. But nothing on how hard it is to actually use them. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:49, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

How would you summarize the criticisms in these two sources? Crossroads ^-talk- 23:54, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Aside from unfamiliar, I'd maybe say something very generic like "and have seen some pushback against their use" as that at least can be sourced to Rolling Stone's voice. Beyond that, there does not appear to be anything in the voice of those publications. In both pieces, the criticisms are all vox pops taken from various places on social media, which as I asked before, how do you even assess that for weight and balance issues. Instead, I'd suggest checking to see if Florence Ashley (or any other academic, but Ashley seems like a good starting point based on their comments in Rolling Stone) has published any research papers on neopronoun usage and criticisms. At least that way we'd have something that's been subject to peer-review, and could properly attribute critical statements to, even if the underlying data is drawn from surveys on social media. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:06, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Mandy

Hi Crossroads, I hope you don’t mind the most recent round of edits to the draft essay. Feel free to revert what you don’t like. Cheers, Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:49, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I've been a bit busier than usual lately, but I should be able to look at it and help get that wrapped up soon. Crossroads ^-talk- 06:05, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Looks like we have a moving target. Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:16, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

What counts as contentious?

I was reading the Helen Joyce page recently and noted it was in a bit of a mess, with syntax and grammar issues, mixed formats and duplicate quotes. I went about tidying it up and all was well. Then Newimpartial accusing me of whitewashing, reverted an edit and dropped sanction notices on my talk page. I'm a casual editor with no political axe to grind, a single sentence was the root of the offense taken. I opened a dialogue to try to understand the causes of concern. Several passive aggressive wiki jargon laden exchanges later I'm left bemused and a little confused on exactly what constitutes a reputable source, a neutral point of view, a contentious or contested topic and how I can in good faith, tell the difference. I see you have been having similar conversations on the same page recently, so at the risk of you having better things to do I'd be interested in your thoughts. WakeUpBoo (talk) 20:14, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Certain editors give those notices out pretty liberally. They're not supposed to cause offense technically, but in practice people do tend to be taken aback. You were editing in good faith, but IMO it's probably not worth trying to change that description based on the sources I see there. Thanks for working on it and hope you aren't too scared off. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:36, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

The notices do land with a thud, but that's not the issue or root of my query. It's more to do with manner in which WP guidelines and mechanisms are being interpreted and applied inconsistently, in this case seemingly to intimidate and gatekeep an editor's political/ideological turf. As you suggest, I don't have the energy for this argument. Fortunately, I'm enough of a grown-up to be resilient in the face of these kind of actions. If anything, it diminishes my respect for WP as a worthwhile use of my time and raises questions about its effectiveness against actual bad faith actors. Oh well, never mind, thanks for your time. WakeUpBoo (talk) 15:03, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

It can be difficult sometimes, but in the long run things work out, and even if an article doesn't end up in an ideal state things can still be made better. So I would encourage you not to give up. :) Crossroads ^-talk- 21:54, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Revert at Transphobia

Hey. As much as I'm loathe to make a m:The Wrong Version revert, prior to the recent disruption by Plasamas, the graffiti image had been the stable lead image for Transphobia since August 2020. Just so you know. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:01, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I knew it was old but the day before there was a pile of edits by several different people after which the picture was changed, so I figured there was some consensus-by-editing for it. That coupled with the fact that the IP's replacement had no edit summary or reasoning at all made me think it was better to revert that one edit, especially since I do think it is a better picture. But I am not particularly concerned either way and won't bother with it anymore unless anyone wants to start a discussion. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:05, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

7 November comment

Dear Crossroads I read the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Some_types_of_sources that you cited,

and I have to ask; why my sources the BBC and the journal the independent , are considered unreliable  ? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sex_differences_in_intelligence&action=history

I quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Some_types_of_sources: "Reliable non-academic sources may also be used in articles about scholarly issues, particularly material from high-quality mainstream publications " — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dark Flow (talk • contribs) 13:54, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Also a difference in 1 of 46 Chromosomes is a greater difference genetically than the 1% difference humans have to chimpanzees, obviously !

You are frequently citing the very same studies on this page: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16248939/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16823409/ , why do you make believe this is so important it is a deviation , and does not affect the vast majority ?

Your quotes and citations in the same article https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sex_differences_in_intelligence only focus on the mean not on the deviation, what is wrong with saying men have a greater variability ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dark Flow (talk • contribs) 14:20, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

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Courtesy note: Closure of discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

Hello. This is a courtesy note regarding your request for closure that you posted on Wikipedia:Closure requests. I have closed the discussion here. Happy editing! — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 23:06, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	Thank you for your contributions to the Theyby page's name change discussion! G9m9brown (talk) 00:40, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! Crossroads ^-talk- 05:44, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

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G-books url cruft and page numbers

This refers to this edit. When you grab a google books url from the browser address bar, it's usually a good idea to snip all the url parameters off the long version of the url, and keep only ?id= and &pg=. I've never seen a case where the other parameters are helpful. If the {{citation}} includes a page number, and that page is viewable in the google capture of the book, then you can add the page number to the url parameter, even if the Google url didn't contain it. See my addition of &pg=PA5 in this edit. Note: the page value is usually 'PAnnn', where nnn is the page number of the printed book, but not always, so you should test your modified url before saving it in the article. (You'll also sometimes see 'PTnnn' style page numbers; Template:Google Books URL/doc#Usage has something about this.) So basically, at least snip off the cruft, and then add page number if you want the hyperlink to go directly to the page inside the book. Mathglot (talk) 01:34, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation; Google Books has sometimes been puzzling trying to figure this out and not always worked too consistently. Crossroads ^-talk- 02:05, 20 December 2022 (UTC)