User talk:N-HH/Archive 3

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Note

Heyo Nickhh,
I've noticed you've posted some notes at the /Workshop page but, I'm thinking that you need to either present the signature at each section or just leave the section unsigned as it's title clearly states these to be your proposals.
Happy Purim, Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 09:06, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

You may for once be right about something .. (these kind of things are never that clear) --Nickhh (talk) 17:02, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for compromise

So… I had an idea (or rather, cribbed an idea from Nishidani). What if, instead of topic-banning some of the most useful, articulate, and involved editors in the IP area (on both sides) for a year, you all got together and worked on Judea, Samaria, and Judea and Samaria with the goal of promoting them into GA status in two months’ time? That way (and given the relatively public nature of the arb case), there would hopefully be wide-ranging and neutral community input – sort of an RfC on steroids. If you all did not succeed, it would be back to the arb case (which would be placed on hiatus pending the outcome). The arbs (some of them anyway) seem to be saying you all can’t work together. I don’t think that’s true, and I also think that to the extent it is true, the possibility of avoiding more unpleasantness in this arb case might lead to extra flexibility and reasonableness. In the interest of full disclosure: I don’t particularly care at all how the ultimate content issue falls out -- Judea, Samaria, West Bank, Elbonia, whatever: I’d just like to avoid a mass-banning that would have a seriously deleterious effect on IP articles. What say? (If you wish to reply, you may do so here) IronDuke 02:22, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for replying... if you even just wanted to post the remaks you linked to on the project page, should such a thing spring into being, that'd be great. Oh, and I asked Al Ameer son to come in on it with me, just for those who might think, "At the mercy of Ironduke? Good God, no." IronDuke 23:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

note

I notice that you did not sign your comment here: [1] I thought you might want to. Best Tundrabuggy (talk) 15:42, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorted now, thanks. --Nickhh (talk) 17:37, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Review needed of Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/September_11_conspiracy theories?

See: Proportion of 9/11 defenders restricted compared to 9/11 conspiracy theorists

Although I do not support the views of 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and will not lead a review of this arbitration, I think that a review maybe warranted, and I am floating the idea, with all parties who may have been unfairly censored. Ikip (talk) 14:12, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Never been involved in edits regarding 9/11 conspiracy theories. For what it's worth, I think conspiracy theorists should be censored, but that's a whole other debate really. --Nickhh (talk) 16:25, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrator questions on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/West_Bank_-_Judea_and_Samaria/Workshop

Kirill has asked some questions here. You are invited to respond. --Tznkai (talk) 22:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/The Independent

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Request for mediation not accepted

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arb case

Based on the evidence I saw, I think you are right. However, have been involved in a previous case, I think the some of the heads are to get to the real problem makers, the partisan edit warriors. In a previous case, I have been 'reminded' or something like that, suddenly inserted at the last minute after most arbs had already voted without a single ref presented for what I supposedly had done wrong. I have asked multiple times for those refs, and never received them. As for the why, I have my suspicion, but won't voice that. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 20:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Celebration cancelled

OK, no round of wiki-beer for us. I thought a majority was needed for the proposals to pass, but apparently you got thrown in the same ditch as the rest of us. Sorry for dragging you into this. Unless the guidelines amnesty is granted (and I don't have extremely high hopes), I will probably not volunteer much more of my precious time to this ungrateful project. Are you going to apply? MeteorMaker (talk) 23:13, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Consolation barnstar

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		For hours of fruitless effort trying to protect Wikipedia from nationalist bias. Although you have been sanctioned unfairly, your thoughtful arguments and dogged research have given the community a strong background of information to draw on when denouncing future attempts to portray ideology as fact. untwirl(talk) 14:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, at least I get some recognition for being a (fairly casual) editor who did nonetheless try occasionally to deal with some of the more egregious POV pushing that permeates this place, as well as a whacking from ArbCom for my sins when they hoovered everyone up in one go. Although I'm not too sure I want to be part of a "gang" at all ... --Nickhh (talk) 19:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

My fault Nickhh. for introducing the gang of five. I never assumed we were anything but a bunch of individuals, but since we were being treated as a block of 'pro-Palestinians' I thought the variation on 'gang of four' put in the dock in China decades ago a kind of bad joke. I apologize. The same goes, not to repeat myself, for Pedrito, G-Dett and anyone else offended. You've always struck me as one of the most amenable blokes around here. Oh well, let's take the sanctions as an inadvertent gift. Wiki may be, in the end, somewhat poorer(or richer, we'll see). We will perhaps richer in terms of quality of life and time liberated. After all, it was more of a duty than a pleasure. I'm reading about 200 pages more a day than I would had I tried to stay on and edit two or three lines or key words of wiki over the same timespan! Best Nishidani (talk) 20:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

i'll go ahead and take that off of all of them, if it offends. nothing but the utmost respect to all of you. i, too, have no real world link to any of this, but noticed the inconsistencies and was intrigued. once again, sorry for the 'gang' remark, i guess with things like this now being reported, the ring isn't as 'neutral' as i intended. untwirl(talk) 20:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh sorry, my attempts at mock outrage fail me again! I should make use of winking emoticons more often I guess, but I just have a natural aversion to them. I actually quite liked the allusion to disgraced Communist cliques (not the suggestion that I might be part of one as such, but the allusion to the concept at least). I have a huge backlog of discounted books I bought a while ago, and will no doubt be spending the hour to thirty minutes or so a day I used to sometimes spend on fruitless discussions and being reverted here, and occasionally expressing some exasperation with the more bizarre goings on, to better effect starting up on them (or getting out more, now it's summer). As I noted on MM's page, if all those efforts were for nothing in terms of ultimate content, it doesn't make that much difference if any of us are now no longer allowed to make them. Although as noted, at least (thanks mainly to MM) at least the background research and evidence is there, and on the record. I was minded to hang around here and continue to contribute sometimes to pages on other areas that interest me, and that I know something about (journalism, wine, film, politics more generally etc - topics that have, since I started here, been far more what I wished to focus on anyway, and if one strips out the futile talk page debates, mostly about I-P content, are clearly what I have focused on here most of the time), but the latest farce on the Independent page has finally sapped what waning enthusiasm remained. Cheers as well, --Nickhh (talk) 09:39, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Was writing something on your Kafkaesque predicament at the Independent page andWikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#West_Bank_-_Judea_and_Samaria, against the amazing, and amazingly popular, but impossibly illogical and draconian interpretation of a spectacularly foolish and draconian decision, but was taken away only by the most urgent personal matter, sudden hospitalization of a family member. If I find the time I might write something there, though the discussion seems dormant now. Anyway, a word of support from a protestor outside the prison gate. Free the Judea and Samaria 8 !John Z (talk) 09:07, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks for the note. As you say that particular discussion seems to have fallen off ... only to be replaced on the noticeboard by this one, which leaves me even more open-mouthed about the way this place works and the way arbitrary power is dished out and wielded here (although as it happens, the arbitrator in question seemed to be one of the more reasonable and thoughtful ones when it came to the original decision). The absurdity of the Independent issue was that I'm not generally not an I-P "warrior" as such, yet because I got caught up in the West Bank/I-P ban - for arguing, along with others, for NPOV editing and standard international terminology - I am now shunted off even discussing any vaguely related topic by people who actually are, when they start trying to drag the issue or related issues into other pages (as is often their habit). Oh well. And at least the Independent page seems to have been sorted now. --Nickhh (talk) 15:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The Kafka Award

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.
RolandR (talk) 22:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Cheers - I never got any awards or barnstars until I got (absurdly) topic banned. I should do it more often! Maybe one day we'll get some kind of ArbCom structure where the people involved do more than just sit back, allow reams of evidence to be posted about content, relevant policy and editor behaviour and then just casually decide to ... topic ban every single editor whose name they can see in front of them, and then proceed to interpret the scope of that ban as harshly as they can. --Nickhh (talk) 15:26, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

common traits

Apparently I remind someone of you. Needless to say, I felt that was a very nice compliment. Peace and happiness, Nableezy (talk) 20:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. I love the "no offence, but you remind me of .." - he's a funny guy that one (although actually much better than he used to be), as are plenty of others here who have somehow managed to escape topic bans either recently or in the past. Sane outsiders who at least try to engage (most of the time) in reasoned debate are purged, while involved partisans who seem unable to take a step back from their own viewpoints get to rampage over any article they wish to and insert all sorts of oddities into them. Oh well, I'm currently enjoying a semi-retirement, and I'm not sure this place is significantly worse than it would be anyway without my involvement. I'll vote for you if you stand for ArbCom though! --Nickhh (talk) 10:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

ps: a nice touch that ArbCom have now quietly amended their ruling, in an implicit acknowledgement that I was well within my rights to continue editing re the Lebanon stuff on the Independent page under the actual terms of the original ruling, despite all the criticism heaped on me for trying to do that. As noted above, at least that's been sorted (partly thanks to you)

Yeah, that whole thing was bullshit. You were arguing that there is a disconnect between articles related to the Arab/Israeli conflict and edits in other articles related to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Everybody who read that either had it go completely over there head or just dismissed it without actually looking at the wording of the decision. You were right, and that they changed the ruling should make that clear. You were also right on the other page as well and that you cannot continue to show that same dedication to not making this "encyclopedia" a collection of bullshit shows how dumb that decision was. As far as ArbCom voting, fuck that, I am not a fan of lynch mobs so I don't think I will ever try to volunteer to join one. Enjoy your retirement, Nableezy (talk) 16:04, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Nickhh! Are you still here? just wanted to touch base with someone from the old crew. I just need to check in weith you. it seems strange that Arbcom simply banned everyone who was active in that topic area. I don't quite get it. how are you? --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Happily in semi-retirement, for all the reasons stated above. And increasingly confirmed in my belief that this place is more like an asylum of some sort, open to everyone to come and throw in their random opinions about the world, rather than a place for serious and disinterested people to try and create something approaching an accurate, neutral and reliable record of things. And of course a place where those who edit only in one topic area, seemingly from an ideological viewpoint, are treated the same when it comes to any dispute as those generalist editors who at least try to stand back and take a more objective view, and everyone gets hit with the same big stick. Anyway, enough complaining .... --Nickhh (talk) 14:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the reply! I certainly understand your feelings on that. It's understandable to feel that way after all the edit conflicts etc which have happened. hope to see more group types of efforts, etc. see you! --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 17:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

WP policy

Why so short deletion dates? That means that you do not get a chance to comment before deletion! UlfSamuelsson (talk) 20:16, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Mercenaries:

What kind of references are you looking for? I have never seen this aspect of Al-Qaida etc. raised, so I doubt that it is possible to find many references.

That does not neccessarily mean that you can rule it out, that they should be considered to be Mercenaries, if they really believe that they would personallt gain from Martydom.

A Mercenary

• (a) is especially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
• (b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
• (c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
• (d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
• (e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
• (f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

Abu Musab az-Zarqawi and many arabs fighting in IraqAfghanistan would fulfil (a), (b), (d), (e) and (f).

What about (c)? Until this has been through a courtroom, the legality of people aspiring to become martyrs, for personal gain, is quite hazy. An entry on mercenaries would need to show that the legal status IS unclear.

UlfSamuelsson (talk) 20:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, two points -

• Deletion - there are different processes for deletion, some of which are pretty much instantaneous (eg in the case of blatant vandalism or joke page creations), while others allow for some time to elapse for the deletion proposal to be contested or discussed at length. I added a deletion note to the page, which meant the page would stay for seven days before being deleted, and during that period, anyone could simply halt the process by removing the tag. However another editor came along soon after and simply re-directed the page title to the page that already existed on the subject matter. That was actually a much better solution, and it's not really possible, I don't think, to argue that such a move should have been open to discussion or delay in any way.

• Mercenary - the point here is really about original research. This should be flagged up by your own admission that you have "never seen this aspect of al Qaida etc raised". Wikipedia articles are meant to be a concise, encyclopedic amalgamation - without any novel synthesis - of verifiable facts and interpretations of things, as asserted by third party authorities and as found in reliable sources such as academic texts and studies, mainstream news reporting etc - editors here are not meant to insert their own speculation or conclusions about things, however well-argued (or otherwise), or however obvious those points may seem to that one editor, or even to most editors. Unfortunately this policy is as often as not ignored, hence why its importance may not always be immediately understood. I know it sounds impossibly legalistic, but generally speaking, even if something is not clear, you would need to find a reliable and authoritative source that says as much, and which also suggests that the lack of clarity on the point in question is something significant and notable, as well as not being a WP:FRINGE viewpoint.

Anyway, I'm not that regular a contributor here, but hope the above helps/explains. There's a happy medium somewhere between adding content where the underlying point is unsourced and unattributed, and adding whole lifts of text direct from primary sources. --Nickhh (talk) 14:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

ps: there is a sister site, Wikisource, where complete primary source content such as UN resolutions and conventions can be found. However, again, the content you were trying to add appears to be there already, at least in part

comment moved on arb clarification request

Hi, I've moved your reply into your own section as threaded discussion is not wanted on the Arb request pages. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:02, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, OK, no big deal. Thanks for the courtesy tip though. I know it might seem slightly churlish in response, but I would just make the observation that it says all one really needs to know about the systems here - and indeed most bureaucratic systems - that while representatives of the authority being addressed pass by to tinker with layouts and correct rather trivial formatting points, everyone is still waiting for one of them to offer something resembling a coherent or definitive response to the substantive, but rather simple, question that was originally posed. I'm somewhat bemused that one admin's rather silly error can lead to this much effort having to be expended, which in turn leads to so little being achieved by way of resolution of the problem. --Nickhh (talk) 10:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Troubles banner

Some Suggested text for a RfC on the banner. --Nate^t/_c 13:47, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Cheers for making a start on this btw, it no doubt helped finally to get the problem sorted. That was 40-odd minutes of my life that I won't get back - just think, all of us could have spent the time we've lost doing something constructive here, or doing something else altogether. --Nickhh (talk) 09:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

AfD on Jonathan Cook

I think you know your participation in that discussion is a violation of your topic ban. Please delete your comment there. Mr. Hicks The III (talk) 17:21, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I think you know that douchebags be lurking. Now "douchebag" clearly is not referencing any particular editor, only a general comment on those who serve no purpose here other than to harass other editors, probably out of some sense of empowerment that their real life lacks. nableezy - 17:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I think you know you are a moron this is rather pointless, please delete your comment from my talk page (first contributor, not the second, obviously). --Nickhh (talk) 23:00, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

And I think you probably will be blocked for that, so might just be best to remove the entire section. On another note, some familiar language from a certain ex-arb shows up here. Just thought that might make you smile. nableezy - 00:11, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Mr. Hicks seems to be a sock, but I'd still suggest that too much participation here should probably be avoided. Raising sources where others may not be aware, I think that would fall under WP:IAR (I'd be glad to convey them either way). As to continuing the discussion... well, unless we're ready to give up the topic bans altogether, then this is presumably covered. Or at least right at the line. I'm not quite ready to see the topic bans lifted completely, which isn't to say I support them in all or any cases; I just think if they are lifted there should be some resolution to do so, and some resolution of what to do from there, so that we don't just end up right back where things were. Mackan79 (talk) 00:46, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

As I think I stated at the time, I'm not too fussed on a practical level about the topic ban, in that I don't really want to engage in I-P issues (which were only about 20% of anything I've ever looked at here anyway). Most pages there are screwed really, and the politics that dominates is rather unpleasant. I have no stake either way in the conflict, I just noticed quite a lot of nonsense going on on some pages, and would occasionally step in to point the worst of it out and insist on international, neutral norms for things, rather than the partisan language or interpretations of either side. On the specific issue that led to the Arbitration case, I think I made a total of about eight edits in four months, three months prior to the case - which of course, don't forget, "we" initiated. However, precisely because of all that, I do still slightly resent the implication carried by the mass ban, that I'm some kind of troublemaker or disruptive editor, or just as much a partisan as certain others. And tbh I'm not sure the I-P space is really that much better than it was - in terms of content or editor actions - for all these topic bans. Plenty of relatively blameless people got caught up in them, plenty of others who were worse slipped the net and of course there are plenty of new warriors to take their place. Plus I'm quite sure some of the worst offenders from the past are socking their way through their bans anyway.

On the issue at hand, of course the Cook AfD skirts close to the ban (wherever you draw a line, there's always something right up against it), which is why I was careful not to make a bold "Keep", and to stress the notability point and post something on the journalism project page - ie actually trying to keep it out of the I-P arena altogether. I also of course left a note on Nishidani's page to say as much. And also to note that someone would no doubt be "diving in on either of us" because of it. Not a genius piece of prediction perhaps, but I wasn't disappointed. --Nickhh (talk) 10:34, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

ps: yes, interesting language from Mr Blacketer - the man who of course managed to get himself elevated to ArbCom and dish out random blocks and bans to others, after evading his own ban. Don't you love authority structures?

pps: rather sadly I suspect that the renewed attention on Cook's page will lead to 101 people trying to load it with nonsense from CAMERA and suchlike (this has already been raised on the AfD page), turning it into a hatchet job. This of course is an ongoing problem with media/journalism pages - half of them have huge sections detailing alleged "bias against Israel". And even though I have an interest on media topics and some knowledge of them, I am of course barred from commenting on any of it, because they've suddenly therefore become "I-P pages", even though the point is precisely that they shouldn't be.

Bully for us

I just noted we two constitute a 'gang of bullies'. The problem is, who's the gang-leader and who the henchman? We might well have to fight this one out, Nick, between the two of us, because I don't mind being called a mobster, but rather dislike the idea people might think I'm just an average thug, following the lads. Now, if you would consider just accepting that you're my sidekick, and that I call the shots, I might not reach for a 'rod' to start shooting in your direction. People in here don't like ambiguity! CheersNishidani (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Either of us, bullies? Surely not. Although I will accept that pointing out "X is a notable journalist" is an unduly aggressive act, and it is quite right for us to be chastised for it, officially or more casually by other editors. Sadly, as noted above, I suspect the consequence of this AfD will simply be that the real bullies here simply descend on that page and dump it full of pointless, partisan and trivial "criticism", and thus truly render it part of the traditional I-P battleground, rather than a factual and brief record of who he is and what he writes about (I see below that one old friend has already awoken from his slumber). Let's hope we don't have a repeat - for Wikipedia's sake - of the Ed O'Loughlin saga, where he ended up getting involved, and ultimately demanding his page was actually deleted, so targeted was it by the tinfoil hat fraternity who see evilitude wherever CAMERA direct them to. Would editors who insert such content about "anti-Russian bias" into media pages, based on press releases from Putin's Committee for a Strong Russia, get away with that sort of nonsense here? Actually, they probably would - no one seems to care too much about this sort of thing, as long as you do it relatively politely and in coherent enough English. --Nickhh (talk) 16:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Notice

I've requested clarification here: [2] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Canadian Monkey (talk • contribs) 20:48, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Who saw this coming? Although I did say something similar once upon a time. nableezy - 01:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Now that has truly made my weekend. Who'd have thought that someone would really make so much effort just to run amok over pages here with multiple user IDs? They must be truly committed to their cause. I do love the way as well that they (sing.) ended up being hoisted by a petard of their own making after running to the rules committee to complain about others. --Nickhh (talk) 18:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

ps: and I hope everyone appreciated my cunning plan to flush them out, which worked a treat

Sherry

I'm at the same place as you are... the fix bunching templates did fix the bunching (which was pretty bad), but I'm not sure how to fix the side effects that they themselves caused. We might solicit help at the village pump. Gigs (talk) 18:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Request for Enforcement

Hello. Just a brief note to mention that I filed an arbitration enforcement that relates to you. See here. I regret that it came to this, especially given that we were at the end of the day both on the same side of the issue at the AfD. But as you know from my comments at the AfD, I was troubled by what I viewed as willful flouting of topic bans, and related editing activity. Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 16:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Dear Lord. Didn't this two/three week old issue just clog up the Clarification page for several days - after a now-confirmed sock started a thread there - before being archived? And now two days after that you want to dig it up all over again? I've hardly been here since then. Do you actually have a point here? I believe this kind of thing is normally known as forum shopping, drama mongering, or a combination of the two in some proportion. --Nickhh (talk) 17:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

requested amendment of WB/JS arbitration case

I have filed a request to amend the West Bank - Judea and Samaria arbitration case. See here. nableezy - 20:48, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Cheers for putting the work into that. As I've implied before, I'm in two minds about this - I still maintain it was a bad, if not downright odd, decision by ArbCom, and one that actually excluded several disinterested but serious editors whose only real motivation was to occasionally try to prevent the very kind of partisan bollox and cheap rule-gaming that ArbCom would probably like to think it is there to tackle; but at the same time I don't feel that my life is that much diminished to be honest by being excluded from the looneyland that is I-P articles most of the time. In an ideal world I think I'd rather that ArbCom acknowledged they made a silly decision, but at the same time maintain my ban, if that makes sense, albeit possibly with broader leeway on more general politics or media spaces that happen to touch occasionally on the conflict. Anyway, let's see what happens. --Nickhh (talk) 16:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I see you are now a target for snowballing vexatious litigation as well ..

If a tree falls ...

This was a very accurate and well-written summary of what happened. I only hope there are ears to hear it. Based on prior experiences, I have a feeling I will be deeply disappointed. Nevertheless, I thought I would share my sentiments. Take care of yourself, Nickhh. Tiamut^talk 17:55, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I know that editing in this arena was not your main thing here. That's part of why I so appreciated your presence and perspective. There are far too many vested editors (myself included), and we needed people like you, G-Dett, Nishidani et al. I didn't always agree with all of your positions, but always deeply appreciated what you had to say and how you said it. Tiamut^talk 18:09, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Cheers, probably TLDR though. Plus I didn't provide any diffs, so what I say is "immaterial" of course. More generally my experience here - especially in the light of the most recent events - increasingly justifies the not-especially-novel conclusions I've drawn in real life, as viewed from both sides of the authority fence. First, that about 70% of those who seek authority positions, are, by virture of that ambition, eminently unsuitable to be given them. Secondly, that people tend to behave how you treat them in the first place - infantilise them by constantly issuing petty punishments for minor infractions, and they'll respond in kind. --Nickhh (talk) 18:19, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

ps: as to the second point - yes, you edit from a perspective, as we all do, and with a vested interest, but that's not of itself a bad thing of course. Indeed different perspectives are vital. What is a "bad thing" is when people try to repeatedly and by force of numbers push solely their perspec tive - whatever it happens to be - into articles, subtly or otherwise, which is not something I've tended to witness you doing.

pps: and which of my positions did you ever disagree with? I can't believe I've ever been wrong about anything ..

lol

Very true, about the two conclusions. Its sad how these dynamics, among others, play themselves out on a site with such noble aspirations.

Yes, different perspectives are important. Which is why I was so sad to see the five of you topic-banned, since you represented a variety of positions on a number of subjects.

About what we might have disagreed about, a lot of things actually. I'm quite the radical about much to do with Palestine actually. I just manage to cloak my more deeply held beliefs. If I expressed everything I really thought, well, I'd have likely been double-triple topic banned ages ago. People have no idea just how much I've compromised for the sake of consensus. In fact, though I'm accused of Palestinian bias, I often feel that I don't represent what Palestinians think at all. Those Palestinians that do write according to what people in our region believe, don't last long here. At the end of the day, its a very American-foreign policy centric site. Tiamut^talk 18:35, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, N-HH. You have new messages at Sandstein's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hello. I would appreciate an explanation of what you meant by "bleated" at [3]. Thanks,  Sandstein  18:43, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if admins spent less time pursuing insignificant and technical breaches of policies and guidelines, and more time empathically examining the fundamentals of what and who are involved. Looks like your two conclusions as outlined above are in full play here though. Oh dear. Tiamut^talk 18:57, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Here you go. It's quite pricey, but I believe there are online resources available for free. For the record, I meant that your reasoning for imposing the first ban a couple of days ago - I see you're at it again now - was weak and feeble. It was -

• You imposed the ban roughly a month after another admin had declined to act, and the issue had long since lapsed.
• You also implicitly accused Nableezy of lying about the AfD exemption when you dismissed out of hand his bid to rely on it, asserting that he hadn't provided diffs - without asking for them or bothering to look yourself. And then wiki-lawyered about how you "couldn't take them into account" even once they were presented to you.
• You claimed the sanctions log for Nableezy's prior ban justified your action, since you claimed that it banned him from "all pages", even though in reality it explicitly noted - by the use of the italicised word "except", before the words "talk pages" - that the talk page (and hence AfD) ban was shorter than the article space ban, and expired within hours of the actions in question. As had been asserted by Nableezy, but something for which you claimed there was no evidence.
• Subsequently you refused to reconsider your action, even though a large number of editors protested it, on the basis now it seems that Nableezy was technically still a few hours the wrong side of his talk page ban - thus fuelling yet more unnecessary drama, as you quietly shifted the justification.

In bad faith, you then accused people protesting the ban of simply doing it because they were his mates. Well, if you'd looked into this aspect of it properly as well, you'd have seen that several users who do not always see eye-to-eye with him were lamenting the development on his talk page. You also don't appear to understand the difference between protesting admin misjudgment when one might be on good terms with the affected editor (it's not something I often do for complete strangers or mortal enemies, however virtuous that would be), and protesting an admin action solely because one is on good terms with another editor. As pointed out below earlier, this place would work much more smoothly if admins would once in a while acknowledge error or misjudgment. Most of us are able to manage this after rational debate when editing substantive content, without having to clog up noticeboards or appeal processes. It's really not that hard. --Nickhh (talk) 16:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Sandstein/Nableezy

Hi Nickhh. I would like to work on two things regarding what has happened to Nableezy. On is to file an appeal of Sandstein's decision which I will begin in my user space shortly. The second, concurrent to this, would be opening a User RfC on Sandstein regading his abuse of his admin powers. I have asked Gatoclass for some advice on how to proceed. I hope he responds soon. When I have drafts up in my user space, I will be contacting you for feedback. I hope you will co-sign both the appeal and the User RfC. Also, check out Nableezy's talk page to see what has happened most recently and why these steps are absolutely necessary. Thanks. Tiamut^talk 19:46, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi there. It seems from scanning around the latest nonsense that Nab actually wants to back away from pushing the issue, and that you've agreed to that? To be honest that's something of a relief in a way, even if the actions here are pretty appalling, simply because it saves everyone from yet more process-board drama. Which of course could also be avoided much of the time in the first place if admins could actually take two steps back and revisit decisions themselves when they've fairly obviously got things wrong, or been overzealous in some way. But of course that very rarely happens. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on it and will do whatever I can to help if needed. In the meantime, there are a couple of actual pages I've noticed recently that need some work, which I'd much rather be spending time on, the odd few minutes every other day when I'm here at all. To think! --Nickhh (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for responding Nickhh. You are right of course. I'd much rather be editing pages too. After all, I'm supposed to be focusing on article improvement for the Wikicup 2010 competition, which I was quite psyched abut, before Sandstein's actions diverted my attention. I wish he would do as you and many, many others have suggested. Unfortunately, he does not seems capable of admitting when he's wrong and there are few ways to get oversight here without wasting countless hours. So I'll wait to hear more from Nableezy before continuing on to seek some form of corrective action. Happy editing. Tiamut^talk 18:29, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI, Nableezy has decided to file an appeal at AE. I'm not sure you are allowed to comment, given Sandstein's interpretation of the extent of your topic bans, but I thought I'd let you know anyway. Tiamut^talk 21:35, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

OK - I guess I'll leave it all to others though, all of whom can make the points just as well as I can. Plus I'm ever sure how helpful my interventions are! Like Nableezy and others, I'm now tagged as a troublemaker, and once you get that label, it's near impossible to shake, and it tends to rub off on to other people. Plus it just gives Sandstein the opportunity to repeat their slur that people are only sticking up for him because they're his buddies. I notice Sandstein is sticking to their bizarre defence of "I didn't know all the facts when I blocked him [and misread the existing sanctions log, the one thing they claim they did look at] but don't be unfair and blame me for that". And as for that Fastily individual - accusing Nableezy of "abuse of the unblock template" when they declined his single unblock request, like, what? A personal attack as well as an outright lie. It's not a crime of course to not know what you're talking about, we can all do that, but it's kind of incumbent on those trying to punish and tie down other editors as if they were errant schoolchildren to at least engage their brain and their eyes before ascending their pulpits and spouting off.--Nickhh (talk) 23:45, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey. I probably should have left it to others too. Now Sandstein is trying to claim that I votestacked the debate, even though I informed everyone who commented for and against on his talk page. Its not my fault the majority opposed his decision. Its interesting to see how he is continually looking for a way to discredit his critics or to evade scrutiny or to deflect responsibility, etc, etc. I was quite impressed though, that the first person who commented was SlimVirgin, who I did not contact and who is not a Nableezy or "pro-Palestinian" partisan. Anyway, I'm sorry if my comment here made you feel unwelcome. Of course you are always welcome to comment. I just don't want to see Sandstein use it as an excuse to indefinitely block you. He does not seem to be a reasonable person once he has made up his mind about something. Its very difficult to get him to reconsider his decisions and you know how labyrinthine the appeal process is here and how much mudslinging it invariably entails. So I guess I'm trying to protect you and Nish and G-Dett from further tribulations. Thanks for your thoughts though. Tiamut^talk 00:10, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you didn't make me feel unwelcome, the judgment that any further intervention from me might not help is all my own. Although the appeal seems to have veered off into "I had a bad experience once with Nableezy" irrelevancies anyway, as well as loads of people just asserting things that are flat out wrong, eg EdJohnston claiming that ArbCom "confirmed" that Nableezy's topic ban ruled him out from editing an AfD, and claiming that no one referred in the second AE complaint to the previous one that was already closed as no action. As ever these processes are just slanging matches, with very few of those involved seemingly even capable of distilling out the key facts and issues with any accuracy. Oh well. --Nickhh (talk) 13:26, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I was hoping to avoid that, but, as you say, oh well. nableezy - 15:53, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, sorry, we were talking about you. Anyway, have just noticed that it seems to have been cleared up, more or less. Thankfully, at last. Looking at this whole thing, if we go back all the way to the Jonathan Cook AfD there have been at least five separate clarifications, enforcement requests and appeals now that all basically grew out of that. Now, putting aside my responsibility for starting it all, at the same time you can see at every stage where all that drama and grief could have been avoided, if people had just been willing to engage with each other directly and informally, rather than running to file endless bureacratic complaints, which admins then feel obliged to eventually act on. Easy to say with hindsight, but if Epeefleche - with whom I had no history - had just come and asked me politely to remove my comments at the AfD, or asked an impartial admin to ask me, I probably would have done it. Instead we had people removing them unilaterally, and then endless complaints filed about the comments being there in the first place, as well as their restoration. Subsequently, if Sandstein had just acknowledged that he had got the nature of your prior block wrong - and that he hadn't looked at all the evidence properly - and relented over his decision to renew it over what was in reality at most a marginal infraction, we wouldn't have had reams of often quite hostile debate on various talk pages, as well as the final blowout at the AE appeal. Several people have wasted a lot of their own and other people's time and effort here through an apparent obsession with bureaucratic process and, in some cases, pretty cheap attempts at point-scoring. Most of us are reasonable people - it shouldn't have to be this difficult. Anyway, I hope that my next edit will not be to a talk page or noticeboard of any sort. I mean, look at this page if nothing else ... --Nickhh (talk) 23:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

England/UK

In those cases, I was basically reverting to the previous consensus before the blocked user added his input, as other users have done today [4] [5] I have left many of his contributions intact, where I thought they were fair enough, [6], [7] even in cases where he was clearly just trying to irritate. Given that he is happy to remove UK from some articles and add it to others, it's hard to assume good faith. Where others have made similar edits, I leave them [8] even though it is thoroughly redundant to disambiguate "London". You are free to revert my edits if you want. Bretonbanquet (talk) 00:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Well consensus is often coverspeak for "two or three of us thought it was great" or "been that way for ages, lucky no one noticed", neither of which should carry much weight in the rational world. As noted on that editor's talkpage - where I also noted that their actions were unhelpful - these points are rather simple: where is X? Falmouth or Mawnan Smith for example are, by universal consent - even if some are unhappy about bits of the following - in Cornwall, which is in England, in the UK. Glasgow is, by contrast, not in England, but is in Scotland, which is also part of the UK. Indeed those who are cross about any of the above would have less to be upset about were much of that not so. As far as I can see, these terms should all be used together, or alternatively but equally. Anyway, I don't want to join in any edit or reverting wars over any of this, because my experience has been that arguing for basic common sense, or the use of common terms in respect of anything, is frowned upon here. --Nickhh (talk) 01:16, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The way I look at it in many cases is "no-one's argued about it for a long time so why change it without discussing it?". I basically agree with you, and I am not generally in the habit of reverting people who change this stuff. I did make an exception for Cows because of his dubious motives for doing it. "X, County, Home nation, UK" is the general standard by which most people abide, although this doesn't apply to football articles, where UK is omitted because there is no UK football team. It's when either the home nation or "UK" is removed that the trouble starts, and that's what Cows was doing originally. The fact that he removed "UK" from English articles and added it to Welsh and Scottish ones was what indicated that he was being difficult.

I think your dim view of nationalism arguments might be a little downbeat - although there have been some mammoth arguments at times, generally things go fairly smoothly without too much fringe sentiment. It's usually when new editors with strong ideas come along that the problems re-emerge. Fringe sentiment does need to be acknowledged in articles, so long as it is clearly indicated and referenced as such. A desire to remove it altogether because it's not a convenient majority view is more prevalent than one might think, particularly on Cornish articles, and that is offensive to some. Among his deliberately inflammatory edits, Cows did suggest on a talk page that Saint Piran should be described simply as Irish, which, had he aired such a view in certain Cornish pubs, would have ensured his swift dispatch. Cornish nationalism may be insignificant to many and rubbished by the majority, but it does exist, and people will always fight their corner. I suppose it's the nature of such a wide forum as this. Bretonbanquet (talk) 03:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Joowww activism

I saw your comment on the talk of Jowww's invented article "Cornish American", you may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cornish American - Yorkshirian (talk) 07:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Levy

No, it's an appalling translation of a blog entry, sourced to a news aggregator. It certainly has no place in the article, and I will remove it. Thanks for drawing it to my attention. RolandR (talk) 19:32, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

your requested change of name

Hello. A bureaucrat or clerk has responded to your user name change request, but requires clarification before moving forward. Please follow up as soon as possible. Thank you. delirious & lost ☯ ^~hugs~ 18:51, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Here is the list of a few options just in case you find the CHU note a little awkward to read. With the last option you could use the template {{lowercase}} on your user space pages to generate a lowercase "n", giving you "User:nhh"

• NH - no
• N-HH - yes
• NHH* - yes
• NhH - yes
• Nhh - able to be usurped here and then on Commons and NOWP to give you the m:SUL.

delirious & lost ☯ ^~hugs~ 21:05, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

... or you could do what I did when choosing a user name. Just a thought, and I won't be at all offended if you choose something else. All the best, --NSH001 (talk) 21:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks x2. All these choices, I'll have to have a think .. --Nickhh (talk) 14:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

And you picked the worst one. nableezy - 19:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Hey, I'm the one who has to live with it. Anyway, it's only a log-in and username for occasional twiddling with stuff here after all. As I said, I wanted to be a bit more anonymous, but at the same have some continuity with the old name and the real world ID. I might even try to prettify it a little by customising the signature. I nearly went for NSH002, but the initials were a bit off. And don't tell anyone else, but I'm now going to dive back in to I-P pages - no one will notice, it's a plan of genius. --N-HH (talk) 20:07, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

ps: talking of the latter, I see Drork is being particularly belligerent and own-ish currently. Much as I dislike holding people up to their past misdemeanours, I still remember him as the editor who said on the Gaza War talk page that the problem with BBC Arabic was that it was "written by Arabs"

Oops, I should never assume that what is obvious to me is obvious to someone else: I meant you should consider NHH001 (or NH001, or similar), which preserves your initials and gives you the option of creating a whole series of accounts (as I've already done with NSH002, and which I might shortly extend to NSH003, etc in order to split my watchlist, currently approaching 3,000 pages). --NSH001 (talk) 20:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely - I was making a joke about my taking you too literally, which would then lead to confusion as people began to think there were two of you. Although as you've explained, you've already created the second one anyway. Will you make it to 007? (sorry). For myself, I'm hoping one will be enough .. --N-HH (talk) 20:50, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

No problem

I did find your gushing praise of the Sun in the edit summaries of your reverts to the vandal's work extremely odd ... now I get it. :) Yes, there are many types of wits around here, though I think the "half" kinds are more common that the other four letter kind. There is a lot of overlap though. Cheers. Tiamut^talk 12:36, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

reply

@Jaakobou: @Sean.hoyland: Note that there's two links.
With respect, Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 23:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)