User talk:Snow Rise/Archive 13

Please comment on Talk:Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar

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Bebop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cowboy_Bebop#Praise I do't want to get into edit war so discuss.

Hello...I kind of agree with you about the "universal acclaim" thing.

no narrative or other work of art in the entire history of human expression has impressed everyone, so the claim of "universal acclaim" is always per se inaccurate.

Then what about The Last of Us? 37.39.100.42 (talk) 19:46, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi again, 37, I hope your day is going well? As to your inquiry, we have a saying on this project: WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. In essence, we mean that just because some editors on one article took a particular approach to a content issue does not mean it is a good interpretation of that issue that should be replicated elsewhere (in fact, as a matter of policy, such issues have to be decided on a case-by-case analysis of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS). Sometimes that is because issues work differently on different articles with different needs, but in the case which you have highlighted here, I happen to think that the usage in the Last of Us is also in error and could probably be altered for the better as well (but I tend to avoid editing all articles to correct for a common element of usage; it just ends up being more hassle than it is worth, often as not). Snow ^{let's rap} 20:23, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm doing good, thanks. Yeah I agree with you about Last of us, it even got a score 7.5 out of 10 from Polygon...this score isn't really impressive if you ask me. You know, fans will do anything to make their favorites look like a masterpiece. As for Bebop, I think we should change the "universal praise" to something else. Maybe "widespread critical acclaim"?31.203.110.193 (talk) 18:54, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Just some stuff I wanted to say

Hi! I noticed the message you left on the ANI case I started. I found several new "Edit summary removed" on Oleotusks' edits, so it appears that the most offensive of the personal attacks have actually been revdelled now. There are still a few visible, but I don't mind that much because those weren't that extreme.

Also, apparently, Oleotusks (and LWHarpoon) were discovered to be sockpuppets of Architect 134, who seems to have a lot more sockpuppets as well. This is listed on the former two pages, but not the Architect 134 sockpuppet investigation. I wonder why the info isn't in the main investigation. Maybe it will be added soon? Diamond Blizzard (talk) 00:56, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi again, Diamond Blizzard. :) Yes, that is probable; I must admit that it's been a while since I've been into an SPI, but traditionally they have been stored in nested pages, with active investigations on the top page and archives in a subpage. It may be that you are looking at just one part of the investigated relationships. It's also possible to have multiple discussions with overlapping socks, just as you speculated, where one connects accounts A, B, and C, and another that identifies the link between C and D. I believe that the SPI gurus usually manage to avoid that or to resolve such issues quickly, because there are means to check the indexed investigation results to avoid those redundancies/non-aggregated findings, but mistakes still happen. It's a particularly complicated affair when IP ranges become involved, as they often do. Let me see if I can make sense of the reports regarding your sock troll. Snow ^{let's rap} 01:22, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Oh my, he is a tenacious little troll, isn't he? I don't see any check-users or requests for same identifying Oleotusks or LWHarpoon with this particular sockmaster, though. Can I ask, where did you hear the speculation that they were one in the same? Snow ^{let's rap} 01:33, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

It says on the User:Oleotusks and User:LWharpoon pages that both accounts are sockpuppets of User: Architect 134, and that this was confirmed by CheckUser evidence. Diamond Blizzard (talk) 02:13, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm, the checks must have been done by CUs on their own initiative and outside of SPI. Perhaps Vanjagenije, Zzuuzz, or ‎IanDBeacon can elucidate us on why the association with Architect 134 was made so fast, and how it was confirmed? Snow ^{let's rap} 02:30, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

The investigation went a little like this: Oleotusks = LWharpoon (obvious), LWharpoon = Ann HHero[1], Ann HHero = Architect 134[2] Honestly I don't know and haven't looked into the reasons behind the last step, but it seems credible and I have no reason to doubt it. It quite often happens in these cases that a) the documentation doesn't always get amended or completed, b) things become clearer with more time and focus, and c) a checkuser always knows something you don't. Vanjagenije might be reading this in which case they are welcome to merge Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Oleotusks with Architect 134, otherwise it's probably not worth doing much more with it. Our mission here is to create and maintain an encyclopaedia, and further adjustments of the SPIs won't now help with that. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 06:28, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I can appreciate that SPI record keeping can be no cake walk. But I believe Diamond Blizzard was curious in particular because this user, sad little wanker that he is, has chosen to obsessively troll her using some pretty nasty language. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:01, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Of course. As I suggest, I don't know much about Architect 134, but they seem to want to troll a succession of users. It'll probably pass. You can guarantee there is an increasing number of eyes on the situation, so don't let slack record keeping fool you into thinking it equals a lack of determination going forward. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 07:15, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks zzuuzz--I don't want to speak for our new colleague here, but I would suspect that is reassuring to hear. It speaks to the toxicity of this particular knitwit of a griefer that he is targetting a new user. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:23, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah. I was really wondering why this user was attacking me in particular, so I wanted to know whether it's just his habit to, say, pick a random user to troll.

Just out of curiosity, zzuuzz, what do you mean by "eyes on this situation?" What type of surveillance would be helpful in this situation?

And finally, if the trolling continues, I will not be here for a while. Don't worry, it won't be permanent. I would just want to check whether not being here would make the troll lose interest in me. Diamond Blizzard (talk) 00:35, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

That's absolutely your call, DB, but I would suspect it will not become necessary. It's actually a fair bit of effort for the troll to make accounts to come at you for just a few comments. Obviously this one has some grit for getting his ass bounced out the door with alacrity (somebody has been drinking their troll juice), but it never lasts forever. Regarding why they chose you, it's always hard to say--you rarely get a sense of obvious patterns with these guys when their harassment is not tied to specific topic areas. It may be completely random, it could be you took some editorial action that that their fragile ego took to be a personal slight. Looking at the nature of the comments, it seems your gender plays a role in their sad little troll disorder. I can tell you that what you are experiencing is a bit of bad luck; this is not the usual level of harassment a person has to contend with at the start of their time with our community. But I would be lying if I said you won't have to contend with it now and again. Luckily we have a lot of sound procedures and dedicated volunteers to help nip the harassment in the bud until this guy grows a personality and finds something better to do with his time.

As to eyes on the issue, I presume that zzuuzz is talking about the large number of volunteers who have eyes on this particular sockmaster as a consequence of their sustained disruption. They will be contemplating what combination of techniques can be utilized to identify the accounts and block them utmost speed. Any other 'surveillance' as you say is pretty unpracticable. These folks have the restricted tools necessary to identify trolls and whomp them with the ban hammer. Snow ^{let's rap} 01:01, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Close at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:‎Emir of Wikipedia

Thanks for the close at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:‎Emir of Wikipedia, the issue about me had been resolved and it seemed like it was going to go off topic. 😊 Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:18, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

No problem at all. :) I had hoped to get your blessing that you felt the issues were satisfied first, but by that point you seemed to be done for the day and, as you say, things were looking to take a turn for the weeds and territory that wasn't going to be helpful for anyone. Anyway, I'm glad you approve, and I hope things return to normal for the two of you. Snow ^{let's rap} 18:46, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Darbara Singh (murderer)

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Here is:

		The Barnstar of Teeth Clenching Groans
		A barnstar of groaning sounds accompanied by crickets singing from the rafters for this pun Edaham (talk) 12:01, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

A belated thank you, Edaham, for this kind and not-at-all pre-solicited recognition of my sublime wordplay! ;) Sorry about the delay in response; urgent matters had me offline a few days. I wonder if our friend the exorcist is behaving themselves. Might be worth peeking in on for the sake of the accused satanists! Snow ^{let's rap} 00:57, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn

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Proposal draft

Hey, it has been over five days with no further input given from the WikiProject towards my proposal draft. I expanded it following your recommendations at WP:ANI and would really appreciate you taking a look at it again. Please let me know if it requires further expansion or clarity. Thanks. Prefall 06:35, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

@Prefall: I'm very sorry, I somehow missed this comment when you left it earlier and I am afraid that I am just headed out the door at present. I will try to provide whatever useful feedback I can as soon as I may; I've reviewed the current wording of the proposal already and I think it looks generally good, but I'd like to answer your inquiry with some manner of more useful and nuanced feedback, and will try to do so in the next 24 hours (and hopefully on the sooner side of that span). Sorry for the delay! Snow ^{let's rap} 01:54, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

@Prefall: Sorry for the delay! Finding time to be on project has been difficult this week. In any event, I like the construction and framing of your RfC proposal: you built upon the solid foundation of your original draft and I think this will get you a clear consensus at whatever discussion space you host the matter at, even if it is WP:VPP and you get a lot of responses. I do have two last subtle recommendations with regard to the wording. First, I would be careful to avoid describing the results of the previous discussion at WikiProject Wrestling as "style guidelines"; this could create confusion and/or objections, as a "guideline" is typically the nomenclature that we reserve for a WP:Guideline as recorded in a policy page after a WP:PROPOSAL process, and even an WP:MoS change requires consensus at a relevant policy talk page per WP:PROPOSAL requirements. I would rather favour "style recommendations" or "a recommend default approach".

My second recommendation is somewhat related to the first: I would alter the wording of the question posed to say: "Should we adopt a default approach of omitting the bulleted list/"In wrestling" section, in favor of its notable content being contextualized in prose when appropriate? The effect of your proposal is really the same regardless, but this wording I feel makes it seem like you are not looking to overreach and throw WP:LOCALCONSENSUS out the window; you merely wish to create a consensus default approach as to the best way to present topics with regard to biographical articles in this area.

The first suggested change I would describe as fairly essential if you want to forestall complaints early in the process. The second suggestion is really more a strategic recommendation that I think will boost your chances in getting a firm consensus, as it is less likely to trigger concerns in editors such as myself who worry about "one size fits all" recommendations; there might not be a single article to which the "default" rule would not apply, but leaving that door open as a conceptual matter may net you more !votes, I think. But that's just my impressionistic observation: take it or leave it! When you do post the discussion, be sure to let me know so I can participate. :) Snow ^{let's rap} 09:51, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment and have adjusted it per your recommendations. Should everything go well, I will post it later today. Thank you again for your assistance throughout this process. Prefall 10:43, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

And done: WP:VPP#Should the "In wrestling" section be removed from professional wrestling articles?. Prefall 15:04, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Donald Trump

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"Mankind"

Please don't take this as some kind of back-talk or challenge to get into further linguistics argumentation; rather, I'm trying to steer the discussion toward a practicality-based and reader-focused one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:08, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: No, not at all! :) I took your pragmatic argument in the spirit I believe it was intended. I did just respond, before I saw this message, but I understand your motivation in wishing to foreground the discussion in terms of easily-accessible common sense. I think it may be inevitable that the discussion will get side-tracked into folk etymology/arguments predicated more in cultural values than science, which is why I've developed a habit for trying to hamper their immersion prophylactically, but it's possible yours is the smarter approach: wait and see if those arguments will actually manifest before trying to grapple with them. Snow ^{let's rap} 00:35, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Aye. I was trying to dispel pseudo-linguisic arguments without wading deep into proper ones, and instead focus on a simpler rationale.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:37, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Re: All-caps

I don't disagree that all caps is not per se disruptive on Wikipedia. The thing about the IP contributor's posts is that it rubbed me the wrong way as patently uncivil, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was about them that was uncivil to me. I didn't think it was that he was being sarcastic or saying other people were basically being stupid, since as you and I both know, that level of discourse is not uncommon among some of our more salty contributors to Wikipedia. Granted, they had a lot more mainspace edits than this apparent WP:SPA, and their arguments tend to be founded in policy rather than bluster, so they likely have a bit more leverage to say such things.

Anyway, I'm tempted to just go to WP:ANI and lodge a WP:NOTHERE complaint, but I think this is a case where it's best to just let the rope do its thing. Nonetheless I appreciate the clarity you've brought to this situation.--WaltCip (talk) 11:14, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, WaltCip--I appreciate the comment and the understanding of the intended narrowness of my caveat. :) For what it's worth, I think you're right that this is a pretty cut and dry WP:NOTHERE situation, and I intend to take the matter to an admin myself with the recommendation of a GS block if the IP does not heed the most recent wave of warnings about the ceaseless PAs directed at various editors in that thread; like you, I wanted to give just a little more rope (along with some additional info to help them consider a more constructive route), but I would be lying if I said I was optimistic that they will abort their current course in favour of principled discussion. Still, I think there's an outside chance that some of the comments made in trying to reach the IP may be received more thoughtfully, and with better chance of positive outcome, by others who may be visiting from SquaredCircle. Snow ^{let's rap} 11:35, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Driveby comment: A WP:CIR argument can be made (two, perhaps): 1) Anyone who doesn't understand that ALL-CAPS IN THREADED MESSAGING IS INTERPRETED AS SCREAMING cannot work their way into our collaborative editing environment; 2) anyone who can't figure out how the capslock key works and leave it off cannot be trusted to edit our article content.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:24, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Eh, if you want to try to sell that to the community, it's your headache! But I think there's a reason for the balance that was struck at WP:TPG of strongly recommending against over-use of caps without outright prohibiting them or even attempting to set clear metrics for how much of it can occur. It's just too subjective and context-sensitive, the question of when someone is being emphatic vs. bombastic. AND YOU SHOULD REALLY LISTEN TO ME BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT DO YOU HEAR?!!!!?!!!!!!....

...

...!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)Snow ^{let's rap} 20:22, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah. That's almost. As. Annoying. As. This.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:20, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

@WaltCip and SMcCandlish: Just so you are both aware and don't trouble yourselves with redundant reports: I've asked for an admin to make a GS assessment of the situation. Snow ^{let's rap} 21:01, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Wow. If I had sat down to try to script out an exaggerated exchange to exemplify WP:IDHT and WP:EBUR, I think it could have been this, word for word. I'm going to have to remember what a patient and unflappable admin Ian is. Snow ^{let's rap} 21:44, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Infobox criminal

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Please comment on Talk:Donald Trump

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Please comment on Talk:Elon Musk

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Trump & Jerry

Re [3], unless there is some nuance I'm missing, such arguments are not uncommon from experienced editors, particularly Trump-supporting experienced editors. I don't mean to single anybody out, but here is just one typical example still on the page, which was supported 9 minutes later by a different experienced editor. If "relatively new" editors do it, they are only following the example of many of their elders. Somehow the counters to those arguments never look much like yours, possibly because the other side is also guilty of allowing personal analysis ("editorial judgment") to play far too great a part in their arguments. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:27, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Yup, if I am to be perfectly honest, I've been gobsmacked, in my most recent responses to RfC notices there in particular, by the sheer volume of completely free-wheeling WP:original research and general application of "it seems to me" style arguments completely disconnected from the policy-requisite WP:WEIGHT analysis. And you are quite right that newcomers (SPAs or not) can be forgiven for leaping to such arguments; after-all, there's nothing particularly obvious or intuitive about the "your own opinion doesn't matter here" standard of our content policies, so this is exactly what new editors are inclined to do, especially if they came to the talk page specifically for the purpose of WP:righting great wrongs.

Honestly, I'm at a loss as to how to remedy the situation. I've tried to engineer the WEIGHT/NPOV/NOR points into all of my responses to threads I've replied to where I've seen previous OR !votes in said thread. Which is to say, all of those which I have personally had occasion to respond to recently. I was a little long-winded in that latest one not only because I wanted to AGF on our new editor friend that they would adopt community standards (hard to say if that will take hold, given all of their edits to date are Trump-specific and leaning in one direction, suggesting a WP:NOTHERE disposition, but plenty of editors start out that way and still take community standards on board as soon as they are explained, I would like to hope), but also because I hoped the explicit reminder might jog the memory of other editors on that page who have clearly forgotten that WP:OR does not permit them to decide for themselves what is important or accurate information, even on such an emotionally charged subject as Donald Trump. Short of that, I don't know what else can be done; the article is saturated with editors who are clearly on one side of Trump divide or the other and willing to depart from normal content policies where necessary to stamp "the truth" on matters, so none of the normal remedies suffice. Even our usual best-chance curing strategies like RfC fail to get discussion substantially re-centered on neutral and objective content approaches.

This whole situation has become a bit of a puzzle/thought experiment for me the last couple of weeks. In the past seven years or so, I've made RfC a major component of my work on the encyclopedia; I estimate that I spend upwards of 20% of my time on the project responding to notices and in that time I've answered somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand RfCs, almost all through random notice. In the first five years of doing that, I was never once summoned to the same article twice, nor even to very closely related articles. In the less than two years since Trump's election, I have been summoned to articles about Trump and his administration constantly. In the last three weeks alone, I've gotten notice to Donald Trump itself twice. I guess there should really be no surprise that articles on Trump should have risen meteorically to become the most divisive on the project, as this just tracks with our new reality as world citizens. But with the last few notices I've received, I've begun to notice something more troubling than just the time commitments that these disputes require of the community, which can sometimes be lengthy, but which do have an eventually end date. Specifically, I've begun to worry that there is a new class of edit warrior being generated by these articles, either in the form of SPAs or more veteran editors who have adopted "fight fire with fire" tactics that are becoming engrained. In other words, I think these articles, where WP:OR standards have eroded, are becoming breeding grounds for disruptive editing that would persist even if Donald Trump left office tomorrow, with potentially unbounded consequences for the enforcement of neutrality standards on the project.

As I say, over the last few weeks, after my responses to the related articles, I've puzzled over what can be done to mitigate these problems, contemplating (and mostly rejecting as unfeasible or WP:SNOW-bound) the idea of a number of novel new mechanisms or tools for addressing the problems. I must confess, I have bupkis to show for my pontification, in terms of workable solutions. The best half-measure I cna think of would be a quota on how many times (and/or how many kb) a single user can contribute to the talk page in a given span of time, and even that prospective approach has substantial drawbacks/complications, to say nothing of the complexity of getting it passed by a community which has general always allowed editors to contribute as much as they want to a given article, until a strong showing of disruption can be demonstrated.

Complicating matters further is the fact that I don't really want to be involved in that article, at all. Like most people on planet Earth right now, whatever their political and ideological leanings, I spend way to much of time as is having to think about Donald Trump, what he has recently done, and what he might do next. The last thing I want to do is spend time on-project doing the same thing, when I come here mostly to edit scientific, historical, and artistic topics. I have to assume that the same is true of most editors, whether they support Trump and his policies or are wholesale opposed to them. Which is a part of the problem: the editors who are least inclined towards breaking with WP:NPOV regarding Trump are the same ones who get exhausted with the sheer volume of POV pushing there. Meanwhile, the true believers/most zealous advocates view presenting Trump and the new right in the "correct" light (whatever sources say) to be a moral and personal obligation, and will quite happily spend all of their on-project time for that purpose, and make still more time for it if necessary. And because there are so many of them acting in the same way (albeit with often very different aims and priorities), it becomes effectively impossible to isolate any one editor for community restraint, even with discretionary sanctions covering the relevant articles, per WP:ARBAP2. Since I got those last two notices, I've managed to maintain just enough willpower to keep coming back every few days to check the talk page, just because I am so concerned about the complete abandon with regard to original research there, but my steam is personally running out. The community needs a solution to the problems, but honestly, it's such a convoluted gordian knot of issues, I don't even know what forum to raise it in that might produce workable solutions.

All of which is my TLDR/"thanks for giving me the opportunity to voice my thoughts, but they honestly go nowhere" way of saying: yeeeeeesh! Snow ^{let's rap} 09:34, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

See my related comments at Wikipedia:Village_pump (policy)#Not a democracy?. They were not specific to the AP2 area, but I made the mistake of mentioning it as an example. I withdrew when the discussion became about AP2, then rejoined when one editor brought it back to my thesis, now at the bottom of the thread. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:03, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

I've commented there. The scope of the problems you raise is so large, I don't if the discussion can do much but chase its own tail until broken into more manageable bits, if I am honest, but I've given my thoughts on the general outline of what would have to happen if your general proposal of a group of editors vested with increased policy authority was to be adopted. Snow ^{let's rap} 12:24, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

WEIGHT is a good example. Sometimes one source is enough for inclusion, other times 20 sources are insufficient, the difference entirely a matter of editorial judgment. We count editorial judgments and call that consensus. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:59, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that is a point I have tried to emphasize in my own responses on the talk page. So long as the views expressed are predicated in due weight, I am very conservative on a page like that about discounting countervailing views. After-all, with a topic like Donald Trump, where the sources are so numerous and so difficult to parse, I anticipate and accept the inevitability of a wide range of perspectives. Some of those views are going to be more obviously predicated in bias (including confirmation bias), while other variances may be down to which sources were encountered by which editors (in which number, and in which sequence), but I try not to take any conclusion I read in the sources for granted. And even if I stand incredulous of the conclusions reached by some parties, I still credit perspectives as reasonable (given the corpus of sourcing and complexity of the analysis), provided they avoid original research and stay focused on how to construct content in conformity with the sources. But when half the editors in any given thread are so laissez-faire about NPOV that they are not even trying to obscure their personal thinking behind cherry-picked sources but instead openly forwarding their own take on things, it's not just impossible/against policy to accept the proffered editorial theory, it greatly (indeed, in most cases, fatally) complicates the process of reaching a stable consensus. Snow ^{let's rap} 11:22, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Disappearance of Asha Degree

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

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Please comment on Talk:Andrew Brunson

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NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. ()

Hello Snow Rise, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

June backlog drive

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.

New technology, new rules

• New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
• Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
• Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.

Editathons

• Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

The Signpost

• The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

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The Signpost: 31 July 2018

• From the editor: If only if

• Op-ed: The last leg of the Admin Ship's current cruise

• Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality

• News and notes: Another newspaper for Wikipedia; Wikimania 2018 ends; changes at NPR

• In the media: Blackouts in Europe; Wikipedia and capitalists; WMF Jet Set

• Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals

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• Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes

• Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else

• Technology report: New bots, new prefs

• Gallery: Independence days, national holidays, and football – all in July

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Please comment on Talk:Joan Freeman (Irish psychologist)

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film

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Please comment on Talk:Albert Cashier

You have previously participated in discussions about the use of gendered pronouns in the biography of Albert Cashier. An Rfc about this topic is taking place at Talk:Albert Cashier, and your comments are welcome. Mathglot (talk) 18:38, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Philip II of Spain

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If you have time

Hello Snow Rise. You have advocated for talk page discussion based on sourced references - a core WP principle to which we should always adhere. If you have time, please have a look at this thread "Birtherism in the lede" at the Donald Trump article. There appears to be a swarm of personal opinion and OR there and perhaps you can help sort it out as an uninvolved editor. SPECIFICO talk 13:48, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Mohammad bin Salman

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Vision - how do photos work to enable perception

Was wondering if you can pick up on "the higher-level neuroscience, cognitive psychology and metaphysics of the perception are where I will pick up tomorrow. Hope the first part helps for now!"

This is what you had: "Since no one has yet spoken to the biophysical, neurophysiological and cognitive mechanisms at work with regard to your latter set of questions (regarding what happens once the light enters the eye), and seeing as visual cognition is an area in which I have expertise, I will pick up the description from there. However, owing to time constraints, I may explain this process in small installments over the next couple of days, as this is a deeply complex set of topics--though I will try to keep discussion concentrated on the most top-level processes and try not get caught up in the weeds on the chemistry and neuroscience. Photons enter the eye through the optic lens, which, in the human eye, is controlled by muscles which flex it in order to focus the light on different portions of the retina, which absorbs the photon. Amongst the matter absorbing these photons are photoreceptive cells, rods and cone cells. These cells are preferentially sensitive to light of varying wavelengths and intensity (see also Photometry (optics) and Luminance). The absorption of photonic energy catalyzes a reaction in a receptive protein molecule, of class known as opsins, creating a chain reaction of protein activity for the purposes of cell signaling. The degree and duration of this stimulus either excites or inhibits the cell, towards a threshold where the cell will be more or less inclined to fire, sending a bioelectrical signal to another kind of specialized nerve cell, as the first step of relaying the signal that carries information as to what has happened with that particular receptor into the optic nerve and ultimately into the brain, where the combined stimulus of all the receptors is amalgamated, filtered and processed to create visual perception and the subjective experience of vision" Thanks. 67.175.224.138 (talk) 12:34, 23 August 2018 (UTC).

Hello again, 67...138: I don't see why not. But can you remind me of the nature of your initial inquiry--what brought discussion to the topic of the biophysics and cognitive science of visual perception? It could help me to narrow and frame my response a bit to serve your needs. For example, are you more interested in the neurophysiology, or in the qualitative analysis of the phenomena of perception as through the lens of cognitive psychology and such? Of course I'll certainly provide a bit of both, but a notion of the basis for your interest would help me choose an angle to best address your curiosity. Snow ^{let's rap} 05:46, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Yea I guess both will do. Thanks. 67.175.224.138 (talk) 01:17, 7 September 2018 (UTC).

Please comment on Talk:James Randi

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Talk:Keith Ellison

Is there any way I could convince you to move your 6-paragraph reply in the straw poll at Talk:Keith Ellison to the discussion section? VQuakr (talk) 15:58, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, I kind of like keeping my initial thoughts, as they apply to my own take on the editorial issue, in the !vote section so as to isolate my own initial thoughts from any further discussion which may be the consequence of response to others and the usual discussion back-and-forth. I know there's a feeling amongst some that lengthy comments mask the responses of others, but honestly I've never felt that was the case. On the other hand, I appreciate it when someone takes the time to come to come to my talk page to make requests in a friendly manner, so let me take a look at the comments and see if there is any way I can disentangle the main thrust of my argument from the more long-winded elements (assuming no one has responded to them yet) and maybe I can move the bulk the discussion section below. No promises, but I'll eyeball it. Snow ^{let's rap} 02:02, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the 2nd look; all the best! VQuakr (talk) 14:23, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2018

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WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 12

Newsletter • August 2018

This month: WikiProject X: The resumption

Work has resumed on WikiProject X and CollaborationKit, backed by a successfully funded Project Grant. For more information on the current status and planned work, please see this month's issue of the newsletter!

-— Isarra ༆ 22:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

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NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018

Hello Snow Rise, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.

Project news

• The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.

As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.

• There are a number of coordination tasks for New Page Patrol that could use some help from experienced reviewers. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination#Coordinator tasks for more info to see if you can help out.

Other

• A new summary page of reliable sources has been created; Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources, which summarizes existing RfCs or RSN discussions about regularly used sources.

Moving to Draft and Page Mover

• Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
• If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
• Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
• The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js^(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
• The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.

List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing

Twinkle provides a lot of the same functionality as the page curation tools, and some reviewers prefer to use the Twinkle tools for some/all tasks. It can be activated simply in the gadgets section of 'preferences'. There are also a lot of options available at the Twinkle preferences panel after you install the gadget. In terms of other gadgets for NPR, HotCat is worth turning on. It allows you to easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions. MoreMenu also adds a bunch of very useful links for diagnosing and fixing page issues. User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js(info): Installing scripts doesn't have to be complicated. Go to your common.js and copy importScript( 'User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js' ); into an empty line, now you can install all other scripts with the click of a button from the script page! (Note you need to be at the ".js" page for the script for the install button to appear, not the information page) User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js(info): Creates a scrolling new pages list at the left side of the page. You can change the number of pages shown by adding the following to the next line on your common.js page (immediately after the line importing this script): npp_num_pages=20; (Recommended 20, but you can use any number from 1 to 50). User:Primefac/revdel.js(info): Is requesting revdel complicated and time consuming? This script helps simplify the process. Just have the Copyvio source URL and go to the history page and collect your diff IDs and you can drop them into the script Popups and it will create a revdel request for you. User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js(info): Creates a "Page Curation" link to Special:NewPagesFeed up near your sandbox link. User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js: Creates links next to the title of each page which show up if it has been previously deleted or nominated for deletion. User:Evad37/rater.js(info): A fantastic tool for adding WikiProject templates to article talk pages. If you add: rater_autostartNamespaces = 0; to the next line on your common.js, the prompt will pop up automatically if a page has no Wikiproject templates on the talk page (note: this can be a bit annoying if you review redirects or dab pages commonly).

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Please comment on Talk:Roseanne Barr

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Talk:Mohammad bin Salman

Hi Snow Rise, appreciate you might be waiting for others to chip in on this thread but I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the points in my last post there if you’ve had time to look at it some more (also appreciate it’s quite a time-consuming discussion). You’ll see the RfC on the Human rights subsection has now been closed – the first point of the closing statement isn’t right in my view and I’ve messaged the editor on that. Thanks for your input on this so far. Tarafa15 (talk) 13:16, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tarafa--yes, to be honest, I was waiting to see if any additional perspectives would be forthcoming before commenting further, but as the RfC has now been closed and further discussion has not taken place for some while on the second thread, I'm happy to review the matter again and provide whatever further input I can. But you'll have to be patient with me, as the next few days (and life in general on this end) are packed moment to moment with obligations, and as I recall, there were a fair few moving parts to the questions raised. So it may take me longer than usual to find enough time for a cogent response. Snow ^{let's rap} 05:11, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Snow Rise, thanks for getting back and yes of course I fully understand. There is a bit to iron out on that issue but I hope we’ll have a chance to in time. Just on the RfCs, the third one has been closed for a while but as a COI I can’t act on the consensus on the second point there. And the first two don’t seem to be getting much more attention after being relisted. Also there are two other threads (Issues with recent edit to intro and New paragraph in Human rights section) which have been there for a few weeks and could do with some attention at some point. Can you think of anyone else who might want to take a look in the meantime? Thanks again. Tarafa15 (talk) 13:50, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Tarafa15, I wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten your request; I've had only spare bits of free time for the project this last week, and almost every minute of it went towards another editorial matter requiring some immediate attention. I'll return to Mohammad bin Salman as the next thing on my list, hopefully tonight. Snow ^{let's rap} 17:30, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Snow Rise, I realize I didn’t respond to this at the time although our discussion then moved on. There’s been some activity on the page in the last day or so including some non-consensus edits by an IP (see here and here and here – all reverted). I’ve made points previously about the material the IP deleted of course and those views are reflected in the drafts I’ve been working on as our discussion has progressed. (I’ve also just posted here regarding the alleged Qatar invasion paragraph.) You may have seen I also responded on this thread and I hope you might have a moment at some point to take a view on my suggestions here – there are a few things to look that there but I hope we’re more or less agreed on the need for some updates to the Controversies section along these lines at any rate. Many thanks. Tarafa15 (talk) 19:13, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tarafa; I've commented on the talk page regarding today's additions; those issues had relatively few moving parts and I think the solutions are pretty straight-forward and easy to discern under policy. I know you are still waiting for me to weigh in-on/implement the large revision and I promise I will make an effort to do so ASAP, but work obligations have severely curtailed my Wiki time this week, so you'll have to endure my snail's pace on adding that content just a slight bit longer; I appreciate the patience on the talk page and hope to get the edits live soon. Snow ^{let's rap} 01:37, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Snow, sure completely understand. Regarding that new thread, the sentence on the response to the missile attack is actually one of the ones I’ve attempted to sort out using stats from the UN. There are moving parts for sure but I hope it’s not all that much – Controversies, which we’ve discussed; intro, which we haven’t but my original post on it could have been simpler if I’m honest – my second to last in the long thread (Oct 4 12:42) is more helpful perhaps; and then one or two more additions and adjustments which I hope are relatively straightforward compared with the rest. Thank you very much for keeping it on your list. Tarafa15 (talk) 19:56, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Snow Rise, thanks for your continued input on this page. You may not have seen it but I’m not sure this edit makes much sense given it means we now have the same incident twice in the space of about 200 words (even the same phrase - “Following (a/the) Houthi missile attack against Riyadh in December 2017, which was intercepted by Saudi air defense”). I would try and discuss it with the editor as per WP:BRD but I can't help noticing they don’t seem to discuss anything much. I've also posted on this thread regarding a possible addition to the Vision 2030 section plus a possible edit to the Philanthropy section. Thanks. Tarafa15 (talk) 15:21, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: just pinging you here in case you missed the one above. Tarafa15 (talk) 12:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tarafa, I did miss the first and while I got the second, I got mired in some other stuff and neglected to respond. I'll take a look at the newest prooposal first chance I get, probably tonight. Snow ^{let's rap} 17:34, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Tom O'Carroll

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Please comment on Talk:Mohammad bin Salman

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Please comment on Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard

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The Signpost: 1 October 2018

• From the editor: Is this the new normal?

• News and notes: European copyright law moves forward

• In the media: Knowledge under fire

• Discussion report: Interface Admin policy proposal, part 2

• Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbcom

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Please comment on Talk:Andrei Radu

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Please comment on Talk:Keanu Reeves

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NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello Snow Rise, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Backlog

As of 21 October 2018, there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.

Community Wishlist Proposal

• There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
• Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!

Project updates

• ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
• There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.

New scripts

• User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js^(info) — A new script created for quickly placing {{copyvio-revdel}} on a page.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Leo Tolstoy

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Get a clue

Stop and think before the next time you address me. You've been saying a lot of needlessly hostile things to me. Jehochman ^Talk 12:28, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Barnstar for ANI

I moved the barnstar to the next section because if the "Ad hominem at homonym" section is not archived right after the "IP posting 'porn'" section, the barnstar will be split off. I moved it for posterity. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 01:04, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Feel free to move it back to the way I had it. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 01:05, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi SemiHypercube; thanks for the move and for the explanation. I'm guess I'm a little out of date in my understand of the mechanics of the archive bots: why exactly will the template not archive along with the "IP posting 'porn'" section? Does the fact that barnstar is encapsulated in a template cause the bot to recognize it as a part of the thread in which it was placed? Anyway, what I think I will do is leave the star where it is so that I am sure Mjolnir sees it, and then I will make a note to manually move it to the right thread after the archiving. In any event, thank you much for the courtesy edit! Snow ^{let's rap} 01:12, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

PS, love the name! Snow ^{let's rap} 01:12, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

It wouldn't even make a difference if the barnstar were not in a template, the barnstar might be split off because when a thread is archived, it takes everything until the next section header, or the end of the page. (so the barnstar was part of the "IP..." thread, not "Ad hominem...") Also, ANI isn't archived by a bot (at least I don't think it is. It appears to all be human users.) And I moved it back to my version, since you sound okay with it. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 01:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

• I caught a gander of it, and as they say, it's the thought that counts, so by all means, move it wherever it works best.

P.S. I think from your comment above and the note inside the barnstar that it was for my little spy thriller (BTW, there's an Easter egg for any fans of that at the top of my talk page, now), but I think SemiHypercube might be under the impression that it was for the "ad hominem at homonym" thread. Which, for the record, is equally deserving of a barnstar IMHO. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:15, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I see the source of the confusion now; indeed, SemiHypercube the barnstar was intended for Mjolnr in the the thread addressing the porn vandal, not the "ad hominem/homonym" thread. That's why I was a bit confused by the comment; I was scratching my head trying to figure out why it wouldn't be archived by the bot with the thread it was in, and assumed you were telling me something about a bug caused by the template syntax. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:27, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Proud Boys

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Your comments at ANI

I'd just like to say that I respect the views of people like GMG, who form carefully thought out opinions based on what they read and what they can discover. I respect them even when I disagree with them (and I didn't actually disagree with much of anything GMG said there). I even went and commented on GMG's talk page to let them know that I heard them.

But I will never respect the opinions of people who insist that they know what other people were thinking, who invent and add highly dishonest implications to statements made by others which they can't even be bothered to research the context of, who use "petty personal attacks" (not my words, but those of an editor who saw you editing through a close and alerted me to it) and who otherwise engage in such meaningless tactics when disagreeing with me (or really, anyone) about something. During that drama about my edit notice a while back, I defended you based on the assumption that you were approaching me in good faith. You immediately discredited my assumption, and have since done nothing to reconfirm it. Indeed, your comment at ANI seems to demonstrate much the same, which is disappointing, if hardly surprising. Your predictions don't bother me, your threats do not, either. Honestly, you've a lot of work to do if you ever want me to take you seriously, and since I highly doubt that you have even the slightest interest in doing so, I'll not bother telling you what you'd need to do differently. The information is already in this comment, anyways, should you care to look.

For the record, I'm not watching this page. I won't respond to a ping, either. I'm not interested in discussing anything with you because you've given me every reason to devalue your opinion. I just wanted to respond to what I felt was a very dirty tactic (you posted your edit an hour after Simon's close and I don't believe for one second it took you that long to write it). ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:37, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Actually, it did in fact take me that long to write; I consider my words very carefully when it comes to community standards of conduct, and it's not exactly my shortest post ever. Some of your language in your above post is both confusing and worrisome to me. You seem to needlessly personalize any commentary which you feel reflects negatively upon you, which frankly I think is part of the pattern that people were discussing at ANI, well before I added my post. You use the word "tactic" repeatedly above, as if to suggest that my aim was to "get you" and/or that I was previously involved with the matter. Neither of those things is true. I'm not sure what reversion discussion you are referencing. (If you provide a diff to a comment you found inappropriate from that discussion, I'd be happy to discuss it; contrary to your assumption, I don't mind discussing any differences of opinion). But I can honestly say I only recall one specific occasion of encountering/interacting with you on this project before yesterday, and as I recall that was an ANI thread years ago in which I was also uninvolved in the underlying dispute (I recall it was a conduct complaint regarding an article about fallacies, but not the specifics). Certainly nothing that would in any way cause me to be "on the look out" for you.

More to the point, my comments (which were my first post and only post in an already long thread) were not meant for the purposes of encouraging a sanction against you, but to push back against comments from others that were attempting to advance a fringe but increasingly incessant expression of conduct standards which I believe threaten to undermine the integrity of one of our pillar polices, and the stability of the collaborative process on our project. That is why you will notice I never used your name once. I felt that the expression of laissez-faire attitudes to personal attacks was worrisome and as a community member concerned about those standards, I spoke up, but I quite intentionally spoke about the problem in systemic terms, of which the present conduct was just a part of the pattern. And just to be clear about this, my concerns regarded one of the presented diffs in particular. I personally think every one of those comments did violate WP:CIVILITY, but one of them also has WP:NPA implications, and not a trivial sort:

"...you should go fuck yourself and pray to whatever deity you worship that we never meet in person."

I'm sorry, but I just don't think I'm adding anything by "implication" there that isn't already apparent to anyone who is likely to have read it. You made a threat of physical violence. Whether you intended that threat to be received as credible or realistic is not dispositive as to whether or not it is acceptable under this project's conduct standards: WP:NPA and the overwhelming consensus of this community since it's earliest days says that this is unacceptable and that editors who flout this prohibition must either find a way to regulate this behaviour or be shown the door. And it doesn't encourage the community to believe these behaviours won't repeat when you react super aggressively to anyone who raises concerns about them, frankly.

And I get it, there's context here (I find it hard to be patient with someone who I think is advancing a bigoted argument too, so believe me, I take that into account) but at the end of the day, there's still lines we, your community of fellow contributors, ask you to not cross, even when facing individuals who you find (or event those who simply are) unsavory themselves. And don't think that it doesn't wear on all of us. In the last couple of months alone I've had to deal with racist commentary, oh so much misogyny, and a group of pro-paedophile activists trying to use this site as a platform for their belief that child sexual abuse can be beneficial for the victim. So yes, dear colleague, I understand the feeling of being at my wits-end with such nonsense or outright ugliness. But even with all of that, I've managed to make it the better part of a decade with the project without ever making a threat of physical intimidation. I've also never felt it was appropriate or useful to tell someone to "go fuck yourself", for what it's worth. And I don't apologize for my belief that every editor needs to tow the line in respect to our conduct policies in this regard.

I'm sorry you feel beleaguered by my voicing this opinion, but please try to understand that it is about more than you. This is about how we keep this community functioning and why we adopted WP:CIV, WP:NPA (which includes a prohibition against threats), and yes, even WP:NOTFREESPEECH. Nobody can insist you be a saint, but we do expect you to abide by some brightline rules. One of those you blew right past. And while I did not comment (whatever your instincts suggest to you) for the purpose of targeting you in particular, I will speak up on this project whenever I see editors expressing an attitude towards our policies and community consensus which would degrade our prohibitions against violent speech, and I don't feel that much differently about just plain angry and incivil speech. This, alas, applies even to editors who we appreciate for bringing the fun on other occasions. But there's nothing personal in any of this, nor was I pushing for a sanction against you or anyone in particular, so I'm not sure where you got any "threat" out of my thoughts (you'll have to quote me directly to clarify that, if you are inclined). I stand by every word of what I said, but I don't discount the possibility that we can have a meeting of the minds about any of this and find some common ground in our perspectives. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:02, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I saw your self-reverted edit, and read through it. It's much more nuanced, and much better written, and it lead me back here to your response, which is also much more palatable. Let me say a few things:

First, I apologize for assuming we'd come into conflict previously. I was wrong. I mistook you for another admin who'd said some cringeworthy things on my talk page a while back, got put on blast for it by a couple of other editors, and then turned around and accused me of bad faith editing in response to me defending them from the other editors. You could look up that situation if you want, but i don't want to point fingers and name names. Suffice it to say, I mis-remembered that admin as being you, and I was wrong. Again, I apologize for that.

I also apologize for the adversarial tone I took in response to your first comment. Though I believe my response was justified based on my reading of your comment, it seems quite unjustified in light of your intention in writing it. I'm not going to blame you entirely for the misunderstanding, either. I think my frame of mind had a substantive impact on how I read it. I was in a pissy mood (and had had it described to me as a "petty personal attack filled rant" just before reading it). There's almost no chance I didn't take some of it the wrong way.

Second, I don't want to re-hash the problems I with your first post, but I do want to say that it does not bear any resemblance to your followup. Your second post at ANI and your response here were both thoughtful and, for the most part, I agree with them. I wish you had posted something more akin to that the first time around, but I'm not going to berate you for it further. I do appreciate that you responded by clarifying your meaning, instead of following my lead into the flames. You were the better man in that, I don't mind admitting.

Finally, I'd like to more dispassionately and clearly respond to this:

I'm sorry, but I just don't think I'm adding anything by "implication" there that isn't already apparent to anyone who is likely to have read it. You made a threat of physical violence. Yes, that was (or rather, contained) a conditional threat of violence. I'm not disputing that, and I've already acknowledged that it was a bad idea and agreed not to do it again.

The implication I said you added to it was the notion that I was threatening to track someone down. You never explicitly claimed I did so, but you paraphrased my comment as that sort of threat more than once, and responded to that sort of threat, as well.

In no way, shape or form was that comment of mine intended to suggest that I intended to, or would ever track someone down. Nor, upon me re-reading it, can I find any hint of that meaning.

I generally associate the notion of tracking people down with the Navy SEAL copypasta. As you might imagine, I find the accusation that I threatened to track someone down rather insulting.

In many respects, it's more of a warning to any out-and-out nazi editors not to bother tracking me down. It's also a bit of an intentionally hyperbolic "Well, anyone want to defend the holocaust NOW, HUH HUH?" statement which is mostly humorous. I usually try to find phrasings that have multiple meanings, such that it doesn't matter how people read them, they will be correct. However, as should be clear right now to both of us, this is an uphill battle. There are always interpretations that will never occur to a person writing something.

But now I'm getting back into complaining about your first comment, and that's not my point in writing this. Here's my point:

Your followup comments seem to come from a much more mature, collected and thoughtful place. I've read both of them, and I'm satisfied that the points you make therein are worth considering. I'm also willing to acknowledge that you were, in fact, attempting to convey substantially the same ideas in your first comment, even if they didn't come across, and that the miscommunication there likely had as much to do with me reading it while already irked as it did with the way you phrased it.

Your followups are very clear, very thoughtful, and probably deserve an extended response, which is difficult for me to give right now, because I've already said so much here. Please, feel free to ping me if you would like me to respond to the points in your followup comments more directly. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:10, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi again, Mjolnir. I'm very glad we can finish this discussion in an amicable way. I'm especially happy that your comments suggest that you believe me when I say that my concerns were not meant to be focused entirely on you. The nature of process at ANI is such that discussion of long-term priorities, complexities, and concerns invariably get bound up with specific conduct discussions. As such, while it was not my intention, I can see how you might have felt, by the end of that thread and my long capstone comment in particular, that you were being held accountable for much more than your own conduct. But as I hope is now evident, I was rather attempting to build off GMG's comment to discuss why I think the culture of our perspectives on PA's has changed a bit, and why I think its not necessarily for the better. I care a great deal for WP:CIV; while there are other policies which are more essential to the editorial process directly, none of them can operate without WP:CIVILITY easing the deadlocks. I think we could all do a bit more to try to keep it in mind in our interactions--even when we are convinced that we've been pretty damn good about it already (which we all think, of course!). However, I recognize that, because conduct threads at ANI come loaded with emotion before the first word is even typed, there is latent potential for a level of criticism to be perceived that is substantially beyond that which was intended--and accordingly, we must be willing to forgive eachother misunderstandings. And if we can agree (or even respectfully disagree) at the end of the day, that is what matters most.

I'm also glad to know that you didn't mean that comment to be taken as a genuine threat--though to be clear, I always understood that your phrasing was largely as emphasis to your broader point. But as we all mostly seem to agree at this point in the discussion, the potential for problems is still there even in that context, so as one community member to another, let me say I appreciate you being willing to say explicitly that you're mindful to avoid it in the future. Let's face it, its just plain awkward to find a way to say you agree with someone after spending a while disagreeing with them. It's not even always a matter of pride; the human brain just doesn't tolerate reconciling adversarial discussion in that way very well. So it says something important about a person when they make it a priority to do so anyway.

Lastly, I'm sorry to hear that you are facing some stressors in your life. Between demands from my professional life that have never been greater, and some hardships and frightening times we have had to face in this household, the last couple of years have been among the hardest of my life. People tend to think that you would check out of a volunteer project at a time like that, and though its true that I haven't been able to commit nearly the time I once did, I found that my time I have been able to spend meant more to me than ever. When life is presenting you with problems that have no certain solutions and no way of knowing how long before you will know how they will turn out, something like Wikipedia with relatively small goals can seem a sublime distraction by comparison. But then when the process turns sour, as things just invariably do here sometimes, it's not always easy to try to present your best self. I hope that your current concerns are not long-term ones and that things improve for you quickly.

Thanks for taking the time to respond here; as to your inquiry, please feel free to comment further on my own previous statements (or not) as your circumstances and inclinations determine; as I said before, the topic is one of importance to me and I am always open to talking about it at some length. If you don't have an inclination or find the time, I hope our next interaction finds us on better terms from the start. Ciao! Snow ^{let's rap} 20:30, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

One thing that I would like to say is that I agree that WP:CIV is one of the most important policies we have. I want to start from that, because it needs to be clear that I'm not attacking that policy when I say that I believe that enforcement of WP:CIV should be done with at light a hand as is reasonable (not "as light as possible").

The reason for this is because, well, we're all human. As such, we're all pushed by our very instincts to attack anyone who seems to be attacking us. I guarantee you that every single editor with more than a thousand or so edits has made at least one personal attack. Some of them will have disguised this as advice or criticism of an argument. The vast majority will have simply insulted someone because they felt it justified. So no-one is innocent.

Another reason is that it's much more efficient for us as a project to deliver the message "get over it" to an aggrieved party than it is to deliver the message "never do that again" to an offending party. The former can be repeated verbatim ad-nauseum. The latter requires constant escalation in order to be effective. So the former carries the risk of offended editors leaving the site, and the latter will inevitably result in a wide variety of editors (with a wide variety of values to the site, including very valuable editors) being blocked from editing. Taking a risk management approach to this, (and taking into consideration the rate of new editors joining the site) it's rather clear that heavy-handed enforcement of our civility policy would be harmful, and possibly even fatal to this project, over the long term.

But with a light touch, we can have a different outcome. Especially when we rarely, if ever, acknowledge that we are intentionally doing so (this seems to me to be the case right now). First, the fact that we still have (and emphasize as one of the core pillars) our civility policy keeps the threat of sanctions there, for anyone thinking of breaching it or who realized that a recent comment of their breached it. And the fact that some admins will immediately block anyone making a clear enough personal attack will keep that threat alive in editor's minds. So we will tend to avoid directly insulting anyone, and think twice before we engage it out and out disrespectfulness.

The second thing that supports the "light touch" approach is that it encourages discussion of what our civility policy means. Rather than a quick back and forth over whether something is uncivil, instead, we end up discussing how uncivil it is. That may be a bit more frustrating to editors like me who absolutely despise anything that looks like drama, but even I can't deny that produces much more understanding than not engaging in that discussion would. It gives us a lot more leeway to use our best judgement, because we have to rely on our judgement, and we can't just point to the behavior under discussion and treat it as the simple algorithm:

if (!Edit.WasCivil()) Block(); else DontBlock();

Another consideration is this: Editors who get used to having to ignore low-level incivility because they're more likely to catch a boomerang warning for reporting it are more likely to simply ignore such low-level incivility and continue doing good work in the future. In other words, allowing the low-level stuff to fly helps inoculate us to the potentially damaging effects of the more serious incivility. To be fair, this carries some risk of minimizing the more serious stuff. There will be long term editors who will eventually come to the conclusion that they can do whatever they want. This is partially what happened to me (though I'd say it was a fairly minor influence, hardly visible next to the recent rise in my own stress levels, which I agree is my problem and not anyone else's). I knew damn well that cursing another editor out for doing something stupid on my talk page was generally acceptable. I then did not consider the effect of me doing so with frequency.

But the risk of that is not so bad. After all, by the time an editor has been around long enough to get numbed to it, they've also been around long enough to know where the community will draw the line. Again, using myself as an example: I knew from the get-go that the thread would be closed with a warning to me. I knew I wouldn't be sanctioned because the vast majority of the diffs provided were on my edit page, and of me reverting other editors. I could have dug up the diffs to prove some pretty severe provocation, and then pointed out that I used my "fuck offs" in lieu of ANI reports or requests from admins to handle things. I could have pointed out that the odds of a nazi-editor meeting me in real life were so low that anyone taking the threat seriously was out of touch with reality, and I could have emailed a bunch of users whom I knew would defend me to weigh in. The outcome would have been the same, if not better for me.

But I've been here long enough to know that simply saying "My bad. I'll try harder" is the quickest way to end such a thread (even if it means that I actually have to try harder to avoid the next, inevitable such thread turning against me). I've also been around here long enough to recognize that, though I would almost certainly have "won" the debate, my opponents nonetheless had a point: I'd seriously ramped up my grumpiness in the past few months. To be fair, I didn't count on the re-opening, but even that surprise didn't change anything. So the worst-case scenario to come out of the risk of getting numbed to incivility just happened, and in the grand scheme of things, it was barely a blip on the radar.

The final reason we should enforce things with a light touch is momentum. Low-intensity methods have a way of not building up much momentum; it's possible to ramp them up when needed. But high-intensity methods tend to develop a momentum over time. If we start strictly enforcing WP:CIV, then after a few months or a year, we'll have gotten used to that heavy handed approach, and it will become very difficult for us to ratchet things back down when that becomes necessary.

You may have noted by that I haven't responded to much of the details of your comments. That's because, for the most part, we're in agreement over them. Experienced editors do get a reusable "get out of ANI free" pass (I'm not really convinced this is a bad thing, but I'll not go into that right now) that new editors and IP's are told doesn't even exist. The number of frequently grumpy experienced editors and admins does encourage newer editors to be grumpier than otherwise (I agree that this is a bad thing). Etc, etc.

So it's really the overall point of your comments that we should do something that I wanted to address. I think the way we handle things right now is about as good as it's going to get, though I'm always open to tweaking things here and there, just to see if it helps. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:33, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Mjolnir, thank you again for a thought-provoking post. I definitely want to respond to it in detail, and I hope you will indulge me if it takes a day or two to manage that; I am behind on work and so will only have a sliver of time to edit this weekend (with a few outstanding tasks and requests already), and there are a lot moving parts to your post with which I would like to engage without being slap-dash about it. Plus, as you are now familiar with, I can be a little on the slower side in typing out my thoughts, particularly where community matters are concerned. :) Snow ^{let's rap} 23:01, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Here, for convenience and reference, is the post in question:

"and if you don't think that users who are not so well integrated into the organizational culture would be long since blocked for the same thing, I think you're kidding yourself." I think you've hit the nail on the head, GMG. And to pick up on power~enwiki's comments above, these comments are very clearly sanctionable under our policies and the consensus of the vast majority of the members of our work community; if "Fuck you and you better hope I don't find you on the street someday" is not a violation of WP:CIVILITY, I can't fathom what comment would be, and why we'd even bother to have a civility policy to begin with. Surely even the editor who made such a comment would, if competent, recognize the inappropriateness of such threats and invectives--hopefully before they hit the edit button, but certainly at least once they have calmed down. If an editor can't even own up to such issues after the fact, there's an WP:IDHT and basic WP:CIR issue that will have to be addressed by the community eventually. The reason it takes so long at present is two-fold: 1) the massive differential between what is tolerated (with little to no consequence) of long-term contributors and what would get a new editor immediately indeffed, as GMG notes, and 2) the fact that this single noticeboard responds to the majority of complaints about such behaviour, and there is a collective of editors here who have more or less set-up camp to push back against any efforts to contain such temper-tantrums--not because they are actively colluding to cover eachother's back, but just because they share an ideological belief that they should always be able to react to a situation and "call at as they see it", and as their perspective and emotional state inclines them, without any restrictions on their comments whatsoever. These editors steadfastly refuse to internalize any piece of WP:NOTFREESPEECH and decry any effort to reign in editors with a similar perspective and predilections as 'bureaucratic nonsense' or 'hand wringing by easily upset editors'. "But that guy really was a fucking asshole, so it's perfectly ok to call him that, whatever WP:NPA says" they insist, or: "When I say that I'm going to find somebody and make them regret what they have said, nobody really believes its a real threat!" These sentiments are not just in conflict with the explicit directions of policy and community consensus, they demonstrate a kind of willful ignorance of the inexhaustible number of reasons that such comments corrode our established processes, undermine the work we are here to do (and make the work that does get done so much more onerous for everyone involved), drive experienced contributors off the project and discourage new ones from taking their place (contributing to an editor retention problem that has grown to an outright existential threat to our whole endeavor), create liability for the project, and frankly just debase our reputation for maturity and reliability, embarrassing the rest of us with their lack of self-control. That's to mention just a few of the possible consequences that take place on project; one only needs to look at the headlines in the news this week to see the broader consequences of what happens when unchecked hostility becomes a part of public discourse for too long. Most of the (very small, but very vocal) minority who leap to excuse such comments every time they appear here (provided they come from the "right" people) come from others who are recognizably the same hotheads who have been the subject of a similar thread recently and probably will be again some time soon (though good luck convincing them there is a connection between their own propensity for being brought here themselves and their perspective on WP:NOTFREESPEECH/WP:NPA when defending others here). However, even for that hypothetical editor who just objects to any checks on violent or angry rhetoric on-project for purely philosophical reasons because "the greater good" demands unrestricted ability to speak ones mind, I would say the following: I respect your belief and believe there is some merit in it, but you're either going to have to temper that absolutist perspective in order to conform with the standards adopted by this community, or find somewhere else to volunteer your time, because we decided a long time ago (and most editors in good standing here continue to feel) that there must be limits in this work environment." And this is a work environment, make no mistake, even if we are all here as volunteers; this isn't just us getting together with some chums for a hobby, and there's more at stake than our individual rights to blow off steam and tell others what we really think of them. And I highly doubt that most of our editors can get away with telling their co-workers in their professional life that they are going to come after them if given the opportunity. Frankly, if you're someone making those particular kinds of comments to anyone, anywhere, at any time, I hope you pay a consequence for it. It never helps a situation, whether at work, on the street, on facebook, or on Wikipedia; it only adds vitriol into the world. In any event, this community has rules, and we've been doing a bad job in recent years of holding editors to those standards (and applying those standards equitably to all members of the community). In particular, any threat of violence (whether conditional on finding that person first or not) ought to be grounds for an immediate block, and indef if it happens more than once. Any other course of action is infeasible and unsustainable for this project. Snow let's rap 5:26 pm, Today (UTC−7)

Thank you, regarding your post on Incivility

Snow Rise: Thank you for your excellent comment at WP:AN/I. For those I mentioned here, I hope you take a look at it.

I went to the 2018 WikiConference in Columbus, Ohio. The conference had a theme about harassment with the first keynote speech by Mckensiemack from Art+Feminism talking about a Safe space policy. Megs and Bluerasberry made a presentation with the theme "Harassment, Civility, & Safety" at this session, where Megs presented an extensive civility policy. Ragesoss (Sage (Wiki Ed)) spoke on making Wikipedia a friendly place. Ian (Wiki Ed) was at that session too. I embraced these presentations and discussion about harassment, but all along, I felt the "elephant in the room" was the problem you so eloquently spoke to--the failure of AN/I and other noticeboards to address harassment--for all the reasons you mentioned.

Others have complained of it too at Jimbo's page: Wikid77, Michael Hardy (who was more or less forced to never talk about it again despite being one of the most senior editors we have), myself, and others.

I spoke face-to-face with a number of the presenters and a number of admins about it. Of the admins, I got the sense they know of the problem, but their preference was to "avoid drama." I pointed out that if neutral editors and admins do not stand up to incivility, harassment, and bullying, the perpetrators will remain unaccountable, making for an unpleasant and uncivil editing environment, chasing off new editors, and negatively affecting WP:NPOV. To my surprise, one admin said it's not worth worrying about, and suggested we should tell people not to trust Wikipedia to be WP:NPOV.

I wonder if any of you have thoughts on what can be done to address the problem that Snow Rise has so eloquently explained here about how and why harassment and incivility by long-term editors goes unchecked?

One idea that I believe has Jimbo's support is to have a provision for a randomly selected jury system, something Wikid77 supports too. [4]. I fear those with the most power at the noticeboards would vigorously oppose it, preferring the status quo that works for them, and calling it unfixable or not a problem. But if enough editors who see the problem voice support, it's a possibility. I am close to bringing this up for discussion at the Village Pump. I am all ears for other solutions.

I hope you all weigh in on this discussion on whether it is civil to repeatedly say "fuck off" to other editor: "Request for comment on the specific term "fuck off" – sanctionable or not!" [revised 09:22, 31 October 2018 (UTC)]

--David Tornheim (talk) 21:48, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

@David Tornheim: Hi David--as you've seen, I responded to the WP:CIV discussion, but went on at such length that I've exhausted all remaining time that I have for today and probably the weekend, being dangerously behind on meeting a work deadline. Nevertheless, I would very much value the discussion you propose above; this is a topic which has often dominated my thoughts while working on the project the last couple of years, and it is clear that we are in desperate need of some clever new thinking to right the ship and re-affirm the value we place on WP:CIVILITY (and its necessity to our endeavour whether we value it or not). Please bear with me if I am slow to respond, but if you or any other editors end up discussing the matter here on my talk page in the interregnum, I would be more than pleased to have it serve in that capacity. Snow ^{let's rap} 03:42, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Enjoy your 2 days away, and I'll post below: So you won't miss the discussion, while you're working, I'll add comments below later. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:52, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

My take: Nothing in the civility area can or will change because so many of the milder-disposed among the editing population avoid the drama boards like the plague. Count me among them. The problem is systemic. No matter what the policies say, no matter what "consensuses" are reached in RfCs, the decisions whether to sanction or not are made by the relative few who can tolerate the uber-toxic environment at ANI (or thrive on it, in some cases). They routinely ignore the letter and spirit of behavior policy in favor of factors such as who the offender is. If the offender is an ally or simply like-minded, they will find a rationale for forgiving their bad behavior. Established editors receive far more forgiveness than new ones. They will likewise ignore any result of such an RfC if it suits them, which makes the RfC and any like it completely pointless.
Bottom line: If you want to change the environment, you have to find a way to fix ANI—against the strong opposition of those who like the status quo. As I don't see how that's possible under the current system of self-selected "self-governance", I've pretty much written off civility at Wikipedia. Pessimists can't be disappointed, but we can be pleasantly surprised. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:05, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Wow, you really have explained the current problems in detail. I offer some alternative methods in the subtopics below. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:41, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

"Michael Hardy (who was more or less forced to never talk about it again despite being one of the most senior editors we have)"

I view what I consented to under coercion as not bringing up again an accusation of bullying that I made against six users. I may bring up other issues that arose in that same discussion. Michael Hardy (talk) 12:28, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Other civility methods

I think we could discuss other methods to improve civility, as subtopics below, unless Snow_Rise needs another break to handle further outside issues. (@Snow Rise: please post here below whenever you want discussion to pause, or issues moved to another venue.). -Wikid77 (talk) 18:41, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Reward good behavior by merits/demerits

In the past, I have suggested WP adopt a formal system of negative demerits, offset by possible merits earned, tallied about overall civility issues, to total over a block threshold, rather than block a user for each incident. Some users objected to running such a formal system as if an academy, but perhaps a series of talk-page messages could be used by a Wikiproject posting short messages of disapproval, or thanks, in noting user actions re civility. I suggested merits could be earned, to offset demerits, such as asking a user to update 100 pages for better sources, or adding images from Commons, or just setting image "alt=" to describe more photos for sight-impaired users in a hundred pages (or reasonable count) to offset negative actions which the user had made. Each user could choose which 100 tasks to perform for reward. In fact, users could store some extra rewards as a potential to prevent, or shorten, a future block when debated at an wp:ANI incident, by asking for special consideration. Obviously getting a system-wide change to the whole WP project would likely be rejected, but a WikiProject could adopt such methods to encourage a person to cooperate more, similar to group peer pressure which some users might prefer, rather than work with a single mentor as a one-on-one alternative. Any thoughts? -Wikid77 (talk) 18:41, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Civility

Hi! I would like to quote your recent post, and would like to have a couple of typos fixed before I do:

• "mudslingers are a dim a dozen" (dime?)

• "the value of allowing threads at ANY to be closed" (ANI?)

• "it's coming with a cost." (it comes with a cost?)

I really like what you wrote there. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:51, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

I do too. I noticed the same typos. :) --David Tornheim (talk) 03:03, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to you too, David. :) Snow ^{let's rap} 03:55, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Guy! I was just about to hit the edit button for the "dime" and another typo; I appreciate you pointing out the other two, which I missed! Snow ^{let's rap} 03:13, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

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Civility

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"Weak Oppose" to block of Mervyn Emrys

Snow Rise, I read your message (thank you) but you appear to think I am a new editor that has not already established themselves as a serious editor. That is only half accurate. Apparently you have not visited my User Page and have not seen the list of articles there I have initiated, or the list of Good Articles, or the Barnstars. Neither have you visited my Talk page and therefor have not seen the reasons I have been "semi retired" for the past ten years or so after having been driven out of Wikipedia by off-site harassment from an administrator, who chose to "out" me (risking my employment) and later admitted it. Part of the difficulty is that in ten years the rules have apparently changed dramatically, unknown to me, and I have forgotten many of the technical operations my critics are so adept at (like making a hotlink for a diff). Previously Wikipedia was rather more open to discussion of ideas than it appears to be now, and editors were less intrusive about deleting things from other editor's talk pages than some appear to be now. There appears to be more hostility in edits and less willingness to discuss things than before. That is kinda sad. Had I known, I certainly would not have sent my proposal to anyone for review and comment, for fear of reprisals. Concerning the proposal, which is in the very early stages of development, I should say it was always my assumption that if the project was published here, edits would have to conform to WP:BLP and WP:NPOV (see my talk page for my views of the latter). Certainly there is room for improvements, and I was seeking suggestions when I sent it. But I was never given the opportunity to explain any of this when I did send a personal message to a couple other editors requesting their comments. In my previous time here, I operated under the admonition from Jimmy Wales to "assume good faith" when viewing the edits of others. I have seen no evidence of that precept in the way I have been treated in the past few days. That is also sad. In one case, my personal message was deleted from the talk page of another editor before I even was able to type in the last line of it. The person deleting it did not contact me for discussion, did not ask me any questions, and did not "assume good faith" at any point then or subsequently. And it appears his action was probably in violation of a previous Arb Com decision prohibiting such actions, yet nobody seems to care about all that. Now my sandbox has been deleted, including a number of items that had nothing to do with the proposal, and somebody has begun methodically ticking down the list of my previous articles and nominating them for deletion too. Understand something else: I don't need to edit on Wikipedia. I do it as "community service," as an act of charity. I have published several scholarly books that are now in over 160 libraries in 20 countries throughout the world. I published over 100 peer-reviews publications, government reports, and even a couple internationsl agreements between the US and other countries (having said it, I now expect other editors to denigrate that). I don't need to edit on Wikipedia. But in the past, I was told by other editors on my talk page that Wikipedia needs editors who are experts, and I qualify. In my short return here, I have observed that WP needs a lot more than that. It needs real adherence, not just lip-service, to WP:Civility, which appears to have turned into a tool to beat other editors with, under arcane misinterpretations I don't understand. So the bottom line is this: who will be harmed if I am blocked? Not me. But it won't do any good for Wikipedia. One of the reasons Jimbo Wales has given for the need to abide by WP:Civility is that editors who are treated poorly leave WP, and that is a loss for WP. Yesterday when I logged in I received a solicitation for donations to the Wikipedia Foundation. Jimbo might also be aware that editors who are treated poorly are rather unlikely to make donations to the Foundation. That's a practical matter concerning survival of the enterprise. I'm not seeing many of the great editors editing who were here ten years ago. Why did they leave? Mervyn Emrys (talk) 23:36, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello Mervyn. I want to note first that I agree with several things you've said there. I think you've particularly hit the nail on the head when you note that partly the dispute stems from a change in culture in the intervening ten years between your periods of editorial activity; many of our most central content policies that define the constraints of permissible encyclopedic quite so strident a fashion. I also agree that it was perhaps a bridge too far to delete your talk page post, and I almost said so at the MfD, when the topic arose there, but for two factors: 1)it wasn't really the right forum for the issue to have been raised in, in the first place, and 2) the issues regarding whether or not it was appropriate are nuanced and the cost-benefit likelihood of getting into those weeds was questionable. But yes, I believe there were missed opportunities to diffuse that situation and reach the consensus faster and with less tension.

All that said, I should also stress again how much of a non-starter the underlying idea was, for this project. And it's not just a matter of BLP and NPOV; there's roughly a dozen highly important polices that the proposal brushes up against, because it is so much in contrast to what Wikipedia articles are expected to be, now. Content in article space needs to be scrupulously objective and lacking in agenda; your proposal, from top down, was polemic. And I don't mean to use that word pejoratively; polemics have their place when we are talking about topics that intersect with the survival of ourselves and the planet's biodiversity; but even those editors who might find value in that sort of investigative analysis elsewhere will pretty much to a person oppose it here, if they are veteran editors, because they know our objectives and methodologies here don't allow for it. And fyi, yes, as you suspected, I failed to notice that you'd had a much earlier wiki-residency until after I made those initial comments, but I still think it may not be a bad idea to re-familiarize yourself with those particular policies I cited, given the amount of time which may have passed since you last updated yourself upon how they look today.

And yes, Wikipedia can benefit from experts, but I'd like to give you a different perspective on how you might approach integrating into the project. Often it is not a great idea for experts to edit in the area of their specialization--or at least, not until they have a significant amount of consistent experience. Paradoxically, it is sometimes the areas an editor is most knowledgeable in that prove to be create the largest pitfalls for their participation. If one is both knowledgeable and passionate about a topic, it can be difficult to accept decisions predicated upon WP:WEIGHT rather than upon what the the WP:TRUTH as their expertise suggests it to them. Editing and interacting on Wikipedia is its own unique skillset, and sometimes it can help to work first in areas that are unrelated to your professional or personal interests and first-hand knowledge. And then, after a certain amount of experience with the idiosyncrasies of our processes (while working on topics which do not subject one to potentially problematic biases) and effort can be made to marry that Wikipedia experience with the professional experience, with far greater likelihood that the approach will comport with policy, community consensus, and a generally neutral outlook.

All of which is to say, if you really do want to contribute here, and wish to adapt for the long-term, one of the best things you could do is to start out working in topic areas you aren't nearly as invested in--or which are at least less attached to the perspectives you live by in your professional life. In this case, if I read the implications of your previous comments correctly, I would suggest you try working at first in an area that is not connected to environmental studies and policy. Once you've learned to apply our current content standards (and, by consequence, develop a reputation for being a neutral editor who is WP:HERE for the sake of the encyclopedia itself, rather than to leverage it to forward specific ends) you will find it all-around much easier to begin applying the expertise which is the basis of your formal background. Just my two cents! For what it's worth, I hope you do stay, and not just for the advantage we may eventually cull from your specialized knowledge, but also because, despite believing you need to familiarize yourself better with certain project priorities and expectations, I also felt you mostly kept your cool as the heat rose in that discussion, which I take to be a good sign of long-term potential in an editor. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:29, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

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Mohammad bin Salman

Hi Snow Rise, hope you’re doing well. You probably saw but just to flag here that I updated my suggestions a touch for the Vision 2030 section in Mohammad bin Salman (here and diff). Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Thanks. Tarafa15 (talk) 19:14, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Snow Rise, just coming back to this - let me know if you get a chance to take a look, thanks.Tarafa15 (talk) 13:05, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.15 16 November 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello Snow Rise,

Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW

• Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.

If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.

We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.

With all 650 reviewers voting for these urgently needed improvements, our requests would be unlikely to fail. See also The Signpost Special report: 'NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers', and if you are not sure what the wish list is all about, take a sneak peek at an article in this month's upcoming issue of The Signpost which unfortunately due to staff holidays and an impending US holiday will probably not be published until after voting has closed.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}18:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

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ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Snow Rise. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 1 December 2018

• From the editor: Time for a truce

• Op-ed: Looking back, looking forward: A beginner's experience on Wikipedia

• Special report: The Christmas wishlist

• Opinion: The blogosphere migrates to Galaxy WMF

• News and notes: Reviewer of the year, WikiCup winner, and the 2019 Wikimedia Summit

• Reflections: Wikipedia, history, and the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day

• In the media: Court-ordered article redaction, paid editing, and rock stars

• Discussion report: Farewell, Mediation Committee

• Arbitration report: A long break ends

• Traffic report: Queen reigns for four weeks straight

• Gallery: Intersections

• Recent research: Why do the most active Wikipedians burn out?; only 4% of students vandalize

• Essay: No one cares about your garage band

• Humour: The dark side of our favorite root vegetable

• From the archives: Ars longa, vita brevis

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:47, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Guidance Barnstar
		For being superior to every other Wikipedian I've interacted with so far in your willingness to help me think through nuanced issues, to give clear and complete explanations (not just links), to point me towards new resources I didn't know about, your friendliness, and for your excellent communication skills. Sincerely, Shashi Sushila Murray, (message me) 22:47, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Shashi Sushila Murray, for the super kind words and the barnstar (which variation I've never gotten before! :). I'm very glad to hear that I've created a positive impact for you so soon into your time with our community. I hope I'm just the first of many people to inspire a sense of comradery in your time here; if my own experience is anything to go by, you will soon have enough of them that you will have a hard time keeping everybody straight. ;) Not to sound like a broken record, but please stop in whenever you could use an additional perspective on something as you get adjusted--or just to say hi! Snow ^{let's rap} 23:27, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Request for review?

Just for my own edification, how DOES one request a closure review. I really just want this whole thing to die at this point (see my attempt here). But in the interest of learning the proper way for future reference, you mentioned there was a way to request a closure review? And/or request that a thread be archived? How would one do that? --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing})

Hi Zack: the appropriate process is outlined at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE. In this case, the forum you would have wanted would be WP:AN, though you would be expected to first discuss it with Bbb23, as the party who reverted you. Even if you are asking for future reference, it bears saying that even if you had known about this process at the time, I would have advised you not to pursue it; CLOSECHALLENGE is utilized in a majority of cases to question a contributor's rationale in summarizing consensus, but in this case, you would have been asking for a reversion of a decision made by an admin that did not concern their interpretation of consensus, but rather their decision to enforce a bot auto-archiving for presumptively pragmatic reasons. Admins have a great deal of discretion in such matters, not least at ANI, so while its not impossible that there would be consensus that the discussion ought to have been re-opened given the degree of consensus there, I think it would have been more likely that the close would have been kept and you would have run the risk of coming across as over-zealous. That would have been a shame, because I think your concerns were legitimate (both in opening the thread and having misgivings about it not receiving a formal close), but knowing how things can come off when an ANI thread won't die, I think you were better off letting the matter go. Snow ^{let's rap} 05:10, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the your thorough explanation. Let me re-emphasize that I am not only willing but very eager to put this in the past. Frankly the most frustrating part for me about the whole thing was that this all started when I reached out with an offer to help DePiep. I still believe in the cause and want to work with them, though I doubt that will happen. Let me also commend you on your level headed responses both to me and others during this whole process. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me as well as to offer some very sound advice. Please know that it did not go unappreciated. --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 05:32, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

You're most welcome--I'm very happy to have been of some assistance. Hopefully this is the end of the matter; there was some administrative action here, which is actually more than one can usually hope for in an ANI thread opened with regard to primarily WP:CIV issues these days and hopefully that will be all the resolution that is needed. Under the circumstances, I have lingering concerns, but as I said at the time of the closing, there's nothing to be gained at this point by assuming the worst, so we might as well proceed under a more hopeful mindset. Good meeting you, Zack--happy editing. Snow ^{let's rap} 05:45, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Back at you my friend. Don't hesitate to reach out if I can ever be of service. --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 05:59, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

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NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018

Hello Snow Rise,

Reviewer of the Year

This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.

Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760 reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001 reviews), Semmendinger (8,440 reviews), PRehse (8,092 reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306 reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016 reviews), and Elmidae (3,615 reviews).
Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.

See also the list of top 100 reviewers.

Less good news, and an appeal for some help

The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640 holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.

Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019

At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3 December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.

Training video

Due to a number of changes having been made to the feed since this three-minute video was created, we have been asked by the WMF for feedback on the video with a view to getting it brought up to date to reflect the new features of the system. Please leave your comments here, particularly mentioning how helpful you find it for new reviewers.

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If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:14, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

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Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

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WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 13

Newsletter • December 2018

This month: A general update.

The current status of the project is as follows:

• Progress of the project has been generally delayed since September due to development issues (more bitrot than expected, some of the code just being genuinely confusing, etc) and personal injury (I suffered a concussion in October and was out of commission for almost two months as a result).
• I currently expect to be putting out a proper call for CollaborationKit pilots in January/February, with estimated deployment in February/March if things don't go horribly wrong (they will, though, don't worry). As a part of that, I will properly update the page and send out announcement and reach out to all projects already signed up as pilots for WikiProject X in general, at which point those (still) interested can volunteer specifically to test the CollaborationKit extension.
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Pilots was originally created for the first WikiProject X prototype, and given this is where the project has since gone, it's only logical to continue to use it. While I haven't yet updated the page to properly reflect this:
  • If you want to add your project to this page now, feel free. Just bear in mind that more information what to actually expect will be added later/included in the announcement, because by then I will have a much better idea myself.
• Until then, you can find me in my corner working on making the CollaborationKit code do what we want and not just what we told it, per the workboard.

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 22:44, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 24 December 2018

• From the editors: Where to draw the line in reporting?

• Op-ed: Wikipedia not trumped by Trump appointee

• Special report: The Signpost got 380,000+ views in 2018, sounds reasonable enough, right?

• News and notes: Some wishes do come true

• In the media: Political hijinks

• Discussion report: A new record low for RfA

• WikiProject report: Articlegenesis

• Arbitration report: Year ends with one active case

• Traffic report: Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents

• Gallery: Sun and Moon, water and stone

• Blog: News from the WMF

• Humour: I believe in Bigfoot

• Essay: Requests for medication

• From the archives: Compromised admin accounts – again

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:36, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

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