User talk:Courcelles/Archive 64

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You had no reason to protect mike catherwood's page

He has a history of homophobia and the references were valid. Please put that information back as it is NOT a BLP violation. Even Diannaa agreed with me before you reverted back to her edit and then protected the page. How is bringing up Mike Catherwood's 2 separate homophobia controversies and then posting valid references to them a BLP violation????

I had every reason to protect this page. The sources are questionable, they're being presented as absolute fact, and it violated WP:WEASEL in every single sentence. WP:BLP is sacrosanct, and your edits were, at best, at the extreme boundary of acceptability. Courcelles 23:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

The Advocate and GLADD are questionable??? That is ridiculous. You know what I think? I think you are a homophobe using your questionable status as an administrator to defend a man who has received complaints of homophobia on numerous instances. You are biased and what you are doing isn't fair.

Whatever. You've proven just now you have no idea what you're talking about. Anyway, I've got no time to converse with someone who calls me a bigot. Courcelles 00:05, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea what I am talking about?? There is INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF he has offended gay people on numerous occasions and received complaints because it. The Daily 10 even apologized on air because of him! YOU have no idea what you are talking about!! You are unfit to be an administrator. --75.72.174.28 (talk) 00:15, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Like I've never heard that last one before from an IP with an axe to grind that came here to embarrass a living person? Got any sources that don't come with a clear POV like the two you gave do? Further, read WP:UNDUE. 33% of someone's biography shouldn't be one stupid thing they said, it's what separates an encyclopaedia from a gossip rag. try the article's talk page. Use the {{editsemiprotected}} system. See if you can get anyone who understands and deals with BLP issues on a daily basis to make the edit for you. Further, it was pointed out to you twice, did you ever go and read Wikipedia:BLPGOSSIP? If not, do it now. How is this event not a violation of that? Courcelles 00:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Off2riorob and PC

I don't know how involved you still are with the whole Pending Changes thing, but regardless of opinion, we need to find some way to get a consensus. It seems work isn't progressing at the levels it needs to on the feature until the community gives it another try, and the community isn't willing to give it another try until improvements are made. Kind of a stalemate we're at here...

In the middle of all this, Off2riorob comes along seven months after the trial ends and tries to start another new poll; I happened to think about Pending Changes for the first time in five months at just the right time to arrive within hours of the creation of this poll, which I promptly deleted. Since then, I feel he's been a bit combative over his reason why we need a poll. I agree with him, but I also argue that it's not his role. His response is to delete my posts from his talk page with no answer, so I've copied everything to my talk page and asked him again for comment.

What I am asking of you is whether there is some way we can get an uninvolved administrator, even a bureaucrat due to the sensitiveness of how this whole thing is affecting part of the community, and have a non-slanted and fair poll created regarding whether PC can be given another trial, or whatever else the next step would be. All Jimbo is doing is pointing to the discussion page that is already noted prior to his comment. Obviously he can't create the poll either; he has himself said he's a strong supporter of PC. Is there anyone at a high level who is not involved who can fairlyadminister a poll that is somewhat needed to determine what happens with this feature? According to the last agreement, this thing should already be shut off.

Note I am still a strong supporter of PC, I just want to see a resolution in this whole mess one way or the other. CycloneGU (talk) 00:53, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Meh, I'm involved in that I've expressed an opinion a few times, but am actively trying to not pay attention to this round. I just don't care anymore, though I would still like to see it turned off, it's not worth my energy anymore. WP:BN is always a good place to recruit a 'crat if they think it is within their remit to do something. The best idea I could come up with now would be a kind of triumvirate to administer a poll, someone involved who supports PC, an Arb who is somewhat uninvolved, and someone who opposes the system. Run the poll for a fortnight, and let those three decide what the consensus is. And after those three make a ruling, everyone just let it go. That's the only idea I have that could ever work anymore, there's no one left that is fully uninvolved anymore, unfortunately. Courcelles 01:01, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I was afraid that might be the case, I am sorta hoping there is at least one bureaucrat who is less involved than others. But regardless of that, I agree, get a small group to administer fairly and get a legitimate result. I wonder the best way to proceed with this.

I'll search out an active and friendly bureaucrat and see if we can set something up. For now, I'm witnessing Off2riorob's situation at the Wikiquette page, so I'll do that for now and seek a 'crat in a bit. Thanks for your time. =) CycloneGU (talk) 01:50, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi Courcelles, I have your page watchlisted and could not help but notice Cyclone was here. May I say that like you, I'm tired of the whole mess and just wish it would go away, but I agree that one final poll or Rfc, if carefully thought out and administered as you wisely observe, would possibly end this one way or another. I find Cyclone's views on the issue have merit; needless to say I feel the other party's approach is of small value and hasty. I'm hoping you and the admin community can push for some kind of timely resolution of this matter, which has dragged on too long. My best wishes to you, Jusdafax 02:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

As an update Courcelles and Jusdafax, I have posted a query. Let's see what develops. CycloneGU (talk) 02:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't really think a 'crat will consider this within their remit, which is actually fairly narrow. (The role is so much smaller than the hassle to become one would have you believe.) Both of the polls on this manner have been so ad hoc and even "make it up as we go along" it was inevitable that one side wouldn't be happy. Part of it is our consensus based model, at RFA consensus is seen at 75%, give or take. At AFD, you can close against the majority in rare and exceptional cases. AN and ANI discussions are even trickier to close than that rare AFD. Which model were we using for the polls? Who was going to determine it? Did we need consensus to keep the feature, or consensus to remove it? Could you have answered all those questions with certainty before you !voted? I couldn't have come close either time. And if a third poll is even to be considered, all of those are going to be contentious. You have a number of editors who feel as if they have been lied to twice now in this thing, and with good cause; what was sold as a two-month trial has gone on for nearly three-quarters of a year. A "drop-dead" date of December has turned to March with no change. Does the feature even work? It didn't work a lot of places, in the highest-traffic articles the trial was an unmitigated disaster, some lasting only days on PC. That leads to another disconnect. If we keep the feature, what is it for? Is it for articles like Jesus that get vandalised thirty times a day when unprotected, is it for articles like Anna Kozlova that don't even get read 30 times a month? Is it for those articles that end up on OTRS' doorstep with someone unbelieving that we've had an article keep (vandal-inserted and irrelevant) profanity in it for over a week? You want to see a long series of embarrassing failures, go read the history of the vandalism queue on OTRS. Any perception we were doing a great job combating vandalism I once had didn't survive my first three days working that queue.
Little sidetracked there, but the central issue is that a third poll must be designed well, or we're just wasting more time. An actual trial with an actual control, and actual plan, would go a long way, too. What we had was a slow roll-out, not a trial in the clinical sense of the term, and therefore we don't have the hard data we need to make an objective assertion to the tool's utility. Instead we get caught up in either ideology (IP's editing or not) or perception (I saw the initial articles be so high-profile that it failed time after time. Someone else would have an entirely different perception, especially if they didn't start looking until August, when those real train-wrecks were already back on semi.) And I still don't have the slightest clue where the reviewer time will come from if this gets rolled out over half a million or more articles. I still don't think it even exists. And if I'm right, that could be the biggest mess of all, if the review queue ended up as backlogged as most of the things in CAT:B. 2006! We've had work flagged as being needed for FIVE YEARS. And we want to add this much more? 16,391 audited articles (FA/FL/GA) out of 3.5 million. The amount of work we've got staring us in the face is enough to feel impossible if you think about it. When it boils down to it, that's my concern with PC, I just don't think we have the volunteer time to keep the queue in shape it is going to take. And if the review queue ends up with months of backlog, it isn't going to be pretty. Courcelles 03:18, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Chzz linked to the little test post thing he is still drafting. I don't suggest everyone make their way over there and comment, but I added my own so they don't get lost on his talk page. Among them I suggested a new and extremely limited mini-trial for Committee analysis using the new version of the Pending Changes software (last updated in November) on a couple dozen or so pages (not 2,000 or 10,000 or such). My suggestion was that all pages be pages where admins. currently patrol in any case, and at least one edit per day on average strictly on a per article basis (i.e. not three edits daily to one article, none to another two). I feel with a much smaller-scope trial a Committee can analyze the smaller numbers and make a quicker decision on whether the system is working. CycloneGU (talk) 03:47, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Remember the Law of small numbers. A trial has to be small enough to be manageable with the resources you have, but not so small that the results of it are dependent on random chance. Like I said though, I really just don't care anymore. Too much drama, too little return for my time. Courcelles 03:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

That's why it's merely an idea for consideration. With the scope of the previous trial and many pages with 0 edits throughout the trial, it didn't give the best numbers to work with. As I noted on the page, it's just something to think about and maybe a small number of pages (probably BLPs mostly) would be a good test unlike the prior one; it would also give us some use of the new version of the system. Nothing determined yet. =) CycloneGU (talk) 04:49, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

2009 World Series

I think I've dealt with your comments, thanks! Staxringold _talk^contribs 05:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

• Fixed the FUR. Also looks like we're racing on finishing our respective draft lists. WHO WILL WIN?! Staxringold _talk^contribs 06:00, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
  • You, because I'm stuck juggling four picks in one year, and have no prose yet. Hopefully the Braves will be done sometime this evening. Would be very nice to be at FTC on Opening Day. Courcelles 06:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Page protection for Cleveland... again.

Greetings... I am here to request that you please put another protection lock on the Cleveland article. It seems that vandalism is on the rise again, and this article is a relatively frequent target. If you could limit it to registered users indefinitely, it would make our policing job a lot simpler. If not, then whatever the normal protection duration would also be appreciated. Thanks Ryecatcher773 (talk) 20:14, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

We like to to try a nice long protection before going for an indef. So... six months semi. If it comes back after that, then we can talk about an indef. Courcelles 20:21, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan to me. Many thanks. Ryecatcher773 (talk) 22:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Dramatech (Indian Institute of Technology) article

pl restore this page which was deleted by you on 20 November. You may verify our content at dramatech.in. 15.219.201.81 (talk) 08:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)Ravi

Link? Dramatech (Indian Institute of Technology) has never existed, and I can't find anything in your deleted edits. (And am not trawling my 50,000+ item deletion log) Courcelles 20:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DramaTech_(India_Institutes_of_Technology) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 15.219.201.81 (talk) 04:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, yeah, that went in the logs as a WP:PROD but it was overly promotional, and highly likely to be copied from somewhere. So, I'm sorry, but there's no way I can restore that, though you're welcome to use [{WP:AFC]] and submit a new article on this topic. Courcelles 04:56, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Followup regarding American sportspeople of [European] descent

I hadn't had a chance to review your response until now, but please take the time to consider my request at the bottom of the page here more thoroughly. Wikipedia, by consensus, has a number of categories for American [x] of [y], where y is an ethnic or national origin/ancestry category. Although we do not try to be completely inclusive on the subject for a random x and y, there are undoubtedly many such intersections that are notable and that have received widespread coverage, and which Wikipedia editors have seen fit to categorize via a list article and/or category. Despite your assertion to the contrary, the proposal to delete all of the American athlete by national origin categories simultaneously did not get much notice or discussion vis-a-vis the extent of what is being proposed. We have a rather serious underlying process and potential behavioral problem here, in the form of a prolific editor who has become somewhat of a WP:SPA in recent months in attempting to delete many references to race, national origin, and ethnicity from the encyclopedia. They have gotten quite aggressive in these efforts, and taken to making specious accusations of wikihounding, among other forms of bad faith, against editors who are following this campaign. You can see some of this at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 18, [1], Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/White American (2nd nomination), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Multiracial American, etc., and I believe this has spilled onto WP:AN/I at least once. The result of going about things this way untenable - some of these efforts succeed randomly, others fail randomly, and we end up with uneven coverage, a swiss cheese problem, to the detriment of the encyclopedia. Mass deletion efforts reflecting policy shifts on categorization need wider discussion. I don't really want to have to go around you on this by proposing it for review or recreating categories individually with due citations, as either process will undoubtedly create administrative drama that could be avoided by simply having a wider, more thoroughly noticed discussion. If you choose not to, that's fine, but please do consider this a notice that I am not convinced and would intend to either selectively recreate or pose for review. Thanks, - Wikidemon (talk) 23:18, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:DRV exists for a reason. There's no way I can just void a unanimous consensus to delete these categories. And if you'd followed CFD for anywhere near as long as I have, you're realise how rare a six-vote CFD is; there are entire daily logs that don't get six different people voting, much less a single discussion. The deletion is valid, recreation will be met with G4 and SALT unless a DRV is held. The discussion was well-attended. You've given me nothing to overturn that discussion except accusations of misconduct by another editor, who was by no means the only participant in the debate. CFD has a simple quorum of whoever shows up, and lots of folks did here. If you had posted every word you've said on my talk page as a !vote in the CFD, it would have still been closed the same way. And before you take it to DRV, remember that DRV doesn't exist to re-argue the XFD, which is all you've been doing. No reasonable admin could have closed this discussion in question any other way than a delete. Courcelles 05:03, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I have been following mass deletion nominations for 4+ years, and they are often problematic, particularly when they slip by with little notice or participation. The fact that people don't participate much in routine discussions either isn't pertinent. Five (not six - the first comment was only about a single one of the 30+ categories, before the nomination was complated) comments on thirty articles in a back corner of Wikipedia process hardly establishes a consensus against these sorts of categories, nor were the comments focused or unanimous. One of the five supported keeping some categories, three argued only unsubstantiated opinions about the categories being "pointless", "no particular reason", or no justification at all, and only two argued WP:OCAT (inaptly, because that fairly controversial rule does not even claim to apply to nationality). Based on strength of arguments it should have been "no consensus", or more appropriately, based on procedure and lack of cogent argument it should have been relisted and noticed for wider review. But let's not policy wonk, we can't get away from the broader issue of mass-deletion of personal identity categories. A reasonable administrator may well have sought wider input or put two and two together and seen the bigger problem. I asked if you would review that broader issue, something that is within your administrative discretion, but you're apparently not prepared to do that. Fair enough. If as you say DrV is not a place to question the notability of the underlying subject, then recreation is the proper way to go. On the other hand, some of the category/list deletions have recently been overturned on review, or by the closing administrator. Please don't make threats about speedy deletion and salting - I am an old hand here, and would not recreate the collective categories in an identical or unimproved fashion, in a way substantially identical to their form as deleted, or without addressing the stated reason for deletion nomination. There's no sense process-wonking this, a speedy deletion would get overturned, and we're back to a wider community discussion of the categories. There are other ways to do that, an RfC for example, I was just hoping to find the most efficient path. Why don't I just take one or two of the most obviously viable of these 30 categories, establish through sourcing that they would satisfy OCAT even if it did apply, and if anyone wants to nominate the new improved versions can do so. That's the correct process, I believe. - Wikidemon (talk) 06:49, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

This back and forth isn't going to go anywhere. My closure was the only reasonable option, relisting five or six comment CFDs would mean the entire process would grind to a stop, as would restoring and relisting the categories based on an argument against the nominator. Who or what User:Bulldog123 is and what he has done is the worst of all possible arguments to restoring these categories, it doesn't matter if he is on a crusade to remove all mention of ethnicity from the category tree, unless you can show something to suggest sockpuppetry, it doesn't matter, and it doesn't invalidate either his opinion or the opinions of the other !voters at this CFD. You've written a GA's worth of words about these, and you've not even come close to countering the clear WP:OCAT argument. Go to DRV if you want, but any recreation will earn a G4 deletion with a lot of salt, as a category can't really change substantially enough to overcome the reason for deletion. You want to argue against mass nominations, there are places to hold that discussion, but mass noms are allowed in current policy, and have not one iota less validity than one-at-a-time nominations. Courcelles 07:23, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

You're missing a number of points here, and I think you're flat wrong about how the community views editing campaigns and mass deletion nominations. We can agree to differ, as I said, so no back and forth is necessary. I've told you that I wouldn't do anything that would fall under G4 or fail OCAT. Recreation, not DRV, is the correct way to handle subjects redone in different form. I'm open to starting a discussion somewhere before doing that, but as you note, DRV is a place to discuss process failure, not notability, and the notability of intersections is a key issue with OCAT. - Wikidemon (talk) 08:49, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I think what we can agree on is that OCAT is a bloody mess that means whatever the folks who show up at one particular discussion want it to mean. WT:OCAT is the logical place to start trying top change it, but your success is that is hard to perdict. Courcelles 09:20, 4 March 2011 (UTC)