Talk:Cypress Village, Oakland, California/Archive 1

J Stalin

Stop adding J Stalin to this article he is inconsequential and is completely out of place for such a mini-stub of an article.Boomgaylove (talk) 13:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Stop edit warring over this. The information stays in. It is sourced, similar the kind of information that is appropriately included in many other articles, and your argument to remove it is invalid. There's no consensus to delete and, frankly, your opinion does not count because you have not been editing in good faith. You are simultaneously nominating his article for deletion claiming there are no sources, while erasing the sources and blanking the article, and trying to get him deleted here. If you keep this up you are going to be blocked. What gives? Wikidemo (talk) 16:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

not bad faith. doesn't belong here. let it go. i'm not the only one that thinks so. your swimming against the current dude.Boomgaylove (talk) 16:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You do not have consensus for your improper edits. Please slow down and stop edit warring. Wikidemo (talk) 16:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

look i'm gonna make this real simple for you bro. You're wrong. 2 to 1. So stop it. Secondly, I am reporting you for continually accusing me of vandalism. That is a personal attack, and that is harrassment.Boomgaylove (talk) 17:07, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You are misstating and playing games with policy and the notion of "consensus." Please go ahead. If you cannot figure this out on your own, AN/I is this way. Wikidemo (talk) 17:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I find myself, strangely enough, siding with "Boomgaylove" on this one. We're talking about a two-bit rapper here; they're a dime a dozen, so certainly not "notable". Every baggy-pants gangbanger around there aspires to be one, and lots of them end up releasing CDs with small distributions; so what? It should go. (By the bye, Wikidemo, it's probably fair to point out that you've already overstipped 3RR in your zealous restorations of this item.) +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 19:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I haven't gone past 3RR (more than 3 reversions in a 24-hour period) but I don't want to edit war, which is why I stopped reverting this problem user pending a community resolution. Although I do respect your edits on a number of subjects, I find your characterization of "baggy-pants gangbanger" shows a disrespect for the subject matter and possible insensitivity that does not seem encyclopedic. If a notable person is from a place it makes sense to say so in the article about the place, particularly if his origin is a significant part of his notability, e.g. a rapper from the projects whose work is in large part about describing life in the projects. There must be a few other notable people from those projects, but not a huge list, and perhaps the only good thing to come out of those projects is art. It's not going to be overlistification. That's begging the question of whether he's notable. Until proven otherwise I think we should assume that everyone who has an article here is notable. It's interesting to observe that a lot gets written about rap artists, even minor ones. They write a lot, and there is a lot of coverage, something I think we ought to celebrate and not deride.Wikidemo (talk) 20:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to address one point: "Until proven otherwise I think we should assume that everyone who has an article here is notable." Really? Either you must be extremely naive, or perhaps you've drunk too much of the Wiki-Kool-Aid to have a clear perspective on this. Surely you're aware of the vast amounts of flotsam and jetsam that get added here constantly, and the continual battle to separate out the truly "notable" articles from this sea of stuff. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 21:39, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

That's the premise of the project, isn't it, notability being the threshold for inclusion? I think the place to sort that out is the article itself, or the notability standards if you think they're too inclusive. Deleting wikilinks is awfully indirect. Anyway, my main concern was to keep an eye on what looks like a pattern of disruptive edits. I have no interest in J-Stalin, though I almost feel like I know him by now. Wikidemo (talk) 22:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Also your comments have led to me include you in my threshold for people with poor critical thinking and logic skills. I am smart!.Boomgaylove (talk) 23:28, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

+Let's add everyone and everything thats ever had anything to do or been to anywhere at any place near this neighborhood and the articles for west oakland, oakland, alameda county, california, and wtf not the U.S.A. too!+ Ditto to IL2BA's strange bedfellow's comment. rofl. It gets removed, period, point, blank. This guy isn't even signed to a label. He claims to be, but its his own label, and he's the only artist on his alleged label. It's laughable. I just you vote to have the article deleted. It's so-called references are unobtainable "album notes" and other dubious sources like a review article about a performance in a dinky newspaper's lifestyle section which reads like a promo.Boomgaylove (talk) 23:27, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

That's weird. I'm giving up on you. You can't, or won't, edit constructively here. I'm taking this to AN/I. Wikidemo (talk) 23:49, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

You don't have support for this, less it go.Boomgaylove (talk) 23:57, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

As I said, I've given up on trying to educate you because after many, many warnings and explanations from me and other editors (and occasional blocks) you are showing no sign of improvement. But if you do want to examine WP:consensus and WP:BRD, be my guest. You wanted to delete this material, I disagreed and gave my reasons, and you've been edit warring over this ever since (with two other editors getting involved, one on each side). The norm for this kind of article is that yes, we do list notable people who come from a particular place.Wikidemo (talk) 00:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Note:Boomgaylove was subsequently blocked indefinitely and later found to be a likely sockpuppet. See: Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Boomgaylove. Wikidemo (talk) 00:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Relevance of cypress structure / mandela parkway

The sources describe the impact of the cypress freeway on the neighborhood, and some on the cypress village housing complex specifically. The decision to re-route the freeway and construct the Mandela Parkway is a significant issue there, also sourced, in the context of "environmental racism" as it affects poor formerly segregated neighborhoods. Whether you call it a neighborhood or a housing division, it's a several square block project. Wikidemo (talk) 00:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious what you mean by "formerly segregated", and whether that is supposed to apply to this housing development. Hard to see where there was much change in that regard, from pre-earthquake to Mandela Parkway. How are things better now? Or did you actually mean "formerly separated"? The former Cypress structure did divide that neighborhood pretty decisively. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 02:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, probably a misguided attempt on my part to be PC. I didn't want to call it a "poor black" neighborhood because even if that's true, using the term is sometimes controversial. When it was built it was officially segregated. Only African Americans were supposed to live there, and they weren't supposed to live other places. Reading through some of the google books, there were lots of blacks moving into Oakland during and just after the war, and the city planners thought that mixed neighborhoods would cause strained race relations. Hence, several projects that were officially segregated. Some others, like the Acorn, were not segregated - at one time there were some poor whites too but I guess they moved out. When it came time to build the Cypress Freeway, no surprise that it was an ugly inconvenient structure (when viewed from underneath) that cut through the black part of town. The books also support what you say, that the physical separation from the freeway caused the two sides to drift apart, also that the noise and pollution drove everyone out who could get out. After the 1989 earthquake the initial idea was to rebuild all the destroyed freeways, but as happened elsewhere there was a move to replace them with more neighborhood-friendly surface streets. The jury's out on what good if any that did for the hood but it was a step forward that they tried, planting a park in the median. So I guess "formerly segregated" just means that people are trying to make things better, whether they succeed or not. Personally I know almost nothing about the subject. I drove down the Mandela Parkway a couple times just after it was finished, and it does look a little more cheerful than other places. But you could say that about Cypress Village too, physically it doesn't look bad driving by. I really can't get a handle on all this but somewhere in there is an interesting, encyclopedic story on race, culture, and urban development in West Oakland. After we get rid of all the sockpuppet weirdness in the articles we may find that it's best to have a merged article about all of these projects because they all tell a different aspect of that same story. Wikidemo (talk) 02:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Your ignorance of the history of that area is just astounding. All of West Oakland, including that little patch where this housing project is, was once the place where well-to-do white people (primarily Italian and German immigrants, with some other ethnicities as well) had their homes. Just another of many reasons why this "encyclopedia-that-any-idiot-can-edit" is doomed to failure. The neighborhood was segregated in exactly the opposite sense that you've stated above.

Since you apparently live in the Bay Area, a trip to the history room in the main Oakland public library might be in order, if you're truly interested in the history of this area. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 04:14, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Attempted censorship of this page: I will consider any attempts to remove this discussion as vandalism, not subject to 3RR. Object to what is said here if you like, but do not censor this discussion. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 06:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You can consider it what you want but it's not up to you, and removing a personal attack is not vandalism. You have contentiously added a personal attack on me three times now, after a previous incivility and contentious editing in support of the sockpuppets. I have asked you to retract the above comment on your talk page here, and also mentioned it on the AN/I report here). Other than being uncivil, you are calling me "ignorant" and an "idiot" for saying something that matches the published sources cited in the article. Wikidemo (talk) 07:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I stand by what I wrote. If you feel compelled to make this an administrative matter, be my guest (though I would say that this appears to be a misuse of that process, but hey, it's your call).

I'm just curious if you're prepared to address the substance of what I wrote regarding West Oakland history here, or if you intend to continue to make yourself out to be the victim of some vicious attack. For my part, I'd like to get back to the topic of this article. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 17:56, 28 February 2008 (UTC)