User talk:SimonP/Archive 2

Archive - for user talk from December 2001 to September 2004

Shaihu Manu!

Thank you for the edit at Usman Dan Fodio. I makes the clarification I was seeking. I think you deserve an award. This is a slightly political point of view, but in this day and age, when the "fundamentalist" right-wing of Islam co-opts people like him, it is very important to point out that the right way to start a Jihad is by a legitimate leader chosen and/or recognized by a community; not by individuals.

BTW, where did you get the content?

PS: in case you are wondering about the heading above, it is the exclamation a Hausa-Fulani might utter where an English-speaking Westerner would go "Jesus Christ!" ("Manu" is a Hausa shortform/nickname for "Usman(u)") —iFaqeer | Talk to me! 20:16, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Support

I have noticed that User:Darrien crusades against standard English spellings on Wikipedia, replacing them wherever he can with Webster spellings. You have my full support in clearing up his mess after him. Chameleon 12:51, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Art Movements

Well done on cleaning up all the dubious links to artmovements.org. I see that User:Canadianartist went above and beyond the call of duty this morning. I'd got a mental note to put Thinkism and the related artist on WP:VfD, but I see the pages have already gone. -- Solipsist 08:18, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Keeping Canada clean

I'm impressed when someone reverts an ad while I'm fumbling my way to do the same thing. Well done. :) Krupo 00:38, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Beating a dead horse

Exactly how did the votes on this translate to a consensus to keep the article? Especially since most of the "keep" votes actually made no attempt to justify the article itself, only insulting and baseless accusations that the "delete" votes were politically motivated. Well, dear Lord, God forbid that when we have an idiom that can be fully explained in one sentence, we don't give it its own multi-paragraph article entry with two examples and three external links. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:48, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Please protect archived VfD

You have closed the VfD Violence against Israelis and posted "Please don't edit this page", but User:MathKnight edited and put striku-thru through one of my posts before you closed it and he is now reverting my restores.

Besides the fact that he shouldn't be editing this page at all, he should not edit other people's posts. (If he disagrees with some opinion he should post his own, rather than crossing out the opinion he disagrees with).

I restored my original post but anon IP 128.205.1.26 reverted it to User:MathKnight illegal version. Please either protect the page (revert to my version if needed) or ban User:MathKnight and User:128.205.1.26 from editing it. Thanks. HistoryBuffEr 17:52, 2004 Oct 6 (UTC)

Colours

I'm just using the same colours as in other places. The light blue is perfectly reasonable, but as for the red, well- we'll just have to make those red links blue, now won't we? Earl Andrew 07:04, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Civil war

I just wanted to say that you did some great work on Civil war. Given your excellent additions, it's doubtful if it needs to be COTW anymore (which I nominated it to be). Alarm 21:40, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I believe they are. I'm curious, what article are you going to use them for? PZFUN 17:34, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ah, that sounds like an interesting article. If you need any information about South Africa or Namibia, I'd be happy to help PZFUN 18:24, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I believe they are. I'm curious, what article are you going to use them for? PZFUN 18:40, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Björn Björnsson

Why did you remove my request for deletion and add a substub notice? If you had read the page's history you would have seen that I created the article. Regards, Wiglaf.

Deletion of Bertschi School

Hi... you moved the VFD for this school, but you didn't implement the consensus decision (delete by 9 to 3).. Are you planning to ? Mozzerati 18:45, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

Hmm.. I'm most of the arguments were against the notability of the school, not the quality of the article. There are a number of better articles for equally notable schools which are in the process of being deleted. E.g. the school in Malaysia. What say, if we want to keep this, someone should try to get a policy which justifies it. E.g. "all schools are notable since they infuence thousands of people's lives" or "it is sufficient to have schooled 5000 people to be notable" or "it is sufficint to have done 25k teaching years to be notable". Mozzerati 18:57, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

Well, I'm going to leave it, since I'm primarily voting against boring and useless articles but I'm thinking about using it as part of an argument that all schools are inherently notable. My local Tesco is seen as a "landmark"... Mozzerati 19:19, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

Fried meatballs

Were you aware of the fragile consensus obtained on fried meatballs before restoring them ? Do discussions matter ? Why did you restore it ? Why are you deciding this ? SweetLittleFluffyThing

Sorry, but, once again, I had the proof of the ultimate stupidity of vfd.

Some one propose a deletion.
Immediately, some users jump on it, in favor of deletion.
Others jump on it, in favor of keeping.

Then, an editor (me) comes around and try to find a solution. HOW STUPID ! WHAT A TOTAL LOSS OF MY TIME ! I tried to merge the content of the article in another place. Fix links here and there. Change it into a redirection. Try to start a discussion about a policy we should adopt.

Basically, none of the first voters came back. They did not see the changes made to the articles, so they can't even change their opinion on it. Some, however, commented on the policy discussion, and agreed with the idea.

Finally, someone just drop by (you), and without taking into account, neither the changes I proposed, neither the comments of the few who saw the changes, neither the first reactions to my policy proposal, just revert all I did.

Sorry, but this is not exactly what I call decision with consensus. This is not taking into accounts proposals made during the process. This is not constructive behavior, this is destructive.

This is also totally ignoring my efforts to try to find a solution agreeable to most reasonable people.

It is totally discouraging.

I listed the policy proposal on votes for deletion. Just make meatballs with it. This is all this place deserve for just making it clear to people that their efforts are NOT welcome. I have seen battle over recipes for the last 2 years now. I sure am not happy to see that the only attempt to try to find a solution is just ... thrown in the trash in such a way.

Fifth grade

Why was this kept? There were only a couple votes to keep; otherwise, all votes were in favor of removing the content, whether to delete outright or make it a mere redirect to primary education. A vote for redirection is not a vote to keep by any means. Postdlf 01:43, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

deletion request

Could you please delete my user subpage User:whosyourjudas/pui? I don't need it anymore. Thank you, Whosyourjudas (talk) 02:56, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Clarification on high schools, please

I happen to think consensus to delete is not at all obvious in the case of Hannibal High School. Therefore a judgement to keep is reasonable.

But I am puzzled by your remark that "I question whether there is consensus to delete any high school." Does this mean that if a particular high school article received, say, eight deletion votes and no keeps, you would, as sysop, act on that article by casting a single keep vote, declaring that "decision was keep" and keep it?

My own view is that it is very clear that there is no general consensus or policy regarding inclusion of high schools, and that each VfD discussion is an individual case. What I one would expect, given the contentiousness of the issue, is that in most cases there would not be a consensus to delete and therefore the actual outcome of most VfD discussions would be "keep." But I would expect there to be some cases where there would be consensus to delete, and I would expect a sysop acting on that VfD to respect that consensus.

I have heard assertions that there is a policy that high schools are to be kept. I have repeatedly asked for pointers to the discussions documenting this, and so far have yet to get one. I believe User:Geogre claims to have traced this assertion and that it referred to something different; it was in reference to one particular article which was a list of high schools and that there was consensus that non-notable high schools should not be removed from this list, and that since then inclusionists have mistakenly represented it as a policy regarding high school articles. I don't know. All I know is that so far nobody has been able to point me to any policy or documentation of consensus on inclusion of high schools.

[[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:42, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Topological Geometrowhatever

Good call. -- Decumanus 00:14, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)

John Vanbrugh

Hi, I have just used your great image of Castle Howard to illustrate a large re-write taking place at John Vanbrugh - I hope that's OK with you. Regards Giano 09:04, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Delete Article

The article: "Joan of Arc (cross-dressing)" should be deleted, not retained as an article. It serves no purpose now (I was the author, but its original function is obsolete at this point). Please delete it. AWilliamson 03:23, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

For heaven's sake....

This regards your note to my personal page. Since I'm the author of that article, and since its intended usage is no longer relevant (some of it will be incorporated into a different article), please delete it. There doesn't need to be a consensus if the article has no purpose. AWilliamson 03:35, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ruzwana Bashir

I went ahead & edited in, via ed-conf, what i spent a lot of effort stating as thoroly & clearly as possible during TV ads over the last 6 hours; i think this is not a routine situation that the procedures anticipate, so i make no apology. Please review and i will defer to your decision on how to clean up the mess that i've left there.

I have, however, closed the edit-windows i have open on

w/o making the following edit on them:

Following your last edit to the above-named debate, the nominator of the article asserted that the stated basis for your Keep vote (yours and those of 2 others, by name) included factual errors (of a testable nature). IMO:

this puts you under no obligation to comment further, but
either your confirmation of your vote, or your change of heart, would be valuable information for the person (not me) making final disposition of that VfD.

Further info:

Disclosures:

The anon nominator attempted once to vote improperly (IMO probably knowingly), and afterward forged an ostensible reg'd-user vote.
I voted for deletion.

--Jerzy (t) 07:54, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

Thanks, but i shan't; over & done is fine too. --Jerzy (t) 18:44, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

CSM template

I was adding them because it was agreed on the WP:Bias talk page. I didn't see you cleaning up after me until I'd done a lot. Do you object to even the five article on the main CSM To-Do list having? You could have mentioned your objections earlier in that case and saved me, and yourself, a lot of work. -Xed 18:03, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

VfD action

Time after time I notice that you're the one who's made the effort to wrap up a VfD discussion and take the administrative steps to close it out one way or the other. I really appreciate the work you do in that respect.

Nevertheless, I must question your action on Revival of the draft. I see only one vote (Silverback) unequivocally for keeping, with one more that would accept a standalone article as one alternative but would also accept merger of the content elsewhere (Wile E. Heresiarch). Everyone else -- by my count, fourteen other participants -- voted against letting it remain in this form. (Some of them favored a merger of the content into Conscription.) I don't see how this can be interpreted as anything other than a consensus that this material shouldn't remain as a separate article. There was disagreement among the fourteen voters as to whether this topic even merited a redirect, but that's no justification for letting the one-and-a-half votes to keep the article prevail. I suggest it could properly be deleted, replaced by a redirect, and if those of us who disagree with redirect feel strongly enough about that point, it can be thrashed out through a listing on RfD. JamesMLane 19:25, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Delete, Redirect, Keep

I noticed that you consider delete and redirect to be competing votes when calculating a consensus. This concerns me because I have always voted believing that either one would do as a vote to not keep. I thought this was common sense, and I've observed many others acting on the same premise on VfD. It appears that a few people have already brought specific instances to your attention. What are your thoughts on this? Specifically, do you think most VfD participants think as I do, or as you do, or that their intentions aren't relevant? Cheers. -- WOT 03:44, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I still have two concerns:

It seems that in some cases, you counted straight, mergeless, redirect votes as keep. This is what you said to Postdlf about Fifth grade: "Redirect votes do not count as delete votes." Looking at the VfD history on the page, these redirect votes had no indication of rescuing any content.
Counting redirect and merge as keep seems to be an oversimplification. A hypothetical example:
- 7 votes keep
- 7 votes delete
- 7 votes redirect and merge

14 votes (a consensus) indicate that there is content that should be kept, yet 14 votes (another consensus) also indicate that there shouldn't be an independent article. Merging and redirecting, in this case, would satisfy both. Simply keeping the article is essentially disregarding part of the intent of several of the votes.

Regards. -- WOT 17:58, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Clarifications on the two concerns:

Why were the Fifth grade redirect votes, for instance, counted as keep instead of delete, even though none of them suggested a merge?
I think that you must assume that a delete would prefer a merge and redirect to a keep unless specificially stated otherwise. Your counterargument has a few problems:

A merge is assumed to mean "merge the accurate and useful content"
Even if a user disagrees with what is accurate and useful, he can still edit it on the merged page.
Most VfD participants vote on the assumption that delete prefers a redirect of any kind to keep. My observation has been that in rare cases where the assumption might not hold, users clarify preference orders.

Thanks. -- WOT 21:01, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

H'm. The chasm might be just a little too wide for this to be a productive discussion, but I want to give it one more shot.

You say that Fifth grade wasn't deleted by counting the redirect votes as keep, but you gave that as an independent reason for deletion to Postdlf (see my original first concern above). With that in mind, do you think you might be allowing personal opinion to outweigh the consideration of the intent of some voters in some cases?
Delete is not mutually exclusive with merge as your definition of delete suggests. Merge and delete is a perfectly valid combination. Thus, my concern about interpretation of intent remains.
That previous delete votes might be discounted because a page has been edited in the process is now a third concern for me. You must assume that a user sticks with his vote if he doesn't say anything else because:

Users only vote once, not periodically, on an article.
Precedent is that a user will strikeout his old vote and post a new one if he changes his mind.
Precedent is that if the delete count is still high after changes and following votes, someone (generally the one that made the changes) will leave a message on the user's talk page, to request a reconsideration of his vote.
Expecting otherwise would be impractical; no one would ever know how often he would be required to re-affirm his vote. Even if a notice on the corresponding VfD page were posted, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect each voter to continually monitor each vote he has cast to see if there has been a new development.
If, after a change, the total is still a consensus for delete/redirect, and the end of the voting period is approaching, shouldn't the administrator extend voting for long enough to see if previous voters will have a change of mind, or new voters will tip the balance?

If you don't think we're going to see eye-to-eye on this, then I should probably address these issues at some VfD policy page. I don't want to feel like my time voting on VfD is wasted, and with so large an understanding gap, clarification on standards could only help. Thanks -- WOT 22:45, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Austrian

You have reverted Austrian to be a redirect to Austria. I am just wondering why the disambig page was inappropriate? There was no reason given on the revert so I am not sure. The Austrian national airline is officially called "Austrian" and referred to solely by that name as of late-2003, when it renamed from "Austrian Airlines".

I think it is appropriate to have that on a disambig page, rather than IMHO the worse alternative that to have a "If you are looking for the airline 'Austrian', see.." on Austria. --kjd 09:50, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nadine Gordimer

Why did you re-delete the CSB articles tag in the Nadine Gordimer article? The article is far from complete and exhaustive and could definitely do with such a tag in order to advertise the need for people to add to it. At the very least, it does no harm. Elf-friend 09:57, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's always nice and courteous to give a reason for adding/deleting something in the edit summary, anyway. Elf-friend 09:59, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

old images

old images are not automatically PD .. see the tag PD-art .. applies in the USA only as Wikipedia is international. In refrence to the cathar image. Stbalbach 12:47, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

list of state leaders

I don't know if these pages are your idea, but they are brilliant: A perfect example of how the Internet/hyperlink aspect of wikipedia can organize existing knowledge into a new shape that can lead to new insight. I've always been frustrated by the difficulty of keeping track of what was going on in different parts of the world in ancient times; now that problem is solved. - DavidWBrooks 17:44, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Removing VfD tags

Why did you remove the VfD tag without comment from Meaning and Knowledge? The listing is ongoing, and consensus is unanimous so far in favor of deletion. Postdlf 00:37, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I read the article talk page, and I'm even more bothered now. A unanimous vote determined that this subject was insufficiently notable. I think we have a problem when an admin decides for himself what a consensus really said or what it should have said. I have not noticed anyone else both deciding to keep articles unanimously chosen for deletion or to interpret votes to keep an article as a mere redirect as a vote to keep the content. I think this should be resolved before you engage in any more clearing activities on VfD. Postdlf 00:49, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Remorse 1981

Hello SimonP. I see you removed the Remorse 1981 page but did not act upon the wishes of the consensus at Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Remorse_1981. Last I counted there were 14 keeps, 13 deletes and 2 strong merges. You appear to have deleted this page (and any traces to it) without a majority vote. Please advise immediately or I will be reposting this article. Thank you. --Radman1 01:26, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Canawikipedian coffeeklatsch

Just discovered there's a Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board. Spread the word. Bearcat 03:11, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Please don't recreate articles with a consensus to delete

You've been warned by both RickK and another admin above. If you persist, I'm going to request a temporary order from the Arbitration Committee. Please don't let it get that far. Ambi 08:00, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)