User talk:Matt57/Archives/2007/August

From Muhammad to Elonka

Matt, I do respect your interpretation. What I ask you to suppose is that other Wikipedians might conclude one policy weighs a little heavier and another a little lighter. It's one thing to jettison WP:CENSOR and AFD the pornography articles (or compromise with those who do). I've stood very firm against that impulse - whatever topic is at hand - and if I thought that were operating with Elonka I'd be as opposed to this nomination as you are.

When I put Daniel Brandt's and Seth Finkelstein's biographies up for deletion I asked people to tip the consensus scale a bit lighter on WP:V and heavier at WP:BLP. I did my best to clarify exactly how far that would go - to give a reasoned basis for the request - and consensus did shift. I don't recall whether you agreed with me on that one or not, but you may know Daniel Brandt repaid me by adding my username to his "Hive Mind" page, which was poor sportsmanship to say the least. But I don't regret asking the community to weigh that balance. And I don't think I was breaking WP:V on that scale.

At Joan of Arc (who in some odd ways is a good parallel to Muhammad when you think about it) I dealt with an opposite challenge: a strongly Catholic POV dominated the article throughout, and as a reflection of that nearly all of the images were devotional portraits when I began editing. That really didn't convey very much to the reader because the only actual portrait she sat for was lost in the fifteenth century. So I found a photo of the house where she was born (it still stands) and a period map of France and the ruin of the castle where she met the king of France, a fortification from one of her battles, an actual portrait of the king she crowned, and a photo of the cathedral where the coronation took place. I even added an image of her signature. And that approach - I am absolutely certain - was more informative and more NPOV. That page page got featured in part through those efforts so maybe I'm onto something? Durova^Charge! 23:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry you're having to deal with criticism of Elonka. I feel you shouldnt. You should nominate and let her go. People who deserve to be an admin find it no problem defending themselves at an RfA (well first they dont let people find anything to criticize about). Then if she can be a good admin, believe me its her who should be writing the responses you wrote above. Instead if you look at her RfA, she's not responding to people much as if she doesnt care. Not caring is what I saw at the Kaab article too. She wanted her way, thats it. Good admins work with people and listen and talk to them and show a genuine concern. That was exceptional stuff then you did at the Joan of Arc, you went out of your way literally to get the pictures and improve the article. We already had the images for Kaaba. The last thing we needed is something coming and trying to get those images out and as Beit Or put it so succintly: "An admin should know better than arguing for the removal of images as Elonka did on Talk:Kaaba. The community cannot entrust the tools to an editor for whom someone's sentiments trump policy.", but really you shouldnt feel you have to defend Elonka. Its she who should stand up for everything she's done and said. Its possible to have a great sense of judgement and rationale. Here's one RfA that passed with flying colors recently. If you look at this user's contribs, she has an excellent sense of judgement and rationale and I supported her, so its not that I'm hammering everyone. So again, these were historic images like no other and in short, policy was overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the images. CENSOR applies very strongly. UNDUE applies very weak. Having images of Muhammad around is now not a minority affair anyway because of Muhammad cartoons being printed everywhere. So UNDUE applies very weak.

Its all there on her talk page. If she becomes an admin, you can be sure as one user put it, she's one admin that might need to be de-sysopped and therefore, why go through the trouble. She's a good editor and all, but being an admin requires solid rational thinking in the right direction. Thats not what I saw happening in Kaaba. It was all wrong. She was trying to make people happy I think and it back fired. One should do the right thing, no matter what. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 01:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Tell you what? I'm serious about the offer I made in my conomination. I hope I never need to make good on it and I don't think I will, but bear it in mind. Regards, Durova^Charge! 15:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

If you had to make that kind of safety route just in case, its not safe. A person should be an admin if no one could even dream of them getting an rfc. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 01:21, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Top level article

Hi there. Can you tell me what a 'top level article' is and where I can find policy on top level articles in Wikipedia, especially as regards categorisation ? TIA. MP ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

You still haven't answered the question. I have been trying to clear up the Islam category page for a while and have only just got round to completing that task. The articles that I have kept, I chose very judiciously. MP ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I've seen that WP page and it says nothing about which articles should be placed in the top level category page. The only reason I want List of Islamic terms in Arabic in the Islam cat page is that it is one of the main things that users of WP will want to look at; exactly the same argument goes for Portal:Islam. Using your argument, if the former is removed, then so should the latter. MP ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

If you think its justified, sounds good to me. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 01:17, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Elonka's RfA

You seem pretty solidly against Elonka's adminship and this is of course perfectly fine. However, this is going way overboard. Please assume good faith and remember to keep a cool head when expressing your thoughts. Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 19:22, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

That advice came from the heart. If she really did say sorry to people, it would all be over. She should have went for a Editor review before standing up for another RfA to make sure she was in the right place before doing an rfa, especially that she'd had problems before. I think she just doesnt care. If she did, she would make amends. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 01:57, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry but I reverted that last addition. This is completely uncalled for. A couple of editors have already told you to cool down. As I said, I don't mind you opposing Elonka but civility is paramount and you seem to have lost track of it. Pascal.Tesson 02:36, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I most certainly will not get into an edit war over this. But I stand by my initial evaluation that your tone on Elonka's RfA is grossly inappropriate and that your point could be made without it. Pascal.Tesson 03:42, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Kirbytime sock?

Hi Matt, can you please use your Kirby nose and have a sniff at [1] this dude? Prester John ^{-(Talk to the Hand)} 00:19, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Kirby nose, hehe. Kirbytime wasnt able to do a cleanup job like that one. If it involves actually writing anything, he couldnt have done that. But its a sock of someone alright. The way he removed a link to Allegations of Israeli apartheid and replaced it with Anti-Arabism, I would have reverted his edit on the basis of just that. Keep talking to him. Maybe he's reverting to someone else's earlier version. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 01:55, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

regarding edits to Islam/suicide articles

WorldNetDaily is not a reliable source, and certainly not a reliable source for attributing statements to the Pentagon. ITAQALLAH 18:55, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

That article is mostly OR. This has a video of a sheikh saying suicide bombings are OK in Islam. Also someone who is being supported by tax dollars essentially says the same thing here. Arrow740 20:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

and there are plenty of others- the majority, in fact- who say otherwise. regardless, are you claiming that WND is a reliable source or not? ITAQALLAH 21:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

For criticism, yes. For statements of fact, generally not. A critic's statements about facts used to further an argument would fall in the former category. Arrow740 21:42, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

extremist, unscholarly sources aren't "reliable sources" for "criticism". ITAQALLAH 21:54, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

The fact that you are labeling them as such indicates that they are probably notable critics. Arrow740 22:00, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello Matt57

Hello. I am RS2007. Why don't you want to became the administrator? I looked at your contributions and I think you have done a great job. Best of luck! RS2007 13:03, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Chigs image

I don't have the second image. It was uploaded by User:Q Original, not by me. Anyway: User:Matthew (coincidence of your names is... fascinating) first broke 3RRR.LexingtonDark 11:33, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Stanley Dunin edit

In this edit, where you remove information for not having sources, you actually removed several sources.

• "The paper was first presented at the ARS 17th Annual Meeting and Space Flight Exposition in Los Angeles, in November 1962, and published in the AIAA Journal in March 1964." That's a source, the AIAA Journal, March 1964.
• [2] was an embedded link. That's another source. (It's apparently moved to [3], looking at the Internet Archive.) --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 14:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Not everyone who presents a paper in that journal is notable. The other link has nothing on Dunin. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:17, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

That's not my point; you'll notice I didn't say a word about whether the subject is notable or not. If you believe the person isn't notable enough for an article, the way to show that is to nominate the article for deletion, not to delete information from their article. Not every bit of information in an article has to individually suffice to make the person in the article notable or be deleted, merely the sum of it. The second link seems to be referring to his company. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, my point is that you deleted sources from the article. Please restore them, and the sourced information. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:29, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

No, the right way is to first place a {{notability}} tag in an article, so people are given some time to establish notability if it exists. You're an admin. How come you dont know this? We need multiple 3rd party non-trivial reliable sources in order for the article to stay. I want to give people the time to find those sources. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Nothing of importance to restore there. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:37, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

With respect, there is no such tag in the article. And it doesn't seem appropriate to remove those sources that do exist, if your goal is to encourage people to find more. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm waiting for Elonka to respond about all this. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:46, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah. I suspected it might be that, but didn't want to assume bad faith. This should be about the article, not about your relations with any particular editor. Deleting information in order to get a specific editor to respond is called disrupting the encyclopedia to make a point. If you want Elonka to respond, post on her talk page, not on an encyclopedia article. Reverting, and cautioning you to be more careful. If you want to delete unsourced content, don't delete the sources along with it. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:54, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

?? What are you doing? You didnt have to restore all the information. You're being disruptive by putting back unsourced information. Please dont do that again. Dont put back unsourced OR back into the article. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 16:46, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

You think its okay to create 8 new articles about my family members and write about what they do in their spare time and who they married and how many kids they had and where they worked? --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 16:59, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I never said a word about your family members, and don't intend to, since I don't know who you are. If you're William Wales or Marlon Jackson then having 8 articles about your family members would be easily appropriate. If you're asking me about Stanley Dunin specifically, I'm not sure if he meets Wikipedia:Notability (people). But it's not a speedy delete, there's certainly some assertion of notability. However that wasn't my point, which was deletion of sourced information. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 18:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that's much more careful. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 18:02, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Aol Vandal

Where did you found that His excellency was the parent sock of the AOL vandal that has been vandalizing the same Canadian Conservative-opponent politician articles for several weeks. If it's the case, then this is important for sock reports. I was trying to found the main puppeteer for weeks. I've tought that User:Aol Worker was the main puppet. Thanks again.--JForget 23:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I was guessing from the fact that he's had other IP's in virginia before ([4]) and the way he suddenly comes and edits Islam related articles. If that politician has nothing to do with Islam, it might be someone else. But you're the head quarters may be in the same location while the sock puppet might be in a different location.--Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 23:49, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elonka 2

Thank you for taking the time to participate at the discussion in my Request for Adminship. Unfortunately the nomination did not succeed, but please rest assured that I am still in full support of the Wikipedia project. I listened carefully to all concerns, and will do my best to incorporate all of the constructive advice that I received, into my future actions on Wikipedia. Best wishes, Elonka 03:37, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Dunin Articles - Vanity?

Hey, don't gut the articles. You can try AfD on some of the weakest ones. Also, run Google searches and see if other references exist. If they do, add them in good faith. Your opinion will carry a lot more weight if you do it the way I suggest. You reputation is a lot more important than whether these articles survive or not. Jehochman ^Talk 03:37, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jeho, thanks, I'm waiting for Elonka's response on this before doing anything further. I did do a search for Antonin Dunin and found nothing on Google except references from Elonka. Yes I'll definitely try my best to justify inclusion before afd'ing any article because if people can find references easily, it'll reflect badly on the AfD. On many articles, I've not seen any non-trivial 3prd party references so lets see if anyone can find them. If they can be included, the unsourced OR has to go in any case. thanks for checking. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 03:44, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I will support AfD on at least two of these articles if things remain as they are today. It's probably better to leave in all the content if AfD is the solution. If AfD fails, then they could be stubbed. Better to do that after everyone has a chance to look and a consensus emerges. Jehochman ^Talk 03:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh, thanks, yea, I'll deal with one article at a time, giving it plenty of time. Alright then, I'll look into leaving the content back before Afd'ing, if thats the right thing to do. I'll ask people around who have edited the articles in any way if they can find more sources. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 03:52, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

One more thing: article leads don't need to be referenced (but can be). The lead summarizes the rest of the article. If the lead says something that is explained later on with a references, that is sufficient. Jehochman ^Talk 06:17, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

thanks, got it. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 12:37, 5 August 2007 (UTC)