User talk:ThePromenader/Archive 3

Paris

See what happens when the personal attacks stop and you offer constructive criticism. I believe you and Super are acting in good faith even if obviously a little miffed at your work being revamped, the odious German chap on the contrary has shown himself to be quite inhumane and incapable of polite conversation. Please keep things constructive from now on, and avoid attacking the work that's been done on it to date and you'll see that I am willing to work with you rather than against you. Many of the issues identified (like the oval shape, wrong area, female names etc) existed long before I edited it.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 08:52, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I was offering constructive criticism from the start. I suggest you change your condescending tone, and stop passing blanket judgment over other contributions than your own ('doesn't cut the mustard', 'not good enough') - ~that~ is what ruins any constructive discussion. If you don't like something in a contribution, target that without even mentioning the contributor him/herself - to better avoid creating confrontational situations. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 09:08, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

You've pretty much said the same thing about my own work on the article... "passing blanket judgment over other contributions than your own " is 95% of what is on the Paris talk page, directed at me mainly by Der Stat. That you cannot see how offensive he has been and support his behaviour is quite something.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 09:13, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but I do provide some reasoning behind my criticisms. And I did not target you at all when discussing the article itself - the work may have been yours, but I am not aware who did what, nor will I get involved in any teapot tempests over that. I did question your hurry to implement the changes you saw fit yourself before any further discussion - but that's your way of working with others I'm criticising, not your contributions. Again, full and precise explanations in criticisms greatly helps to avoid sending a wrong message and/or stirring fires. A 'Not good enough' comment doesn't provide a goal to be attained (coherence, comprehensibility, etc), and it makes the reader think that you think yourself the 'best judge' on what's good or not and that you will always have the last say - this is discouraging to other editors. Cheers.THEPROMENADER 09:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Glad to hear it, but that's pretty much how I've been feeling!! I've been made to feel inadequate for work I did purely to help out my friend Gilderien who had nominated Paris for GA when it wouldn't have passed because of the sourcing. I thought I was doing a good thing helping promoting it to a Good Article, and a city like Paris should be an FA on here anyway. Your comment about being lazy with sourcing I thought was a bit mean; I've ransacked tons of books and doubled the sources to 250 odd now! But you do seem to be constructive, and acting in good faith. Der Stat has not helped the situation, he's even attacked other articles I've done... I agree, so let's not go there anymore. I look forward to seeing some of your suggestions and additions to the article. Looking at French wikipedia it seems to cover some areas areas we've not addressed so I'd be open to translating some parts into this one, naturally I'd need your assistance on that.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 09:35, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I just reviewed today's changes to the Paris article - you're really going to have to change your editing attitude! But let's keep Paris discussion to the Paris page - thanks for being open to reason. THEPROMENADER 09:42, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean, I've rewritten it in part to include some of yours and Super's sentences, if I had real attitude I'd not have done that. I agreed with most of Super's points, but I think the lead must adequately summarize the article, that's where I disagree with you. I don't own the article, neither do you. Honestly I rarely show much interest in a single article. But if you and Super are interested in promoting to FA I do have a lot of experience in that field, so combined with your superior knowledge of the city I think we could go all the way with it.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 09:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Au contraire, it takes real balls to revert, cut and paste other people's work into your own without any discussion about it. At least that is the message you send. I opened a discussion about how to improve the intro because I saw that others in addition to myself had misgivings with it - yet you ignore any discussion, revert any other editor's edits, yet cut and paste text from the discussion that you 'approve' of as if it's your own? You seem to have a really bad case of WP:OWN. You will get approval and constructive improvements through discussion, not through the coercive and discouraging methods you have used today. THEPROMENADER 11:23, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I have a really bad case of OWN? You're the model prototype of WP:OWN to the point that you'd happily restore a vastly inferior article version just to restore your full additions to the article. I tried to reason with you and listen to your views on the lead and all I got is nastiness from that sour Canadian tongue of yours. If you don't want your work tampered with, stick to writing books and stay the hell away from editing wikipedia, a project which you've illustrated yourself to be completely ignorant about; you lack even basic knowledge of article development and the spirit of collaboration.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 12:08, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Did you even read the last section of the Paris talk page? I'm voting to practically leave the article as is. Comments like "stay the hell away from editing wikipedia" do nothing for your image - I have done nothing but ~discuss~ changes until now. Your language and attitude is quite defensive - does nothing but make you sound like you're afraid that other contributors might 'walk all over your work'. Oh, and the "spirit of collaboration" is definitely not letting no-one but yourself edit the article or have any say over what goes in the article - I posted that intro text as a discussion point, but you cut and copied it before any discussion could even take place - or was that you considering me 'unworthy' to contribute my own text? That's the message you sent, anyways. Your behaviour has possibly been the most belligerant, inflammatory and condescending I have seen since my seven years editing Wikipedia - it only serves to lower other contributors' views on yourself and your contributions. Or is this a purposeful 'stay away from my article' tactic? I can only wonder. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 18:04, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Your incredibly dumb proposal to revert to the April version far outdoes anything I could possibly say to you. Most editors would laugh in your face at what you've said on the Paris talk page, even Eric said something about the lack of intelligence behind your suggestion that it would be an improvement. If I was you, I'd be more embarrassed with claiming to be an expert on Paris and making a fool of yourself on here with a lack of even basic editing knowledge and skills. I approached you in a friendly manner here, and I also incorporated your ideas for the lead to try to work something out with you. All I've heard since are negative comments from you and the recent proposal to completely obliterate everything I've ever done illustrates that you don't have the mental capacity to accept that wikipedia is a public institution and that you don't own the rights to the text. I'm all ears for what Superzoulou has to say, I'll never be able to take you or Der Stat seriously as wikipedia editors, you've made it perfectly clear to me what sort of an editor you are, and I really don't think you're suitable for having an account and editing here, you're a danger to society.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 19:36, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Your condescending tone and rather hysterical and gratuitous criticism of other editors who 'dared' criticise the edited article did indeed jade me at first to a point where I was only set on finding the faults in the rewrite, but I've had time to read it objectively (not coincidently a week after you left and things cooled down) and have come around since then. If you cared to pick out more than just criticism from the Paris talk page, you'd see that I even stated how impressed I was with the reference work. Oh, and by the way, I'd decided against reverting the article days before your most recent talk page... input. Did I mention that I have changed my mind and now do not want to revert? And before I forget, I'd like to say that my last posts suggested improving sections of the article without reverting anything.

Are you drunk? THEPROMENADER 19:54, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

You didn't even read the article before you criticized it!! ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 20:32, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes I did, and my first criticisms are still the same in even my latest posts. What I didn't look into was all the referencing work done - that's not exactly top-level obvious in the article, you know. THEPROMENADER 20:43, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Promenader, seriously, I'm generally a reasonable fellow, and I usually assume good faith with people, but if you really are a decent fellow too you must look beyond your personal issues with the article and its defense and see exactly why you and Der Stat have been so upsetting here. Paris gets a lot of traffic, Gilderien nominated it for GA and it would have failed. I wouldn't have touched the article but for the fact that I thought it had potential and I wanted to see a good article on such an important city. My thought process was not "who should I ask for permission to edit" but "what do I have to do to make this a formal GA". I have nearly 100 GAs, I know what an article needs technically to meet requirements, although there is considerable dispute on what really is a good article and some here have much higher expectations than others which are beyond what I myself would expect. Anyway, I thought I was doing a good thing, an important thing to have such a major city at GA and I thought people would be happy with what I did with the sourcing and the additions. It isn't perfect but aside from the obvious errors to a Parisian, it is a pretty good effort. I didn't get any praise at what I did over many hours while watching Wimbledon and I originally only intended overhauling the sourcing. A lot of new and much needed content was added afterwards and the lead was expanded well after it actually passed GA. I've heard nothing since but nasty comments especially from Der Stat. Please at least try to see how your response over this looks from my perspective. I'm sorry that you felt that I disrespected your editing and work, but it is standard practice on here to condense longer sections on core articles and split them into sub articles to maintain focus and balance and it really isn't feasible to trace through article histories and ask every editor if you can edit it. Wikipedia just isn't like that. Yes, the landscape section was also very long and needed condensing. I'm still not sure what to do with it, all I know it that it's clearly better than having an unsourced haphazard bulleted list. If you genuinely care about the article I hope to see more positive input from you.. That you can at least acknowledge what I've done to the article now you've had the chance to calm down is at least something, but you must see how it looked to me... To have put so much effort into an article and hear nothing but swipes at it is really not pleasant and seriously makes you wonder why you edit wikipedia if hard work on an important article gets this sort of reception.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 20:50, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Look at your reaction to someone 'threatening' to revert your work, and notch it down around a hundred times - I did feel a sense of dismay at the thought all the months (even years) of contributor work (and arguing) for that article. Gilderian was kind enough to go through the article history to find me and ask me to contribute in late April. I declined after a short involvement in the 'infobox photo' argument, but I encouraged him to improve the article. The photo debacle resurfaced with the same old actors I guess so I answered a mail from him on May 10 by saying that you're going to need an 'army of editors' to get past the deadlock of a few 'controller editors' and edit effectively; Gilderian's next mail was on the 21st of July announcing the Paris GA status and his 'enlisting' (or having had enlisted) your (and others) help to 'keep it stable' (a disquieting choice of words). When I checked it out I found a total rewrite with some points I disliked, revert wars in the history and a talk page of disgruntled, arguing editors. The rest you know.

ThePromenader, I think you may have mis-interpreted me - my exact words were "I have enlisted the help of Dr. Blofeld, Rosiestep, and Nvvchar;" (which was in reference to the posting on WP:RBN) "and Tim Riley and SchroCat have been helping keep the article stable." which was in terms of keeping it at the GA version and protecting it against vandalism and massive changes of material.P.S. It's Gilderien --Gilderien Chat|Contributions 21:51, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

By 'massive changes in material' you mean... blanket reverting. So there was some 'resistance' to the rewrite, but by few or many? And what is RBN? Just waking, will look in a bit. THEPROMENADER 04:30, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

I think the "resistance" was entirely from Der Stat, and only after it passed the GA review. RBN is a group of collaborators and article writers.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 07:10, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

It's your putting 'I' and 'my' in your messages to other editors about the article (with no pointed discussion of article content) that gets me (and probably them) the most - it's counterproductive and you're giving others the impression that a) you alone know best and that b) all decisions about the article go through you (with an added 'or else' threat because you are quick to revert). You contributed a lot to the article, but you are not the article, so criticisms about the article cannot be a personal affront on you as you take them to be. You contributed a lot to the article, and you have indeed made many improvements, but you must let others who see errors or further room for improvement do their thing - but you're not even letting anyone even talk about it. I can't even begin to understand the reasons behind the disruptive/protective/aggressive/hysterical behaviour I saw tonight, but it must not happen again. And although you sound friendlier, your tone is ~still~ condescending: you have to work on that. Cheers and good night. THEPROMENADER 21:41, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Holiday

I'm now on holiday (although unfortunately not in Paris) so I can't really keep up with the discussion, but I shall say before I stop completely that no, the rewrite did not work like that - each person who rewrote a section also referenced it, but we also found references for content that was in the article before we improved the sections.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 13:26, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

"whining on user talk pages"

Actually whining occurred ailleurs... Seudo (talk) 09:57, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I missed that - or rather, didn't look that far. I've seen the same propos so many times now (even using the same language) - those forwarding such arguments don't even care that they've done it before, they just return from time to time to try it on a new, hopefully unknowledgable and unsuspecting audience. I hope that's not the case this time. THEPROMENADER 10:46, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It is surprising to see so much turmoil about the name of a template. Messages like this one are unlikely to win the sympathy of regular editors. It's especially ironic that you're accusing the other party of ad hominem comments. You may well be right about the underlying dispute, but your manner of going about this could be losing supporters. EdJohnston (talk) 02:27, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I lost it yesterday, and it's rare that I ever 'get personal', but I felt (then) that I had to say something about that day's behavior, and as I'm sure you understand, the dispute goes beyond the template. Part of the ire came out of the fatigue of repetition - have a look at the Paris article's talk page. Actually that last reference is where a lot of the frustration came from: I shouldn't ~have~ to give you lengthy explanations about the whys or 'who did's or whats of who's right in the subject we're dealing with, but when one involves new contributors in the dispute (namely admins) who can't tell which one of us is right or not (and they don't even have to even care)… aaaargh. You were right to criticize my message, I regret that now that the anger has passed. THEPROMENADER 04:38, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I hope this edit is not typical of your understanding of consensus. There is a move discussion in progress, and that discussion will get formally closed when it's over. There is no need for you to declare your own consensus while the vote is still going on, and when most people seem to disagree with you. There is a risk that a passing admin will simply block you for edit warring on Template:Paris Metropolitan Area. EdJohnston (talk) 18:42, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but If you note the time of the move request, you will notice that it was placed well after I had made the (title only) template change this morning. THEPROMENADER 18:48, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

What am I missing? The move request was opened on August 29 and is still in progress. The edit of yours which I think shows edit warring is dated September 5. You didn't wait for a verdict on the template title, but simply changed it to your own preference. EdJohnston (talk) 19:03, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

No, apologies, I'm mixing up my debates: 'Der Statistiker' requested a (rather 'pointy') page move request at Paris aire urbaine almost minutes after his reverts my morning edit to the Paris Metropolitan Area template title. So I was too early in my modification? I considered the 'move' to 'Paris urban area' dead (as discussion with another contributor even led me to oppose it) - our conclusion was that the most referencable solution was to use the original French term. How long does a move deliberation take? But I guess I can look that up myself. THEPROMENADER 19:18, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

PS: About this debate: Did you know that Wikipedia is probably the only place on the web that translates the academic-study-only Paris 'aire urbaine' INSEE statistical tool into "Paris metropolitan area? Also that the 'Paris metropolitan area's widespread presence on Wikipedia is due to a campaign by a single user (whose antics I find were very similar to those of Der Statistiker)? The term 'metropolitan area' may 'sound good' to many north american contributors/administrators, but how to tell them that nothing comparable even exists for the French public, and that the term can't be used to reference (at the limit) anything outside of Demographics? I don't know how to make this clear to people without getting too 'wordy' about it. Or perhaps I just did.

I did make a summary about this here. I know this is tiring, but imagine how I feel. THEPROMENADER 19:43, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

PPS: Were the facts behind the 'name promotion' real, one wouldn't think that all the revert-warring/sockpuppet/meatpuppet/incivilities would be necessary. And have you seen one reference cited by the same in all this debate? THEPROMENADER 19:49, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool update

Hey ThePromenader. I'm contacting you because you're involved in the Article Feedback Tool in some way, either as a previous newsletter recipient or as an active user of the system. As you might have heard, a user recently anonymously disabled the feedback tool on 2,000 pages. We were unable to track or prevent this due to the lack of logging feature in AFT5. We're deeply sorry for this, as we know that quite a few users found the software very useful, and were using it on their articles.

We've now re-released the software, with the addition of a logging feature and restrictions on the ability to disable. Obviously, we're not going to automatically re-enable it on each article—we don't want to create a situation where it was enabled by users who have now moved on, and feedback would sit there unattended—but if you're interested in enabling it for your articles, it's pretty simple to do. Just go to the article you want to enable it on, click the "request feedback" link in the toolbox in the sidebar, and AFT5 will be enabled for that article.

Again, we're very sorry about this issue; hopefully it'll be smooth sailing after this :). If you have any questions, just drop them at the talkpage. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) 21:58, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank

The "thank" function apparently created a notification, which appears just by the pseudo on top of the page (a number appears there: 0 if you have no notification, 1 if you have one notification, etc. Just click on the number to see the notifications). I guess it's a new functionality in Wikipedia. Seudo (talk) 20:41, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

'Thank' me in return for something then: I want to see what happens for myself ; ). Not sure how useful this feature is yet… thanks! THEPROMENADER 06:28, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Paris urban area

Hi ThePromenader, yes I would support Paris urban area if consensus is against using metropolitan, which would make most sense to me. 86.30.135.155 (talk) 17:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

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Happy New Year

This greeting goes out to all those I have worked with this year - it has been a pleasure. I enjoyed working on Paris this year, and I hope I shall find the time to revisit the article in the coming year. To another good year! Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 21:44, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Rue Adolphe Mille, Paris

Is this street really notable? Do you have citations about this? Bearian (talk) 21:48, 4 February 2014 (UTC)