User talk:SMcCandlish/Archive 104

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July 2015

Please comment on Talk:Chinese language

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Please comment on Talk:Sabra and Shatila massacre

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Please comment on Talk:Chemicals in electronic cigarette aerosol

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July 2015

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Introducing the new WikiProject Evolutionary biology!

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Greetings!

A photograph of Charles Darwin

I am happy to introduce you to the new WikiProject Evolutionary biology! The newly designed WikiProject features automatically updated work lists, article quality class predictions, and a feed that tracks discussions on the 663 talk pages tagged by the WikiProject. Our hope is that these new tools will help you as a Wikipedia editor interested in evolutionary biology.

Hope to see you join! Harej (talk) 21:06, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

A thank you

The Special Barnstar
for disagreeing with reason and cogent arguments backed up by both source and policy as well as logical interpretation of the position you disagree with. In essence for disputing content in a manner that builds consensus. SPACKlick (talk) 23:26, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

It may seem a little over the top to barnstar for a couple of days work but in an area where there's been entrenched battle ground for so long it has put a huge smile on my face, and moved me on a few of my positions, to be disagreed with in such a consensus building fashion. My faith in wikipedia has been somewhat restored and I can only hope it's a sea change for the way the talk page looks on the articles. SPACKlick (talk) 23:26, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) It probably helps that I had no real view on the topic before arriving. My only approach is from the perspective of the (complicated, and "always balance A against B, C, D, and E criteria") article titles policy, and what's best for the readers. To me, it all boils down to whether "vapor", without any context, is potentially misleading, PoV-pushing, or anti-informative. Editors too often go with a "COMMONNAME above all, forever" approach, but it's not what the policy actually wants, for good reason.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:20, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Blazing Saddles

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Disambiguation link notification for July 11

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Reference errors on 13 July

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Please comment on Talk:Bias in reporting on North Korea by Western news media

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography

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Your edits at WP:mosnum on 20 July 2015

I saw your edits today and considered one of those anonymous 'Thank' messages that you can deliver with one click of a mouse. But you made so many good edits I thought it best to deliver a properly typed message instead. (After all, I'm a real person too, and real people deliver real messages, right?). So here goes: Thank you for your considered thoughts and wise words :-) Dondervogel 2 (talk) 16:14, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

@Dondervogel 2: Oh, thanks. :-) Much appreciated actually. My "just shut up and fix it" style makes me some detractors, too, so the positive feedback helps. PS: See my just-a-moment ago post to WT:MOSNUM#O Canada!. I think the "Canadian trick" actually fixes the vast majority "ENGVAR vs. DATEVAR" problems, including some that are extant at WT:MOSNUM.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:37, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Your WP:ANIME post about air dates

 Fixed

Sorry, but I think you didn't understand the problem being referenced. It wasn't how to display times or dates, but rather a show that is listed as airing on Monday May 21st @ 25:00 hours should be listed as May 21 (Year) or May 22 (Year). In Japan and China the post-midnight events are often listed as being beyond the 24 hour time format yet create conflicts when simplified to "offical dates" versus "actual 24 hour time dates". Example from List of Attack on Titan episodes:

As Attack on Titan was broadcast in MBS's Saturday 25:58 (1:58 am JST) time slot, the premiere technically occurred on Sunday, April 7, 2013. Dates for Japanese broadcast in this article reflect the broadcast date rather than the actual calendar date.

That issue is completely different from the one which you responded about and to. It results in confusion between official sources and editors will attempt to "correct" dates between both designations with citations to reliable sources to both variants. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:48, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

@ChrisGualtieri: D'oh! OK, well my "Canada trick" works for a lot of other disputes, at least. >;-) Thanks for telling me. I moved the idea to WT:MOSNUM.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:25, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Requested move for Haplogroup R1

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You have new message/s Hello. You have a new message at Talk:Haplogroup R-M173's talk page. Message added 16:50, 20 July 2015 (UTC).

In a flash...!

Whew, you came through WT:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers like a flash flood. Or a whirlwind. I think it kind of needed that. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:38, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I get well-caffeinated sometimes. Haw haw.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:15, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:1982 Lebanon War

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No link

 Fixed

This doesn't contain a link to the referenced discussion. (not watching this page; no reply needed) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:00, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

montage

Resolved
 – Done.

Hi, I'm the guy who posted that proposal on montage. I didn't want to offend anyone. Anyway, I've just change it. Could you please support that? You seem to be an experienced user and could give a help. Thanks--Edemastoryfinestoption (talk) 19:35, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

@Edemastoryfinestoption: Where is it? I hit 100 pages a day ...
I found it, and commented there. I disagree that you changed it in a meaningful way, but whatever.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:58, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Gangsta.

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I invite you to an ongoing RM. --George Ho (talk) 17:35, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Military Frontier

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ARBATC

First two points in passing:

  • you really should consider archiving this page (helpful link).
  • Shirley, you can't be serious! you must know (as we had discussed it before) that I disagree with most of what you wrote with this edit.

Now to the substance of your request. They were both notified at about the same time. See these diffs 15:35, 14 July 2015‎ and 15:30, 14 July 2015 and this section.

-- PBS (talk) 10:30, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I've been meaning to get to it. I'd forgotten that we'd discussed it before; I've had similar convos with others, and they tend to blend. But doesn't that also suggest that you knew exactly what I meant? >;-) Ah, I didn't realized EEng had rapidly archived the notice. I forget that some people to do that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:16, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Fixing pings

Hey Stanton. I just happened to notice your edit here. As far as I know that does nothing. Even removing your signature, saving, then signing again with a ping does nothing. To be sure, an easy way is to start a new section just below with the same title, ping and sign, then delete, e.g. this, then this.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:44, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I had no idea that pinging was that "brittle"!  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:58, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Antikyra

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<Throws up hands>

Resolved
 – This eventually worked itself out, though it took a lot of moderating.

In all seriousness, I'm at a loss to know what to do [1]. Is he being intentionally clueless? Since he doesn't seem to understand at all what's happened or what the plan is, I hesitate to resume work for fear he'll start another round of reverting anything not previously discussed. EEng (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it. I think it's just a case of WP:LASTWORD (which you seem prone to yourself; I am as well, so I'd recognize it). This appears conciliatory, and can be taken as a promise to not be obstructionist: 'Anyway, I look forward to your new proposal on the the edits that most of us already agreed (Discussion of individual edits (2)).' I really think there's not a lot of re-re-re-debate. Of the 12-point list that was pored over, I think we all know what is good to go with.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:58, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
I didn't make myself clear. You may not be aware that, after JS simply went silent for several days during discussion of the famous "12", I (foolishly) assumed he'd wandered off elsewhere, and so continued what I was doing with another 60 or so edits (listed here [2]). Now, I want to be clear: when I've installed the modified set of 12, as so endlessly discussed, is it your opinion I'm supposed to enumerate and justify the next 60 things I propose doing? I feel foolish even asking that, because we both know the answer is No, but I fear he's just gonna repeat his past behavior of reverting and demanding explanations of why each change is "necessary". EEng (talk) 04:19, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Well, multiple editors thought many of your changes were good and that mass-reverting them wasn't helpful. I expect he's learned from that. But I also expect you've learned from the experience too: None of your edits in that batch were unanimously supported, and some were supported by no one. I'm skeptical that that page needs another 60 edits any time soon, and beyond skeptical that more than some under-50 percentage of them would meet with consensus. I'm a huge fan of WP:BOLD even when it comes to policypages, but they're not articles, and sweeping changes to them tends to be viewed as disruptive. It's better to take a few at a time and let people adjust to and refine (and sometimes reject) them.

If I could simply "get away with" rewriting MOS my way, it would change in way more than 60 places. But MOS's function isn't to reflect what I want it to say, but what the community needs it to say. Some "rules" in it that I really hate, as a writing style, are better for WP's needs than what I'd prefer. Some are just accepted for better or worse, and changing them won't have a positive effect that outweighs the negative of a zillion pages having to change to comply with them. Some advice I see as missing doesn't need to be added (in a few rare cases it does). I've mostly learned to make a spate of copyedits that do not in any way change the meaning only the facility of the wording, and let those sit a while. Then make a substantive change (usually an addition) by itself, and let people chew on it, for a week or longer even, then do some pure copyedits. When you mix in substantive changes in a series of copyedits (as J-S did recently, hyper-compressing stuff and moving something, and losing some points in the process, in the middle of implementing some of the things that gained consensus on the talk page) it triggers concerns and confusion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:00, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not learn that many of my edits weren't universally supported, because there was nothing to learn: I expected in advance that that would happen, at least here and there, since I'm new to /Linking and not tuned in to some of the hard-fought subtleties of phrasing, so that what I intended to be equivalent but tighter (or better-organized) direction to the reader turned out to have subtle substantive implications. But I also expected that would be ironed out through others fixing and building-upon, not obstructionist mass reverting. If you step through a few of "the 60" I linked in my last post you'll see that's the intent there as well (and, of course, I did it in discrete bite-size bits) so I hope we will be able to continue with fix-and-build-on-but-rarely-revert for those too. I did those 60 over about three or four days, with no objection, so I figured I must be doing something right. Then of course the "silent majority" (JS, Albino), having said nothing all that time, showed up to mass-revert again.
BTW, it's apparent JS did expect yet another "proposal" for the 12 (see [3] -- I'm guessing he watches this page) so I still have a bad feeling he's going to demand pre-discussion on everything new after the 12 are in and settled; let's wait and see how the 12 go first. And Crikey, what a comedy of errors [4] followed by [5] EEng (talk) 16:14, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Meh. Consensus is consensus. If we'd already agreed some stuff is going in, lets put it in. The recent revert of someone in good faith restoring stuff that some of which is what we actually want, is not helpful. Drawing this out any longer will seem WP:POINTy.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
C'mon -- I reverted JS' monolithic reinsertion because it was confusing to such an extent that Flyer re-inserted duplicate material on top of it, thinking something had been deleted that had actually merely been moved -- remember? [6] I'd like to avoid a repeat of anything like that, so I'd like to do it myself. After a month of prevent-bad-changes-at-all-costs obstruction, now he's a bull in a china shop. Just in the last few days he's been babbling about more proposals, then changing his mind, then... It's exhausting just reading his posts. Saints preserve us! EEng (talk) 23:55, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Noted, but every minute we argue about how things should go or could have gone is time we're not spending editing. It's time to start inserting the consensus changes. I see one was inserted already (and I typo-corrected it). Good start. Let's proceed. It doesn't matter who insert the does-have-consensus change, or in what order; let's just get it done, just not in a confusing mass dump.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:09, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
How do talented people such as we let ourselves get lured into the ridiculous time-sinks? In 24 hours I shall swing into action. Thanks for your help. EEng (talk) 01:13, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Consensus doesn't have to wait for you, though. It's reasonable for others to add in some of the material in question without your "permission". :-) I'll look for attempts to alter what was agreed upon, if someone adds more of it, and if I'm around to notice.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:42, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Oh for heaven's sake, OWN has nothing to do with it. I'd just rather there were no more screwups to attract more sleeping reverters (a la poor innocent Flyer). I'd have done it days ago if Mr. UnclearOnTheConcept hadn't continued to imply he wanted more "proposals". He keeps his foot firmly on the brakes for a month, then suddenly floors it and runs the thing into a tree. EEng (talk) 03:37, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
My point is that "wait, I want to do it my way" isn't something anyone else is obligated to abide by, and the more you demand that people wait, yet don't actually do anything, the less likely anyone is to keep waiting. I.e. "get on with it". It's not important whether J-S's edit was great or terrible. You've made a production about wanting to do this just so. As Granddad used to say: "Shit, or get off the pot." Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:59, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
(It's 4:15am where I am and I just got up to complete a report for work...) Excuse me, but asking for 48 hours because of IRL responsibilities [7] -- that's not a "big production". And IRL only became an issue for me because, after I proposed [8] "What I'd like to do is reinstall the changes we all seem agreed upon, then continue from there, but more slowly this time, with other editors modifying, fixing, and (where necessary) reverting in a targeted way. Are we all on board with this?", it took a week for JS to, um, get on board. And re your comment to PBS, I already got his/her bullshit AE notificiation (User_talk:EEng#WP:LINK) and responded in detail; of course, PBS took no notice at all of anything I said. I appreciate your calming influence but please stop cutting the baby in half. I'm nothing like JS and I'm not gaming -- for a month I've just wanted him to quit his obstructionism. EEng (talk) 08:19, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Missing the point: Consensus is consensus, so it's entirely reasonable for any editor to make the edits that consensus agreed should be made. There is no obligation for people to wait for you to do it just because you want to be the one to do it, so the faster you get it going the more likely it is to go the way you want. The time you've spent arguing with me on my talk page and making out-of-band complaints about J-S, is all time that could have been spent adding one of the consensus-agreed changes to MOSLIST, to demonstrate progress and assuage concerns that you're stalling for some reason. ARBATC DS notices are not "bullshit", they're a signal you need to take it down a notch. Too many of your posts are about the editor not the edit, and laced with invective, accusations, sarcasm, baiting, and extraneous grousing. If you have an actual editor behavior complaint to make against J-S, please take it to ANI and (to return to the same theme again) just get it over with; don't cloud MOS talk pages with it perpetually, please. Just accept this constructive criticism in the way it's intended and move on. This being my own talk page, you're unlikely to get the last word here. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:26, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Not looking for the last word, rather looking for an indication that, should JS restarts his obstructionist nonsense you'll understand what's really going on. As recently as two days ago he was still playing the naif wanting "proposals" for everything [9], and I came here for reassurance you wouldn't stand by while I got shot down again. You and I now seem caught in a loop in which you keep telling me to go as fast as possible, and I keep telling you to please give me the 48 hours I asked for (because of IRL entanglements), well, 45 hours ago. I'm very careful about a high-visibility pages like this and want to be sure at each step, lest I get accused of something else. My first step is to assemble all the commentary so I can be sure not to miss anyone's thoughts on each edit (see User:EEng/sandbox). EEng (talk) 21:13, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Still WP:NOTGETTINGIT. You need to stop making snide comments about other editors, like "he was still playing the naif" (which is both name-calling and insinuation of a motivation or mental process about which you do not have any facts obtained through mind-reading magic). If you do not stop it, especially with regard to MOS topics, one admin or another will block you or topic ban you. See WP:ACDS for how this works; it does not require an ANI case, but can be imposed unilaterally. I am not telling you to go as fast as possible. I already agreed that step-wise changes would be the best approach. But no-changes is not a good approach, and other editors may proceed to move on without you (doesn't mean I will, but two already have, and if you revert a third one, that probably won't go over well). Your IRL entanglements cannot be so great you can't insert one of the consensus-agreed edits, to demonstrate some progress in moving forward; we know this because you're on Wikipedia right now, for a several-hour stretch, spending an even greater amount of time and brainpower arguing with me over common-sense things I asked you not to argue further with me about. Are we done now?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:20, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
What I've been putting my brainpower into is matching up different people's comments in that insane discussion (there were at least two different numberings 1-12) to see what people thought they were actually agreeing or disagreeing on. In at least some places it looks like people were talking about two different things without realizing it. I figured this was going on, and that's the main reason I wanted to take some concentrated time to be sure everyone was happy. I have to quit for tonight, but stay tuned. EEng (talk) 05:51, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

My 12 are point-by-point matches to J-S's. I can't speak for anyone else.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:10, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

  • NB: If you keep throwing up hands, stop eating them. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:36, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Remember the truce

We do have a truce, or so I thought. I'd appreciate it if you'd tone down the personal attacks on the race (biology) article. I made the proposal in good faith, just because I have a difference of opinion with you does not mean that I'm being any of the things you accused me of over there. My motives are simple. You apparently missed the earlier party at this which resulted in this. I'm not fond of racism, particularly white supremacism, however masked behind quasi-scientific or quasi-philosophical "debate." I have about zero patience with people like that and I think the article is just bait for this sort of thing. You are, of course, welcome to disagree. But cracks like "The nom needs to just accept her own unfamiliarity with the topic, and drop it," (as if the reader does not exist) and a link to Shrew (archetype) is WAY out of line. Montanabw(talk) 08:34, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Splitting this into separate subthreads.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:55, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

On the personality dispute

Seems to be resolved.

Opposition is not an attack, but fine; I made my point there, you made yours, no need to belabor it. I thought we had a truce, too, but you're returning to the tactics you used in trying initially to get rid of the Landrace article. I think it's understandable that this set off some red-flags. I did not accuse you of bad faith; it's just this WP:ICANTHEARYOU thing, ignoring everything that doesn't mesh with where you've already decided this should go.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:43, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

NB: Pursuing this even further by pestering other editors, e.g. at User talk:Peter coxhead to Google up some sources for you that have already been linked to on the article's talk page, in discussions in which you already participated, is a pretty strong indication this is an ICANTHEARYOU game. You frequently complain about faith assumptions, but need to consider that patterns like this wander into disruptive territory and make it harder to keep assuming the best.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:06, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
PS: What's way out of line to me is your repeated reaching as far as possible to find some excuse to find insult in unrelated comments and matters, and brand me a sexist. It's the second time you've done this in as many months, and it it's hard not to take it as a personal attack. It comes across as pointed, willful character assassination. There are two articles in living memory that I've done the kind of total-overhaul on that I was talking about (to someone else), one called Landrace and one called Shrew (archetype). The fact that one of them coincidentally has something to do with a negative view of women, and you happen to have the right chromosomes, like over 50% of the human race, has nothing to do with anything. This kind of demonizing, false insinuation of 'sexual harassment', BTW, has a lot to do with why I'm opposing the proposal at WT:HARASSMENT; things like this prove that it would be too easy to WP:GAME.

Ironically, my work on that article was to convert it to something factual and properly sourced, about a literary motif, from what bordered on a sexist attack stub that suggested that the stereotype of the "shrew" is not only an objectively identifiable type of person (which it's not) but an archetype (!!!). Seriously, read its talk page, where someone hell-bent on defending this take tendentiously derailed the RM to Shrew (stock character). I'll be re-proposing that move soon, now that I've rewritten it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:54, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

On the article

I didn't miss anything there. I'm the one who went thru every single discussion on that page and archived the resolved ones, specifically to shunt away old invective that might induce more trolling! That #Social_concept one is resolved; the social "concept" (construct) material has all long been moved to Race (human classification) where it belongs. We can't document how the concept was distorted by racists if the very page on the topic is "disappeared". The drama engendered by efforts to wish the page away has been so draining I'm not going to have much enthusiasm for doing that work any time soon, but I'll at least try to rework it in the short term to be narrowly tailored.

Mycology and bacteriology haven't abandoned the taxon yet, but even if they had it would still be an encyclopedic topic (as at least 4 other editors have pointed out in that discussion, for the same reason), documenting the facts of its former usage and why it's been increasingly abandoned. If it helps, I pledge that as long as I'm around I will watchlist that page and revert racist bullshit if people try to add any. And if that page didn't exist, watchlisted by scientific minds sharply limiting the scope to the use of the word in biological taxonomy and its decline, and shunting social construct material to the other article which is well-watchlisted, trolls would just create a much worse page, mix-and-matching stuff to try to construct a case that a biological basis for human "races" is plausible, starting the debate all over again. There are a dozen different ways to write a pseudo-article like that, so it would keep getting re-generated in different form. By having this article instead, we're curtailing their ability to go that route, by filling the "race in taxonomy" niche, so that POVforks get nuked. If the niche is empty, there's no forbidden forking, just room to write craftily constructed POV crap that might be hard to get rid of at AfD.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:43, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

seems to be resolved
  • A simpler answer would be "sorry for the misunderstanding, I didn't mean to imply that you were being shrewish, I just got caught up in the argument. We can agree to disagree." I'd be even happier if you would say, "sorry for accusing you of having nefarious motives, when, clearly, it would have been better to address your concerns respectfully, rationally, and without personal attacks, even if I disagreed with your proposed solution." But I guess that's too much to ask. Montanabw(talk) 05:19, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
This seems to be about the personal stuff again, not the article. But okay, I'll try to address that first, then get back to the article. I am sorry there's been a misunderstanding. But I'm not sorry for it; it isn't coming from my side. I did not imply you were being shrewish; you're imagining that, and assuming bad faith. Actually, you're directly accusing bad faith, since I've already denied it and shown that it's not; you're way beyond the "assuming" phase. I didn't get caught up in the argument; you did: No one else is magically responsible for you choosing, for no explicable reason, to associate yourself personally with a negative stereotype of women, just because someone else on the same talk page mentioned having worked to improve some articles with similar problems, and in one case it happened to have been work to make a page be less about a negative stereotype of women.

It's entirely natural, given my editorial interests and the nature of this article's problems, that the only two articles I've semi-recently worked on extensively in that way that had similar problems would themselves have had either a discriminatory WP:UNDUE issue (as in the case of what is presently still at Shrew (archetype)), or (as in the case of Landrace as it was when I got to it) a poorly sourced mangling of taxonomy. Those are, after all, exactly this article's problems. I was making a direct comparison to two previous cases of similarly poor articles, where just writing and sourcing them well ended up obviating attempts by others to treat the topic as "unimprovable". You were directly involved in the Landrace case, but had nothing to do with the other one; that was some guy, trying hard to keep the article be about a stereotype (a non-encyclopedic dicdef) instead of about a very well-sourceable and largely obsolete literary motif (and I don't impute sexist motives to him; looked more like a case of WP:WINNING to me, a refusal to reconsider an already-cast !vote). You're inserting yourself fictively into a case in which you had no participation of any kind, and claiming a grievance based on some non-existent connection to it.

Yes, we can agree to disagree; I think we're doing that now. I, too, would 'be even happier if you would say, "sorry for accusing you of having nefarious motives, when, clearly, it would have been better to address your concerns respectfully, rationally, and without personal attacks"' I don't think that is too much to ask.

I haven't accused you of anything nefarious (like sexism) at all. With regard to that page, I think you are over-focusing on protection of the "breed"-related article sphere, and improperly engaging in deletionism toward a topic that, while controversial, is clearly notable and should be covered (better). That's not an accusation of nefarious motives, or an attack, it's an editorial-behavior observation. I'm not the only one making it. If it were just me, I could see, maybe, why you might want to shoe-horn this into some kind of personal dispute (though doing so would not be productive). But it just isn't the case. The ironic thing is, the page in question would actually serve our shared anti-racism interests if it were written up correctly. But your antagonism and irredentism have drained me of all enthusiasm for improving it any time soon (other than some basic sourcing work), as they have on so many other articles before this. I am going to trust that if I at least do some of that basic sourcing that you won't be obstructionist about it. I don't see anyone else lining up to work on that article. Let's not let trolls actually take it over, right?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:44, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

tl;dr. Go improve the article, then. Put up or shut up. I'm tired of your bad-faith accusations, false boomeranging, gaslighting, and drama. It's also amusing that you accuse me of "deletionism," given my penchant for inclusion as a general default. But if it helps to say that I misinterpreted your intent behind your link to "shrew" and I now accept that you didn't mean it as a gender slur directed at me, then I just said it. {{sofixit}} Montanabw(talk) 23:28, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree with very little of that assessment of things, other than the sentiment that working on articles is more productive than further argument. I appreciate the clarification at the end. One of my own: I don't imply that your views are deletionist generally, I just observed a three-times-in-a-row deletion pattern on the same article, that mirrored your earlier sentiments about a conceptually similar article with a similar name. Observation of a pattern isn't an "accusation", and I'm not implying any nefarious motives; it just doesn't seem practical in the face of what everyone else is saying about that article. [shrug] Let's get back to editing, shall we?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:54, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
We seem to have found a point in common. I support fixes to the article itself that may help address that issue. Montanabw(talk) 02:42, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Of Interest: [10] Bernstein's comments about that article are a more articulate expression of concerns similar to those I've had on the article in question. Montanabw(talk) 22:26, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
I'll have a look-see.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:29, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Interestingly (though not surprisingly given my left–right centrism on many political issues), I actually agree with both Bernstein and Blackford, simultaneously. See the lead item on my userpage. Blackford is absolutely right that external "forces" (on all sides, including the far left) are misusing WP as a political propaganda platform, and I consider this the #1 issue facing WP's future. I've been saying this in various forums here for at least 5 years. In that particular case, Bernstein is also correct that the article in question was a nonsense job. The key statement, to me, in AfD#2 on that article is this one: 'A few books have been cited as using the phrase "cultural Marxism", but none of them support the existence of a school of thought called "Cultural Marxism".' The issue with that article was the fallacy of equivocation at work, substituting one meaning for a term in place of another. The race-in-taxonomy article is a different case, though it could be manipulated in that wrong direction. Real sciences really have used "race" as a real taxon, essentially to mean "sub-sub-species"; the difference is that no reliable sources have actually used "cultural Marxism" to really mean a real school of thought or socio-political movement called "Cultural Marxism"; it's a manipulative fiction. The manipulative fiction at work in taxomony has been the extension of the idea of sub-sub-specific taxonomic categorization to humans; modern genetic research has proven that it's a cultural construct, i.e. a fiction. (As an anthropologist by training, the reason for this is obvious to me: Human move around and interbreed much more freely than most species, and have been doing so since tens of thousands of years before written history. Even if we could have been classified this way during, say, the last Ice Age, it's definitely not true today). The place where b.s. arguments about a biological basis for human races is happening is at what is now Race (human classification) (which I'm RM'ing to Race (human categorization); you'll probably have an interest in that RM).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:28, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
I'll look at the RM, hope that spat doesn't wind up at arbcom... sigh. I'm all for finding areas where we can find common ground. It's rather surprising that two people with center-left leanings still spat as much as you and I. I do agree that POV-pushing is a huge problem on WP, stuff like the stealth edits by the Chinese government on articles such as Dalai Lama are another example. However, another huge problem - sometimes propagated by the POV-pushers, but not always - is the simple trolling and general meanness - the infobox wars being one example (one still only tries to add an infobox to a classical music article with great caution for risk of having one's head ripped off and being beaten with it... sigh). Well, TTFN Montanabw(talk) 04:46, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
ArbCom: Well, for a dispute like the "cultural Marxism" one some intervention might have been useful, but I bet they'd've turned it down as it's more of a content dispute than a behavioral one. And it'll probably be back. I stay far away from classical music articles because of that infobox thing and certain other WP:OWN patterns. In the end, I think the "don't you dare put an infobox on one of our articles" camp will lose their war, since there's a general site-wide consensus that infoboxes are useful, and this consensus becomes increasingly inescapable the more and more our userbase percentage shifts to frequent mobile browsing (during which most users don't read anything but the infobox, unless looking for some detail). At some point, as with WikiData and much else, it probably makes sense to fork the infoboxes into an external process, and have it purposely optimized for mobile use.

Anyway, I agree on finding common ground. It's easy to let a temper flare-up lead to obstinacy (I find it helps to write the angry version, to blow the steam off, and post something more measured instead). A large percentage of the cases at ANI are people angry at each other over words and attitudes, while the central issue at whatever article they're fighting over is actually resolvable by some better writing and sourcing. This is one of the reasons I've sworn off ANI (much less AE) actions unless faced with someone who has a clear external agenda to promote some -ism, or who is in some other way WP:NOTHERE for encyclopedia writing. I used WP:AE last year to deal with some anti-[one ethnicity or another] PoV-warrior, letting WP:ARBAA2 disputes spill over into, of all places, the Van cat article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:27, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Someone is indeed working on infoboxes. See mediawikiwiki:Extension:Capiunto, being written by Hoo, who happens to be a Wikidata dev. --Izno (talk) 16:00, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
A Plan of Goodness +5.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:35, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Please stop

You now have more edits to this RFA‎ than the candidate does. I believe you have expressed your opinion about the candidate quite well, even eloquently; now it is time to move on. Thank you. Risker (talk) 18:20, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

@Risker: I object to your "Please stop" tone, which should be reserved for WP:DE. I find your singling me out here to be interesting, given my outspoken comments very recently at WT:BARC (where your own participation is, amusingly, similar to mine at this RfA). I'm hardly the only one at that particular RfA discussing the criteria that people are, well, discussing, and whether they're valid; I don't see a similar demand from you on the talk page of, e.g., Inks.LWC. It's business-as-usual for questionable criteria to be discussed at RFAs, especially if they're made in opposition to the candidate. The rapidity with which the candidate is making their own responses (which in this case is frankly rather slowly) has no bearing on how quickly others may comment. All that said, I've removed one of my comments in that subthread, as it pertains only to the commenters and not the candidate. I think that's more than sufficient to address any concern you have. I have as much right to clarify my own posts and ask the candidate a question as anyone else does. I also think it's perfectly appropriate to address the issue when someone appears to be treating the candidate negatively simply for being honest, as this erodes the already shoddy and failing RFA system even further. If you think I'm being unreasonable in any way, you know where WP:ANI is.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:46, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello, SMcCandlish. And here I thought "Please stop" was a polite way to address you; sorry that I have offended you. I didn't single you out because of anything other than the fact that you're the only editor with more posts to the RFA than the candidate (10 in the approximately 18 hours since the RFA opened). Perhaps you might want to reconsider your standards for responding to questions; the candidate has responded to five additional questions already within that 18 hour span. Giving advance thought to RFA questions before responding is not necessarily a weak point. I'm taking my time considering his response to my question, and I hope you do not think that I'm going too slowly. At the end of the day, one important goal of the RFA system is that candidates (whether successful or not) continue to believe that they are valued members of the community.

I have not closely followed your activity at RFA; perhaps you can tell me if being questioned about the criteria you used to determine a vote about a candidate resulted in your changing your vote. (I know it happens occasionally with some editors, but it does seem to be quite infrequent.) If your !vote was questioned, how did it make you feel? I differentiate from occasions when someone may have asked for clarification of some aspect of your vote. No matter what changes are made with respect to RFA, it will always be a stressful time for candidates. Our job as voters is to give our honest assessment of the candidate (with evidence if applicable or asked), and not allow ourselves to get into debates about other people's assessments. That too is part of RFA reform. Risker (talk) 19:19, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

@Risker: OK. Maybe I'm being over-sensitive. But "please stop" is what a lot of editors use as the heading or first words of a last attempt to get a point across before filing an ANI grievance, and they're the lead-in words of a lot of the {{uw-InsertTransgressionHere}} warning templates.  :-/   I get your point about advance thought; relates to why I self-moderated with a deletion of one of my comments; more thought before posting would have obviated that post. I think my <del>-and-<ins> self-correction of one of my posts there indicates that I do in fact take seriously others' objections to the validity of a concern I raised (though it wasn't in my !vote, I suppose). I have changed my mind at RfA before, and at various XfDs, based on others' observations and counters. I don't mind people questioning my rationales (with a counter-rationale, not just venting). I find the frequency with which people at RfA in particular respond to such points with an "I can vote any damned way I want" attitude to be unhelpful to anything, even if I'd also agree RfAs shouldn't be treated as discussion boards about extraneous issues (thus, again, my self-deletion).

RFA reform and discouraging interleaved commentary: It would need to be applied consistently, e.g. no cross-talk allowed at all, except on the talk page or in a discussion section below the voting sections. A site-wide standard for this that also applied to XfDs, RMs, RfCs, noticeboards, etc., would probably be helpful, and we're moving that way slowly in a de facto shift to using ===Discussion=== sections below !voting ===Comments=== sections. A potential problem with this is that it won't do much to stop dog-piling; someone "influential" can post something utterly stupid, and garner a lot of "me too" parroting from their entourage, without any of them noting well-reasoned objections in the ===Discussion=== section (and this kind of "influence" often has little to do with how reasonable the person is, but simply based on wikipolitics). Maybe a standard template one could insert, that produced This rationale has been challenged in the [[#Discussion]] section. ~~~~ would work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:55, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Check out shiny new Template:Rationale discussion. Heh. Should have done that years ago.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:42, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
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