User talk:Eloquence

I will respond to messages on this page. Please check your contributions list ("My contributions") for responses. If there is a response, your edit is no longer the "top" edit in the list.

Unlike other Wikipedians I don't archive Talk pages since old contents are automatically archived anyway - if you want to access previous comments use the "Older versions" function. But I keep a log of the removals:

Removed all comments prior to Jan 2003. --Eloquence 04:42 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments prior to Feb 2003. --Eloquence 10:19 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments prior to March 2003. --Eloquence 21:19 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

Removed all comments prior to April 2003. --Eloquence 08:14 25 May 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to May 31 2003. -Eloquence 19:14 31 May 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to June 21, 2003. --Eloquence 18:58 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to July 3, 2003. --Eloquence 21:51 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to July 22, 2003. --Eloquence 09:07 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

File:Tournesol(S).jpg

this page is far too much textual... Anthère

Thanks for the flowers -- I thought we were only supposed to give those to women? ;-) Now, if you could isolate one of those sunflowers, you could implement my logo suggestion .. --Eloquence

KingTurtle seemed to imply that was not fair...so my offer of wikimoney for flowers switched to WikiMen some time ago. Anyway, I rarely follow these kind of sexist conventions. No pb to isolate a sunflower, I have about ... 20 picts of those I made 2 weeks ago. I can apply a filter to make it appear more designed than pict. But, only when I am back, which would require that the date limit is slightly pushed further. Or I could make a quick hack ? However, who said sunflowers were not a very good idea perhaps, because of some political smell ? :-) Some one will then say I am pushing my political ideology...:-§

I am going to protect the page once again. I have already received support for this decision since I am not an antagonist in this conflict, never having edited the page other than to restore the version supported by every user but Nostrum. Please see the talk page for the reasons why measures have to be taken against adding the content at question.

His charges that I'm somehow "biased" are slanderous. I could care less about the raging controversy on Wiki over the sex abuse scandal. I have never touched that topic before tonight. I'm only biased against irrelevant, poorly written, and non-encyclopedic content being added to a very important article. 172

I fail to see how someone can say himself not an antagonist in a conflict when he restore one version over the other before protecting the page again. Even if 172 does not contribute in the article (in adding stuff to it), reverting to a particular version is definitly "an active support" of one side over the other. This removes any credibility in the neutrality claim. Perhaps the definition of active contribution, active support and passive support need to be defined.

In any case, I think the page has to be protected. However, the way it was done, actively suppressing one version over the other, was not done proper imho. Actively choosing the other version would have been perhaps not neutral either. I missed a coin to flip ! So, I did an bihead solution. Not pretty, but less offensive. I already did similar things on the fr wiki, I don't know if practiced here. But I just could not let that be. ant

Thank you for unprotecting the catholicism page. Your words were enlightening and I deeply envy your unbiased conceptualization process. Thank you for allowing me to express the truth in the best manner I can. Don't allow this comment to prevent you from criticizing my work. I enjoy the criticism of others just as much as their approval. Nostrum 09:45 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think your edits definitely need to be reworked and possibly moved elsewhere, but I don't like how the matter has been handled so far. Let's see if we can come up with a diplomatic solution. Welcome to Wikipedia, by the way. --Eloquence 12:05 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

My respect for you increased by a third of a point following your actions regarding 172. Pizza Puzzle

Damn. That sounds like I made a mistake. --Eloquence

Well, now it dropped about 5 points. Pizza Puzzle

Mmmh. With all those pseudonyms, that's gotta add up. --Eloquence 14:31 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

As for the nice and fun things in Wikipedia, such as creating new admins, CYD has accepted on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, and Zippy applied, by the way. כסיף Cyp 12:57 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm not apologizing. My protection of the page was justified. It received support beforehand and I have since noticed that it has been defended.

BTW, this comment on the mailing list by Jimmy Wales seems to support my action: "Sysops should generally not edit a page that has been protected due to a dispute, whether or not they were involved in the edit war to start with. I say "generally not" because of course there can be exceptions, for example rolling back to a version before the edit war might be useful in some cases, or attempting a one-shot temporary compromise."

What I did followed the guidelines, according to the exceptions Mr. Wales explained above. My edits only rolled back to a version before the edit war, the version without the incoherent, poorly written essay. Before the edit war, I had not even read the page, let alone edit it.

When my sysop privileges are reinstated, I promise to continue following the protected page guidelines. 172

and me, me and him and anthere and the two vandals... Pizza Puzzle

Sorry 172. But what you did was neither reverting to a version *previous* to the edit war (which was 51 edits ago [1]) nor an attempt in compromise in any way (since it just consisted in reverting all the other editor edits). What you did was not following these two guidelines Jimbo mentionned. Don't try to mislead us here. We can all make mistakes from time to time. Especially in an edit war with heated spirits. That is no big deal in the end.user:Anthere

Even all this aside, what about protecting Imperialism and Talk: New Imperialism? Pizza Puzzle

It was the last version not containing the content that caused the edit war. I opted to restore the last version by Jtdril so that the restoration wouldn't be so drastic. My actions were completely correct. Perhaps, however, I should have better explained my actions. But I was doing too many things at once, such as writing several in-depth articles yet to be posted, searching for news online, watching cable news on television, and the research activities that I'm actually supposed to be doing. 172

Nod. You should have explained. And take more time to ponder perhaps. It is not as if having a bad article 2 hours instead of 10 mn is gonna change the world :-) In particular if you put a warning banner at the top to indicate readers that the article is contencious Eh, most of us react too strongly one time or another, in search of our own vision of perfection. This is *so* painful to see what we consider crap inserted in articles. If you can't assume all these activities, consider taking a break in some of them. And in the time gained, after cooling, consider carefully what Erik wrote on ML.

I am feeling in a philosophical mood today, perhaps am I gonna do that sunflower after all...or write a political rant on the fr wiki...hum

Something odd - QANTAS redirects to Qantas but isn't listed on BackLinks:Qantas. Also, a link to QANTAS seems to be stub-coloured, rather than article-coloured like normal redirects... Evercat 19:43 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

QANTAS was deleted at one point, and I restored it. Probably related to that, somehow. The Undeletion didn't show on the deletion log as I expected, and the deletion didn't disappear, either. Doesn't explain why something is strange though, just why the strange things decided to happen to that particular redirect. כסיף Cyp 22:23 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd like to respond to more guidelines that Mr. Wales laid out. I am certain that I acted according to those guidelines.

"Q1. Have I been involved in the edit war?

A1. Yes --> don't protect the page, and it's probably best to let the other person win for today to end the edit war, and if the remaining participants keep having an edit war, ask another uninvolved sysop to protect the page."

I had never edited the page prior to this edit war and I have never added content to the page. The article's history demonstrates that I only restored versions, which were to be protected, that did not contain the content responsible for the edit wars. Personally, I was the ideal person to stabilize the page, being of no faith and never having participated in topics pertaining to the sex-abuse scandal. I have not contributed a word to the article.

A2. No --> protect the page, proceed to Q2.

Q2. Is there some edit that needs to be urgently made to fix the page, or is there some very cautious thing I could do that's likely to help for now?

Yes, there was an urgent need to edit the page. Due to Nostrum's repeated refusals to cooperate with the other contributors, I was forced to restore the latest version not to include the unacceptable content.

A2. Cautiously make the edit.

And that's what I did until you overreacted, probably unaware at the time that I was not involved in the edit war, have never expressed any strong feelings about the subject, had been asked to protect the page, have read requests to protect the page, waited cautiously while the article was stable before protecting the page, warning all involved contributors that I'd be willing to protect the page, and finally unaware of the unacceptable quality of the text. 172

I acknowledge that as a sysop I should relegate the protection of pages in these cases to other sysops who were not substantially involved in the dispute. I maintain that I acted within these boundaries when protecting Catholicism, especially after Jimbo twice clarified some exceptions on the mailing list today. Since I have acknowledged that I will continue to follow these guidelines, you should live up to what you declared earlier: that when I make this acknowledgement you will restore my sysop status "immediately". To placate you, I will adhere to a more conservative interpretation of the guidelines in the future and better articulate reasons for protection. 172

When you say that you will adhere to a more conservative interpretation of the guidelines, do you mean that you would not protect a page like Catholicism in a situation like the one yesterday, where you clearly took position against the page and then protected it? What about the protection of New Imperialism which several people were uncomfortable with? Note that I am not accusing you of anything -- I just want to be sure that we are talking the same language. --Eloquence 09:07 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

While I agree with much of the sentiment posted on the mailing list arguing that your actions were far more of an abuse of power than my protection of Catholicism and that your actions were frankly unprecedented when considering past disputes of sysop powers, for the sake of avoiding a protracted dispute, I won't press this issue. As much as I dislike dealing with such hypothetical questions as the ones you're asking above, I will contend that while a looser (and perhaps legitimate and justified) interpretation of the guidelines would support all of the actions at question, including those pertaining to New Imperialism, I will in the future adhere to a more conservative one, which would have entailed only protecting the New Imperialism page in case of blatant vandalism and would have entailed me being more communicative before protecting Catholicism. Concerning the latter, being more communicative and convincing when explaining that I am not a participant would have enabled me to build up enough of a clear consensus behind the protection to avoid the kind of controversy that we're dealing with right now.

By the way, I think that there is some kind of ulterior motive behind your demands that I answer you hypothetical questions in a certain way before you revoke your actions suspending my sysop status. You came under considerable criticism for your heavy-handed actions regarding my sysop status. Perhaps you want a contrite "I was wrong and you were right" response from me to counter your own criticism. Yesterday, after all, you stated that you would reinstate my admin status once I acknowledged the guidelines. Now you're turning it effectively into acknowledging that your actions were justified. In short, if I were acting according to this "more conservative interpretation," the New Imperialism protections would not have occurred. But the Catholicism protection would have occurred in context of having mediated the situation more effectively and better conveyed before the fact that I was in a proper position to protect the page. 172

Actually, you are incorrect that such action is unprecedented, see e.g. the case of my removal of Kils' sysop status. You are also incorrect that I came under "considerable criticism" -- the only person to criticize my actions besides yourself was Jtdirl, which should be obvious since you two were on the same side from the beginning in the Talk:Catholicism dispute. On the other hand I received support from Anthere, Pizza Puzzle, Camembert and Michael Becker, and Jimbo emailed me privately saying that he agreed with my actions but that it might have been better to let him do it. So it's quite clear that my actions were widely supported, although perhaps I should have given you more time to react to my criticism.

I don't care about any admission of guilt or "I was wrong and you were right" type apologies. Your promise to respect the guidelines as we discussed them is good enough for me. I do hope that future exchanges will be less unpleasant. --Eloquence 11:26 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Come on. Your line up of supporters doesn't prove anything. Jimbo, who probably hasn't read the content being used to vandalize the Catholicism page, was probably swayed by the far greater influence that you have over him than I have. Anthere jumped in after the protection, after all the charges of me having a stake in the article were conjured up by Nostrum and Pizza Puzzle (Lir/Vera Cruz, etc). Michael Becker was probably more than willing to castigate me after I rebuked him for his conduct concerning Paektu. And Pizza Puzzle? Come on? We're talking about Lir/Vera here! This is a user who has been targeting me for half a year, probably because of a behavioral disorder and my propensity to usually be among the first to recognize the reappearances of banned presence. However, I'm at fault for allowing myself to be out-talked and out-argued by the self-serving whining of trolls and vandals who unfortunately influenced some credible users, like yourself. 172

While Jimbo trusts me to a certain extent, he always checks exactly what happened in cases like this one. The simple fact is that we are both concerned about any blurring of the sysop/editor distinction. Of the other persons you name, I only share your opinion regarding PP, but he has been declared an unbanned user by Jimbo for the time being, so he should be treated as one. If you want PP to be (re-)banned, please present evidence that he is the same person as Lir to Jimbo. I hope you are not referring to anyone else besides PP as "whining trolls and vandals". --Eloquence

Anthere has been watching the article ever since MB mentionned the issue on the ML. Hence, hours before it was first protected by you. When she woke up, Anthere looked at the article, and noticed it was stable again, so did not feel the need to protect it at all. A few hours later, when she came back for lunch, she noticed your edits and read your pov from her questions, and thought it was inappropriate that you protected the page yourself. And said so.

Anthere did not jump in after the protection, she voiced her concern during/after the protection. Which is different :-) Recommand that you drop the matter and goes back to editing. Everyone seems to have expressed hir opinion. Thanks for listening (well, reading) :-) Have a good day. Anthère

I was referring to Nostrum as such. Being involved with education basically all my life, I know the type all to well: an arrogant teenager who thinks that he knows everything just because his IQ is in a fairly high range. BTW, he's the only user who's been going around declaring how smart he is. Meanwhile, he hasn't been deferential to contributors who have considerable expertise in Catholicism. In the real world, Jtdril, for instance, would be literally able to throw that rant in a garbage can and flunk him.

Work done, I put Greek religion on the list of Wikipedia:duplicate articles and left a message to User:Ihcoyc to merge the articles. Notified about your advice to keep a log of my removals when I do it. Many thanks. The Warlock 05:45 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ok, I'll back off on "sadistic tyrants." even though I think that whether or not you think the U.S. is an imperialist rouge nation, it is objective fact that Saddam, Uday, Adolf, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin were all "sadistic", by any rational definition, and "tyrants", by any rational definition.

What does Uday have to do with Stalin? Well, they're both sadistic tyrants.

Still, it's not worth it. I'll back off.

Saw the "friendly dictators" page. It's obvious that you and I are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. I don't deny either that the U.S. government at some point supported Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Saddam and Uday Hussein. The U.S. government bears some responsibility for the reign of Pol Pot. The U.S. government, unlike the British, French, and Soviet governments, was not complicit with aiding Hitler by giving him diplomatice cover for his conquests of Czechoslovakia or Poland. Governments, like people, make mistakes. Think of the millions of sincere Leftists that supported Stalin through the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, until Khrushchev's secret speech? There was agreat deal of evidence was already massacring millions, but they chose to ignore that out of a higher ideal to Communism, just as the U.S. ignored brutality in the Cold War out of fidelity to anti-Communism.

First, while we have more than enough evidence regarding Saddam's behavior, and it would not surprise me if all the stories about his sons were true, it would be naive to just assume that they are and present that assumption as unquestionable fact, given the massive use of propaganda by the US in the Second and Third Gulf War and the engagement of professional public relations companies to manufacture and distribute lies which are engineered to arouse the public's support. This is why we have to be careful with phrases like "sadistic tyrants" -- we don't really know what we know. See also Weapons of Mass Deception on Disinfopedia.

Second, it would be equally naive and unnecessarily forgiving to explain each supported dictator, each ignored atrocity with "governments making mistakes." In fact, such an attitude lends itself to selective enforcement that is perfectly in line with the government's actions: If a government supports a dictator, it is acknowledged after the fact that it made an unfortunate mistake. If it wages a war, it is "doing the right thing." Critical citizens should not adopt such an attitude towards their government, as it reinforces the very "mistakes" that are supposedly criticized. Instead, we need to ask deeper questions: Why were certain "mistakes" made? Who benefited from it? Who benefits from deposing Saddam Hussein, who benefited from keeping Pinochet in power? Only if these questions are satisfactorily answered can it be determined if the government is indeed acting in the interest of its citizens, and if it isn't, whether it needs to be replaced.

Just labeling the "evildoers" as such does not do anyone any good, it will only make us look unprofessional. If people want to get the same information as on Fox News, they might as well tune in for the original and ditch the imitation. Wikipedia can and will do better than that. --Eloquence 18:31 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

---

Some time ago you gave me some decent feedback on Battle of Vicksburg, which I plan to fix up sometime. I recently wrote a fair-sized page on Revolution of 1848, the failures of which sent several of my German ancestors to America ... curious if you had ideas or suggestions, how it looks in general, blah, blah, blah. I searched all over for maps of Europe in 1848 & found nothing. Thanks; if you are too busy & say, "Go away," that's OK. --dino

From Wikipedia:Requests for adminship - User:RickK has been nominated and has accepted. Evercat 01:30 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

And, btw; should you been asked to proceed to the sysopping of a french editor called Ellisk, please, I would appreciate that you put it on hold till I am back. I did not hear anything about him asking, but with holidays, we have very few sysops left, so someone could have the idea to launch a new campaign (which we should plan pretty soon I think, but the newbies are clearly not aware of some aspects yet).

I would appreciate to have time to phrase my strong objections to this were that to happen. Thanks in advance.

your challenge for the weeks to come :-)

Hi Eloquence,

I understand, why you deleted Antheres eyes from the Wikipedia:Brilliant pictures. I added now the image to the article about Eyes, so they are no longer "standing around". Is this now better? Thanks for your comments, Fantasy 17:24 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Fine with me. Seems to fit well in terms of scale. --Eloquence 17:32 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Fantasy 17:37 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Calling Surrealist Subversions "yet another Boyer promotional link" is a real stretch. This book is one of the most significant anthologies in the history of surrealism, larger and covering a wider range than Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion ever did. Its publication was not only one of the most significant moments in the history of The Surrealist Movement in the United States but was significant in the history of surrealism as a whole. The book was introduced and edited by others, and published by a publisher with whom I have no connexion -- I have no position with Autonomedia, and it has never published anything by me. I did contribute two articles and a drawing to the anthology, but that represents an extremely small portion of it, and I would certainly have worked on this article, and would lobby for its inclusion, if I had no contributions in it. --Daniel C. Boyer 16:55 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'll take your word that "Surrealist Subversions" is "one of the most significant anthologies in the history of surrealism." Whether a book should be listed on the main page for that year (e.g. 2002) depends, however, more on its overall cultural importance than on the importance for the particular niche it is published in. For instance, the 2002 edition of "Java for Dummies" may have been all the rage among computer programmers, but people outside the field have hardly taken notice of it. "Surrealist Subversions" produces 200 Google hits, not exactly indicating extraordinary cultural significance. A search for my own website name, infoAnarchy, which is unique, returns 11,600 results (if I exclude the pages which are part of the site; 24,900 otherwise). A search for my own name produces 1,120 results (if I exclude other people with similar names; 7,240 otherwise).

I know this kind of metric is terribly unfair because it is biased in favor of online activities; even so, any book that had a major cultural impact in the year 2002 would certainly produce more than 200 results. And we're not just talking about cheap mass market paperbacks. A search for Marquez' "Vivir para Contarla" returns 6600 results.

Maybe "Surrealist Subversions" is not a D.C. Boyer promotional link, but on the 2002 page, it is at least a surrealist promotional link. It's OK to have it on 2002 in literature, but in general, I would prefer it if you would let others write about works you were involved with instead of starting the pages about them -- this makes it look less like self-promotional activity. If Surrealist Subversions was so important, then I'm sure a surrealist who was not featured in it would eventually have come along and started a page about it. --Eloquence 17:56 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hallo Erik, Du hast ja diese super Idee mit dem Logo-contest gehabt. Hab aber bei ct noch keine Nachricht dazu gesehen. Hab ich sie nur übersehen, oder sollte man denen mal schreiben (Du hast glaub ich eh ganz gute Kontakte ;-) Bis zum 20. August sind nicht mehr so viele ct Ausgaben... Fantasy 21:12 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Naja, ob das unbedingt da reinpasst, weiß ich nicht.. wenn, dann wohl eher auf http://www.heise.de. Die haben aber in den letzten Monaten schon ziemlich viel über uns gebracht, so dass ich das nicht unbedingt überstrapazieren will. Ich denke, wir werden auch so genügend Logos kriegen. Kannst aber gerne einen Hinweis an newstips at heise.de schicken.—Eloquence 23:34 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for feedback on statistics. Backslash replaced. Could you please confirm that navigation works fine now? Thanks. And yes, I am a Windows user. MSIE does not care about slash/backslash. One of the few things they got right then, I presume. I had been thinking about gplot already, but I'll start with html bar charts. They can be very nice as well, when done properly. Erik Zachte 13:33 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Jtdirl has protected New Imperialism, as part of an "edit war" in which he was part. This is an abuse of his sysop powers. 172 has also previously protected this page (and the talk page) unilaterally. Pizza Puzzle

I'm not sure I understand completely -- didn't you keep asking for the page to be protected? --—Eloquence

Jtdirl is a participator in the debate. I asked for somebody to protect it from Jtdirl. Pizza Puzzle

I have temporarily protected the page to ask other users for an adjudication. I am not a participant in the editing of the text in any way and I have made it clear that I respect both 172's and PP's efforts. The question is simple:

Should a temp page that is not a communally edited text but a rival to the main article be advertised as a rival on the main page? If we were saying that everyone was re-writing the temp and the main page was going to be replaced by the rewrite such a mention might be warranted. In this case, it is in effect two rival articles. I question in the circumstances whether it is correct to advertise both rivals on the one page. I have asked PP to desist for a while while this was explored. He has refused and continually reinserted the link to his draft, a link which he agreed could be removed as part of the arrangement to came things down by allowing the creation of his vision of the page on the temp page. Pending a resolution of this problem, which I expect will be shift, I protected the page to allow a decision to be made. The issue is not the rival merits of both articles; that is a different article. The issue is simply how to deal with the existence of two rival articles and should the temp be put on the main page as a link?

In the meantime I also redesigned the top of the talk page to increase the visibility of the link to PP's temp page. FearÉIREANN 14:10 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)