User talk:ThatPeskyCommoner/Case History

Bad publicity is still publicity

Hi Pesky,

On the one hand, I appreciate your not mentioning me by name, perhaps because of our friendship. :)

On the other hand, I did make a rather stern comment on BadgerDrink's talk page after you left the statement of concern. Having examined my own sinful self, having watched The Shadow (not recommended), and read Father Brown (over-rated), I believe that I had a more healthy fear of human failings and wrathfullness, and I foresaw that BD would not respond well to your comment. Thus, I tried to head him off with a prior "talking to" with you, which was calculated to try to pre-emptively interject myself as rodeo clown to prevent a goring---the role comes naturally to me but the ability is limited, alas. If you mentioned my comment, then maybe you should mention my name....

On the other hand, with less streetwise sense, I also awarded you the barnstar of decapitation, which you seemed not to have mentioned either. I again regret having caused you distress with that. If you mention the others' lack of kindness, fairness would allow you to mention mine, despite the friendship that later developed.

This is your user space, so you are free to remove this, if you like.

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:16, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

No, I won't remove it, these are perfectly valid points. I really wish that BD had actually returned to, and read, the RfC/U, even if he didn't want to make any further comment. I was desperately trying to de-escalate the situation and stop him backsliding, as the recommendations at the RfC/U were that if he didn't change, he would find himself under increasing sanctions, blocking, banning, ArbCom, and all that totally (probably) unnecessary extra trauma. All I wanted to do, and was trying to do, was to nip any backsliding in the bud so that none of that other painful mess would happen, and to let him know that his improvement to that date had been noticed and appreciated. If only it had been possible for he and I to understand each other a little better.

The Barnstar of Decapitation affected me very little, honestly. Partly, I must admit, because I had so ready-to-hand that smiley-link to parry your "productive editor" link with! You absolutely dropped that little gem into my lap, and it was one of the very few things in the whole case that gave me an opportunity for that evil badass granny grin ... if I had been marking-up a student's work, that would have got an "inadequate background research" comment! As it was, it provided me with a "Gotcha!" moment, which was welcome. I had a far better one of those with a couple of other editors, too. But my contemporaneous bites-back are, on the whole, subtle. The comments left at AN/I, based on nothing but total belief in the accusation, were orders-of-magnitude more uncivil than the Barnstar of Decapitation.

Your "rather stern comment" on BD's talk page I read as a genuine total failure to have understood exactly what I was trying to do there, and so I responded in kind with a brief explanation. Without wishing to blunt your self-appointed horns, crop your self-appointed forked tail, and deprive you of your self-awarded pitchfork (in case these deprivations may be painful for you ;P), in the ranks of "sinners", you were a very minor one, and I wasn't going to list absolutely everyone. Sorry about that ... !

I believed, and still believe, that your own input was, if a bit mistaken, a heat-of-the-moment thing. It didn't have the malice of other remarks which may have appeared, on their face, to be minor things. I may be wrong, but what I've tried to do on that page is a say-it-as-I-see-it report.

On a far more obsessively-analytical note, I did some stalking around a number of editors' talk-page comments at the time, including yours, and in my obsessively-in-depth research around all the links at ArbCom have done even more. At first I just had a "niggle" somewhere in my semi-conscious mind, which led me to start marking-up comments ona sliding scale of one to ten, with five being neutral. The more I looked at you, the more intrigued I became. Having marked everything up on my admittedly relatively unscientific scale, I plotted out a rough graph of scale over time. You may or may not be aware of it - but you show a longish-interval waveform pattern, hence my totally weird personal question on your page.

P.S. I hope my obsessive analysis and that comment don't totally freak you out! I mean you no harm - I just have that kind of mind. In mediaeval times I would almost certainly have been burned as a witch! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 12:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but I failed to review this or even to watchlist it.

I am intrigued by the description of the wave-form analysis. Are you talking sinusoidal functions or Daubechies's mother of wavelets or Kondratieff waves or a nemesis star? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:12, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Hehe! Hi again! It was a kinda sinusoidal-type thing, which (AFAIK) didn't seem to tally with any normally-recognised biorhythm patterns (not sure if you believe in them, or even if I do!) Irritability-wave thing. On a several-weeks centre. Seems to have flattened out significantly over recent months, but at the time gave me one of those "Oooh! Interesting!" moments! Feel free to do the symbolic burning-as-a-witch thing ;P Pesky (talk) 12:22, 3 January 2013 (UTC)