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 revisions are automatically archived anyway - if you want to access previous comments use the "Page history" 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)
Removed all comments up to August 28, 2003.—Eloquence 02:11, Aug 28, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to October 15, 2003.—Eloquence 22:39, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to December 5, 2003.—Eloquence 15:17, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to December 20, 2003.—Eloquence 12:42, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)

Discussion

true seal fixed - thanks

Gahhh - some major brainfade was the cause of that. The redirect should point to earless seal, not eared seal. Fixed now. Perhaps it could use some fleshing out but I'm going to bed. Tommorow. Thanks for the heads-up! Tannin 14:13, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Life in the Freezer

Oops! Missed your "Work in progress" note. Sorry. Andy Mabbett 19:23, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

NPOV Tutorial

Hi Erik, the Mother Teresa discussions on the village pump were turning into nothing but a slanging match so I've refactored and moved only what was relevant to the NPOV tutorial talk page. I saw you wrote you were going to take a break from the MT article. That might be for the best as you don't want one article to cause you to burnout. Don't worry, there are plenty of others who will be keeping an eye on it. Even though their views may not exactly reflect yours, it doesn't mean the article is going to fall into complete disrepair if you leave it alone a couple of weeks. Angela . 05:03, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

With sections like "positive secular quotations concerning Mother Teresa", it's certainly not improving. But amusing in the way that some traffic accidents can be amusing if you ignore the tragedy. In terms of NPOV, these accidents happen all over Wikipedia, especially on articles where religion and science, faith and facts collide. But while it's noble to help the victims of these accidents, it might be time to think about improving traffic safety. And that's what I'm going to do.—Eloquence

Hello Eloquence. I have something very strange on your talk page. I can edit it, but simple display stops just after "User talk:" string, and so I don't see the text. I have tried other users talk page, and don't have the same problem. Very mysterious bug. gbog

Now text is back... Strange... May be my proxy is bad.gbog

---

Book of Mormon Controversies

Where do you stand on this effort? Still interested? I have given the idea plenty of thought and perhaps can see your POV. What do you think of this idea? Is this an approriate way to think of organizing things?

The Mormonism Controversy is an issue unto itself. Has resulted in deaths on both sides. Deserves an article with some name.
We should have only one main Mormonism Controversy article. All other Mormonism articles should not be Controversy oriented.
Disputes about the Book of Mormon could be organized on the Mormonism Controversy article, with pointers to various more general articles on American Archealogy, Book of Mormon Chiasmus, Solomon Spaulding, Book of Mormon Animals, etc.

That frankly seems to make the situation worse. My main criticism was that the current structure reduces the visibility of the controversies. If all of them are relegated to a single overview page, then what remains in the main articles? "All other Mormonism articles should not be Controversy oriented"? What do you mean with "controversy oriented"? I'm not asking to make them oriented toward controversy, but to include controversies in these articles (with summaries and links to detailed articles). Any page with "controversies" in the title sounds like a divergence from NPOV to me.

However, I think it will be better to discuss this issue in the abstract, that is, to develop a general policy on such matters. That would avoid the emotional component of the issue and once we have clear rules, we can apply them to all articles about controversial issues consistently. It also seems unfair to me to single out the Mormonism articles here as other articles are equally concerned. Would you be interested in participating in such a general policy discussion?—Eloquence

Good points. I don't know that I have the experience needed to discuss other articles with any knowledge, but since the resulting answer needs to be in harmony with all Wikidom, I want to lean that way. But realize that my examples will have to be from the Mormonism Controversy background.

My thoughts on this are still rather fluid, so feel free to guide me through, and I will do the best to help implement the result in the Mormonism articles.

My latest thoughts run like this (forgve my lame formatting):

Hawstom on Controversy

Controversy Breeds Entropy

Much of the Mormonism Controversy discussion tends to be quite undisciplined, with the result that any given Mormonism related page might become burdened with all kinds of extraneous information. For example, on the Book of Mormon page we ended up with discussions about the LDS Church doctrine of the Godhead. When discussions get heated (like the Mormonism Controversy), people have a hard time staying on the subject at hand. And issues tend to get mixed up (eg. LDS Church and Book of Mormon)

Controversy Breeds Redundancy

Amid a heated discussion, like the Book of Mormon page had turned into and the Book of Mormon Controversies is tending toward, all sorts of information ends up on a page that is better left to other pages.

Controversy Creates New Topics

Many new topics arise from controversy. Mormonism examples include

Book of Mormon Language (Linguistics)
Book of Mormon Archealogy
Book of Mormon Authorship
Book of Mormon Theology
Book of Mormon Peoples

These new topics become serious areas of study and knowledge as serious combatants tackle them.

Controversy Discussion is Distracting

When I go to read about Islam, I don't want to see page after page of discussion. I want to see the distillation of the key issues with references to serious studies. Similarly, reading about Chiasmus and Smithsonian statements or The Three Witnesses on the Book of Mormon or a Book of Mormon Controversies page is too much. Distill it and refer! That way no separate Controversies page is needed.

Hiding Controversy is un-Wiki

When I go to the page on Joseph Smith, Jr., I expect to see in the very first paragraph that he is "the controversial Mormon Prophet" or "Heated controversy has attended Mormonism from the day Smith told his mother, 'I have discovered for myself that Presbyterianism is not true.'" I expect to read that he had about 33 wives. I expect an index to the key core controversies about Joseph Smith. The same for the Book of Mormon and the LDS Church. While I don't want pages on pages of discussion, I want to know what is so hot about this guy and his church.

Depending on the strength of controversy, I think the fact and strength of the controversy ought to be very prominently and early mentioned in every controversial article. Even, say, an article on Oliver Cowdery might mention the "controversial connection with the Book of Mormon". It would be very hard to overstated the heat of the Mormon Controversy, so this is a good extreme case. Somewhere in the article, maybe at the end, the salient outline of the controversy should be given with pointers to other articles.

Summary

Since Mormonism is highly controversial, we might expect an unusual number of ancillary topics. We would reduce entropy and redundancy by creating new topics where serious claims and studies have been made. We would expect many Mormonism articles to mention controversy. We would expect some key articles that are the parents of key controversies to outline their controversies in non-redundant fashion:

Joseph Smith, Jr.-- visions, angels, reject creeds, new scripture, polygamy, temple, "theocracy"
Book of Mormon-- too like Bible, too unlike Bible, no real world foundation, poor language, too Smithlike, too American, etc.
LDS Church-- large, rich, authoritarian, secretive, etc.

We would have the rest of articles point to the core articles as parents. For example, under Oliver Cowdery, we might say, "Mormons look to Cowdery's testimony of the Golden Plates as a key argument in their side of the controversy about the Book of Mormon." Or under Kinderhook Plates, we might say, "Critics of Mormonism often refer to the Kinderhook Plates as an example of the susceptibility of Joseph Smith, Jr. to fraud.

Is that better? Hawstom 08:38, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Hawstom's comments. I think that articles about any controversial subject, such as the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, Jr., should not shy away from the controversies (at least by mentioning them and citing a more in-depth article on the subject), and if there is substantial information in a given aspect of the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, such as "Book of Mormon Authorship", the more in-depth page should not be a generic "controversies regarding x" page, but should be a page regarding the subtopic that is controversial. Many aspects of Mormonism are controversial, but articles with the word "controversy" in their title are so vaguely-defined that anything and everything "fits there" and it becomes a usenet forum rather than an encyclopedia article. COGDEN 03:46, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well put. And I like your recent work. It needed to be done. Hawstom 06:29, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Re: stub edits

I probably should stop doing this manually. I do think we need a bot to search malformed stub messages though. Anyway, sorry about the spam. I didn't realize it clogged that up. ;) -- Emperorbma 12:26, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Re: Man-eating lions
Wow, you're fast. OK, I'll see what I can do. -- Emperorbma 23:24, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the editing, I thought it looked a bit E2-ish... -- Emperorbma 23:36, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yeah. Watch for those overlinks to obscure articles that will never get written ;-) —Eloquence

postnatale Grüße

Hallo Erik,

Danke für Deine Ausführungen. Es ist manchmal schrecklich, wenn man reiner User verschiedenster Software ist und man daher immer einen anderen braucht, der einem was erklärt. Andererseits: Wenn es Dir gelingt, so versetze Dich einmal in einen informatikunerfahrenen Neuling, der glaubt, da sei wo ein bug, der sich dann durch verschiedene Wikipedia-Seiten klickt und schließlich bei völlig Unverständlichem landet.

Falls Du in den letzten Monaten heimlich Dein Studium (eines Deiner Studien?) beendet haben solltest, so gratuliere ich herzlich. (In diesem Zusammenhang interessiert Dich vielleicht der meines Erachtens ziemlich schräge Numerus clausus-Atikel.) Hoffe, Weihnachtsmann/Christkind haben wunschgemäß agiert.

"Achse Wien-Berlin" klingt nicht so toll, daher bloß schöne Grüße aus Wien

Kurt aka KF 00:20, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Number pages

You know what, you should just leave the number pages alone while their deletion is being discussed at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. I do not think it is right to just simply jump the gun and blank them yourself. Some people think that they should stay, and if you blank the pages, you'll just sway the vote toward deletion, and that is just not fair. Denelson83 07:03, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Nobody has questioned the deletion so far, it is just the method that is under discussion, and until someone proposes a practical alternative, this seems the most open way to do it. This is a major effort and some bulldozing is required to get it done.—Eloquence

"Nobody has questioned the deletion so far" I have. Andy Mabbett 15:36, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it's still under discussion. You may well be right that most of the numbers over 100 have too little content to be usefull and should be deleted, but IMO while disussion is going on it's better to leave the text in the pages for folks to see while their making up their minds. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 17:13, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree, blanking pages with non-offensive content is a bad idea Jack 17:19, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well, the whole point was to make the review process open instead of just deleting all nonsense pages after 7 days.—Eloquence

If your comment to me is seriously intended, then remove both the references. Clearly, in the USA, "The Derby" means the Kentucky Derby. In the UK, it means the Epsom Derby. Mentioning one but not the other is biased and contrary to theinternational nature of Wikipedia. - BRG 20:26, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree. I have removed the Epsom Derby reference.—Eloquence

You gave me a good laugh

by suggesting to Lir my association with the DHS. I'd tell him I am not with the DHS.....but that's _exactly_ what a member of the DHS would say! ;-) Happy new year, and thanks for bringing a chuckle to my day. Jwrosenzweig 23:01, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Grove

I disagree with your latest edit of Grove, and have reverted it. I merged Grove City into Grove because I don't see the point of one disambig page leading to another. Also people's surnames are sometimes used to refer to them on their own (ie Shakespeare). I always divide places by where they are in the world, and by subject because it's easier to read, and, just plain neater. Francs2000 21:22, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Disambiguation, specifically the section, "When to disambiguate", in its entirety, and feel free to comment if you have any further questions.—Eloquence 21:47, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)

Auto-Op

Can you give Angela auto-op access on #wikipedia under the nickname "Angelab" please? -- Tim Starling 15:17, Jan 2, 2004 (UTC)

Done.—Eloquence 15:32, Jan 2, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Angela . 15:40, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Memory Alpha

I had added some comments on your Memory Alpha User talk, during Wikipedia's outage. We've also been discussing your Main Page comments, and you'll probably hear from one of us later. -- Harry 17:23, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Ban me

I don't care. I will just come back again. You are not going to be partial toward one person and not another. What you are wanting to do to the Bush page is just that.

You just don't get it, do you? I'm an atheist living in Berlin who despises the present Bush administration as a corrupt club of power-grubbing madmen. Many editors working on this site are raving lefties. Many others are raving right wingers. They get along with each other just fine as long as they respect our central policy: the neutral point of view. There's no problem with your addition of "negative" information as long as you make at least a good faith effort to include counter arguments, and put the information in a full historical context.

I agree with you that the critical information about GWB should be in the main article! I just do not agree that it should be in a "Controversies" section, because such sections tend to relegate facts to the status of hearsay.

Before you decide to go into a "You can't get rid of me" mode (some people have done that, and they have lost -- we have a very sophisticated banning system), you may want to start listening to people who try to communicate with you. As it is, you do much more to hurt your cause than to help it, and you make me embarrassed to be on the same end of the political spectrum as you are.—Eloquence

I could care less of your political beliefs. If you would look at the Al Gore page, many wanted to put back the controversies section. I didnt like the idea, but lost the argument. I said then, if it goes for Gore, I would do Bush. However, people now question it saying it is "wrong" to critcize a sitting president. I stressed in the article that the debate was between Bush's statements and the opposing argument. I also said, if someone would, they can elaborate on a right wing defense. But what gets me is people being inconsistent on here. What is decided on for one public figure page, should be applied to all. I hope you see what I mean. ChrisDJackson

Some anonymous user named "Tim" said this information does not belong into the article about GWB. From this you seem to conclude that somehow there seems to be a right-wing bias in favor of GWB. That's a pretty large leap. I will defend the inclusion of critical information, as long as it is 1) redundancy-free, 2) neutrally written, 3) relevantly placed, 4) put in context, 5) not clearly false. Oh, and it shouldn't be copy & pasted from random websites either.—Eloquence

Hello, Eloquence. I have seen that you have voted "Yes" on the second poll on the peerage. I wonder if I might request you to reconsider the vote.

Firstly, I believe that, in general, the additions of articles take nothing away, but subtractions most definitely do. For instance, I would consider the case of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson. I don't think that much would be lost by adding "1st Viscount Nelson". However, the addition of "1st Viscount Nelson" is important, in my opinion, because it provides a clue to the reader as to his identity as "Lord Nelson".

Nothing would be lost by adding peerage titles to article titles. What would be lost if they were removed is consistency, and, more importantly, accuracy, for the peerage title is considered to be a part of the name of the individual in question. I therefore humbly request that you re-consider your vote. -- Lord Emsworth 19:11, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

I think that our "common names" policy is best for keeping the main articles at the expected titles, avoiding unnecessary redirects (which increase the necessary level of maintenance when page titles are changed, because double redirects have to be fixed). The less common but more accurate title can still be kept as a redirect, but the most common title should be the non-redirect one. The peerage itself should always be noted in the article, of course.—Eloquence 22:50, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

Silsor's Administratorship

On an entirely unrelated issue, I must suggest that I am astonished that you have chosen to bypass the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship page in making Silsor an administrator. I don't think that it is justified for any developer to take it upon himself or herself to grant administratorship without the approval of the users being first had (explicitly), for the administratorship ought to be granted by the authority of the users themselves. Furthermore, I submit that it is inappropriate for such an individual to enter the realm of prophecy by determining that there could possibly be no objection. The page in question is there for a purpose, and I feel that it ought not to be so easily overriden. I feel that the precedent, in general, is an undesirable one. Please note that these comments do not indicate my opposition to silsor's administratorship. -- Lord Emsworth

The RfA page has become a circle jerk where people are measured by their number of edits. It was never supposed to work that way. People should be granted admin status unless there are serious violations of trust in their behavior. Everything admins can do can be reverted.—Eloquence 02:38, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps you would like to transfer the above comment to the RfA page itself, for that seems to be the center of debate at present. I shall there respond. -- Lord Emsworth 02:42, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding "People should be granted admin status unless there are serious violations of trust in their behavior." - I would agree if there was any way of removing admin status when someone proves later they are not trustworthy, which currently is not the case. There is no process for de-sysopping someone. Many people feel The Cunctator is no longer trustworthy, but that whole discussion came to nothing. (I don't think TC should be desysopped by the way, but I recognise that a lot of people do). Angela . 04:38, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

There is a de-adminship section. If Cunctator had seriously violated his privileges, his admin status would have been removed. Obviously there is no consensus that this is the case. In his case it seems to be mostly about unprotections. Page protection is rather silly, in my opinion, now that most regulars are admins. Hopefully we can do away with it in the near future, by using MeatBall:FileReplacement instead.—Eloquence 05:21, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

Socialism

yeah, I saw your comment you made when you took Nazism off that list, and I read the talk. While I don't agree with leaving National Socialism off of the list, and I think in general the wiki (and of course this article in particular) has an imbalance in favor of Utopian Communist philosophies amongst its editors, I agree to respect the concensus here. This does bring up a serious question, which is whether voting is the basis behind wiki policy on each minor issue, and what to do when the vote gives an answer that is wrong, due to an imbalance of intense POV? Is there a lower level official able to check and balance such democracy gone wild, as Jimbo does on the big issues (banning, etc...)? I have often found myself wishing there was more to the wiki heirarchy than simply

Jimbo
Programmers/Bomis employees
sysops/admins
users w accounts (like me)
anonymous users
banned users, sock puppets, etc.

I am no anarchist (I love heirarchy, and find it everywhere) and I would like to see a place for scholors, professors and experts of varius types to have some extra say, a check and balance against mob rule. :) Jack 04:23, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I do not recall a vote on that page taking place -- the compromise seems to be a consensus-based solution. Generally we try to arrive at decisions by first seeking consensus, and if that fails completely, voting. In fact, when one of the participants strongly objects to using a vote to arrive at a decision, there's little we can do about it, as consensus is the only officially sanctioned form of decision making.

I don't think the current solution is biased. Having a list based on who has at some point called something this or that seems like a sloppy way to write an encyclopedia, especially where the consensus among reutable historians is rather clear.

Of course Wikipedia has a slight bias in favor of "Utopian Communist philosophies" -- it's an intellectual website, such websites tend to attract people with liberal/progressive views, and such people tend to have a slightly rose tinted view with regard to communism (one could also argue that conservatives tend to have a highly exaggerated view of all communist nations as hellholes where the sun never shines). But I do not see bias at work here, and our policies should help to prevent it. I am against compromises that violate NPOV -- if you feel this one does, please show me why.

As for the power structure, see Wikipedia:Power structure, there's also a mediation/arbitration scheme in the works to appeal decisions.—Eloquence 04:35, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

FoT-related talk moved to User talk:The Fellowship of the Troll, with Eloquence's permission

I won't complain about your addition to George W. Bush, but watch out for that one; I'm afraid to mark anything minor there, for fear of sparking another edit war. Good luck, Meelar 04:49, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Rename of Wikipedia:Brilliant prose

What do you think of Wikipedia:Editor's choice? Please opine at Wikipedia talk:Brilliant prose#'Brilliant prose' is a very bad name. --mav 04:58, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

On a somewhat related note, there are several nominations on Brilliant prose candidates where you objected to the nomination, your objection was addressed, but you didn't reply. I'd like to clean up some of the old nominations, but don't want to throw away a page that should be on brilliant prose, or add one that's still got a valid objection. Thanks for any clarity. Gentgeen 10:56, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I guess I saw more than were there, maybe I moved them to the archive. The only ones left are Geyser, and Richard Wagner. When I went back and reread Wagner I realized that neither of the seconders had address your objection. Thanks. Oh, is Geyser good to go then? Gentgeen 07:56, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, geyser is good to go. I didn't see anything else in the archives.—Eloquence

nowiki button

What do you think of this one [1] Dori | Talk 17:16, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

nowiki button

What do you think of this one [2] Dori | Talk 17:19, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

hallo von uwe @ usa

Lieber Erik! ich moechte Dich bitten, meinen ehemaligen sysop status wieder herzustellen. Bitte bringe mein Anliegen den sysops vor. Es ging damals um die Praesentation eines bestimmten morphologischen Bereiches des menschlichen Koerpers, an denen Eltern, Kinder und Studenten recht wild Anteil nahmen, und ich gestattete, unter meinem Namen einige Editierungen zu unternehmen. Wir haetten es auch anonym machen koennen - ich stehe zu unseren Taten. Es tut mir leid, dass sie so viel Wind erzeugten. Heute ist das Problem nicht mehr da. Ich bin gerne bereit, wieder voll mitzuarbeiten. Ich habe mindestens 15 Bilder gespendet in 6 Sprachen und viele Artikel aus dem Bereich Ozeanographie gestartet / bearbeitet. Viele Gruesse Uwe

User Uwe Kils

Professor Dr. Uwe Kils Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences Rutgers University New Brunswik New Jersey USA kils@comcast.net

Am besten mal bei Wikipedia:Requests for adminship anfragen, aber es wird wohl besser sein, ein paar Wochen mitzuarbeiten und erst dann wieder einen Antrag zu stellen.—Eloquence 22:50, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

"Go" button

You wrote me asking what I meant in my comment on VfD: You wouldn't think this if Wikipedia correctly handled capitalization when using the "Go" button.

My humble apologies! I remember when all searches were case sensitive ("starship enterprise" would not find the article "Starship Enterprise") and had not tested the functionality in many months. Thank you so much for writing this functionality, it removed an impediment to using Wikipedia that I thought was actually quite major and could turn off a lot of people.

Now my only beef is that when you type something and hit "Enter", the "Go" button should be invoked and not the "Search" button, especially now that Search doesn't work. Thanks! Tempshill 18:34, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately that behavior is browser-dependent -- in Mozilla it triggers the Go button.—Eloquence 02:45, Jan 20, 2004 (UTC)

NPOV tutorial

Is it just for the sake of length that you removed my avoiding conflicts section? I think we shouldn't count words until the article is closer to finished. Also I'm not sure where the word-limit comes from and why we should worry so much about it. I think the most important thing is that the article is mostly practical, puts its most useeful info up front and doesn't spend too many words on any one idea. Having bold headed sections enables people to skip over sections if the topic sounds familiar and they are looking for one that is addressed farther down. I don't think we have to limit the number of succint bits of "news-you-can-use" (not that I put the "avoiding conflict" section in that category, it's more of an overview). NPOV disputes are diverse. They have a lot in common that can be explained in abstract terms, but I think people in need of a tutorial aren't going to absorb well the abstract ideas, which anyway I think belong in the article on the principle of NPOV. The tutorial is a how-to for the thick-of-head, many of which I think we've both encountered in our travels here.168... 03:26, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I didn't like this section because of the majority/minority/majority methodology it proposed. I think that's a bad way to go about writing NPOV articles, and also, that "majority" and "minority" are often very misleading terms. If the majority of Americans believe that God played some role in the evolutionary process, should that view appear in every article about evolutionary biology? Obviously not. The new version is much better.

I do think the size limit is important, because I imagine the target audience as somewhat different than you do. One problem with the current NPOV policy is that it is very long and rambling and difficult to wade through. I want the NPOV tutorial to be useful for those who just want to get a quick feel for things but get most of the basic stuff right. I think the size limit helps us in applying self-discipline to get the priorities right -- anything that goes beyond this scope is probably more of an elaboration on NPOV, and would be better placed in the actual policy article, rather than the tutorial.—Eloquence 04:25, Jan 20, 2004 (UTC)

Abstract

Are you sure the abstract of Phaistos Disc is not useful to the reader? ([3]). Optim 01:43, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes. The introductory paragraph should provide a brief summary, but if the article gets so long that it needs an additional abstract (which it isn't), it might well have to be split up.—Eloquence 02:00, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)

thanks for answering. Optim 02:06, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

replace those dispute headers

See Talk:atheism. I don't mean to seem short, but that was really not an agreeable thing to have done. Jack 01:47, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Atheism

Hi. First of all, thank you for helping on the Talk:Atheism page. I just wandered by and tried to help, and it's nice to have someone with a cool head to help as well. Speaking of cool heads, and the lack thereof, would you please take a look at this and give me your opinion? (By the way, I have no intention of responding to Tannin; he doesn't appear to be in a communicative mood...) - Scooter 14:48, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Well, I do have mood swings, too. :-) My recommendation is to ignore the Conflicts between users page. No decisions seem to have ever come out of that page, but it generates a lot of bad vibes. Participating there will only make things worse - just let it die down. Both Tannin and JackLynch have good intentions, but they seem to be caught in a negative feedback loop.

There is a mediation/arbitration discussion board in the works which can be used to negotiate in cases of disputes, and to ask an arbitration board for decisions such as warnings, temporary and permanent bans. Benevolent dictator Jimbo Wales has hand selected a few people for both roles, and I'm confident they will do a good job in cooling down flamewars. The most important thing is to not let these conflicts discourage you from working on articles.—Eloquence 15:06, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)

Seems like fair advice. I'd heard some other avenues were being considered, but I didn't know what or when. Nice to see that things are developing well. Anyway, I've said my piece at the Conflicts between users page; no need to revisit it now. - Scooter 07:56, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Edit toolbar feedback

I can't post to the mailing list from my current location so am leaving feedback about the editting toolbar available at the test wiki here. I went to test it not expecting to be impressed - particularly as I am used to typing the wiki syntax I thought it might be more gimmick than useful. I am happy to say however that I reversed my opinion completely on using it. I think this toolbar will be very useful for newer editors and to an extent older editors too. In my opinion new editors will be able to reproduce standard layouts more easily than they currently do. Older editors will be able to make changes just that little bit quicker. I am using IE5.5. IMO therefore it is worth the time being spent to get the best possible set of features for other browsers so that this feature can be turned in live wikis. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 13:31, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, the edit toolbar does everything it's supposed to do on IE. Wikipedia of course has an unusually high number of Netscape/Moz users - 14.5% - so it's important to get things right in these browsers as well. I won't rest until the toolbar is activated by default, though. :-) —Eloquence 15:12, Jan 26, 2004 (UTC)

Alternative medicine.

The neutrality of Alternative medicine is being disputed. The changes that I have made are perfectly valid. The old article was a total mess. -- Mr-Natural-Health 15:37, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Slashdot trolling phenomena

Hi Eloquence, you objected to the sparcity of quotations and examples in Slashdot trolling phenomena when it was listed on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. I've put an example of something that might be done to change this so it might be able to qualify for featured article status, so if you have a minute would you pop over to Talk:Slashdot trolling phenomena, I wanted to check to make sure that what I'm suggesting would improve the article in your opinion. Cheers :) Fabiform 02:26, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Atheism

If you were not a (very) high ranking admin, I would revert your recent edit. As it is, I expect you to provide citations for all of it, or I will slowly return all of it (w citations). The only part that IMO was in any way justified was the removal of my comment regarding the lack of wide use of the "soft atheism" term, but I have cited that before (listing google hist). If you don't like my old citation I'll find one better. I request that you discuss your decisions in talk, and refrain from undoing edits I make without placing your own citations. I, in return, promise to discuss in a reasonable manner changes made, and will go out of my way to cite everything I do on this page. Thank you for your kind attentions, Jack 11:29, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

apparently you were right about the scientists as well, the link was broken when I made my edit, and I wasn't aware there was such an article. Jack 11:40, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Apologies for the "sneaky removal" comment - I did not notice that the old link was broken. Please provide a citation other than an inaccurate Google search (it linked to a search for "soft atheism" rather than "weak atheism") for your claim that there is some "controversy" surrounding these terms. —Eloquence 12:09, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

Bias

Please explain to me how the bias of having prisoners in the sample will still be present after removing prisoners from the sample.—Eloquence 00:02, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)

It not just the question of having prisoners in the sample or not, it's the question of what persons are included in the sample, which are excluded, and how the sample is choosen. To be unbiased, every person in a population should have an equal opportunity to be included in the sample taken. Therefore, if the original sample don't fulfil this request, it's impossible to afterward correct the sample to be unbiased, whether you remove some people from the sample or not. The bias will always be present. Den fjättrade ankan 06:29, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This point is already addressed in the Duberman quotation. A certain degree of non-random questioning is almost inevitable in sex research, because the likelihood of people willing to answer questions varies according to their sexual belief system (as does their sexual behavior). The section of the Kinsey Reports article deals with examining Kinsey's methodology and pointing out any problems with it -- Kinsey can't be blamed for the problems that are inherent in sex research. In my opinion, the quotation is fully sufficient to explain the matter, and tacking on a redundant "But it was still biased" paragraph smacks of POV.—Eloquence 07:31, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Anthony is on IRC with questions about being blocked. - Hephaestos 16:30, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

G/g

I honestly think you might be underestimating how cooperative I am. I agree w 90% of the suggestions you recently made on Talk:atheism. I simply want respect of common usage, and reliable sourcing. I tried to make a compromise substituting "deity" but I quickly realized that was misrepresenting all sources, which use "God or gods". I am waiting on the arbitration committee to get ready enough for me to take my case against Kenneth there, but what I am looking from them is this: For Kenneth to be banned. For myself and Bryan (as well as anyone else who feels they are strongly biased) to voluntarily leave the atheism and agnosticism pages (and avoid one another). I don't think it takes much inspection to observe that Kenneth is consistently abusive, and that Bryan and I appear to have a propensity for edit warring with one another that is quite simply unhelpful to the page quality. Its VERY clear to me that if a handful of the editors were removed from these above mentioned pages, they would quickly find themselves in much better repair. To be perfectly frank I profoundly dislike the subject of atheism. It has been agonizingly unpleasant debating it, discussing it, even being around it and studying it, for these past couple weeks. I would have gladly left long ago, but I don't feel right leaving a page w people like Kenneth in charge. Now, I feel a bit trapped in this ugly situation, and have at times gotten angry enough by what I feel to be administorial bias I have considered leaving the wiki. Even now, I am no longer recommending the site to friends, and don't plan to do so again until issues of trolling, flaming, and disputes of accuracy/NPOV have a useful process to alleviate them. I have great hopes for the wiki, but I no longer have the unmitigated optimism about it I had a month ago. Rather, I see terrible problems, and a slow pace towards solutions. Solutions do appear to be in sight however, and I see nothing but good in statements from Jimbo, and policies I have reviewed. I sincerely do want to make this a better place, rather than somehow corrupting it to my POV. Thank you, Jack 21:02, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Factual contradictions

Hi Eloquence,

I was wondering if you could tell me the best way to resolve a factual error in which two articles claim two mutually exclusive things. For example, in the articles on US States, it is said that both Connecticut and Massachusetts have the second highest per capita income, right after New Jersey, which in its article claims to have the fourth highest per capita income. How can this be resolved?

Thanks!

Acegikmo1 05:32, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)

This is usually caused by differently dated data. Your best bet would be to google for an up to date dataset for all states, and to update the articles accordingly.—Eloquence

Allegation of abuse of your sysop powers

Eloquence - I just thought I'd let you know that the more I find out about this supposed "abuse" of your powers, the more I think you were right. (Which is why I've defended you so vigoriously). →Raul654 16:16, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)

MPAA

Hi, I noticed you reverted my changes to Motion Picture Association of America. Next time you disagree with me on an edit, could you please notify me? It would help; I didn't notice the ongoing controversy until now. I've since rewritten the article, following a series of edits by other users. As for the quote, there's really no way to include quotes without POV. A note about Valenti's opposition to VCRs etc. would be appreciated, though. Thanks, Meelar 20:43, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Quotes are an integral and fundamental part of any encyclopedia that wants to be taken seriously. Of course they are "POV", but that does not mean that they are in contradiction with NPOV anymore than the statement "Christians believe that Jesus Christ is their personal savior" is. NPOV is about attribution of points of view, not about their elimination.—Eloquence 21:15, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)

Understandable, but...I have one problem with the inclusion of quotes. There's an inherent selection bias, since only the most outrageous quotes will be noticed and remembered. And really, they don't do anything that a simple statement of the person's beliefs can't accomplish. Since everyone seems roughly OK with the current version--and since the quote now has context, rather than simply making Valenti look foolish--I'll bow my head and leave it in, but even with context, I'm not sure it belongs in an article.Meelar

Anthony DiPierro

I see no evidence that User:Anthony DiPierro was a "vandal" or "troll", merely that he was in an edit war with you over whether to include a site he runs on the list of site running MediaWiki. Banning a user you're involved in an edit war with is in rather poor taste. In particular, it is explicitly against Wikipedia's policy to ban logged-in users with a history of legitimate contributions without a decision from either Jimbo or the arbitration committee. --Delirium 05:27, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)

Very well put. I was about to say pretty much the same thing. But I would like to add that there are some extenuating circumstance due to the fact that Jimbo isn't involved in banning decisions anymore and the mediation and arbitration process has not been finalized yet. So in a vacuum of power like that, vigilantes do tend to try to enforce order. --mav 05:32, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)