User talk:MastCell

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Process

Hi MastCell. I responded a bit impulsively today in the heat of the moment in the thread that alleges misrepresentation of sources. I sort of wish now that I'd held off, since I really appreciate your suggestion that we get back to the process we started. I think that's a good suggestion. TimidGuy (talk) 00:29, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

OK. But since you're here, I want to ask you something. Our content on the purported health benefits of Transcendental Meditation is heavily influenced by editors affiliated with the TM movement. Do you think that raises questions about bias (either conscious or unconscious) in our coverage? I think the best practice (one that is recommended, but not demanded, by WP:COI) would be for editors with close connections to the movement to participate in talkpage discussion, but for independent, unaffiliated editors to manage the actual editing of article content.

I'm not a big fan of analogies, but let's say that our coverage of an antihypertensive drug from Merck were dominated by a small group of single-purpose accounts closely affiliated with Merck. That situation would rightly raise concerns about our ability to present accurate and unbiased medical information. I see a similar problem on the TM articles, at least as far as they intersect with medical claims. Do you?

Finally, I'm sort of disappointed in the lack of restraint shown by TM-affiliated editors. Frankly, there are a number of Wikipedia articles, both medical and biographical, which I avoid because I want to manage any potential conflicts of interest on my part. These are areas where I believe I could undoubtedly improve our coverage, but I recognize that my connections (which are not financial, but rather personal or professional) would potentially bias me. So I don't edit those articles, as a simple but healthy form of self-restraint. I sort of wish that some level of introspection would take place here so that people wouldn't need to beat the drum confrontationally about it. MastCell ^Talk 17:53, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks...

I just thanked Bishonen for her comment on the German WWII arb case, and realized that I never did the same for you. Thanks for speaking out - I entirely agree with you, and didn't say so because I thought the case result was a foregone conclusion. I'm glad you commented, and Bishonen as well. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:49, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. MastCell ^Talk 00:47, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Quick question

Your comment on GorillaWare's page here. What comparison were you trying to make exactly? Because it seems like an apples and oranges situation. PackMecEng (talk) 15:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Not to me. That's the point I was making. MastCell ^Talk 15:58, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Could you elaborate? PackMecEng (talk) 16:01, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Sure, as long as I can use the Socratic method. You said: "I just cannot see how it is okay to disparage anyone based on their race, religion, gender, or sexuality." (I completely agree).

• Can you think of any people more prominent than Sarah Jeong who have used their platforms to disparage people based on their races, religions, gender, or sexuality?
• If so, then why did you choose her case, in particular, to take a principled stand against such disparagement?

More pointedly, the diffs I cited here suggest that you are consistently downplaying racially-charged statements by the most powerful person on Earth, at the same time that you're choosing to emphasize racially-charged statements by an obscure technical writer. That suggests, to me, that your concern about bigotry is not universal or consistent, but rather conditional. Or, to repeat my initial comment: if you survey the current political and social-media landscape for racism, and decide that Sarah Jeong's tweets are the item most deserving of your attention and scorn, then I think that says more about you than about her. MastCell ^Talk 16:15, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

The difference is I did not play up the racism in either article. With Trump it came down to due weight for what was suggested and where, you will note I did mention where it would be more appropriate. In Jeong's article it holds more weight in her overall bio but even then I did not up the importance and even suggested showing the other side. But again, they are two vastly different BLPs and not comparable. Hence the apples and oranges. To do otherwise would be more akin to activism or righting great wrongs in my eyes, which is never appropriate here. But maybe I have it backwards? It is an interesting subject overall, I would like to know if you think I am way off base here. PackMecEng (talk) 16:39, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

In my view, it's pretty simple. The people who are up in arms over Sarah Jeong's racially-charged statements are, in many cases, the same people who have tied themselves into rhetorical knots trying to excuse, minimize, rationalize, or normalize a long series of racially-charged statements by the President. Now, the President has a much larger bully pulpit than Sarah Jeong, and he targets groups far more vulnerable than those targeted by Jeong.

Therefore, the disproportionate reaction to Jeong's tweets suggests that many of her critics are motivated not by any real concern about racism as a societal ill. Rather, they care about the subject only when they perceive their own "tribe" being targeted, or when accusations of racism can serve a useful political purpose. Jelani Cobb put it better than I could (his piece on the subject is worth reading in its entirety): the Jeong matter is dominated by partisans who "understand the current debate around free speech and social media not as an attempt to create parameters of decency around public dialogue but rather as part of a board game in which each side attempts to remove valuable pieces from the other's team."

I don't know you personally, nor do I know your beliefs, but your actions here—at least those which I highlighted—seem to conform to this pattern. Hence my comment. MastCell ^Talk 19:48, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Again it all goes to weight for that BLP, not much past that. It is a flawed comparison between the two people, and the importance the controversies have played in their lives as a whole. They simply are not equal in terms of their overall coverage. For example, there are hundreds of articles about Trump's perceived racism, but there are hundreds more on just his hair.Heck even on google (I know not an indicator of weight but still interesting) Trump racism is about 62 million, Trump hair is about 90 million, Trump hands is 127 million, and Trump by itself is 915 million. So the weight is not as strong, in the Jeong example that is not the case. But anyhow, thanks for explaining your opinion and hopefully you will better understand my actions. PackMecEng (talk) 20:09, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it's obvious that racism and hair styling stand on equal grounds as matters of biographical relevance. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:18, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

@Shock Brigade Harvester Boris: I have no idea why you would think that. Heck not even covered in the article. Focus here! PackMecEng (talk) 22:21, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Immediately above, you suggested that Trump's perceived racism is less noteworthy than his hair or the size of his hands, on the basis of Google hits. Boris is responding to something you just said. Please stop playing games. I'm happy to have a serious discussion, if you're willing to engage more forthrightly, but this feigned incomprehension is beneath you.

Boris's point is that regardless of Google hits, a President's habit of making racially-charged statements is inherently more relevant than his hair or hand size. Because you were the one who proposed that comparison, can you explain why you find it relevant to coverage of Trump's racially-charged statements? MastCell ^Talk 18:26, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

As I stated it was a comparison of coverage in the media and how we assign weight. Of course I am not advocating that his main BLP to cover such silly things and it rightly does not. It does cover his racially-charged statements though and it should, it is obviously more important than his hands or hair. The issue I had was with the weight given and prominence in the lead. Which most people agreed with me on btw. Also it is absurd to compare the two people, which I have seen no argument on why someone would make such a comparison within Wiki policy. You said it yourself, "most powerful person on Earth, at the same time that you're choosing to emphasize racially-charged statements by an obscure technical writer" which is exactly what you seem to be doing. How do you give similar weight to something that is a vastly different situation? It more sounds like a WP:OTHERSTUFF type situation, even though other than a racial component they are completely different. Perhaps you could offer an example of how my comments on the Trump pages related to Jeong's page or are inconsistent with what I have done? But to Boris's comment, I gave a sarcastic response to a sarcastic comment so take it easy with the tut-tut. PackMecEng (talk) 18:47, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

I've made the same point a number of times, and you're dancing around it and avoiding it, or perhaps I haven't been clear enough. I will try again. You went out of your way to express your moral disapproval of Jeong's tweets ([1], [2]), and argued that such racially-charged statements should be highlighted ("sunlight is the best disinfectant and light should be shown on both sides"). Admirable words, but your deeds don't match them—when it comes to Trump, you've found various rationales to avoid applying sunlight to his racially-charged statements.

That's the key inconsistency, and I was interested in hearing your rationalization for it. You argue that Jeong's tweets are more biographically significant than Trump's. I think the opposite is true: that it inherently more significant for an American President to habitually make racially-charged statements than for an obscure technical writer to do so. I question how you can make high-minded and moralistic pronouncements about the racist aspects of Jeong's tweets while ignoring—or, in fact, actively attempting to minimize—the racist aspects of Trump's tweets. That seems hypocritical to me. Your explanations so far have something to do with "weight" and with Trump's hair and hand size. But we're not talking about WP:WEIGHT, really; I'm questioning your decision to moralize publicly about Jeong while ignoring/enabling Trump. I haven't really heard a direct answer on that yet, not that you owe me one of course. MastCell ^Talk 19:52, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

None of those diffs were me purposing they be added the article, that is why I am confused I suppose. That is the sticking point I had brought up above as well (though perhaps I could of explained it better) "The difference is I did not play up the racism in either article". Those were talks on a user page about the situation as a whole, not something I was trying to add the article. Perhaps it is the difference in my personal view verses my views as an editor, which I would assume are not always the same for you either. At least I would hope not, which goes back to what I said above "To do otherwise would be more akin to activism or righting great wrongs in my eyes". The more you describe it the more it looks like you are seeing the difference between editor me and personal feelings me. I personally have many issues with things Trump has done, especially given who I am as a person. But I do try to edit in a way that goes with policy over feeling. As far as the question of weight per subject, we might just have to agree to disagree. As the leader of the free world does it matter his racial views? Certainly, heck it has it's own article. Are they the even in the top 5 for most important things for his whole BLP to be added to the lead? I would say no, you obviously have a different opinion and that is fine there really are no right answers there. Does that help clear up the situation for you? PackMecEng (talk) 22:12, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

So then let's talk about "personal feelings" you rather than "editor" you—as long as you're willing. Why do Jeong's racially-charged comments bother you in a way that Trump's do not? (This isn't a trick question; I genuinely don't understand, and I would like to).

On a separate subject, I see you've followed me to the John K. Bush article—which you've never edited before—in order to revert my edit. Your assessment of consensus is incorrect, for reasons I'll detail on the article talk page, but I want to ask you here not to do this again. That is, don't look through my contribution history and then follow me to an article to revert or dispute my edits. I think it's inappropriate. MastCell ^Talk 18:32, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

As I mentioned above it does bother me the things he says and does. "I personally have many issues with things Trump has done, especially given who I am as a person." So it is not a case of Trump's comments not bothering me. Even on the various talks pages I am sure you have seen my past edits stating my personal feelings to that effect as well. But I try and keep those personal feels separated from what I do on articles. Why do comments like that from one side bother you but comments from the other not? Personally it all bothers me. PackMecEng (talk) 19:17, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

I believe you when you say that Trump's comments bother you. But my impressions are based on your actions. You went out of your way to publicly moralize on Wikipedia about Jeong's tweets. Have you ever gone out of your way to publicly moralize about Trump's comments? (Honest question; I don't follow your contribs, so I don't know). MastCell ^Talk 15:17, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Good question, I know I have several times on article talk pages put in a sentence or two with my other comments expressing my disapproval. But it is rare that I comment on anyone personally anywhere on Wikipedia. GW's talk page is not common for me, I poke fun with other users all the time but not BLP subjects much. I suppose being called a hypocrite and POV pusher would be a reason why I don't do it much. Feel satisfied to retract what you said? PackMecEng (talk) 15:43, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not clear what you'd like me to retract. I didn't call you a POV pusher, I don't think. (I did ask you to stop following me around to revert my edits, and I'll take your silence on that topic as agreement). I do think it's hypocritical to chastise an obscure progressive for racially-charged statements while ignoring similar (and worse) statements from a conservative President. You haven't really said anything to convince me otherwise. Your statement above is exceedingly vague. Insofar as you care about my opinion, I'd like to see a specific instance where you held the President to the same standards as you apparently hold for random opinion columnists. (Of course, you're free not to care about my opinion. I'll be alright). MastCell ^Talk 21:23, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

No you did not say POV pusher, that is correct. You said I was a hypocrite only defending one side, completely different I know... The hounding is BS and I have not responded, to the several times you have brought it up in several places, because we both know it's BS. I have explained the situation several times now in several different ways, while receiving no answers on the reverse. Which after going though your contribution history is starting to make sense, though I will say there is certainly consistency in the overall positions you take. So I will leave off this one with a quote that might help you 실수하여 고치지 않으면, 곧 그것을 실수하고 만다. 실수하여 고치는 것을 꺼리지 말라. - Confucius. But if you do still want to talk more about all this I am more than willing. PackMecEng (talk) 22:49, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't read Korean, so I'm afraid that quote isn't going to help me. Now, about the hounding: you found the John K. Bush article by going through my contribution history (something you acknowledge doing above). You then followed me there and reverted my edits, based on your incorrect assertion of consensus. Are you honestly saying that you found that article some other way, and not by looking at my contribution history? If so, please, let's hear the alternate explanation. You say you've already "explained the situation several times now", but I don't see any explanation of your sudden appearance at that article shortly after you undertook a study of my contribution history. Enlighten me.

While we're on the subject, I am proud of the consistency of my contribution history. (Yes, I realize that you invoked "consistency" in backhanded way, and meant to imply political bias without actually having the courage to say so outright, but let's go with it). I've been here for more than a decade, and I've done a little of everything, both editorially and administratively. Think of it as a Rorschach test. I've found that when people focus on my contributions to political topics, it's usually because they themselves have trouble conceiving of Wikipedia as anything beyond a partisan battleground. Take a look at my most-edited articles sometime, and you'll see that political topics don't figure prominently in what I've done here.

You say you haven't received any answers from me. I've made an honest effort to engage with you here and answer your questions. If there's something you think I've failed to answer, please, ask again and I'll do my best. MastCell ^Talk 04:40, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

This is my final comment on the hounding claim because it is a red herring that has no value here (or anywhere for that matter). It is getting rather repetitive that you keep bring it up. Yes, I saw a bad edit in your history and corrected it. You had no consensus for what you did but for some reason tried to say otherwise. Then tried to say the version you wanted had been in there since the start when that was not the case, a quick look in the article history showed that and I showed that with diffs on the talk page. There is now consensus for that version thanks to me. As to the actual claim of hounding are you suggesting I did it in malice or as a form of harassment? That is an odd idea since again it was a very misleading edit that needed to be corrected and was on one article, though I do apologize if I caused irritation, annoyance or distress. Also the "explained the situation several times now" was in reference to my beliefs and the main discussion, which I will discuss below, unrelated to the spurious hounding claim.

Next with consistency it was not backhanded, I am not sure I could of been more blunt other than saying in all caps and bold "POV pusher here!" that was not the point, nor would I personally consider you a POV pusher. It was meant to give you something to reflect on along the lines of "those in glass houses should not throw stones". When looking at your contributions to talk and articles from the past year or so, yeah they are mostly topics that have a right or left swing and all favor one side or disparage the other. You can deflect however you want by saying people that focus on your topics are pov pushers themselves. But that does not actually change anything and is more of a whataboutism without addressing the substance. Though again it was meant to be insightful to you and help, but I have apparently missed the mark.

Finally back on track and to the important bits. The questions I had asked are mirrors of those you have asked me, like "Why do comments like that from one side bother you but comments from the other not?" which was skipped. I addressed that just prior to this, in that you see an issue in what I say and do but none in your own. I would like to understand that thought process and why you think that. Going back to the explained several times from above, again that was explaining my thoughts and positions on things several times through the discussion. I am not sure if you either do not believe me or do not understand me. I would get it if you just disagreed with me, but it does not look like it has gotten to that point. I would be fine with either not believing me or disagreeing with me since that is your choice to make on an internal level. But I am not sure if it is not still an understanding issue. I would actually be happy to go over any part again if you still have any questions, perhaps tackle it from a different angle for clarity.

Lastly this is kind of off topic to the rest of the discussion but do you speak any other languages? I have found I am always surprised on Wikipedia the vast differences in people from all over the world that contribute here. It's fascinating and very enlightening to hear about. First hand accounts always have more life to them than articles I find. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PackMecEng (talk • contribs)

Let me see if I can clear up some things here, as it looks like you two are kind of talking past each other.

@PackMecEng, on the hounding thing, what you said above is such a distorted description of what actually happened it's almost unrecognizable. Almost every "point" you have tried to make about "consensus" is wrong. I'll put this in bullets to make it more clear:

• 21:51, 6 August 2018‎ [3] An IP removed a sentence about confirmation hearings from the lede. Edit summary: "he was confirmed, so this clearly didn't have enough of an impact to warrant including in introduction." Although some details in that sentence had been added as recently as 1 month prior, there was an existing talk page consensus from 2017 to include the confirmation hearings in the lede.
• 22:15, 7 August 2018 [4] MastCell reverted the IP. Edit summary: "plenty of precedent for including notably controversial confirmation hearings, even in confirmed judges; cf Clarence Thomas" You (PackMec) claimed above you had no consensus for what you did but for some reason tried to say otherwise. This is clearly false. You also claimed above, it was a very misleading edit that needed to be corrected. Also false. There was nothing misleading about the edit. (I think you may be conflating MC's revert of the IP with their revert of you, thinking incorrectly that MC claimed "consensus" in this first revert.)
• 13:37, 15 August 2018 [5] PackMec reverts MastCell. Edit summary: "Undid revision 853936116 by MastCell (talk) consensus on talk is to exclude". This is clearly false, as a careful reading of the talk page shows that there is consensus to include material about the confirmation hearing, although there wasn't an explicit consensus on the specific wording and which details should be mentioned.
• 18:39, 15 August 2018 [6] MastCell reverts. Edit summary: "consensus on the talkpage was clearly to mention his confirmation hearings in the lead (please read past the bolded words on the talk page); restoring per *actual* consensus, pending further talkpage discussion."
• 01:48, 16 August 2018 ‎ [7] After a talkpage discussion a different editor who had participated in the original (2017) discussion tweaked the wording and added sources, implementing a new consensus version very similar to what MastCell had originally reverted to.

I think the point where you two started being on entirely different pages in what you were talking about was when PackMec (on the talk page) switched from it being about the confirmation hearing sentence to it being about the details in that sentence (eg. birtherism) which had indeed been added only 1 month prior. MastCell apparently didn't follow that switch in argument that happened only after the reverting was done. I also found it a bit amusing where PackMec pats themselves on the back, saying (There is now consensus for that version thanks to me.) Ummm...no...there was consensus before too. What you achieved was converting a tacit consensus about the wording into an explicit consensus.

One other observation is that PackMec's original (and mistaken) invocation of talk page consensus (in the "hounding" revert) looks more like an excuse to revert material they didn't like than an actual concern for enforcing consensus. It's pretty clear they skimmed the talk page and didn't read past the bolded votes.

In conclusion, I think that the outcome at the article was a small positive, as the article was slightly improved. I think that improvement could have happened in a better manner without all the the false claims and posturing. In any case I think it's time to put this to bed. Talking about it more isn't going to help anyone or do anything to improve the encyclopedia.

On the other topic, the one about Donald Trump's racist tweets versus Sarah Jeong's racist tweets: I think MastCell doesn't quite understand where PackMec is coming from, so let me address that. @MastCell, I imagine that PackMec, like many conservatives, is very bothered by Trump's tweets, as well as a lot of other things that Trump says. I imagine that they find racism repulsive. That said, I think they are willing to tolerate some things because they see Trump as doing other things that need to be done. (For many people this might include appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court who can maybe stop what they see as the killing of unborn babies. Not saying that PackMec specifically endorses this, but that's an example that probably applies to many conservatives.) Jeung, on the other hand, probably isn't doing a lot of good in their view...just working for the (failing) NYTimes. I also imagine that PackMec doesn't hear some of the "dog whistles" in Trump's statements and is distrustful of the media reporting on such. I'd also like to push back on the argument that if PackMec really cares about racism they should be willing to call it out wherever they see it. I imagine that you (MC) value honesty, but I don't think that alone would convince you to try to paint Obama as a liar (even though he got the "lie of the year" award for his "you can keep your healthcare if you like it" thing). The point is, these things don't exist in a vacuum. There's also the sourcing argument...that most of the news about Jeong is related to her tweets.

So is it hypocritical for PackMec to support talking about racist tweets in Jeong's article and oppose talking about racist tweets in Trump's article? Well, maybe. But I think it's better understood as being a part of the tribalism that unfortunately too many of us engage in. It's a very hard trap not to fall into, and I don't know the best way to get out of it. Getting out, I think, requires the mental ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Using this as an example, you might try an experiment of trying to decide what you would do editorially if Clinton or Obama wrote racist tweets. Like actually sit down and think about it. Should there be a mention of racism in their respective Lede sections? You could also ask yourself what you would do if an obscure writer for Fox News was discovered as having written ugly racist tweets in the past. Should quotes from those tweets be substantially quoted in that person's biography? ~Awilley (talk) 18:15, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

@Awilley:There is a little more to it on the consensus side. The orginal version that was implimented as part of consensus was here from August 2017 and then on July 2018 MastCell changed the wording here to the wording today. So almost a year after consensus was reached the text was changed. It's a muddy situation.

Though for the most part I agree with a lot of your assessment there are a few comments I would like to make. I am not actually a conservative, didn't even vote for Trump. I ended up doing a write in for a co-worker because I couldn't stomach the lesser of two evils argument, I live in Illinois so no matter who I voted for it was going to Hillary. I just truly feel there is a weight issue at play. I could be completely off base and I admit that but that is what I see as neutral over all. On the whole though you are pretty close on most of it. I appreciate you taking the time to go though the weeds on this. PackMecEng (talk) 18:32, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

@Awilley: Thank you. I'm embarrassed to say that you explained my concern about the consensus/hounding issue much more clearly than I have, so thank you for taking the time. I don't have anything to add to that and agree it's best put to bed at this point.

As for the issue of racism, I want to distinguish clearly between my views as a Wikipedian and my views as a human being. Like most people, I have a set of political and sociocultural beliefs, but I've worked hard (and, I believe, successfully) to ensure that my actions here on Wikipedia reflect site policies, principles, and expectations regardless of my personal beliefs. I'm not really interested in touching the question of what Sarah Jeong's Wikipedia biography says. (Generally, I find these sorts of situations, where Wikipedia policies conflict with what I would consider basic human decency, to be depressing. We've made a lot of positive headway with WP:BLP and WP:AVOIDVICTIM, to the effect that Wikipedia should not be a vector for prolonging or intensifying the harassment of otherwise low-profile people, but in the end, arguments about "sources exist so it should be in the article" tend to win the day). I was interested in PackMecEng's threshold for making a moral statement singling out an individual for racism, as she did with Jeong. MastCell ^Talk 17:30, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Feedback

For the record, the original verbiage pertaining to "nose is long and straight" must be attributed to Jayen466 (talk · contribs) who introduced this verbiage during the Werner Mölders FAC review see diff1 and diff2. Since I am not a native speaker of the English language, I consequently assumed this verbiage to be FAC compliant and made the "mistake" to replicate this text to other articles. In addition, I also assumed the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Content guide#Biographies to be applicable, in particuar as it pertains to the victory claim tables and dates of rank tables. I assumed this to be legitimate since the following FAC articles (Albert Ball, Roderic Dallas, Paterson Hughes, John F. Bolt and George Andrew Davis Jr.) also include claims tables. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 17:20, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying that; I had tried to find where the original wording was added, but was unsuccessful given the lengthy page histories. While you're here, I guess I'd reiterate the wording of the MILHIST sourcing guidelines:

Policy requires that articles reference only reliable sources; however, this is a minimal condition, rather than a final goal. With the exception of certain recent topics that have not yet become the subject of extensive secondary analysis, and for which a lower standard may be temporarily permitted, articles on military history should aim to be based primarily on published secondary works by reputable historians.

I don't think that Nazi biographies fall under the "recent topics" umbrella, and WWII and the Nazi war effort have both been the subjects of extensive secondary analysis, so please keep this guidance in mind when choosing sources and subjects. MastCell ^Talk 19:33, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Absolute power of admins

From one admin to another, the repetitive jeremiads on this subject are surreal. I almost never enter the fray on such discussions, but it's good to see a bit of candor on what adminship really is. This place does crack me up. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:41, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, and thanks for the note. I usually avoid those sorts of discussions too—and I have a couple of reminders near the top of my userpage to keep me honest—but for whatever reason I couldn't resist in that instance. Have you ever noticed that the people who most vocally demand more accountability from admins often refuse to accept even the most minimal responsibility for their own behavior and actions? But then, unintentional irony is a Wikipedian specialty. MastCell ^Talk 04:26, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

For sure, there does seem to be a common thread. My personal favorites are when I ask for a name and diffs so I can seek out these heretofore anonymous abusive admins, without exception I only get excuses for not doing so. Sometimes it's impossible not to interject this whenever the latest round comes up somewhere. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 12:43, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Have you ever noticed that the people who most vocally demand more accountability from admins often refuse to accept even the most minimal responsibility for their own behavior and actions? Yes. ~Awilley (talk) 18:19, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Sometimes I wonder if the accountability policy should be expanded to cover all edits, not just "admin actions". JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 10:27, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Lethality of firearms

Thank you for your contribution to the May discussion RfC: Wound characteristics of military-style rifles at WP:RSN, in particular thank you for your comments on the quality of the arguments offered in opposition to expanded content from obviously reliable sources. One of the WP:MEDRS sources suggested in the RFC as supplemental to The New York Times:

• Smith, Edward Reed; Shapiro, Geoff; Sarani, Babak (July 2016). "The profile of wounding in civilian public mass shooting fatalities". Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. 81 (1): 86–92. doi:10.1097/TA.0000000000001031. ISSN 2163-0755. PMID 26958801.

was recently summarized at Mass shootings in the United States as:

A retrospective study of 139 autopsy reports from 12 civilian public mass shootings in the United States published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery in 2016 found that gunshot wounds from high-velocity rifles have a lower rate of potentially survivable injuries as compared to other firearms. 371 gunshot wounds were found, included gunshot wounds from handguns, shotguns, and high velocity rifles. Potentially survivable injuries were about equally distributed between handguns and shotguns; no gunshot wounds from high-velocity rifles were found to be potentially survivable. Compared and contrasted with the results of earlier studies of injuries in military combat, military combat injuries include injuries from explosives, military personnel wear body armor and ballistic protection helmets and so have more injuries to extremities, while civilian public mass shooting events are closer range, have more injuries to the head and torso, and have a lower rate of potentially survivable injuries.

...and quickly reverted and is currently under discussion at Talk:Mass shootings in the United States#Recent edits. Some of the same editors who objected to the NYT as unreliable are now opposed to the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. As with most academic papers, the source includes a "Limitations of this study" section which is being cited in opposition. A letter written in comment (largely agreement) to the source is being cited in opposition. Opposition includes objecting to the retrospective nature of the study as inherently biased. Opposition arguments include WP:BLUE, that it is so obvious that high-powered rifles are more lethal than other firearms that Wikipedia need not say it.

Similar summarizations of this source were also attempted at Gunshot wound and were reverted. At the RFC you wrote:

If these sorts of arguments are relied upon to exclude content, or to attempt to disqualify obviously reliable sources, that may constitute tendentious and disruptive editing and may become an issue for administrative attention.

We could use your help. Could you take a look and perhaps weigh in? Thank you again. AviRich6 (talk) 15:45, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:27, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Six years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:10, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Awesome

Ten years!

When I miss a user, I write an article. For Shock Brigade Harvester Boris, I wrote "Im Frieden dein" (In Your Peace). It's on the Main page today. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:17, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

No truth

"I think this idea that there is no truth is the thread that will run through the rest of the Trump presidency, as it has his entire candidacy and his presidency so far." -- Nicolle Wallace[8]

Bam! -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 22:51, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

• "How to cover a habitual liar"

• "Let's just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backward."

• President Trump has made more than 5,000 false or misleading claims

• Time to stop counting Trump's lies. We've hit the total for 'compulsive liar.'
• "...what's even more amazing than a President who is averaging -- repeat: averaging -- more than eight untruths a day is this: Trump's penchant for saying false things is exponentially increasing as his presidency wears on."

Sources

BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 22:53, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm old-fashioned enough—or naive enough—to believe that truth and honesty are universal, rather than partisan, values. That said, while individual dishonesty is one thing, the official acceptance and promulgation of obvious falsehoods is morally corrupting and toxic to society as a whole. (This corruption is a central theme in the dissident literature of any totalitarian society—for instance, that of the former Soviet Union). A broader discussion is outside the scope of Wikipedia, and I know better than to try to have a serious discussion on this website, with this "community". I will say that, insofar as Wikipedia is concerned, this project serves as a bulwark against official dishonesty, or at least it should. This project is dedicated to summarizing human knowledge, and to combating ignorance and misinformation—meaning that we, as Wikipedians, have a responsibility to resist falsehoods and lies, whatever their source. And that's my inspirational speech for the day; now back to the comfort of my usual cynicism. MastCell ^Talk 20:33, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

AR-15 style rifle

I'll post this here instead of extending the NPOV thread. Several editors have been supporting a certain passage, "Gun expert Dean Hazen and mass murder researcher Dr. Pete Blair think that mass shooters' gun choices have less to do with the AR-15's specific characteristics but rather with familiarity and a copycat effect."(USA Today) (ABC News) while opposing sources that present other viewpoints or discuss characteristics of the gun that make it attractive to mass shooters, such as The Atlantic which quotes the original designer of the weapon. These sources are dismissed as "non-expert", "media commentary", "speculation by journalists", etc. even though they are published as news items and not opinion pieces.

I would recommend reading the entire talk page for background, particularly the opinions on why mass shooters choose the AR-15 section. Here are a few relevant diffs: [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]

On a related note, I recently opened an ANI thread regarding 72bikers' behavior in this topic area. It would help to have an uninvolved admin keep an eye on the article since it's really a long pattern of stonewalling and refusal to compromise on the part of several editors which can't easily be narrowed down to a particular incident. I've written an essay on the big-picture situation which has largely been resolved. –dlthewave ☎ 04:06, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks; I will review those links and discussions. I'm not super active these days—too much else going on in my life, and in the world—so I can't promise a rapid resolution, but I will look into it. MastCell ^Talk 03:02, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Your NPOVN AR-15 comment

I think your comment was probably the best thing you could have added to that discussion. There were lots of issues that editors felt compelled to discuss, but the discussion was going in more of a "forum" route than a "find a consensus" route. That's why I stopped commenting.

So thank you. I'm always happy to see drama put to rest, and I think that's what you did. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:12, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. MastCell ^Talk 03:03, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

M&P15 discussion

Could you look over this discussion, these notifications and this comment? The discussion concerns the addition of criminal use information to Smith & Wesson M&P15 and several editors are essentially stonewalling the process by referring to prior discussions which are no longer relevant and making accusations of canvassing and forum shopping. Input from an uninvolved admin would be appreciated. Thanks –dlthewave ☎ 17:34, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

@Dlthewave:, that is a VERY self serving summary of the issue. The proposed material is virtually identical to the material debated in RfC from last year. That RfC had about two dozen participants, many were not the usual editors, and resulted in no consensus for addition. You are attempting to relitigate the same material while ignoring previous consensus. You are also engaging in vote stacking by notifying the "Gun Politics" project. That was a project you started to correct what you felt was insufficient coverage of this sort of content in gun articles. All 10 members are editors who have reliably supported such content. So yes, I am asking why you think we should relitigate this content and why you think your notifications were not vote stacking. Springee (talk) 18:06, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

@Dlthewave: I apologize for the late response; I'm not super-active here these days. I've reviewed the material in question, as well as some of the referenced RfC's and other discussions. It seems entirely appropriate to have an RfC on the topic of whether the Smith & Wesson M&P15 page should include mention of that weapon's use in mass shootings. The current consensus is to handle such material on a case-by-case basis, which is what it appears you're doing by opening an RfC. The "forum-shopping" objections seem groundless at best, and intentionally obstructionist at worst.

Nor do I see any problem with the Gun Politics Task Force; it is properly constituted and open to anyone interested in gun politics, regardless of their underlying views. Springee can, of course, open an MfD discussion about the task force if s/he is so motivated, but the complaints about votestacking are likewise inappropriate and unfounded. I hope you're able to get a decent amount of thoughtful outside input at the RfC. If there are ongoing issues with obstructionism, please let me know. MastCell ^Talk 21:00, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

MastCell, why isn't this a case of revisiting a previous RfC in hopes of getting a different result? I have been under the impression that editors should have some just cause for reopening a previously closed RfC. Absent that reason why wouldn't this be forum-shopping? Springee (talk) 21:11, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

The previous RfC took place in 2017—at a time when the Firearms WikiProject had promulgated guidelines forbidding mention of mass shootings in articles describing the weapons used in those mass shootings. Those WikiProject guidelines have since been rejected by the community. Since the underlying assumptions from the 2017 RfC are no longer valid, it seems reasonable to revisit the question now. In other words, there is "some just cause" to re-open the question, and it looks like other editors have repeatedly explained that cause to you. MastCell ^Talk 21:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

The change in the project guidelines was small, the existing recommendation now clarifies that WP:WEIGHT applies. Since the guideline helped interpret weight what we have was a non-change. Additionally, that argument would have more substance if it was shown the change in project guidelines was a deciding factor in the previous closing. Asking the editors in question could clarify if that was a deciding factor. Not many editors cited that reason alone. Keep in mind that Dlthewave didn't start a new formal RFC including notifying the previous editors. Instead they set up a quick vote despite the objections of other editors. So even if the RFC should be reopened, they didn't notify responding editors that the material had been previously discussed nor why the previous RFC should be overlooked. Finally, I can't fathom how it isn't vote stacking to notifying a project that it's specifically setup to push this sort of information. Project firearms includes a broad range of editors including those who have supported such article changes in the past. The same can not be said of protect guns politics. Springee (talk) 23:16, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

I understand your point, but I don't agree with it. When the dictates of the Firearms WikiProject were overturned by the community, the baseline assumptions for these discussion shifted. I don't know what the outcome of the current RfC will be, but I do know that it's fair to revisit the question given the changing context, and that the RfC itself is not abusive or inappropriate. Please stop insisting otherwise.

As for notifying participants of the previous RfC, that is certainly fine but it is not a requirement, to my knowledge. You're free to do so if you feel so moved; if you do, please notify all (non-blocked) editors who commented in the prior discussion. But please stop asserting that the lack of notification constitutes misconduct on Dlthewave's part, because it doesn't.

Finally, regarding the Gun Politics task force, I don't share your concerns. Like other such task forces, it is open to any who wish to join, regardless of their personal views on gun politics. Of course, any WikiProject can end up serving as a platform for partisan vote-stacking or inappropriately coordinated editing. For example, the Firearms WikiProject developed a bizarre dictum insisting that criminal use of firearms could only be included as a "see also" in gun articles—an obvious violation of WP:NPOV and WP:WEIGHT—which the broader community rejected. And, as I'm sure you're aware, reputable outside media have raised the concern that the Firearms WikiProject is inherently political in its approach to the topic area. I haven't yet seen similar concerning issues with the Gun Politics Task Force. In any case, if you believe the Task Force to be invalid, then the appropriate venue is WP:MfD. Until and unless the task force is deleted by community consensus, please don't keep implying that it's somehow less valid that others. MastCell ^Talk 20:16, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Mastcell. I would add that participation in a Wikiproject is not restricted to those who are listed as "members" or "participants". For example, I assume that Springee and other editors have either watchlisted the Gun Politics task force or are monitoring my edits, as they often respond to my posts on the project talk page, just as I have followed Firearms and other projects before adding my name to the list. I request that Springee either cease making these accusations regarding the task force (which only seem to come up when there is an RfC or other discussion to undermine) or bring it up at the appropriate noticeboard.–dlthewave ☎ 21:29, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

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It's time for elastic waistbands....

Whad'ya call a turkey on the run? Fast food.	Wishing You A Happy Turkey Day!
	Thanksgiving chuckles... What smells best at a Thanksgiving dinner? Your nose. What did the turkey say to the computer? Google, google, google. 😊🦃 Atsme✍🏻📧 22:49, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Wow!! Another year gone.

	Santa Claus is coming to town!
	Hoping all of your wishes come true, but I'm thinking you'll settle for the first 5, right? 😊 Stay warm...enjoy the holiday season...make happy memories!! Atsme✍🏻📧 23:40, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy Holidays

Best wishes for this holiday season! Thank you for your Wiki contributions in 2018. May 2019 be prosperous and joyful. --K.e.coffman (talk) 22:32, 21 December 2018 (UTC) Noël ~ καλά Χριστούγεννα ~ З Калядамі ~ חנוכה שמח ~ Gott nytt år!

Note

Could you please try to keep your talk page comments a bit less personal? [17] [18] You may be right, but venting assumptions of bad faith like that on the talk page is not helpful to the discussion and a bit off-putting. ~Awilley (talk) 00:51, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Awilley, I appreciate your presence at Talk:Donald Trump, which is clearly an underserved area in terms of administrative guidance. That said, I disagree with your decision to scold me about my tone, rather than to address the repetition of obviously false claims (at this point, I think it's fair to call them lies) on the highest-profile article and talkpage on this site.

Specifically, the Donald Trump article currently states, in its lead, that the crimes committed by Trump's associates were "unrelated to Russia". That is false. (At a minimum, Cohen's and Flynn's guilty pleas are directly and undeniably related to Russia). We're not talking about a difference of opinions, nor context dependency. The wording in the lead is categorical, and categorically false. So we have a situation where editors have inserted and defended wording that they know, or should know, is false, in the lead of a high-profile biographical article. Worse, we have a talk-page environment where obviously false wording receives at least a significant minority of support on an RfC. That's evidence of a deeply dysfunctional editing environment, one that has drifted very far afield from this site's policies. Given those ground truths, my tone is significantly milder than perhaps is appropriate.

As for PackMecEng, look. An editor presented a reliable source describing Trump's plea for the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's email. (The source is entitled, in part, "Trump Invited the Russians to Hack Clinton"). PackMecEng responded: "I do not think any reasonable person takes that comment as actually asking Russia to hack Hillary." So you have a reliable source saying X, and an editor responding by saying that no reasonable person believes X. That is bizarre. What is the good-faith explanation for a flat refusal to accept or acknowledge the content of reliable sources? Should I nod and smile when someone looks me in the eye and tells me that 2 + 2 is 5?

I'm a believer in civility, and I wouldn't have lasted more than a decade here, on the kinds of articles I edit, if I weren't relentlessly and sometimes teeth-gratingly civil. But any adult definition of civility has, at its core, honesty. There is no act more uncivil than lying, or feigning incomprehension, or pretending that something is true in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. Being polite to someone while s/he lies to your face or gaslights you is not civility. So if this is about tone and civility, then I'm going to suggest you start there.

I'm going to close with a question to you: does it bother you that the lead of the most prominent article in the encyclopedia now contains a false claim—one that you've now locked in place by protecting the article—and that numerous editors continue to defend this false claim on the talkpage? It bothers me, and I'm open to your suggestions on how to address it. MastCell ^Talk 15:26, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Since I was pinged here for some reason I will give a short response to the above. I stand by what I said about reasonable people thinking Trump honestly asked Russia to hack Hillary. It was clearly a joke and the people that took it as anything but that seem to be pushing a political POV. I am also disturbed that you keep misrepresenting what the lead actually says. You keep saying "unrelated to Russia" but that sentence and the sentence before that make very clear that it is unrelated to Russian efforts to interfere in the election. There is a clear distinctions there and one that has been brought up by several people on that talk page with several RS supporting it. It is a little ironic that you call people lairs, incompetent, and childish for disagree with a source then you turn right around and do the same thing. Perhaps political articles are not your thing and you should take a break from them. But eh it is a free world and that is just some friendly advice. Marry Christmas! PackMecEng (talk) 16:55, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @PackMecEng: I pinged you because I don't want to be accused of talking about you behind your back. I understand that you think Trump was joking when he asked the Russians to hack Clinton's email and help him win the Presidency. (The Russians then did hack Clinton's email and help Trump win the Presidency, so it would appear they didn't take it as a joke, but I digress). I don't object to your sense of humor. I object to your total disregard for the content of reliable sources. I object to the fact that, confronted with a reliable source saying X, you respond that no reasonable person could possibly think X. I think I made that clear above.

As for the "unrelated to Russia's efforts" wording, no amount of legalistic nonsense makes that wording any less false. Reliable sources unequivocally tie Cohen's guilty plea to Russia efforts to influence Trump and the election: [19], "(Cohen's plea shows) that Trump was engaged in business dealings with Russia in the midst of a campaign in which Moscow interfered to help elect him.", etc. Likewise, Flynn held secret backchannel communications with the Russian ambassador to help Russia avoid consequences for its interference in the election, and pleaded guilty to lying about those conversations.

Now, our article says that the guilty pleas were "unrelated to Russia's efforts". But obviously, both Cohen's and Flynn's pleas were directly related to Russia's efforts. It might be narrowly and legalistically correct to say that their pleas do not speak to collusion with Russia to influence the election, but that's not what our article says. Our article contains a categorical denial that their pleas had anything to do with "Russia's efforts", which is false. Since Flynn tried to help Russia avoid consequences for their interference, his plea is obviously "related to Russia's efforts". MastCell ^Talk 17:29, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

The problem with removing it is the same issue you have with leaving it. The current wording is technically correct, though I see your point it could be misleading if you take the sentence by itself. The issue with just removing that part is that the sentence at that point would also not be correct. What kind of clarification for the sentence would you suggest to remedy that? PackMecEng (talk) 20:03, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

I think you're mistaken PackMecEng. The sentence without the words "unrelated to Russia's efforts" is technically correct AFAICT. (That several of Trump's associates have pled guilty to various crimes is uncontroversial). The problem I think people were having was with the implications of having that so close to Russian meddling. ~Awilley (talk) 20:19, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Could be, but if the sentence says "to investigate possible links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government regarding election interference, and any matters arising from the probe. The ongoing investigation has so far led to guilty pleas by several Trump associates" I think it is to strong of a implication without clarification. Similar to what MastCell was saying, while not technically incorrect there is a high possibility that it would mislead our readers. I get the feeling our readers would either skip over or not understand the ,and any matters arising from the probe which would then make it an incorrect statement. PackMecEng (talk) 22:07, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

@PackMecEng: ok, so you understand the problem. Now what can you do to fix it half way that doesn't involve adding the words "unrelated to Russia's efforts"? Looking on the talk page I see that User:Objective3000 has proposed an alternate wording here that adds the word "various" before "criminal charges". Does that sufficiently soften the implication for you that the charges are Russia-collusion-related? ~Awilley (talk) 23:09, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

That has the same issue and does not clarify any of it. I would personally like to kill the whole sentence as has been suggested by others and kick the can down the road to the presidency article. PackMecEng (talk) 23:38, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

If you're worried that readers will draw incorrect inferences about the specific crimes committed, why not just name them—financial fraud, lying to the FBI, conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to obstruct justice, etc.? I don't understand the need for lawyerly language about what they didn't do; just say what they did do. MastCell ^Talk 02:59, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

That would certainly be more appropriate for a BLP to be clear on what they did and try to avoid implying anything else. One needs to be careful when talking about a BLPs crimes. PackMecEng (talk) 03:38, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @MastCell: Yes, it bothers me. Although to be fair the text doesn't actually say "unrelated to Russia" as you quoted above. It says "unrelated to Russia's efforts" and I think in the context of the whole sentence the intended meaning is "unrelated to Russia's efforts [to influence the 2016 election]", which I believe is true so far as we know. (At least people have produced sources saying things along those lines.) So I think what bugs me about the wording is not that it is categorically true or false, but that it can be interpreted as being true or false by otherwise fairly reasonable people.

I have a lot of respect for you. I remember sometime back a long conversation between you and PackMecEng where you were trying really hard to understand her perspective. I think that same type of open-mindedness is going to be what resolves this issue...when someone takes the time to understand the root of others' concerns, and comes up with some wording that reasonably addresses that. ~Awilley (talk) 17:16, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

PMFJI, but as a Brit looking on (who is daily thankful he does not edit on US politics) I have to say that having phrasing like "unrelated to Russia" in the lede seems just really odd. Surely this is an opinion, and quite a layered/contested one at that. How can it belong? Merry Christmas to you all! Alexbrn (talk) 17:22, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Awilley, Flynn admitted lying about his efforts to help Russia avoid sanctions for its election interference. So how can his plea possibly be "unrelated to Russia's efforts [to influence the 2016 election]"? His plea revolves entirely around Russia's election interference. Without Russia's efforts to influence the election, there would have been nothing to lie about, and no crime. And yes, I tried hard to understand PackMecEng's perspective, because I try to be open-minded. It's partly on the basis of those prior efforts on my part that I am less willing to extend leeway to her now. I am all for compromise wording, but you can't compromise effectively with people who flatly deny the content of reliable sources or insist of categorical and false language. MastCell ^Talk 17:35, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

I suppose one could also argue that all the guilty pleas are related to Russia trying to influence the election. (If Russia hadn't interfered there probably wouldn't have been a probe in the first place.) Looking more closely at the sources some people are providing [20] it looks like the issue might be whether the charges were related to collusion with Russia to influence the election. That might be helpful in finding a compromise. Anyway I'll stop bothering you here. ~Awilley (talk) 18:07, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

You're not bothering me; I appreciate your engagement and interest. MastCell ^Talk 02:59, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Austral season's greetings

	Austral season's greetings
	Tuck into this! We've made about three of these in the last few days for various festivities. Supermarkets are stuffed with cheap berries. Season's greetings! Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:28, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

2019

Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht

Happy 2019

begin it with music and memories

Not too late, I hope ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:31, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Fox News

I appreciate that there are examples of sub-standard reporting in Fox News. My question is what is the difference between Fox news coverage of the Seth Rich murder and the New York Times (and other U.S. media) coverage of the reasons for the invasion of Iraq. In both cases media presented information they should have known was false in order to further political ends. And I don't think these are isolated incidents, just the most egregious. TFD (talk) 18:15, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

In the case of Fox News, I'm not sure that "sub-standard reporting" is a remotely proper description, so the comparison is useless.

Thanks, MastCell, for continuing to bring up these issues. Consensus doesn't do us much good if the facts aren't well known, or are being overlooked. --Ronz (talk) 20:54, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Korean Proletarian Artists' Federation

Can you please restore Korean Proletarian Artists' Federation that was deleted (PROD) because of "No decent google hits. Possible hoax, or un-notable thing. Maybe just because this was invented and dissolved way before the www was invented..."

The topic is notable, certainly not a hoax, and there is plenty of coverage in books (physical and Google books) and journal articles. There's lots of new English-language scholarship since the article was deleted in 2007. Thank you. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:53, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

@Finnusertop: The old, deleted article was only 5 sentences long, contained little beyond a basic description, and cited zero sources. I can undelete it if you like, but there is really no sourced info there (and hardly any unsourced info either). If new sources exist then you might be best off just writing a new, properly sourced article from scratch. MastCell ^Talk 02:07, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Okay, thank you for the information. Based on the description you provided, I'll probably just start it from scratch (with sources). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:40, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Quoting from a court opinion.

Please see my questions on the Center for Medical Progress talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Swood100 (talk • contribs) 22:02, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Also see my question on the talk page: For the People Act of 2019. Swood100 (talk) 22:38, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks; I will respond on those talkpages. I've added them to my watchlist, so there's no need to ping me here. While we're talking, though, did you see my note on your talkpage, asking you to stop following me around and reverting my edits? MastCell ^Talk 01:12, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes I did but that was a one-time event. It's not as if it has turned into a pattern, but rest assured that I will not be hounding you, if for no other reason than I don't think I want to aggravate you any more than is necessary given your apparent proclivity for viewing my edits in the worst possible light.

While I am here, I asked on Talk:Center_for_Medical_Progress#findlaw.com_as_a_legitimate_secondary_source whether anybody has an objection to findlaw.com as a legitimate secondary source. If you do could you go to that page and supply your reasons?

Also on that page I responded to your assertion that a court transcript is always a primary source with a reference to the effect that those portions of a court opinion that are orbiter dicta are a secondary source, as are concurrences and dissents. Did you have a response to this? Thanks. Swood100 (talk) 21:34, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Your partisanship at AE

I've been following WP:AE for quite some time, and have noticed that you seem to pop out of nowhere when there is an enforcement report that is tangential to politics. Recently you have not participated at AE for a long time, until now when there is a request related to gun politics (which is a very controversial issue in American politics).

So, I opened your contribs at 1000 edits and CTRL+F'd "enforcement". These are your last AE participations (political descriptions broadly speaking):

• 18 February 2019 proposing sanctions for right-leaning editors (gun politics)
• 28 June 2018 proposing sanctions for a right-leaning editor (American politics 32-)
• 24 May 2018 defending a progressive editor (American politics 32-)
• 17 May 2018 proposing sanctions for a right-leaning editor (gun politics)
• April 4 2018 defending a progressive editor (American politics 32-)
• 4 April 2018 proposing sanctions for a right-leaning editor ("Race and Intelligence")
• 11 March 2018 proposing sanctions for a right-leaning editor (gun politics)
• 4 January 2018 proposing sanctions for a right-leaning editor (American politics 32-)
• 9 November 2017 defending progressive editor and proposing sanctions for a right-leaning editor (American politics 32-)

Really, there is no pattern here? Can you say hand on your heart that your participation at AE is not politically biased? Frankly, this reminds of Gamaliel's enforcement of Gamergate requests which led to this motion

PS. In your latest AE comment[21] you accused three editors of "deep-seated partisanship" so hope you don't mind the word being used to describe your own behauvior. --Pudeo (talk) 08:25, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

An observation on this comment, hope that is okay with the user. There is an odd logic, and curiously US view of right and left politics embracing crazed populists lying left, right, and centre. According to the postscript, indicating hyper-partisan behaviour is itself partisan, therefore Pudeo's behaviour is partisan? Or can I just accuse them of that, see if something sticks? … it's confusing and paradoxical, this nice method of hounding those users working on stopping 'deep-seated partisanship'. cygnis insignis 10:19, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I can't say I'm some kind of a neutral observer not involved in partisan issues in Wikipedia. However, the difference between me and MastCell is that I'm commenting as a regular user giving my two cents, and he's commenting as an uninvolved admin directly leading to users being banned and blocked as a result of these reports. Arbitration enforcement is not to be taken lightly, it requires professionalism. --Pudeo (talk) 15:50, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Somebody made the point once that most of us are not familiar with the process of consensus and arbitration, and we try to equate it other forms of resolution, judicial, political, and the forms of democracy and control. This user's tools are somewhat incidental, although it is usual for those entrusted with other tasks to also be admins, and so are their own views if all is well with the community. The actions are not this users own, per se, they are an integral part of the 'community', a bizarre and alien creature that would not even be able to exist but for the consensus that it does. I'm a regular user, like you, and probably too protective of the community and its ways; I don't know much about either of you and hope what I had to say was helpful, in some way. Regards to you both. cygnis insignis 12:41, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Really, there is no pattern here? Patterns can't be discerned without context. Are these all the AE cases MastCell participated in the last year and a half? What were the cases he didn't participate in like? And did MastCell agree with the majority in these cases, or disagree? If rightwingers are more likely to be wrong, and lefties more likely to be right, then you'd expect this pattern. If it's the other way around, then it's unusual.

Without context, things like this are impossible to interpret. You admit you aren't a neutral observer - you need to make sure you don't come across as someone casting aspersions or trying to pressure admins at AE you see as unfavourable to your side. Guettarda (talk) 18:04, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

• Pudeo, first of all, I don't necessarily accept your facile dichotomization of editors as either "right-leaning" or "progressive". I have no idea if Captain Occam, for instance, is "right-leaning" or "progressive". I do know he's repeatedly abused this site to push racist pseudoscience, but I'd hesitate to label someone "right-leaning" on that basis. More generally, I think that the tendency to reflexively pigeonhole editors by their perceived political leanings is evidence of a partisan political-battleground mentality, which is best avoided.

  But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that I accept the labels you've applied to these editors. Your complaint, then, is that I've advocated sanctions for "right-leaning" editors disproportionately to "progressive" editors. Have you made any effort to assess the merits of any of the cases in question, or are you just reflexively defending your "team"? By way of analogy, suppose that, in the course of a football game, the Packers are flagged for 150 yards of penalties while the Bears are penalized for only 15 yards. Does that mean that the referees are biased against the Packers? Or does it mean that the Packers committed more penalties than the Bears, while the referees did their level best to call the game fairly? I don't see any evidence that you've tried to disentangle these two potential explanations. Do you think that some or all of those cases were wrongly decided? If so, it's not clear from your complaint, which seems based on your assumptions that a) editors fall neatly onto one of two "teams", and b) editors from each "team" should be sanctioned in roughly equal numbers by an unbiased admin.

  As for where I choose to involve myself, I've been active for more than a decade here, and I've done a little of everything. I've written featured articles, drafted content guidelines, handled vandalism, new page patrol, and protection requests, and participated in every level of dispute resolution. I don't feel the need to justify or make apologies for where I choose to spend my time on this site anymore.

  One more thing, regarding professionalism. In the threads in question, I voiced my opinion. Sometimes other admins find my opinion convincing and agree with me; sometimes I'm an outlier. That's part of the job. I rely on my administrative colleagues as a sanity check, and as a safety against any conscious or unconscious bias on my part. If your complaint is that other admins find my arguments convincing more often than not, well, I guess I hope I'm guilty. MastCell ^Talk 01:12, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Yes, it's not nice to pigeonhole people into these labels, but it had to be broadly done to make the point. And let's not pretend that the DS area American politics 32- isn't about progressives vs. conservatives. I don't think the cases were wrongly decided or that you made completely unreasonable points. It's just that if there's a call to make, you will always fall on the same side which I think makes deep bias in the long run. There is some complaining about Sandstein being biased in Israeli-Palestine reports, but he's not always making the same call, and he's active in AE reports in other areas as well. The reason why I care about this is because AE is frequented by only a handful of admins, so if one or two admins pop up selectively, they will sway the consensus. Happy trails --Pudeo (talk) 08:11, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Some information you might want to know

I guess sometimes our experiences help guide us in knowing when something isn't right. I'm sure you know that a doctor can tell when another doctor screws up a suture. Well, a journalists know when another journalist screws up a story. Before you believe everything you read, you might want to take a look at this tell all book by former New York Times editor Jill Abramson. There's a similar exposé about getting the story wrong published by WaPo about WaPo, BuzzFeed, McClatchy, CNN, etc. but I can't provide that diff until after my appeal has been decided, if it ends in my favor. You probably know WaPo is being sued for false representation and victimization of that kid, and that other news sources have apologized to the victim, but WaPo intends to fight it. In all likelihood they will settle out of court. There are many other incidents of similar bad reporting by so-called trusted sources and if WP editors are going to IAR and blindly trust breaking news, pundits, opinion pieces etc., then we're doing a disservice to our readers and will soon be listed along with the sources we're citing that got the story wrong. I provided diffs when I spoke of those sources - nothing like what you represented that I did - and I also provided alternative ways to present the information without making it seem like WP supported it but I encouraged waiting a while instead - we're an encyclopedia, not the news media - and certainly discouraged saying things that were not verifiable in WikiVoice. If you can find instances that what I'm saying now isn't true, then please provide the diffs. I don't think it was fair that you made the statements you made about me without a single diff to support the allegations. How is that not casting aspersions? ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 05:17, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

I don't believe everything that I read. I just believe that something I read in the Washington Post is far more likely to be accurate than something I read on InfoWars. It's the embrace of false equivalence that got you in trouble. I understand that we live in the midst of a sustained partisan assault on our journalistic institutions, but reputable mainstream journalistic outlets remain reliable sources for this site's purposes. MastCell ^Talk 21:59, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree. InfoWars is a click bait site and full of conspiracy theories. BuzzFeed is a questionable source, but we have an entire article cited to what that source initially published. I know you disagree with my views about breaking news, internet click bait sites, etc., but Masem and DGG both made accurate presentations regarding news sources. It is with sadness that it appears you have lost site of our NOTNEWS policy. Oh well, it's only WP and we're all just volunteers. RL is far more important. Enjoy your weekend. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 23:19, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

I apologize for what I now see as an insensitive comment, so I struck it. It certainly wasn't fair to paint you with such a broad brush, especially when I personally don't believe it to be true. There will always be varying perceptions about news and how it is being reported over the internet. I tend to be old school - the John Cameron Swayzee - Walter Cronkite style ethics in journalism; i.e., report only the facts in adherence with NPOV. The dilemma arises when the reporters are no longer reporting facts, rather they are mixing their commentary with opinion and that's why it has become difficult to get everyone on the same page. With the transition of the primary medium for which news was reported, specifically the transition from newspapers/magazines to analogue (TV) and from analogue to digital (internet), technology paved new roads for what we are plagued with today. WP has its own news source separate from our encyclopedic articles, and that is where I believe "news" should be published. When we defend news sources, we are not talking about peer reviewed academic sources or credible journals that have specific guidelines to keep editors on track, such as MEDRS; perhaps we should consider something similar to help avoid the ideological division that often leads to disruption. Some will argue that we already have PAGs that adequately address the problem and they just need to be followed - others will argue that we do follow them - it all depends on one's perspective. That's why I am in full agreement with the arguments put forth by Masem and DGG regarding sources. Their arguments clearly align with our current PAGs. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 20:07, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Your portrayal of Cronkite is bizarre and unrecognizable, since he was famous for mixing opinion, moral perspective, and personal interpretation with facts in his journalism—as were the other high-profile newsmen of his day, like Murrow. Cronkite's reporting on the Vietnam War was essentially a sustained moral challenge to Presidential and military authorities. If he were alive and reporting today, you and Masem would be deriding him as a left-wing hack, and the President would label him an "enemy of the people". Mainstream media haven't changed, so much as the ground has shifted under them in light of a sustained partisan attack aimed at undermining the very notion of a free, reliable press (and yes, you and Masem are part of that attack, here on Wikipedia).

I'm tired of the ridiculous argument (articulated by Masem, for instance) that the news media were perfectly good sources until all of a sudden, in 2016, they suddenly became questionable, dubious, partisan, and unreliable. That's utter self-serving nonsense. Yes, the reputable press has struggled, sometimes mightily, with the challenge of covering a President (and a party apparatus) who lie reflexively and unabashedly, whose conduct flouts established ethical norms and is frankly criminal to an extent unprecedented in modern memory, and who are capable of creating "alternate facts" which at least 40% of the population will accept in lieu of actual facts.

But it would be a lot more honest of you, and of Masem, to admit that your real problem is simply that you don't like the way that reliable sources have chosen to cover the Trump Administration, and that you are not willing to follow reliable sources in that area because they conflict with your personal viewpoints. Rather than acknowledge that reality, you've created an alternative timeline, replete with a phony version of Walter Cronkite and other newsmen of yore, to buttress an attack on the concept of reliable sourcing which forms the foundation of this website. And no, Masem's arguments don't "align with our current PAGs"; his views on sourcing are extreme outliers and have consistently been recognized as such. As I said at the AE report, I don't think he is doing you any favors by normalizing and enabling the behavior that got you in trouble in the first place. MastCell ^Talk 21:11, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

I won't address anything beyond the topic of journalism, but if Walter Cronkite is truly as you describe and you can cite RS to support it, some CE may be in order at his WP article. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 22:07, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

I don't think so. Have you read our article on Cronkite? It's pretty decent, and quotes Cronkite at length on the Vietnam War essentially telling his audience that the official government line was not to be trusted, that the Administration's pronouncements of imminent victory were false, and that the best course of action was to cease offensive operations and negotiate for peace. Cronkite was trusted in part because he spoke with moral clarity and identified political lies as such. Of course, it was a different time. (In contrast, today's media would run something like: "White House: Viet Cong on verge of surrender—some critics disagree"). MastCell ^Talk 20:26, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you!

deisenbe (talk) 17:56, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Lynching of Shedrick Thompson

I'd appreciate it if you had another look at this. In my view, Qwirkle should be sanctioned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Tagging_as_not_neutral_of_article_Lynching_of_Shedrick_Thompson

I put quotes in today and he takes the whole section right out. How should I escalate this? Thank you. deisenbe (talk) 15:29, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@MastCell:, I think you might want to do a quick look at @Deisenbe:’s earlier attempts at...forum shopping isn’t quite the right term, but it may have to do...before answering this. Let me know if you need diffs. Qwirkle (talk) 16:09, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

On climate post

Hi MastCell — I don't know if we've ever interacted directly, though I have seen you around and respect your editing. While I agree with you on the content question at Talk:The Wall Street Journal, I object in particular to this post that you wrote earlier: [22]. Even if I think Atsme is wrong, they are clearly approaching this issue in a principled manner by raising specific concerns and linking relevant sources. However, that single post of yours that I'm noting here — early in the discussion — accuses Atsme of WP:IDHT and WP:BLUDGEON. Your next comment is an implicit threat because you invoke their topic ban [23]. For me, even disagreeing with Atsme on the content (as I think I normally do actually), I'm not sure how you expect Atsme to present their concerns with the article: I can't imagine a more civil or academic way to approach the topic, which is what we want on a talk page. I also don't think it's reasonable to expect Atsme to just refrain from commenting at all. Would you have wanted them to approach the conversation differently? Or is it possible that you are in fact personalizing this dispute too quickly? Anyway I hope you consider my comments, no offense intended. -Darouet (talk) 15:00, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

• Darouet, re-litigating an RfC a few weeks after it closed is precisely the kind of thing that made Atsme's talk page contributions so difficult to handle, no? Drmies (talk) 01:39, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi Drmies — Atsme wasn't involved in the RfC: they arrived later and then questioned the RfC result when they learned of it. I disagree with Atsme but their comments aren't simply spurious, as evidenced by some supportive or ambivalent comments by respected editors [24][25]. Overall I think the impact of their critique has been positive, in that we've had posts bolstering the RfC results with further evidence [26][27][28], and a few suggestions to possibly tighten the lead language — while adhering to the RfC result — if needed. I'm glad Atsme is around to apply their considerable talent and prodigious energy to this and other articles. Atsme's content-based and collegial critiques are what we need to make sure we get Wikipedia articles right. But if we were to respond to those critiques with ad hominem arguments or accusations, the behavioral problem would lie with us, not Atsme: encouraging this would degrade rather than improve the editing environment here. -Darouet (talk) 16:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

In this case, a properly-conducted and well-attended RfC was just completed with a clear consensus. Atsme didn't like the RfC's conclusion, so she opened a new discussion in a different forum about the same issue a couple of weeks later. That's a classic example of disruptive behavior ("asking the other parent"). It basically invalidates the good-faith, content-based, collegial work of all of the editors who participated in the RfC. Seriously: what is the point of ever having an RfC, if any editor can happen along a week or two later and just toss its result and re-open the topic?

So then, what if one see an RfC that was just closed incorrectly? It's one thing to "present concerns" about a topic or a consensus—any editor can do that at any time. But in doing so, they need to acknowledge the existence of the consensus and show it some degree of appropriate respect. Atsme doesn't do that. She is, to parrot the classic description of the surgeon's mindset, "often wrong, but never in doubt". Rather than voicing a "content-based and collegial" critique, and rather than approaching the issue as a good-faith disagreement, she accused the editors from the RfC of "a miscommunication or possible misrepresentation". She lectured the other editors on basic policy and bludgeoned them with a variety of incorrect arguments, while refusing to listen to their responses:

• Under the guise of explaining "how it works" here, she claimed that "When material in the lead is challenged because it is not supported by a RS... then the material needs to be removed from the lead, and included somewhere else in the body of the article as a controversial opinion." That is just wrong as a matter of basic policy, and also an obvious example of begging the question (the material was, quite clearly, supported by a reliable source).
• She mischaracterizes the source in question again: "The cited source points to an opinion essay by a scientist". In fact, the cited source is Merchants of Doubt, a well-regarded book written by two prominent academic historians of science and published by a major publishing house.
• She complains that the RfC was closed by a non-admin ([29]), which is a non-issue since consensus was clear and the close met WP:NAC criteria. She also complained that the other editors did not provide "in-text" [sic] and accused her fellow editors of bad faith, claiming that "they do not want to provide page numbers and follow policy". This is not only bad form, but also completely wrong and unfair, as the citation in question did include page numbers.

... and so on. If you look at this exchange and you see Atsme providing a "content-based and collegial" critique, then I guess I question your perspective. I see her disruptively re-litigating a just-closed RfC, dismissing the input and basic competence of the other editors on the page, accusing them of bad faith and misrepresentation, making a variety of incorrect or false claims about the material under discussion, and constantly moving the goalposts when people respond to her—as substantiated by the diffs above. What am I, as a bystander and admin who watches the page, supposed to do in that situation? It is not "casting aspersions" to call attention to these behaviors and to ask or insist that they stop.

More to the point, everyone has his or her pet theory about why we lose good editors. Here's mine, informed by more than a decade of editing and adminning controversial topic areas: good editors leave because it's demoralizing to watch bad editors run riot with no one reining them in. The editors that worked the proper processes and completed a well-formed RfC just watched Atsme swoop in, invalidate it with a bunch of poorly-thought-out and condescending arguments, and then go off to a different noticeboard to try to get the answer she wants. Those editors are bound to feel demoralized and dispirited at seeing this perversion of our content-dispute-resolution policies. Surely, with a modicum of empathy, you can acknowledge that you'd feel that way in their shoes. So I speak up, because I can, and because I think it's important. Like you, I worry about the degradation of our editing environment, and I see the behaviors demonstrated in that thread by Atsme as a case in point. MastCell ^Talk 19:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Unlike either you or Atsme, I participated in the RfC whose outcome she later questioned. I argued against her viewpoint before she arrived, and then later on the talk page and at NPOVN. But I never once felt that Atsme's objections [30][31] (and reply to me directly [32]), to quote you here, "dismiss[ed]" my "basic competence", or "accus[ed]" me of "bad faith", or used "condescending arguments". Surely, our views were not "invalidate[d]" by Atsme's comments: if mere disagreement invalidated facts, arguments, or articles, then we'd need to ban everyone who disagreed with us. Atsme raised her objections, we all looked into the matter more closely, and in the end the same outcome as before prevailed. The process was important: how we write the lead describing one of the world's major newspapers isn't a trivial issue, and I for one am happy that evidence not provided during the RfC process was presented after Atsme's critique. Regarding Atsme's use of NPOVN, she wasn't present for the RfC, and that's what NPOVN is for.

It was no difficulty — in fact it was a positive thing — to reply to Atsme at Talk:WSJ, by quoting from relevant sources [33]. But as I noted when I began this thread, your two initial posts [34][35] did not pull up this evidence, and instead came out somewhere near the bottom of the "disagreement hierarchy" [36] by accusing Atsme of WP:IDHT and WP:BLUDGEON and invoking their ban. This is despite the fact that you and Atsme have been colleagues here for over eight years. I think your quote about why people leave is a good one, and accurate, and I trust your good intentions. But as somebody who participated in that RfC and disagreed with Atsme, it was your response, and not hers, that I found "demoralizing." I won't trouble you any more on your talk page, it was not my intention to create any more drama: none was ever needed in the first place. -Darouet (talk) 11:56, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

I understand that you personally aren't bothered by Atsme's behavior, and I'm glad to hear it. But I'm asking you to exercise some empathy for how her behavior affects others besides yourself. MastCell ^Talk 21:41, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

WP:CONDUCTTOBANNED, WP:HARASSMENT - your representation of me is false, disruptive and unwarranted. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 20:46, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Your shouting links make no sense and your text contains no valid (or indeed any) argument. I have only glanced over the underlying discussions, but MastCell's description seems to be in agreement with reality. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:13, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Umm...who referred to that is banned in this discussion? And how is this talk page discussion disruptive? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:15, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Stephen, MastCell's interaction with me goes much further than this discussion. I will not litigate it here but I am prepared to do so when/if I am forced to. I will say no more. Thank you. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 21:46, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Atsme, I was asked a question on my talkpage, and responded on my talkpage. I'm allowed to do that. (In fact, if I were to ignore the original poster's questions, an unscrupulous person might accuse me of evading accountability). You've come to my talkpage to criticize me for answering a question I was asked, while implying (without evidence) that I have some sort of nefarious history to cover up. I won't go so far as to call that harassment, but it does render your accusations a bit ironic. To the extent that I've discussed conduct, I've provided diffs to illustrate my concerns—in contrast to your insinuations here. MastCell ^Talk 22:13, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

You failed to consider the reason they posted to your TP. I did not, and will not engage you further. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 22:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

What an odd response. I carefully considered why Darouet posted here, and engaged his points at length. Simply because someone disagrees with your point of view does not mean that they have failed to consider it. MastCell ^Talk 21:37, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

That's heresy, MastCell, and you know it. Anyone who has properly considered any of my opinions has agreed with all of them; to disagree with me is to prove that you haven't considered it properly.

Also, please note that in the latest edition of Newspeak Dictionary "listening to" was defined an exact synonym for obeying instantly in every particular. You must get with the times. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:14, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Woohoo

Hey, MastCell. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Mjs1991 (talk) 06:54, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you!

Re: Peter the Fourth at AE--I tend to agree with your take, but more importantly, I too think treating "go pick a fight in traffic" as terribly violent is somewhat ludicrous. But because I received no support and pushback from people I respect, I began to think perhaps I was the insane one. It's nice to know that if I am insane, at least there are others who share my delusions. Cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 19:37, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

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Season's Greetings!

		Faithful friends who are dear to us
		... gather near to us once more. May your heart be light and your troubles out of sight, now and in the New Year. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:54, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Be well at Christmas

	Have a WikiChristmas and a PediaNewYear
	Be well. Keep well. Have a lovely Christmas. SilkTork (talk) 18:34, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Long time no see

I hope you'll return to activity at some point. Guy (help!) 14:43, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks, Guy. I do log in from time to time, but I haven't really been able to muster the energy to do anything more. As you might imagine, it's been a pretty remarkable and draining couple of months at work. As a result, I've been circumspect about making sure that I spend my discretionary time in ways that are relaxing and rewarding, and Wikipedia hasn't checked those boxes for awhile now.

  I also need to be in the right head-space to edit here, because (as we both know) the culture here prioritizes superficial politeness over pretty much everything else. The people who used to make this place interesting and engaging—the ones who understood civility as an extension of basic human decency rather than as weaponized tone-policing—are pretty much extinct. And it's harder for me to be superficially polite right now. After what I've seen and done over the past few months, to come here and see a bunch of ignorant half-wits downplaying the severity of the pandemic, or the criminal negligence of our national response to it, is a challenge to my equanimity.

  I think the sheer avoidability of so much of the suffering and death is the hardest thing to grapple with. Meanwhile, we're watching an effort to rewrite the history of the past few months right in front of our eyes, in real time, to minimize the culpability of those in charge and to turn career public-health workers (of all people) into the villains of the story. I feel a certain responsibility to honor the efforts, sacrifice, and suffering of my colleagues, friends, and patients by pushing back. And while I think we all realize on some level that these are lies, the usual subset of Wikipedians nonetheless have sprung into action to incorporate them here. I have to decide whether I have the stomach to watch them do that, with relative impunity, without saying something I'll regret.

  More generally, the reason I first got involved with Wikipedia—and a governing principle in my decade-plus here—has been to make Wikipedia a vehicle of accurate, high-quality medical information, and to limit the harm caused by medical misinformation here. I don't think I anticipated a situation where the President of the United States, and his political enablers, would become the primary vectors for medical misinformation, nor where simple opposition to blatant medical misinformation & lies would be treated as a partisan act rather than as a basic expression of this site's founding principles. (Of course, I never dreamed that these people could turn the simple use of face masks, during a deadly global pandemic, into a partisan wedge issue either. Live and learn.)

  Glancing at some of the talkpages related to Covid-19 and national responses to it, the sheer dishonesty of so much of our proposed coverage is palpably oppressive. Reliable sources are really clear about the details, coherency, and effectiveness of our national response, but a subset of the usual partisan hacks are tying themselves in knots trying to block Wikipedia from conveying the content of those sources. To take a specific example at random, summaries like this: "In response to the global coronavirus pandemic, Trump declared a national emergency and passed a $2 trillion stimulus package" are proposed as "factual" and neutral, when in fact they are worse than lies—they are technically correct but deeply misleading misrepresentations of the content and emphases of reliable sources. Again, having lived through this in a very hands-on way, I find that dishonesty appalling and uncivil, whereas Wikipedia culture would likely mistake its dry concision for neutrality and my passionate disapproval for incivility or bias.

  Anyhow... I am thinking I'll gradually dip my toes back in the water, but on my terms and in a way I'm comfortable with. I appreciate you checking in, and I hope you and yours are staying healthy and grounded during these unprecedented times. Take care. MastCell ^Talk 18:14, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the help!

How dare you say these rude things about Covid deniers! That's outrageous!! Thanks for all the important work you're doing, and if you can find time and patience to try to push back against misinformation here, that'll be greatly appreciated. Have a Wee Annie pic, hope you don't mind our local sense of humour. . . dave souza, talk 18:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

So good to hear from you MastCell. I went through something similar in the late 80s/early 90s when we started to get our first AIDs pts. I was working at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP) and it was just heart wrenching in that they were all so young. Any nurse/doctor is very well used of death of old people but so many beautiful, accomplished, young ones was not easy. None of us were used of that. To this day I have snapshots of my patients in my mind and I still feel a loss. But a least they did not have to die alone and I cannot imagine what you must be going through. Gandydancer (talk) 18:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Image

I wonder if you have any ideas about this image request: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#Image for granulocyte transfusion

I hope all is well with you these days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

NPAs on Jimbo's talk page

This was pointed out to me and I think I need to give you fair warning: [37] this diff with the statement "Anyhow, maybe we could start by committing to reject active KKK members from our ranks, and to basic honesty about notable, well-documented racist utterances from our political idols." in combination with what your complaint is and reviewing the discussion (and your comments there) on the Reagan talk page, its pretty clear this looks like a NPA directed at one identifiable editor. You may want to redact that. (I can't speak of the 2008 incident to know if thats an issue as well, searching on certain names is not getting me a clear picture immediately). --Masem (t) 15:32, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I think you're misreading that. I don't read it in any way as saying that anyone at Talk:Ronald Reagan is a KKK member, much less any particular editor. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:42, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Masem: I find it disturbing that our community has, historically, openly welcomed members of the KKK as editors, and that right now there's an obviously bad-faith effort to suppress racist statements made by a former President. You find it disturbing that I would bring these things up, and view tone-policing me as the best response to this situation. You instinctively defend bad-faith efforts to downplay racism, and instinctively threaten people who raise concerns about it. Frankly, in my view, that makes you a bigger part of the cultural problem here than any soup-spitting racism denier or KKK member. MastCell ^Talk 18:23, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think you can make broad generalizations about racism based upon an anecdote, especially when you consider the number of editors that identify as communists or anarchists. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:08, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Well, I don't think you can ignore obvious systemic problems by pretending that they're only "anecdotes". Or at least I can't. And I'm not sure what point you're making about communism/anarchism; if you see those as indistinguishable from being a racist or a KKK member, then I don't know how much progress we're likely to make. MastCell ^Talk 19:30, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

As you will see from the WP:ANI (where the discussion from the section below was moved to) I was wrong to have giving you the above message, so I have publicly apologized there and repeating it here as well as formally redact the statement. I know there's a wholly separate issue related to the same discussion on the ANI page that is more demanding so I'd rather clear this up first, and again my apologies. --Masem (t) 04:35, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Masem, sorry for the late reply, and thank you. Apology accepted and we're good. MastCell ^Talk 18:04, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

No worried on lateness and thank you. --Masem (t) 18:36, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.
Please note, I am only doing this notification as required by AN, I am asking for a self-review of my actions related to the above and only because I've mention you I have to notify you to be legit, I am not asking for any AN action towards you or others. --Masem (t) 00:12, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

SR Site Ban

I wanted to thank you for closing the thread regarding the site ban for SashiRolls, without having it go to ArbCom (where I think they would send it back to the community anyway). It's going to be contentious, but I wanted to just applaud you for stepping up and closing the discussion. RickinBaltimore (talk) 17:51, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

The same from me (not surprisingly). Goes a significant way towards restoring my faith in Wikipedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:53, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

I’m glad this block, of someone who hasn’t bothered you in years, has partially restored your faith in Wikipedia during your very active retirement. That gives us all some measure of comfort. Mr Ernie (talk) 18:04, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm glad that you're glad. Nice of you to say so. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:12, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

I am not among the great and good of Wikipedia, but I wanted to say as well that I believe you did the right thing, whatever happens in other venues. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 18:13, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm pleasantly surprised the AN thread was closed correctly. I was sure the dysfunctionality of the way that page is set up and run would hopelessly muddle things. I still wish proper outcomes at ANI didn't depend so often on wiser-than-average and more-flameproof-than-average admins being the ones to close them. That's how I can simultaneously have no faith in how ANI generally works, while simultaneously recognizing that at least it worked here. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:20, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Floq don’t you have blocks to threaten and aspersions to cast? Mr Ernie (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Mr Ernie, you're welcome to express your opinions about the close here, but if you're going to snipe at Tryptofish and Floquenbeam, then take it somewhere else. Or just quit it. MastCell ^Talk 19:29, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

MastCell you’ve barely made 50 edits in 9 months, and 500 in the last two years. Sashi has been actively contributing good content up until this indef, creating and building many articles. If you give a clean slate for everything related to their highlighting of a former admin socking to avoid a topic ban you’ve got very slim pickings for an indef. That stuff was brought up in nearly every notice board report about Sashi, and nobody I can see has ever once acknowledged Sashi was right about that and they were wrong. Normally protecting the project from socks is considered a good thing. But since you’ve been inactive for so long I’m willing to understand you probably didn’t know all the details. Mr Ernie (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

I could certainly be wrong, but isn't it proper to base the closure on consensus rather than MastCell's subjective feelings on the matter? Dumuzid (talk) 18:35, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Mr Ernie, I don't have a strong personal feeling about whether a ban was warranted, and am not interested in arguing about it. That discussion took place at WP:AN, and I didn't voice an opinion either way. The community (or at least the subset of the community who commented at WP:AN) pretty clearly felt that a ban was warranted, and that's how things work here, for better or worse. Separately, I don't feel the need to defend my activity level to you, and your petulant passive-aggressiveness in this thread doesn't reflect well on you. MastCell ^Talk 19:35, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

• I wasn't going to comment (there were kudos already posted), but after a few sown seeds of discontent and disruption I thought maybe I should. Add me to the list of those who are aware that you did do the right thing. Originally I was going to close the thread as obvious around the 28 hour mark or so - but El_C's comment and the late opposes left me thinking I should sleep on it. By the time I got back - the whole thing was such a mess that I didn't feel up to wading through it all. Your foresight to include the Arbcom option should have placated the grumblers, but you know wiki - Some folks will jump at any chance to stumble into a battleground.

tl;dr - well done. (from an insignificant voice in the balcony). — Ched (talk) 20:39, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

• Hi MastCell. You wrote in your close "While there is no numerical threshold for consensus, it would be inappropriate to close a discussion like this—with >2/3 of commenters supporting action—as 'no consensus'." Would your close have been different if it were less than 2/3? Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 14:00, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
  • You're asking whether I have a numerical threshold for determining consensus, even though I explicitly said I don't have a numerical threshold for determining consensus? :) If it were roughly 50/50, I'd have closed it as "no consensus". If it were, let's say, >90% in either direction, I'd probably have closed it with one sentence. Recognizing these as rough limits, in between it's a judgment call as to whether a clear (super-)majority of community opinion constitutes a consensus. My judgment was that, in this case, a consensus existed. MastCell ^Talk 19:17, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I found this

A Wikipedian's work in meatspace

and I knew you would appreciate it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Community Siteban vs ARBCOM appeal ANI decision

Hi MastCell,

You recently closed a ANI against SashiRolls as a community siteban, but go on to say that This ban can, of course, be appealed to the Arbitration Committee. Unless there's some private evidence I'm not aware of in play (in which case it should never have got there), scope point 2 (and the note) in ArbPol doesn't give them the right to hear appeals to CBANs. Indeed, it's that which made the Community CBAN Edgar after his socking was discovered, despite an ARBCOM ban, because they wanted to ensure they also needed to sign off any appeal.

Could you clarify? Am I missing something? Nosebagbear (talk) 20:17, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm watching here, and I think this might be relevant: At WP:UNBAN, the policy does allow appeals to ArbCom of CBANs, but within some limits. There, and here: [38], which is linked to in the footnote, it's made clear that ArbCom normally does not overturn CBANs, but could review whether the procedure of the CBAN discussion, or whether MastCell's close, seriously violated normal process. That sounds to me like they are unlikely to review all of the disputes giving rise to the present situation, and would mainly focus on procedural fairness in the sense of whether SashiRolls was given an adequate opportunity to respond to accusations or whether the close was manifestly improper or unreasonable. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: - that's a good point. From Sashi's reasoning, I suppose a pure procedural argument could be raised on two grounds, that of a request by him to hold it a couple of days so he could put together a more coherent argument when not at work, which would be an interesting basis (I'd actually guess that ARBCOM would have preferred that were the case, but wouldn't overrule on it) or that insufficient chance and effort was made to get all early participants to see El C's (the primary stated victim) statement in rebuttal of a siteban, after which there was a firm majority in opposition of a siteban. That's quite a common flaw, though this was a significant example, and I guess ARBCOM would again rather more effort be made but reticent to make what could be quite a broad overruling. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:43, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Although no one should regard me as a neutral party, I suppose that hypothetically another line of appeal would be that MastCell should instead have found "no consensus". But there would be a high bar, in that it would have to have been manifestly wrong, rather than something where there can be good-faith differences of opinion. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

While I don't know where I stand on the premises of both the discussion itself and the potential procedural concerns I noted above, if those are both accepted as tolerable, I would say that MC's decision was legitimate, if that makes sense. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:04, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm really just trying to identify the relevant policies here, followed by nothing more than a bit of idle speculation. I've already said just a little way above that I very strongly support the close. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

• It's my understanding that any ban or sanction can be appealed to ArbCom. Community bans are explicitly included, per the banning policy: "Bans imposed by the community may be appealed to the community or, where there are serious questions about the validity of the ban discussion or its closure, to the Arbitration Committee." It seems to me that SashiRolls, and at least a small handful of other editors, have "serious questions about the validity" of the ban and/or my closure, so SashiRolls has the right to appeal to and be heard by ArbCom. Obviously, I think my closure was reasonable and appropriate, and in my view ArbCom should decline an appeal on those grounds, but I can live with whatever they decide—and it does seem to me that our community-ban policy gives SashiRolls has the right to appeal to the Committee for review. MastCell ^Talk 19:06, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

July 2020

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#SashiRolls squashed and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. As threaded discussion is not permitted on most arbitration pages, please ensure that you make all comments in your own section only. Additionally, the guide to arbitration and the Arbitration Committee's procedures may be of use.

Thanks, -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 11:13, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Perl and support groups

After seeing that one ([39]) and realizing that I had already interpreted the code without a second thought—there should be! Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:30, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Seraphimblade, I'm a complete dilettante when it comes to coding, but I do have fond memories of summer work writing server-side Perl scripts, with the old camel book in hand. It was either that or work on the database side, so it was an easy choice. Not to mention the feeling of power and trust when I was granted access to the cgi-bin directory... On another note, the cultural contrasts between tech and biomedicine always fascinated me. For instance, in medicine, people gain esteem as they age. Patients instinctively trust older, gray-haired physicians, and it takes time to prove yourself starting out. In tech, youth is everything (at least that was my superficial impression), and people's value was perceived to decline as they aged—it's the older, more experienced people who have to prove their worth. Both fields are marked by extremely rapid technological and practical change and evolution, so the difference is interesting to me. But I digress. MastCell ^Talk 17:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I certainly find that as I get a bit longer in the tooth myself. (Though they seem to be quick enough to like me when I can write a five-minute bash script to do what would've taken them hours.) I've decided myself I'm going to complete my degree and go for chemical engineering; I don't just want to do web-monkey crap forever. As to the substance, though, do be wary of saying "nothing" or "never". We do have a user literally named Neutrality, and they are, at least in my experience, an excellent editor and admin. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:28, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I've come across Neutrality a few times, and s/he is a great editor. I guess that's the exception that proves the rule? :P Good luck with Chem-E... MastCell ^Talk 18:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Please trim your statement at the SashiRolls case request

Hi, MastCell. I'm an arbitration clerk, which means I help manage and administer the arbitration process (on behalf of the committee). Thank you for making a statement in an arbitration request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case. However, we ask all participants and commentators to limit the size of their initial statements to 500 words. Your statement significantly exceeds this limit. Please reduce the length of your statement when you are next online. If the case is accepted, you will have the opportunity to present more evidence; in any event, concise, factual statements are much more likely to be understood and to influence the decisions of the arbitrators.

Requests for extensions of the word limit may be made either in your statement or by email to the Committee through this link or arbcom-enwikimedia.org if email is not available through your account.

For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 00:36, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Your statement is around 645 words at my count. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 00:36, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Furthermore, if you don't want to modify or trim your statement, you can have a word extension granted to cover your statement as is. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 00:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

You can have some of mine; I was pretty frugal and didn't use my full share. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:05, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Dreamy Jazz: If possible, I'd prefer to leave my statement as is with a word-count extension, since a) people have already responded to it and I don't want to destroy the context for their responses, and b) the case request looks almost ready to be closed anyway. That said, if it's important, I can cut it down—just let me know. Thanks. MastCell ^Talk 16:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

  MastCell, the arbitrators have given you a word extension to cover your statement as is, so you can leave your statement as it is without shortening it. Thanks and happy editing, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 20:18, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks and stuff

Thank you for this (I replied there). I do really appreciate it:)

I thought you and some of your lurkers might find these sources interesting, enlightening, blasphemous, other...

Ronald Reagan

Why did Ronald Reagan do so well among white voters? Certainly elements beyond race contributed, including the faltering economy, foreign events (especially in Iran), the nation’s mood, and the candidates’ temperaments. But one indisputable factor was the return of aggressive race-baiting. A year after Reagan’s victory, a key operative gave what was then an anonymous interview, and perhaps lulled by the anonymity, he offered an unusually candid response to a question about Reagan, the Southern strategy, and the drive to attract the “Wallace voter”: You start out in 1954 by saying, “N****r, n****r, n****r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n****r”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut taxes and we want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N****r, n****r.” So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.       This analysis was provided by a young Lee Atwater. Its significance is two fold: First, it offers an unvarnished account of Reagan’s strategy. Second, it reveals the thinking of Atwater himself, someone whose career traced the rise of GOP dog whistle politics. A protégé of the pro-segregationist Strom Thurmond in South Carolina, the young Atwater held Richard Nixon as a personal hero, even describing Nixon’s Southern strategy as “a blue print for everything I’ve done.” After assisting in Reagan’s initial victory, Atwater became the political director of Reagan’s 1984 campaign, the manager of George Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign, and eventually the chair of the Republican National Committee. In all of these capacities, he drew on the quick sketch of dog whistle politics he had offered in 1981: from “n****r, n****r, n****r” to “states’ rights” and “forced busing,” and from there to “cutting taxes”—and linking all of these, “race ... coming on the back burner.”       When Reagan picked up the dog whistle in 1980, the continuity in technique nevertheless masked a crucial difference between him versus Wallace and Nixon. Those two had used racial appeals to get elected, yet their racially reactionary language did not match reactionary political positions. Political moderates, both became racial demagogues when it became clear that this would help win elections. Reagan was different. Unlike Wallace and Nixon, Reagan was not a moderate, but an old-time Goldwater conservative in both the ideological and racial senses, with his own intuitive grasp of the power of racial provocation. For Reagan, conservatism and racial resentment were inextricably fused. Lopez, Ian Haney (2015), Dog Whistle Politics, Oxford University Press, pp. 56–57

Was Bill Clinton a racist?

Bill Clinton is a hero to many liberals, so it’s worth pausing to ask whether “the first black president” was a racist. If the term means only someone motivated by racial hatred, the answer is clearly no. There’s every reason to believe that Clinton despised white supremacist-style racism and regarded blacks as worthy of the esteem and empathy of equals. There are stirring stories, for instance, of a young Clinton’s efforts to help blacks in Washington, DC, displaced by the rioting in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, and of his friendships with African American peers while a law student at Yale. Nor should we ignore the close relationship Clinton maintained with Vernon Jordan, an African American confidant sometimes referred to as the president’s “First Friend.” Contrast this, for example, with the racism exhibited by Richard Nixon, whose secret White House tape recordings are littered with racist statements, such as when he told his personal secretary that African Americans would become productive citizens in perhaps 500 years and then only after they were “inbred.”      The starkly divergent racial views held by Clinton and Nixon reinforces an important point: the “racism” in dog whistle racism does not refer to individual bias, it refers to a willingness to manipulate racial animus in pursuit of power. When a dispute erupted about Ronald Reagan’s racial pandering, his defenders cried foul, insisting he was no bigot. Economist and political commentator Paul Krugman offered this succinct rejoinder: “So what? We’re talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.” Just so with Clinton: he understood the political advantage in race-baiting and chose to use it. It may have violated Clinton’s values; indeed, he was likely deeply troubled by the perceived need to racially pander. Whatever the case, though, Clinton bit down on that whistle and blew. At root, the “racism” in dog whistle racism is the “strategy” in the Southern strategy; the racism lies in provoking racial animosities in order to gain votes and power. Under this definition, Bill Clinton was as deft a dog whistle racist as Wallace, Nixon, or Reagan before him. Lopez, Ian Haney (2015), Dog Whistle Politics, Oxford University Press, p. 113

Conservatism

Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and liberty—or a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force—the opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere. Such a view might seem miles away from the libertarian defense of the free market, with its celebration of the atomistic and autonomous individual. But it is not. When the libertarian looks out upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he sees private, often hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and an owner his employees. Robin, Corey (2015), The Reactionary Mind, Oxford University Press, p. 16

Enjoy, —ArtifexMayhem (talk) 00:54, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks! Interesting stuff. It's almost like these are relevant areas of scholarly inquiry that should be included in an aspiring serious, comprehensive reference work like Wikipedia. :)

  It's become evident to me that a lot of people have a simplistic view in which people who say or do racist things are inherently Bad People. Because they know that Ronald Reagan (or Bill Clinton) was a Good Person, he therefore could not have said or done racist things. When confronted with inconvenient truths (like Reagan's casual use of racial slurs), the resulting cognitive dissonance is impressive to behold.

  Less-sophisticated editors seem to resolve it with simple denial—as in the threads where Atsme and others simply refuse to acknowledge the harmfulness of even the most blatant racial slurs. More-sophisticated editors are able to operationalize Wikipedia policy to resolve the dissonance; you can see this at Talk:Ronald Reagan, where they invoke WP:UNDUE to suppress uncomfortable, if well-documented, items. Of course, it's objectively laughable as a matter of policy—the Reagan article is chock-full of insubstantial mythopoeic fluff, so the sudden invocation of WP:UNDUE in this one instance is clearly selective and opportunistic, but it's a fig leaf at least.

  There's a real reluctance to acknowledge any sort of nuance or complexity. In the real world, people are capable of good and bad, sometimes simultaneously. A politician can be personally racist while advancing policies that promote racial equity (Lyndon B. Johnson and Truman come to mind); they may be privately without evident bias but promote public policies that worsen structural racism and inequality, or they may be both privately racist and publicly exploitative of racism. The evolution of leaders' racial views is also interesting—Truman's early and mid-life letters were full of casual racism, but in his later Presidency he aggressively championed civil rights ([40]). Conversely, Reagan appears to have been relatively progressive with regard to racial issues early in his life, but evolved to exploit racism deftly as a politician (and, evidently, acquired privately racist views as well).

  Those transformations didn't happen in a vacuum; they reflect societal changes as well as shifts in what was politically expedient and/or possible. Anyhow, these are all extremely relevant aspects of these leaders' biographies, and of our national history—which continue to have substantial effects on day-to-day life today—as well as subjects of extensive scholarly inquiry. So when our biographies completely ignore the topic—or when editors obstruct mention of it—then we're failing our fundamental responsibility as a project.

  Anyhow—that is a long way of saying thank you for posting these thought-provoking items. MastCell ^Talk 18:17, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. I see a big difference between saying A)"That statement is racist. You understand that right?" and B)"You are a racist for making that statement. Go pound sand." I'm not sure how we cover this stuff in Wikipedia if we can't even start a discussion without people freaking out and claiming A and B are equivalent. The cognitive dissonance is truly astonishing. Not really surprising I suppose. We do still have a "race and intelligence" article still supports the idea that those two fictions are related in some biological way (there has been some improvement to that article of late, so there's that, yay?). Improving our coverage of race and racism, especially in American politics, is going to be a tough row to hoe. Hopefully, we will see even more scholarship on the topic and the sources will ultimately prevail. It's gonna need a lot of hoes, regardless. I'd like to think there are more editors that feel the project is worth the blisters than not. Call me a dreamer. —ArtifexMayhem (talk) 01:59, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

It will be tough, because we're starting from a place of ignorance and willful blindness. How do you get to a serious discussion of race—one that would befit a reputable reference work and live up to our project's goals—when a significant subset of editors won't even acknowledge the harmfulness of the most obvious racial slur? And the response is a bunch of chest-beating and performative "how dare you call me a racist!?" stuff, rather than anything more thoughtful. I'm not calling anyone a racist; I'm saying that if your first instinct is to deny that "lynching" is a racially charged term, or to dream up a bunch of innocuous alternative explanations for obvious racial slurs, then you have a pretty significant blind spot. And these blind spots add up to the systemic bias in our content.

It's also a self-fulfilling prophecy: if we as a community, and culture, loudly deny, minimize, and dismiss obvious racial context, then we are effectively silencing and excluding people who value open and thoughtful consideration of those subjects—and people for whom these issues are intensely personal and existential, and not just matters of bloodless intellectual debate. The lack of diversity then reinforces the echo chamber. It's about who gets a voice here, and the thread on Jimbo's talkpage made that abundantly clear.

I don't think the problem is a lack of scholarship, although it is encouraging to see the proliferation of (and renewed interest in) academic work on the subject. There have already been entire scholarly books written on race and politics, but we don't have the will or interest as a community to incorporate them—and in fact we reflexively reject scholarship on the topic because it offends our sensibilities. But then, I've been doing this for more than a decade and I have a lot of blisters (to use your analogy). I got started here because I was concerned that Wikipedia was a powerful vehicle for the spread of medical misinformation. I never considered I'd live in a world where the primary vector of medical misinformation was the President of the United States. It's led me to re-evaluate and refocus some of my efforts to ensure I'm spending my time and money (after all, time is money) in a way that serves my values and principles most effectively. MastCell ^Talk 17:11, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

It will be tough, very tough. I think we've seen white defensiveness in action. In fact first section of that article's talk page is indicative of the challenges the project faces. Along with crap like citing an article from Quillette or this one from The Federalist —the latter is also cited in the White Fragility article— as valid sources of criticism on the topic. Now how much of a time suck will it be if I dare to remove those sources (resulting in an almost instant revert) or question them on the talk-page? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? It's insane that all of those durations are actually a possibility. My money is on— however long it takes for the editors supporting inclusion to wear me down to the point that I decide the juice isn't worth the squeeze and move on. I hate to admit that I might not have the stamina to hang in there, but that is the reality. Maybe there is some support structure that could be built (like WP:MEDRS of lack of a better example) to help editors deal with the stonewalling, etc, but I have no idea what that would look like. Maybe I'm missing something? —ArtifexMayhem (talk) 22:16, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Heads up

See: ban review at an (courtesy ping to JzG who started it. Think he probably forgot to notify. Also Guy, I mean that in a good faith way, not snarky. The internet sucks on conveying meaning through text 😊) TonyBallioni (talk) 23:48, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, oops, my bad. Sorry, no disrespect intended, and actually I think everyone is aware of this one being controversial. Guy (help!) 09:51, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. I don't have anything to add, except that an admin would have to be crazy or stupid to volunteer to close this noticeboard discussion. MastCell ^Talk 17:05, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Just to clarify

re: The ban discussion. Not that I felt it was aimed at me (my post was well above yours), but just wanted to voice my thoughts somewhere. Regarding the "procedure-obsessed" comment. Personally I couldn't care any less about the whole thing (even if I tried). My point was that in my 10+ years here - I have seen SO SO many discussions turn on "procedure." A ban and an indef block are not the same things. A 4th revert after 24 hours and 10 minutes isn't violating policy. I could go on, but I'm sure you've seen your share of this yourself. My point was mainly that "The AN ban proposal was closed, and closed properly. It was appealed to ACom who declined to overturn it" To me, that is case closed.

Some folks may say that the "re-open" thread is a disruption (I've seen far less called that). I don't think it is, I'm just saying some might. I've seen people railroaded off the site (IMO), and I'm sure you've felt that way somewhere along the line yourself. I've seen plenty of people ganged up on to the point of becoming ... uncooperative(?), or downright belligerent. Still - once something hits any of the "boards", then "best behavior" should be a the phrase of the day. Anyone who's been around the block more than once knows that editing another editors post is bright red line.

Anyway - I know my post might seem a bit anal to some, but given the history of wiki discussions, yes I did note a "a matter of procedure" in my oppose. Is there a difference between "open" and "re-open" - not really. Was it a bit obsessive? IDK - maybe. But given some of the things I've seen on wiki - I'd post the same again. Now that I got all that out: Hope you have a great day/evening. Cheers and Best always MastCell. — Ched (talk) 20:48, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

• Hi Ched—it's always good to hear from you. My comment certainly wasn't aimed at you. It wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, really. It just reflected my sense that people are expending a lot of mental energy and argumentation on points that seem like hairsplitting to me, and losing sight of the bigger picture. I get that other people might see it differently, and that's fine. I've tried to limit myself to explaining my point of view, as required by WP:ADMINACCOUNT, and maybe correcting a couple of the most egregiously misleading claims in the discussion. Beyond that, I'm OK with any outcome—I'm not invested in any way in SashiRolls being banned, or not banned, and I think it's fine to re-open the discussion if that's what the community wants. Anyhow, I hope you're well, and stay healthy out there. MastCell ^Talk 06:37, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok - I've been reading and studying

At first, I couldn't pinpoint where it all went to hell in a hand basket on Jimmy's TP wherein you ended-up with the wrong impression of what I said...but I'm pretty sure I've figured it out. Racism is a touchy subject which is why I asked you to not make it personal. Now that I'm not under pressure, I can see things a bit more clearly. Perhaps if I had not been approached in such a forceful and intimidating manner by 2 admins, I would have responded differently. I do know that your perception of me has been wrong for quite some time, and that you have a very strong POV which makes communicating with you rather difficult. I'm just going to be here long enough to clear the air regarding my attempt to bring context into the discussion when I brought up the various terms and how they were used back in the day.

It was an era in our history when racism was more accepted by white society, and racial slurs were used more freely. I strongly believed then, as I do now, that it was wrong. I was not denying that Reagan's comment was a racial slur, which is what you perceived my position to be. I will assume my proper share of the blame for lacking clarity in that regard, but I'm asking you to try to be a little more attuned to what I, as a female editor, was feeling by your aggressive approach. There were alot of thoughts going through my head while trying to recall some of the history of the 60s & 70s. It was my intention to present intelligible context relative to Reagan's racial slur. My thought process stems from my early childhood in Providence, RI where I was born. My maternal grandmother was an Italian immigrant who didn't speak English, and my paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants, so we had our own battles to fight against prejudice within our own family. I was raised by the Italian side, and the words that were commonly used against us were dego, wop, hike, and guinea. It was a shameful time in American history, and a time when little kids were chanting "Sticks and stones". The school I attended was not segregated so I was not exposed to any racism against Blacks...at least, not until my family moved to Texas where I was not only busy defending against the Italian slurs, I was a target of Yankee, go home! When Mom registered us in school, I was advanced enough to be in the 5th grade instead of 1st, so I got bullied early on. My parents eventually saw that it wasn't a good idea, so I was moved into the 3rd grade, still the youngest and the shortest in my class. The Southern Democrats on our block would not allow their kids to play with us. My closest friends and allies were the Black kids who lived in Sunnyside across the railroad tracks, which is where I hung out. They accepted this little Yankee wop with her Bostonish accent as one of their own. I spent more time there with my best friend, Mathis and his family, than I did my own. Yes, MastCell, I know bigotry and racism very well...and while I'm typing this response to you, tears are falling as I relive those memories, and why I didn't want you to make it personal. I grew up a scrappy, defensive Tomboy who fought tooth & nail against the bigots; add to that, the fights I fought defending my handicapped sister from the bullies. I've had cigarette ashes flipped on me by the older girls on the bus ride home from school, I had soda poured over me, and was punched in the face for objecting to it. After that, I chose to walk home instead of riding the bus. As I got older, I learned how to defend myself against the bullies, and I sure as hell don't want to have to do it on WP.

But I digress, the bottomline is that I should have provided a more succinct explanation instead of assuming my intent would be understood. Of course I don't condone what Reagan said, but what I did not volunteer to do as a WP editor was to RGW. My time here is a special time in my day where I can become totally absorbed in my role as a pragmatic editor with a focus on getting the article right per our PAGs. I did not start that thread at Jimmy's TP with a focus on Reagan, but after you diverted my attention to it, I was trying to adjust by focusing on context and the events that might have provoked such an insensitive racial slur from a president, and it had all the makings of frustration. Most southern schools by that time had been integrated, the hippy era had waned, but communism was on the rise, Cambodia was in the news, and the USSR had nukes. And I hope that I've clarified my position to your satisfaction. Have a good evening, and happy editing! ^Atsme _Talk 📧 23:30, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Since I have defended MastCell other places, I think it's appropriate to offer a better explanation of the sequence of events that led up to all this clusterf###. Let's examine that actual thread, and I'll add my commentary in bold between each comment to see what derailed it and caused the discussion to go downhill:

From: User talk:Jimbo Wales#Scrub a dub dub

(ec) Well, MastCell...I'm old enough to remember the phrase barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and it came with no labels unlike all the politically motivated labels attached to people today. I remember the Reagan years well, and a time when it wasn't at all unusual for a mom to lovingly tell her rambunctious kids to stop running around barefoot, to go put shoes on and stop acting like "little monkeys" - no labels of racism attached. In fact, I'd wager that it's still said today with no racist connotation. And then there's the 500lb gorilla picture we use on WP today, with no racist label whatsoever, and Trump being compared to and having the intelligence of an orangutan but that isn't racist. Nope - what WP considers racist is Reagan's private recorded phone conversation, and a phrase he used to express his frustration - not about the people necessarily, but about the country in what I would consider the same intent as the aforemented phrases, but because he's a Republican, his words are automatically labeled racist. We censored Biden's "you ain't black" gaffe, and whitewashed his article of notable criticisms while we pretend it's compliant with NPOV. Right - don't pay any mind to mainstream media's criticism - nothing to worry about - remember, WP is too big to fail. Atsme Talk 📧 23:08, 3 July 2020 (UTC) (reply)

Valjean: I wasn't sure what was really meant by that whole comment.

So when Reagan said, of a group of African diplomats: "To see those monkeys from those African countries, damn them...They are still uncomfortable wearing shoes"... you don't see anything racist in that? You find that comparable to a mom lovingly scolding her children? I mean, I know you just said all of that, but I want to make sure I understand. MastCell Talk 23:51, 3 July 2020 (UTC) (reply)

Valjean: MastCell also wondered, and asked for clarification. This is a discussion, and asking for clarification is perfectly normal and proper. It is not personalization.

MastCell, do not make it personal. The only thing you need to understand where I'm concerned has nothing to do with my personal beliefs or yours, and everything to do with our understanding of and compliance with NPOV as it relates to WP and the Reagan article. Since you brought up the "concerted effort" at the Reagan article, I will add that Levivich broke it down quite well and it aligns with my understanding of WP:PAG. UNDUE is the common denominator, but his explanation was much better than mine. Atsme Talk 📧 16:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC) (reply)

Valjean: No, it was not making it personal. It was a valid question that should have been answered. The refusal to answer opened the door for what followed. It provided kindling, which was immediately personalized and lit on fire by PackMecEng.

I suggest that Atsme think carefully before answering MastCell's question, and then to answer it with an acknowledgment of the pernicious results of the racism that permeates our society. Trivializing is not helpful. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 02:58, 4 July 2020 (UTC) (reply)

Valjean: That was good advice, because it did appear that Atsme was trivializing racism.

I was wondering when this would devolve into subtle accusations of racism against fellow editors. Glad to see I wasn't disappointed I suppose. Don't be that guy. PackMecEng (talk) 04:04, 4 July 2020 (UTC) (reply)

Valjean: Now PackMecEng does make it personal with a directly false accusation against Cullen328. Later others make it even more direct and repeat it about MastCell. (PackMecEng is currently blocked for good reason.)

I guess that I do not agree with you, PackMecEng, that me pointing out a comparison that trivializes racism is somehow equivalent to an accusation of racism against a colleague. I was commenting on the content of the comment rather than the character of the editor. I hope that I have made the distinction clear. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:35, 4 July 2020 (UTC) (reply)

Valjean: Exactly. Asking a reasonable question is not an accusation of racism. Editors should always reply properly and civilly to requests for clarification.

No, you did not. I need you to explain that you are not making such a heinous implication because from what I can tell you made no distinction. PackMecEng (talk) 04:44, 4 July 2020 (UTC) (reply)

Valjean: The failure to AGF gets even more egregious. This ended up with lots of piling on and PAs against MastCell, and there is now a long list of diffs that would make her and PackMecEng look very bad at AE. I hope that doesn't become necessary. These attacks must stop and be retracted.

I have made my point and clarified. Now it is time for other voices to comment. I will certainly take criticism by other productive editors very seriously. Nothing I said was heinous if you read my words accurately as written. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:50, 4 July 2020 (UTC) (reply)

Valjean: She should have AGF. She didn't. Instead, she added more fuel to the fire she had built out of the kindling created by Atsme's refusal to answer a reasonable question.

I hope that at least explains my impression of the situation, and why I think it's an egregious PA to attack MastCell with the false accusation that they ever accused anybody of racism.

I really appreciated Atsme's explanation of her background above, and I don't think she's any more racist than the rest of us who grew up in the '60s. The questions are whether white fragility is at play here, and whether she is an active anti-racist? We all have racism in us. Enlightened racists admit they have racism in them and recognize the racism they have inherited from growing up in racist American society. The unenlightened ones deny it and either trivialize it or don't actively oppose it enough, and a good answer to MastCell's question could have cleared up those questions and left Atsme with good support for her anti-racist stance. That stance cannot be assumed without clear statements from her. -- Valjean (talk) 15:33, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Do NOT attempt to compare my life, thoughts or feelings with whomever or whatever you believe yourself to be, Valjean. You are not a female, and cannot possibly understand anything that I'm feeling. You have not walked in my shoes, so stop pretending that you know even one iota of who I am or what I believe aside from what I reluctantly openly admitted for MastCell's sake. I recently watched a rerun of the original tv series, Suits, and something Jessica said in her scripted lines really hit home. She was trying to understand what Hardman had against her: "He's always been dubious of me. I don't know if it's because I'm a woman or black or maybe he just doesn't like--" Notice the order of her concerns. You are not my shrink, or my doctor, and I strongly advise you to stop what you're doing in your ludicrous attempt to make my comments and my personal life fit your distorted narrative. Your comments are beyond offensive and have been noted. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 16:08, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Bah

The AN discussion is too bloated, Reply-Link doesn't work and this is veering off topic anyway so I thought I'd come here direct. I know I am not articulating my view on SR very coherently. Part of my problem is that I think the result is correct (as in: I personally find SR tiresome in the extreme) but I have a terrible tendency to over-scrutinise results I want, in case it's my bias running away with me. I think the call on the outcome can be made more than one way. You are correct in what you say, but so are others: there was a lot of soft sentiment expressed for a less restrictive solution. My gut feel is that more time might have introduced more clarity, and this would contribute meaningfully to the perceived fairness of the ban. The AN discussion itself shows sharply divided opinion on the merits. So: I think this is one of those cases where people will hate the outcome whatever, and you were brave and IMO correct, as usual, but in a way that has unfortunately given ammunition to a certain faction. This is not your fault, it is a weakness with our processes - at the core of which IMO is our inability to handle intractable content disputes other than by banning people as they escalate. Anyway, I don't want to fall out with you. Guy (help!) 07:55, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

No worries. I'm fine with discussion and criticism of the close, or I wouldn't have bothered in the first place. I'm doing my best (with mixed success) to let the discussion follow its course, without commenting or badgering people. I can accept if people think that the close was within discretion but not their preferred outcome; I can also accept that some people think the close was outside the discretionary range (although I don't agree). I'm bemused at the degree to which a subset of the arguments are simply thinly-veiled grudges and attacks against me, with little to do with the matter at hand, but I'm OK with that too. The only thing I've pushed back against is the subset of arguments that seem actively misleading, those which utilize a superficial veneer of logic and evidence to distort the actual situation at the thread.

I think we agree that leaving the thread open would almost certainly not have changed the outcome. I understand your point that more time might have reduced the attack surface for people who disagree with the close, but I don't really buy that. As I said, to me these arguments boil down to saying that the discussion should have run for arbitrary time x rather than arbitrary time y. I've found that it's best to do what you think is right and accept good-faith criticism for it, but not to worry about or cater to the subset of congenitally querulous types who, as you say, will hate the outcome whatever it is.

Anyhow—I appreciate your feedback here, and elsewhere, and don't worry about offending me. There are things that I think are worth fighting for and about, and for which I'd have a hard time forgiving someone, but disagreeing about a noticeboard close on Wikipedia isn't remotely one of them. Stay well out there, and be sure to wear a mask even if the leader of your country tries to tell you that Covid-19 is a hoax or "just the flu"... MastCell ^Talk 20:10, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Following up

I regret that we had that disagreement yesterday, so I want to clarify some of the things that I said. When I talked about it being a political dispute, I actually wasn't thinking about you when I said it. I was reacting to the group of editors who were going back-and-forth at each other, with stuff like "bro" and the like. As I had said a couple of times before that, I could very well see how you and other editors would see what she said the way that you do, and that it would have been my own reaction as well. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:40, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

No worries, and thanks for stopping by. I'm sorry for being sort of pointed in my response to you. I guess I'm sort of fed up with the general Wikipedian tendency toward "both-sides"-ism and false equivalence when it comes to issues that arise on political topics. I think it lets people off the hook for a lot of frankly unacceptable behavior, and makes it harder for serious concerns to be heard. I assumed you were lumping my concern into that dynamic—it sounds like my assumption was wrong, and I apologize for that.

On the broader topic, I am a lot less willing than I used to be to overlook misinformation on this platform. I've previously tried my best to ignore it (per the first few reminders-to-self here), but the last 4 years—and the last 5 months in particular—have been object lessons in the dangers of ignoring or underestimating the power of unchecked misinformation. Without going into specifics, in the last several months I have literally watched people die because of politically motivated misinformation. So now, when I see people slipping off-handed, off-topic partisan falsehoods into discussions here, I'm not willing to just let them slide to the extent that I used to be. Falsehoods gain strength from unopposed repetition, and the whole thing is a lot less bloodless and academic for me than it used to be.

I think you know what I mean. There are people who literally cannot participate in a talk-page discussion without interlarding tangential partisan talking points about the "Russia hoax", or mooting bespoke QAnon-style conspiracy theories, or undermining reliable sources like the Post as no better than propaganda. The cumulative effect of this unchecked assault on objective reality is dispiriting, particularly on a project ostensibly dedicated to summarizing human knowledge and serving as a source of reliable information.

As to the specific event in question, I will never get used to people lying to my face. My understanding of civility has very little to do with the use of profanity or even name-calling (I've been called every name in the book here, and rarely if ever made anything of it)—to me, civility starts with honest and forthright engagement. I can laugh off being called an asshole, but I can't laugh it off when someone lies to me and then tries to convince me I'm crazy for noticing their dishonesty.

I'm not going to rehash the details, but my impression is that it's pretty uncomfortable for people to acknowledge that someone would simply tell a blatant lie, and much easier and less distressing to accept the polite, face-saving fiction that it was all simply a mix-up or misunderstanding. Fine. But fundamentally, this project is about honesty—about being honest with our readers and presenting them with accurate, reliable information. The fact that people can relentlessly push misinformation, lie about it, and then cloak themselves in the mantle of site policy is messed up, and I can't pretend not to be bothered and alarmed by it. We're witnessing an organized effort to rewrite recent history in real time, and to the extent that Wikipedians are serving as foot soldiers in that effort, we have a problem—one that our deep-seated misconceptions about neutrality and our communal commitment to lazy false equivalence have left us ill-equipped to address. MastCell ^Talk 18:25, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Oh no need for an apology to me, either. If there is anyone who is, simultaneously, fed up with en-Wiki culture and with the parade of horribles in the real world, it's me. And I think I'll just leave it at that. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:49, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Seven years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:10, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

We're all Jimbo

Not sure it's Jimbo's fault for the culture here (gestures broadly at real world). --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:34, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

True, and I didn't mean to blame Jimbo, exactly. Maybe to shame him out of his spineless, milquetoasty "fine people on both sides" schtick, but that's about it. Thank you for speaking up in the thread in question. MastCell ^Talk 20:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

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Greetings of the season

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott		Happy holidays
		Dear MastCell, For you and all your loved ones, "Let there be mercy". Wishing you health, peace and happiness this holiday season and in the coming year. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:07, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

WP:MEDRS

Hi MastCell, Hope you are keeping well and safe. If you have time, could you look at the "Editorials and comments" section on the MEDRS talk page. Some proposals have been made concerning the different kinds of articles in a journal and have IMO become a bit unstuck over "peer review", as well as containing language/style unsuitable for a content guideline. It could do with some more input from someone familiar with the academic process, and you are an old-hand when it comes to writing MEDRS. And are there any other editors with experience here who could improve the guideline in that area. -- Colin°^Talk 10:47, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Colin—it's good to hear from you. I will try to take a look, but I can't promise anything. As you might imagine, it's been an incredibly busy and challenging year as a health-care worker. I am frankly pretty burnt-out and have very limited wherewithal and moral energy for Wikipedia stuff. I've also been disgusted by this community's inability to recognize and counteract the efforts of people who blatantly use this site to spread medical and political misinformation, and I view this site—and a handful of specific editors—as complicit, in a small but real way, in the political violence of the past month. Watching people enable and defend these lies—and the people who tell them—on a site ostensibly dedicated to disseminating knowledge has been demoralizing.

If the Wikipedia community were a person, he (yes, of course, he) would be a 20-something techbro whose parents pay his rent, who "doesn't see color", who thinks deep down that people are poor or homeless because they're too lazy to learn to code (but wouldn't say so out loud because of a fear of what he would define as "cancel culture"), who has no problem with neo-Nazis editi g here (because we can't punish people for having unpopular opinions!), and who defines "civility" as a mandate to treat right-wing extremists with zipties, tasers, and "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirts as one valid side of a bilateral civic discourse.

All of that is a long way of saying that I'm not sure I'm up for a WP:MEDRS discussion. Sadly, I can't think offhand of any other active editors who work in academic medicine, although I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. Most of us have been chased off or just left over the years, for the usual variety of reasons. MastCell ^Talk 18:36, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

It is possible the discussion is reaching its end (or at least, showing all the signs that it should be put out of its misery). Along the way I had a rather Alice in Wonderland experience of editors trying to redefine "peer review" and the odd personal attack. As you likely have better things to do, I could ping you if it takes another turn for the worse. Your wisdom and experience would I'm sure be valuable, but I appreciate your time is important elsewhere. I'm sorry you are so disillusioned with Wikipedians and can only hope your impressions are wrong. I recall for a while Commons got an awful reputation for sordid things, and it was justified for a small bunch of highly vocal users on the drama boards. Away from that, there are a lot of photographers who seem to spend a huge amount of time in church (taking pictures of course, ungodly lot). -- Colin°^Talk 20:06, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

On another note... how are you? I mean, not in terms of Wikipedia stuff, just in general. MastCell ^Talk 21:28, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Well I'd rather not say to much on wiki, but you are welcome to email me. I'm living in England, so we're in lockdown 3.0 and dealing with school/college being virtual. I am fortunate to be able to work from home and remote into work and still have a job. We have four more years of our mini-Trump to deal with, and have now passed the 100,000 deaths threshold, which is not the sort of "world beating" that I think Johnson meant when this whole thing started. The government continues to be slow to listen to the science or implements halfway measures few think are good enough. I'm a bit concerned about our approach to only giving people one jab and then making them wait 12 weeks for the next one. I'm not sure they've thought out the human-behaviour aspects of that coupled with the political pressure to open everything back up. I can only hope one jab is more effective than the very limited data suggests. At least our leader isn't suggesting we all try injecting Dettol. We are all looking forward to having less American news on our TVs in 2021, so please don't disappoint us. -- Colin°^Talk 10:25, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Trump article cuts

Hello MastCell. I'm troubled by this comment, "Obviously the content isn't stable if I reverted some of it.". It sounds like a glib denial of several editors' clearly expressed concerns about recent edits. Several users have communicated with this user in the past to ask him to moderate his removals of stable text and references. I'm reluctant to bring this to AE, but it has become a serious drain on the time and attention of other editors, and it's undermining a lot of hard work on this article over several years. Any help would be appreciated. SPECIFICO talk 15:44, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Also, I see that Melanie has included the Cornell study ("A Cornell University study concluded that Trump was "likely the largest driver" of COVID-19 misinformation in the first five months of 2020.") in her suggested copy. I note that you agreed that since it has not yet been peer reviewed it could not yet be included. I wonder if in this case it could be included with "newly released but as yet unpublished" wording? Gandydancer (talk) 18:22, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Gandydancer—I actually think it's fine to mention the study, because it's been covered extensively by multiple reliable sources (which is our bar for inclusion). To the extent that one specific editor (MONGO) raised a concern about peer review, I was willing to compromise on that, provided that he agreed to support inclusion once the study was published in a peer-reviewed journal. But I would support its inclusion and in general support MelanieN's edit. I'll comment on the article talk page as well. (FWIW, the article appears to be under peer review and I suspect it will be published in final form in the near future. Currently it's housed at JMIR Preprints and can be cited as Evanega S, Lynas M, Adams J, Smolenyak K, Insights CG (2020). "Coronavirus misinformation: quantifying sources and themes in the COVID-19 'infodemic'". JMIR Preprints.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) But note that JMIR Preprints is a repository for manuscripts that are undergoing or will undergo peer review, not a peer-reviewed publication in its own right).

SPECIFICO, I don't recall prior interactions with Onetwothreeip, so I can't speak to whether there are ongoing issues. I agree that the comment you mention is a bit concerning. And I notice that there have been recurring issues with this editor playing down Trump's role in the Covid-19 pandemic, and substituting confusingly worded euphemisms for straightforward language on the topic. In my experience, WP:AE doesn't do well with these sorts of cases, but if you feel there is sufficient evidence of a pattern then that is probably your best bet. For the reasons described one thread up, I don't really have the time or wherewithal to pursue these kinds of things, and frankly the degree of enabling and intentional blindness toward prolific, long-term editors who use this site as a platform for dangerous QAnon-adjacent right-wing extremist tropes doesn't inspire me with any confidence that more subtle cases will be dealt with. MastCell ^Talk 18:37, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

A wise comment. Noted and agreed. SPECIFICO talk 04:09, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

MastCell you said, "I've also been disgusted by this community's inability to recognize and counteract the efforts of people who blatantly use this site to spread medical and political misinformation, and I view this site—and a handful of specific editors—as complicit, in a small but real way, in the political violence of the past month." My biggest concern for Wikipedia has been a corporate takeover and perhaps I've been thinking that we have the political and medical bias problem under good control. But for some time I've kept most of Trump's articles on my watch list but mainly author just a few of them, child separation and environment and some work on racial positions as well, so perhaps I'm just not aware of what's been going on under the radar.

I am wondering... In last month's Signpost Smallbones wrote an investigative-type report on paid editing. I thought it was excellent and the best thing I've ever seen written in the Signpost. I am wondering if you and Smallbones could exchange a few emails re your concerns with the way our encyclopedia may be heading? Do you mind if I ping him? Thoughts? Gandydancer (talk) 15:24, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Gandydancer, and sorry for the belated reply. I think the topic is an interesting one, but I just don't have the bandwidth to dedicate to it at this point. We're in month twelve of the pandemic and while I'm very hopeful about the impact that vaccination will have, I haven't yet seen things let up on the clinical end—meaning that I'm pretty depleted at this point. To do a thoughtful and defensible piece on a lightning-rod topic like right-wing misinformation on Wikipedia would take more time and energy than I have at this point. Like many people, I can see the attempt to rewrite the history of the pandemic (and other aspects of the last 4 years) in real time, and it's alarming. Watching people lie and manipulate our coverage of something that I lived through in a very first-hand way is a novel and surreal experience, but these days like many people I have to carefully pick my battles and decide where to spend my finite wherewithal and moral energy. MastCell ^Talk 17:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

y Thank you so much for your reply and I totally understand your exhaustion. I worked when HIV was killing so many innocent, young, beautiful, people. It was just awful. Old people, sure, diabetics, etc., sure, but so many others just because they happened to be gay. Or others who had needed blood transfusions, or even prostitutes who I learned as I cared for them are just as remarkable as you or I, etc. Really it was just awful, but nothing compared to this. With HIC we could be real, caring, people, not just like a bunch of Martians in space suits. So be sure MastCell, I am not asking anything of you. But I am going to ping Smallbones to see this discussion. Best, Gandy Gandydancer (talk) 21:28, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Minor fixes to userscripts

Hey MastCell, it looks like you've got some user scripts that have bare javascript global wg-style variables. These are phab:T72470 deprecated, and while I don't think there's a timeline for their removal, it's been that way for a while. It's usually a straightforward fix, all uses need to use mw.config.get, such as converting wgTitle to mw.config.get('wgTitle'). There's some more info at mw:ResourceLoader/Migration guide (users)#Global wg variables. They are:

• User:MastCell/user-rights.js
• User:MastCell/el-search.js
• User:MastCell/api.js

They're old, so not sure if you still want them; that first one you restored to test something a few years ago. I can take care of cleaning them up for you if you like, just let me know! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:37, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Took care of 'em for ya. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:13, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm sure I'd get around to it eventually, but I'm a dilettante when it comes to coding so I'd have to refresh my memory. I do still use the scripts—at least the user-rights one, which I find super-helpful. I think the external-links one may be broken but I just don't edit enough to bother fixing it. Anyhow—thanks again. MastCell ^Talk 17:49, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Charles W. Dempster

Hello. I re-created the above page you deleted. It has new content and sources. I will be adding illustrations ere long. Sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 21:42, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good, and thanks for letting me know. Happy editing. MastCell ^Talk 17:50, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Tolerance as ostracism

I keep going back to this article and reading the highlighted bit. I thought it might interest you and your talk-page stalkers:

The worst thing about being weird is the loneliness. The loneliness doesn’t only or even mostly come from rejection. This is what I assumed, childishly, as a child, and that is why I thought that if genius bought me tolerance, it would make me happy. When the switch flips to “brave and independent,” and the rules get relaxed, one doesn’t magically find oneself surrounded by people with whom one experiences a real connection. Real connection requires ethical community, and ethical community requires shared rules—not the exemption from them.

Here’s the thing about tolerance: it was never meant to be an end point. Tolerance and flexibility are improvements over rejection as a way of managing the initial encounter with difference. If some people experience the customs and habits that come easily or naturally to others as arbitrary, coercive, alien or just plain confusing—and yes, some of us are like this—the answer isn’t to let us have our own way. That’s not kindness, it’s ostracism by another name. We don’t want to go off on our own. We don’t want to be left alone. No one wants to be alone.

The problem is that any steps taken beyond tolerance will be frustrating and unpleasant, because we are, in fact, hard to coordinate with. These attempts will expose the underlying issue, which is not one of ill intentions or bad guys in need of reforming. The difficulty that drove the retreat to tolerance in the first place isn’t a product of the narrow-mindedness one person could turn off, or the cooperativeness another could turn on. There is something there, something in the way, something that actually matters to the human attempt to get along. There are differences that constitute obstacles to someone’s integration into an ethical community that are no one’s fault and cannot be willed away, and there is no recipe for how to overcome them. It is easier to tolerate people than to acknowledge this; and it’s easier to acquiesce in being tolerated and supported, rather than fighting for true connection. Tolerance is an equilibrium born of exhaustion and lowered expectations.

— Callard, Agnes (2020-11-24). "Torturing Geniuses". The Point Magazine. Retrieved 2021-02-06.

I relate it to some of the difficulties we have as a community. The connection feels satisfying to me, but her prognosis is discouraging. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:41, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Let's make a deal

You stop using me as an example of a racist editor, and I don't take you to ANI. Deal? Levivich ^harass/_hound 22:46, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

No, I'll take whatever is behind door #3. I didn't call you a racist editor. I cited a comment you made—in which you denied that the term "lynching" was racially charged—as an example of the attitudes that make it impossible to have a serious conversation about race or racism on Wikipedia. By misrepresenting what I said and casting yourself as a victim, you're underscoring my point.

If you want to have a grown-up conversation, then start by engaging with what you and I actually said, and drop the performative bluster—it's not convincing anyway. If you're just here because you're angry about being quoted accurately, then please see the reply given in Arkell v. Pressdram. MastCell ^Talk 10:34, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

How about instead of all that we act like adults. You say "ok I'll stop using you as an example of racism" and I say "ok great" and we both go back to what we were doing before. Levivich ^harass/_hound 14:47, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I watch this talkpage, and the quoted edit was part of something where I have long been involved. Off-wiki, I have come to find the arguments underlying the concept of anti-racism very compelling in terms of how I attempt to live my life – although I am not in favor of making any of that into policy with respect to user conduct on Wikipedia. Some people would say that there are two doors for this, one of which is "racist" and the other "anti-racist", and there's some logic to that. But for the purposes of my comment here, I'm going to say that there is a third door, for "not racist and not anti-racist" (even though I recognize that "not anti-racist" is a double-negative – just acknowledging that I'm "not unaware" of that).

I felt at the time of the original discussion, and I still feel now, that "lynching" is unavoidably a racially-charged term, and that MastCell was correct to point that fact out, and that Levivich was incorrect to claim that it is not an intrinsically racially-charged term. And that would be the anti-racist way of interpreting the disagreement between the two of you.

Does that mean that Levivich is a racist? Well, at a time when the de facto policy position of the US Republican party is "Don't call me a racist. I just don't like it when Black people vote", there does seem to be a societal taboo against calling anyone that. But I think that in the one instance when Levivich posted that comment about "lynching", he was "not anti-racist". Myself, I'm not going to call that "racist". But I'm willing to call it "incorrect", and "incorrect" in a way that was harmful to the on-wiki discussion then, and continues to be harmful now. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:37, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I said in Special:Diff/966431506 that I disagree with MastCell's characterization of "lynching" as a "racially charged" word. Lynching doesn't just refer to lynchings of blacks in the US. Accusing someone of lynching doesn't mean you're accusing them of being racist, but rather of "mob justice". It's not a nice thing to accuse your colleagues of, but it's not an accusation of racism. I still don't think that saying "they're lynching me!" is calling other people racist. It doesn't make me racist to have that viewpoint. It doesn't harm anyone for me to express that viewpoint. Levivich ^harass/_hound 19:44, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh and by the way, of course Levivich is racist. I'm white and human, and thus inherently and unavoidably racist. But not because I think the word "lynching" as used in that particular instance was an accusation of mob justice rather than an accusation of racist mob justice. Just to be clear. Levivich ^harass/_hound 19:45, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Saying "they're lynching me" is indeed not saying that "they" are racists. But it is distorting the discussion by using a racially-charged term in an inappropriate context. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:49, 13 February 2021 (UTC) Bold font added. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:06, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

(by talk reader) I tend to agree with Levivich. I don't buy the idea that Levivich has to significantly acknowledge myopic racial history in using the term. I reject this neo-fascist orthodoxy and all fair-minded editors should, too. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:53, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

So then it seems we agree, It's not a nice thing to accuse your colleagues of, but it's not an accusation of racism. In Special:Diff/1006105578, MastCell linked to my comment and described it as me saying there was "nothing "racially charged" about the term "lynching"" and described me as "...these aren't random passing trolls. These are established editors. This is our community." I guess it's nice to know that I'm not a random troll, but an established one ;-) Levivich ^harass/_hound 19:57, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

So why are you saying that MastCell called you a racist? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:00, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Because they used me as an example of an editor whose viewpoints would defeat any effort to change "whitelist" and "blacklist" to "allow list" and "deny list" (ironically, that's a change I support). Also because it's not the first time; they've previously used me as an example of enabling racism, structural racism, and similar (I don't remember the exact wording offhand). I ignored it at first, then I've previously asked them to stop, and now they continue to use me as an example of this sort of thing, and it's been months of this. I'm sure it's totally unrelated to my having vocally opposed their close in that siteban discussion. I'm sure that there's some good reason why, when arguing that racism is widespread on Wikipedia, MastCell often needs to misrepresent one of my diffs as an example of it. (On one of the previous occasions, I remember the example was a !vote I cast in an RFC at Talk:Ronald Reagan.) When I initially read MastCell's most-recent comment, I thought to myself, "I better not be one of those three examples..." and then I looked at the diffs and yup! Me again! All I'm asking is for MastCell to stop using me as an example of racism on Wikipedia. I don't think that's a big ask. Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:12, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd rather that MastCell respond to that, instead of me responding, but I see it as him using you as an example of how the community can make it difficult to have a useful discussion about why it was wrong to have called the site-ban discussion a "lynching". --Tryptofish (talk) 20:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As a counter-example, if I were to say (wrongly!) that "I feel like Levivich is raping me in this discussion", that would be an objectionable way of exaggerating and over-emotionalizing the situation. And if Levivich were to object to being characterized that way, it would be wrong for me to respond by saying that I only meant "raping" metaphorically, and that it is not a sexually-charged or violence-charged word. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:59, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

The difference is that "rape" is always sexual, whereas "lynching" is not always racist, although it's largely associated with racism in the US because something like 75% or more of people who were lynched in the US are black people who were lynched by white racist mobs. But I was speaking to one particular use of the word, by an editor who is not American, and pointing out that this use of the word was a reference to mob justice and not racist mob justice. It's true that generally speaking people should not call being dragged to ANI or similar as a lynching (or as a raping). It's also true that many people have called ANI threads "lynching". It's also true that they probably don't mean that in a racist way, just in an unfair-mob-justice way. This is part of the reason I object to MastCell using that diff as an example of racism on Wikipedia. It's just not an example of that. It's just not. Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:15, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

In general, I'd be careful with loaded metaphors like 'lynch mob', 'witch hunt', 'Feminazi', 'grammar nazi' ... I've had discussions about this with my American spouse who liked (and still likes :-) to call things 'fascist' (because they're more restrictive than her political view, because they're inconveniencing her or others, it can mean a lot of things, I've discovered). Evoking violent and oppressive imagery from the not so distant past, may be powerful, but is rarely useful in a fair and competent discourse. I'd just stay away from these terms in the context of Wikipedia discussions. Obviously, they're not very effective here. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:21, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with Sluzzelin, who puts it very well. And I also think it's arguing on thin ice to say that rape is always sexual in a way that lynching is not always racial, as though talking about lynching isn't really that bad. See, for example, Rape of the Earth. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree completely but I'd like to acknowledge that this isn't a discussion about the term "lynching" or similar terms, and nobody has every said that using such language is helpful or effective. I'd like to make sure we do not distract from the topic of this thread, which is my request that MastCell stop using me as an example as they did. Thanks. Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:24, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

MastCell said that you were wrong to say that "lynching" is not racially-charged. And you did say that. He never called you a racist, but you are acting as though he did. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Levivich, maybe you could just admit that it was, in hindsight, a mistake for you to have defended the use of the term "lynching" as not racially-charged when it was used back in the site-ban discussion, and then MastCell could agree to stop using that occurrence as an example. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:40, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I do ask MastCell to not quote that anymore, as it's upsetting a very fine Wiki editor, and that's not necessary for making the legitimate point MastCell was making. I don't think you're a racist, Levivich. I don't think MastCell thinks you are a racist. I didn't see him calling you one. What I left out, above, is that using such terms is not only ineffective, but it also trivializes atrocities, and can be hurtful and unpleasant to read, depending on the reader (for many reasons, including reasons of racial identity). I'm sure I've upset people for no good reason here (I know I have off-wiki) but it's something I try to avoid. Not asking for a handshake, but maybe an elbow bump. ---Sluzzelin talk 21:09, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

As much as I like to see things reach a resolution, I don't think that this is something for MastCell to settle unilaterally. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:14, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I didn't phrase it well. I don't think MastCell is under any obligation. View it as a suggestion rather than a request, certainly not as a demand. Peace. ---Sluzzelin talk 21:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Sluzzelin, I appreciate that. And I agree, the problem with rape imagery, lynching imagery, nazi imagery, etc., is that it is trivializing. MastCell is free to hold whatever opinion of me they want to, I have no expectation that everyone here will like me. I'm asking that they not use me as an example repeatedly. A few times should be enough; they've expressed their views, there's no reason to keep picking on me. Because, as you said, it upsets me. I volunteer my time on this website like everyone else, and to have one of the website's administrators, in conversations with the website's founder, repeatedly use me as an example... well, I think that's understandably upsetting. My fear is that editors who do not know me will look at MastCell's comments on Jimbo's talk page and believe them, then make wisecracks (like suggesting that the book "How to Argue With a Racist" might be useful in a discussion with me) that hurt my feelings. There's just no need for us to treat each other this way. For my part, I had earlier suggested MastCell say "ok I'll stop" and I say "ok great" and we both go back to what we were doing before, and I'm going to pretend like that's what happened here, and I'm sure this won't come up again. Happy editing, everyone. Levivich ^harass/_hound 04:12, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Levivich, I think it's good to drop the dispute and move on, but I'd like to leave you with a few things to think about. First, it's ultimately up to MastCell whether or not to stop, and your stopping does not create an obligation on anyone else. Second, please do consider how, in the repeated discussions relating to the site ban, you chose to portray me in a negative way that I think was undeserved. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:49, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Interesting topic, serendipitously I've just been reading How should we address Charles Darwin's complicated legacy? | Science | The Observer, by the author of How to Argue With a Racist 9781474611251 by Adam Rutherford. Which looks useful. . . dave souza, talk 23:38, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you all for the commentary. A couple of brief remarks: first of all, Levivich, you keep insisting that I need to stop calling you a racist. I have never called you a racist, and can't stop doing something that I've never done in the first place. As for citing your comment about "lynching", well... look. On Wikipedia, people refuse to acknowledge an issue unless it's supported by diffs, for better or worse. I see a problem, and I therefore need to support it with diffs. The examples I use are, of practical necessity, drawn from my immediate experience, and that includes the discussion with you over the term "lynching".

  Tryptofish summed up my view very concisely; I am not interested in labeling you, or anyone, a "racist", but I am interested in the ways in which we as a community approach racially-charged issues. Quibbling about whether the term "lynching" is racially charged, in the course of an unrelated discussion, is in itself perhaps relatively minor, but small things like this can add up to an environment which impedes our retention of editors of color, or inhibits them from participating here in the first place. Likewise, it sets the Overton window for what sorts of discussions are possible here. If I have to spend all my energy convincing you that "lynching" is racially-charged term (something which, despite reams of text, I still think you've declined to acknowledge), then there's not much hope of having more any more serious, nuanced discussion of race-related issues.

  Sluzzelin, thank you for your comments here and elsewhere. It's not my intent to upset Levivich, or anyone else. But at the same time, it is probably impossible to have a serious conversation about these issues without making people uncomfortable on some level, myself included. And it is certainly uncomfortable to raise these issues; I've been dogpiled pretty consistently (if Jimbo hadn't said something, I have no doubt people would still be defending BobK's "good Nazis should be welcome here" attitude even now), threatened with blocks and the Code of Conduct, and so on. But I don't think it's healthy to prioritize the avoidance of discomfort for a subset of existing editors to the extent that we implicitly condone things that make a much larger, but less vocal, group of people uncomfortable.

  I guess that's a long way of saying that I haven't, and won't, go out of my way to quote Levivich or anyone else to cause them distress, but I also don't view the fact that these issues are distressing as sufficient reason for me to stop addressing them. And, again, there is no way to address an issue on Wikipedia without providing diffs, which, in turn, requires highlighting specific comments by specific people.

  I'm sure there are other aspects of this thread that I've forgotten to touch on, so if that's the case I'm open to further discussion. Thank you to all of you, Levivich included, for your openness and willingness to talk about these issues here. MastCell ^Talk 20:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Por favor

When you use <p> in talk threads (I do this, too, and encourage it), please close it with </p>, or it boogers the edit-mode syntax highlighter (the one available under Preferences, anyway). Another option is using {{pb}} instead of <p>.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:22, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

As an alternative, I recommend that you go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and enable "Discussion tools", so that you will (almost) never need to count colons ever again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

WPM and Whitaker

You restored challenged edits that were removed from the lead of the subject article because such inclusion is noncompliant with WP:GUILT, WP:BLP and WP:NPOV. There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Matthew_Whitaker,_Ronald_Mallett,_WP:GUILT. Please provide your input at that noticeboard. Atsme 💬 📧 19:05, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Please provide the diff for the edit that you're concerned about. I've made only minor edits to the lead, so I can't tell what this alphabet-soup is meant to signify, and I think you're mistaken on the facts, not to mention basic policy. It looks like people are telling you the same thing at the BLP noticeboard, and at the AfD where you tried to get this article deleted on clearly spurious grounds. At a glance, this is veering into the bludgeoning and partisan WP:RGW behavior that's been problematic in the past. MastCell ^Talk 20:54, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

@Atsme: I'd appreciate a response, since you took the time to come here and accuse me of violating policy. Which edit of mine "restored challenged edits" to the lead of World Patent Marketing? MastCell ^Talk 03:59, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Just so you're aware, she's apparently muted your pings, after accusing you of hounding on her talk page. So she's unlikely to have received your last ping. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 08:47, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I advised her to do that. DGG ( talk ) 06:07, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Atsme committed a pretty serious and blatant WP:BLP violation, and when I raised the issue she personally attacked me with a string of baseless and unsupported aspersions rather than addressing her BLP violation ([41]). You're saying that you advised her to respond in that fashion? MastCell ^Talk 18:18, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm saying I advised her to mute your pings., and that's all I said, and all I meant, and all I intend to say here. DGG ( talk ) 23:35, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary

Wishing MastCell a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! CommanderWaterford (talk) 07:43, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

CommanderWaterford (talk) 07:43, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Wishing MastCell a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Zai (💬 • 📝 • ⚡️) 12:55, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Happy anniversary! Guettarda (talk) 13:11, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Not sure that many people find my adminship cause for celebration—least of all me—but I appreciate the sentiment. :) MastCell ^Talk 17:23, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

A friend of mine once said he thought most people celebrating his birthday were actually just glad he was one year closer to dying. So I think your adminship anniversary is probably celebrated by everyone, but for diametrically opposed reasons. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:28, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Alternatively, there's the Gaelic Storm take; for all you saints and sinners, you losers and you winners, here's to one more day above the roses. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:09, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Not bad! Here's to another year of adminship, another year in which

       I mete and dole
         Unequal laws unto a savage race,
       That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

Of course, as Thomas Aquinas said, it's better to burn out than to fade away. (Or maybe that was Neil Young). And I'm managing to do both! Another year above the roses... :) MastCell ^Talk 05:11, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

• Happy anniversary! And I'm certainly celebrating your perseverance, altho I'd be more jubilant you'd responded to my last email back in 2017. A couple years ago another big health issue was uncovered: Crohn's. Seems like it must've been latent a while. Thanks to allopathic medicine (altho the theracurmin research that I found didn't hurt), I feel better than ever. All hail Big Pharma. II | (t - c) 07:54, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Hey! Long time no see. I'm genuinely sorry for not responding to your email; I guess I could plead temporary insanity by virtue of an increasing real-life workload and disengagement from Wikipedia, but no excuses. I'm really sorry about that. I am happy to hear that you're feeling better—obviously not happy that you have Crohn's disease, but at least it's been identified and is being treated. And I know you're kidding on the square about Big Pharma, but (as we may have talked about via email? I can't remember) I'm probably more skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry—and less hostile to alternative approaches—than you might think. Be that as it may, it's always good to hear from you, and I'm glad you're doing OK. MastCell ^Talk 18:12, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Thanks, no worries. Not kidding when I say I feel better than ever, even going back to as far as I can remember of early childhood. Vedolizumab has a pretty benign side effect profile too. Also not actually kidding (but I suppose kidding on the square is correct) about Big Pharma; I've always had a mixed relationship with it (and alternative medicine). It's been a long time since I was a sickly undergrad, but even then I was pretty skeptical. I'm back to speculating / trading in equities in the past couple years including small cap biotechs, so I'm sitting a bit closer to the stage lately. Kinda view money lost on biotechs as a charitable contribution, altho more than I'd like goes to executive largesse; corporate governance is a recurring topic of interest of mine here on Wikipedia and elsewhere. I did drop into UCSF Osher Institute of Integrative Medicine after the diagnosis and I was abashed that UCSF could be associated with the silliness I encountered. II | (t - c) 22:36, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

r

We've had a year of protests. It's natural to talk about them in the same conversation, and it is not inevitably a "right wing talking point" to do so, and IMO it's not helpful to jump straight to that, and I object to the implication you're making about me.

To be crystal clear, I think what happened at the Capitol was an insurrection, and that Trump and Giuliani incited it and should be imprisoned for treason along with the hundreds of stupid people who allowed themselves to be incited. The people who showed up with grappling equipment and other gear certainly were there to attempt a coup and as far as I'm concerned they were there to commit murder. The people who thought they were attending a protest and got caught up in the moment and broke into the building also should be charged with insurrection. But there were undoubtedly people who listened to the speeches, marched to the capitol, then decided it had gotten out of control and left. And probably some who listened to the speeches and then left because the crowd was already getting too worked up. And, yes, some BLM protests turned into looting sessions and riots. Some people attended BLM protests in order to get into fights with the other side. And because these incidents overlapped, discussing them in the same conversation makes progressives, including me, really uncomfortable because of course the insurrection can't be compared to the BLM protests that turned into riots, because in the case of the insurrection the leader of our country was the root cause of it and the immediate inciter of it. But it is absolutely not helpful to shut down such discussions because "they're right-wing talking points." Yes, right-wingers are comparing them in ridiculous ways. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have the conversation at all, and in this particular case what I was comparing was the fact that not everyone in attendance was there to attempt a coup and therefore calling the idea that anyone was there to peacefully protest "mythical" was opinion, not fact. —valereee (talk) 11:18, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

First of all, you brought up the BLM protests, in an unrelated discussion. There was really no need to do that, and they weren't relevant in any way to the AE discussion at hand. But since you raised the topic, I'm not going to apologize for pushing back against what is pretty clearly a lazy false equivalence—not only in my opinion, but in the opinions of subject-matter experts.

As for "a year of protests", these were not both "protests". The BLM marches were protests, based on a very real problem—the disproportionate use of lethal force by police against non-white people. January 6th was an act of organized domestic terrorism based on a transparent lie, in which a group of right-wing extremists successfully breached the Capitol with the intent (and tools) to kidnap and/or lynch members of the government, all in an effort to overturn the results of a legitimate election. Describing January 6th as a "protest" isn't an example of neutral language; it's complicity in the effort to rewrite the history of what actually took place.

And, sure. There were undoubtedly some "very fine people" mixed in with the crowd on January 6th— just as there were "very fine people" in Charlottesville, interspersed with the neo-Nazis chanting "Jews will not replace us!" Some people just have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess.

Anyhow, what I'm saying is that the instinct to reflexively both-sides the issue and to reach for left-wing analogs to the Jan. 6th riots is a problem—not because it's a "right-wing talking point", but because it ignores the reality that these sides are not symmetric, and that neutrality doesn't consist of staking out a position halfway between Medicare-For-All and the guy in a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt carrying a taser & zipties. I don't think you're intentionally echoing a partisan talking point, and I didn't mean to imply that. I do think that these instincts toward false equivalence, normalization, and both-sides-ism very readily play into the real, documented, ongoing right-wing effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6th and broader recent events, and that's why I objected. MastCell ^Talk 19:00, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

The BLM protests were not in an unrelated discussion. We were talking about an incident that started as a protest and turned into a insurrection, in a year of protests that started out peacefully and some of which turned into riots. Because an editor had said that it was impossible that any portion of the insurrection had ever started out as peaceful protest, I made what seemed like a reasonable comparison to explain why I thought it was reasonable to argue that even something that turns into an insurrection MAY have started out peacefully. As you can see I struck that comparison, as it isn't even necessary. Many many many peaceful protests have eventually turned ugly. So I disagree it was unrelated. It was obviously stupid to even mention BLM, obviously that was a hot button, but it's true of MANY protests: they start out peacefully, and some in the crowd use them as an opportunity for violence.

And I didn't say there were many very fine people in the crowd on January 6th, and that's really a very ugly thing to say to me. I think there were a lot of stupid and or gullible people there, probably at least some of whom had no intention of wreaking violence or breaking into buildings. And there were also a lot of really bad people. And there were probably a lot who didn't plan to become violent but ended up participating in it. Given the levels of stupidity we're seeing among those who've been arrested so far, I think that may be a lot of them.

I'm not both-siding this. I am not saying there's symmetry. I am not arguing that we have to find some middle ground that treats the crazy right as a reasonable point of view. Literally all I am saying is that it's reasonable to argue that the day started out peacefully and turned into an insurrection, and that there's no evidence that everyone in attendance during the speeches intended to attempt a coup. That it's opinion, not fact, that the idea there was ever anything peaceful is "mythical".

It's fine to push back. I agree with you that there are many in the right wing -- and even just plain old conservatives -- who are trying to equate the violence of the insurrection with that of some of the BLM protests that turned into riots. But that is not what I was doing. I was doing sort of the opposite: pointing out that sometimes things that end badly started out peacefully, which is what we liberals have been arguing about the BLM protests that turned into riots all along. —valereee (talk) 10:31, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Every person at the January 6th riots was there because they'd accepted a set of transparent lies, and because they were willing to invest substantial time and effort specifically to try to overturn the results of a legitimate election. January 6th was fundamentally an effort to disenfranchise a subset of American voters and to invalidate their votes. Every single person in attendance knew, or should have known, that. Every single person there was fine with the idea of a coup, and came out to lend their support to that idea, whether or not they personally attacked the Capitol building. You say they were stupid and gullible... bullshit. Or rather, yes, many of them were arguably stupid and gullible, but they were also adults and responsible for their own actions. MastCell ^Talk 23:44, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

MastCell, I agree that everyone there had accepted a set of transparent lies and wanted to overturn the election results. I don't think there's evidence they 100% were there for a violent coup attempt. And of course they're adults and responsible for their own actions. The fact they were gullible and stupid doesn't excuse that. It just explains why otherwise basically law-abiding people might participate to whatever degree in something like this. —valereee (talk) 19:35, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

do you have any actual evidence that not a single person there was present just to see what would happen, or to accompany a friend? (They may have had enough sympathy with Trump to be interested, but that doesn't mean they were there with a specific insurrectionary purpose). They were adults and responsible for their action to be sure, but that does not mean they were responsible for actions of other people. I wasn't there, and I doubt that you were, but from the films it looked like there were a lot of spectators around the edges. I can't prove for any specific person they were innocent of criminal intent, but I don't see how you can prove that all of them were guilty of it. Of course this is a talk p, and not an article, so it isn't subject to WP:NPOV and WP:V, but it is subject to BLP, and you are making criminal accusations against identifiable people. DGG ( talk ) 16:56, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

You should really spend some time in learning to understand the subject at hand before you make comments about it. Far-right groups from around the country had been planning to prevent congress from certifying the election results for weeks. And, it was well known that violent groups such as the Proud Boys and other militia groups planned to attend and take part in a violent protest. How else other than violent action could any person attending that march on the capitol expect to prevent congress from certifying the results of the presidential vote and declare Joe Biden the winner? Wouldn't you think that any person that saw that lynching structure being hauled around would figure out that this was not a peaceful protest and leave? Or when some of them started fighting with the security police in attempt to enter the building? Or climbing the walls? Gandydancer (talk) 18:19, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

There's a difference between "some of them" and "all of them". We don't actually disagree that much. I think it very probable that those in the know were quite aware of what Trump was likely to say, or perhaps intended to say. I see no basis for assuming everyone there realized it, but I have no basis for judging the proportion. ( People are attracted by the idea of watching other people fight. I even think that some of those who entered the building were there to watch the excitement, and I think we all agree that anyone doing that was at the minimum, either stupid or reckless. I also am aware of the propensity of people to see how far hey can go without actually getting into trouble, and that they often badly misjudge.

I'm not one of the people trying to trivialize the attempt at insurrection. I was quite apprehensive at the time of the possible results, and I do not think my concern was excessive. The whole series of events Nov-Jan put an end to my residual feelings that the US was exceptional in the strength of its democratic tradition.

I will also add, based this time on my own experience (and what I was taught), that one of the key purposes of demonstrations is to attract spectators , who may join in the excitement and become involved in the cause. It's an excellent opportunity to recruit. DGG ( talk ) 19:11, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

The Atlantic called it political violence so I will go with that: "First, the attack on the Capitol was unmistakably an act of political violence, not merely an exercise in vandalism or trespassing amid a disorderly protest that had spiraled out of control." [42] In that article they say, "However, a closer look at the people suspected of taking part in the Capitol riot suggests a different and potentially far more dangerous problem: a new kind of violent mass movement in which more “normal” Trump supporters—middle-class and, in many cases, middle-aged people without obvious ties to the far right—joined with extremists in an attempt to overturn a presidential election." I can't help but wonder if this was how it all started in Germany. I think of the Bosnian genocide as well. Gandydancer (talk) 15:28, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

This gets to the crux of why informed and expert opinion is so adamant in characterizing the recent transformation of the Republican party. The Nazis were freely elected in Germany. The US Republicans started by backing away from Trump's barbs and tweets but in the past 6 months they've gone on to actively promote an anti-democratic anti-constitutional agenda in the US. And they are doing it as a core agenda of their organized party.

Valereee, I think there's a distinction that needs to be drawn between more-or-less well-informed citizens who read the daily RS newspapers and perhaps some other mass periodicals with commentary vs. the relatively small number of WP editors who are uncommonly well-read, well-informed, and who routinely read media, reliable and not, that present a wide range of views. Such editors can readily identify the sources others have followed to arrive and non-mainstream content suggestions and the well-informed editors, JzG among them, also bring considerable historic and academic perspectives to the table. Valereee, I don't think anyone doubts your sincere concern and distaste for some of Trump's actions. But I suspect you fall more in the cohort of well-informed educated readers of mass media than in the much smaller cohort of those with deep historical and mainstream expert academic perspective. To evoke the term "riot" describing scattered looting, burning, in 2020 is to adopt a Trump/Republican propaganda narrative. In the USA, race-related riots such as those that occured in the 1960's '70s, and at a couple of more recent times -- those resulted in hundreds of deaths and hundreds of millions of property damage. See [43] [44] [45], etc. Nothing like that can reasonably be associated with BLM, but the language matters and the context in which the language was promoted by Trump, the Republicans, and their media partners also matters.

The JzG thread has now been closed at AE with a typical anodyne exortation to "do better" and no sanctions on the editors who came there explicitly to promote their POV and to attack a perceived opponent of their POV. The AE process as applied has resulted in a much worse editing environment in American Politics. I don't know what alternatives may be viable, but clearly our Admin corps has not been up to the task assigned by Arbcom. Whether it was a mistake from the outset or whether things might have gone better is not clear at this time. SPECIFICO talk 18:41, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Returning to Wikipedia after a refreshing break. My only further comment on this is in response to DGG, who asserts that I am violating WP:BLP by "making criminal accusations against identifiable people". First of all, it's not a crime to go hang out with neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other right-wing extremists in order to agitate for the nullification of a free and fair democratic election. I'm not a lawyer, but that presumably falls under freedom of association, which explains why only the subset of attendees who actually invaded the Capitol have been charged with crimes. So I'm not accusing anyone of a crime, and I'll add WP:BLP to the growing list of basic Wikipedia policies that DGG seems not to comprehend. MastCell ^Talk 20:37, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I was following a rabbit trail of links and it led to this comment of yours

And I could not possibly agree with it more. I also find myself agreeing with your position in the thread above this one, which I read, as it touches upon the same subject. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, MjolnirPants. It's good to see you back and active here again. And if you enjoy rabbit holes, there's plenty more where that came from. In fact, you don't even have to leave this page... MastCell ^Talk 19:51, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Those were indeed rabbit holes. And down in them I found deep despair for the future of humanity.

Fortunately my kids are awesome, and my oldest just won a junior pistol shooting competition despite being an abject video game nerd, so I'm like 90% sure he's the chosen one who's going to save the world before he hits puberty. I just hope I don't have to die horribly to motivate him past that last confrontation with the big bad. Joseph Campbell is a harsh master. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:23, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I think your edit summary was insightful, and gets to the heart of the matter—the fear of being "uncivil". Of course, "civility", as defined by this community, is all about prioritizing the comfort of a small subset of editors over that of everyone else. Or, as a wise man once noted, civility is the rallying cry of the sort of person who "is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'."

But I don't want to get you in any more trouble, so I'll leave it there. You know how I feel, if you've read some of those discussions, and you've seen the type of bluster and dogpiling that have resulted—all in defense of "civility", of course.

Congrats on your progeny's marksmanship. I have some (remote) experience with a .22 rifle, and an old NRA qualification to prove it, but I could never hit even the broad side of a barn with a pistol. On the other hand, video games are probably suitable training, since most seem to revolve around shooting things. My reflexes and reaction time have gotten too ponderous for anything beyond Animal Crossing these days. MastCell ^Talk 00:20, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Curiously, civility is a subject I can speak my thoughts on without fear of becoming uncivil, and I couldn't possibly agree more.

I've always defined civility in terms of respect, myself. Respect doesn't preclude frustration or a little annoyance, nor does it preclude the expression of such. But it does precludes things like plotting ways to circumvent community consensus, misrepresenting sources, pounding one's chest about one's education or accomplishments (which can never be verified) using deception and even lies to win ground in arguments and pearl-clutching about the appearance of civility. Yet all of those things are implicitly and sometimes expressly permitted, much to the detriment of this project, so long as the editors engaged in them phrase everything in just the right way. We have a policy on civility, but what we enforce is rather a specific form of etiquette.

I'm pretty proud of the little guy, too. His grandmother (my MIL) was a competitive shooter for most of her life. I won a few badges in the Army too, so hopefully he'll get it from both sides and get somewhere with it. Ironically, video games are actually about the worst training one could have, but he's been ready and eager to go to the range ever since he got to shoot his first gun, three years ago. It's the one thing that he seems eager to work towards, which is a pleasant surprise for both me and his mother, as we'd previously thought him deathly allergic to work.

My wife has a Gen-Xer's deep aversion to seeing video games as a legitimate hobby for anyone over the age of 18, but even she has recently fallen victim to the addiction that is Animal Crossing, so I can't say as I blame you, there. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:10, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Eight years!

I miss User:MjolnirPants, so placed it here. More memory on my talk. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:09, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Gerda. I'm sorry to see MjolnirPants go too. There was a time when Wikipedia was more tolerant of people like him—those who are passionate and outspoken but who also have a fully oriented moral compass—but that time is long past, and this place is much less interesting and less colorful as a result. MastCell ^Talk 17:00, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the thank you

I cannot tell you how much your simple "Thanks" meant to me. I am exhausted after a week of battling someone who clearly signed up for Wikipedia to influence one pet article. I felt like I was screaming into a black hole. I have been hoping another seasoned editor would jump in with support, but none came. Your kind acknowledgement let me know at least someone was listening. I hope I can return the kindness one day. God bless and happy editing! MarydaleEd (talk) 04:13, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi MarydaleEd—I'm glad it lifted your spirits. I've been there, and I know how isolating and depressing it can be to deal with that sort of thing. I think you did an outstanding job of being kind and patient, but also firm about this site's fundamental principles—so thank you (again) for working so hard to find that balance.

I'm sorry for not jumping in more actively to support your efforts to stand up for good editing; unfortunately, with the fourth wave (or fifth? or third? who's counting anymore) of Covid-19 infections I've been too busy with real-life stuff. I hope you can maintain the patience you've shown, although I know it gets harder with each subsequent agenda-driven single-purpose account that one deals with. Anyhow—you're doing good work, and you're not alone, even if it feels that way sometimes. Thank you. MastCell ^Talk 23:56, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Re: Ronald Reagan

Thanks for the link to the archival discussion. Many of the issues that have been raised in the talk page archives have not been acted upon. Would creating a future, centralized discussion about this problem elsewhere have a better result? Journalist Will Bunch (2009, Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy) describes the problem we are facing:

1. The article attempts to eliminate, whitewash or play down any references to negative things that took place during Reagan's presidency from 1981 to 1989.

2. The article awards Reagan more credit than he deserves for good things that happened while he was president, or asserts things that took place when they didn't.

3. The article whitewashes Reagan's better qualities that no longer fit the modern day conception of the right wing.

Any suggestions as to how to address this? Viriditas (talk) 23:10, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

In these sorts of situations, I've had the best luck with identifying a specific sub-topic, systematically identifying the best available sources, and using them to develop a subsection on the topic. But that takes time, which I don't have. (I work in healthcare, and the last 18 months have been a bit draining). A high-level debate about whether the article is too favorable to Reagan will bog down endlessly, so the better option is a focused approach to one sub-topic at a time.

For instance, since the article shamefully whitewashes Reagan's record on race, or his response to the AIDS epidemic, those would be manageable starting points for improvement. As those sub-sections are developed, it becomes more plainly evident that they deserve mention in the lead, and harder for the soup-spitter types who frequent the page to block them on spurious grounds.

As I mentioned at the talk page, I'm not really up for venturing back there. Until Wikipedia stops tolerating and condoning the sort of slimy racism apologists that I encountered there, I don't think it's worth my time, and it's beneath my dignity to interact with people like that. MastCell ^Talk 00:00, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

You were correct on that "widely" issue. My mistake. (I missed it.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 20:22, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Apologies for butting in here. Viriditas, I thought it worth mentioning that the article has FA status, which leads many people to not examine it critically; but it was promoted way back when, and much of its content hasn't actually been evaluated. I recently noticed some of those issues in the subsection related to apartheid. If you have seen broader issues, it may be worth listing them on the talk page; if they're fixed, wonderful; if not, such a notice would speed things along when the FA status is examined as part of WP:URFA/2020. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:50, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi Vanamonde; thanks for taking an interest in the article. It definitely has some glaring blind spots, one of which (Reagan and racial issues) we've both touched on. Well, a "blind spot" is the charitable explanation. It's somewhat more difficult to sustain the assumption of good faith once one recognizes a pattern of cherry-picking sources in a non-neutral fashion. For example, scholarly sources which critically appraise Reagan's approach to racial issues are cited—so it's not like editors of the article are unaware of their existence—but they are carefully mined to support a one-sided presentation of the complex reality that they describe. In any case, thanks for your note. MastCell ^Talk 23:34, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Definitely noticing more of that the closer I look, particularly with the use of vague attribution ("critics said...") for critical material, but not for similarly sourced positive material (see the War on Drugs section). Not sure I can engage very deeply there, as I remain exceedingly busy in RL; but if there were several editors interested, I'd try to chip in on those areas where I've some knowledge of the sources. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:55, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I hate to start up a argument on your talk page, but with all due respect, you've done some of what you are complaining about. Note you (for example) included the fact Reagan was no fan of Civil Rights legislation ....without giving the reason. (Which I had to include.) And also (speaking of AGF), you seem to be pretty cozy with a editor who sprayed a lot of OR all over the talk page (i.e. Viriditas), apparently because he sees RR in a pretty negative light. So yeah, there are a lot of people grinding axes here. (On both sides apparently.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 00:46, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that I'm "cozy" with Viriditas. Despite the fact that we've each been on Wikipedia for more than 15 years, I can't remember ever interacting with him before he left this note for me. Hopefully we both understand that a kind or supportive response to a message is not an endorsement of every single thing that the message-leaver has done or said.

But now I'm curious. What, in your view, was Reagan's reason for opposing civil-rights legislation? MastCell ^Talk 01:08, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

You don't remember interacting with him before this "note"? Remember this: [46]? And note no complaints about his OR. Why did RR oppose civil rights legislation in many instances? As I noted in my edit on his page: it was because of property rights. You may not be aware of this (depending on how old you are), but even some of the biggest (original) advocates of this type of legislation began to question it on this point.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:22, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Interesting. So you're confident that a politician's publicly stated rationale accurately reflects the real calculus behind his promotion of a specific talking point? MastCell ^Talk 02:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

In Reagan's case? Yes. Reagan was (after all) a Goldwater Republican. (And not a fan of big gov....except when it came to defense spending of course.) And he [Goldwater] took issue with these laws for some of the same reasons. In any case, we have a lot of people who want to add one side of that and leave out the rest. That's not NPOV.Rja13ww33 (talk) 02:23, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

The notion that we achieve NPOV by countering criticism of a politician with the politician's own stated positions is ridiculous and contrary to policy, and somehow still common. We ought to be describing what reliable sources say about his motivations, and nothing more. And really that means scholarly sources. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:48, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I am aware of no policy that says we omit a politicians' statements in favor of speculation/accusation. We certainly should include such things.....but omitting direct quotes/arguments (via RS)? I don't think so.Rja13ww33 (talk) 03:42, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

You're misreading me. I don't mind using quotes, so long as we're using them in the context that a source uses them; the crucial point is that the narrative needs to be that of the source, not a "critics say this, politician says this". To be clear, this is a problem with most political biographies, not just with this article. Vanamonde (Talk) 04:36, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes that gets a bit tricky and makes the article a bit cumbersome. (But I try to make it readable.) You'll have critic A slamming politician X without really presenting X's argument effectively (to the point where you are missing some things). You find Critic B who does present X's argument but you are forced into going over the same criticism as A.....so then you feel like lumping them together as just "critics" and.....well, you know the rest. The media lumps people together as "critics" so that rubs off. (I don't think there is anything in the MOS on it....other than it is indeed vague.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 04:51, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, the relevant policy is WP:YESPOV. When a critical narrative is broadly supported by reliable sources, we shouldn't be labelling as coming from "critics". If it's contested, but still from reliable sources, it should be attributed, but "critics" is still not right; it ought to be "scholars" or "journalists" or other specific descriptor. Vanamonde (Talk) 05:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

• Coming back to this, because it's fascinating to me, the idea that Reagan backed anti-Black discrimination because of his race-neutral belief in "property rights". If we're still allowed to think critically about assertions like that, one wonders: did Reagan evince any interest in or expend any political capital on behalf of the property rights of Black renters denied housing on the basis of their race? Or on any of the myriad ways in which the property rights of Black Americans were abridged over the country's lifespan? If not, then "property rights" is probably best understood as a fig leaf to make racist policies and pandering more defensible, in the same lineage as "states' rights" etc.
  More generally, if your understanding of American history generally, and of Reagan's career specifically, excludes the significant role of race, then I think you have a very limited and, dare I say, unencyclopedic understanding of those subjects. MastCell ^Talk 18:34, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Obviously Philadelphia, Mississippi was symbolically important for the race-neutral debate over property rights. Guettarda (talk) 22:42, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

If you relied our biography, of course, you wouldn't even know that Reagan gave a speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi. MastCell ^Talk 00:12, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

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18:13, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Rfc v. policy

Hi, MastCell, in this edit you made a comment about the inability of Rfc's to overrule policy, which I very much hope is the case, as it would help in a completely different situation I'm mulling over. I'd love to be able to quote some policy shortcut on that, rather than just assert it. Do you have a link? (please  mention me on reply; thanks!) Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 09:26, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: A number of our policies are explicitly marked as such—for example, WP:NPOV notes: "This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus." So in the instance in question in my edit, if reliable sources consistently describe a medical procedure as safe, then we as editors cannot take it upon ourselves to describe it otherwise or to attach our own caveats, RfC's notwithstanding.

There's also WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, although it's been cited most often in contexts where specific Wikipedia subcultures have developed internal practices or ideas that run counter to site policy. For instance, the firearms enthusiasts at WP:GUNS decided amongst themselves that articles about assault weapons were forbidden to mention their use in mass shootings, and attempted to use that "local consensus" to overrule policy-based arguments on specific pages. Anyhow, I'm happy to take a look at the situation you have in mind, if you'd like. MastCell ^Talk 05:27, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd love if it if you would; attempting a TL;DR (because I know I'm too wordy, sorry!): a contentious, gender-related topic had a recent Rfc which strongly supported use of the term anti-trans; LOCALCONSENSUS may be involved, and I recently created a narrower discussion to try and look at just part of the issue, but I wonder if I should just give it up. Your comment gave me some hope, and your offer to look at it may help clarify things in my mind, so thank you. The gory details (well, a very brief summary, though it looks long):

The situation I have in mind is at Rapid-onset gender dysphoria controversy (ROGD for short). A Brown University prof published a paper on a hitherto unknown syndrome she named, surveying parents at three website forums known to attract parents who were upset that their kids announced suddenly (as it appeared to the parents) that they were trans, in order to gather data for her paper. The survey methodology was roundly attacked by activists and some professionals, and a controversy broke out in the RW (hence the title), mirrored to some extent at our Talk page. The article got to a very good state after some great collaboration by many editors with differing opinions, imho, and quiesced for quite some time, before flaring up again recently over some edits which labeled these three websites as anti-trans.

They may well be, and I'm fine with it if sources clearly support that, but from where I stand wrt our P&G, that's a loaded term, possibly covered by MOS:LABEL, and if we decide to use that word in Wikipedia's voice then I believe that WP:V and NPOV require very clear statements, by a DUE majority or significant minority of reliable sources. So far, I don't see that. It seems to me that this requirement has been supplanted by arguments by editors who may strongly believe that they are anti-trans (they might be right; maybe there's just not enough coverage yet). As it happens, a previous Rfc decided strongly in favor of anti-trans. I missed the Rfc, and not wanting to re-litigate it I decided to pick just one of the three surveyed websites, and see if it is reliably described as "anti-trans" by sources, and started a discussion about "4th Wave Now" at Talk:ROGD. I gave some responses, but tbh I haven't been back lately because I've been too busy, and also, frankly, because it's stressful. The evidence for the claim seems thin to me wrt 4th Wave Now; there are two sources that label the three websites (collectively) as "anti-trans", PinkNews (listed as usually reliable at RSN) and one other unknown which hasn't been reviewed there. Even a cherry-picked search doesn't find much. This doesn't seem to meet the bar for a term like that.

My next step at the discussion, if I go back, was going to be to point out what it looks like when sources really do describe someone or something as anti-trans or transphobic, and I was thinking of raising the example of either Janice Raymond or her book, The Transsexual Empire, both of which have plenty of sources that could be used. (Views are by no means universal, and she has strong supporters as well.) But the almost complete void when I search for similar terms for 4th Wave Now makes me believe the term is not (yet?) proper for the article; it seems to me to be editors' opinions, or RGW, or something.

So, coming full circle: I was thinking about whether to present my "Janice Raymond" thing, but I was anticipating someone telling me, "By recent consensus in the Rfc, we just decided the website is anti-trans, and V or NPOV doesn't trump that." So, I was hesitating going back there to make my case, when I happened to see your comment at the unrelated discussion, which made me think maybe I should go back and present the case after all. Which brings us back to the present.

I tend to be too wordy, for which I apologize; I was struggling how to keep this shorter, but this is such a contentious topic with a ton of history, and I was trying to find just the right-sized kernel of info for you, enough to be able to avoid most of the walls of text over there, and just enough history to be able to go right to the topic at hand, namely, if their previous Rfc somehow renders the 4th Wave Now discussion moot and I should just give it up, or not. If after all this you still feel like having a look, I'd love to hear your opinion about it (even if you decide not to jump into it over there). Either way, thanks for the offer, and happy editing! Mathglot (talk) 07:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Good Humor
	For your sarcastic essay WP:Sarcasm is really helpful. I find it kinda funny how it uses sarcasm to convey that sarcasm isn't a good idea. Good job. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:24, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks - that's kind of you, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. MastCell ^Talk 17:56, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

AML

How are you, old friend? I hope these times are treating you well. As I indicated on the talk page, 2021 was long and dreadful for my family, and I got the call literally as I was sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. Unexpected, as she was due to be released to home after a year at UCSF (a choice I was not happy with), but the chemo-induced diabetes was the final blow. I cannot work on that article, and I don't see that it moved in the right direction over the time I couldn't bring myself to be involved (still can't). My suggestion is that, unless you are willing and able to bring it back to its former glory, it should go to WP:FAR. Sorry to be saying hello with such a dreadful post. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:29, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi Sandy—it's always good to see your name, although less so under these circumstances. I don't know what to say other than that I'm so sorry to hear about your niece. I can't imagine what your family is going through. I don't have any uplifting words; cancer sucks, and I'll never get used to a world where young people die of it. I hope that your family is able to support each other through this terrible time.

As for the acute myeloid leukemia article, I agree that it's very out of date. Perhaps the most potent indictment of the article is that you—an experienced medical editor—found it useless in understanding your niece's illness. That doesn't inspire confidence that the article is useful to the public at large. I wish I could tell you that I have the time and energy to re-write and update it, but the reality is that I don't. Between increasing real-life workload and disillusionment with Wikipedia and its culture, I'm not able to invest the time that would be necessary to fix the article. I agree that WP:FAR is reasonable under these circumstances.

How are you otherwise? Do you have the same general sense I do, that the people who made this site interesting and fun have systematically either been driven off or burned out? It's just not very fun here anymore. The worst people stick around and thrive, and the overall culture has gotten increasingly rules-lawyerly and bureaucratic. Rule #2 in action, I guess. And Wikipedia, like many of our other institutions, has proven disappointingly vulnerable to counterfactual misinformation and ignorance, despite its nominal aspirations to serve as the sum of human knowledge. MastCell ^Talk 22:42, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Hey there :) Well, in the good medical news dep't, just home from dear hubby's very successful Mohs surgery (got the squamous cell carcinoma on the second excision). As to family support, COVID made it near impossible to be together as one would expect in time of grief; it was just rough all 'round. My brother is still inconsolable, and I don't suppose that will ever get better. My other niece is still distraught. What a horrible thing cancer is.

I am sorta relieved to hear you agree with me on AML, and understand you not wanting to try to fix it. I will at least feel less guilty if someone takes it to FAR.

My sense of what's going on in here is what you mention combined with more of the effect of what are clearly child editors than I recall having seen before. Perhaps COVID lockdowns led to a lot of 12-yo editing, but, well, it does make one miss the wonderful old collaborations at a high level. I did notice that dave souza has kept Charles Darwin clean all these years, so there are occasional glimpses of hope.

I am glad to hear from you, and hope you are thriving. All the best, always, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:51, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Saw your name on my watchlist...

...so thought I'd say hi (while I'm still able to edit anything beyond my own talk page). Been a while. Hope you're well. No, I'm fairly sure you're not. Hope you're as well as can be expected under the circumstances, and I hope the circumstances change soon. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:57, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, seconded. Best of luck IRL, it's been quite a time to be alive. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:01, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Bug report

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Fisher (architect)

I think that I have found a bug in your perl. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 05:50, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Hah! If I remembered any Perl, I'd fix it. :) Coding is one of those pre-pandemic hobbies that I haven't even thought about in 2+ years... MastCell ^Talk 20:14, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

New administrator activity requirement

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

1. Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
2. Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:53, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Acute myeloid leukemia FAR

I have nominated Acute myeloid leukemia for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm _Talk 04:21, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Douglas Leone requests

Hi there, MastCell! I recently posted two requests to the Douglas Leone article Talk page concerning proposed revisions. I see that you're an experienced editor who has updated the article in the past, so I'm hoping that you can take a look at what I've put together. Due to my conflict of interest (I work for Sequoia Capital) I will not make any changes to the article myself. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. VS for Sequoia Capital (talk) 18:01, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Happy Sixteenth First Edit Day!

Hey, MastCell. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Chris Troutman (talk) 19:40, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Invitation to join the Fifteen Year Society

Dear MastCell,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more. ​

Best regards, Chris Troutman (talk) 19:41, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Lightbreather appeal

The Arbitration Committee is considering an unban appeal from Lightbreather (talk · contribs). You are being notified as you participated in the last unban discussion. You may give feedback here. For the Arbitration Committee, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:28, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Nine years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:22, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Mail call

Hello, MastCell. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Bishonen | tålk 08:01, 17 November 2022 (UTC).

Thanks... obviously not very active at the moment but read and responded. MastCell ^Talk 18:05, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Template:Hidden begin

Hello, I boldly renamed two of the parameters used in Template:Hidden begin (along with other changes). However, you are one of three people who have the template placed on a fully protected page. The parameters changed were bg1 and bg2. This means that your use of the template now has no color. To fix this simply replace any instance of "bg1=" with "titlebgcolor=" and "bg2=" with "contentbgcolor=". You can see which pages you use this template on at Category:Hidden begin with depreciated parameters, sorry for any inconvenience. Terasail^[✉️] 22:44, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is SashiRolls requests a !ban. Thank you. — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:09, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Credit where due

I appreciated your AN comment so much that I added it here: [47]. You said that really well. Thank you for that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:02, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Notification

You are involved in a recently-filed request for clarification or amendment from the Arbitration Committee. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment# Amendment request: Abortion and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the Wikipedia:Arbitration guide may be of use.

Thanks, Anythingyouwant (talk) 10:50, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you

[48] I think it's been pretty much never since I saw anyone say anything positive about anything I ever did as an arb. It's... curiously appreciated. I really did try my best on that. Jclemens (talk) 04:49, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Amendment request: Abortion (March 2023) declined

Hello MastCell,

The amendment request regarding the Abortion case has been declined by a majority of the active arbitrators.

For the Arbitration Committee,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:14, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Happy adminship anniversary!

Happy Adminship	from the Birthday Committee
Wishing MastCell a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! -- -ASHEIOU (THEY/THEM • TALK) 13:04, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Protected Page Request

Hello, I am correcting a tracked syntax error on Wikipedia called the Tidy Font bug, and have sucessfully brought it down (In User space) from about 3000 errors down to 30 in the past few months. MastCell's protected page User:MastCell/Barnstars is one of 7 remaining pages in User: space and has four signatures with this error.

When links are written in the <font>[[link]]</font> format with the color specified outside of the link, browsers don't agree on how to display the colors. Some browsers display it with the specified colors, and others default back to the standard link blue.

If you would, please change:

Proposed changes. Collapsing here to keep page tidy

<b><font color="996600" face="times new roman,times,serif">[[User:Levine2112|Levine2112]]</font></b> <sup><font color="#774400" size="1" style="padding:1px;border:1px #996600 dotted;background-color:#FFFF99">[[User talk:Levine2112|discuss]]</font></sup> to [[User:Levine2112|<b style="color:996600; font-family:times new roman,times,serif">Levine2112</b>]] <sup>[[User talk:Levine2112|<span style="color:#774400; font-size:x-small; padding:1px;border:1px #996600 dotted;background-color:#FFFF99">discuss</span>]]</sup> <i><b><font color="004000">[[User:Fyslee|Fyslee]]</font></b></i> / <b><font color="990099" size="1">[[User talk:Fyslee|talk]]</font></b> to [[User:Fyslee|<i><b style="color:#004000">Fyslee</b></i>]] / [[User talk:Fyslee|<b style="color:#990099; font-size:x-small">talk</b>]] <b><font color="999900">[[User:Dematt|Dēmatt]]</font></b> <font color="#009900" size="1">[[User talk:Dematt|(chat)]]</font> to [[User:Dematt|<b style="color:#999900">Dēmatt</b>]] [[User talk:Dematt|<span style="color:#009900; font-size:x-small">(chat)</span>]] and '''<font color="#0000FF">[[User:Jayen466|J]]</font><font color=" #FFBF00">[[User_Talk:Jayen466|N]]</font><font color="#0000FF">[[Special:Contributions/Jayen466|466]]</font>''' to [[User:Jayen466|<b style="color:#0000FF">J</b>]][[User_Talk:Jayen466|<b style="color: #FFBF00">N</b>]][[Special:Contributions/Jayen466|<b style="color:#0000FF">466</b>]] Additionally, if you are willing, these three signatures have obsolete font tags. Changing these will clear all remaining WP:LINT errors on this page. [[User:Wikidudeman|'''<font color="blue">Wikidudeman</font>''']] <sup>[[User talk:Wikidudeman|(talk)]]</sup> to [[User:Wikidudeman|<b style="color:blue">Wikidudeman</b>]] <sup>[[User talk:Wikidudeman|(talk)]]</sup> <font face="Verdana">[[User:Durova|<span style="color:#009">Durova</span>]]</font><sup>''[[User talk:Durova|Charge!]]''</sup> to [[User:Durova|<span style="font-family:Verdana; color:#009">Durova</span>]]<sup>''[[User talk:Durova|Charge!]]''</sup> [[User:Axl|<font color="#808000">'''Axl'''</font>]] <font color="#3CB371">¤</font> <small>[[User talk:Axl|<font color="#808000">[Talk]</font>]]</small> to [[User:Axl|<b style="color:#808000">Axl</b>]] <span style="color:#3CB371">¤</span> <small>[[User talk:Axl|<span style="color:#808000">[Talk]</span>]]</small>

Full disclosure, I made this request last week here but Xaosflux declined on the basis I'd used a Protected Edit Request that created a new talk page instead of using an Admin Help request here on MastCell's existing talk page. Xaosflux has no objection to the contents of this requested change (per their reply with this discussion on Xaos' talk page), and stated that I should make this sort of request in this manner instead, so this is what I am doing. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Thank you for your assistance, Zinnober9 (talk) 21:11, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

• I'm going to deactivate the {{adminhelp}} tag. Your request has been sitting here for three days unanswered; at least a couple hundred admins have seen it by now and have decided not to act, likely because few admins will mess around with another admin's protected page like this. MastCell protected it for a reason and we're generally not okay with editing pages that another admin has locked, unless it's urgent. This is not urgent. When MastCell returns, he can handle it as he sees fit. Sorry about the delay in quashing the bug. Katie^talk 15:38, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

  I don't know MastCell's views on whether lint error fixing and very minor bug fixing are good uses of someone's time. But I think I know MC well enough to be confident that he is either fine with someone doing this, or is not in favor of it, but cares so little about it that Zinnober9's intensity of caring about it is likely an order of magnitude or two higher. So I'm going to go ahead and do this as something that will more likely than not marginally increase the net happiness in the universe. At absolute worst, MC can say "{{ping|Floquenbeam}} fuck off " when he returns, and I'll take that to mean I should revert myself. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:08, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

   Done. I've checked to confirm that (a) the 4 bug fixes actually - on my browser - changed the signatures to appear the way the signers wanted them to, and (b) the 3 linter error fixes made no visible changes to the signatures. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:28, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

  And, as an added benefit, I was able to successfully procrastinate instead of doing the IRL work I should have been doing. Floquenbeam (talk) 22:31, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks Floquenbeam. You're now my official DPOA and emergency contact—congrats! :P MastCell ^Talk 17:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

  when can I start writing checks? --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:09, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  No need to write checks. All of my personal expenses are paid by right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow, with no strings attached. It's one of the many things I have in common with Clarence Thomas. MastCell ^Talk 17:21, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Claims about Kay Ivey claims

I think your recent edit to the Kay Ivey article is quite okay, though I also think that the source itself went a bit too far in saying her ad supported "unfounded conspiracy theories that the [presidential] election was illegitimate." In politics the claim that "we were robbed" is quite common and does not necessarily imply that the actual vote count is rigged; a rigged vote count being the essence of Trump's screwball claim. Ivey, by contrast, blames vaguer, more familiar targets such as a hostile press, generalized business interests, and nasty political foes. Thus it's a stretch to say that her claims are objectively false. The woman is a little shrewder than you are giving her credit for I think. Goodtablemanners (talk) 18:00, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Always precious

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:30, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

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Happy Adminship Anniversary!

• Eighteen years ago. Man. Not sure it's an occasion many people would find worth celebrating—myself included—but thank you for the reminder. I always thought I'd end my Wiki-career in a blaze of glory, but I think I'm more like Garcia Marquez's nameless generations of villagers, who "disappeared little by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days, until they were absorbed into oblivion"... MastCell ^Talk 03:04, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

  Whoa, dude, that’s like really deep, man. —Floquenbaked 12:01, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, I think it's time for me to take a deep breath, put down Love in the Time of Cholera, and get back to answering requests for page protection... MastCell ^Talk 01:27, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

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• Got it. Always good to hear from you, Doug. MastCell ^Talk 01:11, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

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