User talk:Eloquence

I will respond to messages on this page. Please check your contributions list ("My contributions") for responses. If there is a response, your edit is no longer the "top" edit in the list.

Unlike other Wikipedians I don't archive Talk pages since old revisions are automatically archived anyway - if you want to access previous comments use the "Page history" function. But I keep a log of the removals:

Removed all comments prior to Jan 2003. --Eloquence 04:42 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments prior to Feb 2003. --Eloquence 10:19 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments prior to March 2003. --Eloquence 21:19 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments prior to April 2003. --Eloquence 08:14 25 May 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to May 31 2003. -Eloquence 19:14 31 May 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to June 21, 2003. --Eloquence 18:58 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to July 3, 2003. --Eloquence 21:51 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to July 22, 2003. --Eloquence 09:07 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to August 28, 2003.—Eloquence 02:11, Aug 28, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to October 15, 2003.—Eloquence 22:39, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to December 5, 2003.—Eloquence 15:17, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to December 20, 2003.—Eloquence 12:42, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to February 23, 2004.—Eloquence 23:57, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

re: Wikipedia:Deletion requests page - When I first found this page, I was skeptical. After sleeping on the suggestion for a night, I am much more intrigued by it. I'd really like to see a sample, though. I attempted to take a couple of the recent VfD threads and mock up them up using this structure so the rest of us could see how it would work. Would you please correct my mock-up? Thanks. Rossami 13:52, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your corrections. I'm finding the indents hard to follow. I'm going to make a second mock-up later today that uses bullets rather than nested indents just to see if it's easier to read. Thanks again. I'm looking forward to the new format. Rossami 13:23, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You are showing a definite anti-surrealist POV with your votes for deletion and comments on said page. I would really question the appropriateness of this. --Daniel C. Boyer 20:56, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Indeed.—Eloquence

REason for unprotecting?

Is there a reason for unprotecting the messages in the main page? --Hemanshu 22:36, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

To allow general editing -- the MediaWiki namespace is at reduced risk of vandalism, so this seems like a good way to make key parts of the Main Page as open as the rest of Wikipedia.—Eloquence 22:38, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

Cache test

I tried the same cache test at MediaWiki:Dih and it did not work for me (Main Page was not updated until I forced a reload). Do you have 'Disable page caching' checked in your preferences? I just tried the test with 'Disable page caching' checked and it worked as expected (no reload needed). But when I unselect 'Disable page caching' I still have the same cache issue. Konqueror 3.1.3 on Linux Mandrake 9.2. --mav 04:20, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I tried it as an anonymous user.—Eloquence

I deselected "Use cache" in Konqueror and that seemed to do it. Looks like my install isn't keeping things in sync. I'll test IE on XP at work tomorrow to see if I have cache issues there as well. --mav

Well, any issues there are appear to be client-side -- what should absolutely not happen is that someone gets an old version of the page during first time viewing.—Eloquence

Sandbox

Interwiki at the bottom is not a good idea on the sandbox because now there are two regions that newbies will need to leave intact. We also need two MediaWiki messages now (that's how the header at the top is included, through {{subst:sandbox}}). Dori | Talk 05:40, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Having the interlanguage links at the top is unacceptable. This is etremely confusing to newbies, with lots of special characters. They should either be at the bottom or removed entirely.—Eloquence 05:41, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it is. They get to learn about interwiki links. I think having two regions is even more confusing. Especially when there is little content besides the standard headers. Someone else also suggested removing the interwiki links entirely, which would also mean that we wouldn't need to use subst, but just msg. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Perhaps this discussion should be continued on the sandbox's talk page, and maybe even set up a straw poll, but I don't feel that strongly about it. Dori | Talk 05:48, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

I could agree with the learning argument if there were 2 or 3 of them. Not with this huge bunch of links, many of them including special chars. If this is the first thing we show people who click on the "experiment" link on the Main Page, that is one excellent way to permanently scare away potential editors.—Eloquence

You do have a point. Sometimes I think the sandbox should be entirely empty (or rather up to the whim of the newbies). That's why I proposed doing something similar to Wikipedia:Recentchanges and Special:Recentchanges. I think Tim filed a bug on SF about something similar to that. That would be the best way IMO. Dori | Talk 06:02, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

It has been suggested that meta information should be in a separate edit window, which would be optional and off for anons. So you wouldn't see interlang links if you don't want to. I've also thought about having a <meta> tag for information that is shown not on the rendered page, but only on the editing page, which would be useful for editing guidelines.—Eloquence 06:04, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Editing obituaries

If we are going to keep the MediaWiki links so that non-sysops can edit the Main Page, we need a link to be able to edit the Obituaries section. Can you take care of this? --Michael Snow 16:26, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

General objection to new main page, etc

E,

I have added a comment to the main page discussion page (qv), but the disorganized nature of that page leads me to believe it will be essentially a way to blow off steam and not substantitve discussion. Accordingly, as you seem to be the chief of those whose comments indicate an interest in substantive discussion, I invite a response from you directly.

In addition, having gone over your WP page, there are some bullying issues that you might find of some use.

If a dialogue develops here, we might wish to take some or all of it to email. I would be willing to do so.

ww 17:19, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I understand that you feel the new look is too "corporate". Would you care to elaborate on that? I think looking professional and interesting is important, not harmful to the project.—Eloquence 22:47, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

There are two points that I can see. Neither is 'technical'. First, the page is now vertically long because of the inclusion of 'nice' white space and images. This makes getting to the page's content less straightforward than it was. Since that content is an introduction to something much larger (ie, the WP), it should be as straightforward as possible to get to, and through. I (the generic viewer) did not come to this page to admire WP, to be indoctrinated with WP virtues, to hear about WP press releases, or to be dazzled by WP's good taste in Web page design. I have come here as a porthole, and non-straightforwardness of layout interferes with that. Perhaps thinking in terms of figure and ground might be hepful. The prior version was better in this respect.

As for 'corporate', that is more a matter of, in my view, fad. You may have noticed in recent years that all magazines (except possibly scholarly journals) have adopted a kind of wild typography (font choice, font color, text background, ...) in the first page of an article. I personally find it annoying and in some cases next to unreadable. This was a consequence of fad/style amongst the designer folks, possibly as a result of some study of the impact of extreme typographic effects, and almost certainly not the result of some centrally controlled design ukase from the article design tsar. Is there such a design tsar? I'm beyond my knowledge of the world of graphic arts here. Something similar occurs in sneaker design, but on a more rapid cycle.

In a similar manner, Web designers in the recent past have converged their work on a relatively narrow range of choices and effects, with the result that there has been a uniformitization of apparance among actively designed (eg, corporate) sites. In the future, it will be something else. The new home page has moved in that design direction and so has acquired a 'corporate look'. Since the WP is, in a real sense, non-corporate (ie, it's at least tangent to the business world of marketing and PR) it is ill done for its home page to appear more like the usual corporate thing than otherwise. In this sense, anything not in the current main stream of 'good / competent / progressive <there are numerous words used in the context, all it seems attempting to say something more important than au courant -- pick your own term here>' for the design of a home page would provide some distinction from the common corporate herd. A distinction that is, in my view, worth making.

More than I would have liked to say, but I find my reaction more intense than I would have expected. Hope this makes my position(s) clear.

ww

Eloquence,

The comments above, have, I trust, made clear the nature of my objection to the main page redesign. I hope they were useful, or perhaps even helpful. But regardless, there was another issue on which you have expressed interest in attempting some reduction, ie bullying on the WP. Are you still thus interested?

ww

Sorry, I'm in the middle of some deadline stress. I would still like to give you a decent reply if you have some patience with me ... —Eloquence

Standing by.... ww 20:22, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

user Plautus_satire

You may wish to take note of Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Plautus_satire. - Curps

Sandbox

They should be at the bottom, with a "do not edit" notice. A huge chunk of interlanguage links at the top, made of unrecognizable cryptic characters, is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really wrong in terms of usability. Did I mention it is wrong?—Eloquence

I replied in the sandbox, but as that isn't likely to stay there long, I thought I'd better reply here as well. Mediawiki:Sandbox was created for this so that all that would appear is {{msg:sandbox}} rather than the links themselves, but apparently interlanguage links only work with subst, not msg. Angela . 08:07, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

How do the {{msg:xxx}} comments work? Where can I find a reference or page to learn more about them? Rossami

The best list I've found is at Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages - Texture 22:56, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thank you "Eloquence"

I am new to the Wikipedia, and I guess you helped me add the image for the article on Erich Fromm. Danke! Robert Livingston, San Francisco.

Number pages

That was very well put. But I'm sorry, you wont get my vote. The only thing I think makes a joke of Wikipedia is the time some people spend trying to destroy other peoples hard work. BL 20:22, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

I also steal candy from babies.—Eloquence

Fourteen, Lambda

Regarding Nicolaus Copernicus. There is a small edit mistake in Copernicus live. When mentioned his commandship in Olsztun besiege, there sholud be Teutonic Knights instead if Teutonic Kings. I am engaged in contributions to this article so I do not want to touch it. Can you correct it, or something. Regards, User:Yeti

Better Section Edit Links

You mentioned on the Village Pump that the section edit links could use some improvement. How about looking at this old page as a continuing suggestion: User:Seav/TestEditLink? --seav 18:13, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Can you create a mock-up that uses a more complex layout including a couple of tables with headlines in them, and images?—Eloquence 21:26, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Ok. Tried it with the complex portions of the United States article. A possible problem with this solution is that it relies on CSS and that the Edit Link HTML should be inside the Hn elements for proper positioning. But the CSS used is level 1 and from experience should work in all modern browsers.

The heading of the table also needs an edit link. This is where it gets tricky. Headings can be in all kinds of tables. Also, we need to deal with the situation where there is no top section, but the article starts with a headline (currently there are [edit][edit] links next to each other to edit the empty top section and the one that follows it).—Eloquence

Problem is, most "headers" in tables aren't proper headers at all. There probably needs to be an edit link for every table but I wouldn't know how or where the edit link for that should be placed.

As for articles that start with a section header, my opinion is that articles should never start with a header. There should always be an introductory paragraph or two. Nevertheless, one could possibly make a check that the first article content (ignoring interlanguage links, etc.) is not a header before placing a section edit link for the introduction section. --seav 05:24, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

Whatever layout we use for the [edit] links must work regardless of which layout element the header is in. Anything else will cause major layout breakage. I disagree that articles should never start with a header. On talk pages it is often useful to quickly put "==Discussion==" at the top to properly position the table of contents. And we can't make any prescriptions like that for other wikis using our software. So our [edit] links also should be able to edit hidden or empty content above the first section.

I hope that now you see that this is not as easy as it looks.—Eloquence 08:06, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

--- Regarding state terrorism, please see my comments toward the bottom of the page at User talk:Tannin/040224. Edit that page at your own risk and good luck. 172 00:06, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hey

My roommate used my account to make that crap up. The stuff has been deleted and should not pose a problem.

Wiki misbehaving?

Hi Eloquence, Did you mean to revert my edits to Prostitution in Germany? I think Wiki may be misbehaving. A lot of spelling, grammar, and style corrections seem to have been reverted when you did your recent minor edits. And when I click on "last" to see your changes, I see some very strange things, such as changing "desperate" to "desparate", adding the word "their" next to the word "their", etc. Very strange. --Jose Ramos 08:57, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Apologies, I probably edited an old version by accident (I had viewed the history to check who wrote the excellent article).—Eloquence 08:59, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Transliteration issues

Hi Eloquence,

I want to invite you to weigh in at the new discussion of related matters that have come up in the last few days at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places)#Transliteration_of_Russian_place_names. Please see the intro paragraph of Boris Yeltsin to see an example of what's been going on with articles on Russians and places in Russia....

Also, if you haven't already do so, you might want to take a look through Cantus's contributions.

Right now, the main participants in the discussion are the two people who've been changing the formats of intro paragraphs of articles -- both of whom have been here for less than a month and seem rather uninterested in other people's points of view. Many thanks, BCorr ¤ Брайен 13:39, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Logo

Yeah, it's very exciting... I'm just waiting to see it on American news, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. Maybe I should contact these news organizations about releasing their modified versions of my logo under GFDL? I suppose I do technically still own the copyright, and modifications appear to have been made and redistributed. I have no intention to get pushy about this---their coverage is great PR---I just wonder what their technical legal obligations for using the logo would be. -- Nohat 00:45, 2004 Mar 2 (UTC)

Fair use does not just apply to Wikipedians ;-). Companies can reasonably expect that an image used in a promotional context is legal for them to use without further legal implications. Of course if someone does something really cool with the logo it doesn't hurt to ask.—Eloquence 02:05, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

Community portal

I added the few stubs under the todo message because there was a big chunk of whitespace caused by a long tip of the day. Is that OK, or should I edit the todo message to make it longer? (At the moment, the columns are balanced though, so it's OK). fabiform | talk 02:39, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'll try to keep my tips shorter.—Eloquence

Trolling

Dude, I don't know what you're talking about. Anthony DiPierro 04:29, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Bot code

Hi. Angela said here that you might have some code for a bot to upload a large corpus of images. Can you help with this?

Thanks in advance. Marnanel 05:49, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There is a general purpose bot written in Python, see pywikipediabot at sourceforge, that should be useful to you. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:26, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If you still need it, drop me an email and I will send you the code.—Eloquence

Merging bureaucrats and admins

If I remember right, Tim Starling initially created bureaucrats and sysops as equal, and you separated the two roles. There was a vote (but no discussion, alas!) at Wikipedia_talk:Requests for adminship which revealed no good reason (in my opinion, please feel free to review the page) to keep the roles separate. Would you consider flicking the switch back again so that we remove this unnecessary layer of hierachy, or if not, tell me what I am missing in this debate. Cheers, Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:26, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Actually, Tim experimentally eliminated the check for the "bureaucrat" flag in the SpecialMakesysop.php code, but it had always been intended to be accessible for bureaucrats only. Making it wide open to all sysops is not a good idea because a distributed bot that creates lots of sysops could really do some damage (esp. delete images, which aren't currently archived). I'd like to have a requirement that a new sysop has to be affirmed by two existing sysops, that would practically eliminate the security risk.—Eloquence 10:59, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

There may be some theoretical possibility of damage, but you have to wonder how someone came to be a sysop in the first place if they are going to go and on a bot-filled vandal rampage like that. Even then, once someone is an admin, the chances of them being turned down for bureaucrat-hood if they ask for it are virtually nil, so the nightmare scenario you describe has virtually the same chance of occurring with the current setup as the setup I am proposing. Thus we have a layer of hierachy (and associated babble with nominations , de-nomination requests from the cranks) with only minimal advantage.

On images, yes I think this is a big area of concern as regards security. Unless things have changed very recently, I think it is possible to upload for a vandal to upload a blank image with the same name as an existing image, and lose the original forever. The only way round this is to prevent uploading of files with already existing filenames. This would create a little bit of extra work for admins when we want to overwrite images (improved versions etc) but I think this is an acceptable restriction.

The other major hole we have for vandals I am aware of is the moving of pages with massive edit histories (the pump, vfd)... a vandal did this last month and both pages had to be locked for an hour or more, and Brion had to sort out the database wreckage by hand. I have lodged a request on sourceforge for partially-protected pages (i.e. pages that can be edited but not moved, except by admins) to work around this issue. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:21, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The threshold for becoming a sysop is incredibly low, and someone can only become a bureaucrat if they've been a sysop for a while. It is unlikely that someone who has shown questionable standards of behavior as a sysop would become a bc. Nevertheless, I agree that the current system is not optimal. But with > 170 admins, I don't think making all of them bureaucrats is the solution.

Having two levels of adminship does act as a kind of firebreak. Indeed the votes for bureaucrats have been "votes of confidence" or in one case, "votes of no confidence" in how many feathers a given admin has ruffled. It is my opinion that punishing vagrant sysops by not giving bureaucrat rights is a bit odd, but has arisen because it almost to impossible to take away rights (banning, desysop-ing) around here.

Overwriting images preserves the previous revisions, so that's not really a security risk.

Ah thanks, I had got myself confused between deleting and overwriting. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:00, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Deleting the images does not archive the revisions as deleting pages does, though. Moving large pages is indeed problematic, but that is largely because of our fucked up database structure which requires changes to hundreds of rows in the database for a single move. This will be changed with the pending DB redesign. We keep track of all moves so it should be possible to automatically undo them in case someone does something stupid.—Eloquence 11:26, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, I am glad something is in the pipeline to sort this one out, the vandal caused a lot of havoc Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:00, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi, you talked about creating a WebDAV wiki on User:Timwi's talk page. Do you know if anyone is working on such a project ? Jay 10:44, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No one's working on it as far as I know. I might try a proof of concept, but if anyone else wants to do it I'll be happy to help them in any way I can.—Eloquence 13:39, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

Yes please. Would like to know your ideas. Jay 14:34, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

McFly

The 80s cover band is different from the UK boy band. Anthony DiPierro 15:21, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I get it. I'm wary of unprotecting the page while Wik is still in "IWILLREVERTYOUALLYOUDIENOW" mode now, though.—Eloquence

Signature

I can say one thing, if I see one of your link-infested signatures on a page I edit I will remove it instantly. This is unacceptable.—Eloquence

Ok. now my sign is normal. Is it ok? Optim 16:54, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Much better, thanks.—Eloquence

oh no! is this why optim left? I thought his sigs were charming... and just the other day I saw some other WP'an asking Optim how he did it. what about "link-infested signatures" is offensive to you? +sj +

They make the diffs completely unusable, and the source code hard to edit, because suddenly you have crap like this: O]][[Rosicrucian|p]][[AMORC|t]][[Freemasonry|i]][[Western mystery tradition|m]]<sup><small>[[S L MacGregor Mathers|·]][[Hellenic Ministry of Culture|.]][[User_talk:Optim|·</small></sup> all over the place. Optim has been informed about this before, and he had promised to only add one link per signature. Then for no discernible reason he returned to his overkill sig and added some HTML to boot. If my telling him to stop doing so made him leave, I'm sorry, but I stand by what I said.—Eloquence 09:56, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)

Main page comments; apologies

Eloquence: I apologize for my pissy comments regarding your modifications to the main page. I still believe that your changes had little merit, but obviously this disagreement stems from our radically different perspectives on more fundamental issues; I doubt we'll ever truly eye to eye on this. FWIW, I happen to believe that the AssumeGoodFaith prinicple is fundamentally flawed and impractical as a guide to action (I instead try to adhere to Hanlon's Razor). But I did want to sincerely apologize and ask your forgiveness for my rudeness. -- Seth Ilys 18:58, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No worries - I did not perceive it as rude. Besides, I am highly flame-retardant ;-) I think the problem with the AssumeGoodFaith crowd is that they carry the principle to extremes, and assume good faith even when all evidence points to the contrary. I am very firm against trolls and malcontents, but I think we should give everyone a fair chance to improve themselves.—Eloquence 19:00, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you completely about the photo. I will not act in such a way again. If he removes the pic, I will not restore it. However, Adam's behavior proves that demagoguery works; so I had to try it at least once. His self-righteous posturing has allowed him to get away with a pattern of behavior that demonstrates utter disdain for the site's collaborative spirit and NPOV policies. Yes, it was a silly stunt. But I will not regret the ensuing damage to my reputation if fewer users mistake his McCarthyism for "morality." 172 21:11, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi Eloquence. I'm getting error messages when I try to save or preview MediaWiki:Uploadtext at symbolwiki. I've saved the error at User:Angela/Sandbox2. Angela . 23:49, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

Should work now. Was a MediaWiki bug caused by requesting a thumbnail for a non-existent image.—Eloquence 09:53, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for that, and for getting the arrows in recent changes too. :) Angela . 14:53, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

obstructionism

I see that you have tried to deal with the same set of problems that have plagued, e.g., the DNA page. I am puzzled by these phenomena. It should be a rich vein for a sociologist to mine. Why will two or more groups try to kill each other (in a virtual way) when neither of their pet versions is particularly good? During the Clinton impeachment and the Columbine Massacre aftermath I spent a great deal of time on the NPR forum. I observed right away that most American participants had a heavy "set" to assert that somebody else was wrong, an idiot, etc., etc. That seemed very important to them. I mediated too many firestorms around the kitchen table as an undergraduate to get caught in that trap. In that context what I discovered was that I needed to never respond to characterizations of myself as a whatever-it-was. When I did that I continued to speak to the people who were rational and not involved in ego-boosting and in trashing other. The problem in the Wikipedia environment is that it is hard to make it work when people like Lir are involved. They do not, I suspect, even value the content of their own posting. Any edit content would do as long as it could continue to draw attention to them.

When I had students in a bad secondary school environment who would misbehave in order to fill their dependency need (it's a real need and one cannot supply it for oneself), then I would totally ignore them, and I would pay attention to them when they did something positive -- or barring that joyful event I would reinforce them at random. In this environment I think a 24-hour ban approximates "not directing attention toward the malefactor." What is needed in addition to that is recognition/attention being given when the individual behaves nicely.

P0M 01:02, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Lir falls into a class of problem users which we have decided is easier to keep around on a tight leash than try to get rid of by force. Lir was banned for months and kept coming back under about a dozen different user names. This went so far that users did extensive analysis to discover correlations between the edits of certain new users and Lir's edits (which was really unnecessary - I always recognized a Lir incarnation after about 5 minutes). Jimbo did his usual "Can't we all just get along?" routine and unbanned Lir after Lir apologized in private and promised to change his behavior.

Lir's behavior has in fact improved, but there are personality traits which no amount of conditioning can wipe out. Basically, when Lir sees a group of 9 people who are saying the same thing, he must say something completely different, regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. At that point you can either ignore him or give him some kind of concession after which he will feel that he has made a positive contribution to the issue. The good thing about Lir is his predictability. That's not true for all problem users.

Oftentimes relatively little disputes become proxy wars for personal issues between editors. This is a good reason to try to maintain good relations with everyone - you never know what else the two of you are going to work on. You might even need the help of someone you strongly disagree with.

Of course this becomes immensely difficult when others resort to personal attacks and similar methods. That's why Wikiquette is mandatory, and its violation a bannable offense. The reality of the situation is that users hardly ever get banned for violating it, though. But that may change as the whole Wikipedia:Dispute resolution process is improved and refined.

I am also strongly in favor of allowing sysops to ban users for 24 hours in case of edit wars. These are almost always clear cut and there's simply no good reason to participate in them if everyone knows that the policy will be enforced. Jimbo has not yet approved these tempbans, but I may very well set a precedent in that department on DNA or elsewhere.—Eloquence 02:32, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)

admin status

I was a bit grumpy about you removing me, but it was also the right decision ;) I don't like anything to do w flamers, and me being on that page attracts em for me. On the other hand maybe I woulda won and sloved the problem, but I doubt it. Admin status is clearly a popularity contest, and I'm not popular enough here. I'd like for there not to be ANY admins, or for the status to be overhauled w specific job tasks (RickK is good at dealing w vandals, for example) so that its not such an all purpose job. A big priority IMO is making the wiki profitatable enough to afford paid employees. We need folks like Jimbo, and Larry Sanger, and... you to be paid employees taking charge of things. I'd be very interested in being part of that. I've got alot of sales skills, and I like the idea that I could maybe sell wikipedia 1.0 disks and make $ at it? There is so much to do, meta-wise... Sam Spade 10:12, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So thanks, and let me know if you have any thoughts on any of the subjects I've been addressing. Sam Spade 10:13, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Accusations of evil

Sorry for over-reacting, Erik. I didn't check the date and mistakenly thought the "asses of evil" campaign button was a current event. Please forgive me for suggestiing it was "censorship" on your part: you were just taking out an out-dated item. --Uncle Ed 16:10, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No problem. You wouldn't be Uncle Ed without the occasional outburst. ;-) —Eloquence 16:18, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)

168...'s subvandalism

[Peak:] I understand you re-un-sysoped 168... recently. Thank you. Anthere does not seem to have realized that at 06:28, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC) I recommended this course of action; it was seconded by RickK a few minutes later. See Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/168#March. Please feel free to copy this to more visible places as you see fit. Peak 16:58, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, although I have to admit that I didn't see these comments. What I saw was 168... abusing his privileges again, even though he knew perfectly well that this kind of behavior was not acceptable. If he pledges not to violate the protection policy, I'm sure we all agree that he can be a sysop again.—Eloquence 17:07, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)

I understand that you had this opinion Peak; however, it is useless to try to save Erik from this :-) He does not have to be "saved" from his decision. First because I think he was entitled to take it alone in case of emergency (and does not need to be seconded and thirded by you twos) and second because when he did it, he was not aware you had requested this yourself (because we were discussing together at the same time, and he would have mentionned your opinion certainly). This only thing I did not appreciate of what Erik did is that he did not tell the community (that is...in particular you and RickK). Erik just forgot. So, as you can see, Erik does not need to pretend afterwards he was just following community opinion. Another point Peak...I do not say to Erik I disagreed with his decision and wanted him to reconsider.

Please, would you like to see my trying to help as the help of a neutral person, and not one trying to undermine the community in supporting a "subvandal" (as you call 168). 168 requested help from the mediation committee and that was in that perspective that I tried to help you guys. If you feel that mediation should only help trusted and recognised members, and abandon others, please raise the issue on the mediation page. If I am only seen by external parties as an obstacle to proper community working, I think we badly need to redefine entirely how mediators can help. FirmLittleFluffyThing

Erik is probably right about user:168 but I hope he will respect the Arbitration Committee's authority. It's not easy being both a Developer and a Bureaucrat.

I think both Erik and I should listen sympathetically to any advice we got from Angela or Anthere. Power should listen to conscience :-) --Uncle Ed 19:30, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[Peak to Anthere and Ed:] I think you two may have partly misunderstood the sequence of events, and also perhaps my role as a "neutral person" in the entire sad history. Anyway, the problem, as I understand it, is that 168... was re-sysoped even though he had made it clear he would continue to violate sysop rules. Sure enough, he once again abused his sysop powers (on or about March 7) at DNA, even without Lir's involvement at all(!). I believe Eloquence responded correctly to 168...'s "subvandalism." Peak 04:42, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Erik and Peak, I just saw this [1] (brion indicated it to me) and I do not understand how that could happen. I had no edit conflict when I did that edit that I can recall of. I am *absolutely* sure there were no comment on that page by Erik. And I am *not* the type of person who just delete someone else comments to replace with mine. So, I greatly apology, but it was not on purpose. There was also a two hours difference, so I really do not understand what happened. The only explanation I can have is a cache problem, as I noticed it several time on my own talk page these last few days (I have a mention of message, when I go, there is no change, I go in history, I see someone edited the page, I reload and finally see the change). This is my only explanation, that I somehow edited a cache version. I would have thought there be a warning though; Anyway, I have no explanation, but this was *not* intended. Sorry. FirmLittleFluffyThing

IRC

If you get this soon, pop into the IRC channel, you're the topic of some discussion Dori | Talk 00:25, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC)

Comments such as "Basically, when Lir sees a group of 9 people who are saying the same thing, he must say something completely different, regardless of whether it makes any sense or not." are rude and deragatory. Please review the articles on proper user behavior. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Pollinator make money of his great pictures you know ? :-) This can be expected, they are really wonderful :-) ant

--- Thanks, Eloquence, for your compliments on my photos. I regret that I can only donate low resolution ones, with an occasional exception. I do some professional photography, and giving away high resolution images would be like giving away the entire store. I am retired, but need additional income, and nature photography has helped. I like to help Wikipedia what I can, as I think this is a great project, but...I hope you understand. Pollinator 23:36, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

168

Now that you showed me the edit history I would like to apologize. I read something that Wik wrote when requesting your deadminship, and I foolishly believed him (or misinterpreted what he wrote). I still don't believe that a developer should have the authority to unilaterally remove adminship status. Mabye we can make a rule where (in cases when immediate removal of powers is of utmost importance)1 or 2 sysops are required approve the action, before the developer does so. I will move my comment to neutral, and possibly back to oppose if 2 sysops approved the action before you carried it out. Perl 15:21, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wikitree

Perl suggested on the village pump (see it here) about a project called Wikitree - an editable family tree. I agreed with the idea. I thought of asking you what as a sysop and a developer what your opinion on it is:

Is it implementable?
Would it need to be a seperate thing like Wikibooks or just a WikiProject?
Would Wikimedia be willing to administer the system?

Ludraman | Talk 18:46, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

1) Everything is implementable in theory. In practice it depends on what the special needs of this project would be. You'd want easy input for family tree data, for example, and I'm not sure a blank wiki page is the best way to do that. The first step therefore would be to describe your exact needs for this project to be useful. If significant changes to the software are necessary, you will have to find a developer willing to commit themselves to it. I know that I won't work on a genealogy project unless I'm paid to do so. :-)

2) It would need to be a separate project if the family trees we are talking about here are supposed to include persons who are "non-encyclopedic" or even personal family members. For family trees of famous individuals there already is Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy. I would caution that the less verifiable the information in such a project is, the less sense it makes to create an open wiki for it.

3) It would have to be approved by Jimbo if it is to become a Wikimedia project. But you better formulate a coherent idea before you ask him.—Eloquence 20:00, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)

Entwurf für neue deutsche Startseite

Hallo Eloquence,

Deinem Entwurf für die Main Page folgend, habe ich zur Vereinheitlichung des internationalen Erscheinungsbildes die Seite mal mit deutschen Inhalten gefüllt (vgl. de:Hauptseite/tmp). Alle Inhalte befinden sich noch im Artikel selbst. Textbausteine müssten hier noch angelegt werden. Auch fehlen einige weiterführende Links. Aber das Ganze sollte zunächst nur als Diskussionsbeispiel dienen. Wobei ich mich nicht wirklich auf die deutsche Diskussion freue. ;-) -- de:Benutzer:Triebtäter

NHL trivia

Thank you for going ahead and removing that hockey player from MediaWiki:itn, it rankled me every time I saw it on the front page but I never removed it. silsor 23:29, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC)