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September 2014

Please comment on Talk:White people

Done

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September 2014

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There are various [diaspora]] branches, that play little part in the annual general meetings.
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Please comment on Talk:Government of Louisville, Kentucky

Already done

– Commented there a week ago.

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You've got mail!

Resolved

Hello, SMcCandlish. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 03:09, 7 September 2014 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Nikkimaria (talk) 03:09, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder! I submitted the form just now. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 03:16, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Consistency in article titles

Pursuant to our discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles, I have created an essay Wikipedia:Consistency in article titles, and would welcome your input into that essay. I believe that it should quickly be refined with whatever additional points are needed to fully reflect our practices with respect to consistency, and moved to guideline status. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:22, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@BD2412: Looks good so far, though I have not pored over its every detail. I wouldn't bet on guideline status. It's hard enough to get even an essay on this sort of thing to stick around in projectspace (Born2cycle has had three WP:AT supplementary essays userspaced recently). The key is probably just avoiding WP:OWN problems. I think it should cover consistency of disambiguation in more detail, too, but no hurry. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 00:19, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 7 September

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Article titles

Already done

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Disambiguation link notification for September 12

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Please comment on Talk:Macedonia (ancient kingdom)

Declined

– Too heated to produce any result but "revert to last stable version", and the facts behind the "Greek or not" arguments are both outside my expertise and too detailed for me to research in the time I have available.

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WikiProject Good Articles - GA Cup

WikiProject Good Articles's 2014-15 GA Cup

WikiProject Good articles is holding a new competition, the GA Cup, from October 1, 2014 - March 28, 2015. The Cup will be based on reviewing Good article nominations; for each review, points will be awarded with bonuses for older nominations, longer articles and comprehensive reviews. All participants will start off in one group and the highest scoring participants will go through to the second round. At the moment six rounds are planned, but this may change based on participant numbers.

Some of you may ask: what is the purpose for a competition of this type? Currently, there is a backlog of about 500 unreviewed Good article nominations, almost an all time high. It is our hope that we can decrease the backlog in a fun way, through friendly competition.

Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors! Sign-ups will be open until October 15, 2014 so sign-up now!

If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the four judges.

Cheers from NickGibson3900, Dom497, TheQ Editor and Figureskatingfan.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:04, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

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Please comment on Talk:List of ethnic cleansings

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Please comment on Talk:South African Republic

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Livestock and poultry breed articles

Why don't we just solve this via a general RFC at WikiProject Agriculture, rather than stringing out a bunch of split arguments across many articles. It would be easiest for all involved to discuss the issue in one place. Steven Walling • talk 03:46, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

@Steven Walling: This will be a pretty detailed response, and I am interested in your thoughts. Because not all domestic animal breeds are agricultural, that wikiproject wouldn't seem to be an appropriate locus, even if having such discussions hosted by wikiprojects wasn't problematic for bias reasons. RMs and RFCs about naming that are hosted on wikiproject pages almost always go the way the wikiproject wants them to, because most wikiproject participants have the wikiproject pages watchlisted and are thus brought into the discussion in much larger than normal levels, resulting in a skewed WP:LOCALCONSENSUS that doesn't reflect a site-wide perspective, and which will just be challenged later, because lots of people are aware of this RFC/RM-skewing effect of hosting them on wikiproject pages. When we get to the point where some RFC might be viable, it should be hosted at WT:AT because this is a WP:AT matter, and AT is a topic-neutral policy page for everyone. It's vaguely possible that one could succeed there now, but I wouldn't bet on it.

All that said, attempts to resolve these matters centrally are attacked as trying to force a one-size-fits-all view, an external rule, a style cabal straightjacket, [insert something else histrionic here]. Meanwhile, attempts to resolve them one article at a time are attacked as trying to tendentiously drag out and nickel-and-dime everything in a war of attrition, picking on articles that violate (non-existent or invalid) wikiproject-level naming rules, and [insert various personal attacks here]. It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, in which the desire to have wikiprojects autonomous and making up their own "naming conventions" that conflict with the next project over, leads to both WP:FILIBUSTER tactics being used by the same parties; neither approach to cleaning up the breed article naming mess can succeed, because both are blockaded.

Do you really feel an RFC would be effective now, and if so how would it proceed? The devils are really in the details on this, and virtually all the involved projects want there to be no site-wide rules to comply with, only their own internal convention on "their" articles.

My tactic lately has been to try a third approach that is much harder to prevent community consensus about, and it's one that is usually effective, regardless of topic. That is to sort RMs into groups of titles that all raise the same problem (e.g. confusabilty with an ethnicity), that is already clearly addressed by WP:AT policy and/or WP:MOS rules, and propose moves to names that comply with those rules. Then it's not an animal breed names (or whatever) discussion, it's a discussion about article compliance with actual, site-wide naming conventions generally, and this either eliminates drama or makes the drama much easier to detect and ignore as just drama. After enough such moves, a pattern of how to name breed articles will naturally, automatically emerge (in theory), and can't be easily WP:BATTLEGROUNDed against. An RFC at that point should cement things into an actual, written naming convention that is adopted as a guideline and doesn't conflict with WP:AT policies.

Unfortunately, the mess at Talk:Teeswater sheep is liable to result in a confused, confusing and disruptive mass status quo ante reversion to inconsistent and AT-violating names, and necessitate an whole new round of these discussions. Fortunately, I've already sorted them, at that page, into 7 different kinds of article titling issues, so they can probably be addressed in 7 RMs, the results of which will effectively be a new naming convention. Unfortunately again, the main problem is that the launcher of that RM mess has vowed to launch several more such messes, which will simply drag this out even longer, because they interfere with the other RMs.

So, you tell me – why would an RFC, even one hosted at WT:AT, be effective now, instead of just derailed by more grandstanding and handwaving? And more importantly by inter-wikiproject canvassing to protect WP:LOCALCONSENSUS interests (i.e. to protect the status quo of chaos and inconsistency simply because it's not a rule to comply with)? What can be done to prevent a handful of combative wikiproject editors from derailing the entire thing again? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 09:39, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

There's an interconnected issue, which is that there has never been a community-wide decision on the capitalization of breed names. (Personally I see no argument for it that does not apply to capitalizing the English names of species, which was decided against, so I can't see how a properly discussed RfC could decide otherwise than to de-capitalize breed names, along with all generalist sources I can find.) The relevance is that if breed names are put into sentence case in titles, the distinction disappears between "Big Pig" as a full breed name but "Big pig" as a breed name followed by natural disambiguation, and this is intimately connected with the current discussion. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:07, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: I've enumerated some (probably not all) of the differences between between breed caps and species caps at User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names#Breeds. I've long agreed that in theory breeds should not be capitalized where they do not contain a proper name, and noted that most off-WP style guides agree. But the WP:BIRDCON drama would probably be considered a mild little discussion compared to the shitstorm that would surround de-capping breeds. The majority of active editors of breed articles are strongly in favor of capitalization, because all the specialist sources use it. This is different from bird caps, because it's cross species. Bird were weird because the same standard wasn't being applied to mammals or arachnids or ferns or whatever. But all the breed articles are cap'd, other than I think I ran into two that weren't, and procedurally RM'd them to be consistent. In some cases, breed editors agree on nothing but the capitalization, and otherwise are antipathetic. Despite a strong logical case for doing so, I don't think WP will successfully decapitalize domestic animal breeds. I no longer bother advocating it, as it seems utopian. Heh.

I'm not sure that the Big pig vs. Big Pig stuff would make any difference; "The breed is closely related to the American Quarter Horse" vs. "The breed is closely related to the American quarter horse". Who cares? Obviously people who like to capitalize breed names do, but I mean that for encyclopedic reasons, it doesn't matter; the actual article wording will correctly give the breed name in the lead (here it would be "The American Quarter Horse is..." vs. "The American Quarter is..."). There may be one or two cases where a breed and a landrace or type name would coincide, because of a WP:DIFFCAPS disambiguation, but those are dumb ideas in this topic area anyway, and if there are still any, they should be renamed. If one wants to make the argument that using parenthetical disambiguation would "protect" a breed name, lower cased, from being confused with something else, it wouldn't really, because the horse project for one consistently uses parenthetical dab. for the names of individual horses (mostly racehorses) and these sometimes even coincide with breed names. We have such limited ways of dab'ing, there is no one perfect solution. The least conflicting one is: "Foo Bar baz" means a domesticated baz breed named Foo Bar; "Foo Bar Baz" means a domesticated baz breed named Foo Bar Baz; "foo bar baz" (or "Foo bar baz", if Foo is a proper name) means a non-breed population or type of bazes; "Foo Bar (baz)" means some term Foo Bar that relates to the baz species, most often a body part or an individual. The "Foo Bar (baz)" structure can already mean almost anything, and it's senseless to operator-overload that further to also mean breeds. At least one person purporting to represent the horse project will go to the mat on this, and "Foo Bar baz" naming has been totally uncontroversial in several other species such as cats. (Most of the "controversy" that exists at all, is three individual editors being loud about it. One doesn't even agree with the stance she's taking and openly says she's doing it just because she doesn't like me, which means her position can be ignored by the closer. One of the others has such serious English language comprehension problems, including with regard to capitalization basics, that the competence of their input renders their !votes basically useless, too. So that leaves one editor mostly responsible for the filibustering of consistency in these categories.) Thet fact that getting these names consistent would mean they could be easily mass-moved with regard to capitalization, disambiguation style, is clearly among the reasons for resistance against consistency in breed article titles. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼

You may be right about the impossibility (at present anyway) of getting agreement to decapitalize breed names, however illogical that is given the decision about English species names. I entirely agree with you on using natural disambiguation where at all possible; there are already far too many confusing and inconsistent uses of words in parentheses in titles (and see the discussion at Talk:Cereus (disambiguation) where there was an argument for "disambiguating" an already disambiguated title by adding another word within the parentheses). So I'm certainly not arguing for "Foo Bar (baz)" over "Foo Bar baz", just that it mustn't be accepted that the capitals show that this is the breed "Foo Bar" of the species "baz", because one day it may become "Foo bar baz" (and there should be a redirect there anyway under the principle of having redirects at alternative capitalizations). Peter coxhead (talk) 21:30, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Completely concur. I don't want to be mistaken as making the "one true case" that "Foo Bar baz" necessarily means a breed, Foo Bar of the species baz; rather, for as long as we're capitalizing it, any such breed would be rendered this way if the species were appended, unless it's a rare "Foo Bar Baz" case like "Norwegian Forest Cat". I.e., it's an automatic result, not an ideal. In many cases a landrace name and a breed name will be indistinguishable, because most of both are just in the form "Foo baz"; you have to read the Van cat article to know which it is, for example. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 09:12, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Whether a centralized discussion is at a WikiProject (I suggested Agriculture because it is popular and generic, rather than specific to Livestock or Poultry or Equines) or at a page like WP:AT or MOS:ORGANISMS makes zero difference to me. I am just tired of seeing essentially the same argument spread across too many individual article talk pages. People with lives outside Wikipedia don't have the energy to have the same argument in a dozen different places. I think if you're concerned about getting participation from people with expertise in article title issues who are not livestock/poultry aficionados, you'll have a better chance if we don't make people chase the issue around a collection of different breed articles. Like I said on a few pages, I'm neutral on the actual issue. I just want to see it dealt with so we can get on to more important stuff. Steven Walling • talk 22:14, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

@Steven Walling: I agree with your feelings on this, I just firmly predict that any such RFC will get filibustered. The entire point of that mess at Talk:Teeswater sheep, a mass status quo ante discussion to blanet-revert months worth of article moves without discussion of the merits of the article names, is to move them all away from increased naming consistency back to utter chaos in animal breed article titles, and stall consistency by requiring yet another round of probably page-by-page move discussions, which the general editorship will probably been too tired an bored to engage in, leading to WP:WINNING by the camp opposed to site-wide standards, instead of any real consensus. Those with an interest in preserving the inconsistency chaos (which amounts to wikiproject-level, insular autonomy from WP:AT, in effective practice) repeatedly strenuously object whenever even a few RMs on the merits are grouped and covered in a single discussion. It's WP:LAME, but many things on WP are, increasingly so since the end of the 2010s, since most important articles have already been written, and the "sexy" work is therefore done, leaving a core editorship that, with every passing month, is smaller, more topically obsessive, and more invested in WP as a game/pastime/sport for their own entertainment. Some of this stuff getting tedious is inevitable. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 09:12, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Can't fathom...

I've just had my attention drawn to your request on AN. I really don't understand why you didn't avoid the drama and ask me directly. Always always always try the most drama-free method first - the worst that can happen is I'd say "take it to AN". the panda ɛˢˡ” 15:52, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

@EatsShootsAndLeaves: Live and learn. I was trying to avoid drama, because the exact wording of my 3-month move ban was basically editwarred over by two admins, and it seemed like I'd be immediately accused of parent-shopping if I were to ask one not the other to change the wording again. It's interesting who's come out of the woodwork to mire a simple "can I move my own pages?" clarification with a string of incessant personal attacks about unrelated matters. I sense that will be an ANI issue very shortly, despite my efforts to get said parties to engage in WP:Dispute resolution, because the ad hominem pattern is not abating at all, but continuing at Talk:Landrace and other pages. I don't think they take WP:ARBATC very seriously either, but I don't wish WP:AE on anyone. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 00:53, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

You really didn't need to ask for a wording change ... simply ask "just to clarify, am I allowed to move pages inside my own userspace?" - wouldn't have hurt anyone. About "unrelated matters", that's the problem when you file at AN or ANI, those unrelated things can and will be used against you - not only is it allowed, it's at the top of the page! the panda ₯’ 09:14, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Noted. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 08:23, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics

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WP:PROJGUIDE#OWN

Unfortunately, you have misinterpreted my position. I never meant to suggest that projects control content of articles included in their projects. I was talking about project scope and which articles are included. Even after your changes (done without consensus), it still holds that projects have a strong say over which articles they include. My issue was that linking to that section appears to accuse project banner removers of WP:OWN, which isn't necessarily the case. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 12:44, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I think we're just having mutual communications problems. The rewritten text still clearly indicates that project scope is principally a matter of wikiproject participants' consensus, while getting rid of all the policy-violating language, and irrationality, in that section; so I don't see what the issue is you want to raise here. I don't need a new consensus to correct those violations; the policies already are consensus, the strongest we have. And a consensus arrived at by the community about the "member" language remains a consensus, absent any later discussion clearly overturning it on WP:CCC grounds). WP:BOLD is also a policy. You can WP:BRD revert the changes if you want, but I'm wondering on what possible policy-cognizant basis you'd defend the older language, which itself in various places was petulantly modified without and, more to the point, against consensus, to be a big show of territorial chest-beating and very un-wiki admonishments. :-) Within minutes of making the changes I started receiving "thank" notices for having done so. I agree that the WP:PROJGUIDE#OWN shortcut is weird and unhelpful, but the fix for that is to go make a new one, like WP:PROJGUIDE#BANNERWAR or even just WP:BANNERWAR or WP:SCOPEWAR, and put it there. No one has objected to the idea that WP:PROJGUIDE#OWN is a lame shortcut name, right? Sounds like WP:BOLD time again. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 13:14, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

We also have a policy/guideline somewhere about being bold but if you're making major changes, it's a good thing to let other editors know why you're making the changes. I don't think your explanation on the talk page was specific enough. At any rate, I'm not going to revert your work, and I don't think I have ever indicated that I would. I only wanted to concentrate on the section not using the harshest language to start out with, through its shortcut or its title. I should be able to link to the section without the editor I'm referring to it thinking I'm accusing them of WP:OWN. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:14, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

WP:BOLD is the policy. It doesn't contradict my actions. Between my clear edit summaries and what I posted on the talk page (and now here), I'm unclear what the issue is, especially since you're indicating that, basically, there isn't one. :-) I've re-posted in support of your idea that the PROJGUIDE#OWN shortcut is poor. I move that we have nothing further to argue about. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 14:24, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

"Participants" vs "members"

Could you point me to where the decision to use "participant" rather than "member" for WikiProjects is documented? I note that although looking at a random selection of WikiProject pages suggests most use "participant" on the project page (with the interesting exception of WikiProject Birds), all the templates I looked at in Category:WikiProject user templates used "member". Apart from WP:OWN issues, "participant" seems to me to be more likely to encourage people to join in than "member", since to become a "member" of a group normally requires some qualification or approval process. I'd like to change the user project template for WP:PLANTS at least, but would like to know where this is supported, should there be objections. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:37, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

It was a mass action at WP:CFD. I'm in the middle of cleaning up Landrace again (the usual suspect has been blatantly misrepresenting sources, among other problem there). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 13:43, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I'll search the archives myself, but if you ever have the time, you're probably more likely to find the information than I am. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:23, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: I think this is the main one: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/User/Archive/October 2007#More WikiProject participants, following on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/User/Archive/October 2007#Category:WikiProject Chemistry participants. It's notable that in the first it's suggested that "we can't come to conclusion on members vs. participants", and the "More WikiProject participants" one immediately after it did just that. This may have come up at MFD, too, to move various non-category pages around. I usually do it as non-controversial WP:RM, and do not recall ever having such a move controverted. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 22:43, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

PS: Going back even further, I found another one, in which I actually opposed preferring one over the other; changed my mind on that later after some of the WP:OWN problems surrounding wikiprojects became clearer. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 03:30, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. There's much more variability/confusion over this than I thought. It seems possible to find every combination of "participant" vs. "member" on WikiProject pages, their user templates, and the resulting category name. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:52, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: It was mostly all cleaned up at one point, but has obviously crept again. I changed all usage in WP:WikiProject Council/Guide to "partcipants", so that may help prevent more "members" creep. I guess we need to make a list of stuff to rename, and start RM, CfD, etc., processes for them. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 03:59, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The main problem area is user templates. I checked Category:WikiProject user templates again; looking at about 20 randomly chosen entries found only one that used "participant". Peter coxhead (talk) 06:45, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Landrace balance

Apropos Landrace, I have looked over the section on plants from time to time and sighed to myself – in my view it's far from NPOV (basically written as "landrace" = good, "cultivar" = bad), depends on too few sources (partly responsible for the NPOV) and ignores modern approaches to describing and naming cultivated plants, such as the ICNCP. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:23, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Yep, needs a lot of work. Part of the problem here is that it began as a very simple article on the term, but has turned into a polarized piece because a certain editor or two seem to feel outright threatened in some way by the idea that some horse "breeds" in the broadest possible sense are landraces (or "landrace breeds" in FAO's neologistic internal terminology) rather than formal, standardized breeds. It's turned into some kind of holy war against the concept of landrace. A consequence of this is reliance on sources that really, really clearly spell out the difference between landraces and other domestic animal and plant categorizations, and these are mostly "genetic resources" conservation articles, which pretty much automatically take a dim view of cultivars and formal animal breeds. Their only real concern is preservation of genetic diversity, while other major concerns, like productivity of agricultural output, or even simple aesthetics and breeding for them, aren't given much attention in such sources.

I'm not really sure what the solution is, other than simply biding enough time that anyone with an extreme point of view to push loses interest and goes away to work on other articles again, and someone like you in the interim improves the article with balancing sources like ICNCP. Their detailed nomenclature system doesn't seem incompatible with landrace classification, any more than it is with heirloom plant classification. The landrace question is fairly simple: Is this a regionally isolated, domesticated organism adapted to its local environment on its own through free-breeding selection in it area, or is it something mostly shaped by selective, pedigreed breeding for specific qualities (in particular, over the last century or so)?

This doesn't seem to me to interfere with ICNCP classification of something as varietas, forma, etc., since landrace vs. standardized breed is about a human management question. To me, ICNCP's system is, by way of analogy, like deciding if a pickup truck is a Ford, a Chevrolet, etc., then what model it is, then what year, then what "trim level" or options package; the landrace question is like asking whether it was designed for the commercial delivery vs. personal/family use markets. Or in personal computers, the landrace distinctions is analogous to off-the-shelf PCs (generally made from whatever parts the manufacturer has procured) vs. a custom-built machine built to exacting specs, e.g. for gaming, or A-V development, or whatever; in that metaphor, ICNCP's nomenclature is akin to the technical specs (CPU and bus architecture, etc.), which are independent of the build process and any specialized intent. I'm not trying to 'splain to you what ICNCP is doing – you know better than I do – but conceptualize how the approach differs, in simple terms, so that the article can be adjusted without it turning into another dispute from the usual quarters. Metaphors like this tend to be helpful in that regard, as long as they're apt. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 00:42, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

As with a number of topics, it seems clear what a sensible article would say, but finding reliable sources that say it isn't easy. To turn a landrace into a cultivar (plant) or a breed (animal) requires human management to impose uniform compliance with some describable standard, so that it's possible to judge that a single individual organism is, or is not, an example of that cultivar (a legal requirement for selling seed under a cultivar name in many countries) or breed (a requirement for showing breeds). A landrace, on the other hand, is much more variable – often deliberately so – hence there may well be organisms not clearly assignable to one landrace or another, particularly those developed in similar locations/environments, even though the landraces as a whole are distinguishable. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:08, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I concur, on every point. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 01:24, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

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Asking here, not there

Not wanting to stir up yet one more controversy, but I thought I'd float a balloon over an idea. If you are opposed, I won't pursue it further, but I'm seriously wondering if there is at least a partial solution to the landrace dilemma with this: Make two articles, one on plants, one on animals. You know that I generally tend to disfavor splitting and forking, so you realize that I'm making a sincere proposal - this time I wonder if it would ratchet down some of the drama because I think part of the problem is comparing "apples and oranges" (or apples and cattle, oranges and sheep - to be more precise). The plant article will probably be longer and more complex, as the concept has been around longer, and there are way more peer-reviewed sources on plants. The animal one will probably still have disputed material, but at least we will know what we are fighting about. But I suspect the whole problem began with a lot of animal articles linking to "landrace", which when you clicked on the link, originally was mostly a plant article. I won't even debate titling, perhaps Landrace (plant) and Landrace (animal) or Plant landrace and Animal landrace - whatever. I can also still move articles if you want to set up sandboxes... if you like the idea, I'll slap on a "split" template and we can just state at talk that we agree on the split and if no one else cares, then when the two new articles are at least sketched out, even if we still disagree on content, the landrace one becomes a dab. Your friend above, Peter Coxhead, may be useful to work on the plant one. Montanabw ^(talk) 05:50, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

@Montanabw: I don't necessarily see it as more controversy. My reactions to this are mixed, but hopeful. I'll format this in a "listy" way that hopefully doesn't trigger another of your "tl;dr" reactions, and will try to phrase my concerns in terms of my perceptions rather than make statements about your actions.

Basically I could support this, with conditions, but I remain skeptical because of ongoing conflict. I agree it could be helpful, because it would keep the sourcing more separate. However, two obvious concerns on this are:

Some sources in botany and zoology have published general, not botany- or zoology-specific, information about landraces and the concept thereof, but one may be apt to use inverse original research to try to limit them to one or the other. I base this observation on recent edit history at the article (i.e. the last two months, give or take).
From my point of view, you're already evading WP:BRD in your efforts to advance the FAO and OED definitions, in the lead, as the broadest-applicable ones, when they're the exact opposite. It isn't raising my confidence level in this split proposal not being some kind of divide-and-conquer move. But who knows? We've both been critical of each other lately. You seem to be trying to show that "landrace is just a kind of breed", in a way that can mislead. I'm not implying any motive here, just observing a result that I perceive: It will confuse readers, it's not practical, and it doesn't accurately reflect the sources and their contexts. We can't use an odd, ambiguous, super-broad definition of "breed" in Wikipedia's voice, any more than we'd promote a definition of "automobile" that included aircraft and tanks and motorboats, just because some source somewhere was found using the term that broadly. It's a serious neutrality, and source reliability, and undue weight problem, and it would be even if I agreed with your distaste for the term "landrace" and it being applied to horses.

Perhaps it would be helpful to stop playing edit-summary chess, and just have a simple discussion about what our goals and concerns with regard to this article are? We can do that in a section below. That might go a huge way toward resolving our disputes, especially if it's here in user talk and not "recorded live in front of an article-talk-page audience". Lower pressure and tension. You say I talk too much, so you go first.
Non-negotiable: No more personalizing accusations or labeling or characterizations (that includes "bullying", "aggressive", "vicious", etc.), no ad hominem arguments, no attacks, no assumptions of bad faith. At all, not from me, not from you, not in a back-door way by you backing up one of the other usual suspects in making them against me at wikiproject or animal breed talk pages, etc. However, no spinning of legitimate editorial concerns as "attacks" (e.g. I can't say you're attacking me if you claim an edit of mine has a POV problem, or that an argument of mine is misconstruing NPOV, nor vice versa with our roles reversed).
There are other points to consider, but this is a start. You told me the other day that you effectively have no faith in me at all; I don't think that's really true or you wouldn't be here. You know mine with regard to you is also seriously eroded, but not dead, or I wouldn't be talking to you either. How do we repair that? I'll have specific concessions I'll want to enumerate, and I'm sure you will, too. I also have practical matters to raise about the split should it be proposed, but let's build the bridge before we try to cross it.
PS: Plants, and @Peter coxhead: Peter disagrees with me about as often as not, but we usually avoid this sort of tooth-gnashing, and have learned to collaborate, though we used to argue more angrily. I'm not sure why you and I are having so much difficulty in that regard. I try to avoid classifying people as "friends" or not (much less "enemies" >;-) on here because it can cause "choosing sides" problems, as you have experienced yourself at RM. I would hope that he takes an interest in directly clarifying the plant-related material. My own interest is primarily on the animal side, for now. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 23:07, 27 September 2014 (UTC) PS: Logging out for a bit to get some real-world project work completed, so if I don't get back to you rapidly it's not because I'm ignoring you. Take your time. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 23:11, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Trust me, I'm so far beyond skeptical that you have no idea. But I think you are smart enough to see it's a partial way out of this morass. I see no need for preconditions, but you like responses, so here are mine:
1. General sources could be used in both articles where appropriate. Many articles throughout wikipedia have minor sections that mirror other articles. No need to create segregated sources
2. And from my viewpoint, it is you who violate BRD, etc., etc., so let's just stop casting aspersions or assuming motives and drop that whole stick
3. If you don't like the FAO and OED, then provide direct quotations from better quality sources that you find. I view them as the best sources I have found that provide a "definition" that can be applied to animals. Doesn't mean there isn't something better, but I haven't found it yet.
4. You misunderstand my views about landraces, but FWIW, maybe I have not comprehended your view accurately and some of our disputes are because we are arguing with an empty chair. See next point, a bit tl;dr, your call if you want to read it.
  A bit tl;dr, your call if you want to read this bit: I'm oversimplifying (for the sake of brevity) but my own views are that genetic diversity is a good thing, but so too is the creation of predictable, consistent traits. I believe that rare breeds of livestock generally are worth preserving for any number of good reasons. So to me, yes, landraces are a type of breed (as Sponenberg says, an early stage in breed development), but that's a GOOD thing. To say a landrace isn't a "real "breed" is an insult! To deny landraces the status of "breeds" just because there is no registry or written set of pedigrees implies they are poor quality mongrels of unpredictable genetics and no particular value. Just because people didn't write down pedigrees and supervise mating doesn't mean that an animal landrace isn't genetically consistent and possessed of positive traits.
5. I find Sponenberg's work of interest and quite credible.
6. Yes, massive multiple edits with long summaries are useless for collaboration. I kind of like putting minor comments in hidden text, to be removed when addressed, but you don't like that method, so that leaves talk page.
7. "Not negotiable?" Well, if you can, look in the mirror and realize that you are criticizing others for doing the very things you are doing to them. However, you may not agree with my position on this, so we may be at an impasse. I will not unilaterally disarm as a precondition to collaboration nor agree not to call you on what I view as problem behavior; but if the content works, we have no reason to spat. If you make no assumptions, cast no aspersions, focus on content, and realize that you might actually be the one who is wrong, can we accomplish something? Yeah, I could work with that.
8. I think you are intelligent and capable of creating good content. I think enlightened self-interest means we both would prefer to work on content than waste bandwidth fighting about creating content. That's enough.
9. I will not make assumptions as to why we are in conflict, though some of it may be due to irreconcilable differences on issues that may not be of cosmic importance to thre rest of the world (like capitalization and naming of animal breeds) we may have to agree to disagree on some things
10. Further steps: I will post a split tag at the landrace article with a statement that you and I are looking at this as a way to clarify the content and improve coverage of the topic. Montanabw ^(talk) 05:51, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

@Montanabw: I've taken the liberty of refactoring to number the points for easier reference later, if necessary.
1. I'm not sure that gets at what I was getting at. I'm talking about general material in topically specific sources, not in general sources. I.e., a paper about botany can make a general point about biology, and misconstruing it as only applicable to botany because of the journal it's in would be a form of WP:OR.
2. I'm talking principally about you re-re-re-installing FAO and OED into the lead at Landrace when there's an ongoing dispute, under WP:BRD, about the applicability of those definition at Talk:Landrace.
  - We have a fundamental disagreement there, I do not agree with your position on that and we aren't going to resolve it here. It's one reason I favor splitting the article, though, as the plant side has some clear definitions used in peer-reviewed literature, while animals do not. --(Montanabw)
    - Splitting the article will simply result in two places instead of one to pursue the same dispute, so no thanks. (SMcCandlish)
3. Has nothing to do with "like". FAO's definition is an internal one, and OED's is vague and contradicted by other sources. There is no requirement anywhere to use direct quotations; we're generally encouraged not to do so, but to write new material based on sources, instead of parroting them. The fact that FAO has "a definition" is meaningless to us when that definition is explicitly vague on purpose to ensure equal legal treatment of landraces and standardized breeds, regardless of the factual differences between them, in genetic conservation legal contexts. That's a very, very special case, and it can't be generalized into an actual encyclopedic definition of "landrace". That's a textbook case of WP:UNDUE and well as presenting both WP:V and WP:NPOV problems (it fails actual verification as to the intended meaning and context, and it advances FAO's government bureaucracy as more reliable than peer-reviewed science).
  - See above. I have found no better sources defining animal landraces and OED is a RS that augments FAO for animals - I still am asking for peer-reviewed definitions. Sponenberg may be one, but I want to see a direct quotation, as you and I clearly cannot even agree on what a source says. (Montanabw)
    - I've already address why both of these sources are faulty. Ignoring these arguments doesn't make them go away. (SMcCandlish)
4. Thank you for clarifying! Two points, sorta: First, you're still misapplying Sponenberg, who says that landraces can be a stage in breed development. That means neither that they are always stages in breed development nor that they are, under most definition of the word, "breeds". Again, I'm okay with selectively using FAO's definitions, in a few rare spots were we think we need to in order to avoid disputes, but only if they're sourced and explained properly. Second, this gets at the "insult"/"status" problem, and I have long suspected that this was the root of our disagreement. Landraces are not breeds as that word is usually used, including on Wikipedia, i.e. "standardized, formal breed". If we occasionally mean to use a wider sense of "breed", e.g. in some horse articles, we have to be clear that it's a special definition and where it came from. So really, these are the same point. No one anywhere has suggested landraces are poor-quality mongrels; the main reason I care about the article at is because they're not.
  I also agree with you about cultivars and formal breeds being vital, and do not want the article to push a POV that landraces are "better" than them; we have sources that say why they have advantages, and we need sources that cover the counter-advantages of formal breeding, like increased production, etc. So we really disagree about this far less than it has seemed.
  - I would propose, and have elaborated in a section below, the idea that all of our breed articles need to be clarified to use "standardized breed", etc., not the ambiguous, bare word "breed".
  - I can only agree that not all landraces become standardized with a breed registry. The word "breed" IS fuzzy, and as much as you hope to come up with a set definition, I don't think it is doable per WP:SYNTH. If you recall JLAN's post with the definition that notes that biologists don't address questions of breeds in the same way they do with species. Animal breeders - and a lot of people here on wiki - don't really understand that a breed and a species are totally different things! Horses are a particularly good example, as we have everything from landraces to closed stud book registries such as the Thoroughbred, to people who create a designer crossbred and call the second generation a "breed" and use "hybrid" language to justify their (IMHO) nonsense. I read Sponenberg to say that landraces ARE an early stage of breed development, (even if not all get standardized) hence, the word "breed" in a general form applies to landraces in the sense of distinguishing them from mongrels, which I think is a crucial distinction in protecting and preserving landraces, and probably one reason many landraces are labeled "rare breeds" in some contexts. (Montanabw)
    - None of these points contradict my position in any way. (SMcCandlish)
5. Agreed on Sponenberg, but he's just one source and we can't over-rely, as you understand.
  - yes. (Montanabw)
6. Yes, let's use the talk page, and individual edits for different kinds of changes. Peter coxhead and others are taking an interest in this article, and it's not fair to them for us to treat it like it's our own pet. :-) Transparency and participation are good.
7. Re: "Not negotiable": I pointedly included myself in that. I'm skeptical that we'll have no reason for conflict ever just because of a mutual attitude shift, but I think the strife level should go way down. Your one-sided response is not encouraging, frankly.
  - You may not realize that you presented a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposal. (Montanabw) You extensively discuss the mote in my eye while failing to see the log in your own - your comments that you are including yourself are tempered by other comments that indicate that you don't think you have done anything wrong. We won't resolve this here and it is actually irrelevant to the content discussion, again bringing personalities into the matter. (Montanabw)
    - I don't see where you're getting that from. You seem to be playing some kind of power game here. Not interested. (SMcCandlish)
8. Agreed.
9. Agreed.
10. The conditions I mentioned: I'd be inclined to support the split idea, given both of the following: a) agreement to stop inserting FAO and OED into the lead pending resolution of that dispute, and b) actually using the "landrace breed" FAO terminology on Kiger Mustang as a test, as I outlined already at Talk:Landrace. These will be sufficient demonstration to me that a split will be a step forward rather than multiplying an editwar into two editwars.
  - See "heads I win, tails you lose" above. This isn't a horse trading issue, and I'm not reopening the Kiger Mustang issue. It's closed, it was a 5-1 consensus and that's a stick to drop. (Montanabw)
    - That's not it at all. See below (interleaving comments like this is a pain; I numbered them for a reason). (SMcCandlish)

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 07:06, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

(Big, deep sigh) Now you are basically asking that the content issue that is creating all the problems be resolved in alignment with your POV (or viewpoint, to not shout with capitals) before we even start. Your point suggest that before we do anything, I have to admit that you are right and I am wrong. That's "heads I win, tails you lose". That's like Israel telling the Palestinians to unilaterally disarm before they can hold peace talks. Not going to happen. We still should split the articles, personalities and battles aside. Montanabw ^(talk) 19:02, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

That's not it at all. See below — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 05:41, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Terminology proposal

I would propose (informally; this is not a WP:PROPOSAL) that all of our breed articles need to be clarified to use "standardized breed" or some synonym ("formal breed", etc.) when we mean that, at least on first occurrence, and linked to Breed. If we use landrace link it to Landrace. If we use "landrace breed", link it to Landrace, and avoid "breed" by itself as ambiguous.

If you (Montanabw) and FAO have a very broad sense of the word "breed", so may some other readers. That makes the term ambiguous at least some of the time, so we have a duty to clarify in article text. If every case has "X is a standardized breed" or either "X is a landrace" or (when we really, really want to use FAO terms) "X is a landrace breed", then no more problem, ever. Just never say "X is a breed".

As a draft criterion, I would suggest that we use FAO's "landrace breed" only for livestock, not pet breeds/landraces. Secondly, it should only be for cases where a preponderance of sources actually use the term "breed" in a very broad way to also include what we know are landrace breeds, which is probably most if not all horse landraces, because horse encyclopedias and the like tend to call everything "breeds" and distinguish formal/standardized ones by saying "standardized breed" or whatever. But it probably does not apply to many others. In goats and pigs, the phrase "landrace breed" means "standardized breed with the word 'Landrace' in its name", and actual landraces seem mostly to be ignored, i.e. are non-notable. So, "landrace breed" itself can also be ambiguous if used inappropriately. In cats and dogs, what constitutes a breed is generally based on what national and international organization specify, not private-business studbooks, so the issue does not arise. I.e., there is no question at all that the Van cat is a landrace not a standardized breed, and the term "breed" should not be applied to it, nor "landrace breed" since it'll just be redundantly long.

This is obviously just an informal proposal on my talk page, for agreement between us. We'd have to see if it actually worked well in real articles, but I'd bet money that it will. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 07:06, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Not quite, I think that is the very content issue we are debating and it is not resolved. I also think that a lot of the trouble you are having with other editors is because you are making these broad, universal proposals for things where there is not a broad, universal consensus, even in the real world, let alone on wikipedia. (Some "round pegs' are actually oval, and some are even square; they just don't all fit) To some extent, "landrace" as applied to animals is a neologism, and the definition, even in plants, still obviously in flux (unless Camacho Villa's 2005 definition has been universally accepted) I think the FAO is the most reliable source so far (of modern sources, at least) for what a "landrace" animal (at least livestock) is, though if you have found a better source, please provide it (I keep asking, I do not think one has been found?) I would partially agree that the word "landrace" as applied to cats and dogs is probably not within the scope of the FAO definition, but absent one applicable to dog and cat landraces, we have to be careful not to insert definitions where none exist (which is why the OED is helpful, it's a default where there are o better sources) While I do think (tentatively) that Sponenberg's structure of landrace breeds, standardized breeds, etc. is one of the best RS out there and contains the lingo we may ultimately agree upon, we cannot at this time make a blanket policy until we have both articles stabilized. I do not agree that a "breed" is only a "standardized breed", though I have no problem linking "standardized breed" to "breed" where it is appropriate to do so. Given that there are breeds with the name "landrace" in them, I kind of think right now I'd prefer to just link the word "landrace" by itself. There are also a number of articles that use Autochthonous also, and we have yet to even start on that one... Montanabw ^(talk) 19:02, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I do not agree that a "breed" is only a "standardized breed", though I have no problem linking "standardized breed" to "breed" where it is appropriate to do so. Then there is no disagreement, basically. What is it you think you're arguing with me about? How can you be telling me I'm wrong when I'm telling you you're right, that "breed" can be used more broadly in some sources than "standardized breed"; we have to write more carefully to disambiguate? I even also prefer "landrace" by itself, but you're the one, not me, insisting that the word "breed" be applied to all distinguishable horse populations, so the solution that presents tiself is "landrace breed", a term we can source to FAO. You know, the source you are so insistent is the most reliable? How are we even still having a disagreement about this?

Minor points we maybe don't even need to discuss, given what I just asked:

Doodle doodle dee...

Landrace as applied to animals is not a neologism; it dates to no later than the early 1930s (when it entered English via pig landrace breeds, so the term was already in use in Dutch, etc., no later than the '20s). We have reliable sources for this in the article already. Exact parameters of definitions are always in flux about most all terms of art in science. The central ideas of the concept have remained constant: A landrace is a distinguishable population of a domesticated species, adapted to its local environment mostly without selective human breeding, with a greater degree of variability than a standardized breed/cultivar, but enough homogeneity to be distinguishable. There's really nothing more to it as a basic definitional matter. Various specific definitions emphasize or de-emphasize one thing or another, or add or subtract some constraint, such as connection to traditional agriculture, but the basic facts are pretty consistent.

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 05:41, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Conflating content, theory and other stuff

@Montanabw: I have made a move proposal as a step in resolving a content dispute. I don't think it works to say that we have to resolve the content dispute before there is a move; the point is that the move will split off the less contentious and confusing material (on plants) from the more contentious material where there is not as much agreement and much ambiguity on terms. Montanabw ^(talk) 19:31, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I can't support the split if we can't agree on a few basic things, like no to editwarring, yes to being civil, and yes to using unambiguous terms. We can even get past most of the content disputes rapidly if you'll just allow the agreement to happen. We're not actually in many of the disagreements you think we're in. However, it will be very divisive (no pun intended) to proceed with a split given the present state of conflict. Nothing you've said here actually addresses the heading you used, so I'm not sure what you were getting at; who is conflating any of these things, where, in what way? The material about animals is not confusing in any way. Who else do you see contending against it? There's very little ambiguity, except when one fails to clarify the word "breed" by indicating whether we mean standardized breeds or standardized+landrace breeds. It's really that simple. There's nothing to argue about when one realizes this. Seriously, nowhere, any time elsewhere on Wikipedia would people argue this much about whether to use clear wording. They'd simply say, "oh, yeah, that's ambiguous" and just clarify it and move on. So, ball's in your court. What on earth is the problem? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 05:41, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Not confusing? Excuse me, but you have citations in that article that go to dead links and you claim the FAO isn't an RS, you make up your own definition of breed and then say with a straight face that there is nothing to argue about? One huge problem is defining animal landraces, and by splitting the articles, we have a simpler situation, plant landraces have more peer0reviewed material - and frankly, I also don't really give a rip about plant stuff in this context (Other than a general attitude of support for genetic diversity and a dislike of factory farming monoculture) so I wouldn't be bothering to edit the plant article much at all, which would reduce the controversy. You also fail to understand that wiki isn't a source for wiki, so when I ask for sources, do not say "go to that article." Unsourced material can be removed. But I'm tired of beating my head against the wall here, Yes, here you ARE just wrong but haven't figured that out yet.Montanabw ^(talk) 05:07, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to itemize this so you'll read it.

There were no actual dead link citations in that article. It's possible that one or another of them will only work as http not https links, in which case I'll fix them. [It was, I fixed it. All you have to do is add "http:" back after |url=.] If there were a real dead link [i.e. resources deleted from original site, or site gone], the way to repair that is to go to the http://Archive.org site and look it up in the "Wayback Machine" form in the middle of that page, and get the |archiveurl= and |archivedate= for the citation from there. Virtually no actually reliable source is ever a truly dead link any more because Archive.org will have copies. No one can use a broken URL as an excuse to start a bogus dispute. Doing so would be WP:BATTLEGROUNDing and WP:Tendentious editing.
I've made up no definition of anything. The Talk:Landrace page is full of requests for you to prove the accusations you're making against me (numerous unexplained claims of text not agreeing with sources, of WP:SYNTH, etc.), and you've failed to do it, ever. Meanwhile, I've proven with more reliable sources than your bureaucratese document, quoted out of context, and dicdef, proven to conflict with peer-reviewed sources, that several of your arguments are demonstrable novel synthesis and redefinition to support a personal view. I seem to recall you accusing me of psychological projection twice. I suspect any independent reviewer would reverse that interpretation. [Update: I'm going through these, and at least one of them is sourced by the very reference cited already in the same sentence! Stop wasting both our time with this WP:DRIVEBY/WP:OVERTAGGING campaign. I consider it demonstrably disruptive at this point.
Your split proposal doesn't make sense in these terms. It is 100% exactly as easy to source material about animal landraces on one page as on another. Sources don't magically appear, or say different things, when you move wikicode to another page here.
Your split proposal would not reduce controversy, since no one is arguing about the plant-related material; X - 0 = X. I asked for three simple agreements in order to support this split as a good idea: Agreement to abide by WP:AGF/WP:NPA/WP:CIVIL, agreement to respect WP:BRD and WP:CONSENSUS at that article (or "those articles" if split), and agreement to using "landrace breed" and "standardized breed" instead of ambiguously referring to "breed" as if it had a single definition when we know it doesn't, because we both now agree that horse people and sources consider landraces to be "breeds" in the broad sense (i.e. landrace breeds). You pointedly refused all three proposed agreements. Now you're going to berate me for not supporting the split? Of course I can't support it; it's a recipe for additional conflict. You're declaring a triple refusal to avoid further conflict.
No one is citing Wikipedia as a source for itself. I'm telling you where sources are already cited that you can just copy-paste. You and only you are making a claim that so-and-so breed being derived from a landrace is a controversial claim. When we already have a source for it, there's no controversy. Pretending there is just to litter an article with pointless dispute tags or delete material we know is already sourced would simply be disruption to make a point and wikilawyering. If it'll appease you (why I bother, I don't know), I can go deal with that rote material myself, but it's seriously a waste of time to devote any energy to that until the article is nearing GA review stage; non-controversial material does not need to have independent citations until then, when we already know we have sources for it one article over. You've done enough GA/FA improvement, you know this already. Honestly, I don't care much about this silly game. As long as no one's still advancing poor primary and tertiary sources, out of context, as if they trump peer-reviewed secondary sources, these minor nit-picks between us are just that. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 10:06, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
Whatever. I'm tired of these circular arguments with you. I feel that the well's being poisoned here, the earth scorched, and I'll have no part of it. Keep it to Talk:Landrace. We're both under administrative orders to stop personalizing disputes there, so we'll stop, and stick to the sources and the policies. I've already been doing that, and as usual you've been ignoring it entirely or selectively, and failing to address the WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV concerns raised. There's only one road that leads down, and you've got the wheel. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 10:06, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

PS: You still haven't clarified what you mean by "Conflating content, theory and other stuff". Looks very much like an accusation of some kind, but unsupported by anything. Par for this course, I suppose. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 12:45, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

We are equally tired of circular arguments. And I'm tired of your endless bullying and tendentiousness. You need to look in the mirror and recognize that most of the accusations you level at me are equally applicable to yourself. Until that time, there is no sense arguing with you. As for poisoning the well, yup, you use that phrase AFTER I introduced you to it by pointing out that it's your own MO. All for now. Montanabw ^(talk) 02:13, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Wholeheartedly agree with the first sentence. The second is entirely mutual, and I'm aware neither of us accept the terms of that criticism from the other. Ditto the third. Wholeheartedly agree with the fourth. (Aside: I don't recall you using the phrase "poisoning the well" until after I used it several days ago (you much more recently used it at WP:RFPP, hours ago). It's a phrase I've used, along with "scorched earth", for over 20 years.) You seem to me to actually be reusing every complaint I make with regard to your edits, just proving the point that the third sentence is entirely mutual. Regardless, I'm going to take this as tacit mutual acceptance that we really are tired of these arguments, and mutually see the same problems in each others' approaches (without conceding the other is correct), and that the episode has not been productive. So, thanks for stating it clearly. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 04:41, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

@Montanabw: Rather than "all for now", how about "all for quite a while"? Perhaps a mutual WP:SHUN is in order, I'd propose for at least 30 days, barring substantive disputes about content that have to be addressed, and even then only doing it in utterly de-personalized terms, e.g. "I believe this edit raises a POV problem, because...", "There seems to be a SYNTH issue with that argument, due to...", as if the editor who made the edits in question did not exist and the edits appeared out of nowhere. I've found this technique helpful in [two-way] disarming disputes of this sort, and I've ended up good collaborators with some people after 1-3 months of such mutual personal avoidance. What say you? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 04:48, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

That's a new set of CAPS article to me. Interesting concept. I am quite reluctant to say anything—yes or no—because past history suggests you may interpret a "deal" differently than I do and thus use it against me later. That said, depersonalizing things is good and wise to try. Also wise is to avoid shouting so loud that one cannot be heard. I do hope that you realize that my views are as legitimate as yours and stated with more good will (at least at first) than you may think. Montanabw ^(talk) 05:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I can certainly shake on that. (But I did not get what you mean by "That's a new set of CAPS article to me." Not sure which CAPS that refers to.) Maybe no two-way shunning for a while is really necessary, though we can keep it in mind if things get out of hand again. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 05:21, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Reference to a new shortcut to a new article I hadn't seen before; the way WP uses ALLCAPS for shortcuts. Montanabw ^(talk) 15:57, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

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