User talk:Thekohser/Archive 7

Proposal for detente with Fayssal

I wish to duly note in public that I recognize Fayssal's indefinite block of my account as a severe warning against future "WP:POINT" behavior, and if unblocked soon, I will abide by a self-imposed En-Wikipedia break of 14 days. -- Thekohser 15:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Unblocked

Thekohser's Willy tool

Thekohser is unblocked now that he recognizes the mistakes made and that violating wp:point is not something which helps creating a good and friendly atmosphere —something essential to creating good content. I should add that I'll leave it to ArbCom to see if there's a need to review the conditions with him. I'll leave it to their judgment since I am recused as the blocking admin.

Talking about the detente, I've got two chairs for thekohser and anyone who would work with him in a friendly way. Let's insert all the typos into our dolphin's mouth, keep the place clean and relax in front of the river. Be careful with the river's flow though! All comments above are appreciated. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion

Greg develops a shorthand for edit summaries; (for example) a or + for additions to content, r or - for removal of content, rev for a revert, rw for a rewrite, remv for vandalism removal etc., etc,. (or a variation of same) and only resp in talk edit summaries and sticks to only those abbreviations. This stops the temptation of posting poorly perceived pithiness - it also means that anyone wishing to discuss the content changes can only refer to the article edits, and Greg can make considered replies in return. In turn, this also directs Greg's major contributions toward article editing (I still think that responses to others postings should not be counted for the purposes of the article/non article ratio). Just a suggestion, and I would not want Greg to break his self imposed break - any response can wait until he returns. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:00, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The guide for using edit summaries is known (it's placed just 26px above the 'save page' button) and most users don't follow any strict guidance but of course he is free to develop any shorthands he might want. However, that is not the real issue. The real issue is being pointy and the BLP incident is an example of what I am talking about. There is also the issue of feuding. That should end.

As for the ratio, ArbCom was indeed discussing it while he was busy with the edit summaries. If you note my response to your comment at the warning section you'd see that I agreed with you. I believe ArbCom is discussing all these points and would probably update the restrictions soon or else they would reinstate the ban. As I said, I am recused from participating in taking those decisions. My role is limited to counseling. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 20:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

A "shorthand" system on edit summaries might help reduce the temptation to amplify the noting of the actions - typing a quick "add" takes away the likelihood of commenting "add content with intelligible references"; which might be accurate but may lead some souls to wonder if their previous contributions were being ridiculed. I am just trying to provide methods by which Greg may continue to add content without getting diverted over the meanings of his commentary upon same. Since it has been concluded that Greg needs to change some of his methods of interaction, I thought I might try to facilitate some areas. Greg is, of course, very much his own person and will doubtless decide his own method of lessening the chances of being "misunderstood". LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

LHvU, I think you're generally right. Looking back over Greg's edit summ's, he could have used the simple "sp" notation for many of his spelling corrections. Fixing up "Febuary" seems to have finally cracked his noggin, and I can kinda understand that. :) Ending up sitting in a corner chanting the Arbcom mantra was not a good response though. We all know there's a lot of crap in this 'cyclo. Nevertheless, simple changes should have simple edit summaries, so your shorthand is a good idea. For more complex changes, I would prefer to see some explication in the edit summary, just oriented toward the specific change, not towards feelings about the encyclopedia and its writers in general, nor towards Kohs' specific role. I think Greg is pretty much aware of when he is making commentary as opposed to a description of his edit. What he may not be aware of is that repeatedly trawling through some of the sludge he has been trying to fix is bad for the brain, and each new edit should be treated on its own, to the extent that is humanly possible. And if you find youself inserting commentary into article or article-talk edit summaries, it's time to take a walk outside.

Side note on space-ratios: if Greg makes 100% of his edits to talk spaces and those edits result in improvements to the content (such as facilitating discussion, digging up sources, suggesting improvements, smoothing out disputes) - I'm just fine with that. Franamax (talk) 01:26, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Spelling Correction Bot

Hello, there is a spelling correction bot in existence. I don't know why it doesn't correct all the mistakes on the encyclopedia. [1] [2]

99.150.255.75 (talk) 14:14, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

That's not a bot; it's the Mac version of AWB, a search-and-replace tool. Anything it does still has to be checked manually - all it 'automates' is highlighting typos and suggesting replacements, same as a normal word-processor spellcheck. – iridescent 17:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Your work on the 1930's Czech air force

Hi, I'd like to read your dissertation on this topic very much, because I'm Czech and I'm also very interested in our military history between the world wars. Couls you, please, send it to me? My email is at my userpage. Thank you very much --MCermak (talk) 22:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Please comment on my talk page, rather than via e-mail. This allows all to see the comments. Thanks, Irbisgreif (talk) 01:56, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I think this user is blocked. So they may not be able to comment apart from using e-mail. But I'm not certain. ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:47, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Thekohser is not blocked. He agreed to a self-imposed wikibreak for 14 days starting August 7th. He will not likely be editing Wikipedia until August 21st. Until then, he'll likely be using e-mail. I can't speak for him, but that is what I gathered from the threads above with his deal with FayssalF. Ripberger (talk) 07:16, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

User-conduct RfC

I have deleted the user-conduct RfC that you created regarding Logicist. As a formal matter, it did not satisfy the requirements for a user-conduct RfC, because there is no evidence of two or more users including yourself seeking to resolve a dispute with this editor. See WP:RFC. More broadly, given your own situation and history with the project, I don't believe that you are the best person to raise any issues surrounding this situation. Someone less prone to AGF'ing than I might even characterize it as unnecessary pot-stirring. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:14, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

unnecessary pot-stirring ??? !!! How dare you accuse him of behaving in a manner typical of him. WAS 4.250 (talk) 23:54, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I thought I was doing something of a favor, to accelerate the process. It's a pretty clear decision that ought to be made, and not allowed to fester -- what is more important on Wikipedia: the enforcement of community-generated rule systems, or the acceptance of worthwhile content for the encyclopedia? Brad, I don't know how much more clear I could have made it that I knew I didn't formulate the process correctly, nor did I care enough to continue participation in it. Your leaving a comment here to me is actually a bit of "pot stirring", if you ask me. I still respect you, of course, and we'll have a beverage in Philly, I hope. -- Thekohser 02:32, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it turns out that I have conflicting plans on September 12, so will not be able to make the next Philadelphia meet-up. I am sure our paths will cross on another occasion. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Redirect

I redirected this because it's a personal essay, and not even a good one. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 19:59, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

If I were one of the editors who worked on it, I'd find that comment insulting. Isn't there a {{sofixit}} policy on Wikipedia? -- Thekohser 20:04, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

It would need a rewrite from top to bottom, and academic or journalistic sources who actually discuss the issue, not sources picked from here and there to bolster the writer's personal opinion. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 20:17, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, where there's a blanking of so much content, it seems to me the appropriate and accepted thing to do is to WP:PROD or WP:AFD. I'm not saying I disagree with your opinion, but I believe it's a matter of transparency, and as Greg says respect for the efforts of fellow volunteers, to do things like this according to process. -Pete (talk) 21:46, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

And of course if it IS so obvious and uncontroversial, a WP:SPEEDY is always an option. -Pete (talk) 21:47, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

A redirect is more respectful than a speedy. Look, if some of you want to fix it up, I obviously have no problem with that, but as it stands, it's just someone's personal opinion — poorly sourced, with material for which no reliable sources could be found i.e. classic OR. But if people are willing to do the work, that's great. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 21:52, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with Pete here. It may not be a great article, but it's hardly Greg soapboxing (at least, I can't exactly see Greg as a disciple of Chomsky), and it's certainly a valid (and referenced) start of an article on a valid topic (and one that's survived for over four years). Anything that's had this much work put into it at least deserves an AFD. – iridescent 21:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

There's no indication Greg has ever worked on it. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 21:59, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, thought your "soapbox" reference was to Greg supporting it because he agreed with it. A full list through the history shows that it's been worked on by literally dozens of people, which IMO makes it even less likely to just be someone's personal opinion. – iridescent 22:04, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, then it's a lot of personal opinions joined together. The point is that it doesn't reflect the academic literature on the topic. Example of the problem: "This must be distinguished from objectivity in philosophy (see Objectivity (philosophy)), which describes a statement that is not dependent on one's approval." What does that mean? Source? And so on. Anyway, as I said, if someone's willing to do the work, I'm happy. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:10, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Although it's moribund (ironically, given that half the people here seem to see themselves as wannabe journalists) it might be worth posting at WP:JOURNALISM to see if anyone fancies cleaning it up. And, in a sentence I never thought I'd say, the people who regularly contribute to Wikinews might be useful. As with all "philosophical concept" articles this is a hard one, as it can't be photographed or measured but undoubtedly exists. You might want to consider asking some of the regulars at another website, particularly Peter Damian, to contribute to this one as well (I know he's banned, but if he wants to put something on an appropriately licensed MWB page I'll take the rap for accuracy-checking and transwikiing it.) – iridescent 22:22, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

My guess is that if it were up to Peter Damian, he'd redirect it too. Or worse. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, I don't think anybody's saying that they disagree with your assessment that the article is not very good. (I haven't read it; I simply have no opinion one way or the other.) But the problem is a lack of transparency. It is not a huge transgression or anything like that, but it would be nice if you'd acknowledge the point: Wikipedia has pretty well-established procedures for dealing with articles like this, and you simply substituted your own personal judgment, without so much as a talk page notice, for any number of processes that exist, in part, to promote transparency.

Your point about a redirect is a tangent. Of course a redirect is better than outright deletion; and the closing admin for a speedy, a prod, or an AfD would presumably agree and leave a redirect. The end result would be the same, but the community would be respected in the process. -Pete (talk) 22:48, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

←If it's going to be redirected, it should probably go to Journalism ethics and standards. As previously said, I think it should go through AFD first, though; it's such a significant topic (unscientific test) that it will almost certainly be recreated otherwise. – iridescent 22:49, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

To add a little more not-science into the mix, it looks like Objectivity (journalism) gets about 5,000 hits/month, while Journalism gets 35,000. I'm surprised they're so close, actually -- I'd think the sub-topic would get far fewer. But regardless, that's a lot of people interested in the topic, and it would certainly be a good collaboration project to create a decent article about it. I'd pitch in where I could. [3] -Pete (talk) 22:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Pete, I think you've misunderstood what a redirect is. It's an edit like any other. It's there in the history for anyone to see, anyone can undo it, the material has not been deleted, and so on.

Uh no, I actually have a fairly good idea what a redirect is :) -Pete (talk) 22:58, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

And apart from my credentials, which I don't think should be the point -- if you were to have used one of those processes, it's generally recommended that you do stuff like notify original/recent/major contributors of the nomination, etc. Page blanking without discussion or notification of any kind is something that's generally considered vandalism, and while I understand your intent -- and will likely agree with your assessment once I read through the article -- I simply don't see why anyone, no matter how much excellent work they've done for the project (and I acknowledge and admire all you have done), should ignore perfectly good practices that are well-established. -Pete (talk) 23:14, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Iridescent, I agree that it's an important topic, which is why I redirected it (not deleted it), until such time as it can be written up properly. It'll take a lot of work to write this well, and access to the scholarly sources. It's not something that can be written on the hoof. People who would never dream of dashing off something about special relativity without being qualified in the area, think it's okay to write articles like this, because they see it as some kind of common knowledge, but it really isn't. That's my only point here. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:54, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

An interesting tidbit: at the very bottom of the article, there's a note that its "parent article" (whatever that is) is Journalism ethics and standards. I suspect that "parent article" is something somebody invented, and not an actual part of the Wikipedia taxonomy…at least I've never heard of anything like that (outside of the concept of sub-pages more commonly used in user space, etc.) But it is interesting to note, and if we're going to make a redirect, by whatever process, that may be a better article to point to. (I haven't read that one yet either -- just throwing the idea into the mix.) -Pete (talk) 23:10, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The objectivity article could be condensed to the size of a short section, using whichever parts are properly sourced, and added to the parent article; then the title could be redirected to that section. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 23:13, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I like that idea. -Pete (talk) 23:15, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

• I think that, if the article on Journalistic objectivity is to be worked on, then someone should add how it can be historically derived from Hazlitt's emphasis on critics and reviewers approaching a work in an objective manner and should analyze a work as a work and not to push a political agenda. His argument was one of the earliest and most famous in the modern period. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I've done a quick cleanup of the article. A ton more work is needed before it's featured, obviously, but in my view it is at this point a worthwhile article that offers some value to the reader. I'm happy to discuss that in the context of AfD if anyone wants to nominate it; also happy to proceed toward the idea of merging the content into sections of other articles, etc. Hope this work is helpful. -Pete (talk) 00:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

That's a good start, Pete. Thanks for doing it. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 00:48, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

No problem, and regardless of my comments earlier, thank you for catching it. It really was a mess! -Pete (talk) 00:53, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

And, if I hadn't reverted Slim, it may never have been noticed. That, despite the fact that Anthony posted a link to the redirect on Foundation-l mailing list, which is what alerted me to it. I guess it all depends on whether you have a skeptical attitude toward Wikipedia or not. -- Thekohser 15:27, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

You're right Greg, nobody would have ever found that, and some poor kid someplace would have flunked J-school because he missed an important point he might have otherwise found on Wikipedia, if not for your heroic action :) Kudos, and much appreciated. -Pete (talk) 17:44, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Or might have graduated from J-school because not exposed to that article. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 18:37, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Would it be better to redirect the article, then? If so, by all means, be my guest. That would give me unique content for Google juice on the website that I own. -- Thekohser 19:09, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

---

Hi Greg. The article needs sources that truly reflect the subject-matter. You may find David Brooks. “Objectivity in Journalism.” Imprimis 35, no. 1 (January 2006): 6-7 useful, of which a summary is here [4].

Brooks claims that there are five principles required for objectivity in journalism:

1. Suspension of judgment (or rather, given he says later that judgment is essential, suspend prejudice or pre-judgment.
2. Modesty and control of one's emotions.
3. Generalisation or 'judgment' - take all the facts and form a general conclusion
4. Preparedness to betray friends "for journalists and for most citizens, loyalty to the truth should supplant loyalty to the team."
5. Ignore stereotypes

The Land Surveyor (talk) 20:39, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Hello there, Mister Mystery Editor with past interest in logic! Thing is, I don't have a threshold of interest in working on that article. I'm more inclined to work on other areas, since I suffer from Asparaguser's Syndrome. Also, I'm not prepared to betray friends in my pursuit of a better free encyclopedia. -- Thekohser 20:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

NPOV

Objectivity is under attack on Wikipedia! :) ChildofMidnight (talk) 01:30, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Hypnotized

Hello,

In today's Salon, Camille Paglia invokes Bob Welch's song "Hypnotized" when comparing fantasy and reality in planning for the future. [5]

But dreaming in the 1960s and '70s had a spiritual dimension that is long gone in our crassly materialistic and status-driven time. Here's a gorgeous example: Bob Welch's song "Hypnotized" which appears on Fleetwood Mac's 1973 album "Mystery to Me." (The contemplative young man in this recent video is not Welch.) It's a peyote dream inspired by Carlos Castaneda's fictionalized books: "They say there's a place down in Mexico/ Where a man can fly over mountains and hills/ And he don't need an airplane or some kind of engine/ And he never will." This exhilarating shamanistic vision (wonderfully enhanced by Christine McVie's hymnlike backing vocal) captures the truth-seeking pilgrimages of my generation but also demonstrates the dangerous veering away from mundane social responsibilities. If the left is an incoherent shambles in the U.S., it's partly because the visionaries lost their bearings on drugs, and only the myopic apparatchiks and feather-preening bourgeois liberals are left.

I imagine that she included that section in her column in response to your request on the reward board. Although it did not meet the terms of an "Informative and engaging article" on Wikipedia which would have been worth $15.00 to her, maybe it could qualify for a some of the reward as the column was informative and engaging, it was written within the time limit (prior to September 14th), and it is now present on Wikipedia (above). Perhaps you could sent her $2.00 as her portion of the reward and an explanation why. Uncle uncle uncle 13:25, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I like your thinking, Uncle Cubed. Maybe I could send Paglia $2.00; or, I could review her Wikipedia article for any libel or defamation -- certainly a $2.00 value! -- Thekohser 13:40, 9 September 2009 (UTC)