User talk:Vlad/2007-2008

I don't get it

this edit of your bot: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3APv7721&diff=99507694&oldid=88200655 While I perfectly understand the migration of UB, I didn't understand of the addition of Ragnarok online. --User:Vlad|-> 18:16, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry! That was a bug; it shouldn't happen again. —Mets501 (talk) 19:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Prunariu

Hi, Vlad, and sorry for the delay. Sure I remember you. As far as I can tell, the term is "discharged" (could be "decommissioned", but that seems to be in use mostly for objects). I have edited the info in the article, and hopefully got it right. See you around. Dahn 15:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi again, Vlad, and thanks for the feedback. I think I got the term right, but my only concern is that it seems to have a very specific meaning in Anglo-Saxon environments; being crap at military stuff, I wouldn't know by how much the Romanian situation is different or similar, so I had to give you my disclaimer. Hey, I just happened to see your political compass results, and, the last time I took the test, I had virtually the same score.

Thanks for the welcome back message: I originally pondered leaving wiki for good, after having been confronted with some gratuitous and nauseating nastiness on an overblown topic, but have since decided to concentrate on my pet projects and procrastinate my return to that particular battlefield...

Keep in touch. Dahn 18:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that you have also had bad experiences with the project (I don't know if that is the cause for your disappointment, but it would seem so). Yes, I did notice the essay, which is, alas, almost entirely accurate, but did not want to assume that you were endorsing it (rather than calling attention to the debate). Myself, I try to stay informed about points of view expressed about wikipedia itself, but I generally avoid taking theoretical sides and getting involved - I am fascinated by the culture created around wikipedia, but I don't contribute to it (it brings to mind a story by Borges called "The Congress", where people meeting to represent the world find out they are incapable to do so, and end up creating their own world; not a bad thing at all, but arguably counter-productive).

It would be hard mentioning what debate I was involved in without drawing certain usernames into the conversation. Suffices to say that lengthy paragraphs have been dedicated to questioning my motivations, to speculating about my politics (not only wrong guesses, but ones on a subject I did not indicate was up for debate), to discussing whether I was sane or not, and to diatribes about whether I am a competent editor. This was done because I had removed blatant pov from a particular page, and because I had asked users to stop contributing their personal theories and guesses... Hopefully, this is water under the bridge, but I was really disgusted when they started spamming my talk page with indications that I will not get adminship (although I had been proposed for it and stated I did not want it) or even that I do not belong on wikipedia. The fact that this was allowed to continue for as long as it did added to my annoyance.

Although I think you are an excellent sysop and contributor to rowiki, I cannot say I blame you for meaning to leave. I have caused controversy in the past by wondering whether more than, say, 5% of rowiki was respectable in content - although I was not proven wrong, I should probably apologize to dedicated rowikipedians such as yourself, especially since your patience must be twice that expected from an enwiki sysop. What is it about the average rowiki troll/vandal that makes him so nasty? My disgust with rowiki was sparked off by the fact that a user who was banned over here created his Nazi utopia on rowiki before being discovered, and that he seemed to be benefiting from the indifference of some incompetent admins (who could not or would not identify just what was wrong and fallacious in his edits). When that user caused a scandal there and tried to move back over here, he assumed a different name and approached me, asking for some Holocaust denial shit to be included in an article I had authored. I could tell who he was, and I exposed his agenda. Consequently, he left me a message in Romanian, where he speculated that I was Jewish (I'm not, not that it matters) and told me that I was going to be turned into soap come the next Holocaust (isn't in interesting how Holocaust deniers actually believe in the Holocaust?). What is most disturbing about such reactions, IMO, is how much the Romanian society is still polluted by them, and how traditional they are.

As you might have guessed by now, my projects are connected with Romanian political history (or, at least, this is what I have dedicated many of these last months to). I want to add comprehensive and reliable information on the major intellectual and political trends in our society, and reference both major and lesser-known facts of our recent history. Recently, I worked on stuff like Alexandru Averescu, Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Gheorghe Tătărescu, Mircea Eliade, Romanian general election, 1946, and Ploughmen's Front (I also want to complete what I started on Romanian Communist Party). The fact that, in dealing with these, users with agendas have called me both a "pro-communist" and an "anti-communist" can only indicate that I am doing something right.

Hope you too will decide to stay - this place needs you. Cheers, Dahn 23:24, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi and sorry for not replying on the other topics (I was assaulted with tasks and replies). I guess I owe you an apology and a correction in the post: on one hand, you are right about me not asking you (my stress in that phrase was not on that, but on the fact that it took time for someone to notice, and you were the only one to react to a message I posted on my user page and here; I also noted that an admin was watching him, and did not react - instead, he was openly collaborating with Bonnie); on the other, I have checked the entire situation with Horthy (just noticed it actually involved you on the other side) - the user (Ovidiu) was not banned, but blocked (I have a tendency to confuse the terms), and it did not happen because of that, but because of reasons I would fully agree with. Btw, the version Dpotop Khoikhoi was reverting was also partly vandalized (I'm guessing he does not know enough Romanian to notice). Again, my apologies. Dahn 13:32, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

K, thanks. I want to ask you something: I consider these edits by Dpotop a personal attack, and I would like you to ask him to revert them himself. Dahn 15:29, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

But, Vlad, I did contribute to rowiki in the past. I don't keep away from it as if it were sick, but, as you indicated yourself in the past, I would have even more nasty stuff to deal with than I do here (and did there in the past). In fact, I would probably contribute to it even under such circumstances, but I am too much involved over here. Dahn 16:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps. But I do not say things which are not true, and I sincerely wish I had nothing to point to. In this case, it just hapened to be a related subject. The main difference between English and Romanian wikis is that the latter has standards of quality reduced overall - this means that the activity is mostly one of expanding on enwiki, whereas on rowiki is revisiting, correcting, and maintaining (which gains Sysiphic proportions when one is to consider that: some vandals have been endorsed by admins - see Bonaparte and the fact that, as you said, no one was ever banned there; POV and propaganda are not as easily detected by admins; POV-pushers are many, persistent, and vicious). In this instance, we are not just talking about "a POV", but about antisemitic revisionism, which, besides being more serious IMO (just like a pro-Stalinist POV), is also much more tolerated in our culture (for reasons that deserve their own discussion). Dahn 16:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Gigi Becali

Thanks for reminding me of the npov tag in the article Gigi Becali. I had indicated in my edit summary at the time that I believed there were pov issues in the sections Controversies and Homophobia, but I indeed did not clarify my position on the article's talk page. Sentences like "by using an extremely vulgar language", "Gigi Becali has revealed his true personality", "grotesque curses", "In line with his extremist right-wing views" and the frequent, almost excessive use of the word "inflammatory" were quite pov and bordered on violating WP:BLP. While I agree that the article has improved a lot, and is sufficiently npov to remove the tag, I also believe that there are still some pov issues with the current wording. To give one example, the article states that "Gigi Becali has revealed his aggressive personality in many appearances". The article seems to treat him as a threat to Romanian politics and his views as extremist and ludicrous. Wikipedia does not have an opinion on Gigi Becali. Aecis^Brievenbus 18:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that in Wikipedia, there is no unbalance, only other balances, to use a terribly politically correct term. We list the controversies, but leave the interpretation of what that says about the person up to the reader. For inspiration, you might want to read the article Fred Phelps, about another controversial person with roughly similar views.

As far as my Romanian skills are concerned, they are not superb. Through Latin, French, Spanish and Italian I can understand Romanian texts sufficiently. When I see a Romanian text, I can deduce with a reasonable degree of certainty what it means. For instance, I have used information from ro:Cadrilater in nl:Zuidelijke Dobroedzja. But I can't work the other way around, e.g. from English to Romanian. Aecis^Brievenbus 12:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry, I know you didn't intend to offend me, and I never took it that way :) The article on Fred Phelps is indeed very long, and most of it is not relevant for this discussion anyway. The relevant section of that article is Fred Phelps#Political views. I hope that has narrowed it down a bit :) Aecis^Brievenbus 22:44, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

PS. If you have no objections, I could try to address some of the issues I have raised myself. I can also write a new draft version at User:Aecis/Gigi Becali. Aecis^Brievenbus 22:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

For instance, yes. Other sections could be Views on other politicians, Views on the media, etc. Cows fly kites (Aecis) ^{Rule/Contributions} 11:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC) (PS. This is Aecis, but I use this account when I'm on a public computer.)

Favourable

Just a small note - your change of "favourable" to "favorable" in this edit was probably unneeded, per WP:ENGVAR. Esn 01:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I reverted your edit...

Hi, just to let you know that I reverted your edit to the article Fire (film). According to film project guidelines it is still a stub. According to the stub template on the talkpage, in order to be a start, for that project, it needs at least 2 developed sections in addition to the plot and cast. This article doesn't have that yet. --Belovedfreak 16:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

InstallAnywhere entry

Hi Vlad, thanks for keeping InstallAnywhere entry alive. Gil_mo 07:31, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

In fact, I'm a very *unsatisfied* IA user, and about to request a refund after having struggled with their bugs. We work Mac+Windows, and the main problems we have are related to ill support for MacOSX stuff, very long build times when including VM for Java, installers 30MB+ in size over the original source file sizes and now, version 8 isn't supported in MacOSX Leopard. For getting the bugfix for that, Macrovision requires us to pay $1900 for upgrading to IA2008... Are you happy with it? What platforms do you use it in? Gil_mo 10:46, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wrote the article stub just a little before losing my patience with Macrovision. Besides, I'm a greater fan of Wikipedia than I'm a Macrovision detractor :) I'm don't think we've met, at least not at the forum. I sure hope we're liable to the IA2008, although it doesn't seem so on the website. Gil_mo 06:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I said that I hoped I was able to get the new version of InstallAnywhere (with the fix for Leopard), without needing to pay them an extra $1900 like it says on their site... Gil_mo 13:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Go page

And I think you were right that the page looks better with the TOC higher up, so it's all good. Cheers --ShelfSkewed Talk 23:31, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Eric Hughes / Cypherpunk

I reverted your edit to the Cypherpunks page re Eric Hughes because the Wikipedia page for "Eric Hughes" refers to an English rugby player, not the American cypherpunk, who does not have a Wikipedia page. gbroiles (talk) 07:10, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Osteopathic medicine

Hi there. Do you feel a consensus has been reached on the Osteopathic medicine redirect page? If not, could you comment on our feelings about retaining or changing this redirect so we can resolve the RfD? Thanks for your input on this. Bryan Hopping ^T 16:00, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

My edit on your user page

Hi Vlad. I noticed that you noticed my anal edit on your user page. How do I respond to your message on my talk page about your noticing of my anal edit on your user page? Like this? martin (talk) 21:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Rollback granted

Hi Vlad, I'm happy to grant you use of the rollback feature. Please remember that it should not be used to revert the edits of a user who is acting in good faith; rollback should be used exclusively to revert vandalism. If rollback is misused, it can be immidiately and unconditionally removed by any administrator, and then is probably unlikely to be granted again. Anyway, happy editing. :-) --Deskana (talk) 00:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)