User talk:Uncle G/Archive/2009-02-19

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Yes, I am an administrator.
If you wish to discuss the content of an article, please do so on that article's own talk page. That's one of the things that they are there for.
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For past discussions on this page, see the archive.

� ��

Hello, Uncle G. You have new messages at WikiDan61's talk page.
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DYK

On 1 January, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article World Conference against Racism 2001, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Wizardman 20:01, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

• Thanks for your help, during the discussion of my article Myrzakulov equations. But now I have a new problems from same users (I suggess). So I'm the author of the article Myrzakulov equations and I'm not Myrzakulov. My english not enough to improve this my article. So I would like to ask you and anybody who have a good english in order to improve the article and to keep it. Ngn 92.46.72.14 (talk) 18:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Tara Whelan

Thanks for your help, but I don't think you fixed the "transclusion". As soon as the next entry was added the Tara Whelan entry got merged with the previous entry. Please fix. Thanks!! Yellow-bellied sapsucker (talk) 17:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Whoa: OK now. Thanks a lot. Happy New Year. Yellow-bellied sapsucker (talk) 17:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC) P.S. - could you direct me to where/how to make 2nd nominations for WP:AFD, so I can do it right in the future. Thanks again.Yellow-bellied sapsucker (talk) 17:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:New-yorkistan-new-yorker-cover.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:New-yorkistan-new-yorker-cover.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 21:48, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding "bogus" copy and paste move

I saw that you described my copy and paste move regarding the Yahir page as being a "bogus" copy and paste move. Is that not the proper procedure? If not, then what is? Also, please refrain from referring to my honest attempts to improve Wikipedia as being "bogus". Not all of us spend hours a day working on Wikipedia like you do and don't always know the proper procedures. I just did what seemed to be the common sense thing to do, and if that's somehow "bogus", then I'm proud to be bogus. .Joeschmoe2003 (talk) 3 January 2008 (UTC)

• I didn't call you bogus. I called the "move" bogus. And it is. It's bogus because it isn't a move. It's a copy. And I told you what the proper procedure was. I even handily linked the message to the relevant help page. Uncle G (talk) 23:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

mathematical notation

Hello. Apparently when I posted the material below you had just begun a long wiki-break (several months, I think?), and the matter seems to have been forgotten as a result. But now you seem to be here quite regularly again, so here it is:

---

Hello. When we discussed this last December, it didn't seem urgent to continue the discussion since you seem remote from the Wikipedia mathematics community, but for the sake of completeness, here is the material that you so urgently wished to be communicated to you ONLY by means other than email if at all. I've put it into pdf format so that what you see should not be brower-dependent and email should not be necessary:

File:Notation.pdf

Look near the bottom of the first page of the two-page pdf document.

Here's the point:

• In e^x, obviously the e should be at the same height as the surrounding letters and the superscript x should be higher. That is indeed how it appears in the version that does not use TeX. In the TeX version, on the other hand, the e looks lower than the other letters, and that is clearly incorrect. I've tried this on a variety of different browsers and it's looked that way consistently.
• The letters in TeX are larger than those is the surrounding text; they're comically gigantic. That obviously is inconsistent with standard usage.

Those are among the reasons for the position taken by Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics). Hundreds of mathematicians edit Wikipedia daily and for the most part adhere to the manual. Michael Hardy 20:31, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

• I explained this to you at length in 2006. I explained to you no fewer than three times that on my browser your hand-rolled formula markup looks terrible and is difficult to read, whereas the MediaWiki formula markup that is documented at Help:Displaying a formula looks good and is easily legible. It is ironic that the very PDF file that you uploaded demonstrates the same thing. In the PDF, your hand-rolled formula is quite illegible, with the "e" not even appearing as an "e", whereas the formula using the MediaWiki formula markup intended for the purpose appears as intended. I have to adjust Acrobat's magnification factor to 150% before the "e" in your hand-rolled version even appears as an "e".

  That you think that I asked for a PDF file, let alone "urgently" asked for one, is bizarre. I made no such request. That was entirely your own idea. That you are still trying to persuade me to doubt the evidence of my own two eyes after over a year is mind-boggling. That in all that time you have made no attempt to contribute to the correct discussion page, that I pointed you to at the very beginning and where there is a discussion of this very thing, but as soon as I edit are back here, indicates that you want to vainly try to win an argument with me (which you won't until what I see with my own eyes changes) rather than to participate in a discussion of MediaWiki formula markup and how it is rendered. I repeat my suggestion made right at the very start, over a year ago: Go to the correct talk page and actually participate in the formula markup discussion. Uncle G (talk) 10:57, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Your conspicuous impatience is causing you to misunderstand what you're reading. I never said you urgently requested a pdf document. I said you urgently requested that it be given only be means OTHER than email. You say the "hand-rolled" "e" does not appear as an "e" in my pdf file. It is a clearly legible "e" in what I read. It appears the same size as the surrounding text. And it is correctly aligned. The one done in TeX on the other hand makes the "e" much bigger than the surrounding text and places it lower than the surrounding text.

Your assertion that a certain page is the "correct" place to discuss this is doubtful, for this reason:

The first thing I notice when I click on that page is someone prescribing notation that looks like this:

$a+...+z\,$

which is clearly incorrect; it should instead look like this:

$a+\cdots +z\,$

or at least like this:

$a+\ldots +z\,$

(But I will look more closely at that page.)

Your own relative inexperience with editing mathematics articles on Wikiepdia (by "relative" I mean by comparison to my own) and relatively small number of Wikipedia edits (fewer than 30,000, I seem to recall) makes it a bit odd that you would feel that you should be the one to instruct me rather than vice-versa. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

....OK, now I've looked at that page further and contributed some material to the help page. But my inspection of that page causes me to reject your contention that the is "the correct" place to discuss those issues.

(And maybe you should get a better version of acrobat reader.) Michael Hardy (talk) 03:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For constantly contributing to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion discussions, and for your overall hard work, Ten Pound Hammer and his otters offer you the Tireless Contributor barnstar. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 14:57, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Sri Asaramayan Deletion

Hi Uncle G, I couldn't get a chance to look at the flag of deletion on the Sri Asaramayan page. Can you please tell when did you put the flag or did you just delete it with no consent of anyone else? Also, if you don't mind telling me the reason of deletion as well please. Thanks Rohit (talk) 16:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

• Sri Asaramayan was a proposed deletion that was uncontested for 5 days. The proposal was grounded in the Wikipedia:No original research policy. Do you have any sources that document this poem? Uncle G (talk) 17:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Imaginative Sex

An editor has nominated Imaginative Sex, an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Imaginative Sex and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 01:59, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

User:TruthDestroyer

Please take a look at his contribs. Is this another sock of User:DavidYork71 and User:Neverneutral? Time to block him? --Richard (talk) 09:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Never mind. I was about to do it and found that Kafziel beat me to it. --Richard (talk) 09:33, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

There is also User:Facty, User:Fintimlimbim, and User:TheTrobriandWay. See List of alleged collaborators and Collaboration during World War II. Please drop me an e-mail if you need to know more. thanks! --Merbabu (talk) 23:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

F flat

You created an article on F flat major made out of the Afd'd F-flat. However, how about putting in the key signature imagae?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

• I leave that to the process of collaborative editing. I don't have software to hand for creating PNG files of musical notation. If you have that ability, and want to know what to create, see the picture of the key signature in the book by Busby that is cited at D flat minor#References. Uncle G (talk) 03:52, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

AviationWatch

Uncle.... thanks for you support and mentoring recently over Flying Matters, I found it very helpful and encouraging. Since then I have written a number of articles and tidied up others (see User:PeterIto for a summary), and most of which have gone pretty smoothly without conflict and I am now in some interesting discussions about how to organisation information within wikipedia about aviation protest organisations and their associated issues. However... my article on AirportWatch has come in for some stick; could you kindly take a look at Talk:AirportWatch and see if you can make some helpful suggestions as I do find the bull-fight method of improveing article very tiresome and the article needs from over viewpoints anyway. Many thanks. PeterIto (talk) 15:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Argh.

While I'm stomping my feet and griping about the lazy people, I figure I should thank the ones who are not—so, thanks for getting it. Maralia (talk) 23:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1944 D-Day : Operation Overlord

Just wanted to say thanks for clearing up the (my) confusion at the above AfD – I suppose that while it's not really a case of WP policy, it's something I hadn't come across before. Experience is invaluable here. I've removed my vote because it's no longer accurate, I take it there's no problems with doing that? — alex.muller (talkpage • contribs) 23:54, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

• It's a discussion, not a vote. There's nothing stopping you from changing your opinion as the discussion progresses. I suggest that if you want to help, you go and double-check whether reliable independent sources can be found, using whatever resources you have at your disposal for finding such sources, and use your findings as the basis of a rationale, per our Wikipedia:Deletion policy. The more editors that do that in an AFD discussion, any AFD discussion, the more likely it is that the outcome, whatever it is, will be the correct one for the encyclopaedia. See what the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion says about the Swiss cheese model. Uncle G (talk) 02:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

NPOV re Annotated Bibliography of Fly Fishing

• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

"an argument that today seems", "readable but comprehensive", "excellent read", "probably the most", "beautiful compilation", "masterfully", "transcends the cavalier attitude", "very nicely written", "superbly told", &c. — according to whom? If these are merely your personal opinions Mike Cline, they don't belong in Wikipedia. If they aren't your opinions, then please tell readers whose opinions they are and attribute them properly. Uncle G (talk) 15:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• Uncle G, Indeed they are not my opinions but in most cases paraphrased from some form of notable review--either by other prominent Fly fishing authorities or as part of larger, academic and scholarly reviews of literature of the sport. Although it will take a bit of time, I will do my best to provide cites for all the annotations. Thanks for your advice.--Mike Cline (talk) 22:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  • No worries. Cite sources for everything and make sure that the article doesn't read as if Wikipedia has an opinion, and the article will be better. Don't worry about it taking time. Uncle G (talk) 22:52, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Uncle G. Please take a look at the article as it is now to see if NPOV is still an issue. I still have some referencing work to complete, but can't get to many of my references for a while because I'm traveling so much. Thanks--Mike Cline (talk) 17:37, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Yeanold Viskersenn

It seems I've ruffled a feather or two. Forgive me if I spend 12 - 16 hours a day here, most of it reverting vandalism and occasionally writing or improving an article or two. But I can't imagine why you think I would see your comments when they are posted to a closed MfD and I have taken it off my watchlist to deal with more pressing matters. My apologies, but I thought I was dealing with a pig-headed editor who was only trying to make a point. As you will understand, I see many of them here. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 00:37, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

• It wasn't closed when I hit the edit button to edit it. Uncle G (talk) 00:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. It is now, however; hopefully with a mutually acceptable conclusion. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 00:45, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for supporting me during the proposal that my user page be deleted. I was not consulted about this whatsoever. (The first thing I knew about Stan Shebs being unhappy with my perfectly legitimate use of the image of him was a threatening message). I believe I acted entirely in accordance with Wikipedia's rules and was civil throughout - only then to be told to stick my thoughts "where the sun don't shine" by none less than an administrator! I'm frankly shocked at this, but I thank you for helping me not think Wikipedia has gone entirely insane. Are there any further steps I should take to prevent over-reaction before the fact, and my rights to display GNU images on my talk page? Thanks again for your time. Yeanold Viskersenn (talk) 01:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Water Well

I see you removed the copyright violation tag for Water well. It is a copyright violation. I was surprised since no one caught for a very long time. But it is. http://jamaicawells.com/JWSGlossaryofTerms2007.pdf. Ohmpandya (Talk) 01:21, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

• It's not. The article has had that content since December 2004. That document was created in February 2007, as you can see from its metadata. Barring time travel, the article cannot possibly be a copyright violation. The document copied Wikipedia, not the other way around. This is not an unusual occurrence. Uncle G (talk) 01:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Actually, no, the content wasn't added until February 2007. There was only one minor edit in December 2004 --  jj137 ^♠ 02:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
    • That's not an addition of content. Please read the diff properly and carefully. Start by reading its edit summary. Uncle G (talk) 02:45, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Jj137 is correct. Open up the PDF and check the content introduced in that diff (which is the same as what I removed) for yourself - it's the same. With both the edit and the PDF dated 2007, it's not possible to tell which copied the other without spending far more time than it's worth in contacting the author of the PDF. Of course, you could always rewrite the copyvioed content and then re-add it. Tijuana Brass (talk) 02:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
      • No xe isn't. You haven't read that diff properly and carefully either. You'll find that content in the December 2004 version of the article, and a further edit in May 2005. Please read edit history properly. When someone says that the content is in the December 2004 version of the article, go to a December 2004 version of the article and look. Uncle G (talk) 02:45, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
        • Shut my big dumb mouth... you're right. At least for part of it. I see the corresponding part about the aquifers, but I'm still not finding the second section of the intro. Are you referring to that too? Tijuana Brass (talk) 04:28, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
          • December 2005. Uncle G (talk) 05:19, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
          • Or December 2004. Take your pick. Uncle G (talk) 05:22, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
            • What a headache. Thanks for catching it; I sorted through the histories for 15 minutes and wasn't able to find that. Glad to finally have this settled. Tijuana Brass (talk) 16:14, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with CSD

The problem is that IPs do not have the technical ability to nominate an article at AFD (you'll notice that I originally simply removed it with "take it to AFD", then realized it was an IP) - and the fact that the article only has print sources in the references section made it difficult to evaluate whether it was real or not. —Random832 15:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

• The thing to do is wait to see whether they do take it to AFD, by taking the first step of applying the {{subst:afd1}} template, which they can do. That is the point to then step in and help. (Of course, not every application of the template is a good faith one, so pay attention to edit summaries and talk page discussions.) Uncle G (talk) 16:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Musical notes in scales with flats

Yes, I know key signatures with flats do not contain notes with sharps; however, we currently only have joint articles for enharmonic notes, which are named for the sharps; for example. I would like to change that in the future, but it's a big effort. (And if it's not done right, there's no way they'll survive AfD.) Once it's done though, I'll be sure to correct all the scales. In the meantime, changing the links to B-flat etc. isn't a good solution, since it just leads to a disambiguation page, which has a link for the pitch B♭, which...is linked to the article on A♯. I'm going to revert all the changes for now, but I assure you it's not permanent, and creating the flat-note articles and correcting links is high on my list of things-to-do. Thanks. Torc2 (talk) 19:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion/Moff

Thanks for catching that Moff was a valid G4. I must have misunderstood the history when I prodded it. I need to be more observant. Eluchil404 (talk) 04:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

• You didn't misunderstand. What Jecowa copied and pasted from Google's cache did not contain the AFD notice. So without access to the actual deleted revisions, you couldn't have known that the AFD notice really had been properly applied when the article was nominated for deletion. Uncle G (talk) 05:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
• I have created a brief disambiguation page at this title. *** Crotalus *** 11:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

This Is Fake DIY nominations

I'm fixing an incorrect closing, please stop undoing what I'm fixing asn you're causing even more problems as things get more and more confused. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 18:13, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• No, you're not. You're causing the confusion. As all of my edit summaries have said, I've been fixing a bogus copy-and-paste "move" by doing some history mergers and splits. Not only have you made a right mess by coming in right in the middle of my doing that without paying any attention to what I was doing, instead of waiting a minute until I had finished, you've made exactly the same bogus copy-and-past "move" that I was right in the middle of fixing. And because of your mess, Alexfusco5 has edited the wrong discussion. Please do not do make copy and paste "moves". And please stop making a mess. Your hamfistedness has exacerbated this quite considerably, whereas I was right in the middle of quietly, calmly, and carefully fixing things up and getting the revision histories and edits in the right places. Uncle G (talk) 18:21, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I didn't make ANY copy and paste moves. None at all. I only reverted history. Period. Please stop making false accusations about my actions. Anyone can look and see that none of what I did even closely resembles a copy and paste move. I've never made one of those, I didn't do so here, and I don't ever plan on making one. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 18:35, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
    • My error. I apologize unreservedly. You didn't do a copy-and-paste move. You reverted this discussion closure, rather. The point that I made about your paying more attention to edit/log summaries and article histories still stands, however. If you had checked the article history that you restored (and that I was just on the point of hitting the restore button to restore, myself, having carefully double-checked which revisions were the right ones to restore) you would have seen J-stan's closure. Now whether the previous discussion should have been closed or re-listed is a matter for the two of you to straighten out between yourselves. But it was closed nonetheless, and a new discussion was then opened some 10 hours later by Redfarmer. Xe opened it over the top of the old discussion (a Twinkle bug, it seems), then renamed it, then blanked the redirect, then asked for admin help, and then Tevildo copy-and-pasted "moved" the old discussion. I was right in the middle of giving that admin help, and fixing things to get the old closed discussion and its history back to where it had been, when you came along. All of my edit summaries quite clearly said that I was doing a history merger and split (a complex operation involving two moves, and several deletions and undeletions). Uncle G (talk) 19:14, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Content Dispute

I could not help but notice from the page history of Tom Leykis that you are currently involved in a content dispute. I would like to humbly ask you to utilize the talk page and the various venues of dispute resolution available to us. Thanks, -MBK₀₀₄ 06:59, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

proxemics

On 15 January, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article proxemics, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 14:33, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Christianity and domestic violence

An article that you have been involved in editing, Christianity and domestic violence, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christianity and domestic violence. Thank you. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 20:57, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Spelling lede

Example: News writing#Terms and structure. Wikipedia:Lead section also includes lede as an alternative spelling. "lede" would be an improbable misspelling for the word "lead", not meriting a redirect. / edg ☺ ☭ 23:05, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

• Well the word wasn't in any of the dictionaries that I checked before tagging it. "lead" is, and has had this meaning in journalism for years. Note that the external link to the Random House web site that is the citation supposedly supporting that content leads to a page that doesn't exist, by the way. This accords with what dictionary.com reports. It checks the 2006 Random House Unabridged Dictionary, and reports that the word "lede" isn't there. Uncle G (talk) 23:16, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I usually go with The Free Dictionary. / edg ☺ ☭ 23:40, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Again, note that that doesn't actually find a dictionary entry for that word. The page is telling you that the word is not in the American Heritage Dictionary. Contrast what you see there to when you look up "lead", which shows you what comes up for words that are in the AHD. Uncle G (talk) 23:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
      • So you're saying you still consider this a misspelling. / edg ☺ ☭ 00:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
        • Well, the two of us haven't actually found a dictionary that actually lists such a word yet, have we? Uncle G (talk) 00:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Great improvement on Birth aboard aircraft and ships

I think you should certainly consider nominating part of your work here for WP:DYK (although it still bears the stub template right now - but you could further expand it in the same way).--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 14:47, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

You've been linked

Users have been having a lengthy discussion at Talk: Asian fetish and I thought your work at User:Uncle G/Preference for Asian women by non-Asian men was very interesting. Users have also been discussing possibly renaming the article also. I hope you don't mind that your sandbox (?) will be linked at the talk page of Asian fetish. миражinred (speak, my child...) 20:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

• It's a draft article rather than a sandbox. And I had actually already linked to it on that talk page myself. Uncle G (talk) 00:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Your note at User talk:Montchav about Index of cooperation

You left a note at User talk:Montchav asking him/her to restore Index of cooperation. You should probably have left it at User talk:Garion96, since Garion96 was the administrator who deleted the article. --Eastmain (talk) 21:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

• You're quite right. My error. I'll follow the right talk page link this time. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 00:58, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Continuation of AFD conversation

Hi, I hope you don't mind, I'd rather continue our conversation about deletion here rather than clutter up the AFD any more. We aren't really talking about that particular article anymore, anyways, it's more about process in general.

First, let me start by saying that I agree in general that a stub about a notable subject should not be deleted. I disagree, however, with your statement "We don't delete stubs". This isn't true—stubs about non-notable subjects are deleted everyday. In this case in particular, I felt that Giant spider was covering a non-notable subject. I would have simply redirected but there was no clear target as the article listed three games.

If you went to the page for Carl Gauss and the content of the article was "This article is about the famous Carl Gauss. Carl was born in 1980 and lives in his mother's basement. He likes to drink soda and makes rubber band balls, etc." what would you consider the appropriate course of action? Clearly the article is not about the famous Carl Friedrich Gauss, but about a non-notable person that happens to share the name of a notable person. Should the stub be deleted? The easiest answer would be to replace the content with a stub about the notable Gauss, of course. But suppose you ran across this article and didn't know who Gauss was, or if this had been about an obscure (but still notable) person, and replacing with a decent stub would require some work. In this case, I feel that deleting the stub would be preferable to leaving it. Even though the article claims it is about "the famous Carl Gauss", this does not make it true. Similarly, even though the giant spider says it is about spiders in games and movies, that is not what that article is. Perhaps this example is a little extreme, but I hope it conveys the underlying principle I had in mind.

On a separate matter, I'd like to address your statement, "You are here to write an encyclopaedia, not to delete one." First, this statement sets up the straw man that I want to delete the encyclopedia, which is patently absurd. Secondly, I'm not here to write an encyclopedia. Every now and then I like to contribute to articles, true, but if an editor were to do nothing but read articles and revert vandalism, there is nothing wrong with that even though he does not write anything. To suggest that those who do not write articles are not valued does a disservice to those who spend much or all of their time on Wikipedia patrolling pages, reverting vandalism, contributing to discussion, tagging images, or any of the countless other tasks that improve Wikipedia without adding to the article space.

Lastly, you assumed in the AFD that I did not look for sources. Please be careful with your assumptions—you have no way of knowing whether I looked for sources or not. If you approach the situation from my point of view (and I hope you can, as I can see things from yours, and fully understand) you could see that I looked for sources, and found only sources that I did not consider germane to the article. If you're going to tell me I'm ignoring Wikipedia:Deletion policy, then fine, but please don't criticize me for not following something you've written up in your user space, though. (User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage) If you hadn't brought that up, your words would have had more force with me.

Anyways, I apologize, as this turned out to be much longer than I intended. I bear no ill will towards you, and understand your point of view. I do appreciate you arguing your point and actually having something to back it up (unlike a lot of arguments I see at AFD). Feel free to respond or not respond as you wish—I just wanted to explain my side of things. Pagrashtak 23:13, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

• I am obviously not Uncle G, but I do happen to agree with him and I hope that an argument from someone not him will be more agreeable to you. To clarify, when Uncle G said "We don't delete stubs" he was not referring to any stubs ever. Rather, he was stating that being a stub is not a reason in and of itself to delete.

  If I went to that page on Carl Gauss, my first course of action would be to check sources before doing anything. I feel that I must be confident that no appropriate sources exist before I nominate anything for deletion. If I found some sources to justify the existence of the article, I do not believe that deleting the stub is an appropriate course of action. The minimal effort I'd consider would be adding the newly found sources to the article, tagging it for cleanup, opening discussion on the talk page, and letting other people get involved in the process. If I didn't find sources, I'd tag the article, open discussion on the talk page and, after time has passed and nobody found anything, I'd finally nominate it for deletion.

  When he said "You are here to write an encyclopaedia, not to delete one", I agree that it does set up a strawman, but I do not believe that was his intention. I believe he was attempting to state that he did not see the sense in deleting encyclopedic content just because you personally do not wish to work on the article. Further, I believe the first clause of that sentence to to be in the collective second person. Even if you never write an article, an editor who only reverts vandalism is positively contributing towards writing an encyclopedia, so, yes, I'd agree that you are here to write an encyclopedia.

  Finally, I believe his assumption was on the grounds that you went straight for deletion without waiting after you put up the cleanup tags. While, yes, you did the first step of searching yourself, you did not do the second step of asking other contributing editors to find sources and, more importantly, your nomination did not list the steps you went through in attempting to find sources. And I believe the reason he pointed out something written in his user space was not to try and say he is correct so much as to point out that there were parts of all three levels: policy (WP:Deletion policy), guidelines (WP:N), and generally-accepted essays (User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage) that he believed you did not follow. -- Masterzora (talk) 00:28, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

  • As a matter of fact, the procedure outlined in User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage used to be in Wikipedia:Deletion policy. See this 2004 version of the policy, for example. It was removed when the policy was prosified in 2007. I know that I always found the table of problems and actions helpful, so I created one on my triage page. Others have found it helpful since. Uncle G (talk) 01:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
• No worries. And yes, making a good argument is my aim. I try to provide the kinds of rationales that I encourage others to provide.

  To suggest that those who do not write articles are not valued — Ahem! Who is making straw men, now? I certainly made no such suggestion.

  you have no way of knowing whether I looked for sources or not — Actually, yes we have. We know whether editors have looked for sources because they say so in their nominations. They say things like "I Googled it but couldn't find any relevant web pages discussing this subject.", or, in the best cases that I've seen over the years, things like "I did a LexisNexis search and couldn't find anything." and "There's nothing on PUBMED." and "I have JSTOR access via the university, and I couldn't find anything.". Your nomination rationale, in contrast, said nothing about looking for sources at all. See User:Uncle G/On notability#Giving rationales at AFD for how to make a good rationale that something is not notable.

  Uncle G (talk) 01:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Most of the articles I nominate to AFD are not so contentious. Although I might look for reliable sources for, say, a minor character that has only appeared in one work of fiction, I often don't bother typing up that I looked for sources and found none, as it is often a foregone conclusion that there will be none, as evidenced by the original research and in-universe content found in such articles. (And, let's face it, it's more typing!) This was clearly not one of those cases, and I agree that a more explicit nomination would have been more prudent. I'll try to keep this in mind for future articles that are not clear-cut cases.

    Masterzora, thanks—I'm always happy to hear from other editors. I hope I didn't give the impression that I found Uncle G's comments disagreeable. In fact it was just the opposite—a cogent argument (sadly, something too rare at AFD) made me wish to continue the conversation. Pagrashtak 06:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

    • I recommend doing it in all cases. Don't assume a foregone conclusion that there will be no sources. I've found sources on the seemingly most unlikely of subjects, from Fetch (game) (AfD discussion) to Baby born in air (AfD discussion). As I said in the former's AFD discussion, it's amazing what people study, sometimes.

      Don't take the poor state of an article as representing the poor state of human knowledge, and as any indication of what sources might exist for a subject. There are thousands of poor Wikipedia articles that people have written lousily, citing no sources and based upon a vague personal knowledge of a subject rather than by finding sources where the subject has been studied fully and in depth and using them. Over the years, many such have been turned into good stubs at AFD. There's a long list of such occasions, from Durban Strategy (AfD discussion) and Hemobag (AfD discussion) through Galactic Empire (Asimov) (AfD discussion) and Bantha (AfD discussion) to Pon farr (AfD discussion). (I've deliberately chosen some fictional subjects, given that you were looking at giant spiders.) I appear to have just turned around opinion on North Asia (AfD discussion) with 2 sources, replacing the collaborative speculation of a group of Wikipedia editors inventing their own agreed-in-house definition of a concept over a period of almost five years with some actual verifiable information.

      What we want is for such articles not to come to AFD in the first place. There's enough work to do at AFD with things that really do need an administrator to press a delete button.

      The best way for that to happen is to have a culture where editors seeing a bad article with no sources don't automatically reach for the {{afd1}} or {{subst:prod}} templates, but look for sources themselves, and when they find them go in and boldly Kerrrzappp! the article to make it a coherent and well-sourced good stub on the subject, without involving AFD or Proposed Deletion at all. This has been our editing and deletion policy from pretty nearly the start of the project.

      The work of writing the encyclopaedia is borne on the shoulders of all editors. Nominating articles for deletion only for them to be rewritten concentrates that burden onto a scant handful of ordinary editors and administrators who do AFD patrol and Proposed Deletion patrol. That's not what we want. It's not good for the encyclopaedia. Many hands make light work. Uncle G (talk) 12:05, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

King fisher322 (talk · contribs)

King fisher322 (talk · contribs), whom you blocked, is requesting a review. Is he a reincarnation of a banned user or something? There's no obvious reason that I can see for a block. It's unlikely his first experience with Wikipedia, but there needs to be something more than just adding prods. The categories of unsourced articles were being discussed at Wikipedia Review, so it's possible that he saw that discussion and wanted to come to help out with them. --B (talk) 03:46, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Index of cooperation

I can't imagine I missed the .gov adress. The article is restored. Garion96 (talk) 09:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Birth aboard aircraft and ships

On 19 January, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Birth aboard aircraft and ships, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--BorgQueen (talk) 18:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Collaboration request for Wikipedia essay

Hello, Uncle G. Because of some comments you left in a recent AfD, I think you may be a good contributor to a wikipedia essay I have started. If you would be willing to collaborate on this with me, I would really appreciate it. It is located at: WP:DEMAND. Thanks, JERRY ^talk _contribs 02:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Bandwagon fan

An editor has nominated Bandwagon fan, an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bandwagon fan and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 14:23, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

• Silly 'bot! I worked on the article after it was nominated. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 14:25, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Class council

I was wondering if you could explain the purpose of the new redirect page Class council that you created. I followed the redirect to Secondary education in France but did not see the connection. I must admit that I did not read the entire article, just scanned it. Looking forward to your reply. Dbiel ^(Talk) 16:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• I suggest, then, that you do read the entire article. Or, alternatively, you simply can use your web browser's search function to look for "class council" in the article. ☺ The deleted article wasn't wrong to have the interwiki link to the French Wikipedia that it had. Uncle G (talk) 16:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the reply. I have no idea what you are talking about as far as "the deleted article". My question was solely related to the purpose of the redirect and was a question only; which I thought was a better choice than deleting the redirect itself. As a redirect, I would think that the reference should be more apparent than it is in this article, as some one entering class council looking for an article on that subject would tend to question why it is being linked to Secondary education in France. It just seems a questionable use of a redirect, as a search will take one to the article without the confusion of a redirect. It would seem to me that it might make more sense to redirect class council to Student Assembly where the term is also use and is much closer related to the subject than is Secondary education in France. Dbiel ^(Talk) 20:49, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
    • I personally expect it to become a disambiguation article in the fullness of time, because there appear to be at least two separate concepts of class councils in different pedagogic systems. That's what the sources led me to believe, anyway, when I researched it. I simply couldn't sort out what was what before the Proposed Deletion time limit expired. A tip: Always work from sources. To work out what to do with a subject, go and look at what sources exist, and see how and in what context they cover it. Uncle G (talk) 00:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Well, I now see what you are talking about as the page "Class council" was deleted as being a definition only. I am still trying to learn my way around Wikipedia. Thus your statement: "The deleted article wasn't wrong to have the interwiki link to the French Wikipedia that it had." brings up the question of just how should definition only pages be created and still comply with Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, if that can actually be done. By the way, I finally figuered out how to find the logs on a given page as there is no link from the page itself. Dbiel ^(Talk) 21:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
    • A stub encyclopaedia article is just the seed from which a full encyclopaedia article grows, through the process of editing and improvement outlined at Wikipedia:Article development. A good stub explains what the topic is, giving context; possibly gives some information about the topic; and contains a source citation for the content and possibly further source citations, as further reading, from which the article can be further expanded by other editors, in collaboration. Per Wikipedia:Editing policy, this is a collaboratively-written project.

      We don't delete things that are stub encyclopaedia articles with scope for expansion into full articles, per Wikipedia:Deletion policy. We expand them. A stub is how most of our articles originally started out, and we don't require articles to be perfect ab initio, although that is our goal for every article. New editors are used to encountering more complete articles in the normal run of things. Editors who have been here longer may well recall a time when much of the encyclopaedia was stub encyclopaedia articles. New editors may thus be less aware of how articles start, but being a stub is still how a fair number of our articles start out today. The important thing is that there must be scope for expansion, without original research and with verifiable content, from a stub encyclopaedia article into a full encyclopaedia article. If an article can only ever be a stub, then it is presenting the information in the wrong way.

      Moreover, sometimes it can take years before someone comes along to expand an article. I just expanded North Asia, for example. That was a stub for five years. Per Wikipedia:Editing policy, this is also a volunteer-written project. There is no deadline for articles to be written by. I suggest that you read Wikipedia:Your first article and User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage, as well as all of the other things that are hyperlinked-to above. Uncle G (talk) 00:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dbiel (talk • contribs) 01:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage

Brilliant. Very well done. Dihydrogen Monoxide (party) 23:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

whisper number

Hello Uncle G, you were an original editor to the whisper number article and i was looking for your help with it. i am whisper123 and we had a back and forth discussion on the article back in 2005 when it was created. The article sat untouched for two years, and now a person is in trying to do exactly what you indicated i was not allowed to - I am not sure how to get a person of 'authority' to review the 'new' changes to this article, but I knew that two years ago you were well versed in the ways of wiki and i would assume that has only improved. I may have disagreed with you but at the same time would like to see others follow the same guidelines that were enforced on my edits. Would you be willing to intervene as it has become a back and forth of edits and deletes resulting in a mess of an article, and it appears no editor is willing to act on these changes. Thank you. 69.69.74.108 (talk) 13:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC) 13:50, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Staying out of this one? 71.1.170.178 (talk) 18:42, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

RE: one more question at ANI

I am not disagreeing with you, but I have a genuine question for clarification about bots and bot approval. I respect you and your opinion on the matter greatly. If you could respond at ANI, I would be most appreciative. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 16:42, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages and articles

In reply to your comment in an AfD that is now closed: Disambiguation pages are not articles per WP:DISAMBIG ("disambiguation pages — non-article pages that contain no content and only refer users to other Wikipedia pages"), MOS:DAB ("Disambiguation pages ("dab pages") are, like redirects, non-article pages in the article namespace"), and the ToDo list of the Dab Wikiproject ("Make it so disambiguations are no longer classed as articles!") Disambiguation pages cannot become Good Articles, and they cannot be deleted through ArticlesForDeletion. (MiscellaneousForDeletion would however be the right place.) Just FYI. :-) – sgeureka ^t•c 03:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

• Wrong. As I wrote before, disambiguation articles are articles in the main article namespace, and AFD is where they are discussed. Uncle G (talk) 09:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
  • If they are non-articles, how can they be articles? They are pages. As said above, redirects are also pages in article name space, and they are discussed at WP:RFD, not AfD. I have started a thread at WT:D#Where are dab pages discussed for deletion?. – sgeureka ^t•c 12:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Disambiguation articles are pages in the main article namespace. Disambiguation articles have always been discussed at AFD (and at VFD prior to that). I do know what is discussed at what venue. Have a big hint. Uncle G (talk) 13:09, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Possible WP:BLP problem on user page

Hello Uncle G,
I recently came across User:Little Joe Shots while doing some recent change patrolling. I was curious if you think that my concerns are correct. From the description on the top of the page, it looks like some of this material is based off a book, ("Mob Nemesis" by former F.B.I. agent Joe Griffin), but some is also based off original research and web forums. Many of the people listed are deceased, which probably isn't surprising given their "alleged" line of work, but there are quite a few that are still living. I posted a note on the user's talk page asking that they remove it themselves, but now I'm not sure it's worth waiting a few days on what I think looks pretty clearly to be a WP:BLP violation. I didn't think it was serious enough for it's own thread on AN/I, but I looked at the history there to see which admin's were actively editing this morning. You were there, and linking to BLP in a recent edit summary, so I'm coming to see what you think. --Onorem♠Dil 13:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

• This is in fact one of a number of such userspace pages. I think that we need more eyes on this. I've referred them to the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard for a more general discussion. Uncle G (talk) 15:31, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Wow. I thought I'd remembered seeing a few similar pages a while ago, but didn't realize how many there were until I read your post on BLP/N. Thanks for the help. --Onorem♠Dil 16:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia family

Hello, I noticed you put a BLP tag on Talk:Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia family. I have no problem with that. On the contrary. I am just curious if there is any particular reason for that tag right now, a year after the article was created. Did you find any problems? I usually reference my articles as much as possible, but if there is any particular problem, please tell me and I will try to fix it. - Mafia Expert (talk) 17:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

• It's just a notice. I didn't spot a particular problem that needed addressing. My aim was the prevention of future problems. I put the reminder there, and on several other crime family articles, because there appear to be editors around who don't scrupulously source their statements of criminality and reports of murders and deaths when dealing with these subjects. See what is currently on the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. Uncle G (talk) 18:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I see what you mean. However, the problem is not only in the userspaces. Many of the articles about the American Mafia are unreferenced, unsourced and blatant violations of WP:NOR. I tried to do something about it, but gave up. Some of the contributors became very aggressive (see: User_talk:OwenX/Archive_9#Listen_You_Little_Prick.21) and did not hesitate to quote false references (see Talk:Agueci Brothers). You need a task force to clean that mess up. - Mafia Expert (talk) 22:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
    • The articles on organized crime are atroctious, some of the worst I've ever seen. In only a few minutes I found Colombo crime family, Genovese crime family, and Chicago Outfit — all chock-full of unsourced lists of names of people who are allegedly mobsters. Some of these articles are so bad that they should be either deleted or reduced to stubs, then started again from scratch. At the very least, the lists must be removed until and unless reliable sources are found to substantiate them. *** Crotalus *** 23:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
    • I suggest that you explain the situation and ask for help on the BLP Noticeboard. Uncle G (talk) 02:57, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

I just noted your challenge of the AFD rationale for Slartibartfast. I'm happy to see someone finally challenging the deletionists who are playing the "no real world notability" card simply because it's an easy way for them to get a pop-culture-based article they don't like deleted. Well done. Now if only folks would start going after editors who repeatedly resubmit articles to AFD until they get the decision they want. 23skidoo (talk) 03:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Crime family userspace pages

Based on your post to the BLP noticeboard, I have nominated the organized crime content in Alexbonaro's userspace for deletion. *** Crotalus *** 20:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

• I noticed. ☺ You forgot the original userpage that led to it all. (Read earlier on this page.) Uncle G (talk) 02:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Bulbasaur closure

First, I recommend that you should not make admin decisions in a state of agitation. Leave it to others. Second, I was about to revert your closure but then again, it is an obvious snowball keep. Nevertheless I recommend that you change your closing rationale because the overriding concern in this topic is to create a clear and unambiguous ruling that ends edit warring and is enforceable by the community. Only the second concern is whether forum X is the proper arena for such a discussion. The discussion at AfD was on the right track to create such a ruling on content. Your overtly emotional objection to my choice of forum does nothing to end the content discussion and simply passes it on to another forum based on a technicality. This does nothing to help resolve the problem and only incites further controversy. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 17:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

• There was no emotion. It is not the correct venue, and never has been. The person who passed the discussion on to another forum was you, incorrectly passing it along to AFD in the first place, instead of doing what you should have done, and what I did, which was to stop the forum shopping, throw it out of the deletion discussion fora and send it back to the article talk pages, where it was already being discussed at Talk:Bulbasaur#Redirect and Talk:List of Pokémon (1-20)#Bulbasaur. You should have taken heed of what was written by the editors in the deletion review discussion. The correct venue for discussing redirects is the article's talk pages, involving Wikipedia:Third opinion and Wikipedia:Requests for comment if outside opinions are needed. This has been the case for years, and continues to be the case now. AFD is not a part of that. AFD does not create "rulings" in editorial disputes where deletion is not involved. It is, as its name states, for dealing with discussions of deletion. If you want a consensus with outside editors involved, use RFC to request greater input to the talk page discussions. Please read Wikipedia:Dispute resolution and Wikipedia:Consensus. This is all explained therein. Articles for deletion is for deletion. Uncle G (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • In that case I have to revert your closure. Redirect with protection is akin to deletion, it removes the possibility for a normal editor to recreate and add to the article. As such, AfD is the correct forum. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 18:27, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
    • (ec)No. Protection is a means of halting an edit war, and bringing a discussion, again, to the article's talk page, as it was in this case. That a protected redirect is The Wrong Version does not magically make it a deletion. In addition to familiarizing yourself with what Wikipedia:Dispute resolution and Wikipedia:Consensus say, please read Wikipedia:Edit war says as well. You have entirely the wrong idea of how these things are handled. I strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with how our editing dispute resolution processes work, what protection is for, and to stop trying to get AFD involved in a discussion that has nothing to do with deletion when there are perfectly good discussions already existing in the places where they should be. Uncle G (talk) 18:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
      • I have a very good understanding of how our resolution processes work. As I pointed out in my procedural nomination, as long as "delete and redirect" is a potential outcome of the discussion (which it might be if editors continue to restore the article over a redirect consensus), AfD is a perfectly good forum. It doesn't matter that there are other potential forums, what matters is that there is a community consensus based on merit not on your editorial disagreement with my administrative decision. if you have problems with my record of closing DRV's, bring it to WP:RFC. Otherwise, put your editorial opinions at the bottom of the discussion. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 18:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
        • No, you clearly have not, because what you are doing is completely contradicted by all of the pages, that I've already pointed you to three times now, that explain our dispute resolution processes. You should never have made a procedural nomination in the first place. It is you that is disrupting an ongoing discussion, which was ongoing on the articles' talk pages. The correct course of action was to send the discussion from Deletion review back to the articles' talk pages, as editors in the deletion review pointed out. The result of the talk page discussion will either be to retain the merger or to revert to the article as it stood. Deletion is not involved in that. "Delete and redirect" will not be a allowable outcome of a merger, per the requirements of the GFDL. And I am not expressing an editorial opinion as to the state of the article. I am speedily closing a deletion discussion that does not belong on AFD, does not involve deletion, and that should be, and was already being, held on article talk pages. Uncle G (talk) 19:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
          • Uh, is completely contradicted by all of the pages No. It is you that is disrupting an ongoing discussion No. "Delete and redirect" will not be a allowable outcome of a merger, per the requirements of the GFDL. No. Deletion can occur if no content is retained. I struck your invalid closing statement, and closed the discussion as snowball keep. I hope that resolves the core of the dispute. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 19:17, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
            • Yes, you did disrupt the ongoing discussion, which would have perfectly happily proceeded, with the article protected against edit warring, on the article's talk pages and come to a conclusion, and which you will observe is now ongoing there once more, now that your disruption of it has ceased. Yes, content was transferred as part of the merger, as the article's edit history will attest. And yes what you are doing is contradicted by our pages that explain how our dispute resolution processes work, what protecting a page that is being edit warred over is, where such protection is intended to send discussion to, and how to involve outside editors in such talk page discussions. They say it several times over. I strongly recommend that you read and familiarize yourself with them. You are clearly not familiar with them, with Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Discussion, or even with what is written about controversial mergers in the big box at the top of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. What I stated in my closure was perfectly correct, and is exactly as explained on all of the aforementioned policy and other pages, as I hope other people are now going to explain to you as well. This is now the fifth time that I have. Please learn how these things work. Administrators are supposed to know what does and doesn't involve deletion, what the difference is between deletion and protecting a page in the middle of an edit war over a merger, and where discussion of such a merger then is resolved. Uncle G (talk) 19:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
              • I stopped reading after "perfectly happily". Again, if you can't control your impulses I recommend you don't get engaged in administrative activities. If this is a chronic problem I recommend you give up your admin bit. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 20:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

and I came to congratulate you on a model close, & I hope others learn to close likewise--& this goes whether or not I like whatever the final result will be. DGG (talk) 02:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Projects

Sorry to bother you, but how do manage to have time to contribute to all of those different projects with you being an administrator on this one? Earthbendingmaster 19:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Fan loyalty

On 26 January, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Fan loyalty, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--howcheng {chat} 06:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Need you help and advice to reedit a page about the company Faceo

I created a page about the company Faceo in June 2007. You deleted this page on December 21, 2007.

I would like to reedit a page about Faceo, ensuring that it will be interesting for Wikipedia and its users. I understood that we have to pay attention not to advertise for our company.

Could you please let me know what elements made our article unappropriate for an encyclopedia? How can I make sure it will not be the case in a new article?

Please give me some guidelines to publish a new article. Thanks in advance, Faceo (talk) 16:44, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:TFD/T

Hi there. I noticed your bot was the one responsible for updating WP:TFD/T to redirect to the current day, an extremely useful shortcut which I use every day. I was therefore saddened to see that Uncle G's Bot has not been updating this shortcut recently - is it possible for this automatic update to be resumed? Many thanks in advance, Happy‑melon 20:31, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Alt.usenet.kooks

An article that you have been involved in editing, Alt.usenet.kooks, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alt.usenet.kooks (2nd nomination). Thank you. Calton | Talk 01:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:On MfD

A tag has been placed on Template:On MfD requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Ray Foley

Hi, I see from the deletion log that you last deleted this page on 14-Mar-2007. I have requested User:MZMcBride to unprotect the page, as Ray Foley is certainly notable now, having won a Best National DJ Award in the Meteor Ireland Music Awards, but I wondered if you have held a copy of what the page was like before you deleted it, to enable me to recreate it (with appropriate sources/references, Etc.) Thanks, --The.Q^(t)(c) 12:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, any chance of undeleting and unprotecting this article, please? --The.Q^(t)(c) 15:14, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Sandboxes

You might want to talk to Wdfarmer about the suggestion he has for an alteration to the code of Template:Template sandbox, which he raised on its talk page. Happy‑melon 15:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. One solution to my request would be to change the default text that your bot uses to refresh that sandbox. Please contribute to our discussion there. Wdfarmer (talk) 23:26, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:AFC instructions

A tag has been placed on Template:AFC instructions requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Beef hormone controversy

Thanks for this solid article. Do you have more information on what the EU claims they found in 2004? All I can find is some variant of:

"The EU responded by basing the new EU Hormones Directive of 22 September 2003, in effect a continuation of the ban, on what it says is a full scientific risk assessment that was conducted over the years 1999-2002."

But I can't find the actual 'full scientific risk assessment.' My mom has seen some documentary about this on TV and won't let me eat beef anymore. Please Help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.80.40.86 (talk) 03:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Please look at this proposal at WP:BIO

Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Shortcut WP:BLP1E should not link here for some suggestions about how to clean up the problem, and add your thoughts. One of your diffs is mentioned. Noroton (talk) 23:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Heads up!

I just declined a G10 speedy deletion request on an article you created, Christianity and domestic violence. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 23:11, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Jaan

An article that you have been involved in editing, Jaan, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jaan. Thank you.
--Jerzy•t 17:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Origin of notability

Hi Uncle G. I'm researching the origin of the Primary Notability Criterion, just out of personal interest. Trawling through histories and so on. I've compiled significant edits I've found at User:Ryan_Paddy/Origin_of_primary_criterion_for_notability, and you've come up a few times. Rossami suggested that the concept may have originated in early WP:CORP discussions, but I'm having trouble tracking that and suspect some edit history may have been lost in a merge there. When you created WP:Notability (organizations and companies) you commented "Notability and inclusion guidelines modelled after those for Wikipedia:WikiProject Music", but I haven't found much there. Any pointers much appreciated. Ryan Paddy (talk) 22:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Harold C. Pachios

An article that you have been involved in editing, Harold C. Pachios, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harold C. Pachios. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Ecoleetage (talk) 01:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the intrusion. I know that you didn't create the article, but the original author is banned from Wikipedia. You were cited as among the earliest editors on this, which is why this notice is being placed here. Ecoleetage (talk) 01:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Brion Vibber

An article that you have been involved in editing, Brion Vibber, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brion Vibber (2nd nomination). Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Eastmain (talk) 15:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Advice to those writing with a COI

Somewhere I have read an excellent piece of advice by you to those writing with a COI, along the lines of "forget everything that you know or that is in your private sources; use only what you can find in independent sources, and if you can't find anything, then don't write" - but better put than that. Could you point me to it, please? I often find I would like to quote it. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 20:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

• Don't trouble - I've found it. Thanks for writing it, though. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 17:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Redirect of BLAG

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on BLAG, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because BLAG is a redirect to a non-existent page (CSD R1).

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting BLAG, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 08:40, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

RfD nomination of Template:Please leave this line alone (tutorial sandbox talk heading)

Template:Please leave this line alone (tutorial sandbox talk heading) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2008 September 9. Thank you. Suntag (talk) 21:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Marginal utility

Please see “Marginal utility” and “Marginalism”, which explain Jevons' utility theory of value (in the context of a more general explanation of such theories). —SlamDiego_←T 21:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Green day untitled eighth studio album

Valiant effort of the references, but until it has a name and estimated release date from the band or their label, I can't see the article surviving. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 18:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

• Neither can I. But it was a twofold point: First, there are often better sources around than what people choose to use. (The band's own article had a raw link to a video on YouTube as a citation, for goodness' sake!) Second, the sources don't tell us anything at all about the album. (After reading the sources that I found, I decided that after editing the album article I would also go to the band's article and add a sentence if it wasn't already there. It seemed to me that what there is to say, verifiably, is about the band, not about the album. It was already there, but abysmally sourced.) Uncle G (talk) 19:03, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Spoiled brat

Good work on the spoiled brat article. I've withdrawn my AfD nomination. Cosmic Latte (talk) 20:25, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

House blessing

I propose to replace "are religious rituals intended to bless a home" in the lead with "are religious rituals intended to protect inhabitants from evil spirits". This is backed by para 2 of ref 1 and from other refs is clearly the intention. I think it is helpful and less tautological. Are you cool with this? TerriersFan (talk) 23:26, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

• Maybe not "evil spirits"; "misfortune" or some such, perhaps. The Pennsylvania blessings, for example, aren't directed at any form of spirit. I wasn't very happy with the introduction when I wrote it. But I was concentrating more upon the remainder of the article at the time. Uncle G (talk) 23:33, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Misfortune is good. TerriersFan (talk) 23:36, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you (Pan-Serbism)

Many thanks for rewritting the Pan-Serbism article. You did an excellent work on it. The versions are like night and day. Stanimir (talk) 03:35, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Your work on Al

		The Article Rescue Barnstar
		For saving what is now an interesting article, Al (folklore), by doing extraordinary, useful, and quick research. Bravo! Drmies (talk) 04:21, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

'Australian Diasporas' - proposal for deletion

Hello, Thanks for your interest in the above issue regarding the Australian diaspora article. Would you kindly please respond to discussion on the article's talk page with your justification for undoing the proposal for deletion, or otherwise advise on what may be done with this article? Thanks SeventhHell (talk) 00:02, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi again, I put a response on the article's talk page - if you could respond when you have a chance, I really think there are some fundamental flaws with this article. I think the more we look into references (and it may take months), the more the literature will support the position that this article should either be deleted, renamed & 'moved', or completely re-written from scratch with a disambiguation page. I think time spent researching the pros and cons of the very existence of this article is would be better spent deleting it and getting on with our lives. Thanks, SeventhHell (talk) 11:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC) On second thoughts I have posted requests for comments. SeventhHell (talk) 00:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back

I just saw a posting of yours on the village pump, and thought to myself that I hadn't seen your name in a while. It's good to see you back, contributing; I've always appreciated your wisdom. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Murder of Thomas and Jackie Hawks

Hi!

Since you moved the above article from Skylar Deleon to Murder of Thomas and Jackie Hawks, I think that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Skylar Deleon is now obsolete. The current debate is focused on discussing the merits of that one indivicual rather than the event and the article now clearly puts the event in the spotlight which makes me believe that a new debate needs to be started. Do you think it's a good idea to close this debate and start a new one or will a simple note in the current debate suffice to reflect the change in focus? SWik78 (talk • contribs) 16:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind me. I just noticed that you already did that. Sorry for bugging you!

Peace! SWik78 (talk • contribs) 16:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		Once again you have taken poor articles and rescued the encyclopaedic matter in a way that satisfies policy and improves the project. Another piece of exemplary work from one of my all-time favourite Wikipedians, thank you for being not only right but also very persuasive. Guy (Help!) 11:53, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Samanthadecanta

Uncle G - I already notified User:Rich Farmbrough about this, but as one of the potentially "offending parties", you might want to be aware that User talk:Samanthadecanta is now threatening on her talk page to take legal action over the deletion of the "Darren Meade (bodybuilder)" page that was recently the subject of a AFD discussion. I believe you were the closing / deleting admin, so you are probably one of the individuals she is targeting. Of course, I don't think there's any legitimate basis for any sort of legal action here, and her allegations of religious persecution, other editors deleting her comments (an offense she is guilty of, ironically), and so on seem to have no basis in reality. Anyway, just a heads up. 71.233.6.118 (talk) 11:28, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Image:Hld mastehead.gif

Thanks for noticing the incorrect copyright tag on Image:Hld mastehead.gif. I changed the tag to {{Non-free logo}}, which it should have been all along. Having done that, I also removed the speedy deletion tag. -- Eastmain (talk) 16:21, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Rope (unit)

An article that you have been involved in editing, Rope (unit), has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rope (unit). Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? MuZemike (talk) 16:55, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

rescue tag

Hi, please leave the rescue tag until the AfD is complete. -- Banjeboi 19:50, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

• Why? I was the one that added it in the first place. I was also the one that said how to rescue the article. And I was the one that did the rescue work. Uncle G (talk) 20:13, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

thank you

Thank you for your comments. I have withdrawn the AFD. Before, I saw votes for "merge/redirect" so I thought this is what I wanted people to vote for. Chergles (talk) 23:06, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Wakey Wakey!

Why'd you poke me re the University one? I never participated there. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 01:01, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

• You can independently review it and close it. I participated in the discussion. Uncle G (talk) 01:05, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for the restoration of two redirects. Regards, Korg (talk) 01:06, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Souperism

I posted the following at Talk:Souperism. I also dislike disjointed conversations, so please reply there. Thanks --Yumegusa (talk) 10:30, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

American spelling

I made a number of edits in accordance with WP:ENGVAR (proselytizing -> proselytising, ostracized -> ostracised, etc.), but these have been reverted. Why?

I also changed "not all non-Catholics made proselytization a condition of food aid" to "not all non-Catholics made religious conversion a condition of food aid". This was again effectively reverted. Proselytisation, as generally understood, is the act of converting (someone) - not of converting oneself, so the term "religious conversion" (which has both transitive and intransitive meanings) is more correct. Thoughts?
--Yumegusa (talk) 16:57, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

to which, in the absence of your response, I have now added the following --Yumegusa (talk) 23:17, 28 October 2008 (UTC) :

Can someone (the editor in question or other) please show reason why we should (i) have American as opposed to Irish spelling in an article specifically about Ireland, and (ii) why we should use counter-intuitive and misleading vocabulary? Failing any response I will reinstate the relevant edits tomorrow.
--Yumegusa (talk) 23:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Conspicuous sneeze

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regional differences and dialects in Indian English --Badger Drink (talk) 18:55, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Article Rescue Barnstar
		I hereby award this Barnstar to Uncle G for his excellent work expanding and improving the Pyrokinesis article to protect if from deletion. Nutiketaiel (talk) 12:46, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Russell Brand Show prank telephone calls row

Great work.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 21:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Request

Please take a look at the latest developments in Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Reply. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 23:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scientific freedom

Hi, I think that the AfD was closed prematurely, but I don't want to reopen it unilaterally. May I have your view please? Though the concept is encyclopaedic, I think that it is a coatrack for Michael Polanyi's book, which has undue weight in the article or, Polanyi's Society for Freedom in Science which seems marginally notable. I just can't shake a feeling of unease ... TerriersFan (talk) 02:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

• If you think that it presents a one-sided view of what scientific freedom is, then please be bold and edit the article to expand it. Per our Wikipedia:Editing policy, perfection is not required ab initio. What articles need to get better is for editors who see poor articles, for which copious sources exist, to take those sources in hand and mercilessly write the articles until they improve. Start with Resnick and Schaffner. Uncle G (talk) 11:47, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

John R. Smith

Hi! I gather from AN/I that you were looking into the article as well. I was about to make a comment on the AfD when I was hit by an edit conflict as the discussion was being closed. :) I suspect it will proove to be a good call to delete it, but, in case it proves of some use to you:

• It seems that Silver Stars were handed out for Civil War soldiers, depending on which source you read. Certainly the Citation Star was retroactivly granted to Civil War veterans, and the Silver Star was derived from that. One source stated that the earliest action where the Silver Star was granted retroactivly was in 1861, but I don't view that source as sufficiently reliable, and it mentioned no names. At any rate, the fact that the Silver Star was created in 1932 doesn't disprove the article.
• There was a John R. Smith who served in the 108th Cavalry from Pennsyvania. The company of which he was attached did serve in the Army of the Potomac, which is consistent with the article.
• On the minus side, as far as I can tell, the article was completely wrong about the events of fall of Fort Sumter: I could find no account of the flag being lost and having to be retreved from beneath a dead soldier. Anderson surrendered the fort, and the flag was taken with him when he left (noting that a significant accident during the attempted 100 gun salute to the flag left one solider dead). The flag did fall briefly during the battle, though, so there is a small chance that Smith was involved then.

Anyway, I'm strongly leaning towards hoax, based on the lack of sources and the flag issue. The presence of a John R. Smith is interesting, but John Smith isn't exactly an unusual name. Still, not being an expert on the topic, I'd want to check the print references before calling it either way. None of this is an issue now, but as you were looking into it, I figured that even if it was of no value (which seems likely), you might have a passing interest. :) - Bilby (talk) 15:00, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Baitul Huda

Regarding my "hasty" speedy deletion request for Baitul Huda: I'm not going to take issue over that—though I might argue that it was the creation of a disambiguation page in advance of the articles among which it was intended to disambiguate that was hasty. ;-) But no matter: thanks for removing the template when you saw it was moot.—Largo Plazo (talk) 21:17, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

• No worries. People build sets of interrelated articles in different ways. Clearly, xe knew what we didn't: that xe was just about to write another article that warranted the disambiguation. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 15:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#BLP prod

I thought you'd be interested in and might like to comment on the above. RMHED (talk) 21:29, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Silver Star and stuff

Would you be able to comment here? No-one else seems interested any more in the points about how hoaxes shouldn't be speedy deleted. Carcharoth (talk) 09:13, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

That thread got archived to here without comment. I'm following up on people's talk pages. Where is the best place do you think to discuss how to handle discussions of suspected hoax articles? WT:CSD or WT:AFD? What I want to end up with is a clear agreement from everyone involved that discussions of hoax articles should run the full amount of time (or a specified minimum of time - for example, if all the sources have been checked and found wanting). In particular, it would be nice to be able to participate in an AfD debate like that, and ask around at various places, before it gets speedily closed and deleted. CSD says that suspected hoax articles shouldn't be speedily deleted, but also includes a "blatant and obvious misinformation" clause. So where the boundary lies, I don't know. Maybe the AfD documentation should have a note saying that some debates should not be closed prematurely (as delete) if the articles don't fit the CSD criteria? Snowball deletes are another matter. Not quite sure what should be done there. Carcharoth (talk) 11:59, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Help pages

I saw that User:Uncle G's 'bot's used to update the Help pages from the Meta copies, but hasn't done so for some time, would you be interested in reviving that task? MBisanz ^talk 17:36, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

• I would, but currently the 'bot is non-operational. The machine that it runs on currently has problems with its connection to Internet. Uncle G (talk) 14:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Oh, ok. Well if it is something an idiot could run (like me), I'd be willing to run it on my own machine. MBisanz ^talk 13:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Gender-neutral pronouns

I would like to know why you used the epicene pronoun "xem" to refer to Chaim Walkin in Wikipedia:Deletion review#Chaim Walkin. The request for deletion review used the pronouns "he", "him", and "his" in relation to the subject, so the subject's gender was not in doubt. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Coke advert

Good job well done. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 13:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Afd regarding List of Who Framed Roger Rabbit characters

Hi I'm confused about the notice you made regarding this afd. You said that my NAC was discussed on xyr's talkpage. I Went through the admins talkpage and couldn't find any discussion about this afd can you please help me out here? Alexnia (talk) 18:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

• wikt:xe#Pronoun. Uncle G (talk)

oh hehe thanks Alexnia (talk) 19:09, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

• I'm sure I read a sci-fi book with these gender neutral pronouns back in the 1980s. Guy (Help!) 00:22, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Treasure Trap article

Hi there. Someone reverted your edit to this article. I liked what you did with it, and the reverter was an anonymous string of numbers, so I reverted it back, but we might need to keep an eye on this. Any help much appreciated (not my article, but relevant to my interests.) JustIgnoreMe (talk) 19:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

• Not having an account is not an indication of bad faith, remember. Reverting an article to replace sourced content with the unsourced content that it replaced, and to put back a Proposed Deletion nomination, might be. But it also might be simple unfamiliarity with our content policies, too. Thank you for reverting. Uncle G (talk) 12:47, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Nai Talim

In the AfD discussion on Nai Talim, you wrote:

You've written 3 paragraphs in this very discussion. Expend that writing effort on actual article content, rather than deletion discussions. Think how much just those 3 paragraphs worth of writing on your part would have improved this article.

I disagree. I try to limit my substantive editorial contributions to areas where I have material knowledge, or to areas where it isn't required. The topic of this article falls into neither category.

Uninterested in making this topic my life's work, I limited the article to what was easily verified and not likely to be subject to opinion (there are likely numerous sources for the proposition that this form of education was or was not widespread, material or not to the development of the country, effective or ineffective, etc.), which renders the article basically a useless dictionary entry that strikes me as "content not suitable for an encyclopedia" as described in the last bullet point of WP:DEL#REASON. The corresponding alternatives to deletion--tagging and hoping--had been done to no avail, and I've described my views on at least my editing of the article. References can support the arguments in an article, but they don't substitute for them. Bongomatic 09:39, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

• You are, despite the explanation in the very policy that you are alluding to, erroneously conflating a stub encyclopaedia article with a dictionary article. Please re-read the policy, think about the process of article development, and familiarize yourself with our Wikipedia:Editing policy, until these points sink in. You have not grasped our article development processes and what stubs are, yet. Uncle G (talk) 11:43, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of non-notable Primary Schools

Just to clarify on the prod/Afd thing: any number of primary schools have been removed by prod over the last few months. To me, Afd is cumbersome and time consuming for this type of thing. I'll leave it to the folks that like Afd. Cheers! --Stormbay (talk) 22:31, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

• It may be cumbersome, but that doesn't stop it being the venue for contested deletions, which Proposed Deletion is not, and which deletions of articles on schools have been for at least four years now. Uncle G (talk) 11:56, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

On baiting

Sorry if it appeared as though I were baiting, certainly was not my intention. Reqluce does bite back quite easily, so I should have been more cautious I suppose. Best Regards and thanx for the advise. — Realist² 18:11, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

ethnic groups

Thanks for providing us with the context for this issue. I am unfamiliar with user:Zestauferov but from your examples it seems to me like there are serious NOR issues here and if this issue comes up with Jewish related articles could you keep me posted? They are on my watchlist but I seldom check every edit. But I have a real thing about NOR violations, and about drawing on (the considerable body of) real research out there. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not the best person to ask to keep an eye on those things. I'm largely uninvolved in those wars (unless an article comes to AFD). However, I do agree with the sentiment that it is a shame that there's so much this-seems-like-a-good-idea-that-might-be-true or here's-a-list-of-characters-on-TV-that-did-this rubbish on Wikipedia in areas where there is actually a large corpus of actual sources in the field to draw upon in order to make a proper article. (See User:Uncle G/Cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing.) There are sources on what I suspect many editors would consider to be the most surprising of things, too. Mathematicians have studied the game of Fetch, for example. Uncle G (talk) 15:37, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:Articles for deletion/Asynchronous error reporting

Thanks for notifying JzG :-). Interesting topic, and I had no idea we are so underdeveloped in this area. What's wrong with all those computer scientists and software developers? Are wikis too complicated for them? --Hans Adler (talk) 23:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

• No. But there's a lot of Wikipedia. I wouldn't be surprised if they were too busy dealing with other subjects to write about subjects that they are experts on.

  In that vein, I point to placement new as an article that needs immediate attention, in addition to Event-Based Asynchronous Pattern. I have some other articles already on my plate, otherwise I'd address it myself. TCPPPL and TD&EOC are obviously two sources. But there's also ISBN 9780521520430 as an independent source, for starters. (See pages 121 et seq..) Renaming to cover all aspects of placement syntax (because C++ is not the only language to have such, because there's also placement delete, and because there is also sourced discussion to be had on those C++ derivative languages that evolved in certain ways in order to avoid conflicting with it) or just placement (computer languages) in general might be an idea.

  And yes, those other articles on my plate have nothing to do with computing. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

  • Hmm, initially I was puzzled by your acronyms (keep in mind that I am a German mathematician), but I think I know what you mean. I even have TCPPPL on my bookshelf, and I have TD&EOC (I suppose you mean TD&EOCPP? :-) in a German translation. The former is practically useless; it's so terse that after reading it I had no idea what the point was. But the latter has fantastic background information for a nice article. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:15, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
  • I had a closer look now, and I think it's nothing for me. The information in TD&EOCPP is usable, but somewhat limited. After reading a few web sources I would say that's really not a topic for someone who never even tried to write a C++ programme. I have done what little I could to improve the article, but that was almost certainly not enough. Sorry. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
    • I've rewritten it and renamed it to placement syntax. There's still more expansion to be had. Uncle G (talk) 21:55, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
      • Wow. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:03, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
• Wrong content plus wrong title, both now fixed thanks to Uncle G's usual diligence. And now, we have to ask: where is Uncle G's candidate statement for ArbCom 2008? What ArbCom needs is the thoughtful types who are capable of, you know, actually fixing stuff. Guy (Help!) 00:19, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Advice on Tiger kidnapping

You commented on the AfD for Tiger kidnapping that you felt the article was a stub, not a dictionary definition. Another administrator feels that it is and has placed and replaced {{dictdef}} on the page. Frankly, you both appear to know what you're talking about, and you each know more than I, so I'm hoping you will comment on the article's talk page to enlighten me. Thank you!--otherlleft^{No, really, other way . . .} 12:44, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Niggerati

I found your explanation for keeping this article constructive and persuasive. I have taken the liberty of copying your comment to the article talkpage because i think other editors clearly need concrete constructive suggestions for how to research and improve the article. If you think what I did was inappropriate, my apologies and do what you wish, but I hope you will consider developing your comment into more practical guidance for other editors who may be willing to work on the article in earnest. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/LCC

FWIW, User:Liverpoolcc overwrote the dab page again... 76.66.195.63 (talk) 07:55, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for requesting sources so strongly

I was beginning to think that I might, after all, be the only one in step. It is good to have an affirmation that I was correct to nominate the Mumbai hero's article for a consensus to be reached by someone else who is a stickler for adherence to policies and guidelines even in the face of overwhelming emotion.

I fear we have many such memorials hidden in Wikipedia, probably all of which will be contested hotly with emotion instead of argument.

Whatever true consensus appears, so be it. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 17:19, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• Keep up the good work! --Alan Au (talk) 00:07, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Elementary/middle schools

Hi, I wonder if I might suggest not forcing elementary/middle school prods to an AfD? I go through prods about once per day and unless the school has some exceptional feature (Blue Ribbon for example) I simply merge and redirect them (none of which have been challenged to date). AfDing them simply causes extra work. High Schools are, of course, a different matter and should never be prodded. I should be delighted to discuss this further. TerriersFan (talk) 22:35, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not forcing them through AFD. I'm not nominating them for deletion. What I am doing has zero effect on your ability to merge the articles, and causes you no extra work whatsoever. If you want to stop these articles going through AFD, take it up with the people who are actually nominating them. You are talking to the wrong person. Uncle G (talk) 23:02, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Oops, that was a badly phrased request, I agree. Let me refractor it since I disagree with your third sentence; When a school prod is removed invariably the prodder AfD's it. That shouldn't be the case but it is what happens in practice. At that point I lose the ability to merge/redirect the article as an editorial action. It then also involves monitoring/contributing an AfD. Further, if the AfD is closed as delete then I cannot merge it for GFDL reasons. TerriersFan (talk) 03:45, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Niggerati talk page

Just to clarify, I am aware the talk page was not previously protected as it did not exist until a few days ago; the issue was that non-admins were barred from creating it (and, as it happens, nominating it for deletion). Great work on the article, by the way: I'm happy to be proved wrong when the result looks like this.FrFintonStack (talk) 03:24, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Proposed Deletion for a Hoax

Hey, sorry for melting down on you there. I had a ridiculously stressful day on Wikipedia because of a really bad AN/I scare and some not-so-fun borderline WP:CIV comments. Anyways, I took your comments completely incorrectly and I'd like to apologize for that. It was my first attempt at a policy proposal, and the sudden pile-on of opposes really rubbed me the wrong way. Following a short wikibreak and some thinking time, I have realized the merit of your (and the others) arguments and greatly appreciate NuclearWarfare's closing of the proposal.

Again, my deepest apologies for losing my temper. That should never have happened. Thanks for your time and your patience. DARTH PANDA^duel 03:42, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• No worries. I can see how I might have been misunderstood. Nonetheless, it's possible that someone could come along and provide something new to the discussion, or take it in a new direction. Don't be discouraged at proposals that fail. I proposed User:Uncle G/Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Unsourced biographies and it failed to gain consensus (Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/2). But even so, we now are a lot more strict about unsourced biographies than we used to be, and in many ways we have in part reached the same result by another route, via the parallel proposal #1 and the more recent adoption of the BLP policy. I certainly have no qualms now about speedily deleting the biography of someone under 18 that cites no sources at all in any way on BLP grounds.

  I suggest reading Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive488#Abuse of AFD for a suggestion similar to yours, and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 20#Is it time to require sources for BLP? which might give you some arguments to address, some ideas for further work, and a new direction to consider. Uncle G (talk) 11:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I finally got a chance to look at the discussions you linked. Apparently, I'm going to have to spend a lot more time in policy discussion before I really get the hang of this! Thanks again for your help! DARTH PANDA^duel 14:18, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Bill Murray filmography

Yeah, please can you delete the article. Thanks. Just wondering though, whats the quickest way to delete an article? I just guessed putting that tag was the best way, but is there a better way? Ste900R (talk) 17:48, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• Speed is dependent from which volunteer happens to be around at the time. So there are no guarantees as to speed. However, if you have created an article by mistake, and you are the sole editor (ignoring edits such as the application of tags), and no-one else has merged the content elsewhere, the you can tag an article for so-called "speedy" deletion under criterion #G7, under which I have just deleted your article. The "speediness" is that there is no deletion discussion is required, since the (intentionally narrow) criterion is unequivocal and can be determined on sight by an administrator. Uncle G (talk) 12:11, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: you are not alone

I doubt. ☺ `'Míkka>t 19:43, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

The Shakespearean Sonnet articles

Hey Uncle G.

If you have issues with the Shakespeare Sonnet articles, might I suggest you take it up at the article's Talk page or, if a general concern, on the Shakespeare WikiProject's talk page; so that we can avoid this back and forth in edit summaries? Above wanting the interwiki link to WikiSource to be the first thing in the article, I can't tell what it is that your concern is just based on the edits and edit summaries. --Xover (talk) 16:03, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

• It's not my concern. It's these people's concerns: diff diff diff. Uncle G (talk) 17:12, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Uncle, I'm rather startled that you, of all people, should have placed this deletion, instead of just a request for expansion . Anyway, it has now additional content, so presumably you want to reconsider. DGG (talk) 18:40, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

• If you look at the edit history, you'll see that I actually put it on Proposed Deletion, with the expectation that it would be rescued by turning it into a proper stub, with some actual content. (I chose Proposed Deletion over speedy deletion, for which the article actually qualified, and indeed over simply speedy deleting it outright myself, precisely because it gave an ample timeframe for this to happen.) Instead, to my dismay, a very misguided editor simply reverted immediately to the empty article, without doing anything at all — not even writing a single sentence's worth of content. You're forgetting that a redlink on something like Template:Shakespearesonnets is itself a request for expansion, by the way. The reason that no-one touched the article to add even a single sentence to it in one and a half years may well have been the blue link on the navigation template making people erroneously think that there was actually an article there, and that there was no need to help start one. Uncle G (talk) 19:12, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • It wouldn't meet the criteria for speedy since it's not non-controversial. It wouldn't meet the criteria for AfD because it does meet the criteria for inclusion (specifically, notability). See also WP:NOEFFORT: if nothing else the article is on the worklist for WikiProject Shakespeare (whose project banner was on the Talk page, and it would have been nice if you'd notified of the AfD); if we haven't got around to expanding it yet it's simply because we're busy with higher priority articles (e.g. the plays). Also, if I may be so bold as to offer you some guidance, please comment on the edit not the editor. --Xover (talk) 19:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
    • You are misguided. You mistakenly think that WP:NOEFFORT is relevant, for example. That addresses lack of effort in improvement on something that already is a stub. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#A4 quite clearly addresses lack of content, which is what was the case here. Something that has no content isn't a stub. Ironically, being a redlink for those one and a half years would have resulted in this being rectified long since. The WikiProject members, seeing the redlink, would have realised that not only had no-one got around to expanding the article, no-one had got around to even writing a stub. That's exactly what redlinks flag. If you want to stop being so misguided, learn from this edit how to rescue articles with no context/no content from Proposed Deletion. Xe made a good edit. You, by misguidedly reverting to an empty article, did not. Uncle G (talk) 19:51, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
      • You mean A3, and it isn't intended to apply to this situation; it's there to address content that isn't and can't be notable. The distinction between "empty" and "stub" in this case is academic (there's even an explicit exception for infoboxes with non-trivial content), and WP:NOEFFORT applies in that 1) prod, speedy and AfD aren't cleanup, they're for things that don't meet the criteria for inclusion (which was why I pointed out its notability in the revert edit summary) and shouldn't be here, and 2) you could just as easily have added a sentence or two yourself to make it fulfill your criteria for "stub". That you instead chose to go from a removed prod to an AfD, after having the article's notability pointed out to you, seems to be contrary to your stated goal of improving the article (which is what your preference for a redlink boils down to). The article has been expanded to meet any criteria for a stub (I think it's currently rated as C-class by the WP1.0 Assessment criteria) and would meet the criteria for a speedy keep (#1: none but the nominator have voted to delete) if you'd withdraw your AfD nomination, but you still seem to be defending it. Also, I would appreciate it if you would stop calling me misguided just because we happen to disagree on this question. --Xover (talk) 20:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
        • You mean A3, and it isn't intended to apply to this situation; it's there to address content that isn't and can't be notable. — Wrong. The criterion is to address articles that have no content. The explanation at the link given is very clear on this. Please familiarize yourself with our speedy deletion criteria. Notability has nothing to do with it. No matter how notable the subject is, if the article has no content, and has never had any content, it is speedily deletable. This is exactly so that redlinks on to-do lists and elsewhere aren't misleadingly recoloured, as this one was for one and a half years. Once again you misguidedly think that WP:NOEFFORT is relevant. Creating an article where no content exists before is not a cleanup issue. It's not expansion, of a stub or otherwise. It's creation. And an article whose infobox contains only source text isn't an article with non-trivial information. It is an article with no information. I challenge you to read this and state what information it actually imparts to the reader. Again, please read our Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, read our Wikipedia articles are not mere copies of source texts policy, and learn the better way to work from the edit that I linked to before. That you think that it would have been easy to have added a sentence of information, and yet didn't do that yourself when contesting the proposed deletion, despite the encouragement at Wikipedia:Proposed Deletion to address the concerns of the nomination, and the concern of this nomination that the article was empty, explicitly stated in as many words, was simply misguided. You saw an article challenged for being empty, and having no non-empty version anywhere in its history, a speedy deletion criterion, and simply reverted it to its empty state. Uncle G (talk) 21:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
          • Ookay. I'm going to go ahead and assume that you intended the inclusive version of our there. As it also seems increasingly clear that I'm failing spectacularly at getting my point across to you, I'm going to stop wasting both our time and leave the matter for the normal AfD period. I am however going to respond to something you brought up in another thread, since you saw fit to mention me by name: the Shakespeare WikiProject is painfully aware of the sorry state of Shakespeare articles on Wikipedia. In fact, that's a main impetus for its existence. However, the project has in excess of 700 articles within its scope—the majority of which are still Stub or Start class—and something like 3–5 active editors (at any given time). We know exactly what sorry state the Sonnet articles, as a general rule, are in. However they used to be redlinks without that mere fact causing editors to miraculously appear and create stubs. Currently they're mostly stubs, with a few more fleshed out and a few, as you found, "empty"; but at least they now have the standard structure, the text of the sonnet, the navbox, etc., which lets editors fill in the fun bits without having to deal with the administrativa. From our perspective you came along and created more work for us, and needless work, for reasons of personal preference and semantics: that you prefer redlinks to "empty" articles is preference, and the distinction between an empty article and a stub is semantics dependant on whether you see any value in the structure that's there. You can keep arguing that the letter of A3 supports your interpretation—and be close enough to "correct" for the distinction to be irrelevant—and I can keep arguing that that's not actually what the intent of A3 is, and that the approach you've chosen here is not the most constructive one; but frankly I see little sign that you're even interested in this point of view so I'm just not going to bother. With the AfD you put a metaphorical gun to our heads and forced us to slap together an article (which may or may not have serious POV/fringe/balance issues and other problems; I couldn't tell in the frenzy); the article now meets all relevant inclusion criteria and won't be deleted, so there's no real point to pursuing this any further. --Xover (talk) 15:54, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
            • What you are actually "failing spectacularly" at is understanding our criteria for speedy deletion, or the way that Wikpedia works. You think that empty articles encourage creation, whereas redlinks don't. In fact, the opposite is true, as the facts that (a) someone came along and created these empty articles from the redlinks in the first place, and (b) in the intervening one an a half years no-one has noticed that some content is required, as would have been noticed if the articles had remained redlinked. Red links invite creation. I put no gun to your heads. You put that there yourself. You could have just left the page to be redlink, inviting creation of an actual article. There is no deadline.

              That you continue to be misguided about the intent of criterion #A3, despite its very clear wording that an article with no content (anywhere in its entire history) is speedily deletable, indicates to me that you are wilfully misunderstanding it in order to justify an unjustifiable position. The unjustifiable position is that Wikipedia is better with empty pages sitting around for years, because they somehow provide a "standard structure", rather than with redlinks that invite people to create actual articles. That is just nonsense. The "standard structure" (in this case a single navigation infobox itself devoid of any article content) can easily be copied and pasted from existing articles. It is insulting the intelligence of the editor community to think that they are somehow incapable of copying and pasting a single template transclusion from a similar article. They do this all the time, in fact.

              The fact that the Shakespeare WikiProject is in such a sorry state is almost certainly your own doing in having these empty pages instead of redlinks, for all this time, thereby not inviting editors to create articles. It's certainly your own doing as a consequence of your spending all of your time maintaing this "standard structure" of empty pages, by reverting them, as you have been, instead of writing the one sentence of context that you yourself claim to be so easy to do.

              I suggest that you read about Wikipedia norms before thinking that this is somehow one person's personal preference, as well. This is a consensus criterion for what constitutes an empty article, that we don't keep, that we've had for several years, that was strongly supported at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/11 in 2005, that was in fact pretty much already policy (short articles with no definition) since 2004, that is explained as one of the things to avoid in Wikipedia:Starting an article#Things to avoid, that has been explained over and again by the many editors who agree with it, such as here by Redvers in 2006 for example, and that has even the support of Badlydrawnjeff, an editor particularly renowned in xyr opposition to deletion. Even Maoririder and SamuraiClinton created substubs, not outright empty pages. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia editors agree with this. Even the ones at a considerable distance from the mainstream do. It is you who has the singular personal opinion. You are misguided and wrong. Uncle G (talk) 12:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

              • As mentioned, I can't—with the very best effort I can muster—see that you're at all interested in understanding what it is I'm trying to tell you, so I am not going to waste more of your (and my) time in trying. Right now you seem (from where I'm sitting. I may be wrong) to be entirely focussed on browbeating me with precedent and policy; assigning blame, to me personally no less, for the lack of editors contributing to the articles within the scope of a particular WikiProject; not just implying, but outright claiming, that I am not familiar with Wikipedia policies (at the same time as claiming that I don't understand them); and painting a picture where there are just two possible answers: the right one and the wrong one. Maybe AGF is the policy that would be most fruitfull to cite?

                Would it have helped at all if I'd pointed out that as a general principle I'm entirely in agreement with you on redlinks versus empty articles? No? How about if I mention that if you'd gone to the article's Talk page and said "This is empty and might be speedied if nobody Stubs it out."—instead of communicating through deletion templates and edit summaries—the Shakespeare editors would probably have done just that, stubbed it out? See, you're acting as if my goal in life was to fight to keep an empty article around instead of actually improving the encyclopedia!

                In any case... If you're actually interested in achieving mutual understanding, and perhaps even—*gasp*—agreement, feel free to hit me up on my Talk page (I'd be happy to discuss this if you're actually interested). If you'd rather be right then, fine, you win. I really can't be bothered to tilt at this particular windmill; my limited Wikipedia time is better spent working on The Tempest, which is WikiProject Shakespeare's current collaboration, where you'd be most welcome to contribute should you be so inclined. --Xover (talk) 15:25, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Sonnet 151

I've been gone a year and suddenly I find you nominate stuff for AFD... What happened? It looks really weird for a hardcore inclusionist like you (at least that is what i remember) to nominate something for deletion... ;) - Mgm|^(talk) 01:07, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

• The only "-ist" I espouse being is encyclopaedist. The only times that people use "deletionist" and "inclusionist" is to call other editors names, something which I wholeheartedly disagree with (c.f. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Deletion/archive1#Name calling is a bad idea, for example, or on this very talk page in 2007). So the answer is: Nothing happened. According to the AFD statistics tool on the toolserver I've nominated things for deletion before. (According to the tool, I've nominated in several cases where I wasn't the actual nominator, but simply the first person to edit the discussion sub-page, however.) And I have no qualms about nominating empty articles, such as this, for deletion under the "no content" deletion criterion, on the grounds that it's better as a redlink inviting people to write some actual content, especially when the lack of a redlink has led people to fail to notice for one and a half years that there's no article there.

  It does make one wonder about the editor(s) who watchlisted this empty article without apparently reading it whilst doing so and seeing that it had no prose content whatsoever. Turning a redlink blue without adding any content clearly didn't help to build the encyclopaedia, and shame on Xover and others for requiring an actual AFD nomination to spur them from reverting empty articles into writing even one sentence on one of their supposedly favourite subjects.

  I observe (from checking only ten) that there are at least three other empty sonnet articles, with zero content, that, because they are bluelinked, editors haven't noticed are empty and not in fact articles at all. Nonagonal Spider (talk · contribs) hasn't really helped Wikipedia by generating a whole load of boilerplate empty articles. Remember the discussion of Rambot (talk · contribs)? Ram-Man ensured then that when redlinks were recoloured the articles at least contained context and some facts, and there was wide agreement that empty articles wouldn't have been a good idea. Ironically, the fact that the Shakespeare WikiProject hasn't realized that it has been missing several sonnets for one and a half years shows exactly why the Rambot approach was wise, and Nonagonal Spider's empty-article approach is not. Uncle G (talk) 12:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Hand-rubbing AfD

I can appreciate you wanting to clean up the article, to prevent its deletion. However, until it is overwhelmingly expanded-with-sources/cleaned up, it is probably not going to survive deletion. Until it survives deletion, it shouldn't be a link in Villain. Perhaps contribute to the AfD discussion regarding the proposed deletion. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 21:50, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Anheuser Busch & Campbell Taggart

An article that you have been involved in editing, Anheuser Busch & Campbell Taggart, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anheuser Busch & Campbell Taggart. Thank you. andy (talk) 23:50, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Digger slang

Thanks for the headsup. Obviously, given the rewrite, sourcing, and basically complete renovation of the article into a shining example of sourced information, I would have changed my !vote to a keep, were the nom not already withdrawn. Its always nice to see what is usually such a negative process result in such a spectacularly positive result. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:00, 5 December 2008 (UTC).

Merge edit summaries and GFDL attribution

Hi. I mentioned an edit you made 7 June 2007 to Help:Merging and moving pages. Any comments would be appreciated at Help talk:Merging and moving pages#Merge edit summaries. Thanks. Flatscan (talk) 04:14, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

FYI

• Talk:The_Chronicles_of_Narnia:_The_Voyage_of_the_Dawn_Treader#Reversion Inclusionist (talk) 06:49, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

An offer of help, other inclusionists, and suggestions

Your name came up prominently at Talk:Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia#Prominent inclusionists? I was wondering:

1. How I can help?
2. If there are other inclusionists you can suggest I talk to, or if there are any groups you belong too.
3. Any suggestions about how I can help form policy to be more inclusive.

Thank you, Inclusionist (talk) 00:32, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Reply: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Prominent_inclusionists.3F Inclusionist (talk) 01:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Number 0

Thank you for the suggestion, which was unnecessary, as I have in fact been monitoring the discussion. - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Non-admin closure

The reversion of the NAC was not a good call, in my opinion. No one accused this of being a bad faith nomination, so your repeated mention of faith seems odd. Problems with references can be fixed in editing -- that is not the purpose of AfD. Reverting the NAC only delays the obvious -- consensus is (at the moment) unanimous in favour of keeping the article and the only way it will close as delete will be through an unprecedented rush of delete !votes or a closing admin who ignores consensus. I stand by my decision to close this as per WP:SNOW and look forward to the confirmation of the decision when this discussion is closed. No hard feelings on this, either. :) Ecoleetage (talk) 03:49, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• Consensus is not formed after a mere four hours of discussion. At the very least, the editors who are not awake at the time need the ability to contribute to the discussion. And the "speedy keep" is an accusation of a bad faith nomination. As I told you before, that's what speedy keep means. Uncle G (talk) 15:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• P.S. You also stated the AfD lasted "two hours." For the record, the AfD opened at 21:04 on 16 December and was closed as a non-admin closure at 02:52 on 17 December. That is not two hours. Ecoleetage (talk) 04:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I mis-read it. It was actually four hours, between the first and last discussion contributions. The actual point that I made still stands: that is not enough time for a proper, inclusive, full discussion. There are a lot of things that you need to learn about AFD and about closure, if you expect your record of non-admin closures to lead to administratorship. At the very least, you need to learn what the shorthands mean. You also need to learn the good reasons why we don't necessarily go with the first set of pile-on commenters. Uncle G (talk) 15:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Re-SNOW

Hi there. I wanted to inform you that I decided to re-SNOW that AfD. It was turning into a snowball quite fast and even Collectonian admitted that this would be the likely outcome. Please do not see this as an act to undermine your decision or any criticism of your judgment. I just felt that running it any further, after another six keep !votes and a ton of sources mentioned, does not serve us in any way. I agree with both your and Collectonian's criticism that the article desperately needs to be improved with sources but I thought that this would not change in any way just because the AfD runs another 3 days.

I will try to integrate the sources myself in the next hours. Also, please apologize that I have not asked your permission first but I figured by your contribution times that you are not online for another couple of hours and I did not want to let that AfD slide into any kind of drama. Kind regards SoWhy 12:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, I do have to work. ☺ Ironically, I was actually trying to push it away from the "It's so notable! How dare such a bad faith nomination stand!" drama, by trying to get editors to focus on what our policies and guidelines need AFD to focus upon: sources. It's a blot on all of Amwestover's, Johnfos's, Ecoleetage's, and Bongomatic's copybooks that they all accused a nominator, who made a good notability nomination, who pointed to the applicable notability criteria, who used Google News to look for sources, and who asked other editors quite civilly for sources, of a bad faith nomination, by saying "speedy keep". (It's a particular blot on Amwestover's and Ecoleetage's copybooks that they then demonstrated that they hadn't noticed that every justification listed at Wikipedia:Speedy keep is a bad faith action, because "speedy keep" is an accusation of bad faith action.) The examples of good AFD contributions, which these editors' contributions were not, are those by LinguistAtLarge and Paul Erik, who made arguments that were properly grounded in policy, unlike those of these editors, and who responded to a request for sources with citations, as these editors did not. It's a shame that you closed the discussion, because I was actually going to thank those latter two for being the examples that the former four should look to. Uncle G (talk) 15:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I think you should thank those users personally and tell the others personally as well about that. It is much nicer than calling their names on the AfD. As I said, I thought no content discussion would occur anymore and I do think telling some users there that their argument is weak, however true, may be ill-advised, because they might initiate more drama (that is if they read the AfD again which most people don't).

    I appreciate your concerns for the correctness of arguments though, I think you demonstrate a problem with the process. Another problem was mentioned as well, mostly by Collectonian, that noone of them bothered to add the sources. I did so afterwards and then wrote down my thoughts at WP:SEP - you might be interested in that as well. On a final note, I do not think speedy keep always implies bad faith. Even admins make mistaken AfDs that are SNOW-kept like these nominations and noone would assume that the close implies any assumption of bad faith. Just a thought. Regards SoWhy 16:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

    • Pointing out poor rationales that aren't based in policy is not prohibited at AFD. On the contrary, encouraging people to not use bad rationales and instead to use good ones that have solid bases in policy is encouraged. I recommend reading Wikipedia:AfD Patrol. It's not actually historical, contrary to what the page says. I, for one, do it regularly, as do many other people (as is obvious from their discussion contributions). And "speedy keep" really does make the accusation of bad faith, which is why several of us discouraged people from using it liberally some years ago, and why Wikipedia:Speedy keep was written to explain it in more detail. It's not the same as a snowball keep (which is a really a justification for a closure, rather than a discussion rationale). It was "speedy keep" that all of those editors opined. (The edits can be seen linked-to below.)

      As for Wikipedia:Somebody Else's Problem, see below. Uncle G (talk) 17:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• Thank you, SoWhy. Your closing AfD statement quote "This is a prime example of WP:SNOW" confirms what I said earlier. Ecoleetage (talk) 13:56, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I did not do it to confirm your point of view. I completely understand why your close was reversed, as by that time no sources have been demonstrated to exist, a situation that rather backed the nominator's point of view that there are no such sources, just claims.

    I closed it after those sources where brought and Collectonian acknowledged that the problem is not the missing sources but that they are not cited[1]. I have changed this now. In future I advise you to not speedy-keep any AfD as NAC where an admin or other established user nominates and keeps on commenting, even if it looks like a sure thing. Leave it to an admin if there is just the slightest possibility of doubt. Regards SoWhy 14:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

    • Uh, MuzeMike had already shown where notability could be found and a skein of editors clearly supported that determination. The article also plainly cited this was a Time Warner web site, which by itself should've clued everyone that they were dealing with a major endeavour. And I've done many NACs without incident and I understand how the process works. Ecoleetage (talk) 14:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
      • No, you clearly don't understand how the process works. This is an incident with your non-admin closure, for starters. You are not learning from it, I observe. Speedy keep is an accusation of bad faith, and has been so since I first documented it in the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion back in 2005. That you don't know what these shorthands mean indicates that you do not fully understand the process. That you think that notability is affirmed by a whole load of people (including you) accusing the nominator of bad faith with "speedy keep" opinions also indicates that you don't understand what notability is and how it is demonstrated at AFD. I recommend at the very least learning what the AFD shorthands are, what deletion policy needs from a AFD discussion, what notability is and how it is demonstrated here at Wkipedia, and the very good reasons that we don't close good faith discussions after only a few hours, especially when there are outstanding policy-based requests that have gone unanswered. Your understanding of these matters is clearly incomplete, and your rejection of their being explained to you (by the person who actually documented what Speedy Keep was in the first place) is not going to lead towards your non-admin closures becoming admin closures any time soon. Learn from this. Uncle G (talk) 15:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
        • Considering that no one accused the nominator of bad faith, and considering the article in question was about a Time Warner web site (which should've been the red flag that this nomination had problems), and considering that MuzeMike had already demonstrated that notability was confirmable, and considering that consensus was overwhelmingly supportive of Keeping the article, and considering the argument for reverting the closure was based on the incorrect assertion that only "two hours" elapsed, and considering I never talked about making admin closures at any point in this discussion...oh, hold on, the White Rabbit just stopped by for directions. <"Yeah, the tea party is about three blocks down to the left, past the Walrus and the Carpenter...."> Ecoleetage (talk) 15:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
          • Your accusation of bad faith is your "speedy keep" here. Amwestover's, accusation of bad faith is xyr "speedy keep" here. Johnfos's accusation of bad faith is xyr "speedy keep" here. Bongomatic's accusation of bad faith is xyr "speedy keep" here. "speedy keep" is an accusation of bad faith action. It always has been, and it is today. And, again, you have a lot to learn about consensus and AFD discussions. If you continue like you are doing, which is tantamount to outright refusing to learn, you will only end up with other people telling you that you are wrong (as one already did in the AFD discussion) and your non-admin closures based upon not understanding AFD continuing to be reverted. Uncle G (talk) 16:53, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
          • I don't know what the 2005 version of the guide to deletion said, but what is relevant is the current version, which states:
            • Speedy keep is rarely used. It implies that the user thinks the nomination was based on an obvious misunderstanding and that the deletion discussion can be closed early. See also Wikipedia:Speedy keep.
          • An "obvious misunderstanding" does not imply bad faith. In any event, the definition of "Speedy keep" in the guide to deletion is for the !vote, not for closing, whereas both the guide to deletion and speedy keep cross reference WP:SNOW. WP:SNOW cuts across all policies and contemplates conclusions, not !votes or comments, and nowhere suggest bad faith, just an inevitable outcome.

            Sadly, consensus outcomes frequenlty do not reach the conclusion necessitated by the notability guidelines or the deletion policy. (Just look at my track record of nominations to see why I strongly believe that.) However, WP:SNOW, like the rest of the decisionmaking in Wikipedia, contemplates consensus, not correctness, so your repeated references to deletion policies and guidelines are (again, sadly) irrelevant. In this instance, there was no reasonable possibility whatsoever "of getting an unexpected outcome", so WP:SNOW was correctly applied. Bongomatic 15:49, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

            • You are erroneously conflating a snowball outcome (which, again, it is unwise to assume after a discussion of a mere few hours where not all editors in every timezone have had a chance to participate) with the "speedy keep" which was your actual opinion and accusation of bad faith aimed at the nominator. Again: "speedy keep" is an accusation of bad faith action. That you have looked at Wikipedia:Speedy keep and not noticed that the justifications listed there are bad faith actions, makes your copybook now as blotted as Amwestover's and Ecoleetage's. Thank you for letting me know that the Guide has been altered to be incorrect, though. I've fixed it. The actual meaning of "speedy keep" has not changed since 2005, and it still remains an accusation of bad faith (despite Haukurth's preferences). Also note that what prior versions of our policies and guidelines say is relevant, because it leads to understanding them. It's not just knowing the current wording that matters. That makes one merely a Wikilawyer, not someone who actually understands our policies and guidelines. If like Ecoleetage you also desire administratorship, it would be best that you are willing to learn policies and guidelines, from the people who know them (and, indeed, wrote them down), rather than dismiss them as "irrelevant". Don't follow Ecoleetage's bad example of not learning. Follow good examples. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 16:53, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
              • WIth respects, Uncle G, the very first reason the guideline Speedy Keep gives for considering a sppedy close is "No one other than the nominator recommends that the page be deleted, and the nominator either withdraws the nomination, or wishes the page to be moved, merged, or have something else done to it other than deletion." This very first reason does not have anything to do with good faith or bad faith and simply points out one reason for considering a a speedy... a reason that assumes the best of good faith in the original nomination. In the light of the provided sources, whether IN the article or not, per WP:ATD the quick closure of the AfD was in order and the article should have then be sent to WP:Cleanup... in that it could be improved and made encyclopedic and sourced. An AfD is not a mandate that an article be improved (though happoly that is usually the case), only a determination if the article has the potential to serve Wikipedia. WP:AFD itself instructs "If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD." It is important to WP:AGF all around... in Ecoleetage's invoking a WP:SNOW closure... in your re-opening in order to reaffirm a wider keep consensus... and in SoWhy's reclosing with a SPEEDY when the snow turned into a blizzard. To all of you, I say thank you and keep up the good works. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 16:58, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
                • Note that the nominator didn't withdraw in this case. It's always a good idea to wait for everyone to come to an agreement amongst themselves before closing in such cases. To do otherwise gives the nominator the impression that xe is just being ignored. Again, AFD is a measured and deliberate process, not a frantic rush to closure.

                  The point that I've made, and originally told Ecoleetage about, is that the closure at that point, after not even 1 whole day's worth of discussion, with points in the discussion, including requests for sources, left outstanding and with the outcome not being certain, given the lack of policy basis for most rationales, is not even a good snowball closure, let alone a "speedy keep" closure. (I've updated the Guide to properly reflect the distinction between the twain.) "Speedy keep" is an accusation of bad faith. It is very rarely used, and such an accusation is a blot on the copybook of someone who performs non-admin closures, and who has already nominated xyrself for administratorship. I've used it as a closing/discussion rationale myself, but I've used it with extreme reluctance. In all of my years here, I don't think that I've used it more than a handful of times. Uncle G (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

              • "Don't follow Ecoleetage's bad example of not learning"??? What am I, hanging out in the boys' room, wearing a leather jacket while smoking cigarettes? :P Ecoleetage (talk) 17:10, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
              • When you created Wikipedia:Guide to deletion on 23-Feb-2005 [2], you included a presumption of bad faith (specifically, vandalism).

                The "Speedy keep" definition was next edited on 14-Jun-2005, to include error as well as bad faith.

                The next material edit of "Speedy keep" was of a major rewite on 16-Sep-2005, and again defined it as solely related to bad faith.

                The last change (until today) of the definition, on 12-Nov-05 was explicitly intended to remove the presumption of bad faith.

                So, until today, the definition prior to your edit today had been in effect for 81% of the time, and definitions that did not presume bad faith were in effect for 88% of the time. I think it's fair to say that the consensus has been that bad faith is not presumed when someone !votes for a "Speedy keep", based on the fact that most people who have read the policy (and any who only read the current version in more than three years) would not have seen any hint of such a presumption.

                In conclusion, I guess I agree with you that reviewing policy history is helpful. I hope I'm doing a good job of learning now. Bongomatic 18:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

                • Most of those people will have also read Wikipedia:Speedy keep, and noticed that the justifications listed there are bad faith actions. Its talk page, including its own history, you will also find to be informative. Uncle G (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
                  • If Uncle G wants to go around accusing me of bad faith, let him -- I don't care. I just got word that a friend of mine in Zimbabwe died in the cholera epidemic that is going on there. There are more important things on my plate now than hair-splitting over this trivia. Ecoleetage (talk) 18:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
                    • That's called a straw man. What actually happened is that you accused Collectonian of bad faith. Your accusation, and the accusations by Amwestover, Johnfos, and Bongomatic, are the only such accusations here. Uncle G (talk) 18:56, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
                      • At the time I and the other users used "Speedy keep" in the AfD discussion, its definition did not imply bad faith. Note that the enumerated reasons for speedy keep are inclusive and hence a "Speedy keep" recommendation does not imply that one of the enumerated criteria is implicated. Furthermore, an explicitly contrary criterion (WP:SNOW) was given. So it is inaccurate to say that our comments amounted to accusations of bad faith. Bongomatic 19:24, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
                        • It has always implied bad faith. This is why its use is rare. That you haven't noticed that the justifications at Wikipedia:Speedy keep are bad faith actions, or read Wikipedia talk:Speedy keep and seen that this is how people regard it, does not change that. Uncle G (talk) 20:22, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Bongomatic requested a comment from me on this-- I made it on my talk page. I do not think Speedy keep implies bad faith, just serious error or misunderstanding. If on nominates an article thinking , for example, it is some other article entirely, or based on an earlier much-improved version, that's a speedy keep, but not bad faith, just carelessness. DGG (talk) 20:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
  • It's justification for an early closure, after discussing the error with the nominator. It's not a "speedy keep" in the sense of an AFD shorthand. Early closure is not the same as what people are saying when they say "speedy keep" in boldface in an AFD discussion, as Bongomatic and the others did. "Speedy keep" as an opinion is an accusation of bad faith. It is used for nominations that are vandalism or disruption. It isn't "We should snowball this.", which people say in those words. Speedy keep has denoted bad faith for a long time, at least since 2005 when I documented it in the Guide. See what is written at Wikipedia:Speedy keep and its talk page (from 2005 onwards), too. Those other editors observe that it implies an accusation of bad faith, as well. This is not a new thing. Uncle G (talk) 21:01, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Somebody Else's Problem

I appreciate your concerns for the correctness of arguments though, I think you demonstrate a problem with the process. Another problem was mentioned as well, mostly by Collectonian, that noone of them bothered to add the sources. I did so afterwards and then wrote down my thoughts at WP:SEP - you might be interested in that as well. […] SoWhy 16:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• You may have noticed that I've been using that phrase myself quite a lot over the past couple of months. I've had a page planned about that for some time, now — albeit with a slightly different focus. I and other editors have been telling people for years that citing the sources in the article is best, because it makes the argument whilst improving the encyclopaedia at the same time. Indeed, sometimes my own arguments are the articles, which I leave to speak for themselves.

  However, I've done several experiments and found that the converse of your page is often true. Often improvements to articles go completely unnoticed. Witness this rationale, for example. Has the person making it read the article, or even the preceding discussion, and noted that the nominator's rationale applied to a markedly different article, do you think? I did a few experiements where I didn't even add the hints to the discussion pages, or made the article improvements without logging into this account and thus without the recognizable name "Uncle G" being connected with them. The results were disappointing.

  So whilst there's a problem with failure to actually put one's edits where one's discussion rationales are (as you observe), there's also a converse problem with not noticing improvements to articles, and when a discussion rationale doesn't match the article. And there is also the problem (exemplified by one editor here) of people thinking that finding sources and putting deletion policy into actual practice (per Wikipedia triage) is Somebody Else's Problem, too.

  Also note that people such as the Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron do put their edits where their discussion contributions are, and very much so. (See List of United States presidents by handedness (AfD discussion), and these edits for example.) So the problem that you are documenting is not universal by any means. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

  • You are correct: Within a running AfD people usually do not review if the article has changed to address the concerns. But arguments made by people that do not fit the article or do not cite correct reasons (like "cruft") should be discarded by the closing admin anyway, so a delete-!vote that cites a problem with the article which has already been fixed should not weigh anything anyway. If it is still counted valid, it's the admin's fault.

    My point was that after the article has been kept, people seldom bother to make the updates they claimed were possible. Of course sometimes it happens, maybe even many times, but still I see it happening again and again that the articles are just left in the sorry state they were in before AfD. Regards SoWhy 18:53, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

    • Some administrators don't check the discussion against the article. See this, for example. Training and development (AfD discussion) was one of my experiments.

      The converse of your observation is that AFD is not cleanup, note. Uncle G (talk) 20:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

References and Keep Opinions

Hello Uncle G I noticed your comments on several of the afd discussions where I expressed a keep opinion. You stated that just giving an opinion and a listing of a search result is not in itself establishing notability. You are right, it does not. However, I think you may have over looked that in vast majority of cases, I will have either already referenced the piece or have gone back within a few days and made sure that the pieces do get referenced and cited. The reason for my cantankerous remarks in one or two of the opinions, and note the initial opinion was not expressed that way, is a fair number of articles that come to afd the nominator made no attempt at all looking for references to establish Notability|notability before nomination. But rather they just throw it out there, often times based on their personal like or dislike of the subject, depending on someone else to do at least minimal research on the subject. Hope this explains where I am coming from. Thanks. ShoesssS ^Talk 10:52, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Best wishes for the holiday

We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, and I would like to get back in step. To rectify that, I would like to take advantage of the season to share a wish of good will with you and to make my own resolution to become a better person in the new year. Ecoleetage (talk) 19:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Ecoleetage (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Flaming/MC2008}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Thanks for the fix

Thanks for the fix when I broke Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Redencion_911. I'm still relatively new at this and I am trying to keep mistakes to a minimum. ;) --smurdah (talk) 20:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Kyle Eckel

please disregard the last talk message. i took the liberty in deleting it off your talk page

apologies uncle G. the comments were removed. I'll read more carefully next time. Thanks for your efforts here on wikipedia

Use of so-called "gender-neutral" pronouns

Dear Uncle G,

I have been on Wikipedia for a long time. You (of course) haven't noticed, because I have never made an account, and I have never directly interacted with you personally; yet I have been visiting and following the developments on this website for quite a long time. Yes, I have been here long enough to remember when "AfD" was "VfD". I still remember Esperanza and its demise. I remember many things... here, for example, is one of my earliest edits, from 2005: I corrected an apparently small but significant mathematical mistake. [3]. (I was using a university terminal, before they started to forward XFF headers to identify individual users.)

In the past years I have met many Wikipedians, both online and in real life, who have asked me why I do not open an account on Wikipedia and start editing in earnest.

I am very sorry to say that... one of the reasons is you. Or, rather, it's your insistence on using the so-called "gender-neutral" "xe/xyr" (and so on) pronouns.

Please believe me, I do understand that gender-neutral pronouns are sorely lacking in the English language. I do understand that that can be seen as a major flaw. But... using invented words is not the solution! These "words", that you are so fond of using, ["xe/xyr" etc.] are not English language. Unfortunately, maybe; but they aren't. Using these invented words can actually drive away potential contributors! (They have actually, seriously, driven me away for these past 3 or 4 years.)

I do seriously ask you to consider the alternatives. There is nothing wrong in saying "he/she" or "she/he" or "(s)he" when you are unsure of a user's gender. And if you think that the terms "he" and "she" do not exhaust all possibilities, let me say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with using the singular they. Yes, despite what people may tell you, there is actually nothing wrong with that! You can always say: "The user User:Example (or whatever) did this-and-this. What they meant was..." and so on.

And, finally, there's absolutely nothing wrong with repeating the noun that you have used before; you can always say things like "The user User:Example said such-and-such things; what this user meant was..." etc. In other words, you can always use the phrases "this user" or "that user", instead of your beloved [but non-English] "xe" and "xyr", when referring to somebody you have mentioned before.

yours, 131.111.223.43 (talk) 04:28, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

131, if someone using a few harmless words really is such a big problem for you that you can't work here in earnest, then a multicultural cooperative effort like Wikipedia just isn't your thing. Nothing wrong with that. I only have one question to you: Do you seriously believe any intelligent person would buy your attempt to put the blame on others? — Sebastian 08:46, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Notifications about Page Unlocks

There is currently a discussion going on at WP:RFPP about whether to unprotect several articles. As the protecting administrator of Orfeh, you are invited to come join the discussion. NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 02:12, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Plot mountain

Can you explain your comment here? The material in this article is entirely in the proposed article for merger already. The appropriate course of action would seem to be to delete Plot mountain and have it redirect? Thanks. RandomHumanoid^(⇒) 17:22, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• Once again: Deletion is not part of any stage in the article merger process. Deletion is not involved in merger. Nor is it required in order to make a redirect. Please read the merger process and follow it. That step #2 of the process may be short does not magically make deletion a part of the process. Uncle G (talk) 17:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
  • And yet again :), Dramatic structure already contains everything in Plot mountain and then some. There is nothing to merge. What would you have done with the Plot mountain page, given it is entirely superfluous? Sorry for pounding on the issue, but given there is no merger required, I'm trying to follow your rationale. RandomHumanoid^(⇒) 18:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
    • Please read what I wrote above about step #2 of the process being short. Uncle G (talk) 19:53, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

December 2008

Welcome to Wikipedia. It might not have been your intention, but your recent edit removed maintenance templates from Austell. When removing maintenance templates, please be sure to either resolve the problem that the template refers to, or give a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry, as your removal of this template has been reverted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia, and if you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. You removed a prod template, which really shouldn't be removed without a good reason, which you didn't remove. Please avoid removing these templates when they should not be removed. Marshall T. Williams (talk) 20:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• The reason given in the edit summary was a good reason. And on the subject of edit summaries … Uncle G (talk) 20:49, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Prod Vandalism

The prod template was not vandalism. This is not vandalism. This article contains incorrect information. If you have anything to tell me, please do it on my talk page. --Marshall T. Williams (talk) 20:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• Indeed the template was not. The content removed by that edit was vandalism (or at least indistinguishable therefrom), which has been added to the article several times over the past two years, and reverted as vandalism many times. You reinstated that vandalism here. Please learn how to read diffs. Uncle G (talk) 20:49, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism?

If the prod is removed again, I may have to report you to administrators. I am going to restore one last time; please stop. What I did was not vandalism. --Marshall T. Williams (talk) 20:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• Kiddo, I am an administrator. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with (a) what the template itself actually says, (b) what the proposed deletion process is, (c) how to read article histories (so that you can be on surer ground as to who did what), and (d) how to read diffs to see what actually changes in an edit. Uncle G (talk) 20:49, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I bow to your opinion, and ask for another

The Prod I placed on an article where the AfD result said (broadly) "merge it, if not merged within a reasonable time then it may be proposed for deletion again" is one that you removed. I'm not at all exercised about that, but I am interested.

What would you suggest to be a proper process here? I'm not about to follow the {{sofixit}} suggestion in the edit summary. I can see nothing to merge in the source article, despite the AfD result. So how do you suggest one proceeds in this case? Fiddle Faddle (talk) 23:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• Merge the articles, leaving behind the unsupported content but taking across the supported content (noting in the edit summaries where it came from, of course). The content about the Cape Town Declaration is verifiable (indeed there's more to say on it that isn't in either article). Find some decent sources for it (which isn't hard with Google News — there's an article in The Hindu) and merge it. You can even rewrite it and improve it along the way. The same holds true for a few other things here and there in the article, such as the work of Jost Krippendorf (which is again sourceable — you can find xyr work on the impact of tourism discussed in books, for example). It might be worth renaming to humane tourism and then merging from that title. But the AFD result does appear to be the correct way to proceed. It just needs an editor to do it. And since you're the one with the itch … ☺ Uncle G (talk) 04:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the ideas. I care, but not that much. The article can take its chances. WP will survive poor articles. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 21:39, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Holloways Beach

You removed the prod tag from the article. While there is no dispute that Holloways Beach is a real place, it is a suburb of Cairns, and there does not seem to be anything particularly noteworthy there to merit an article. It also shouldn't be promoting particular vendors in the locality, which are also not notable. Surely there do not need to be articles for every suburb of every city simply because they are included in censuses?--Jeffro77 (talk) 04:34, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• Rambot populated the encyclopaedia with articles sourced from the U.S. census. There's no reason that the same cannot be done for Australia, given the depth of census data that are apparently available. Uncle G (talk) 04:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Other stuff exists--Jeffro77 (talk) 04:45, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
    • That is a facile response to a statement that a subject has in-depth sources from which articles can be made in the way that many other articles have already been made from similar such sources. Uncle G (talk) 04:51, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

It was intended as more of a question as to relevance. In any case, I've lost interest, and haven't considered re-adding any of the prod tags.--Jeffro77 (talk) 04:54, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Safety Climate Article

I put Safety Climate up for deletion. At a first reading, the article looked like a teaching tool. You removed the delete tag. I read back through the article. It has a lot of "should" and "must" language, as if it came from teaching material. But it can be Wikified into a more objective encyclopedic article. I'm going through it reworking those places, breaking sections into sub-sections to make it readable. Have it on my watch list and will continue working on it. Doctorfun (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC) (cleanup volunteer)

• Goodonyer! From my reading, the main problem seemed to be one of neutrality, expressing the advice of others as if it were the advice of Wikipedia itself, rather than properly attributing it to the people actually giving it. Uncle G (talk) 16:33, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eustacius de Yerburgh

So, according to your interpretation of Deletion policy, I am not allowed to nominate an article for deletion unless I go to a major library and look it up there? Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 20:14, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion.2FEustacius_de_Yerburgh. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 20:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

My interpretation is what I actually wrote, and linked to, in reply to your assertion that it wasn't your responsibility to look for sources, but was rather a task that you were trying to push onto other editors. It wasn't the above straw man. Our verifiability and deletion policies have stated all along that the onus is on editors to look for sources themselves when checking verifiability (and by extension notability). It's been phrased in various ways across the years, from simple prose in the very earliest versions of the verifiability policy, through procedural flowcharts laid out as tables, to what deletion policy, the Guide to deletion, and many other places (as well as many other editors) say now, but it has always been there. The proper study of encyclopaedists is finding, reading, evaluating, and using sources. When one is challenging notability or verifiability, one doesn't get to opt out of the finding part and sit back waving at other editors saying that it is their responsibility, not one's own, to look for sources. As I said, one cannot honestly state that sources do not exist if one hasn't actually looked for them in the first place. Uncle G (talk) 23:37, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Miss Tourism World

Hey Uncle G. I saw your Miss Tourism World post at BLPN. I took your suggestion to proactively head off the otherwise inevitable OTRS complaint and revised Miss Tourism World. Hopefully, this will ease tensions there. -- Suntag ☼ 23:01, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

• Goodonyer! I hope so, too. Uncle G (talk) 23:43, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

13th parallel

I appreciate it. I'm not sure why the nominator didn't bunch all of the articles together, other than to make a point that some parallels are more notable than others, or something like that. By the time I got to the fifth or sixth one, my thought was this is pretty silly. Mandsford (talk) 01:50, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

William Herschel (disambiguation)

I've replied your message on the AfD. I realize that I should have checked other possible usage of the term. Anyways, thanks for pointing out my mistake. ^LeaveSleaves _talk 05:07, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Technocracy movement

I noticed you took a tag off the page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technocracy_movement&diff=next&oldid=261551970 - I think the person that put it on is a sock puppet ... if I understand the term... which I may not... for user User talk:Isenhand who is the Andrew Wallace of this group Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Network of European Technocrats. The I.P. if I am not mistaken of the single purpose edit is that of Andrew Wallace/Isenhand. His personal webpage which is located here http://web.telia.com/~u11319012/index.htm this shares the Telia ref of the I.P. of the person that tagged the article 90.229.144.187 IP : 90.229.144.187 Neighborhood Host : 90-229-144-187-no117.tbcn.telia.com OK Country : Sweden

I think this user is angry because his group Network of European Technocrats article was Afd'd, and the link to them black listed on Wikipedia, and for that reason he put an inappropriate tag on the article which is related, but not directly to his group. The Technocracy group is a group he wanted to link to in order... I think to get notability for his group of which he is the Director N.E.T.-

Thanks, if this information is not relevant please feel free to remove it, or let me know that alerting you to this is not appropriate. I do think the editor mentioned has used other identities while editing on Wikipedia also possibly including this one - User talk:Technocrate. skip sievert (talk) 21:10, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

• There doesn't seem to be any further action necessary other than improving the article. Technocrate (talk · contribs) has not edited in 11 months, Network of European Technocrats was deleted months ago, and the only thing of current concern is ensuring that Technocracy movement doesn't represent a distorted view of what sources actually document about that movement. The article does seem to be a little misleading, giving the impression that this is currently a flourishing movement when sources say that it is barely noticable today after largely collapsing in the mid-1930s; and its introduction could do with a lot of work. Uncle G (talk) 00:39, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

• • Thanks. I just wanted to bring this to your attention as a reference if the same editor Andrew Wallace or Isenhand or Technocrate start to make a habit of putting tags on it for what ever reason. I am not a member of the official group, but I do monitor them... and according to their website they are growing.. http://www.technocracy.org/ and there is currently a lot of information relating to them on the internet. They put out a newsletter, have a radio show, etc. Thanks, I will look into improving the introduction. skip sievert (talk) 02:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

• • • The same user has shown up again to vandal the article. Can you run a trace on the I.P. and see if it jives with the editor I mentioned above... and his personal web page... Andrew Wallace NET Director... it would appear to be that editor as a sockpuppet for Isenhand? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/90.229.144.187

Binomial regression deletion

Hi, I proposed Binomial regression for deletion. I thought this would be uncontroversial since I wrote most of the text and the article gets no attention. Would you mind looking at my proposal at Talk:Binomial_regression#Started_cleanup. PDBailey (talk) 14:06, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

• You either want cleanup or merger. Neither involve deleting the article at any point of their respective processes. I also suggest remembering the readers once in a while. How is a reader looking for binomial regression as a subject served by an article that not only isn't entitled that but doesn't even contain that name anywhere in its content? Take a look at how this subject is covered in sources, too. Uncle G (talk) 16:42, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Happy Uncle G's Day!

Uncle G has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as Uncle G's day! For being one of our greatest essayists and a very wise user in general, enjoy being the Star of the day, Uncle G! Cheers, bibliomaniac15 00:06, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Deletion review for Ethnic stereotypes in popular culture

As you brought up the issue of GFDL compliance in this AfD, I thought you'd be interested to know I've opened up a deletion review for Ethnic stereotypes in popular culture and Ethnic stereotypes in American media, in order to restore the edit history of these articles and ensure compliance with the GFDL. DHowell (talk) 03:09, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

• I had been intending to do the very same thing myself. Uncle G (talk) 02:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Edit war for Kando

I'm looking to open a discussion on the talk page for "Kando" whether it deserves to be a disambiguation page or not. I see Uncle G and DAJF change it back and forth. Could it be discussed? McKorn (talk) 23:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

• There has been no "back and forth". Xe made a bold change. I reverted. Uncle G (talk) 01:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Wicca music

An article that you have been involved in editing, Wicca music, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wicca music. Thank you. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Revised scoring?

File:Lady on glass.jpg

Uncle G gets Morenoodles' Service with Style award for saying it like it is. Morenoodles (talk) 08:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Uncle. I enjoyed your punchy put down of my impertinent comment, and hope you don't mind my own counterpunch. Anyway, care to revisit this and deliver some devastating argument that will have me silenced for ever? Best, Morenoodles (talk) 04:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to return to the discussion before it was closed. I didn't view anything as "impertinent", incidentally. You're quite wrong about coverage, though. The PNC works, even if (as you do) one doesn't expect it to. An irony here is that the Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (AfD discussion), a restaurant (amongst other things), were given in the WP:CORP criteria as an example when I first wrote those criteria. The PNC works. It's your preconceptions about what one can find in sources that are wrong. You'll clearly be surprised at some of the things that the world has chosen to document in depth independently, reliable, and multiply, when you go and have a look.

  In general, when editors express problems with the primary notability criterion, it is not the criterion that is the cause of the problem. It is editors not looking hard enough that is the cause of the problem. Uncle G (talk) 02:28, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

  • Sorry, after a couple of days I forgot about this earlier message of mine, and it's only today that I remembered it and came back to see if you'd replied, and yes you have. I like your style, Uncle. When you think I'm wrong you say I'm wrong, and no nonsense about "Sorry, but". That irritates me less than it provokes me to think. And it led me to think "Dammit, there must be some 'RS' for this chain" and to find it, and leads me now to concede that you were right about PNC and I was wrong. Well, I live and learn, and in the process I get to save an article on a subject of no interest to me whatever. I bet there are morals in there, somewhere. If we were both in Bangalore, I'd like to have tiffin with you (in front of the lady with the chrysanthemum nipple-coverings). Best, Morenoodles (talk) 08:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter William Wade

Sure we have standards of conduct, and sure WP is not a silly chat forum. Then again, if we were really strict about that, the article in question should have been deleted the moment an admin laid eyes on it, and we wouldn't be pampering contributors who add ungrammatical and nonsensical articles and see every AfD as either a conspiracy or an ad hominem attack. I have removed my comment, and I hope that pleases you well enough. Drmies (talk) 01:13, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

• My comment, at a third-level bullet point, was actually in reply to the second-level bullet that preceded it: this edit Uncle G (talk) 03:33, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Removal of prod notices on ciphers

Hi, I notice you removed the "prod" notices I left on several ciphers. Could you say a little about what you believe makes those ciphers notable enough to include? Thanks! ciphergoth (talk) 09:09, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Notability. Multiple independent published works discussing them exist. Uncle G (talk) 11:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Speedy keep = bad faith accusation?

Hi. I was just reviewing recent AFD discussions and I came across the one for Phone Call to Putin here. In the discussion you indicated that the "speedy keep" vote equates to a bad faith accusation against the nominator. I'd like to seek clarification on this as I regularly use "speedy keep" in AFD, often with regards to nominations opened too soon after a Keep decision has closed a previous one, and I'm concerned if there is in fact a Wiki policy regarding this that I'm unaware of; while I regularly oppose quick re-nominations I rarely accuse the nominator of bad faith (if I do I state so, but only when I sure of it), and I would not want to be making such an accusation without cause. Or were you simply referring to that particular AFD discussion? Thanks! 23skidoo (talk) 14:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Chase Coy

I noticed your contributions to the Chase Coy and the page is at risk of being deleted, I was wondering if there was any way you could contribute to it or help object to the deletion. This page is extremely important to myself, Chase Coy, and his thousands of fans! Please help!!

(XoxJoshGxox (talk) 00:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC))

AfD nomination of Chase Coy

An article that you have been involved in editing, Chase Coy, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chase Coy. Thank you.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sausage bread

You might want to consider the redirect I suggested in this debate. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:56, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Big Tom, Bronx

Thanks for finding the refs. On the other hand, well-referenced trivia is still trivia. Sigh. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• If we organized Wikipedia on the basis of what editors personally, subjectively, find to be "trivial" subjects, we would be in chaos, with each special interest group pitted against the others. Non-astronomers might find asteroids to be "trivial" subjects. People would consider towns in other countries to be "trivial" subjects. Non-mathematicians would consider obscure theorems to be "trivial" subjects.

  This is not an encyclopaedia of what its editors personally like. We don't determine whether a subject merits inclusion on this basis. It is an encyclopaedia of (already properly documented) human knowledge. Fame, importance, significance, size, and popularity have been consistently and continually rejected as article-worthiness criteria here. See Wikipedia:Notability/Historical/Fame and importance for starters. Notability is not subjective. We determine it purely on the basis of sources — whether a subject has been documented, in depth, in multiple independent published works by people with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy.

  Content-worthiness, moreover, is determined by Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, and Wikipedia:Copyright policy, not notability. Notability deals with topics and subjects, not content. If a fact is verifiable from published sources written by people with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy, and is expressed in a way that does not present something in a way that sources do not, it is includable (in neutral fashion, and without violating copyright) in some article somewhere.

  So please leave your personal subject preferences at the door, and consider solely what sources can be found, what they document, who wrote and published them, and to what depths they document a subject. The proper study of encyclopaedists is the finding, reading, using, and evaluating of sources. Uncle G (talk) 14:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

A centralised discussion which may interest you

Hi. You may be interested in a centralised discussion on the subject of "lists of unusual things" to be found here. SP-KP (talk) 17:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you. I'll try to drop by. But I still have four outstanding rescues in other tabs of my web browser to look at. Uncle G (talk) 02:12, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Ashida Kim

I have renominated Ashida Kim for deletion, on the basis that it is impossible to find adequate reliable, third-party sources for this subject. Since you have commented on this issue in the past, perhaps you might wish to do so again at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ashida Kim (5th nomination). Of course, if there are any sources I've overlooked, then the article might still be saved. *** Crotalus *** 20:25, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you for letting me know. Uncle G (talk) 02:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar notice

		The Surreal Barnstar
		For livening up AFD with this argument. Stifle (talk) 09:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

DRV on Cherryade

You might be interested. Thanks, Majorly talk 21:18, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

re: AfD of "Study Skills"

I don't know why because I don't really have an interest in the subject matter - but I've started working on the Study skills article that is up for AfD. I guess the only reason I'm working on it is because I think it is an article that belongs to wikipedia, and could attract future editors. Would you consider closing the AfD for a few days, and allow me to try to fix some of the items that are of concern. Thanks (no matter which way you decide). — Ched (talk) 18:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• fix link — Ched (talk) 18:14, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

May take longer than I thought - I followed the link above to your rap - it's gonna take time to get the tears of laughter out of my eyes. Good Grief, absolutely priceless. — Ched (talk) 18:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Uncle G/On sources and content

Like User:Hersfold, I've started a detailed mentorship/adoption program. Would you mind me using the above page to teach my adoptees about sources? I find it particular complete and accurate and I think if every newbie read it, Wikipedia would be a better place, so I'd like to deliver my $0.02 to make it happen. - Mgm|^(talk) 18:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

• You are welcome to point people toward it. It's listed in the editors' index, after all. ☺ I hope that it helps. Uncle G (talk) 01:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#1911_talk

This deletion discussion has been relisted for further discussion. I couldn't help but notice that you repeated exactly the same thing that I said in my nomination statement for {{1911 talk}}, so I would like to know whether or not you actually support the deletion of this template. Thanks. --Eastlaw ^talk ⁄ _contribs 18:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Deletion review for Bezgovo cvrtje

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Bezgovo cvrtje. Since you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedy-deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review.

Sure hope you noticed my reply to your somewhat angry comment there - I have never implied that you couldn't care to look for sources - it's a misundertanding on your part. Power.corrupts (talk) 09:52, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Dallas Blaze

That closure statement might well be the longest I've ever seen. Well done for not being unneccesarily brief. Even newbies will understand this closure perfectly when they read your statement. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:33, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

{{Cite episode}}

Since you're kind of an expert on sources, I'd very much like your input on the deletion discussion I started for this template. It's clearly not gonna fly in its current form, unless I can convince the closing admin the keep arguments are lacking. Do you have any ideas as to a compromise that would allow the keep voters to keep their beloved template while simultaneously while not giving up verifiability? (If you decide to vote in the debate, don't forget to mention I contacted you. I have no reason to hide it) -- Mgm|^(talk) 08:43, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Template:Afd

Why is half of {{Afd}} now msising? All the code at the bottom listing the directions is now gone. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 03:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

• No it isn't. It's still there. See Template talk:AfDM#Hiding instructions - follow-up. Try nominating an article for deletion. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 10:09, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Advice on Maratha 96k Clans‎ merge?

Greetings, I've listed for merge, tried contacting folks, proposed delete, and nothing's happening. The editors contributing (almost all of whom have major COI issues) just keep plugging away at three separate articles. Is there any more forceful way to merge them? The Maratha-related topics appear to have a ton of wiki-drama, and I'm just a non-Indian outsider who stumbled across them and is trying to fix the pretty grievous state of things. Thanks for any tips, MatthewVanitas (talk) 00:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• NOTE the preceding message was moved from your user page. The date/time above reflect when the user left that message. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 17:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
• There's only one major editor of both of the merge-from articles, and xe is Starrahul. I see that you received no response at User talk:Starrahul. I suggest that you start a discussion at Talk:Maratha clan system. Or you could simply merge the articles yourself. Note that you did receive a response at Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics. Uncle G (talk) 22:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC)