User talk:Triddle/M1126A Fryker

• Happy April fools! I hope everyone gets a good laugh at this. Triddle 06:49, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Hey... When are these things gonna go surplus so I can get one for my next potluck? :D --Nirvelli 07:11, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Two thumbs up* And oddly enough, the Stryker would be useful then. :P --Kross 20:14, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

Another attempt

The last time I put this article up (yesterday) it was removed so fast I think the admin didn't even bother to list it on candidates for speedy deletion and I was not able to find a history for this article on the same. I checked the criterion for deletion on the spot and also for speedy deletion; I do not believe this article matches either one. I would appreciate it if any admin, or higher level user, who decides this article is not appropriate would at least put the article through the proper deletion procedures so some people can enjoy it even if the admin does not think they should. Triddle 18:28, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Note: I have since learned that deletion on the spot and speedy deletion are the same thing. Also there is not voting required for speedy deletion; the candidates for speedy deletion page is where non-privileged users list articles they think admins should delete immediately. Triddle 16:18, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Removed again

The article was removed again but at least this time the admin was friendly enough to move the article into my name space. Here is the note he left on my talk page:

BEGIN
I have moved your April Fools joke to User:Triddle\M1126A Fryker.

It's April Fools, and the patent nonsense threashold is quite low. No. We will not spend 5 days on VFD to get rid of these jokes. That is clearly gaming the system.

Please find another way to engage in April Fools that does not require other well-intentioned people to spend time and effort to undo. I've already spent more time on this than I care to, and more time than it deserves. -Rholton 21:37, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)>
END

The Wikipedia:Patent nonsense disagrees with him though. It lists patent nonsense as

1. Total nonsense, i.e., text or random characters that has no assignable meaning at all.
2. Content that, while apparently meaningful after a fashion, is so completely and irremediably confused that no intelligent person can be expected to try to make head or tail of it.

Clearly this is not the case for M1126A Fryker. Also it lists (and specifically mentions that this is a regrettable case) these items as not being patent nonsense:

• Hoaxes OK WTF? I didn't expect to find this in here
• Really poorly written content (See Why Aren't These Pages Copy-edited?)
• Incompetent and/or immature material
• Vandalism (See dealing with vandalism)

It occurs to me that this admin is completely wrong in his justification so I'm going to seek clarification. Here is the message I left for him:

BEGIN
Hi Rich,

You removed my M1126A Fryker article and were kind enough to move it into my namespace and leave a message explaining why. Thank you very much, I sincerely appreciate that. However I disagree with your justification; in fact you linked to Wikipedia:Patent nonsense and stated that 'It's April Fools, and the patent nonsense threashold is quite low. No. We will not spend 5 days on VFD to get rid of these jokes. That is clearly gaming the system.

I read the patent nonsense article (thank you for linking to it, by the way, if you hadn't I probably wouldn't of bothered to read it) and I still can't find any justification for your actions. In fact the article states:

The following, while often regrettable, are not patent nonsense. Check the Deletion policy for information on how to handle these things.: I have shortened this list to things that only apply to this case for clarity only

• Hoaxes
• Vandalism (See dealing with vandalism)
• Really poorly written content (See Why Aren't These Pages Copy-edited?)
• Incompetent and/or immature material

Even with a very low threshold I believe your actions are explicitly listed as being against policy. You were nice enough to archive a copy of the article though and again I do appreciate that. However I believe it would of been better for you to at least move the article into Wikipedia:Bad_jokes_and_other_deleted_nonsense#April_fools so it can be enjoyed in the future.
END

Starting dispute resolution

I am going to begin pursuing dispute resolution in this matter as my previous message to the admin in question has gone unanswered after 2 days. I believe I should clearly make my intentions known now so this can be resolved as soon as possible. Simply I want policy to be followed. In this case I believe the article in question was removed outside of policy and all I want is for it to be dealt with according to policy. I believe this means the article should go through votes for deletion and eventually be archived in the bad jokes section (or even the april fools subsection of the bad jokes section) but I would settle for the article simply moving into the bad jokes section considering its nature (so long as a person in the future is not likely to come by and remove it because it never went through VfD).

In an effort to resolve this dispute with out taking up anyone else's time I am going to send another message to the admin in question letting him know I intend to pursue dispute resolution in this matter. I also will give him at least a week to answer in the hopes of not artificially escalating this issue.

Here is the message I intend to send:

BEGIN
Hi again Rich,

I am writing to you because you never responded to my previous message (User_talk:Rholton#M1126A_Fryker). Since I have not received a response I intend on moving forward with dispute resolution. I ask you to please keep the following in mind:

1. I believe I am trying to uphold policy and get this article archived in the proper place for the future
2. I am not a bad person; I am also a contributor and a member of this community
3. I am trying to solve this in a manner that is consistent with the wikipedia ideals of community and consensus. It seems you are trying to solve this problem with the opposite (but I am not privy to the entire story as well) see Wikipedia:Administrators, especially the paragraph that begins Administrators are not imbued with any special authority.

I would very much like to get this resolved ASAP and here is what I am looking for:

• Follow policy in the matter related to this article
• Have the article properly archived in Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

As a show of good faith and a demonstration that I would like to resolve this dispute (rather than try to escalate it for no reason) I am following the first item on the dispute resolution list a second time. If I don't receive a response from you in this matter with in approximately a week I will continue on to the next step of dispute resolution.

I hope we can work together to resolve this issue Triddle 19:39, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
END

I really do hope this can be solved quickly. Triddle 19:39, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Got the reply: BEGIN
Triddle: I really don't care whether this page gets archived on BJODN or not. I am in no way "in charge" of what goes there and what does not. I do note that a pointer to the article at your homepage is listed there, so I must assume you actually want a copy of it there? User pages are no less permanent than Wikipedia pages.

Regarding your comments on my following policy: I believe that you are correct that identifying your page as "patent nonsense" was a mistake. The page in question does not qualify based on the definition found at patent nonsense. I apologize for this mistake.

Instead, I should have identified this as vandalism. See "Silly vandalism" at wikipedia:Vandalism. However, under vandalism the recourse is speedy deletion -- there is no mention of the option to move it to the user page or BJODN.

Be assured that had I decided to call this "vandalism", I still would have moved it to your talk page. My real concern from the beginning was to move the joke article out of the acticle space (where it does not belong even on April Fools Day) and into a more appropriate location. I chose your user page. If you want to move it to BJODN, I don't care. But I will not move it for you, and I will not become involved in any dispute you may have with others who might disagree with your decision to do so.

However, if your intent is to make an issue out of this, then I urge you to move ahead with your plans. I am confident that public review of this matter will not harm me in the slightest.

-Rholton 23:49, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

END

I'm not going to reply to this message because it is solved to my satisfaction however I would like to note this for the future: I had no plans of artificially escalating this issue. After review I discovered exactly how authority was derived to delete this article. In Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion it states that admins may delete an article on-sight if the article is vandalism and vandalism does include articles created entirely for joke purposes. In fact speedy-deletion is in fact on-sight deletion of an article; there is no voting process required. I discovered this during research into a complaint about the conduct of this admin. It would of been nice if the admin had explicitly listed this authority rather than inviting me to consume other people's time and have them explain it to me.

I'm glad to find out that someone else listed the Fryker on the BJODN page. That's good enough for me. I've had a strange observation though: I bothered to identify this page as an april fools gag; if I hadn't the article would not of even qualified for speedy deletion. Instead it would of gone through a longer deletion process. I added that in because I was attempting to be responsible (I also logged all the changes I made to put the article in so I could go back and remove the changes after april fools) and ultimately it was the reason the page only got exposed in the main article space for approximately six and a half hours. Triddle 03:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lessons learned

This all happened because of my assumption on policy (and a lame assumption at that). If I could of communicated this assumption to the admin it would of been clear to him where my error was and he could of easily informed me of how I was wrong. Additionally Wikipedia:Assume good faith should be kept in mind. This leads to something like:

Dear Administrator,

You deleted insert article here but I do not understand where this authority comes from. Can you please cite the wikipedia policy that enables this decision?

Thank you, Mr Contributor

additionally something like this as a standard message from the admin when they delete something would make things very clear too:

Dear User,

This article was removed from the main article namespace because it has been considered vandalism (see silly vandalism). According to policy it qualifies for speedy deletion (see the pure vandalism clause).

Just some thoughts. Triddle 05:52, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedily deleted because... This page was left empty and I wanted to fill it with an April fools article. It is still linked to that page and I dind't touch the talk page. There was nothing on this page so I changed it. --Calebrams25 (talk) 14:45, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

First of all, why did you move ANOTHER user's subpage to the mainspace? That is inappropriate to mess with another user's subpage (unless permission given), and this is the article mainspace we are talking about. You can have (mostly) anything you want on your own sandbox, but the mainspace is for serious articles only. Not April Fool jokes. — BladeRikWr 14:48, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Contested deletion

I apologize if I made a mistake. This article is 14 years old and the information on it was removed many years ago. I was simply changing and renaming the article because it had only a link to another page on it. It was even linked through a mainpage article so it has always been public. If you go to the wikipedia:aprilfools 2015 this article is there. It's meant to be a joke. --Calebrams25 (talk) 15:30, 26 April 2019 (UTC)