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January 2021

Happy New Year

	Happy new year 2021 !
	Sir, Wish you and your family a very Happy and prosperous New Year! best regards RV (talk) 06:12, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

About Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 74#Italics 2

Hey, SMcCandlish. I just found this discussion and was interested, but I want to know the subject better before I participate. Could you direct me to the part of the policy, guideline, or otherwise that explains it? Especially why |work= or one of its aliases is mandatory, and why we can't just use |publisher= if the one cited is just a company's own website. Thank you in advance and please ping me when you answer. —El Millo (talk) 20:41, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

@Facu-el Millo: You'll have to pore over years of threads at WT:CS1, WT:CITE, etc. But it's not a matter of a choice being made; it's a matter of policy being what it is, of there being no choice due to policy. See WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:RS. WP cites published works, only, nothing else, no exceptions. This means we do not cite companies, or individual authors, or organizations, or any other form of entity, only published works by them. E.g., Oxford University Press and Time-Warner are not reliable sources; they are (generally) reputable publishers of reliable (for many things) sources. The specific books and magazines and journals and news shows and so on that they publish are the sources we cite.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:39, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I just noticed the Italics 2 conversation. I would like to call attention to this edit of 19 February 2020. I think that having some relevant examples would be very valuable to Help:CS1. — BarrelProof (talk) 00:59, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I undid that, since the claim that there's no consensus is clearly false; the editor appears not to have been aware of WP:CITALICSRFC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:13, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

SMcCandlish,
Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia, and a Happy New Year to you and yours! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:13, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

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– Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year}} to user talk pages.

Heh...

hope this isn’t me...since while we don’t necessarily always agree, I do t think I’ve ever reached tooth-grinding levels with you....Ealdgyth (talk) 01:16, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

the most I’ll cop to is the occasional eye roll....usually for the patented SMC verbosity...Ealdgyth (talk) 01:17, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

No; MontanaBW and I used to get into it, for a long time, but left it alone for a while, and then we just stopped, and don't have an issue (that I know of!) any longer. It's a testament to just stepping back/away. Noetica (way back in the day) and I did likewise, for about three months, and were wikifriends afterwards. Maybe this is a particular personality trait or something, though. I'm not sure it works that way for everyone.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:54, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Move question

 Done

 – I commented in the (eventual) RM.

Another move question for you, if you would be so kind. I'm considering doing an RM to move the disambiguation for Lully to a redirect for Jean-Baptiste Lully. All of the places/people in Lully (other than the composer in question) receive far less views so it seems to be a pretty straight forward move. Just wanted to check with you first, as I'm new to proposing RMs and want to make sure I'm not missing something silly or such. Best - Aza24 (talk) 04:37, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Aza24: This one has rather split chances of success, I think. Names like this usually should go to disambiguation pages, unless one particular referent is overwhelmingly of more encyclopedic significance than all others combined, and is a name that almost everyone is familiar with. Nearly everyone in the anglosphere knows who is meant when they encounter Einstein, Gandhi, Stalin, Mozart, Dickens, and Oprah used as mononymic shorthands. Readers outside opera/classical circles don't have this sense about Lully. Editors frequently argue that geographic places usually should take encyclopedic precedence over most biographies (especially when there's more than one place with that name and more than one bio). Not a strong argument in this case; all three places (besides the one in Anarctica, a recent coinage in reference to J.-B. L.) are small villages, and all other bios are less-famous descendants of this person or are better known by a different name), but people will make the argument anyway. Page-views can be iffy, since they include editorial attention not just readers, and we have more opera-focused editors than those working on French and Swiss places. It's always a subjective consensus process, but RMs meet more resistance when the alleged WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is only familiar to readers with a particular interest. On the up side, Jean-Baptiste Lully has way more page views than all other Lullys combined, and COVID-related travel restrictions timeline has no visible effect on number of page views of the place names. Purely from a rules perspective, I think this RM should pass, but it's still a hard sell due to lack of everyday, global recognition of "Lully" and it not being auto-equated to Jean-Baptiste Lully pere, in most reader brains. Then again, I've just hinted at various arguments that can be pre-emptively addressed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:28, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for all of this, and yeah I was a little concerned about the places as well. I want to attempt an RM but I'm not really sure how to do so in this case? I'm assuming I propose that "Lully" be moved to Lully (disambiguation), but then how do I correctly propose a new Lully page becomes a redirect? Aza24 (talk) 01:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Aza24: Yes, that's the right move to propose. Just make it clear in (probably the first sentence of) the rationale that Lully should redirect to Jean-Baptiste Lully, per WP:PRIMARYREDIR.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:14, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

SMC, see Talk:Lully#Requested move 18 January 2021. Aza24 (talk) 22:08, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Please do not post further about the RFARB on my talk page, but confine your evidence and concerns to the RFARB.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:44, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

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It would be helpful if you would not makes posts that could re-inflame a situation half-a-day after it ended.[1] The situation is quite bad enough, not to mention unfair to Flyer, and inflammation from the peanut gallery will advance nothing. It is also unhelpful to direct a comment at me on a user talk page where I have been asked not to post again (which I have not done). I would ignore your post as little more than belated and unnecessary, except that I hope that you will similarly stop making inflammatory posts to the Workshop, as those are of no help in the long run to Flyer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:13, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I have no issue with you in general (and would like to see that continue). I can't, even with strong effort, take the evidence you've posted and arguments you've made in the case as "fairness" to and "help" to Flyer22_Frozen. I feel a sense of impropriety in being lobbied to join you in that stated cause, regardless of its sincerity level. RFARB and its evidence are for getting to the heart of a behavioral problem and arriving at the ways to resolve it that are best for the project – not winning a wiki-PR battle. I'm confident my evidence and analysis are in fact both fair and helpful, to the case and to the project. I'm not in a "peanut gallery", and the material I've contributed is far more pertinent to the case than your tangential material about MEDRS and related topics. There's nothing "inflammatory" about my posts to the Workshop page. When claims about another editor are demonstrably distorted and fallacious, especially in such a venue, these flaws need to be pointed out. That's the principal reason that process exists; otherwise ArbCom would just look at evidence, draft up findings and remedies by itself, and post them as decisions.

Your post here seems self-contradictory of its stated anti-inflammatory messaging, and is easiest interpreted as moving on from one attempt at participant intimidation to another. Please do not post further about the RFARB on my talk page, but confine your evidence and concerns to the RFARB. Moving on to a third evidence-provider's talk page to do something similar to what you've posted here and at User_talk:Ozzie10aaaa is surely ill-advised.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:16, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Perhpas you failed to see the main point. You posted to me and about me, addressing me at Ozzie’s talk page, hours after the discussion was over, and hours after I was asked not to respond there. Which I complied with. Obviously, I cannot respond to you there, so obviously your own talk page is the most appropriate place to respond. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:30, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

It isn't all about you; were not the only person doing that stuff at Ozzie...'s page. And my talk page is not the appropriate place for it, the RFARB is. I'm not sure how I wasn't clear about that already. The Workshop talk page is one place to do that, or you can e-mail arbcom-en (as I did about both of these user-talk incidents). If you don't think ArbCom should examine your (and Newimpartial's, et al.) suspicions about Ozzie..., and the way you went about confronting him and now me in user talk, then just dropping it would appear to be the sensible approach. Repeat: Please do not post further about the RFARB on my talk page, but confine your evidence and concerns to the RFARB.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:44, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

QAI

I tried to give 2021 a good start by updating the QAI project topics. Please check and correct, - did you know that - at five years - belong to project's "oldest" active members? For moar private "happy new year" see here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:22, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I might drop in from time to time, but I've mostly shifted toward improving Stub and Start pages toward being acceptably encyclopedic; it has seemed a bit more pressing. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:20, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

What you do is just great, requesting moves such as L'Ange de Nisida! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:55, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

The next batch to be considered for deletion is at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 January 14. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:29, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your analysis. If you'd been around when the arbs looked at such things (or not? - WP:ARBINFOBOX), the outcome might have been different, who knows. - Happy Wikipedia 20, - proud of a little bit on the Main page today, and 5 years ago, and 10 years ago, look: create a new style - revive - complete! I sang in the revival mentioned. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:28, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for having defended Flyer22. Watching arbcom proceedings has proven bad for my health so I looked at the case request yesterday for the first time, shocked that such a thing could get accepted. I had no courage yet to look at the case. On the Main page now a DYK about seeking solace. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:22, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

thinking today of Jerome Kohl, remembered in friendship --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:15, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the older we get, the more we're having to remember the departed. [shakes angry fist at mortality]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Today Brian. - Back to work: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 February 7 --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Note to all and sundry

For the first time ever, in over 15 years here, I just received a warning from the system that: "There have been multiple failed attempts to log into your account from a new device. Please make sure you have a strong password." I consider this highly suspicious in that it has come shortly after completing my evidence in an ongoing RFARB, involving a topic with a lot of on- and off-site advocacy swirling around it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:36, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

It is nothing new and nothing (different than the usual amount of) suspicious, as it has happened during every arb case since at least 2020. Whatever is going on there is not confined to this case. I changed my password after each occurrence of this in 2020, and have had no problem. It has been repeatedly discussed on arb pages. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:27, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

It is absolutely something new and different, since it is newly happening to me and is different from what happened before when I participated in RFARBs, ran for ArbCom twice, and participated in other highly charged topic areas etc. It not being new and different for you is immaterial to my observations and concerns. But my point is that people (probably with an agenda regarding one side in that RFARB) are trying to compromise my account, so I'm going on-record about it in case they succeed and do something stupid and offensive with my account. Obviously, I changed my password, but that is no guarantee. I may switch to 2FA, despite finding it to be a butt-pain (I'm not one of those "glued to my cellphone" people).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:30, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

There is no need to change your password, assuming it wasn't bad and preferably was not on list of common passwords (that is the useful page from the "Password Blacklist library" at m:Password policy). Wikipedia's advice is at WP:SECURITY. However, it is essential that you do not use a password for Wikipedia or for the email account associated with Wikipedia that you have ever used at any other website. That's because other websites are often hacked and lists of username/password are published that hackers can access, and they might try using any such combinations here). Johnuniq (talk) 06:31, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Fortunately, I don't use stupid passwords. I did realize it had been about a year since I'd changed it, though, and I'm not 100% certain I used my alt every single time I was in "digital nomad" mode and on public WiFi. So, it seemed a "better safe than sorry" change to make.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:32, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I think you should always trust your gut. With your background in technology, you know if something is amiss or not. My background in tech is mild compared to yours, and I always trust my gut, even when others are telling me it's, "probably just a glitch in the system". If by "glitch", you mean "hacker troll", then I believe you. Remember that Psychological warfare is a thing too, and the troll may not have any hacking experience at all, but might want to give you the impression you are being hacked (for the fear factor) by making multiple login attempts. On the other hand, if they are an experienced hacker, and still didn't get in, then you have nothing to worry about, unless they are experienced, and they were never trying to get in, but just scare you for the time being. My guess, it was just a troll tryna scare you, as a good hacker would never alert you to the fact they attempted a breach. However, it's always better to prepare for the worst, but assume for the best. ;) Huggums537 (talk) 19:03, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Sure. I think this is almost certainly wannabe psy-ops stuff from clowns over at Wikipediocracy, not real system crackers. Given that one of the parties in the case has an entire hate-thread devoted to them at that site, I stand by my assessment that this is PoV-motivated, not just random, and not just "try to get into the accounts of everyone at all ArbCom threads" behavior, or it would have happened to me before now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:07, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

:)

This deserves more than a simple thank: or whatever the kids use these days when they won't get off my lawn —valereee (talk) 22:31, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I hate when they pull off my rubber mask, too, and prove I was really the ghost all along. Would've gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for their darned meddlin'.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:00, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

!Voting in an archive

I noticed you !voted in an archived discussion here. I don't think this is appropriate—we are not supposed to revive discussions that have died out enough to be archived, and I would like to respond to your !vote but cannot do so without further commenting in a place where discussion is not supposed to be taking place. The fact that it's still sitting at WP:ANRFC doesn't change that. (And of course if you want to go by the more literal rules editing an archive violates WP:TPO and {{AAN}}.) Could you please consider withdrawing your comment? Others made a very similar point to the one you did, anyways, so the closer will still be able to consider that perspective when they make the close. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 14:14, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

You are not the Official Wikipedia Talk Page Police. It's an RfC. It's still open. It'll be closed when a closer gets to it. It's perfectly fine if it is closed in situ in the archive page, or unarchived and closed, then immediately or later re-archived. Any editor may also unarchive a recently archived, unclosed thread and add commentary to it. Given that I can just go unarchive the entire thread, and add my commentary to it, then just re-archive it right back where I found it, the result would be exactly the same, except for some potentially annoying additional watchlist hits on the main talk page. A general recommendation to not add material to archive pages and a "Please ..." request in the talk archive banner do not amount to formal prohibitions ("rules"). My edit summary made it very clear why I was choosing to comment there at that time. Try actually reading before reacting. See also WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY, WP:WIKILAWYER, WP:IAR. We all have way more important things to do than nit-pick at each other for who posted to what page, or to be compelled to respond to complaints by people who want to nit-picking about who posted where.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:39, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Feedback requests from the Feedback Request Service

 Done

 – except for the Ukraine one, because I don't understand enough of it to have meaningful input there.

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Arthur Laffer on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment, and at Talk:Jared Kushner on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment, and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukraine on a "History and geography" request for comment, and at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment, and at Talk:Post-classical history on a "History and geography" request for comment, and at Talk:Political positions of Sarah Palin on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

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type at ANRFC

 Done

 – Updated both Template:Initiated/doc and WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:38, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi, re this edit. The value of the |type= parameter can be given in any case you like, because the code in {{initiated}} applies the {{lc:...}} magic word to lowercase the value before testing it. Also, if the parameter is omitted, it's assumed to be |type=rfc anyway, so most of your edit had no effect at all - really, all you did was to add the "Template talk:R to project namespace#RfC: Should we categorize redirects to the same namespace?" section. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:51, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Then the template doc should be updated, both as to case and as to defaults; and the |type=rfc removed from the "copy-paste this" example at ANRFC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:16, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

I've done both.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:38, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:30, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Thanks

I saw the effort you put in to defend Flyer. I just wanted to acknowledge it. She was a good, principled editor. I watched much of the case unfold and was glad she had you standing up for her. I feel terrible knowing with better clarity why she was so unwilling to fight this. Springee (talk) 00:06, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I did what I could (well, what I could tolerate to do, given the amount of character-assassination at play in that case). I am very disappointed that ArbCom tolerated so much smear-campaigning by a WP:GANG. But people who engage in such behavior get topic-banned eventually, so I decline let it worry me all that much, when it comes to those participants and this topic. There's a more institutional problem at play here, though.

I did have some prior, private information about Flyer22's medical straights, and this is one of the reasons I got so involved. The fallacious nonsense being pushed by the GREATWRONGS/ADVOCACY crowd trying to pillory her was easy to deflate, but someone actually had to do it. I'm glad Crossroads was also involved, as most of the necessary diffs were tracked down by that editor, and I ended up able to focus on interpretation and timeline. By the time I'd assembled even 1/4 the diffs I needed, Crossroads had posted them all already!
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:34, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the appreciation. And I very much appreciate the great deal of work you put in as well, especially addressing the claims of the detractors. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:11, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I think this case deserves some Signpost examination

Flyer22 communicated with me multiple times every day during the case. I was not proxying for her; aside from arguing against obvious nonsense I saw in various accusatory posts, I stuck to a particular line of evidence and analysis, regarding a pattern of lies and distortions about sources and their authors, and alleged ties to various organizations, which were then being used as a weapon to smear editors ("transphobic", "TERF", "anti-trans") simply for not agreeing with the suppression or mischaracterization of those sources. I was very aware, though, of all the objections Flyer22 wanted to see raised against the litany of accusations, evidence distortion, cherry-picking, false pharaphrase, assumptions of nefarious motives, and other b.s. techniques being used to demonize her, and of how much strain it was all causing.

Frankly, I was in enough contact with Flyer22 during the case to see her stress levels over all the lies and smears and distortions about her take a palpably worsening day-by-day toll, until she quite suddenly went silent on Jan. 13, before the Workshop phase even closed. This case and the awful behavior in it every day (mostly in the Workshop phase) that ArbCom permitted with total impunity, over my repeated objections (on-wiki and in e-mail) was a major and unjust strain on Flyer22. It actually got worse over time, because every failure of ArbCom to address this behavior on the case pages simply emboldened the perpetrators to turn it up another notch. ArbCom is not in a position to exactly predict physiological effects on particular case parties, of course, but cases are supposed to proceed a particular way for good reasons, and this one did not. A previous ArbCom long ago instituted rules about comportment in RFARB/ARCA proceedings, even on their talk pages, and used to actually enforce them.

The current ArbCom badly failed to do so in this case, and I would hope that The Signpost devotes some coverage to this (Smallbones?). This was an actual failure, and a bad one. It is not good enough that ArbCom in the end was drafting a Proposed Decision that would have done little to address the issues in the case beyond institute a two-way interaction ban. It's crystal clear that the Principles and Findings of Fact material are targeted one-sidedly against Flyer22, buying the WanderingWanda fan club's disingenuous, prevaricating nonsense in its entirely, and completely ignoring all the awful behavior by that faction both in the events leading up to the case, and during the actual case proceedings. (Whether this was because most Arbs agree with the viewpoint of that faction, or fear its smear tactics being turned against the Arbs, or simply didn't give a damn, or some mixture of these is unclear.) Nothing like this should ever be allowed to happen again. If people abuse an ArbCom case for character assassination and bogus claims not backed up by the actual evidence, they should get one warning and a short opportunity to correct/retract, or be redacted by clerks. If they do it again, they should be summarily blocked, and prohibited from further participation in the case if it is still open when their block expires.

PS: The Proposed Decision was also headed directly for a violation of WP:Arbitration policy, by countermanding the community to make up new policy by ArbCom fiat, namely in defining individual-editor pings as a form of canvassing, after the community already rejected a proposal to add such a redefinition to WP:Canvassing. The Arbs were certainly made well aware of this, multiple times, before they drafted that; it was not some "oops, we didn't know" error, but a deliberate attempt to override community consensus. Oh, it doesn't stop there. It was also gearing up to invent a new element of WP:Ban policy, whereby two editors friendly or related to each other could be interaction-banned to prevent them collaborating in ways that editors opposed to their viewpoint in a content dispute didn't like. That also violates Arbitration policy in a second way (ArbCom cannot take sides in content disputes). I thought at first this was a clumsy drafting error, but it certainly was not. At very least, the community needs to be aware of these things and able to examine them in detail.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:34, 22 January 2021 (UTC); revised 21:03, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

{{ygm}}

Please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom at the bottom.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:16, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I came here looking for information about the effect the workshop had on her. I think at the very least we should come up with a proposal to abolish workshops. I remember when Fred Bauder introduced them. Arbitration was fine before that, less cruel. Not that Fred had bad intentions; he was (I believe) hoping to make things more transparent and easier for the Arbs to pick up ideas. But it has turned into something that does no one any favours, and we should take this opportunity to get rid of it. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:31, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, that is an excellent idea and one I wholeheartedly agree should be seriously pursued. Now that think about it, it really seems to accomplish nothing whatsoever except to engender massive amounts of ill-will, to enable dogpile harassment, and to permit circumvention of the evidence word count limits by posting it at the workshop. The Arbs did not need walls of text from the rabble, and never have. This would really streamline the process and make it much less of a hell than it currently is. Thank you for bringing it up. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:09, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Crossroads, what happened before we had workshops was overall much less stressful. People would submit evidence, then there was a break before the decision appeared, and during that break nothing happened. No one went back to fighting because people didn't want to make themselves look bad; and they generally felt better having presented their cases during the evidence phase. So everyone started getting along better. It was a much less divisive process. By the time the decision appeared, it almost wasn't needed anymore.

Now, having said that, I'm writing this from memory. Maybe if I went back and looked at some of the disputes, I would wonder what I'm talking about. But that's my memory for whatever it's worth—that arbitration was unpleasant, but it wasn't the deeply traumatizing affair it can be nowadays. It was also much less legalistic: now we have the facts established, the principles established, and so on. It's a huge chore and time sink and very upsetting to be at the centre of it. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:50, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin and Crossroads: Well, I'm skeptical of the propriety of disclosing on-wiki, in any detail or by direct quotation, the kind of effects the Workshop page's rants had on her. The deceased don't really have a privacy interest, but I wouldn't get into specifics on-site without Halo_Jerk1 being okay with it. And my goal is not to blame ArbCom, or specific Arbs, or specific participants in the case, or the case being accepted, for Flyer22's end or its acceleration, or anything nearly that histrionic. Rather, ArbCom has long had civility and evidentiary rules, for important reasons, and this case highlights that they're important and should not be set aside.

Anyway, I don't think it would be a bad idea to get rid of the Workshop phase, though I think ArbCom might be more amenable to reforming it (length limits, no threaded discussion, strict evidentiary rules, etc.). Either would be an improvement. A wrinkle in the abolition argument is: where are people supposed to refute b.s. claims made about evidence? On the evidence talk page? People will want an answer to that.

Smallbones (Signpost chief editor) sounds interested in an op-ed about this case or related issues in general, though I'm not certain I'm the best to write one, since I was involved in the case (as evidence provider and analyzer and refuter, not a formal party). But we're already seeing serious negative fallout, like trying to treat an un-passed, voided, and ArbPol-violating draft provision as something to force into CANVASS policy without consensus, and who knows what'll happen next, so this trainwreck of a case does need to be addressed by someone. After I take some time to get some distance and calm I may attempt it. There really are three issues here (that I can cleanly isolate): Workshop as battleground, versus what RfArb is actually for; ArbCom inventing new CANVASS policy; and ArbCom invention new BAN policy. Regardless, such an op-ed should likely come at least one issue after Signpost runs an obit. So, there's time to ponder on it. I'm bit too hot around the collar to calmly write such material right now anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:03, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Here again we've had an ArbCom case used to hound a long-term editor. I wrote on 15 December 2020: "[T]his risks becoming another GGTF case ... The only two people who ended up being banned were the ones who had been hounded. Or the Lightbreather case in 2015, where Lightbreather, who experienced some of the most persistent harassment I've seen on WP, was the only one who was banned."

In addition, I've never seen a case accepted where so many experienced editors cautioned against it. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:00, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

She wanted to create a "Wikipedia:You are irreplaceable" essay to counter Wikipedia:You are not irreplaceable. We should try to create one as a tribute. I couldn't do it now, but perhaps in a few weeks. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:23, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

SarahSV, I started a list days (weeks?) ago of issues to raise for discussion after the case closes, but before I digress from what I came here to post when I saw this dicussion ...

SMcCandlish, I am glad to see you acknowledging the extent of your involvement in this situation, and while I appreciate the FYI, you may not have noticed that I haven't posted to that page for almost six years. I do presume that I can express my opinions about how the arbs handled the case on other pages without concern of my posts being stalked. I "strenuously" believe the arbs did their best to keep the case on track and respect Flyer's contributions, that they engaged more than typical during the case to try to keep things moving in the direction of not enacting more sanctions than called for, and they were on track to enact the least severe sanctions possible (a mutual iBan). They were also forced to this case by the fact that the community did not resolve it, when it was well within the realm of something that the community refused to resolve when it could have, so it seems a bit unfair to shoot the arbs. I don't expect everyone to agree with that, but that is how I saw the direction they were headed very early on, even with WTT's suggestion at Sarah's talk, which I tried to support on the Workshop. So, I do hope your FYI was nothing more than a "friendly" note, and you didn't realize you might have had the facts wrong. Would you take into consideration that your personal involvement here may be coloring your views? And perhaps Smallbones would consider neutrality should the Signpost advance anything more than an obit.

Back to the other topic here: Sarah, your memory in fact disagrees with mine wrt the Workshop phase, and is different than at least the 2008 cases I am familiar with. I was presented with an arbcase on Jan 1, 2008, where yes, there was a Workshop, and that editor was allowed to call me a "poisonous little madam" (where, as private evidence revealed, madam was used in the sense of prostitution, and I was allowed to be called an "erotomaniacal stalker" (by someone who later admitted she had confused me with someone else). And there was more, which did have to be submitted privately by necessity. Although I had no blame (other than being caught in the middle of trying to help two now-banned editors), all of those things, and more, got to be said about me during the case. And in terms of understanding the physical threats Flyer was living under, I have those, too ('nuff said).

So, what is the biggest difference between cases then and now? It's not at the Workshop phase. It's at the Evidence phase. It used to be possible to present full, carefully crafted, well-written evidence, without word limits, and that was how we avoided nasty Workshop mudslinging. I think we could have a better Evidence phase, and a much shorter, better clerked Worshop phase, as even a sitting arb got to put up undiffed and unsupported allegations about me during the Medicine Workshop (allegations for which I can assure you no diffs exist).

This is what an Evidence page looked like in 2008, and this is what a Workshop page looked like. Now we have to scrunch our evidence into 500 words, which often leads to misinterpretations (because one can't spell things out), and that is what then leads to the Workshop mudslinging. Now, in the arbs defense, they say they tried relaxing word limits in the Medicine case, and weren't happy with the results, but bad cases make bad law, and that case was never going to result in full sanctions based on the evidence, so sure, in hindsight, it made no sense to provide all the evidence. But I still think if you give people an extended period to compose good evidence without all the crazy word-limit gyrations this case went through, you can end up with less confusion and mudslinging at the Workshop phase.

Also, mudslinging is in the eye of the beholder; for example, speculating about a "personality dispute" and personalizing over a legitimate notification. [2]

Separately, SMcCandlish, re force into CANVASS policy without consensus, CANVASS is a guideline (there's a significant difference), and you are surely familiar with WP:BRD? More careful use of language would help us all in such a difficult situation. Not unrelated, I am strongly convinced that the "ping" notification system has led to a decline in community and an increase in toxicity, and was one of WMF's worst ideas ever. We used to go to other user's talk pages to actually talk, and those users who simply removed your post or refused to actually "talk" were the ones who were faulted. We have nothing like that today. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:13, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

I've addressed the off-topic material in this at page; thsi should stay focused on "ArbCom: what used to work, what broke, and how do we fix it?".

I'm sorry you (Sandy) were subject to a lot of awfulness in an old case's Workshop phase. This just points out that the problem is longer-running than either I or SarahSV thought. Looking at what you've presented, I think your analysis of the change from "big Evidence and little Workshop" to "little Evidence and big Workshop" is correct, though this is not necessarily dispositive of how to fix the problem, in the sense of reverting to 2008 norms (which you seem to suggest still produced gross mudslinging anyway). E.g., having no Workshop phase, but an Evidence phase with longer word-limits but tighter rules about accusations might do the trick. So might having a Workshop phase with some, but generous, Workshop length limits plus rules like on other pages against threaded discussion and also with strong rules against free-reign mudslinging, but without changes to the Evidence phase. And so on. The important thing is getting to the desired results, so whichever way to do that will be the most palatable change is what should be proposed. Your "I think we could have a better Evidence phase, and a much shorter, better clerked Worshop phase" sounds right to me, though it's not the only possibility (and "better clerked" implies an ability to get more clerks and get them to do it, in a timely fashion). "[M]udslinging is in the eye of the beholder" is fixable by instituting clearer rules about comportment and evidence. Some of this might be borrowable from AE, which is markedly less tolerant of that kind of crap, and issues BOOMERANGs quite frequently (with or without also imposing sanctions on the editor being reported, depending on the evidence). AE takes comportment more seriously that does ArbCom itself, which is ironic given that AE is ArbCom's own animal).

Moving on, if ArbCom just wanted to address the two-editor conflict pattern, they could have imposed a two-way, no-fault I-ban by motion and been done with it, and this is what several people recommended. If they wanted instead to examine broader behavior across the topic area, all the "PoV warrior" claims and behaviors, to help resolve overall conflict in the category, then they should have opened a broad, many-party case to do that. Instead they pretended to open a simple editor-interaction case, then permitted a coordinated WP:GANG to turn into into an utterly unrestrained witch hunt in furtherance of a partiuclar PoV. This is not fine and dandy.

I agree that ArbCom were in this case at least ostensibly aiming for a low-restriction result, and were even respectful of Flyer22's contributions. That doesn't get around the problem that what they were drafting at Proposed Decision exceeded ArbCom's remit in at least two ways (very unnecessarily). Or the problem that they allowed the Workshop phase to descend into a slander factory. Or the problem that they produced a Proposed Decision that was grossly one-sided and failed to address any element at all of the problematic behavior on the other side; it actively took a side in a content dispute while trying to pose as not doing so.

"[I]t seems a bit unfair to shoot the arbs": Let's be clear (again) that trying to blame ArbCom or its members, or participants in the case, for Flyer22's demise is not on the table. But ArbCom can't just pass the buck on how ArbCom process is failing. They knew the job was dangerous when they took it, in the words of Super Chicken. They had every opportunity to have a productive case of either sort, and instead created the least productive kind of case possible (and then attempted to attach ARBPOL-transgressive riders to it, which in fact have nothing at all to do with the stated intent to just address the editor personality conflict). No one is responsible for this but the sitting Arbs. But this isn't about blaming them, it's about ensuring it doesn't happen again.

A pattern I've noticed over many years is a community habit of getting mad at the sitting Arbs (usually rather uniformly despite differences in approach and voting), followed by various gadfly invective against particular Arbs (probably mostly the ones who decided to take the bullet and post what ArbCom as a body had drafted/decided), then no community followup to actually cause change, either through petitioning ArbCom to change things under ArbCom's direct control, or through RfCs to change ARBPOL (which ArbCom can't do, of course). It's as if actual blame is going to be assigned, with an expectation that next year's Arbs won't make the same mistakes (as if each new year's ArbCom is a clean slate). This is not practical or productive. The problems need to be identified and specific proposals for policy [in the mass-noun sense] changes then put forward, or nothing will actually change (well, not for the better anyway).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:19, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

I like that "WP:You are irreplaceable" essay idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:19, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

So do I. I've been watching the same woman-related pages that she watched and worked on for years. I mostly only joined in at the talk pages when she needed another editor to add weight to her positions but she did most of the work needed to keep our articles accurate and fair. She may be gone but her gift to WP keeps giving in that she has done a lot of work that has supplied references and put articles in good shape so that less able and informed editors will be more able to keep the articles in good repair. But with no one to replace her our women's articles are in danger, IMO. BTW, we have a couple of other irreplaceable woman editors and Slim Virgin is one of them. Gandydancer (talk) 16:22, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

I think we can get a good sense of what went wrong on the Workshop page right here.

Gandy, viewing content work as divided by gender is just odd to me. Prostate cancer is a wreck, yet it affects one in six men. Meanwhile, osteoporosis is also a wreck, and it affects the same amount of women. I don't tend to think of medical editors as people who preference male v female content. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would have liked to see both of them cleaned up, as they are both very high pageview articles. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:09, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

On the second part of that, I would concur, though I think Gandydancer is coming from a WP:WOMRED sort of perspective, i.e. that content relating to women is often in more need of work (if it exists) and that ties in a lot with the editorial base being so male-dominated. But maybe that's man-splaining. >;-)

On the first part, that's clever but not so substantive. When various participants engage in a shotgun argumentation approach and throw in F-loads of barely explained claims and accusations, often multiple per sentence and nested inside each other with sneaky wording choices, it takes far more text to rebut them. This fact is actually a commonly exploited CIVILPOV tactic: If an RfC or something isn't going your way, you and a wikibuddy can "Gish gallop" it with a firehose of claims and accusation and statements and questions, and the ensuing rebuttal chaos may tank the entire thing. So, we need to avoid a pointed quantity argument about a qualitative issue, especially when it seems to have an "addressing contributor" purpose.

However, there's a big seed of truth here: If the Workshop page (should it be retained) had length limits and no-threading and strict evidence requirements (actually enforced), then shotgun argumentation would no longer be possible to use there, thus no sprawling walls of rebuttal and counter-refutation and etc. There would also be much less cause to engage in tit-for-tat, for "counter-ranting", and other things that drag discussions down.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:59, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

SMcCandlish you are right to a point. I was not coming from a medical position but rather a feminist position. However, I am not a Woman in Red--I have not joined them and find that I disagree with them in many instances. Not just that, in my experience the men here try very hard to be fair when it comes to woman's issues. As often as not, perhaps even more often than not, I have sided with the men rather than with the women editors when it came to instances of sexual abuse reported against men (Al Franken or Joe Biden for example). As I remember it, it was not men that held what I considered unfair viewpoints but women holding men responsible for unintended invasion of space that they viewed as sexual advances. OK, I know that this is way off subject here but I felt that I needed to clear it up. I don't remember a distinct example but I felt that Flyer and I were on the same page on such matters. Gandydancer (talk) 23:07, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Well, I steer clear of conflicts between WIR, WP:FEMINISM, etc. I don't think my input would be very helpful or welcome, and I just hope they blow over quickly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:35, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

There's some interesting related discussion (after the first paragraph or so) about ArbCom process overhaul at: User talk:El C#Look, okay..  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:27, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #1

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Reply tool

Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.

The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.

• The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
• It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.

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• As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
• There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[3]
• The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[4] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
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New discussion tool

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Next: Notifications

During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Ooh, "New discussion tool" is interesting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:20, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia

Moved to Talk:SandyGeorgia

@SandyGeorgia: Seems better to ping you than give an impression of trying to get the last word on your own talk page. Anyway, I'm sorry you feel any of this was "threats" or "following you" or in any way intended to thwart future better interaction. I passed on to you Halo_Jerk1's wishes that you disengage from anything to do with his sister, and I have absorbed your criticisms while offering some of my own, but there's really nothing more going on.

"Considering the history of abuse at the hands of admins [you] have endured", I can retroactively understand you might react negatively to particular concerns or phrasing, but I was not and still am not in a position to predict what those might be, and your own talk page header is rather insistent that people bring issues directly to you for discussion. If you do not want editors to e-mail you directly with concerns when discussing them on-wiki might be sensitive for them, you, or other editors, you can turn off the "Email this user" feature in the Preferences menu. I'm disappointed that you've returned to making the same claims ("us vs. them", etc.) you started with, as if none of our conversation existed or mattered, but I understand/accept that and am not going to pursue this further.

Not every attempt to work things out is destined for immediate success, but contrary to your apparent expectation, a long-running dispute between us is the furthest thing from any goal of mine. Peace.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:09, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Responded on my talk (splitting a conversation three ways is not optimal, and you need to archive your talk page). I hope you enjoy your break, and return refreshed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:44, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Stepping out for a while

After an RfArb full of drama, the death of a good editor, and drama arising even from that, I need a break.

I encourage people to improve the obit at Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2021#Flyer22 Frozen; The Signpost wants to run a version of it in next issue, but it's a little bare at the moment.

If I need to be reached quickly, use the "Email this user" link, though I'm not going to be glued to my e-mail either. I'll probably only be away for a day or so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:51, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Had a nice sleep; am back.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:25, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Obit

Hope you don't mind if I discuss it here. I was wondering why the rough age was removed. SarahSV ^(talk) 08:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

? Not sure what that's referring to. Will go look at it again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:24, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

You removed "in her 30s". SarahSV ^(talk) 08:26, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Fixed. It was one of those glitches where system doesn't catch an edit conflict. Happens to me a couple of times per month.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:34, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Reading that obit again, and not wanting to edit directly: "last edited articles" doesn't carry the weight of her being highly responsible for some of those, and I'd mention these topics first, before sockpuppets, as a prime interest if I understood her right. "Driving fource" might be appropriate for some titles. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:59, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

The articles listed are her most-edited, not last-edited (which would be very random since she was a bit of a WP:GNOME :-) I'm not sure I (or whoever) has the time to research exactly which articles she was a driving force at, before Signpost runs the obit. I'm trying instead to gather some meaningful testimonial comments. Probably have enough already.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:07, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

• As of right this second, (Monday morning), what’s there now is really good. I like the idea of adding a few testimonials, but the rest can probably stay right about as is. Montanabw^(talk) 15:48, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Books & Bytes - Issue 42

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MOS:FOREIGNITALIC

Hey SMC, thanks for your help with the Lully move, looks like it passed with no issues. Had a question for you about MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, if you have a second (and know the answer), would it apply to musical terms like Antiphon or Organum? Best - Aza24 (talk) 01:18, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

• Actually, I'd like to know your opinion on this as well. While many of the terms are readily recognized by musicians, they are mostly foreign jibberish to the rest. I don't italicize things like "alto" or "falsetto", but certainly in the above examples, I would. Primergrey (talk) 03:20, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

  @Aza24 and Primergrey: The most relevant guideline language there is:

  Loanwords or phrases that have been assimilated into and have common use in English, such as praetor, Gestapo, samurai, esprit de corps, e.g., i.e., etc., do not require italicization. Likewise, musical movement titles, tempo markings, or terms like minuet and trio, are in normal upright font. If looking for a good rule of thumb, do not italicize words that appear in multiple English dictionaries.

  I think it'll be a case-by-case matter. Music (especially on the theory side, and in classical/opera circles, versus pop and other informal ones) has a lot of fairly technical language inherited from Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and German, and the assimilation level varies from word to word. If it's not italicized in any dictionaries, encyclopedias, music text books, music journals, etc., then WP wouldn't italicize it. If it's italicized frequently is such such works then WP would. If it's a toss-up due to very scattershot use of italics in RS material, it'll be a local-consensus discussion for that article's talk page. Another strong indicator for italics is if the term simply does not appear in most good English-language dictionaries at all, which typically indicates that the term hasn't really begun to be assimilated into English. PS: A source that never italicizes any foreignisms won't be a useable source for such an analysis, nor would an online dictionary that uses italics for every entry title including native Anglo-Saxon words. One needs to look at use in running text and throughout the work. PPS: I try to keep a fairly good list of online dictionaries (besides WP:UGC ones like Wiktionary), and what actual lexical databases they are using, at WP:WikiProject English Language#Online tools.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:49, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

  No-one asked me, but I'll just point out that the tempo markings bit is a little problematic; "piano" means something different to "piano" and the italics in this case is really useful because the two are not really homonyms in most English accents. Beyond music, "metropolis" often means something different, historically, to the English "metropolis". GPinkerton (talk) 15:20, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

  I was wondering about that myself. There are various places throughout MoS and the NC pages where a certain someone heavily focused on "classical" in the very broadest sense (inclusive of opera, baroque, etc.) injected all kinds of exceptionalism, and I've been rather interested in removing it where it doesn't actually have consensus or make sense.

  From that section in particular, I just now removed "musical movement titles", because MOS:ITALICS doesn't cover titles of works and parts of works; that's MOS:TITLES. It's possible that material was trying to get at something like "terms for kinds of musical movements" or something, but I'm not sure it even had a clear meaning except to its author. If taken to mean actual titles, the advice is wrong for various cases, which would be italicized as works in some cases or take quotation marks in others, depending on their nature. Some stand-alone major works are later republished as parts of larger ones (common with short novels that later form part of a series that gets reprinted in an omnibus volume), in which case both would retain their italics. But something originally published as a sub-work (e.g. the composition "The Ninth Wave" on the B-side of Kate Bush's The Hounds of Love album) would take quotation marks, as would its named parts. Same with the composition "2112" and named sections/movements thereof on the album 2112 by Rush.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:42, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

  I ask because I'm concerned about these edits [7] (there's no edit summaries—but all of the music related ones are the user changing terms/instruments to italics). My self and two other users approached them and they cited MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, but for something like Organum, I've never seen italicized in scholarly sources; though under the strict definition of MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, it seems to fit. Something like ars nova, I've already gone through italicizing myself, since it not only fits under MOS:FOREIGNITALIC but many sources italicize it as well. IDK—maybe I should just let it slide, but it just looks bizarre to see Organum italicized. Aza24 (talk) 23:31, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

  @Aza24: Well, you just linked to the entire edit history of the editor. :-) I assume you mean cases like this and this. I think it will be a case-by-case basis. We would be likely to italicize names of ethnic folk instruments that don't have names in English and which do not generally appear (unitalicized or at all) in major English-language dictionaries, but would not do so with terms that do, such as "organum" (I just spot-checked 6 of the big online ones, and it was in 5, only missing from the Cambridge one, which is abridged and intended for learners). I.e., FOREIGNITALIC already has this covered, with its dictionaries rule of thumb. It's a lot like food topics: italicize "torta de yema", which is not assimilated into English (even in places with a lot of Salvadorean immigrants), but do not italicize "burrito" or "taco". Whether to italicize "empanada" is a toss-up; does it show up in most English dictionaries now?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:55, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

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