User talk:Tromboneborges

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Hello, Tromboneborges, Welcome to Wikipedia!

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Happy editing!

This is a bit belated, but Welcome anyway. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:33, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Cylion? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 7 July 2005 18:21 (UTC)

I asked because you signed his message for him (your first edit). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 7 July 2005 18:47 (UTC)

Ah, mystery solved (and my apologies to Cylion for the mistake concerning her sex). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 7 July 2005 20:07 (UTC)

VFD signature

Thanks for explaining that bit. No offense was meant by the tag, it's simply standard operating procedure on the VFD page to mark new/anon user edits to make it easier for administrators to sort out votes. --FCYTravis 03:29, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

re "Cassandra Claire" article -- let's avoid another revert war :)

Hi Haukurth -- just wanted to address the Cassandra Claire edits in a slightly better context than a one-line edit summary. :)

When there was a real Cassandra Claire article, as you'll see in the history and in the discussion page for it, it was vandalized, over and over again, by one or more people who felt it was the proper place to disseminate fandom-specific controversies, rumors, and general vitriol about Cassie; there were a number of edit wars, and in part, the VfD that led to the redirect was an attempt to take away the controversy surrounding the *person* of Cassandra Claire while maintaining the presence of her most well-known work in Wikipedia at all.

I'm a fan of Cassandra Claire's and I think she deserves positive attention, but this seems to be a great example of why fancruft can be a problem -- because it brings fandom people who are otherwise unconnected with Wikipedia in to have fandom-related fights in the form of revert wars and long comments in the discussion page of the article (check out that discussion page; it's a disaster). Although it would be nice for her to have a Wikipedia page that merely noted her accomplishments, that doesn't, at the moment at least, seem possible without a lot of messy controversy and vandalism; I don't particularly want to babysit that article every day and I doubt you do either.

Cassie's first original novel should be released by Simon & Schuster in the first half of 2007, which hopefully will allow her to have a Wikipedia article without any need to have big conversations about what is and isn't fancruft and with enough people paying attention to avoid the vandalism. Till then, it's my opinion that the VSD article is what is going to stay unvandalized (which it has so far). Seriously, check out the discussion page for the Cassandra Claire article and some of the old history, and check out the VfD. This was a /mess/.

I'd like to hear your thoughts; I appreciate what you're trying to do, I just feel like I've been here before and it leads to mess from a Wikipedia perspective and a vandalized article full of defamatory content linked to Cassie's name, which doesn't quite seem to be in her best interests.

Sorry for the length of this, and thanks. Hope to hear back from you. Tromboneborges 12:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your assessment of the situation is almost certainly correct. There was wank when Cassie had an article and in restoring the article we will increase the probability of more wank.

But that's just not a good enough reason not to have an article on her. Wikipedia's job is to distribute knowledge - not to act in the best interests of Cassandra Claire as you or I perceive them. Cassandra Claire is a notable topic and we already have a little article on her. Hiding that article from our readers runs counter to Wikipedia's goals.

I will undertake to babysit the article. I'll have it on my watchlist and as long as I'm active here I'll quickly revert any vandalism. I'll also do my best to ensure that any criticism edited into the article is not disproportional.

If vandalism gets completely out of control - and I don't think that's likely - then Wikipedia has mechanisms to deal with that, such as semi-protection. Look at the edit history of George W. Bush and you'll see some serious action :)

I won't restore the article again while we're discussing this. Let me know what you think. - Haukur 13:40, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My wife helped me update the entry a bit, this is how it stands now: [1] I've also archived the wank on the talk page, see Talk:Cassandra Claire. Please let us know what you think. - Haukur 22:53, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I might add that after the John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy people around here are much more conscious of the need to watch the biographies of living people for libel and inaccuracies. - Haukur 23:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Still waiting to hear from you :) Sorry for the impatience - 24 hours is just such an enormous amount of time in wiki-land. If you'd feel more comfortable discussing this in private mail you are welcome to contact me that way. - Haukur 13:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Still haven't heard from you and I don't have the attention span to wait any longer :) I'll restore the article for now, explaining my reasoning on its talk page. Feel free to make it into a redirect again when you get back if you feel more discussion is needed. - Haukur 19:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]