User talk:Coppertwig/Archive 6

Probability and statistics sub-project?

Dear Coppertwig, I recently proposed starting a "probability and statistics" sub-project (aka task force or work group) of WikiProject Maths and was wondering if you'd be interested in participating. If so, please add your name and any comments at WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Probability and statistics. Regards, Qwfp (talk) 22:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. I was going to sign up but it took me a couple of days to get around to it. Now I can't find your proposal. What happened? --Coppertwig (talk) 22:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Please see my post just now over at the WikiProject Mathematics talk page. The discussion expanded to whether a WikiProject Statistics would be preferable, and the consensus clearly favoured this (in fact I seemed to be the only one who had initial reservations but I changed my mind) so I created it earlier today. In line with the instructions at WikiProject Council/Proposals I deleted the discussion there about half an hour ago, after archiving it at WP:WikiProject Statistics/Proposal. So you're still very welcome to sign up, but the place to do so is now WP:WikiProject Statistics#Participants!

Possibly I moved a bit quickly, but 11 people had signed up which is more than enough to create a project according to the instructions at WikiProject Council/Proposals and if I hadn't done it today I wouldn't have had time to do it until after Easter. Regards, Qwfp (talk) 22:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for joining up without hesitation! As I indicated above, I may not have much time to do any more with this myself for a week or two so I'll quite happy to let the other members take the initiative. I had fun setting it up today, and I hope I've done enough to start the ball rolling. Qwfp (talk) 23:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Word usage, connotations and positive and pejorative meanings

This is a continuation of a discussion started at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 22#Bots_and_the_.7B.7Bbots.7D.7D_template.

In reply to 68.237.2.101: I hereby continue to chime in on this issue. This is not only about word usage and primary meanings. It's also about whether or not it's OK to comment pejoratively about the choice of words in someone's talk page post when the meaning is already clear; and it's also about whether it's OK to occasionally use a word according to its secondary meaning, rather than always having to use a primary meaning; and it's also about whether it's OK to state that someone's words meant something when they merely at most connoted it. I oppose objections to the use of words on the grounds that the words are positive or pejorative, because I believe that such objections contribute to a change in usage and meaning of the word. The objection raised here was intended to influence Locke Cole to change the way the user uses that phrase in future: in effect, putting a stop to the use of neutral meanings of the word. Such actions, multiplied many times, result in a change in usage and eventually a change in meanings listed in the dictionary to reflect such changes in usage. Whether or not this particular phrase is shifting towards the pejorative I don't know, but I believe that words and phrases in general tend to shift from neutral meanings towards positive or negative meanings, and I deplore such shifts. When a word has a neutral meaning and someone wants to say something judgemental, they can insert additional words such as "good", "bad", and many other such words into their sentence. But when someone (as I often do) wants to say something judgementally neutral, they can be stuck: no matter which word they use to refer to a thing, someone will insist on interpreting it in a positive or pejorative way. They become unable to effectively express the neutral idea they wish to express.

There's another thing involved here. According to a book I read (but I've misplaced it), different people or groups of people tend to have different reactions when someone else starts to speak when they're already speaking. In some cultures, among some personality types and often among women, it's quite acceptable for two people to be talking at once for brief periods of time (often about half a sentence or about three or four words, for example around the time one person stops talking and the other starts.) Often among men and in other cultures or among people of other personality types, it is not acceptable.

For example suppose someone is saying something several sentences long and the other person nods and says, "Yeah, I agree completely!" while they're talking. In one extreme, the other person will continue talking without a break, without even slowing down, and will enjoy the commentary, and neither person will be aware that there's anything wrong; likely they won't even really notice that both had been talking at the same time. In the other extreme, the other person might stop and say "You interrupted me! Now, will you please keep quiet until I've finished!"

The connotations of the phrase "chime in" will, I believe, tend to be perceived differently by people from these different groups. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Diplomacy

I try to be nice. Thaaks for the tea! - Smerus (talk) 13:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

and many very many thanks for the Star - you are most generous!. Toodle-pip - --Smerus (talk) 08:23, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Barnstar of Peace
		I, Chrislk02, award you this barnstar of peace for your amazing response here here to a potentially explosive situation. We need more editors with your grace and tact! Thanks again and happy editing. Chrislk02 Chris Kreider 01:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the barnstar! --Coppertwig (talk) 01:45, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Good Faith

The discussion has been on the talk page for a while. if one party chooses not to talk what are you supposed to do? --evrik ^(talk) 01:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

(An edit conflict on my talk page!! Whee!) Thanks for your message, Evrik. I understand your frustration: although the last message posted in the section Talk:And you are lynching Negroes/Archives/2014/August#Images is your post stating that the image is appropriate and that we aren't going to post an image of a lynching, and nobody has replied to that, nevertheless your edits placing the article keep getting reverted.

Images are nice and help make an article more appealing.

Please try to see another side to this situation. Two other editors have opposed placing the image in the article, and have stated a reason, i.e., that it is not directly related to the topic of the article. You seem to be the only one supporting putting the article image (01:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)) in. You have not stated any reason why you think it's directly related to the topic, and you haven't stated any reason why you think it's a good idea to include an image that is not directly related. So, putting the article image (01:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)) in seems to me to violate WP:CONSENSUS policy.

I wouldn't say that anyone is choosing not to talk. Mikkalai has commented on the talk page and has also said something in edit summaries. If anything, you look like the one who isn't talking: your edit summaries give no reason why you're reverting. In my opinion, when you revert, your edit summary should always begin with "revert" or equivalent (e.g. "rv") and should always explain the reason, unless you're reverting something that everyone would agree is vandalism. At Help:Revert it says "When a revert is necessary, let people know why you reverted." If there has been a previous discussion with consensus favouring a certain edit, you can put a link to that discussion in your edit summary, for example "see Talk:And you are lynching Negroes/Archives/2014/August#Images" in your edit summary, or at least "see talk"; and in my opinion it's best to also put an additional comment on the talk page every time you revert, e.g. "I'm reverting again becauuse ..." However, in this case, the discussion in that section seems to be weighted towards not including the image, so that would not be a valid explanation in this case. You would have to explain further.

Having your comment be the last comment in a section of the talk page is not an indication that your opinion has consensus. The refutation of your comment is already contained in the previous messages in the same section.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where someone is reverting without explanation, there are ways to handle that situation. This is not that situation. If you ask me again, I'll give you some ideas what to do in that type of situation. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:34, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

• I don't agree with a lot of what you've said, but I'll have to come back to this in a few days. ttfn --evrik ^(talk) 01:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

• That's fine. I look forward to reading your discussion of what you disagree with, Evrik, when you have time. All the best to you. :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 01:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I would make a suggestion but I am afraid to put it on your page. Mattisse (Talk) 23:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry you're afraid to post your suggestion. If it involves criticizing another editor, maybe it's best not to say it; or it might make sense to put it on that editor's talk page. Would your suggestion be appropriate at Talk:And you are lynching Negroes? Do you speak Russian? I think we may be able to solve the above content dispute if someone who speaks Russian will contact a certain website to ask for copyright permission for an image. See the article talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:42, 21 March 2008 (UTC)01:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

That is an extremely ugly comment you are making to me. I find it insulting. It demonstrates clearly your view of me. I will not risk more. I commented on the talk page so you would not block me for disobeying your orders to do so. I will participate no more. If you want more information, ask the FAR editors. I do not want to say more. You will probably block me for what I have just said as it is. So I apologize and am extremely sorry and remorseful for anything you take as blockable in anything I have said. Sincerely, Mattisse (Talk) 01:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I struck out my comment because it seems to have been misunderstood. I have no intention to make an ugly comment or to offend. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: Majorly

I realize how bad this looks to people who are not in the loop, so to speak. However, Majorly was aware that this particular banned editor represents a very real threat to several contributors in real life, and that there are other unfortunate circumstances that warrant removing all of his edits. He chose to repeatedly prove a point about his disagreements with the Arbitration Committee/office in this manner despite warnings and couldn't have expected anything else in return. In the end, all that happened was that Majorly couldn't edit a website for half an hour - if he decides to not edit ever again because of something so trivial, that is his prerogative. Respectfully yours, east.718 at 03:45, March 19, 2008

Hello, Coppertwig. You have new messages at Moonriddengirl's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

AIDS

AIDS has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:59, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Reply

Sorry that you do not understand the situation. Thanks any way. Mattisse (Talk) 02:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you would be more understanding if you knew this article is up for FAR review. But other editors, as well as the FAR reviewers, have washed there hands of the article. User:Redthoreau thinks Wikipedia policies and FAR review suggestion are baloney. We wanted the article to keep its FAR in memonry of User:Zleitzen who left wikipedia in discuss over the FA process.User:Polaris999 was one of the article's creators who was driven away. Redthoreau even reverted User:SandyGeorgia, director of FA under Raul before she washed her hands of the Che Guevara mess.I know that I no longer have the drive to work on FA articles. This is a great lesson to my why I no longer do. Thanks! 03:36, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Making clear the "vague allegations"

If I were to properly source all of the vague allegations I made about Jimmy Wales, how will you respond? I don't want to waste my time providing you links if you're just going to react with some juvenile response like, "How do we know the New York Times is telling the truth?" - Four Thirty-Nine (talk) 03:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't wish to predict in advance how I would respond or whether I would respond at all. I agree with Mtmelendez that English Wikipedia is not an appropriate forum for this discussion. I hope you won't use my talk page as a place to lay out such evidence, although if you do list sources somewhere on this project (which, however, may not necessarily be an appropriate thing to do, given the way the discussion was closed) I would not object to a brief note informing me of the location of the discussion. I have great respect for young people, but I don't think they have a monopoly on the idea of questioning whether something in a newspaper is true or not. My intention was more to make the point that evidence had not been provided, than to indicate a personal desire to see such evidence. It may not be worthwhile going to a lot of trouble treating what I said as a request. Now that the discussion is closed, I might not be interested in participating further. Sorry. Regards, --Coppertwig (talk) 11:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

You know those MasterCard commercials with the "Priceless" tagline? They should make a new one with your attitude in mind. Instead of "Priceless", though, it would say "Spineless". - Four Thirty-Nine (talk) 19:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

For Coppertwig - posted on my talk page for you

(This was posted on my talk page as a reply to your post to me. I have removed it from my page and copied it here. Please ask User:Redthoreau to stop following me around making comments under mine where I post an an editor's page. Pleas also ask him to stop using my talk page as a poster board to talk to other users about me - or other topics for that matter. My page is not a board to post messages on to other. Further, Redthoreau is prolonging the antagonism by this behavior. This is becoming nerve-racking. (I was working on another article when I got the message and accidentally lost an article I was working on but not saved, as I am very anxious and tense now.) Please ask User:Redthoreau to leave me alone. Thanks, Mattisse (Talk) 19:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC) )

I am including the post for which I was replying to in order for my response to be in it's appropriate context. Unfortunately Mattisse likes to control the flow of information and present things out of their appropriate framework. As to his request of "leaving him alone" ... trust me there is nothing I wish for more, than not to have to respond to his daily slander. Redthoreau (talk TR 21:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

2 posts which appeared on Mattisse's talk page

Thanks! I will certainly take you up on your offer for help. By the way, User:Redthoreau is not a regular but rather a single purpose account, a bureaucrat informed me, while I am nor with over +44,000 edits on a while range of articles (into the thousands) so I am asking you to please do not treat me as a Redthoreau. I know about Wikipedia:Don't template the regulars. In fact, in the past I have seen regulars forgiven when they are provoked. I deserve to be in that category. The WP:OWN has been brought up many times with User:Redthoreau, but no one is willing to waste their time on the article any more. (Again, I ask you to look at the article history -- it will only take a few minutes for you to get the picture. If you look back at the article talk pages you will find many attempts on my part to explain the procedures to Redhoreau, while his responses to me and others have often been rants, or personal attacks, calling me insane and saying I need a mental health exam. Please read Wikipedia:Featured article review/Che Guevara The "The malformed" answers I have received from both the 3RR people and the Village Pump people msny times. And I still do not understand. The only 3RR I have successfully reported in the 2 years I have been here was one that User:Salix Alba kindly fixed the glitches for me. Also, I am not clear what is a 3RR. I have been blocked for 3RR by reverting my own User Page. I have been blocked for 3RR for making three edits in 24 hour of material that was not related to the person who templated me (e.g. was not his wording or even in the paragraph he had written but was my own writing. Can you explain? That I could warm a user with three templates and he continues with another 15 t0 20 edits is unfathomable. But since it works that way now, I feel I should be able to the same. Am I incorrect? Please inform me! I am very confused over this. Regards, Mattisse (Talk) 16:25, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Correction of the facts - as it is clear that Mattisse has an issue getting them correctly and lies more than any editor I have ever seen (by the way that is not a personal attack, but a fact, he makes factually incorrect statements at will about me). (1) I am not a “single purpose account”, and have contributed to a wide range of articles since I first began editing a few months ago. Yes many of them have been related to a similar subject area, but that is the area that is my expertise, thus I edit accordingly (just as most of Mattisse’s edits have to deal with a similar subject matter which I believe may be Psycholgy ... oh the irony). Also all I have ever wanted was to be treated the same as anyone else ... it is Mattisse who believes that since he has (44 K edits) that it allows him to play de-facto monarch of any article for which he is involved in. ----- Yes, please do look at the article history, read the talk page and take note of my demeanor in contrast to Mattisse. You will find that he declared he was finished with the article and demanded that I stop messaging about him around Noon yesterday (he is notorious for doing this in the past) ... only to come back in the afternoon and begin editing again and false templating me against wiki policy. When I point out that he makes statements publicly on the talk page – only to then act as if they haven’t happened, and ponder openly how I can react to such “oddity”, he then from that impugns that I am attacking his mental state (which is not necessary, as the facts speak for themselves). I have come across a wide range of people in my life, and I am truly dumbfounded at whatever “reality” Mattisse seems to be living in. = Nothing he says represents reality, and thus when I became angry after weeks of this and in response to him calling me a sock puppet I called him “Insane”. An insult? Possibly, but also a medical diagnosis I believe (as I am not sure what else to call it). I have made countless pleas for him to (1) Stop Harassing me (2) Stop templating me against wiki policy -- which he has been warned from a moderator about (3) Stop mirroring my edits and placing tags on any article I work on as a way to cause annoyance (4) Stop lying about my behavior, creating a situation where I am justified in defending myself, and thus responding (5) Be civil and collaborative instead of rude, divisive, irrational, “crazy”, and combative. ---- I will continue to defend myself against his lies, as I believe I am entitled that opportunity. I do not rant, something he does often, and only defend my right to answer the charges against me. I would just as much prefer to never have to leave a message on his talk page again ... but unfortunately he won’t leave my talk page alone, and thus every time he leaves a message for me, I respond in turn, and then discover another libelous smear he is spreading about me. As I asked several times nicely yesterday ... Mattisse please follow wiki policy, and leave me alone. If you wish to discuss something about me do it on the article talk page. I will not respond to you unless you message me or attack me on your talk page. Thank you. Redthoreau (talk TR 19:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Mattisse and dear Redthoreau, welcome to my talk page. I'm really very happy to have you here, and I look forward to a nice, enjoyable and productive discussion with you.

I'm afraid I do have to ask one thing of you, though: would you please not make comments about each other (or any other editor) or about each others' behaviour or what you've done in the past, etc. for example "while his responses to me and others have often been rants, or personal attacks" or "which I believe may be Psycholgy ... oh the irony". I would like you both to feel comfortable and welcome here, and I'm afraid those sorts of comments make those feelings impossible.

Well, now that we've eliminated that topic of conversation, what do we have left to talk about? We can talk about the Che Guevara article and about the relative merits of various versions of various parts of the article -- although it may be better to do that on the article talk page, so that others can benefit from the discussion too, and I may be participating there as well. We can talk about the future: how we hope to get along with each other, and what are our preferred methods of interacting, without saying anything about what happened in the past. How do you like to do reverts? My preferred method is often to ask the person who did an edit to revert it themselves, explaining the reason why. Note the "self-revert" and "harmonious editing club" (1RR) userboxen on my user page. What are the methods you prefer?

I try to treat everyone with respect, from the newest user to the most long-established bureaucrat. I don't tend to treat people differently because of whether they're an administrator or how many articles they've edited, etc. I also tend to apply the same methods to editing articles regardless of whether they're undergoing Featured Article review or Articles for Deletion discussion or anything else. In any case, the principles to apply are verifiability, neutral point of view, etc.

By the way, I initially got involved in this by looking at the 3RR page to see if there were any 3RR reports I could usefully contribute to. As far as I remember I had not previously been involved in the Che Guevara article and had not interacted with either of you. I might become involved in editing the article, though. I might maintain a neutral position and help facilitate working out conflicts between you, or I might develop and express my own opinions about the article content.

I have a suggestion: how about if we take two versions of the introductory paragraph of the article, perhaps the current version and the version in the previous edit, and copy both versions to the article talk page, and then discuss them there without making any comments about editors or editor behaviour, only about words and sentences and POV (POV of words in the article, not POV of editors) and sources and things like that that are relevant to article content? We could develop a new, consensus version of the introductory section on the article talk page. (This method has been used, for example, at the Chiropractic article.) Do you think that's a good idea?

Mattisse, if you're interested in understanding 3RR better, you might want to carefully read or re-read the WP:3RR policy. Do you understand what I was telling you, that consecutive edits by one editor usually count as one edit? Salix Alba is absolutely wonderful, isn't he? The 3RR policy says that usually reverts to your own user page don't count as 3RR violations, but there are some exceptions, e.g. copyright violations and some other things, so that it is possible to violate 3RR on your own user page if it's one of those exceptions. For the 3RR rule, it doesn't matter whose material you're reverting. You could be reverting 4 different parts of a page that were put there by 4 different people, and a fifth person could report you for 3RR and it would be a violation. You might not even receive a warning. New users who might not know the 3RR rule are expected to be given a warning, but users who already know about the rule might just be reported to the WP:AN/3RR noticeboard without getting a warning first. It says in the instructions at the top of that page that it's good form to inform the person that they're being reported. In other words, they might be informed at the same time that they're being reported, and not necessarily warned before. I think it's nice to warn the person before, though, and give them a chance to "self-revert" their last revert so that they won't be blocked. Even after being reported, they may still have a chance to "self-revert".

Anyway, as I said elsewhere, I hope we won't need to worry about the exact details of the 3RR rule because I hope everyone will get along in a polite and friendly way and find a consensus version of the article. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:20, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Mattisse, I just realized I forgot to reply to your request above. I'm sorry, at this time I'm not going to ask Redthoreau to stop following you around, because I'm not aware of any behaviour I consider inappropriate. I believe Redthoreau was replying to comments you had made in various places about Redthoreau. I believe users have a right to reply to messages about themselves. If you do notice inappropriate behaviour of Redthoreau or other editors, please don't post about it on my talk page. I'd like to keep this place for friendly, positive communiciation. You can use the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution process: for example, ignoring the behaviour (surprisingly often the most productive method), posting on the talk page of the user who did the behaviour (maybe not appropriate if they've asked you not to post there, though), posting to WP:AN/I, etc. Also please avoid posting stuff about editor behaviour to the article talk page. It's for article content discussion only. Thanks. I've got to go now! --Coppertwig (talk) 02:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

(unindent)

• Thanks for your response. I am afraid you misperceived the situation as the page is a recognized problem. Others have said so. All you have to do is look at the page history, Since December, the only editor of that page had been Redthoreau, with few exceptions. The article was started in 2004 and reached FA status in March of 2006. In June or July 2006 Jimmy Wales put a POV tag on it, and eventually the page had to be locked down for a month. After that, the editors who had been working on the article were too depressed to continue. The article survived with little vandalism as it was off everyone's radar. Then in December 2006 (I believe), Redthoreau began editing it and reversing other's edits. It went into FAR review and we tried to work on it, me because I would hate to have the article lose it's star. However Redthoreau reverted edits and dismissed the comments of FAR reviewers as baseless. He even reversed User:SandyGeorgia, Raul's deputy. Since the article originated in 2004, counting all the edits that were made in the years from then to now, including all the work that went into getting it to FA status, Redthoreau had made at least twice as many edits on that article between December 2006 and now, than all those other edits put together. FAR reviews made it clear that the main problem now with the article is the masssive POV - much worse now than when Jimmy Wales tagged it. SandyGeorgia has a link that shows the situation. When she saw that, she said she was not willing to get mixed up in helping in the FAR review. She said it was a hopeless POV situation and she was not going to waste her life over it. Ask her what her opinion is. Sincerely, Mattisse (Talk) 02:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Coppertwig for your assistance, advice, and time in reply. I am going to also honor your wishes on not discussing editor’s behavior, and thus I will not comment on allegations from Mattisse above. I am willing to follow all of your suggestions and am willing to work towards an amicable environment for all parties. I am relieved of your interest in assisting us, as I believe that new perspective is badly needed to lend objectivity to existing quarrels. Just let me know how to proceed. :o) Redthoreau (talkTR 07:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Mattisse, I'm glad you've replied. I realize that there is a problem involving the page Che Guevara. That's why I'm getting involved -- to try to help solve the problem. I'm planning to look at the FAR review, but I don't think I'll ask for SandyGeorgia's opinion. If you give me a link to where she's expressed her opinion in the past I'll look at that.

Dear Redthoreau, I really appreciate your cooperation. I'm relieved, too, to read your generous response. By the way, I'm willing to provide you with the same kinds of assistance that I've offered to Mattisse, if you ask for it.

I suggest that the three of us try to agree on a statement of what the problem is. The statement should be designed to be useful: it should be a problem that can be solved, therefore not a description of what's happened in the past, since the past can't be changed. How about something like this:

• "The problem is that there are some phrases in the article which Mattisse believes to be POV and would like to remove but which Redthoreau wants to include."

I'd appreciate comments from both of you as to whether that's a good description of the problem, and suggestions for other ways to formulate the problem. (Note: you might think I'm violating my own request not to post information about editor behaviour, but note that the information here is about opinions, not about behaviour; that it's oriented towards the future editing of the article, not towards the past, and most importantly that I've tried, and I hope succeeded, to phrase it in such a way that the people mentioned will not feel offended or any negative emotion on reading it.)

Mattisse, I would appreciate it if you would do the following things:

1. At Talk:Che Guevara, please provide a list of some changes you would like to make to the article. It can be a list of all the changes you would like to see, or just some of them, maybe the ones you feel are most important, or changes to one section of the article, etc. You may also want to provide reasons for the changes, though that's not necessary immediately. Please be very specific: quote what the article says now, and describe or quote exactly what you want to change it to. If you've already made a list like that, please post a link to it. Please remember to be careful to mention article content only, not editor behaviour.
2. Please comment on the above proposed statement of what the problem is.
3. Please answer this question which I asked you above about 3RR: " Do you understand what I was telling you, that consecutive edits by one editor usually count as one edit? "

Redthoreau, of course you're also welcome to post to the article talk page a list of changes you'd like to see.

By the way, to clarify something I said above: politely-worded criticism of my behaviour (as opposed to other editors' behaviour) is still welcome on this talk page. Coppertwig (talk) 14:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Mattisse, I'm very sorry that I caused you to be so scared. I didn't intend that at all. Please note that I'm not an admin and I can't block you. The most I can do is maybe ask an admin to block you. When I asked you to provide some information and answer some questions above, those were intended as just suggestions. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear. I had no intention of asking to have you blocked for not answering questions. The warning I gave you was only to warn you not to post comments about editors on my talk page or on article talk pages. You don't have to answer those questions.

I think you must have misunderstood my comment in the "good faith" section above. It wasn't supposed to be ugly. Maybe you thought it was ugly because I mentioned an ugly article name. I only mentioned it because that's the article that's being talked about in that section of my talk page, so I thought you were talking about that article. I'm sorry I mentioned it if you weren't talking about that article. I struck out my comment. I take it back and I hope you can pretend I didn't write it. I was trying to be friendly. I guess it didn't work. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I didn't use a template when I posted a warning on your talk page. I didn't warn you for providing a link. Providing a link is fine. I would not criticize you or ask to have you blocked for providing a link to the FAR review.

I don't intend to take any action against you in response to this message that you posted at Talk:Che Guevara. Don't worry. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)

• Thank you very much for allowing me to reply. I hope you do not consider the following as blockable, even if you are not an Admin and would have to ask an Admin to do so. Since you had ordered me not to post concerns on the article anywhere, including the article talk page, then you ordered me to do so, I was in a very unpleasant double bind! I hope you understand that it is not my opinion that counts regarding article organization, grammar, wording, "brilliant prose". NPOV and other criteria included in determining article feature status. The FAR review editors decide. They have given their opinions on the status of the article, as have others. Any list I would make would take weeks, research on facts and the referencing of statements, and would only reflect my opinion anyway. The FAR editors make the decision about those points. Anything I list may be right or wrong from their point of view in evaluating the article for Featured Article status. In my opinion, some basic understanding of the FAR process is needed for you to be of help. Any article changes are not just an issue between two editors. The changes must move the article closer to following the FAR instructions on article content, style, format etc. per Article Feature criteria. Two editors could agree on the article but the article fail FAR because the article fails FAR standards. If you are truly interested in helping, then read the comments on the Wikipedia:Featured article review/Che Guevara as a starting point. Regards, Mattisse (Talk) 17:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

• Hi, Mattisse. Thanks for replying! Actually, I don't have the authority to order you to do anything. I can make suggestions, tell you what I'd like you to do (but you don't have to do it), and express my opinion about what the policies and guidelines say. You can do the same things, i.e. make suggestions to me about things I can do, etc. I'm sorry about the double bind! I didn't mean to do that. I meant that I think article talk pages are for talking about article content, not for talking about editors. I certainly didn't mean that you should do a whole lot of work that you might not want to do. You're free to work on articles as much or as little as you want. I haven't read the FAR review yet, but I'm still planning to. I have read all or almost all the talk page Talk:Che Guevara.
  It's good that you have several books about Guevara. I only have one book, it's in French, and I haven't read much of it. Now that I'm starting to get involved with this article I think I'll read the rest of the book. I might get some books from the libary, too.
  There is nothing wrong with your message. I have no reason to criticize it in any way. It's a perfectly good message. Thank you for talking about the article and about how the article content is decided, and not saying anything to criticize other editors. It's fine to disagree. I don't mind if we disagree about things. I think the comments from the FAR review are probably important for deciding on article content. I might not agree with you exactly. I think the editors editing the page now are as important as the FAR review editors.
  You said you had a suggestion. I hope you won't be afraid to tell me what your suggestion is. --Coppertwig (talk) 18:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

• Article content is considered in general by FAR, in the sense of its importance and relevance to the article subject, and in the adequacy of its sourcing. Information, especially if it is the least bit controversial, cannot remain in the article unless in is well sourced. This is critical. Also, proportionally of information is critically evaluated by FAR. For example, if a large section in an article pertained to a particular book the subject of the article wrote, this would be deemed giving the book "undue weight" by FAR unless the article demonstrated that the writing of the one book or its impact was an important part of the subject's life. If the book was of prominent importance to the subject's life, then proportionally that should be reflected in the article. Likewise, the lead must mirror the article. There should be nothing in the lead that is not more fully explained in the article. Crucial to FAR standards are following the summary style, with a a lead correctly reflecting article content, and the core principle of wikipedia, a neutral point of view. Here are the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. As an example of how an article reaches Feature Article status to begin with and to get the flavor of the process, read Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Kannada literature which is attempting currently to become a Feature Article and get the FA star. It was even more difficult for Che Guevara because the subject is controversial. Controversial subjects rarely reach FA status. You can see that it is far from a disagreement between the editor who wrote the article and another editor, although editors may disagree. This is the process Che Guevara went through originally to receive its FA star. I believe User:Polaris999 was the main editor along with User:Zleitzen. You can see that a lot of work went into achieving the star, so it would be a shame if the article lost it now. Hope this information helps. Mattisse (Talk) 20:08, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

• I agree with everything you say there, Mattisse. I've followed a link you gave and re-read the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. Now I'm going to read the Wikipedia:Featured article review/Che Guevara. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:44, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• OK, I've read the FAR. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Mattisse and Redtnoreau, I'm very happy to see lots of comments posted by both of you at Talk:Che Guevara. You each have lots of books about Che Guevara and experience editing the article, and I think that by working together you can make the article great. I only have one book: (Che Guevara. Jean Cormier avec la collaboration de Hilda Guevara, Alberto Granada. Nouvelle édition augmentée. Editions du Rocher. 1995, 1997, 2002. ISBN 2 268 04302 9.) Anyway, I really appreciate how you're both trying hard to just talk about the article and not to say or do anything that might offend the other person. I know it can be very hard, when there's been conflict recently, to refrain from responding harshly to things the other person says or does, and I see that things got difficult today, but I think you both managed to recover and get back to just talking about what needs to be done about the article. I hope you'll both try very hard not to offend the other person, and to remember that different people see things differently, so we don't always know what will offend someone or how intense an offense is felt. To recover from difficult times, I think we each need to be very careful with our own words and actions and at the same time forgiving towards others. When we can keep calm, we can make progress improving the article. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:49, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The prototype article you suggested on the help desk

User:LoserNo1/The_Game_(game). Thanks. LoserNo1 (talk) 00:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I've put the article up for DRV here if you would like to be involved. LoserNo1 (talk) 17:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

New Messages

Hello, Coppertwig. You have new messages at User talk:Ajl772/link-title.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Three-revert rule

Regarding your message on my talk page, I do not believe that my edits in List of unaccredited institutions of higher learning violated the three-revert rule. What I was doing was, in effect, reverting repeated vandalism, while making a good-faith effort to inform Shannon Rose regarding the WP policy I was enforcing. That's hardly the first time I've reverted one user several times in a short period for repeated unconstructive edits to one article. If someone wants to block me for my efforts, so be it. --Orlady (talk) 00:10, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Regarding your more recent message, I don't believe the edits I reverted were vandalism in the strictest sense of that term. That's why my earlier comment included the modifying words "in effect." They were, however, unconstructive. Furthermore, the user repeatedly defended the edits by urging me to stop enforcing WP policy. This was happening in an article that gets a lot of attention from people with a particular special interest to push. Some are intent on removing one particular school from the list; others are (similar to the user in this particular situation) intent on adding one particular school to the list; still others add many schools to the list with the intent of diluting the negative impact of their own institution's listing in that article. Having logged more than 200 edits on that article, maybe I am sometimes too quick to revert, but I'm not interested in playing coy with single-minded users who are intent on using the article for their own purposes. If someone wants to block me for repeated reversions there, so be it. --Orlady (talk) 02:52, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Regarding your latest comment, I don't believe that GreenJoe or I were "ignoring all rules." If you look at the log you will see that during a 30-minute period after my last reversion, GreenJoe reverted two more of this user's repetitive edits. Her edit summaries on the edits he reverted said "Please stop citing WP:RS to justify your POV. You are overinterpreting WP policy." and "Please refrain from undoing constructive edits. Examine the matter well." If you look at the actual edits, you may agree with me that this was tendentious editing (a fairly mild case compared with some of the situations that GreenJoe and I have both encountered in this and related articles) by a contributor trying to simultaneously subvert and hide behind WP rules (subverting the rules by trying to cajole me into letting her ignore WP policy, and hiding behind them by writing edit summaries that attempt to represent as vandalism "janitorial" reversions of her POV-pushing edits). --Orlady (talk) 14:52, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

IRC

Can you come onto IRC on the ##RudgetKnight channel. Regards, Rudget. 13:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't think I can, sorry. I don't have IRC. How about email? --Coppertwig (talk) 13:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Neither do I. Follow the link in IRC above. :) Rudget. 13:23, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I logged in, connected to the channel, found your name and clicked "send a PM", but was not able to type anything. Not sure if you were online or not. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not able to follow the instructions for sending you a message when you're not online. The computer interprets a command starting with a slash as a search string and merely finds that string on my screen. Maybe I'm supposed to start by clicking somewhere or something. I don't know how to enter any information or commands. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't even use "/help" for more help -- again, it just interprets it as a search string. I'm using Firefox. Should I try again with a different browser? --Coppertwig (talk) 14:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

No matter, just email me. :) Rudget. 14:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

A few days later, I found out how to do this. Apparently there's an input bar at the bottom; I must have thought it was just part of the border of the page. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Diff problem

Concerning "radio buttons," now that you have described their appearance, I can say that I have one such button for each entry on an edit history page and a space where another could be but isn't. However, my problem was that the instructions for making links to diff pages in a talk page posting found at Help:Diff, which contain no mention of radio buttons, result in a link that goes to the main "Welcome" page of Wikipedia rather than to the diff page intended. Even if the alternate instructions given by User:Kralizec! work, the problem with the set formally offered remains and should be dealt with. Ted Watson (talk) 19:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I think you're right that there's a problem with those instructions. They don't seem to make sense. How could it work if you delete the name of the page? I'll look into it. But I may not necessarily know the correct instructions for making the more complicated diffs (comparing two different pages) so I might not be able to fix it.

I also plan to take the nice, simple instructions from Wikipedia:Simplest diff guide and put them into Help:diff. I'm glad you sent me this message or I might have forgotten about that.

Re the radio buttons: yes, there's usually one button for each version, and a blank space where another button could be. When you click on one button (say, halfway down the list of versions), then below it, each version will have a button at the left, and above it, each version will have a button at the right. You need to select two buttons, a left one and a right one. It's rather confusing at first. Then you click "compare selected versions" and you'll see a diff of those two versions you selected. If you then take the URL of what you're then looking at, you can put it between single square brackets to make a diff. For evidence purposes, it may be best to use only diffs of adjacent edits, so they won't say "2 intermediate versions not shown" or whatever. Only with the single-edit diffs is it clear who actually added certain words. --Coppertwig (talk) 19:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the instructions at Help:Diff were right after all. I was confused because the example used rather small numbers which I thought couldn't contain enough information to specify an individual page when there are 2 000 000 pages or whatever there are. But they must be small numbers because they're referring to old pages written back when the wiki was smaller or something. Most pages have bigger numbers. So the page name is unnecessary after all. Anyway, when I follow those instructions it does work for me. You can delete the page name and title= but must keep the question mark.

If you're still concerned about the instructions not working for you, tell us the URL that you're trying.

I added simple instructions for making a diff link to Help:Diff. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:14, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Quick question? on Tags

Can any editor place tags on an article, or must you be an administrator? Is there such thing as excessive "tagging" where in a normal editor goes around leaving 3-4 tags on the top of each article for tone, length, POV, style, etc ? Also is that particular editor then required to justify their tags ... or can they simply leave them ? Moreover, if they do not justify them, can the tags then be removed ? Thanks. Redthoreau (talk TR 09:02, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Redthoreau, it's good to hear from you. Any editor can place tags on an article. For how to use a given tag (template), see the template documentation for that tag; for example, for {{disputed}}, look at Template:disputed to see the documentation which describes in the "usage" section how to use the template. Some of the tags specify that there should be a section of the talk page describing why the tag is there, and where discussion can take place about resolving the dispute or fixing the problem. If there is a consensus on the talk page of an article that a tag can be removed, then it can be removed; however, per WP:CONSENSUS#"Askiing the other parent", "Attempts to change consensus must be based on a clear engagement with the reasons behind the current consensus", I interpret this (though it doesn't precisely apply here) to mean that when forming this consensus editors should consider the reasons why the tag was originally placed, if such reasons can be determined. Different editors may have different opinions about what the general rules are for adding and removing tags; I don't think there's a policy about tags specifically, and I'm not sure if there's a guideline. The policy WP:CONSENSUS applies, and there might or might not be a community consensus for a practice something like: for example, that if there is a dispute and at least one editor wants a dispute tag on the article then the dispute tag stays even if a majority of editors want to remove it. Some editors are opposed to having too many tags on articles.

Per WP:CONSENSUS, "Wikipedia's decisions are not based on the number of people who showed up and voted a particular way on a particular day; they are based on a system of good reasons." I interpret this to mean that in order to make any change, including adding a tag, if the change is disputed the person should provide a reason or else the change can be reverted. So if someone asks why a tag is there and nobody can find any reason for it to be there, then in my opinion it can be removed – but in my opinion a reasonable effort should be made to figure out why it's there even if the person who put it there is no longer active in editing that page. Other editors may have different opinions about adding and removing tags.

If you'd like to remove a tag and if there's no section of the talk page already associated with that tag, I'd suggest you start a section of the talk page to discuss removing the tag or to discuss the problem the tag is pointing out. When you're dealing with an article where you're pretty much the only active editor, though, or where you don't think there will be any disagreement about removing a tag, you can just remove it if you think it no longer applies. Others might then revert the removal of the tag. Regards, --Coppertwig (talk) 11:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Puzzling 3RR noticeboard

Hey Coppertwig. I notice that both of us have been commenting on some of the WP:AN/3RR issues. This noticeboard is quite hard to figure out! I look at how various admins close the issues, and I see unexpected complexities in the reasons for the verdicts. (Plus it seems like you need to have a PhD in sockpuppet issues to detect the bad-faith complaints). I did leave a message for User:Future Perfect at Sunrise to see if he wants to look at that Macedonian thing. (He did block one of the two contenders in the distant past, and seems to know the area). There also seems to be a 'staleness' rule that I don't see written down anywhere. This suggests that if (for whatever reason) no admin responds within a certain period, the complaint goes away. If true, this seems puzzling, because admins may be unavailable for whatever reason. EdJohnston (talk) 14:24, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't find it puzzling at all! As an admin, you have some leeway/license/discretion to decide within a range of possible options. For example, in the case of user Kapnisma, it would be reasonable IMNAO to block the user for 24 hours or even possibly longer, since there was a 3RR violation and the user has previously been blocked for 3RR (it was even on the same page). On the other hand, it would also be reasonable to do nothing, which may be why nothing is being done. The reason it would be reasonable to do nothing is that the user has not edited at all since very shortly after receiving the 3RR warning, now several hours ago. (It seems faintly possible to me that the user had not read the warning before the user's last edit.) As long as no editwarring is continuing, no action is needed. The report is still on the page, so that if the user comes back and reverts again, and if that revert is still in violation of 3RR or is considered editwarring, then a line can be added to the report (if anyone notices etc.) and the user can be blocked at that time. One might also consider page-protection on the grounds that the user reporting the violation did almost as many reverts as the other one; but I think page protection would be inadvisable in this case since those two have not been editing in the past few hours but meanwhile four other editors have made edits, apparently all constructive ones at a quick glance (there's a tiny bit of content-knowledge coming in there).

No knowledge of the specific subject matter of the article is required, although admins may sometimes use such knowledge to influence their decision, i.e. to decide whether someone is trying to insert unreasonable information; e.g. to decide whether to let someone off since it's apparently their first offense or to block them anyway. I believe that the spirit of the 3RR rule, though, is that use of such knowledge is quite unnecessary here. If it isn't one of the specific exceptions listed at WP:3RR such as BLP, then the admin can leave it up to the editors of the page to decide on all the content issues. If someone is trying to repeatedly put in a bad edit, then probably a number of other editors will be reverting them, and it will be clear that only one side of the edit war has violated 3RR.

Since there's a range of possible options, then admins may mention various factors that influenced their decision, which are not necesssarily the same factors that would influence another admin. Probably nobody will question the decision unless it goes beyond the range of what's considered reasonable. (which is complex, in a consensus-based system.)

Re the staleness rule: An unwritten rule, I suppose. There are unwritten rules on Wikipedia. I think that's a natural consequence of the consensus-based system. The staleness idea is a logical consequence of the policy about not using blocks as punishment, plus common sense and knowledge of usual patterns of editor behaviour. For example, if someone hasn't edited for hours, the probability that they will edit within the next hour is much smaller than if they had just edited. Ditto for reverts by the user of a specific article. Therefore, the utility of using a block to prevent reverts goes down with increasing length of time after the most recent revert (exponentially? Or is there an increase, or less of a decrease, around 9 hours later when the editor might have come back from work or sleep etc.?) Ah, it's a relief to be talking to a mathematician. :-) Anyway, the rule can't be written because there would be no agreement about what the length of time should be. Anyway, it's a matter of individual judgement, involving predicting the probability that a given editor will continue reverting, which can be a complex decision (but on the other hand one doesn't have to use a lot of complex information if one doesn't have the information).

Basically, you use the blocking and page-protecting as a tool to try to optimize some combination of maximizing freedom to edit while minimizing edit-warring. Exactly how that's done requires individual judgement, so the admin decisions can't necessarily be predicted in advance. It might be interesting to do a survey: have a bunch of admins judge the same situations, without knowledge of what other admins would do, and see how their decisions compare.

If there's currently ongoing editwarring on a page that's been reported (which is not the case at the moment, I believe) then IMNAO it's probably more important to do something (blocking or page protection, or warning if the user has not been warned) in a timely manner than to take a lot of time consulting others on what to do. One can always change the action: unblock a user and protect the page, or whatever. As long as the user has actually violated 3RR it wouldn't be an actual mistake to block them. (A user who has not violated the rule might be very upset at being blocked, even if unblocked shortly afterwards, since it will show up in their block log -- although if a case can be made that they were editwarring anyway even if they didn't violate 3RR, then maybe they have nothing to complain about.)

Is it now more puzzling, or less puzzling than before? --Coppertwig (talk) 17:11, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Hah. Did I call that one right or what? B blocked for 12 hours, halfway between the two options I said were reasonable. :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 17:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you mean. Maybe you do need a PhD in sockpuppetry to do 3RR. :-) However, I think the reason Moreschi was so hard on themself was because the user is one of about 8 or so admins listed as contacts on the Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Ararat arev page. I don't think you necessarily need to know everything. If the user doing the reverts knows they should be immune because they're reverting a banned user, they should say so in their edit summary. If they don't know they're immune, they shouldn't be doing more than 3 reverts.13:05, 26 March 2008 (UTC) --Coppertwig (talk) 21:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your informative reply. EdJohnston (talk) 00:03, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure. It's just my opinion. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:21, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I struck out part of my message above because I realized I'd left out an important possibility. Suppose the user is about 80% sure that they're reverting edits by a sockpuppet of a banned user, but they realize there is also the possibility that they're reverting edits by an innocent new user. In that case, it would probably be inappropriate to mention sockpuppets etc. in the edit summary. There might be a way to do it diplomatically -- maybe there isn't, and even if there is the user might not happen to think of it at that moment. But it probably would be appropriate to repeatedly revert, especially if one turns out later to be right.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I've had very little experience at the 3RR noticeboard before a few days ago, and am learning. I could be wrong about some other things, too.

I've noticed that the vast majority of 3RR reports are malformed. I've also noticed that in the vast majority of cases, the reportee stops reverting around the time of the report, regardless of whether the report is malformed and regardless of whether any admin does anything about it. I can think of several explanations: it may be that large numbers of reverts are very rare, so that if someone has done 4 reverts, a 5th revert is very unlikely regardless of whether a 3RR report is filed or not. It may be that the reportee becomes aware of the report in one way or another and stops reverting for that reason. And (just for epistemic completeness) I think there's one more possibility; that some other factor, such as a determined attitude on the part of the reporter, causes the report to be filed and also separately causes the reverting to stop, perhaps by means of firm or intimidating messages to the reportee. Regardless of the reason, since reverting stops anyway it may be a waste of time to complete a properly formatted report. What I might do is: just check the page histories, and if the reportee has reverted after the report was filed, then if they haven't been alerted to the existence of the report, warn them; otherwise, then finish the formatting of the report if I have time for it.

I also wonder whether the paucity of reports in the hours after I congratulated One Night In Hackney for being the only one to fill out a report correctly was because my message daunted a number of would-be reporters. Maybe it was just a slow time of day plus coincidence. :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 13:05, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

RE:Pictures

Hi, i was wondering why my images kept getting deleted off wikipedia. One of the images was GRMA ETHNIC.jpg and GRMA ETH.jpg. [it is the same image]. It was an image off http://www.ethnologue.com/show_map.asp?name=GR and it has been deleted twice for i think "copyright Violations" even though these are the terms of use : "Permission You MAY print or post copies of the JPEG versions of these maps if (1) the copyright and "watermark" are not removed, (2) the graphic is not modified, and (3) no more than three SIL JPEGs are used in any one publication or internet site. Any other use requires prior written permission from SIL International.

These maps may not be displayed on an internet site containing adult or other content objectionable to SIL International."

another image was MacedonianLanguage1980.jpg it was a map of the Macedonian language in various countries it was also deleted due to "copyright violations". It is on http://www.makedonija.info/notmap.jpg and is from an encyclopaedia. If you could help me repost these images it would be appreciated, thank you user: p m kocovski?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by P m kocovski (talk • contribs) 02:46, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Re ETHNIC.jpg: I'm pretty sure that those terms are not compatible with the GFDL. In other words, the permission they are giving allows it to be uploaded to Wikipedia (I think), but Wikipedia's policies do not accept images or other material which is under those copyright restrictions. Generally, material on Wikipedia is free to be copied by other people and posted and used in other places without having to ask permission again, though with certain conditions such as attributing it to the creators of the material. (See Wikipedia:GFDL for details.) Therefore, Wikipedia does not accept material if the material is not free to be copied like that. It was called a "copyright violation" even though I suppose you were not violating copyright law when you uploaded it, but if it were kept on Wikipedia and copied to mirror sites etc. along with all the other material on Wikipedia, it would be a copyright violation there (I think).

Note that they say something about written permission for other use. I suggest that you contact them, tell them you would like to use the image on Wikipedia, and ask them to license the image under GFDL or another compatible license. Note that it's not good enough for them to say that the image can be used on Wikipedia. It has to also be free to be used on mirror sites etc., so they have to give the appropriate permission as described in Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. I suggest you listen to what that page says more than what I say. I could have some details wrong. With copyright permission you have to get every detail right.

For the map showing where languages are spoken: I'm not sure, but I think this is the situation: the map is almost certainly copyrighted in the original encyclopedia. You could contact the publishers of that encyclopedia and ask them for permission as I described above. You could make another map that contains the same information as that map but which is completely re-drawn (not just photocopied and the colours changed etc., but a new map made by someone looking at the old map.) Then I think that new map would be fine (but note that I'm not sure – you might want to ask someone else); if you create it yourself and upload it and declare that you created it yourself etc. (and all the other upload instructions) and state that it's based on the other map then it should be OK, I think (not sure).

If you don't know how to make a map yourself, you could put a request at commons:Commons:Picture requests to ask someone to do it for you. (Before doing that or as part of the request, I'd suggest asking someone else how that works in terms of copyright.) I'm not sure if that page is only for requesting photographs or for requesting any type of image, but I think it would be OK to post a request there.

I don't think you could justify the use of the original map under the "fair use" criteria but I'm not completely sure. Again, the law might allow it to be uploaded to Wikipedia as "fair use" but Wikipedia might not accept it under those conditions. Wikipedia only allows "fair use" in specific circumstances, since completely free images are preferred. By the way, if it's not "fair use" I'm pretty sure you're supposed to upload the images to Commons, not to Wikipedia. I think usually images are uploaded to Commons, and from there can be very easily displayed in Wikipedia articles. Some images are uploaded directly to Wikipedia. I'm not sure whether there are reasons other than "fair use" for doing that.

I hope this helps. Thanks for helping Wikipedia provide freely-copiable information! --Coppertwig (talk) 13:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Discrete CPU discussion

Didn't know if you have seen my response on the Indy 4 page, since I didn't see a response. Just posting it here as well then. Discrete electronic device and digital device can mean the same thing. Something being discrete does not mean its automatically analog. As far as in relation to what to use for these articles, neither. They use ic's, so don't match the requirements of the definition at Discrete device. Likewise, "digital device" does not aptly define the separation needed here, since Microprocessor based pcb's are also "digital devices". Unfortunately the template as it stands only has CPU for a category. These early machines don't have a CPU per se, they aren't general purpose computers running code. They're state machine computers, though they do use ic's (pong uses the 7400 series for example). It might be better to move the description from "discrete" to "state machine". While most websites describe pre-microprocessor pcb's as "discrete" (which is why that was used here), I'm thinking "state machine computer" might be a better descriptive, with a link to Finite state machine. That's also what Nolan described it as (state machine). --Marty Goldberg (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Indian Religions

Thanks for your advice. However check the talk pages of Indian religions (you will need infinite patience). This issue has been discussed ad nauseam. This is the umpteenth time that IAF has indulged in edit war (with many persons) to push his POV, dubious edits and Original research on various topics. Ultimately I left it to the last edit of IAF as any further continuance was becoming very disruptive and negative. Unfortunately he has a long history of using abusive language. He has the insolence to call me a “Jackass” and my edits, which are well-referenced, as “stupid edits” and edits of an admin as “tin pottery” on the page of the Administrator here and still go scot-free. I don’t have the energy to go after him all the time on various notice boards. See if your can do something about it. Howsoever, I will follow your advice and will not delete his edit…simply I will tag it as “Dubious”. I hope that should not be a problem.--Anish (talk) 11:51, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

The claim of a unilateral edit war on my part, while being totally pliant oneself is not only banally false, but is laughable as it defies logic. For, Anishshah19 has equally frequent, stubborn, unbudged and unbecoming edits on the said article, and the last three descriptions being solely his alone. A "long history of abusive language" that he chest-beats to, are but mere usage of local slang that atmost translate to "hey dude" (yeah, but "jackass" was used when I was at the brink of despair). Lastly, Anishshah indolently doesn't realize that I was speaking to DBachmann not as an admin, but as someone who has known him through his edits for the past 2.5 years. I've "abused" him and he has likewise to me earlier too. :-)

And the "various persons" on Indian Religions are Mr. Shah himself, and this guy here who speaks for himself. The redoubtable Anishshah who is wrenching tears against so-termed "abuse" above, is known to heartily endorse Mr. Modi. Indian_Air_Force (IAF) (talk) 16:50, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I've just modified the header at the top of my talk page to make it more clear that criticisms of users other than myself are not welcome here. Politely-worded criticisms of my own behaviour are still welcome on this talk page. Messages such as "He has the insolence to call me a “Jackass”" and "has equally frequent, stubborn, unbudged and unbecoming edits "are probably not helpful anywhere on the wiki. In order to be able to collaborate, both of you need to restrict yourselves to calm language. Please comment about the content of the article, not about each other.

When I look at the article talk page what I see is a talk page which has not been edited since Feb. 21. In my opinion, when reverting you should also at about the same time post to the talk page with an explanation of your revert; or at least give a link in your edit summary to somewhere on the talk page that you have previously justified reverting the same material. Discussions are best continued on the talk page, not in edit summaries. If you're still disagreeing, then the discussion is not finished and you need to use the talk page.

I would be interested to see clear, logical reasons explained calmly on the article talk page on both sides of the issue for the edits you were disagreeing about. If such arguments already appear somewhere on the talk page, then links to them or explanations of exactly where to find them would be useful. If you post a new message to the talk page saying where to find your arguments, the new message will tend to be noticed. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:59, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually edit-summaries are the remaining options because the talk pages are saturated with whatever we've had to say many times over. Edit summaries NOW help me to concentrate the gist into a couple of sentences, comprehensible enough to the vandal and/or reverter and even possibly other editors. Indian_Air_Force (IAF) (talk) 11:43, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

No, your edit summaries don't tell me where to find the part of the talk page that contains your arguments. I still haven't seen your arguments. I might not want to read the whole talk page to try to find them. An argument short enough to be concentrated into an edit summary might be comprehensible to someone who agrees with your arguments, but is not good enough for developing new understanding and compromise between people who disagree, and is also not good enough for someone like me who doesn't know much about the subject. It might be OK to put a link in the edit summary to the part of the talk page that has your arguments, but if the other person gives counter-arguments you should continue discussion to understand each others' positions better and work towards consensus. For example, besides expressing your own arguments, you can try expressing the other person's arguments in your own words and asking the other person whether you seem to understand them correctly. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:22, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

E. Haughey

Apologies, I'm relatively new around here, so was unaware of the three edits rule. Merci bien, Belacqua Shuah (talk) 22:08, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks, I'm afraid I'm often too bold; however I will endeavour to show due restraint and follow the referred wiki protocols from now on. I appreciate you taking the time to post the links on my talk page. Cheers, Belacqua Shuah (talk) 01:15, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks...

...for the calmly conveyed info. I've almost forgotten that info can be conveyed calmly on Wikipedia! Gni (talk) 01:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome! May this be the beginning of a long series of calm interactions for you! Perhaps I should have added to my message at User talk:EdJohnston: If you wish to withdraw your report, I believe it would be OK for you to strike out your report with <s></s>. (Just the part you wrote, not the replies by others.) Boodlesthecat might appreciate that. In general, if someone has replied to a message of yours, striking out is OK because your message is still legible, so the context in which the other person replied is still apparent. I often strike out parts of my own messages -- in fact, I'm about to do that on another section of my talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If only it were so. (The beginning of a long series of calm interactions thing.) This really doesn't seem right to me. If you care to weigh in, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Thx again, 13:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gni (talk • contribs)

I'll try to remember to have a look at that later when I have time. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I read the above-mentioned ANI thread.

FYI, I consider myself a friend of EdJohsnton, which puts me in a bit of a COI (as I understand it; not necessarily as you understand it) in commenting on this situation.

I get the impression from that thread that you've edited from the CAMERA building and are likely an employee or close associate of CAMERA. I note that you don't seem to have denied these allegations nor provided any alternative explanation of why you would have edited from the CAMERA building. I'm willing to AGF that you forgot to log in, and am a little alarmed that one can get into so much trouble for forgetting to log in -- I'll have to watch out for that!

A COI can exist (as I understand it) regardless of whether one succumbs to the temptation to edit in a partial manner. The COI exists merely from being an employee or associate of the subject of the article.

Under what appear to be the circumstances, it seems very reasonable to me to limit your edits to the talk page of the article.

I've edited at least one article talk page where I had a COI. I carefully avoided editing the article, even though I believe my edits would have been useful and reasonably NPOV. I considered myself to have a COI because of a relationship, not because of the nature of my edits. I made suggestions on the talk page, and went away and left them to be used or ignored or whatever. I did this without being individually asked to do so by any admin. I did it because I had read the WP:COI guideline and it seemed to be the proper thing to do. I suggest that you do the same.

There are many other articles that need editing. Maybe you can find some articles that are interesting to edit but without the COI issues, and just spend your time on them. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:15, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Traditional unionist

For your information this user is not the innocent that he is claiming. On the day of his block he was engaged in another edit war here. And he is well aware of WP:3RR thanks. BigDunc (talk) 15:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're referring to: I don't remember seeing Traditional unionist claiming to be innocent of anything. I saw where the user had apologized on the 3RR noticeboard for violating 3RR. I've posted additional comments at User talk:Traditional unionist. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Blocked -

- the user I have. Scarian^{Call me Pat} 01:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Naw, I just checked the computer before I went to sleep. I'm sure there are scripts though to get e-mail notifications or pop-ups on the desktop for new messages. That would sure be a handy script. Glad to be of service. Well done for keeping an eye out! :-) Scarian^{Call me Pat} 13:24, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Re Che Guevara

Hello, Mattisse. I've struck out some of my words at Talk:Che Guevara. I realize that those words could be interpreted as being threatening, and I definitely don't want to contribute to a threatening atmosphere.

I oppose all personal attacks, and I encourage everyone to avoid making comments about editors. I do not condone any personal attacks by Redthoreau against you, and I do not condone any other personal attacks. I support the No personal attacks policy, which says, "Do not make personal attacks anywhere in Wikipedia. Comment on content, not on the contributor."

That policy also says, "Frequently, the best way to respond to an isolated personal attack is not to respond at all." Unfortunately, many times I see personal attacks and I don't think I can do anything effective in response to them. Too often, responding to a personal attack is perceived as another personal attack and can cause the person to get angry and attack even more. There are some situations where I believe I can do some good by responding, and then I am very glad to do so. If I do nothing in response to a personal attack, it does not mean that I condone the personal attack. I often recognize and oppose personal attacks and do nothing. I'm sorry for the way the person being attacked may feel when no one responds in their defense.

You said, "Perhaps you started off on the wrong foot by threatening me in the very beginning of your entrance on the scene, treating me very differently than Redthoreau." I have tried to treat you and Redthoreau fairly and equally, and as far as I can see I have done so. Earlier, the way I was treating you both was that if one of you replied directly to a message from me where I was asking for no comments on editors and if you included what I saw as a pejorative comment on an editor in that direct reply, then I would post a note on your talk page about it. This situation came up for you but not for Redthoreau. Since then, I've realized that that was not a good way to treat you, and I've struck out my words on your talk page and am no longer responding in that way to either you or Redthoreau when I perceive negative comments. I'm responding to negative comments when I think I can do it productively -- that is, when I think my response will be likely to lead to a reduction in negative comments in the future. I've said to both of you equally, above on my talk page, "would you please not make comments about each other (or any other editor) or about each others' behaviour or what you've done in the past, etc. for example..." and I've quoted such comments by each of you there.

Redthoreau and Mattisse, I hereby ask both of you again to please try very hard not to say anything that is likely to be perceived as a negative comment by the other person. You might also consider reading through your comments at Talk:Che Guevara and think about whether there's anything you said that the other person might appreciate having struck out with <s></s>. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:46, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Reply to Coppertwig

• (copied from Redthoreau's page)

Also note, please, that this kind of edit summary is likely to cause you trouble. Edits with which you disagree are not vandalism, and you do not own the article.

The editor that left that note on Redthoreau's page did so out of the true goodness of his heart. It let me know that there are some people that saw what was going on and will stand up for me.

Also this

This is a gentle reminder to you that it's not going to convince other editors that you have the moral high ground if you write long posts as you did here [1] which say another editor is "insane" "lies more than anyone I have ever seen" etc. I'm not involved enough to know who's right and who's wrong in this dispute, but you won't win by giving the other person ammunition to be able to argue that you are in breach of WP:NPA, if you see what I mean.

I do not know who you are or how you suddenly were thrust into my wiki life. However, once you were, I was not protected then as I was treated routinely that way by Redthoreau under your watchful eye, yet you act as if we were equally participating in that kind of thing. I made few straight forward angry posts, yes, but I never used edit summaries to abuse and I always responded to the content of his post. He caused me insane, indicated that I had mental health problems "ironically" he said because of my occupation etc. How does he know what my occupation is? That is just a taste of the rants he went on. He always attacked me and/or belittled me and never responded to the content of my posts, nor ever assumed good faith, just as you do not when it comes to me. Your responses were, well, he has every right to follow you around and post ugliness under you on other editors' talkpages, and to use your talkpage as a bulletin board to post ugly notes to others.

I do not feel that his essential character has changed just because he has to be nice now that others are watching. And I do not feel that you will suddenly change either. I resent being left "mutual" messages as if we were engaging in the same level of behavior. It will not be necessary for you to leave me any more messages to the effect that Redthoreau and Mattisse, see message on my page to the two of you Please do not do that any more. Mattisse (Talk) 04:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Mattisse. About a week or so ago, I started [trying to] help[ing] at the AN/3RR noticeboard. The Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive68#User:Redthoreau reported by User:Mattisse (Result: page protected) report was one of the first few reports I became involved with. In fact, it was the very first one -- I'd forgotten that, but I just checked. When I saw your report, I looked through the Che Guevara page history to try to find reverts which would constitute a violation of 3RR, and if I had found them I would have added them to your report, as I've done for some other 3RR reports in the past week or so. For some edits, I was not able to determine whether they were reverts or not, so I was not able to find enough reverts to report a violation. That 3RR report was how I noticed the Che Guevara page.

Because I have a book about Che Guevara and find the topic interesting, and also because it seemed to me that I might be able to help out productively by participating at that page, I've become involved in editing the page.

I would not have time to get involved that deeply in every situation I participate in at the 3RR noticeboard. In most cases, I only post a comment or two on the noticeboard or add diffs and other information to the 3RR report to make it complete. In a few cases, I've also posted comments on user talk pages or article talk pages in relation to the 3RR reports. The Che Guevara page is the only one I've gotten deeply involved in, partly because I would only have time to do that for one or a small number of pages.

I hope that explains how I got involved.

I hope you'll try not to make assumptions about me nor about my attitude towards you.

Actually, I don't think Redthoreau has any right to post ugliness about you, and that was not what I meant. I meant that if you post accusations against Redthoreau, then Redthoreau has the right to respond to those accusations in defense. However, the response should not contain ugliness or personal attacks.

Mattisse, I do assume that you are acting in good faith. Everything you're doing makes sense to me as things you could easily do in good faith.

I apologize again for over-reacting and posting a threatening message on your talk page, very early in our interactions. I thought, shortly after I posted it and before you replied, that maybe it had been a mistake. Clearly it was a mistake. The comment of yours that I was objecting to was mild, and my reaction was out of proportion. I'm very sorry because it may have gotten us started off on the wrong foot. I hope that someday you'll forgive me for that.

I could begin a practice of responding to any message between you and Redthoreau that I think is uncivil, perhaps by replying every time with something like "Please avoid making negative comments." I would be very happy to do something like that if I thought it would be helpful. However, there are problems with doing things like that.

I did something like that in a couple of other fora. The first time, it was apparently very successful; anyway, the flame wars died down. The second time, in a different forum, I tried the same strategy, but I because I didn't distinguish between regular participants and people widely considered to be "trolls", my messages apparently didn't do any good and only caused disruption and annoyance by increasing the number of messages.

The main problem is that there is no objective way to determine where to draw the line between personal attacks and things that are not personal attacks (or incivility). Some things are very clearly personal attacks. But there are other cases that are borderline. Some things will be considered to be personal attacks by some people but not by others.

In general, people usually tend to see comments towards themselves as being personal attacks more often than others see them that way, and people usually tend to see what they themselves have written as being perfectly fine, not personal attacks, even sometimes when others see them as personal attacks. That's normal human nature, I think. We need to do things to compensate for that, or else things escalate out of control.

If I were to comment or object regularly to personal attacks, then situations would probably come up like this: people would object that I was commenting on things they had said which they didn't think were very bad, while ignoring things other people said which they thought were worse. Once it seems that that is happening, then my intervention would tend to lose its effectiveness. That's one of the main reasons I'm not posting objections to specific personal attacks on a regular basis, although I oppose them within my own mind when I see them and I have posted general requests not to make personal attacks, and have quoted one or two of the things that I object to. I also object to some other things even if I haven't mentioned them specifically. If I say nothing in a specific situation, that does not mean that I condone the behaviour.

I'm really glad that some people came to your defense. I hope I may be able to do that sometimes. I hope my explanation above helps you understand why I often feel that it would be counterproductive to do that even sometimes when I want to.

Please assume good faith on Redthoreau's part. Redthoreau has expressed a willingness to avoid commenting on editors. Although before that time, Redthoreau said some definitely inappropriate things, I think that after that time, Redthoreau has been trying to avoid being uncivil, and has been better than before. I believe that, in general, the things Redthoreau said after that time are things that Redthoreau believes are civil even if you don't agree with that. You can support Redthoreau's efforts to be civil by trying to maintain a very high standard of civility yourself, making it easier for Redthoreau to maintain a level of civility. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:43, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to add: I'll try to remember not to post messages specifically addressed to both you and Redthoreau. --Coppertwig (talk) 15:40, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I do not know why you are so fixated on me and Redthoreau. Really I have been involved in the Che Guevara article only twice. Once last summer when Jimmy Wales put the POV tag no the article and Polaris999 and I tried to balance the article. Some editor, like you, stepped in and tried to act like a mediator until the whole thing blew up and the article was locked down for a month. This time again, Polaris999 was having trouble and I stepped in to try to help him. Polaris999 became unwilling because of the nasty atmosphere so I referred the article to FAR as a way of drawing public attention to the horrible problems with the article, since it was impossible for me to do anything personally. I did try for a month or so before, for the sake of Polaris999 and Zleitzen. (Zleitzen and I worked on Fidel Castro together about 1 1/2 years ago until someone destroyed the article and we both eventually deserted. Polar999 work with Zleitzen on Che Guevara, accomplishing the remarkable achievement of attaining FA for a controversial article. In it's original form, it was a beautiful article. Polaris999 and I have a bond developed from trying to save the article from various onslaughts, none as severe as what has occurred recently.)

Therefore, there is no reason for you to treat my involvement with the article any differently than any other editors. The only difference is my relationship with Polaris999 and since he will not work on the article anymore that is irrelevant. Perhaps, if you stopped linking Redthoreau and me as you do, there would be less trouble. I can say I would certainly appreciate it if you would stop, as it has caused me nothing but trouble. I urge you to consider that you are not my wikipedia parent, and that I do not need any more repetitious, patronizing messages about no personal attacks, maybe if you assume good faith etc., when that is what I have been asking for all along. Please consider that I am a grownup. Sincerely, Mattisse (Talk) 16:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

OK. --Coppertwig (talk) 20:29, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I apologize for what I said earlier which I struck out here a couple of days ago. I'm truly sorry for harm that it caused. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I hope this doesn't sound condescending, but I would like to congratulate you, Mattisse, for this edit, which I think is a good example of following the civility policy, which says"Alternatively, respond to perceived incivility with greater civility and respect. Many editors will rise to the occasion and moderate their tone to match yours." --Coppertwig (talk) 20:04, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

The information you requested...

is on my talk page (another helper asked for it too). Low Sea (talk) 03:19, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment on a proposed policy change at village pump policy

Re Wikipedia talk:No legal threats and WP:Village pump (policy)#WP:No legal threats

Oppose: It's unreasonable for Wikipedia to step outside its jurisdiction and tell people what to do in their off-wiki lives. It's unreasonable for Wikipedia to, in effect, tell people that if Wikipedia is violating their copyright or displaying libel in their BLP that they are not to take legal action. The policy has been and should be that if someone is involved in (certain categories of) legal action, then they cannot edit Wikipedia. That's reasonable, because it's about wiki-editing behaviour: who can and who cannot edit Wikipedia. That's something that Wikipedia can, and has a right to, reasonably enforce. But to go and tell people that they cannot walk into a courtroom or cannot have their lawyer mail someone a letter is just way outside the bounds of what Wikipedia ought to be doing or has any clout to enforce.
An alternative that might satisfy what the writers of the new sentence may be trying to do might be something like this: "If are taking or have taken or threatened to take legal action about a Wikipedia dispute, you may never again edit the articles that were involved in that legal action." (or "you may never again edit Wikipedia.") Perhaps that goes further than the current policy and perhaps that's not what we want the policy to say. My point is that the policy should at most prescribe on-wiki behaviour – it should not tell people what to do or what not to do off-wiki. To the extent that Wikipedia does have some power to punish non-Wikipedians for off-wiki behaviour, I definitely do not want Wikipedia to exercise that power in that way. --Coppertwig (talk) 15:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC) In other words, I think it's reasonable for the policy to say that if you're taking legal action then you can't be a Wikipedian, but I think it's not reasonable for it to say that if you're a Wikipedian then you can't take legal action (or even worse, in the proposed form, just plain you can't take legal action, no if's.)

That reminds me of a joke, which may help illustrate the point.
Two monks from different monasteries were arguing over which monastery had stricter rules. They decided they would find out: each would ask their Father Superior whether they were allowed to smoke and pray at the same time.
The first monk went to his Father Superior and said, "Father, is it acceptable for me to smoke while I'm praying?" The Father Superior said, "When you are praying, you should be respectful towards God and give your full attention to prayer. Smoking would detract from that. So no, I don't think it's a good idea to smoke while you're praying."
The other monk went to his Father Superior and asked, "Father, is it acceptable for me to pray while I'm smoking?" --Coppertwig (talk) 17:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Your post to Redthoreau

In this post to Redthoreau [2] you explain a situation to him, and at the end suggest that he recuse himself form editing the article. While I understand you desire to be helpful to Redthoreau, I find it troublesome for him to replace his own wording with your words on the article talk page, copied from your post without noting this the case. To follow your suggestions, he could have merely struck out the passages he wished to retract without copying your wording and passing it off as his own. Moreover, he has deleted your post from his page, giving the semblance of hiding the fact you sent the post at all, as those not aware of it are not going to sort through his talkpage history.

I believe that talk page is becoming too onerous. I already cannot find my place on it to respond to specific posts. To have to try to be on the alert for this sort of thing puts a double burden on the reader. The talk page has become unmanageable, in my opinion. Nothing helpful to the article is resulting. All suggestions from me seem to be taken in bad faith and responded to argumentatively (if at all) with unsourced statements. The same is happening on the RAR review page, eg to NingNut It is clear from this that the article with lose its star. Sincerely, Mattisse (Talk) 21:05, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe I will stop posting on the talkpage for the time being. All other editors besides the three of us have stopped. For me, it is not worthwhile to respond to Redthoreau as nothing construction results. I may respond if other editors (besides we three) post - and even then only if they post at the bottom or under a new heading as by using diffs I no longer can find a particular post on the article talk page. Sincerely, Mattisse (Talk) 21:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. If I post again it will have to be at the bottom, so please forgive me. You say somewhere that you posted to me there? I guess I saw it in a diff, or maybe you didn't as I can't even find the diff now so probably I am mistaken. So please don't chastise me for not following the rules as I am loss trying to find my way on that page, unless I read the whole thing each times—which is pretty grueling as much of it makes no sense to me. Mattisse (Talk) 21:33, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I did't suggest to Redthoreau that they recuse themself from editing the article. In that diff, I quote some words in quotation marks which include the word "recuse". I'm quoting Redthoreau's words. I'm not saying those words myself. Redthoreau said them first, at Talk:Che Guevara. In the diff you give, I suggest to Redthoreau that the user strike out those words.

Redthoreau has removed those words from Talk:Che Guevara. As far as I know, the user didn't copy any of my words and put them onto that talk page. I believe that Redthoreau realized that it would have been better not to say those words, and deleted them in order to improve the level of civility on the article talk page. I was happy to see that Redthoreau had deleted the words, because I thought it would improve the atmosphere on the page. It might have been better if Redthoreau had struck the words through with <s></s> instead of deleting them.

I posted a note in small letters at Talk:Che Guevara stating that Redthoreau's post had been changed.

I'll try to remember to post at the bottom as often as possible. I prefer posts at the bottom too, although for me, a post at the bottom of a section is almost as good as a post at the bottom of the page.

On my browser, I can click control-F and type a word or phrase, and the computer will find that word or phrase on the page for me. That's one way that I find the messages I want to find. Another thing I do sometimes is this: I go to the table of contents near the top of the talk page. If I know which section I want to read, I click on the title of the next section after it. Then, I can scroll up just a short distance and immediately see the last post or the last few posts in the section I'm interested in.

I find that Talk:Che Guevara recently has long threads and it takes time to find things. Maybe we could do something to make it easier. Sometimes it helps to put in some more subsection headings in the middle of long threads. We could open a new section at the bottom of the page, and then put a note at the end of another thread saying that the discussion continues in that new section. However, if there are several threads, they can't all be at the bottom at the same time. If there are some threads that are not being used any more, maybe we could archive those threads, to make the whole page smaller and simpler.

I hope you saw the messages in another section of this page, where I said to you "I apologize for what I said earlier which I struck out here a couple of days ago. I'm truly sorry for harm that it caused." and "I hope this doesn't sound condescending, but I would like to congratulate you, Mattisse, for this edit, which I think is a good example of following the civility policy, which says"Alternatively, respond to perceived incivility with greater civility and respect. Many editors will rise to the occasion and moderate their tone to match yours."" --Coppertwig (talk) 22:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I apologize if I misread the diff and you did not say what I thought. I still therefore unclear what you actually said. If I am reading this current diff correctly that I am responding to now and your words did not say what I thought I read, then that definitely shows I really cannot follow this discussion any more. It was already getting out of hand anyway, all this useless posting. The article talk page is hopeless. If I post on anything regarding this article again anywhere, it will be because I think it more than a useless post and in answer to someone beside Redthoreau. Other editors do not hang around, I notice. I will engage in no more argumentative posts. If I post something, and the response is argumentative, I will leave it at that. I will keep my eye on the article and perhaps tag problems I see, since Redhoreau requested that, athough who know what has been said and what has been changed and where! Sincerely, Mattisse (Talk) 22:23, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your apology. Don't worry about it. It was just a simple mistake and it doesn't matter. I'm not offended, in any case.

I forgot to mention this: WP:Talk page guidelines says "Users may freely remove comments from their own talk pages, though archiving is preferred." So we can't criticize Redthoreau for removing messages from the user's own talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind if I reply here to a comment of yours at Talk:Che Guevara. I'm replying here to avoid taking up more space at Talk:Che Guevara. About edit summaries: I think that to see the edit summaries you have to read through the history. You're right that most people reading the talk page would only see what's on the talk page and would not see the edit summary. They would only see the edit summary if they decide to search through the page history for it, which takes time, especially later when the edit is further down the list in the page history.

Maybe you would like Redthoreau to put back the original words and strike them out, and/or to post a copy of the edit summary (perhaps in small letters) near the message. If you want, I will ask Redthoreau to do that, but it would only be a gentle request: I can't force the user to do it. Alternatively, you can ask Redthoreau yourself. I advise against editing Redthoreau's comment yourself, (see Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Others' comments), but you can add a message (perhaps in small letters) with a copy of the edit summary or a copy of the original words, near where I put a message in small letters. Or, you can ask me to do that and I will. I think if I put Redthoreau's original words I would display them as struck out. I would not put Redthoreau's original words back into Redthoreau's comment, but I would put them as a quote in my own comment right after Redthoreau's comment. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

That would be the correct behavior for Redthoreau but, oh well. I'm not going to deal with him any more on the talk page as I cannot risk this kind of thing again. Regards, Mattisse (Talk) 13:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Personal attacks

Redthoreau is resumming his personal attacks on me. I will have to go to an admin if you cannot persuade him to stop. Please do. Mattisse (Talk) 22:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I've posted a message to Redthoreau at User talk:Redthoreau. Thank you for responding to this situation in a calm, professional manner, Mattisse. I know that can be difficult to do sometimes. You might want to read WP:Dispute resolution to find out about things you can do if we're not able to resolve things. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:10, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

No, I'll just let go of the article. Don't waste your time on anymore notes to him. They just act as fertilizer and your condoning him is supportive of his behavior. This is where wikipedia just cannot handle things if there is not a strong person to step in. Believe me, dispute resolution is not the way to go. So a beautiful article bites the dust. Without a revert it was hopeless anyway. This is what User:Polaris999 meant. He could see the writing on the wall. If it cannot be solved at this level, with number of people involved, then it is hopeless and Redthoreau reverts at will. You have basically condoned it. When there is this kind of editor, then your attitude works to enable that editor. Mattisse (Talk) 01:26, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Mattisse. I'd like to understand more clearly what you're saying to me. You said, "your condoning him is supportive of his behavior". I'd really appreciate it if you would take the time to tell me what behaviour of Redthoreau you see me as condoning, and what exactly I did that you consider to be condoning him. Thanks. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:31, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Mattisse, I have not attacked you. You have accused me of spreading inaccurate information, without providing any corroborating evidence. I take this very personal and as an attack on my integrity. If you believe the article is inaccurate then provide evidence, or desist from the accusation. Correcting your inaccuracies are not an attack, and neither is requesting that you actually provide sourced material for your viewpoints. Redthoreau (talk TR 01:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

"No, I'll just let go of the article" ~ Mattisse

This sounds like a great idea. Redthoreau (talk TR 02:01, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

(ourdent) I think the above speaks for itself as it was written subsequent to your post to him. Are you not disturbed that you post had no effect, in fact, probably prompted renewed attacks on me (see above)? You do not feel he is trying to chase me away because I persist in trying to obtain parity, though the advantage is to him through your basic acceptance of his behavior, despite your posts? Mattisse (Talk) 03:22, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

My post at User talk:Redthoreau was intended to attempt to persuade Redthoreau to calm down and apologize. It did not have the intended affect. I can attempt to influence a person but I can't control the person. I'm working on the next step. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:26, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I've posted a description of this incident at WP:AN/I --Coppertwig (talk) 03:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so very much. Mattisse (Talk) 03:38, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Unbelievable Mattisse ... so now merely agreeing you with is uncivil. I also responded on the report page to what I consider an absurd charge in its merit and implication. I guess Mattisse figured that if he tried hard enough, one day, he would find someone, that would fall for his "woe is me as I annoy and harass the hell out of him" routine. Redthoreau (talk

I feel for you Coppertwig that you allow editors to be abused on you page. Is it that you are intimidated also? I fail to understand your condoning of this behavor. Mattisse (Talk) 00:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't feel intimidated. I'm not happy about it, though. As I explained before, silence does not mean condoning. I'm sorry that you were subjected to seeing this remark directed at you. Maybe I should have posted a reply to it. There were so many other messages at Talk:Che Guevara etc. that I guess I didn't put much time into thinking about how I might productively reply to that one. Sometimes silence is the best I can do, though. I have a message at the top of my talk page asking everyone to keep messages here calm and polite and saying that criticisms of users other than myself is not welcome here. So, that already indicates what I don't condone. Maybe it wouldn't help to repeat it after every such message. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Humor vs. vitriol

Thank you for your comments. I really did intend it as humorous, and it still seems funny to me; I'm frankly baffled at the hostile response. In any event, I've already apologized twice, let's hope that ends it. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:28, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess sometimes when you laugh, people think you're laughing at them. Laughter is healthy. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Personal attacks

He is again saying I "libeled" him. If he does not withdraw that I wish you would template him. If you do not then I will haave to do it. It has become impossible for me to work any further on the article. Please get Redthoreau to withdrawn the remark. Thank you. Mattisse (Talk) 00:42, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll look into it. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I posted a message at User talk:Redthoreau. Maybe there's a misunderstanding here that can be cleared up. Redthoreau seems to think that you have accused the user of deliberately providing inaccurate information. If you are not making that accusation (for example, if you aren't saying the "deliberately" part) then I think it will help if you clarify that. You could explain that that is not what you mean.

I believe it's fine to say that something in the article is inaccurate, if that's what you believe. We have to be able to say that, or we wouldn't be able to edit articles properly. I think it's safer to just say that the sentence is inaccurate, and not to mention an editor in the same sentence as the word "inaccurate". However, if you do mention an editor in the same sentence, I think that is allowed by policy. It's just more likely that someone will feel offended.

WP:NPA says "A posting that says "Your statement about X is wrong because of information at Y", or "The paragraph you inserted into the article looks like original research", is not a personal attack." Your statement "O.K. you can revert and put the incorrect material back in the article" sounds to me rather similar to those, so I think you're allowed by policy to say that. On the other hand, your statement is not quite the same as the ones in the policy. Even if you're allowed to say that, I hope you don't mind if I make a gentle suggestion, which you don't have to do. It may be very helpful, though, if you strike it out and put different words instead. You could put words that just talk about the information being incorrect without talking about Redthoreau doing anything with it, and maybe in a separate sentence or a separate message say something about Redthoreau doing something with the information, without saying that it's incorrect. I hope you don't mind that I'm making this suggestion, because there are a lot of things that I think Redthoreau has a lot more reason to strike out and I may not have suggested that to the user (yet), though I was thinking of it. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Mattisse, Do not confuse "libel" with its legal definition, it has several, and I provided my usage definition and justification on the CG talk page. Yesterday you stated:

O.K. you can revert and put the incorrect material back in the article but you cannot remove a tag unilaterally and arbitrarily. Thanks, Mattisse (Talk) 22:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Why is Redthoreau the only editor who reverts what others contribute to the article? What is the point of FAR if this article is not to be improved? Why is inaccurate information allowed to remain? Somebody please explain to me what the rules are regarding this article. Thanks, Mattisse (Talk) 22:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

NOTE - you never showed how my information was inaccurate, or incorrect, despite the fact that I repeatedly requested it. There is nothing for me strike out, but an accusation for you to justify or retract. Redthoreau (talk TR 01:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Redthoreau: Mattisse said "the information", not "your information". Saying that some information is incorrect is allowed. I don't see the word "deliberately" there. Perhaps you could strike out the word "deliberately" in your message at Talk:Che Guevara.

Mattisse: Please, no templates. You and Redthoreau are already aware of this situation, so there's no need for any template messages in this situation. They would only make the situation worse. If necessary, see WP:Dispute resolution. I'm logging off now. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Mattisse: note message in section User talk:Coppertwig#Message for Mattisse below. --Coppertwig (talk) 10:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

The Dude is a super vandal!

The guy goes around all wikipedia and changes the numbers in lots of articles to fit his own personal agenda these are just a few of the 100s of articles he has changed the numbers in to fit his own agenda and he has violated the 3rr rule in several articles, he even created a new guy called "Bertil1234" that also reverts to his edits as can be seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Bertil124 Shipseggsbasket (talk) 06:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Stamford_Bridge&diff=151750346&oldid=148499516 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Surrender_at_Perevolochna&diff=197355718&oldid=193969900 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Northern_War&diff=156624101&oldid=154861543 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Lutter&diff=196416603&oldid=195155167 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Poltava&diff=170543992&oldid=164772597 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Agincourt&diff=151074645&oldid=148361036 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Jankov&diff=156621797&oldid=155045480 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Northern_War&diff=191750259&oldid=191691404 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Lutter&diff=196416603&oldid=195155167 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_L%C3%BCtzen_%281632%29&diff=156619495&oldid=151408514 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_N%C3%B6rdlingen_%281634%29&diff=156620676&oldid=154193835 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Hogland&diff=193104541&oldid=159451219 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Vyborg_Bay&diff=188178307&oldid=183732542 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Surrender_at_Perevolochna&diff=197355718&oldid=193969900 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Stralsund_%281715%29&diff=202175842&oldid=202060616 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_L%C3%BCtzen_%281632%29&diff=202279491&oldid=202064353 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_L%C3%BCtzen_%281632%29&diff=156619495&oldid=151408514 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_N%C3%B6rdlingen_%281634%29&diff=156620676&oldid=154193835 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Stamford_Bridge&diff=151750346&oldid=148499516 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Surrender_at_Perevolochna&diff=197355718&oldid=193969900 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Northern_War&diff=156624101&oldid=154861543 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Lutter&diff=196416603&oldid=195155167 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Poltava&diff=170543992&oldid=164772597 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Agincourt&diff=151074645&oldid=148361036 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Jankov&diff=156621797&oldid=155045480 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Lihula&diff=158573926&oldid=118383957 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_%C5%BBarn%C3%B3w&diff=158574978&oldid=149403923 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Go%C5%82%C4%85b&diff=158575350&oldid=149404376 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Breitenfeld_%281631%29&diff=156670372&oldid=154035019 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Boer_War&diff=142680023&oldid=141557949 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Breitenfeld_%281642%29&diff=156670932&oldid=151364973 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Siege_of_Sveaborg&diff=144505216&oldid=141392293 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Halmstad&diff=158581151&oldid=153212368 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=European_colonization_of_the_Americas&diff=155209058&oldid=154822496 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Narva_%281700%29&diff=156607681&oldid=156544136 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polish-Swedish_War_%281600%E2%80%931611%29&diff=158576385&oldid=144570767 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Leipzig&diff=159471074&oldid=159404810 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Helsingborg_%281710%29&diff=158579932&oldid=154418112 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_St%C3%A4ket&diff=160124405&oldid=154628096

Shipseggsbasket (talk) 06:23, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Which numbers are supported by reliable sources? Did you ask the user for reliable sources to support the numbers the user is adding? --Coppertwig (talk) 12:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Section for discussion between fictional characters A and B

This section is for discussion between fictional characters A and B. The purpose is to demonstrate how two people might converse on-wiki without too much distraction from others, while still allowing others to comment. A and B will carry on a conversation by alternating between no indentation and single-colon indentation. Other fictional characters may also post here, although they are encouraged to consider posting their comments elsewhere instead in order to avoid interrupting the discussion between A and B, and if other characters do post here, they are requested to indent using at least two colons. A and B will try not to let such posts distract them from their dialog.

I'm going to use instant pudding for the icing on the cake. --A

You can't do that. Pudding isn't icing. --B

OK, let's just call it cake with pudding on it, then. --A

OK. If we add jam and stuff, it will be trifle! --B

No, it won't. You can't make trifle with instant pudding. --C

Yes, you can -- we've done it before! --A

No, you can't. That wouldn't have been real trifle. --C

I'm going to respond to this in another section of this talk page. [Not really. That's fiction.] --A

I think I'll just keep it simple. No jam or anything. --A

Fine. I can gobble several helpings of cake with pudding. --B

Is it OK if I use this part of the counter to mix the pudding-icing? --A

Sure. I'll just move over. --B

I think it's almost ready. --A

Yum! --B

Oh -- I have to answer the doorbell. Could you please put the pudding-icing onto the cake? --A

No, I'm sorry, I can't, because I don't consider pudding to be icing. --B

OK, OK -- would you just put the pudding onto the cake, then, please? (walks away) --A

Sure, no problem. (dips finger into pudding and licks finger.) --B

The last part of the conversation also illustrates how someone might not object to the use of a phrase ("pudding-icing") when it's used to talk about what someone else is doing, but might object to the same phrase if it's within the clause of a verb of which they are the subject, i.e. if it's used to talk about what they themselves are doing. They can see themselves moving over to give someone room for whatever the person is doing, but they can't see themselves using pudding to ice a cake. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:01, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Message for Mattisse

Hi, Mattisse. You've asked me to get Redthoreau to withdraw the remark that you "libel[ed]" him. When I saw the remark about "libel" I thought that sounded rather alarming. However, Redthoreau has explained that it isn't the legal definition of "libel", but an ordinary dictionary definition.

My understanding of policy is that you're allowed to say that Redthoreau attacked you. No personal attacks policy says "Personal attacks do not include civil language used to describe an editor's actions, and when made without involving their personal character, should not be construed as personal attacks, for instance, stating "Your statement is a personal attack..." is not itself a personal attack."

In the same way, Redthoreau is also allowed to say that you attacked Redthoreau. You might not like hearing that, but it has to be allowed. It's only fair.

Redthoreau has explained the use of the word "libel", saying, "I don't view that as a personal attack, but a defense of myself against one." That's Redthoreau saying that you attacked the user. That's allowed.

So we have to take a step back and ask, "Why does Redthoreau feel attacked?" Apparently it's because of these two things you said: [3] "O.K. you can revert and put the incorrect material back in the article but you cannot remove a tag unilaterally and arbitrarily. Thanks, Mattisse" and [4] "Why is Redthoreau the only editor who reverts what others contribute to the article? What is the point of FAR if this article is not to be improved? Why is inaccurate information allowed to remain? Somebody please explain to me what the rules are regarding this article. Thanks, Mattisse".

I think the next step is up to you, Mattisse: I think you need to explain what you meant by those things. If they aren't meant to be attacks, then please explain to Redthoreau what they mean and what they don't mean. Redthoreau apparently thinks they mean that you're accusing Redthoreau of deliberately putting incorrect information into the article. In my opinion, what's needed is for you to confirm or deny this interpretation.

I think that's the best way to have a chance of influencing Redthoreau to take back the statement about libel: i.e. if you clarify, modify or take back the statements that Redthoreau was responding to.

I hope you don't find this message from me threatening. If I ever say anything that makes you feel threatened, please tell me, because I'll probably want to strike it out. I'm feeling quite contrite about having accidentally caused you to refrain from editing the article for nearly five days after it stopped being protected. That's pretty close to the exact opposite of what I was trying to do.

Maybe I should have explained at the beginning what I was trying to do. I started out helping at the 3RR noticeboard (where I'm still helping from time to time). My primary purpose there is to help prevent editwarring, which in turn helps maintain an atmosphere where people can productively edit the encyclopedia. As I see it, my primary purpose in participating with the Che Guevara article is to encourage people to follow the WP:3RR, WP:Edit war, WP:Civility and WP:No personal attacks policies. Those were the problems that (as far as I remember) seemed to come up with this article at the 3RR noticeboard. The reason I'm doing that is that I believe that's the best way to maintain an atmosphere where people can edit. If you don't feel comfortable editing when you want to, then I'm not succeeding. I don't claim to be able to succeed all the time. I'm trying.

My secondary purpose is to contribute directly to the article as an individual editor. I hope that soon we'll be spending a lot less time reacting to things people say that bother other people, and then we can all (myself included) spend more time on just editing the article.

By the way, thank you very much for not editwarring. However, I hope you won't stop editing! You can revert sometimes, too -- why not? although it's often a good idea to discuss it first. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC) (Striking out my message 17:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC))

3RR practices

Hey Coppertwig. I do agree with your last comment at the bottom of the noticeboard. I suspect that the closing admins do weigh a variety of factors. If that case had been decided according to all the reverts that can be seen in the history, both parties would have been blocked, and they are experienced contributors who've made a lot of good faith contributions. For one of the editors it would have been the first block. This ought to be avoided if a climb-down can be arranged. This might account for the seeming unpredictability of some of the 3RR results. Though the logic wasn't crystal-clear to me I do agree with the result that was obtained. EdJohnston (talk) 20:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your comment. Nice to hear from you. I enjoy seeing your comments from time to time at 3RR; it sort-of feels as if we're working together.

My warning and comment may have been a mistake for a couple of reasons: seeming to criticize B; pushing Matt Lweis too hard (criticizing for 3RR when he had just been criticized for copyright); and undiplomatic wording in my warning, part of which I've just struck out while replying to him. I almost didn't post my comment to the noticeboard after posting the warning; it might have been better not to post; and could have perhaps spent a little more time wording it. When I posted the warning (and maybe when I posted the comment) I hadn't read Matt Lewis' comments in capital letters about not knowing about the copyright. Maybe if I'd seen that earlier I would have done nothing. However, the warning may still have done some good, too. It's hard to know. I don't know whether B decided to overlook the 3RR violation, or didn't consider it because nobody had provided a list of diffs, or what. Maybe B thought copyright was more important and only wanted to criticize one thing at a time. I was puzzled about why Matt Lewis would post a 3RR report while violating 3RR; maybe he didn't understand the rules and would benefit from the warning.

A violation doesn't lead inevitably to a block. If the parties seem to have stopped editwarring, then no block is issued, even if there is a violation. My warning was so he would understand that a violation had occurred in order to better be able to avoid violating again in future e.g. on another article.

I wasn't wanting or expecting any admin to respond to my comment by blocking him. (Maybe I should have said so.) The reverts were 15 hours previously, and there had been communication etc. so the edit war was over. I used the pluperfect tense to give the impression that it was in the past. I could have been more explicit about that. However, if he had reverted an additional time (within the 24h) after I had posted those warnings, then I would have wanted the warnings to be available to contribute to a possible blocking decision. That was much of the point of them: sort-of a deterrent, making it clear that further reverts were being discouraged.

And this is a relatively simple situation ... :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 21:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

You might not have seen all of my earlier replies to you at the Puzzling 3RR noticeboard section of this talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for follow-up. I hadn't realized that no block would generally be issued if the reverting has stopped. I'll try to parse future cases using that bit of data. I have noticed that both the reporter and reportee are often uncertain about just how the reverts are counted. So each party may be trying to figure out how to stop short of the edge, but they often get it wrong! EdJohnston (talk) 01:32, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Stopping just short of the edge is called WP:Gaming the system (See example 4.) Not knowing the precise rules is called needing to spend some time reviewing policies. (And having just read Example 4 there, I realize I have to pay a little more attention to the content of the reverts, since I suppose whether they're "good edits" or not actually does come into play somewhat, over and above the specific exceptions listed at WP:3RR.)

Blocks are used for prevention, not for punishment. An edit war can be stopped in a number of ways: by doing nothing (parties stop on their own); with warnings/discussion; with page protection; or with blocks. The method which causes the least damage is chosen. Taking these things into account, blocking in a "stale" situation makes no sense. (Hmm -- what about warning in a stale situation? I will think about.) However, with longer-term problems, a block might still sometimes be used even when there have been no edits for e.g. about 24 hours (apparently, based on recent experience at the 3RR noticeboard.) It depends on one's assessment of the probability of future revert warring.

Even if someone has done a very large number of reverts, if they've said they'll stop and they seem to have stopped, given the policy about not using blocks for punishment, I don't think it makes any sense to block them, especially if you AGF about their statement that they'll stop. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:06, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Clarification: I was in no way criticizing B. It's just that I thought it might look as if I was, which was (one reason) why I hesitated to post my comment. --Coppertwig (talk) 11:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

See also WP:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR#What might happen for a list of ways admins respond to 3RR violations. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)