User talk:IRW0

Welcome!

Hello, IRW0, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or click here to ask for help here on your talk page and a volunteer will visit you here shortly. Again, welcome! VQuakr (talk) 15:48, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sotloff

Your reversion of my hard work with no discussion is unacceptable. Please see my remarks on Talk:Steven Sotloff. Thank you, פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 01:38, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

Thank you for all your recent work reverting the astro-turfing attempts on the article on email. JD Lambert^(T|C) 19:30, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Selectively deletion of features

It is not NPOV to selectively delete the features from some items on the bulleted list and not all of them. I have replaced "all" in reference to the features you deleted, which should do the job, as the features are listed in the article.--Zeamays (talk) 16:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

~~If the other items are not NPOV, then make those changes or bring it up on the article talk page (preferably the latter due to the contentious editing.)~~ (I see you brought it up there.) Those other items haven't had issues with PR campaigns and other weirdness in the past, which is why editors are being more cautious with these HuffoPo articles. I have described the problem with the use of "all" on the article talk page; please continue the discussion in that section. Thanks. IRW0 (talk) 16:13, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I will, if necessary. You need to read what I write more carefully. The remaining items are not POV, it is your selective editing that results in lack of balance. There is no consensus that the HuffPo articles are defective as references, although that is your opinion. --Zeamays (talk) 18:01, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've never removed or argued for the removal of the HuffPo refs, other than in my initial revert after you made your sweeping changes against existing consensus. The articles were written by a group of people with a close connection with the subject, including a business partner who runs a PR firm. You need to do a better job of acknowledging that. They require extra scrutiny, especially as this individual has disruptively edited his own Wikipedia article in the past. [1]Claiming there is no consensus is silly. The consensus is clearly that the story told by the articles is flawed, but that they are fine to include for certain information. You are the only person arguing primarily for Ayyadurai's point of view, and you are not making particularly convincing arguments. Where there's a lack of consensus is on deciding exactly what to include, which is why we've been discussing it on the talk page. If you think every other editor on the article is wrong, then you need to seek wider consensus (through an RFC, or a post at WP:RS/N or whatever), not just accuse me of stuff in an unconstructive fashion.

Anyways, if anyone needs to read things more carefully, it would be you, since you've clearly failed to read edit summaries repeatedly. You never explained why, after I made this fix [2] (the caps go against MOS:CAPS, and it needed a few words added to make it actual English), you reverted the capitalization and broke the English twice [3][4]. Then you go and accuse me of removing ELs, when another editor did so. You clearly need to read edit summaries more carefully, and probably the WP:MOS as well. (And when you copy and paste from somewhere, read what you paste, rather than just saving it with broken English.) Please go take your issues to the article talk page, unless you need to point me at something there specifically. (Feel free to post a diff here if you do want to point me at something that you feel I haven't addressed on the talk page, since I did take a few days' break from the conversation, although I realize that would require you to actually look at an article history.) IRW0 (talk) 20:46, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Footnotes

I have the impression you are not new to Wikipedia, so may I ask you a question? It is in connection with an exchange we had about foonotes on the Beheading in Islamism Talk page here. I mainly copy-edit and when I first went to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant page went to some trouble to rectify the footnotes (correcting, completing, repairing broken links, etc) - there were over 400 of them. I converted a few bare URLs and note what you say about WP:CITECONSENSUS, but the footnotes when I arrived were created with the cite templates so consistency had to be maintained. Lately editors have become extremely lazy about converting their bare URLs, which is why I composed that template you saw (the WP help on creating footnotes is not very clear, especially if you can't run the video), which I leave on offenders' Talk pages with a courteous note, but nine times out of ten it is ignored. The number of bare URLs is mounting and I am extremely reluctant to continue doing other editors' work for them. I have even left a list of the latest ones on the Talk page to shame them. I have asked an admin what can be done about this and was told, yes, bare URLs are a nuisance, but there is nothing much that can be done. Do you know anything that can be done to enforce this, or who I can take this to? If you do I would be very glad to hear it. Yours frustratedly, P123ct1 (talk) 14:18, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is being compounded because (a) the Reflinks tool has been withdrawn and is unlikely to come back (see Village Pump HD discussion) and (b) both Revision History search tools are broken (I've reported it to the VPHD) and it is very difficult now to track down who the offenders are! --P123ct1 (talk) 14:25, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@P123ct1: I agree bare links are definitely a problem. I remember using a lot of them when I started (which was indeed before this account), until someone slapped a {{barelinks}} onto a page. That's the best way I've found to get people to take notice, since it's an ugly template that can't reasonably be removed until the bare links are fixed. Of course, editors will still add them when the template's gone... I have to agree there's not a ton that can be done past that, since adding full cites often takes longer than the related edit, so requiring them would probably drive away editors.

Something I think might help your template is to include an empty text-based citation, like

{{Citation |last= |first= |year= |title= |publisher= |publication-place= |page= |url= |accessdate= }}

(I copied that from Template:Citation#Simple citation; the fields could be tweaked.) Maybe include cite news and cite web versions, I dunno. It might get too complicated and cumbersome if you add that in, especially when people don't read the template anyways. (You could try an A/B test, hitting some users with a GUI version, and other users with a text-only version to see if one does better than the other.) Another thing...I think it might work better if you start off with a brief explanation of why citation templates are a good idea, rather than just starting off providing instructions. I suspect people will be more likely to read the rest of your message if they can quickly grasp the reason to use the template. (Maybe you've been including custom text for that when you place the template, but a little standardized blurb could still help.)

I wasn't aware of the issues around reflinks (which I've used in the past, but never really liked.) Hopefully that gets sorted out soon enough. IRW0 (talk) 04:32, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for your suggestions and taking so much trouble to help out. I do add some blurb at the beginning, but don't explain the problem with link-rot, which I will add to the template. What is a "GUI" version? Where should the {{barelinks}} template go? At the beginning of the article or in "References"? . --P123ct1 (talk) 11:33, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@P123ct1: Ah, sorry, I meant a Graphical user interface. I was referring to how your template directs the user to point and click to fill out a citation, vs filling out a template by hand. (The UI is probably easier for most people, but it may be harder to follow written directions for.) The {{barelinks}} template can be stuck right up top, though if it's a long article with a few bare links just in one section, then in the section would make more sense. (Don't forget to use {{multiple issues}} if there are already tags.) IRW0 (talk) 18:23, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

September 2014

{{subst:uw1-pov|Internet Slowdown Day}}Jh1234l (talk) 22:59, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{{subst:thanks}} IRW0 (talk) 23:09, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"inventor of email"

I found a few more problematic passages (also here and here), mostly by looking for this external link, but a lot of them have the same phrasing and reference style, sometimes repeating the same errors in reference templates (e.g. using template syntax inside external link markup, using parameter: value vs parameter=value inside templates). Let me know if you find any other links which tend to be used to support these claims and I'll go hunting for them. I think we're up to about a dozen pages with this stuff in them. Protonk (talk) 14:15, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Protonk: Thanks. I found the ones I removed through edit histories from what appeared to be COI accounts. There may be more similar accounts, but good idea on the EL searches and noting the template quirks. (We might want to check edit histories on some of those additions.) I'll see if I can find some more when I have some time. IRW0 (talk) 02:07, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have all day

Please do not threaten with block. No please don't do that. You started the edit war. I initially put the name in bold and You removed it.so it is you who started the editing war. So please save the next words you would type in my talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Debasish Dey (talk • contribs) 22:38, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Shoeshock

FYI - I removed the shoe throwing edit from the talk page as well; if he's serious and honest he'll make an account and discuss. Ed Prevost profile|contributions 16:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Visa subject

Hi. Will soon restore the relevant contents and expand the topic considerably. You have convinced me that it needs an entire paragraph. Best. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:09, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Gun Powder Ma:Please discuss such a change on the article talk page first, as two users have reverted you and a third editor has also expressed concerns. It's clear this material and source need to be discussed first. IRW0 (talk) 20:23, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry!

Please accept my apology for an aggravation a few months ago.

(¯`·._.·[God Of Death ÐËxtËR]·._.·´¯) (talk) 13:00, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:08, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]