User talk:Blair P. Houghton/Archive/20050131

Welcome to the Wikipedia[edit]

Here are some links I thought useful:

Feel free to contact me personally with any questions you might have. Wikipedia:About, Wikipedia:Help desk, and Wikipedia:Village pump are also a place to go for answers to general questions. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~~~~.

Be Bold!

Sam_Spade (talk · contribs) 21:28, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

TK[edit]

Thanks a lot for your work on Ted Kennedy. If I can be of serious help, ping me, I just don't have the patience right now to engage strongly with an insult dog on a topic I'm really not that expert on.

I must say, I find it amusing that people are convinced that I have a POV that makes me an arch-defender of Ted Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Che Guevara, and Adrian Nastase just because I try to keep crap out of articles. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:46, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)

Consensus[edit]

By all means post your invective to my talk page. I welcome comments, even if they are not polite. I won't rat you to the bureaucracy for personally attacking me if it helps you work it out of your system. If you do leave unpleasant comments on my user page, I'll simply move them to my talk page.

Your formulation was yet one more way of saying that consensus is the same as the majority's getting its way. I don't agree. I think a consensus would be an accord. Is it possible in situations where parties are polarised? Well yes, obviously I believe it is. But it is a precondition of a consensus process that all involved must be committed to a consensual outcome. That isn't by any means always the case on Wikipedia and certainly not on contentious pages. It's probably inevitable, though, because no one has to sign up to a consensual approach at the "front door" and because it is not a common way to solve problems in life as a whole, most are not going to feel it can be successful or desirable.Dr Zen 06:40, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I mistook your actions, then somewhat over-read your assertion about consensus, which is why I reverted my comments. Still, it's not a matter of a simple majority. It's a majority of people willing to maintain the integrity of the facts; and they must be enough of a majority that the militant minority tires of trying to keep its version of the facts in play. So it takes both a wide numerical majority and an intellectually defensible position. Unlike, say, plural democracy, where you have four years to make up a new story to build a coalition of small duped groups all willing to give up essential liberty to get a political crumb they would not get if rationality were able to revert their votes within minutes. I believe that at the point we get a picture that shows the actual item being described, nobody will remove it who has interest in doing it repeatedly. Then we will have a true consensus. Sometimes I just want to take Thomas Jefferson aside and ask him if he's run exhaustive simulations... Blair P. Houghton 16:23, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Blair, what it needs above all things is that the parties all say "We want to work something out". While you have parties who believe that POVs should fight it out, there cannot be consensus. Polls do not create it because they are simply popularity contests for POVs. Your suggestion here is exactly the Tony Sidaway line: that the majority wins because it is more powerful than the minority. That isn't consensus and it never can be.

If the purpose of "plural democracy" was power-sharing then you would have a point. Since its purpose is in fact to keep power out of the hands of the many, you do not.

The clitoris debate is merely indicative of a wider malaise of Wikipedia, which is, as I say, this is not a place where editors show goodwill to their fellows and try to find solutions that suit everyone, and not even one where all POVs are encompassed, but rather one where POVs contest one another, often to the absolute detriment of the articles (check out the shocking mess that this has become. This makes it a fine playground for trolls and for bullies. The former are banned by the latter from time to time, but all are in the same game. -- Zen

I'm all for cynicism, normally, but I think yours is premature. When someone editing wikipedia actually sees a clitoris and actually manages to photograph it, and it appears on the website and demonstrates the facts, the only minority left will be those who have dogmatic ideas about nudity and open media. Their sophistry doesn't move me. As for plural democracy, this isn't a voting system; a minority can get its way, when it is right, because the majority will be wrong and reticent to be proven wrong time and time again. Trolls seek reaction and conflict; reverting a troll's insertions is mere indifference, which makes them shrink away. And though I haven't been paying much attention to Wikipedia admins for too long, I have yet to see one that used his/her powers for evil rather than acts I agreed with heartily and believe are pure and righteous. We do order the morality of violence according to its value to the community, and the vandals are not going to get the same shake as the police get, not anywhere, not ever; it's not paradoxical, it's justice designed to encourage peacable coexistence within the basic tenets of freedom. --Blair P. Houghton 22:40, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Categories[edit]

We have a specific syntax that allow us to put an article at the top of the list when it is the subject of a category. You use [[Category:Foo| ]] or sometimes something like [[Category:Foo|*]]. See for instance Category:War Rmhermen 20:06, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

Tina in the Movies[edit]

Blair- thanks for you input about the Modotti article, and more recently for noting that her movies had been removed. Hard to imagine why, but then I have never understood knocking over tombstones either. Carptrash 22:34, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ollieplatt[edit]

He wiki-emailed me, too. — Davenbelle 07:24, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

I certainly didn't reply to him. FYI, He used the same address that you posted earlier; his note was presumptuous, but not outright nasty. The votes are in — he's getting banned. Do keep a look out for new incarnations; he'll be easy to spot. — Davenbelle 20:55, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Libertas/Proposed decision#Motion to close

(It's not like you're a vandal; maybe I should add a Talk link to my sig... — Davenbelle 00:11, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC))

nah...I just warn't paying attention. -- Blair P. Houghton 00:20, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's a done deal: User talk:Ollieplatt#Final ruling in your case — Davenbelle 00:25, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Admin enforcement requested#Libertas banned for a year — Davenbelle 00:41, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

re: peer review[edit]

Yes, those notices go on the talk pages of the articles. They shouldn't clutter the articles. You may have noticed that the {{featured}} and {{peerreview}} tags also only appears on the articles respective talk pages.

One more thing, the tag I have added to about 320 (I really need a beer now) articles today is a notice making people aware that the peer review of the article has been archived. When peer review articles are moved to the archives, the person moving them should tag the article talk page with {{oldpeerreview}}. Not everbody do this, hence my cleanup.

Hope that clears things up!

Cheers. Inter 19:13, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hm.. I like it. It looks good. Inter 20:22, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

And yes, my paste finger can really use a bandage. It was closer to 400 when I checked properly. Inter 20:23, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes and yes. It's one of those things I guess. Most things are archived in this way though. Inter 17:13, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Template:Oldpeerreview[edit]

Thanks for tightening up my template. I've been trying to sort out peer review maintenance and it's a mammoth task! - Ta bu shi da yu 04:51, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sigh. I just realised that you got rid of the link to the transcluded page. I've reverted back. Perhaps I should explain the reason I created the template (by the way, it doesn't suck, I noticed what you wrote on another user's talk page), I created it so that it would be easy for anyone to easily comment on the peer review page. Your removal of the link was not helpful. The link will be red in the template, that's because I've added a [[Wikipedia:Peer review/{{PAGENAME}}|specific request]] tag to it that only expands once the template is applied to the talk page. I advise that you look at the Template:Peerreview page to see how that works. - Ta bu shi da yu 00:03, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I changed it because it wasn't working. Why it wasn't working I don't know, but it was showing up in red on the talk pages, too; at least I think it was...maybe I was looking at the template preview and not the old rendering. I made it point to the archival links in the [[[Wikipedia:Peer review]] page because that's where it seemed to want to go. I've put back my cleaned-up version with your working link inserted, and tightened it up quite a bit more. Blair P. Houghton 06:24, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)