NillaGoon

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! -- Cirt (talk) 05:15, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Diplomacy Barnstar for Outstanding Work on Insane Clown Posse

		The Barnstar of Diplomacy
		This barnstar is awarded for your outstanding work on Insane Clown Posse. The debate had sprawled onto three pages and stalled completely, but your careful, elegant prose and willingness to step in the middle of things saved the day. Instead of taking sides, you showed us a middle ground that we could not object to. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 16:54, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Burnout

Nilla, I appreciate all you've done for Insane Clown Posse. Your participation broke through the Juggalo/non-Juggalo dynamic that had left the article in a stalemate, and you fully earned that barnstar.

My concern is that you seem more than a little burned out by all this. What can I do to help? Dylan Flaherty (talk) 00:38, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

ICP's putative Christianity

The thing is that the article wasn't a Q&A, so you don't know exactly what he asked or what they said. He simply summarized and provided some quotes. So he may not have even called them Christian in person, or they may have denied it and he just didn't publish it. Either way, saying that the didn't deny it shouldn't be written at all as we mention in the next paragraph that they do infact deny it. You can only go by what was written, and what was written was that he believes that they are Christian. They never made any mention of it in the article, neither confirming it nor denying it. I'd be the same thing as writing "They didn't confirm it." Juggalobrink (talk) 21:22, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2010-11-07/Tea Party movement

Of course you all can kibitz at will. It is just that the involved editors may wait and drag on the mediation. Talk when you want to. Hamtechperson 01:45, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I had looked for specific guidelines about how to participate as an uninvolved party, but didn't see anything written up. NillaGoon (talk) 01:48, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind, I made a comment under your response on the cabal talk page. :) Malke 2010 (talk) 17:24, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Not at all, thanks. NillaGoon (talk) 21:25, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Kibitz for proposal improvements on the talk page. If there is a glaring concern, mention it on the main page, but try to keep the general discussion to the talk page. We can archive if need be. Hamtechperson 02:19, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Will do, thank you. NillaGoon (talk) 02:52, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Nilla, when you posted your proposed lead, I saw much good in it and used it as the basis of mine. I then opened it up to discussion, listened to your points, and made further changes in the spirit of seeking a version that could be supported by a consensus. However, our interchange seems to be unique, as the other proposals have largely been "take it or leave it" offerings, and !voting has been entirely along party lines, with the pro-grassroots side acting as a block in rubber-stamping any proposal that contains the fabled g-word. All this is despite a lack of meaningful discussion. In short, it's much like Insane Clown Posse was, with two sides polarized and unwilling to move towards common ground.

There's only so much I can do on my side, as I feel bound by WP:NPOV and WP:RS to oppose any version that passes a controversial claim off as fact. Your proposal worked hard to avoid this error, but as I've explained at length, bringing up the g-word without admitting to controversy is not sufficiently balanced. If the mediation gets pushed to completion with a "consensus" (please note the intentional scare quotes) that violates the rules, I am fully prepared to escalate the dispute resolution process. However, I'd rather we fix what we have by forcing people to communicate instead of just taking stands. I want to see some back-and-forth, some bargaining, some movement. With the exception mentioned above, I'm not seeing it, so I'm readying for the next step. Dylan Flaherty 00:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, as you know, I'd certainly be amenable to "grassroots" not being mentioned at all, so I don't have any gripe with you pursuing this; I just question the likelihood of a useful outcome. And I agree that discussion has stalled. In fact, I was thinking yesterday of withdrawing my original proposal because its timing was eerily coincident with the apparent end of the mediation process; perhaps if we refocused on the very specific issue, people would be more willing to participate. But I was held off from this because there were several new votes today, so there does seem to be a bit of forward progress.

One thing I'd urge you to reflect on is that my version (which OK'ed by a couple of the grassrooters) says only that the TPM is often cited as being grassroots. That's certainly true, and if I understand your position, even you would not disagree with this as a factual statement. It's not an endorsement of the TPM as a grassroots organization, and it seems like a fair and reasonable compromise to me. Similarly, I don't have a beef with North 8000's "largely grassroots" formulation, either. Are you sure that you can't accept something along these lines? That is, is it really a battle worth fighting? NillaGoon (talk) 02:04, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm actually not opposed to to the article saying that the TPM is "often cited" as being grassroots. That's completely true, and easily sourced. I'm opposed to this being said without the full context of it also being cited as not grassroots at all, and even as being astroturf. But none of this fits comfortably in the lead. I've filled scratch pads with different formulations, and each one seemed to have some way it could be misread (however unintentionally) to either come across as biased or false. The article should definitely cover all of the above, fairly and neutrally. But the lead should either have a balanced mention or none at all, and I just don't see any way to pull off the former.

I'm not hostile towards some of the other attempts at compromise, but they fall into the same trap. For example, we simply can't say it's "largely" grassroots because that's not what our sources say. Some say it is grassroots, some say it isn't. Averaging the two to "largely" is the worst sort of synthesis. I believe I compared it to saying that Ricky Martin was "largely straight", when in fact no source made any such claim, and all sources would disagree with it in one direction or another. Even if we found some sources that said "largely grassroots", this would not allow us favor it and ignore the "is" and "isn't" sides. This is advanced synthesis, beyond what we are permitted.

So, in short, no, I can't accept such a formulation. And I do believe it is worth fighting to keep such a controversial claim from being stated as factual in the lead. Maybe I'm Don Quixote, maybe I'm a Tank, or maybe I'm just a dick, but that's my conclusion. Dylan Flaherty 02:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

A quick postscript: the "forward progress" seems to be nothing more than a digging in of heels. Instead of addressing new points, the latest round of responses reiterates how completely unchanged their conclusions are. In short, a block !vote. Dylan Flaherty 02:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you feel that it's implausible for the TPM to be "a little bit grassroots" - or half grassroots, or largely grassroots. It's not at all like being a little bit pregnant. NillaGoon (talk) 04:11, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Two things. First, even if it's possible, I don't see how we could adjudicate it. Second, I don't think it's possible. Pregnancy is not a terrible analogy, as it involves a small amount of input from one party causing a disproportionate response from the other. I would pursue this analogy further, but it leads to obvious vulgarities about what Koch did the to movement. Besides, pregnancy is (fortunately!) something that has a start and and end, with a predictable duration; this does not fit political movements at all.

I think a closer analogy is to corruption, as astroturfing a previously grassroots organization against its own interests certainly qualifies. Can an organization be only somewhat corrupt? Perhaps, but how corrupt does an it have to be before it's just plain corrupt? Does the corruption have to reach the very top? If so, where's the "top" in a decentralized organization? Does it have to reach some proportion of the people or does it just need to have a certain amount of impact on the agenda? Consider that only a tiny number of Tea Partiers are on the (slightly indirect) Koch bankroll, yet they seem to be able to wield vastly disproportionate influence. The same can be said for the beltway GOP operatives. It's entirely possible that 99% of them are grassroots, yet the organization is 100% astroturfed.

In the end, my analysis isn't going to matter. What matters is that there just doesn't seem to be any way to resolve these issues under Wikipedia rules. The best we can do is say nothing in the lead, then discuss it in detail in its own section without ever offering our own summation. The second best would be to very briefly, very neutrally state in the lead that it's called grassroots by some, astroturf by others, neither of the above by still others. As this comes down to a very bland and vague statement, I would call it a distant second. Even then, your version is the only one that seriously attempted this; the others just gave in to biased summation. Dylan Flaherty 04:28, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

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