This is an archive of past discussions about User:Andrewa. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Re your pseudo-civil missive at WT:Manual of Style#Good faith: Please follow your own AGF advice, and see also WP:SANCTIONGAMING, points 1, 3 and 5. You can't cast aspersions about other editors and their mentalities/competence/character/motivations while trying to use the CYA tactic of studiously avoiding naming them, and just waving your hand nebulously at an entire class of editors without evidence, and accusing them of the incivility you're engaging in. It's disturbingly WP:KETTLE for you to go to WT:MOS to deliver an AGF lecture that is laced with suggestions that people who disagree with you should just get chased off Wikipedia and that, by the way, they're all so insufferable they'll surely be kicked out of other sites. That's just plain nasty. If you believe there is "any editor who wants to use the MOS ... as a gun to hold at another editor's head", and who is "probably best seen off the premises", that's a serious accusation and proposition. Take the matter to ANI or AE, and be prepared to prove both the allegations of actions and intent, and to support the site ban or indef block you suggest as the most productive outcome. You know there is a procedure for this, and that vaguely maligning people at the talk page of a guideline is not that procedure. (Cf. BOOMERANG in that regard.)
Your participation at MoS has historically been remarkably unconstructive, generating heat but no light. No one needs another fiasco like your POINTy 2014 reigniting of the long-dormant species capitalization debate [1], seemingly just for the hell of it. The original goal was "to clean up WP:NCFAUNA, WP:NCFLORA, MOS:CAPS and any other relevant pages to stop POV-forking from MOS" [2], a routine WP:POLICY synchronization operation, in the wake of a lower-casing decision at RM, per MOS:LIFE, which was in turn upheld at MR. Despite all that previous process in multiple venues, and stable MOS:LIFE wording on the matter for years, you forum-shopped that into a futile rehash about carving out some "special" guideline compliance exemption for a particular wikiproject/topic, leading to one of the most heated RfC debates in WP history (albeit with a 40–15 landslide for lower case). Several editors quit over it. I've gone to great pains to prevent a repeat of that disaster (one began to loom almost immediately afterward, about breed capitalization, and I've managed to head that off for two and half years so far; it is perfectly fine that MoS does not provide a firm rule about such names; we have stability through consistent results at RM, and that is sufficient).
Now you've popped back up to not only take up the "wikiprojects versus MoS" soapbox again, you're also encouragnig more long-term editors to quit over style disputes and go to other sites, or threatening to make them leave? Does that seem like conduct becoming of a Wikipedia administrator to you? How many debacles does it take for you to concede that WP:CONLEVEL is a policy and that is hasn't magically disappeared overnight (and that style disputes get worse rather than resolved when you engage your anti-centralization activism in them)? WP is never going to have style dictated willy-nilly at the wikiproject or individual article level. This was tried in the very beginning, it was a dismal and constant failure, and WP has evolved further and further away from that model for over a decade and a half. The river will not change course because you stand in it and shake your fist. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:38, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
I think you have misunderstood much of what I said.
But you have made similar comments at WT:MOS, and said that you would take them up on my user talk page. [3]
You seem to think that there are behavioural issues, but have not been specific. Pseudo-civil sounds like you want to accuse me of violating wp:civility, but can't because I haven't.
Three questions:
1. Do you wish to raise a civility issue at this time?
2. Do you wish to raise any other behavioural issue at this time?
3. If the answer to either 1 or 2 is yes, what specifically?
The first two questions should be easy yes/no answers. The third can wait if you wish.
I'm very glad you are concerned at loss of editors. So am I. And I agree that civility issues, in fact heated debate of any kind, are a problem that can lose editors. Andrewa (talk) 10:59, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
I think I've made it abundantly clear already. See the "It's disturbingly WP:KETTLE ..." sentence in particular. If you can't understand how or why it's a CIVIL, AGF, and ASPERSIONS problem to say such things about other editors – saying that they need to be kicked off the system and predicting they'll be kicked out of other projects – on the basis of nothing but your own assumptions about their motivations, mentalities, competence, and character, I'm not sure what else to tell you. If you don't understand that lacing that with a nebulous threat of administrative action, in a style-centralization extended debate in which you have been clearly INVOLVED since at least 2014, is an admin behavior/judgement problem, then I'm not sure what else to tell you. The low-drama way to address such things is to take them to user talk first, which I've done. I trust that, despite the NOTGETTINGIT / LAWYER act you're pulling here, that you actually do understand these things and that there won't be a repeat of these antics. Ask yourself honestly if you think pursuing that angle is adding anything constructive or is likely to.
Aside: Incivility is certainly a problem, but I didn't say "heated debate of any kind [is] a problem that can lose editors", so you are not "agreeing" with me by shoehorning that straw man in there. A large number of debates on WP are heated. Much of this heat actually does bring light, and is usually found at our most significant and most culturally difficult articles, on politics, religion, [pseudo]science, and other topics of major international import. WP does not have a principle that debates must be dispassionate, only that our encyclopedic prose must be. These debates forge better articles, albeit the hard way (which is often the only way when the topic itself is challenging and subject to intense real-world interpretational dispute, sometimes to the level of armed conflict), and they tend to attract editors not repel them. When that balance shifts toward the unconstructive negative, we have ArbCom, which seems to mostly have been dealing with it.
I'll leave it at that, since this is the holiday season. Even if it weren't, a reduction in strife is what I'm after, not a shifting of it from a guideline talk page to a user talk page. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:10, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
You have not answered either of questions 1 and 2. I think it is imperative that you do so.
I obviously didn't make myself clear as to what I was agreeing to. I was agreeing that civility issues are a problem that can lose editors. The addition is my opinion. Do you disagree with it? Just curious.
Nor have I suggested kicking anyone out of Wikipedia. That's just your inaccurate paraphrase. I have said that if people insist on an extreme position with regard to the MOS (and used the metaphor of holding a gun at someone's head to stress just how extreme a position I'm describing), then we'd be better off without them, and that other sites would not be as tolerant as we are. I have no specific person in mind, this opinion was expressed in the context of how the MOS should be written.
I'm guessing that you think that the light that heated debate brings makes the heat a good thing. If so I think this is one of our fundamental differences of opinion. But you don't actually say. In fact your posts, frankly, are an excellent example of heat without light, in my opinion. If you could tell me whether or not my guess on your thoughts is correct (again, yes/no is all I need), I would think it very helpful.
And I think I need to ask another specific question:
4. Are you accusing me of misusing my position as an administrator?
I have accused you of nothing so far. But you seem to be accusing me of problems of behaviour. If you are not prepared to be specific, I will be forced to ask whether the heated but vague accusations you have made are disruptive. Andrewa (talk) 13:06, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
Not taking the circular argument bait. I've said exactly what I meant, that meaning is clear, and your questions have certainly been answered. I'm pretty sure you actually understand that, despite your defensive, theatrical handwaving. If not, further rehash with you isn't going to improve that situation. See WP:SANCTIONGAME point #2; you have now hit 4 out of 5 of the don'ts in this guideline: no one will believe your "walking back" of what you said, to now mean that you were non-sequiturially referring only to a situation of extremism so dire it was comparable to taking hostages at gunpoint, since such a scenario is clearly impossible. I really don't think this is a discussion that needs to continue; you can either absorb "that post wasn't a good idea" or not. I have a holiday party to go to, and hope that you do, too. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:23, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
I am playing no games, and have no idea what you mean by circular argument bait, and again your paraphrases are inaccurate... what have hostages to do with it? But I'm fascinated by your mention of WP:SANCTIONGAME. I've only hit four out of five? Which did I miss? (;->
WP:SANCTIONGAME#2 reads "Walking back" a personal attack to make it seem less hostile than it was, rather than apologizing. Example: An editor responds to a disagreement by saying, "You're obviously wrong, wrong, wrong. Did you even pass grade 10 history?" Later, they defend this statement as a good-faith question about the other editor's education.
So two more questions:
5. Is the post with respect to which you consider I have now violated WP:SANCTIONGAME#2 the following: Any editor who wants to use the MOS (or any other policy or guideline) as a gun to hold at another editor's head is probably best seen off the premises. They'd be very welcome at Citizendium, which does as I understand it officially allow such legalism... I've made a few edits there myself. But citizendium is equally legalistic about civility and respect, and I predict that such editors would be banned there within a week or so. (See the context of this remark.)
6. If so, do you interpret this as a personal attack?
And you still avoid answering questions 1, 2 and 4. With the exception of 3, all my numbered questions require only a yes or no, as I said previously. A rehash is not required, and doesn't even answer the questions. Andrewa (talk) 22:18, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
I see you've conceded (twice) at WT:MOS that the post we're talking about did not go over well there and was a serious failure to communicate. That appears to resolve the matter, so I decline to nitpick it death with you here. I get that you're offended and defensive that I've questioned your judgement, including as an admin; no one enjoys being critiqued. Just accept it as constructive criticism, and absorb what will be absorbed. I think this has been happening already to an extent, or you would not have made those quasi-retractions. It not necessary for everyone who raises an issue with your actions to re-re-re-explain what they mean. Make a close study of the four nearly back-to-back AE requests against, and two failed ARCA requests by, Darkfrog24, also over style disputation, to see how poorly that gambit works when someone keeps pressing it. It's the exact same "I don't think I did anything wrong, you have to explain again and again what you mean" performance; the only difference is DF24 was doing it to admins, which is like mooning a jury rather than just mooning random passers-by. The latter is still inappropriate.
Make a close study also of WP:GAMING and WP:LAWYER. Everything you've said above reeks of them, including your new attempt to "loophole" out of SANCTIONGAME#2 as only possibly applicable to NPA breaches, when no reasonable person would ever misinterpret it as not also applying to AGF, CIVIL, and other behavioral policy and guideline matters. All those line items in SANCTIONGAME (and in similar pages) are just examples, not a delimited, exclusive list of the only things that qualify as behaviors they contraindicate. The central point of GAMING and LAWYER is that WP interprets all its rules and principles in the spirit in which they were intended, not a legalistic over-interpretation of their exact wording configuration (which frequently changes, this being a wiki, without significantly altering their intended meaning). This is really basic "how WP works" stuff that most of us absorb fully after only a few months of editing here.
Meandering asides: I'm half inspired to go read your RfA and see how you passed without having internalized these consensus-culture norms early on; I find it genuinely perplexing at this point. [I looked; it dates to the period when there were essentially no expectations other than "has been active and seems to be sane".] Maybe you're simply even more argumentative than I am, and already do understand all this, but just want to have a long-running sport debate. I really don't know, or care. I don't have time or patience for it, and the matter (at WT:MOS) appears to be moot to me anyway. I do hope you consider that by making it essentially impossible, through reliance on argumentum ad nauseam, to resolve matters like this with you in user talk that it is liable to encourage raising Andrewa behavioral concerns in more formal venues in the future (should the need arise, which I'm not predicting it will). I doubt that's what you really want. PS: The "clever" debate tactic of turning everything around into a question for the opposition to try to answer doesn't work on anyone with any formal reasoning experience. It's a first-year debate class move which has to be used sparingly; when repeated back-to-back it becomes instantly obvious that one is hand-waving and has no substantive rebuttal. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:47, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
We certainly are not seeing eye to eye.
I still see the questions as legitimate and reasonable.
Calling them a tactic, a first-year debate class move and hand-waving is uncalled for. Why are they difficult to answer? Do they beg the question? Are they in some way leading? They are not intended to be so. What is the problem? Calling my posts pseudo-civil is not helpful either, as I have said previously.
You are again be calling my fitness to be an admin in to question. That is also uncalled for, as is likening me to a topic-banned editor.
User talk pages are the correct place to discuss issues of behaviour, and I thank you for taking the correct action in this regard. But they are not open slather. They are available for the whole world to read, and the normal talk page guidelines apply. Baseless allegations are disruptive.
If you want me to desist, then don't pointedly summon me back here after I've made it clear I consider the real issue moot, and the rest of this to be a waste of time. Don't complain of supposed "allegations" while demanding again and again that I make more of them, following a number scheme, and in a yes/no format you've laid out for me. I'll address your new post here, but then please let's just move on. Life is short (I think you're in my own age range so you feel this as keenly as I do, I would think).
The short version: I'm sorry I seem to just be offending you, beyond everyday human umbrage at receiving any criticism at all, and that everything seems so personal to you when this is entirely about behavior patterns and whether they're constructive/appropriate or not, in an admin role in particular, which as you know or should know is subject to greater scrutiny than just everyday editing. Pissing you off is not my goal; having you shift your approach is. If I thought there was a problem that warranted noticeboard action we'd already be at one. Discussing perceptions, and explaining the bases of them in detail, is hardly making "baseless allegations".
The detailed version:
Extended content
"Tactic" is a word with a specific meaning; it's in diametric distinction to "strategy". I don't think you're deploying some kind of strategy here, something involving a long-range goal; I think it's a knee-jerk, tactical reaction to being criticized and argued with. (I react that way myself sometimes, so it seems familiar, and familiarly unconducive to resolution.) There's nothing "uncalled for" about the word.
Nor about describing something as introductory/basic. This "turn debate points around into questions for the opponent instead of actually rebutting them" really is a Debate 101 tactic. I took debate in school, and remember that point from the class, despite it having been decades ago. It's also so ineffective, especially when "chained" in series, that most good debaters rarely use it. I was a professional activist and political writer for over a decade; just consider it a free pro tip.
Hand-waving has a specific meaning (two actually; I obviously don't mean the mathematical one). Again, you seem to just be resisting rather than addressing criticism. I'm not implying you're a bad person because you presented a weak argument or a dodge in a particular instance. I'm just criticizing the tactic.
I decline to explain again why assuming bad faith while lecturing others about assuming bad faith is pseudo-civil, and I'm not the only editor to have criticized the statement, which you admitted was poor, and effectively retracted. So, why are you defending it again? Isn't this really old news now? [Those are rhetorical questions that don't need answers, not debate-reversal questions.]
I didn't liken you to anything; I likened one present behavior pattern of yours I observe (subjectively, of course) as effectively indistinguishable from that of another editor who was sanctioned in the same topic area (and the behavior resulted in an indef, not a topic ban. The TB was for inappropriate behaviors of another sort. The editor refusing to stop defending those actions, then blaming others, and demanding niggling re-re-re-explanations of how/why anything they did was questionable, and re-litigating the issue over an over again (sound familiar?) was what got them in the deeper hot water.
I don't think it's across any line to point out what seems (also subjectively to me, a happy non-admin) to be an incompatibility with adminship and our expectations about it on the one hand and, on the other, you exhibiting what looks like a WP:INVOLVED problem, a rather shocking level of unfamiliarity with how WP:CONSENSUS actually operates and how WP:POLICY is actually interpreted (which is in its spirit/intent, not in legalistic analysis) and what policies like CONLEVEL actually say and mean, plus other issues, like not seeming to actually have learned from BIRDCON and your role in it, and your previous attempt (in that same dispute) to use faulty understanding of WP:ARBATC to threaten me with sanctions yourself (another INVOLVED failure), mirrored recently at WT:MOS in what looked uncomfortably like a not-really-veiled threat to hound MoS regulars until they quit or are exiled.
If I thought these matters were serious enough and constituted a consistent pattern (like ... a strategy), or were an ingrained, uncontrollable WP:COMPETENCE problem, not simply momentary tactics and judgement lapses, I would have taken this issue to AN or some other formal venue. My assumption has been that this could all be addressed here. I raise some issues, you think on it and respond if you want, and either the behavior shifts or it doesn't. The longer you pick at each minor point, the less clear the result is and the longer it takes to assess it.
See also recent ArbCom cases about Michael Hardy and The Rambling Man; there's clearly concern that "old time" admins who did not go through a serious RfA may have a tendency to operate as if the current expectations don't apply to them. Not saying that's what's going on here, but the community concern in general is a real one. "It's a thing", as the kids say. So, it's worth considering this when someone says something along the lines of "I don't think an admin should be doing/saying X". It's hardly impossible that, in some instance or area, you're acting like an admin would have in 2004 rather than how one is expected to in 2016. I've been around long enough myself to realize that it takes at least occasional conscious effort to not continue to act like a 2008 editor instead of a 2016 one.
Again, I think this is all pretty much moot. You're not doing anything right now that I have a big objection to, you kinda-sorta retracted at WT:MOS, thus evidence so far is that bringing the matter here did work after all, even if you want to pick every nit.
Declining to re-answer questions already addressed (albeit in ways that don't please you) is not an indication of the questions being "difficult" for the other party (isn't that an insinuation about my mental capacity or honesty? Ha ha, two can play this "you're being mean and hurting my feelings" game). It may just be that circular argument is tedious to some people, who rightly refuse to engage in it.
A second reason for not addressing the questions with the one-word yes/no answers you want is that it would cross a line. You're strenously trying to tease forth direct accusations from me, while complaining that I'm accusing you (I decline to openly speculate as to why, but there are several obvious explanations). It's not my job to enable anyone's self-fulfilling prophecies of wikidrama. There's a difference between raising subjective concerns that seem to indicate certain kinds of problems/issues then having an opinional discussion about it, versus making direct factual accusations of wrongdoing. If you are certain you're utterly blameless in all of this (despite having already admitted fault at WT:MOS – I don't think I'm misperceiving when I note some cognitive dissonance here), ask yourself why the concern was raised. What is it about your communication and your engagement choices that gives such an impression, that ever raises such concerns? At any rate, I decline to put myself in the position of having made specific accusations that need to be diffed out for hours or days at a noticeboard rather than having offered a constructively critical opinion in talk, which you can take or leave. No one needs a dramaboard time sink. I'm not sure my blood pressure can take that crap. Just raising the concerns here should be enough.
If slather is a typo for slander (which seems to be the case; there doesn't seem to be a definition of slather that's applicable here), you're dangerously close to violating WP:NLT, which you should also know as an admin. Can you see why I keep scratching my head? Criticism of and concerns about evinced actions, statements, and involvement patterns are not defamation, they're criticism and concerns. (Also, it would be libel, not slander, that would apply to this medium anyway; know your defamation law!) I once actually raised a defamation-related complaint myself (privately, in e-mail to ArbCom, not on-wiki), about direct and unmistakeable accusations of wrongdoing (not of poor judgment or attitude) by an admin, who was wrong, knew he was wrong, was proven conclusively to be wrong, refused to recant, and then took an especial interest in going after me. ArbCom removed the accusation from the logs, though it took about a year to get that done (and "attention" from that admin stopped dead). So, I'm directly empathetic with others who, like me, edit under their real names. But there's a difference between "someone said something I don't like about what I did or said" and "someone maligned my character and falsely accused me of doing bad deeds".
There's also a three-way difference between raising issues with someone's editorial viewpoint (a content matter), having concerns about their administrative judgement (a meta matter), and just not liking them (a personality matter). Please separate these better in your perception. For all I know, you're a great person with fantastic character. For all I know we might get along famously well as editors outside this topic. We're not on this one, and much of it has to do with commingling of your adminship and your editorial viewpoint, in a way that comes across (to more than one of us) as "throwing your weight around". It also has a lot to do with a serious mismatch between how WP actually works and how you seem to think it should work, and how much of policy you do not seem to have absorbed despite being around for so long. I don't think WP:P&G are your strong suit.
Please just think on this. Write me off as totally misperceiving everything you say, do, or mean, if you want. I don't really need any further blow-by-blow of which details you want to pick at, and you surely have better things to do that write one. Everyone has opinions and perceptions, and we choose which of them to accept or reject from others, all day every day, without it having to be a big debate. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 07:21, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Please see this diff. Note that SMcC has there requested that I neither ping him nor reply to him on his talk page.
Although there is no undertaking there not to further attack me with baseless allegations or insulting language, I am taking this as acceptance of my offer of pax in the post to which it replied. The term bickering is unhelpful IMO and a little unfair... it does take two to bicker!
But I am not intending to "hat" this on my own talk page, as the topic is appropriate for a user talk page, and it will in any case be auto-archived in due course. Andrewa (talk) 22:03, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
Getting back to this as promised (and I don't mind being pinged if this need to continue to resolve). Some of this is a bit repetitive of earlier comments, but little of them appeared to register due to instant negative reaction to perceived tone, so I'm trying again with tone changes. Up to you if want to consider it and/or respond to it. I'll leave it quasi-hatted in case this is too old-news to be of interest.
Extended content
"Baseless" "attacks", "allegations", and "insults": I did not attack you; criticism is not an attack, and accusing others of making personal attacks when they've simply offered constructive criticism is itself uncivil and suggestive of an operating-in-a-massively-collaborative-environment difficulty. That brings us full circle to the nature of the constructive criticism offered to begin with, and your "not getting it" behavior in response to it, which you've simply cycled right back to. (I interpret this as typical hominid reactive defensive behavior, nothing more.) You do not have a right to (or privilege of) total freedom from criticism, especially when brandishing admin authority. The criticism is not "baseless"; I've given a prodigious ream of the bases for it above. You did not offer any actual peace, you demanded a cessation and an admission of "attacks", "baseless allegations" and "insults", which I'm not engaging in to begin with (resulting in a "have you stopped beating your wife?" fallacy). I have no control over whether you feel constructive criticism is "insulting"; you own your own emotions and perceptions. Suffice it to say that I find your repeated false and actually baseless accusations that I'm personally attacking you to be at least as insulting and hostile as you find my criticisms. But, I'm simply not going to let it bother me. I will cogitate on the overall failure to communicate and negotiate well – "how can I approach this sort of thing better next time?". Similar decisions are probably also indicated for you. :-)
What brought me here: You seem to think I have something personal against you; I don't. I'm certainly not stalking your edits or criticizing what you do on WP in a general way; you've simply be very unhelpful in MoS matters and should probably avoid reinvolvement in them. It's not an "attack" and "allegation" or an "insult" to make note of a history (at the forum originally at issue, not site-wide) of counterproductive input. It seems based on stylistic stance soapboxing and anti-centralization advocacy on behalf of insular editorial factions, versus Wikipedia stability and the readership's collective needs. That history started to repeat itself, compounded by communication (in an admin role with admin weight) that you conceded yourself (twice) was sub-par, and I was hardly the only one to react negatively to it. I don't think anyone should be surprised I raised the matter here, and most would be happy that I didn't turn it into some kind of dramaboard thing (surely we need a lot less of such bureaucracy). But you had not been on my mind at all for any reason for over two years until that "Andrewa drives by to light a blaze under the MoS pot again for no good reason" moment the other day. It's not useful for you to go on and on with these objections about tone and "allegations" when it's clearly projection – they're the same objections other editors raised about what you posted, and you're trying to deflect with a mirror (which is glass and is breaking).
Why it matters: I care enough to have come here because the last time you pointlessly/pointedly relit a style fire that had already gone out, it resulted in one of the most productivity-sucking and rancorous RfCs in WP history, with a lot of still-ongoing fallout. While it did close with a clear consensus (against your position) and put that one trivial matter to rest, it cost us at least three editors, angered a large number of people, is frequently cited as how not to do an RfC ever again, and has inspired an increase not decrease in combative behavior about style (probably because it manufactured those self-martyrdoms). That amounts to a dismal cost–benefit result. And it is me (probably more than any other editor on WP) not you expending considerable time and energy on an ongoing basis to head off repeats of this sort of "style war". I won't sit idly by if anyone moves to start another, even if it's not their explicit intent. (I rarely have any basis on which to judge the intent, and even when I do, it's rarely a good idea to air such a hypothesis. I'm sure most of them are convinced that what they have in mind is for the benefit of the project/readers, but have not really thought it through, and are heavily biased by personal and specialist-literature preferences, the source of the vast majority of WP style disputes).
Expectations of admins: There's nothing untoward in noting that your adminship dates to an era when there were essentially no particular expectations aside from a little experience, nor in considering it possible that lack of familiarity with current expectations of admins might have something to do with all this. The exact same matter (about early-admin behavior, but with regard to different content) came up only a month or so ago at ArbCom, in two simultaneous cases concerning other admins from the same period, so this seems to be a general problem [whether you are actually within its ambit or not] that the community is aware of and addressing with far more formality and higher stakes than I have been here. Identifying a known trouble spot as a potential factor is not the same thing as insisting that it must be one in this particular case.
If you're certain I'm misperceiving everything you've done and said, ask yourself why it came off that way and how you can prevent that from happening again. The pax desired comes from mutual reflection, not from trying to win an argument on your talk page by ramping up the defensive posturing with claims of being under assault, and digging a deeper battlefield trench. It's a conversation, not an invasion. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:13, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
User:SMcCandlish, (thank you for permission to ping) I would like to continue this, and would certainly like it to be a conversation, and a mutual reflection. I very much like the comment on your talk page Greetings! I'm a real person, like you. Collaboration improves when we remember this about each other.
I would like to investigate some of the claims above... but you have provided not one diff or link to archives. In particular, the last time you pointlessly/pointedly relit a style fire that had already gone out, it resulted in one of the most productivity-sucking and rancorous RfCs in WP history... link to this RfC, and to my contrib that started it, please?
The exact same matter (about early-admin behavior with regard to different content) came up only a month or so ago at ArbCom, in two simultaneous cases concerning other admins from the same period... Very interesting and relevant... again, link please?
Finally for now communication (in an admin role with admin weight) that you conceded yourself (twice) was sub-par... I admit that some might see everything that an admin does as having admin weight, but was I acting in an admin role? How? Or do you see everything an admin does as acting in an admin role? (You might want to hat the details of your reply to that if it becomes an essay. The other answers I'm hoping can be brief.) TIA Andrewa (talk) 12:54, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
I already covered the first of these above, in summary. See WP:BIRDCON, from which I'll quote a little. This is not a noticeboard, and this is not going to be a diff list. If your memory or perception doesn't match mine, you can review the original discussions and those that led up to them. I won't do reams of such homework again without it serving a particular WP:PROCESS end, like an ArbCom case or something else in which a legalistic presentation of evidence is expected. BIRDCON is too old a matter for that, and I don't suggest that it would be a noticeboard matter anyway, it's a reflect-on-questionable-choices one. This discussion, from my perspective, is about the overall nature of the dispute and disputes like it, approaches to them, their fallout, and why to avoid both. If you want to go over the historical details (from my viewpoint, since I'm reviewing it and you don't seem to be):
Deets:
The sprawling discussion now at the shortcut BIRDCON began as nothing but notice of a routine effort (by me, at WT:AT) to resolve a PoV fork introduced in guidelines (which had been done by introducing changes – slowly, without discussion, and against previous consensus – at pages few people watchlist, to gradually diverge them away from MOS which is heavily watched). It was later proposed to also, given recent consensus shifts, remove the MOS clause that was leading to the PoV forking to begin with.
The proposed renormalization already represented site-wide consensus (with no hold-outs other than a minority of participants in WP:BIRDS, and a few winged-insect specialists, though none of the latter had ever been disruptive about their pro-caps opinion). That consensus had very recently been reaffirmed twice back-to-back, and (important in this context) against capitalization of birds in particular. A WP:RM, not opened by WP:MOS or WP:BIRDS people, closed against caps. WP:MR immediately afterward upheld that, unquestionably – by which point both MOS and BIRDS people had become involved and got their say, along with everyone else. The matter was finished and decided.
WP:BIRDS didn't like it, but they were getting over it, quietly resigned to not having carried their long-running motion to get capitalized birds. It finally wasn't a big deal any more. Go read the contemporaneous discussions at WT:BIRDS. A couple of fists shaken, a big pout, and otherwise resolution to keep working on the content which is what really matters. No indications of any kind of "insurrection" or desire to go in such a counterproductive direction.
All was well until you popped in and derailed that guideline normalization, which would have proceeded without incident (and did proceed after the incident). You launched an obviously doomed RfC to counter that cleanup work, and advocating for wikiproject exceptionalism and against MoS consistency and centralized style guidance, saying it "strikes at the heart of WP:Consensus". From your previous involvement in the topic, it is flat-out implausible that you weren't aware that you were re-igniting a long-dormant issue in a way that was going to lead to renewed, angry dispute, upending two years of gradual relaxation and calm "baby-step" progress toward site-wide consensus. You said yourself in your opening statement, "There's a long history of discord on this point", and even made a fire-and-smoke reference. You followed this up by declaration that a site-wide guideline applying site-wide would "rigidly impose" something "inappropriate", and that a pet wikiproject you were favoring were "doing nothing wrong", despite them disruptively fighting for more than a decade straight against all other editors on the system over a matter everyone considers painfully obviously trivial. The reason any of this matters at all isn't connected to "style" but to control: Either the editorial community as a whole controls Wikipedia, or tiny little cliques of topic WP:OWNing wiki-warlords do, in myriad wiki-fiefdoms.
Ironically, you added "we need to try not to reenact past battles", then (after you were warned what would happen and why) proceeded to ensure precisely that result. You waved a battle flag and generated a "wiki-rebellion" against guideline compliance, against WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, and against the consensus results in two formal processes already concluded (RM and MR). That certainly did strike right at the heart of consensus.
To wit: In your "A new proposal regarding bird names" (which was in no way new), you opened with, "I propose that we immediately and directly seek a community-wide consensus on the question of captitalisation of bird names." Yet we'd already done this in multiple times before in previous years and the result was always the same: Consensus for MoS to say to not capitalize common names of species (since virtually no sources do so and it's confusing to readers); recognition of ongoing dispute about birds in particular (because bird-specific specialist sources are among the only ones that sometimes do it); and an admonition to not change "bird caps" pending further consensus development.
That temporary though lengthy truce situation had already ended in favor of lower case by other, MOS- and BIRDS-unconnected, site-wide processes (RM backed up by MR). What, did you think we were really going to spend the next decade disputing article-by-article whether to lower-case this one but leave that one capitalized? Of course not. The matter was already settled. But you seemingly didn't want to accept the answer. The WP:BIRDS participants who wanted the capitalization – and there was not unanimity in the wikiproject about that, just a cluster of 6 or so editors heavily in favor of it and the rest of us either not caring, or opposing but browbeaten into comparative silence) had already conceded they were not going to get it after all. Yet you manufactured a new opportunity to whip them into a frenzy about it again, against common sense and against prior consensus decisions.
Frankly, I don't think there's any excuse or rationalization for that. It was a bad call, period. The result was a total loss in almost every respect, and was predictably going to be one, like choosing to stare at the sun. Wikipedia lost editors over it. The approx. month-long RfC wasted copious amounts of many editors' time, and generated far more heat than light despite my and several others' attempts to ground it in facts and policy reasoning instead of emotion, and produced absolutely nothing new other than that additional evidence against the capitalization. The entire affair angered so many people (on both sides, in the middle, and with no opinion about it, just about WP:LAME) that it eroded editorial community faith in our guidelines (erosion still not repaired). It inaugurated a long-running fad of verbally attacking MoS people with impunity (because to date no admins will enforce ARBATC DS against anyone but MoS regulars, never those who attack them, due to an administrative [especially old-time admin] bias in favor of wikiproject insularity and against infrastructural consistency builders). It threw the BIRDS project into such cognitive dissonance that they were simultaneously attacking others (including those who regulars of neither BIRDS nor MOS) both for editing to comply with the RfC and not editing to comply with it, and fighting amongst themselves, such that many just moved on to totally different topics, putting bird-related editing into a still-ongoing slump. Your "side" did not "win" one single point in the RfC debate – not on a WP policy level, not in an on-wiki behavior pattern analysis, not at an external fact-verification level, and not at a hearts-and-minds one, either. (On the last point, neither did the MoS regulars; this is now frequently mentioned as a canonical example of why style disputes on WP are tedious and disruptive, and people on all sides of style debates and outside of them see it that way). The defense of the guidelines against the canvassed bloc-voting by a WP:FACTION of BIRDS participants had to go into sleuthing of negatives that it would not have had to if this had remained a routine guideline PoV-fork cleanup. The inevitable result of that was that it made several BIRDS participants appear to be disingenuous in their intent, and of course this enraged them and caused them to increase their bellicosity.
Your RfC, seemingly willfully, turned a finally quieting matter into a last stand of "Save Our Precious Specialists' Style, at the cost of telling the WP community and its consensus-built guidelines to go fuck themselves, and BTW we'll wikisuicide as martyrs if we don't get what we demand". The last-ditch, final-gasp, blaze-of-glory nature of your RfC – coming as it did after the consensus tide had already turned – appears to have directly instigated some of the unacceptable behaviors (like vote-stacking meatpuppetry of off-WP people, detected and eventually confessed to in the course of the RfC, as just one example); it inspired policy-abiding editors to break rules like never before, in hopes of WP:WINNING. The legal concepts of incitement, shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, and imminent lawless action are instructively parallel, in my view. This effect by itself played a major role in the self-exile of several of these editors after they didn't "win".
Note: I only quoted from three or four of your posts; there's other choice bits I could have dredged up. They're all hard to interpret as anything but anti-guideline, anti-consensus, and anti-community in favor of topical micro-control by tiny numbers of "WP:VESTED" editors with a strong desire to avoid conformity with encyclopedic writing for a general audience and produce content specificially intended for specialist readers. While that was two years go and I cannot be magically not certain what your present take on that matter is, your questionable post at WT:MOS the other day strongly indicates it has not budged, other than perhaps to have become more extreme on this.
In short, you re-created a then-dormant battleground, against multiple layers of consensus, for no demonstrable reason but with a clear bias against guideline compliance and in favor of wikiproject-level resistance to consistency simply for its own sake, and did this when even a moment's reflection would have clearly predicted the outcome. It's old news, and I've never cared previously to take you to task for it, because I just saw it as an error in judgement not intentional disruption, and my presumption was you'd learned from the mistake. This seemed a safe presumption since you've not been involved in anything similar for another two years or so ... until the other day, when you appeared at WT:MOS again, engaging in what looked to me and others like another of warcry of exactly the same sort! You even seemed to be ramping up from last time, with strong hints of intent to use administrator power to literally chase people you don't like off of WP and to mock them at other projects. Whatever you really meant, it came across as uncharitable, hostile, and mean-spirited, ergo pseudo- ('not really') civil, despite avoidance of name-calling specific editors. As I learned the hard way several years ago, sanctions can be applied even for vaguely-cast aspersions about the motives or mentalities of a diffuse group of editors, and you would do well to learn from my former pillorying for it. I accept your insistence that this perception wasn't really the intent, but I also think you can also understand why it came across that way. So, I'm not trying to re-open an intent-of-your-post discussion, just explaining why the old BIRDCON fiasco suddenly seems to have looming relevance. For one thing, you're clearly WP:INVOLVED and in no position to take any administrative action on MoS/AT-related matters, having espoused some of the more strenuous anti-MoS views encountered to date, even if historically with more of a veneer of detachment that is rather thin.
For balance: Obviously I'm not neutral on MoS either (but am not an admin and not seeking adminship). More importantly, I hardly consider myself blameless in the BIRDCON fallout, of course, and have learned from it.
In particular ...
I argued more forcefully than was necessary, I had not yet absorbed the essay WP:BLUDGEON and tried to challenge to many respondents, and I probably could have withheld some of the evidence I dug up, both behavioral and sourced, and taken less public self-satisfaction in the proving of it all. After doing the homework (and there was over ten years of material to go through), it was intensely frustrating to discover just how much disruption, at how many articles and projects, had been going on for how many years over this one annoying specialized-style fallacy (SSF), all by a little "clan" of under one dozen editors (more than half of whom had already become inactive years earlier, including the principal instigators; i.e., those who most wanted to fight about this were already gone). I did let that frustration color my approach to the matter, which clearly fed the anger of several participants. I have definitely learned from the experience, both from a WP:ASPERSIONS position (which ties closely into AGF - every time we state that someone's reason for doing something must necessarily be X, we are making a mistake, doubly so if that alleged reason is nefarious or nutty), and from the standpoint that if a dispute will be intense it is generally better to avoid trying to resolve it now/soon, and instead to leave it alone and encourage others to do likewise (per many tenets here, including that there is no deadline, that competence is required, that this is an encyclopedia not a forum, etc., etc.).
Probably the only positive thing that has come out of BIRDCON is that it is a strong precedent against the introduction of SSFs, bogus IAR claims in support of them, and organizing factions to promote them. Yet your post the other day seemed to indicate that this main lesson was precisely what you did not take away from BIRDCON.
Re these continual requests for diffs and links, I hope you understand that it comes across as just more handwaving/dodging; it's another variant of "don't address the substance, just turn everything around into a question for the other party." You already knew where BIRDCON is, and it was already clear that it is the subject of the bulk of the discussion (and my already-mentioned link-pile on the overall topic has virtually every major relevant discussion included at this point). You're also perfectly capable of looking on your own in archives that go only a month or two back at RFARB (ArbCom accepts few cases, so they're easy to find). I'm not going to call attention to particular other editors' ArbCom cases by username, because it'd be basically talking about someone behind their back in a personalized way to make a point about something not even directly connected to them. Exactly who did what isn't relevant here; the relevant point was that there's a recent pattern of community concern about the behavior of old-time admins who did not go through a serious, modern RfA, and this community concern has risen repeatedly to the RFARB level where they were taken quite seriously; wondering if that factor is at play here was not off-base or uncivil. Do you think you would pass RfA under present standards? Worth pondering (and, yes, I know I certainly would not.)
"[W]as I acting in an admin role? How?" By invoking the idea of (and what appeared to be a plan of) sanctioning multiple parties right off the system forcibly.
Anyway, given that you're again not responding substantively, just ducking, I'm unlikely to return, since this feels like a waste of time to me. The point was reflecting on past decisions and their results (intended or otherwise), such that they better inform future choices. You can do that as I have been, or you can not do it, as you will. (For all I know, maybe you are, deeply, but you just like circular arguments? I'm not a mind-reader.)
I was clearly misinterpreting recent post A only in light of old material C from 2.5 years ago, without awareness of intervening position B, and I consequently overreacted. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:23, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
User:SMcCandlish, I thank you for that peace initiative and accept it without reservation.
If you do wish to consider them, there are two things I'd like you to think about, and perhaps comment.
One: You mentioned two recent ARBCOM decisions in which old school admins had been censured for actions unbecoming an admin. As I understand it, these actions (i) did not involve use of admin powers and (ii) were actions that would not have been censured by ARBCOM had the user not been an admin. That is, even when not acting as an admin, an admin is now expected to display a higher level of conduct than expected of other users, or face ARBCOM sanctions.
This concerns me greatly. I agree that an admin should display this higher level of conduct, but I don't think it should be enforced in any way. We should be as free to edit and to express opinions as any other user. If this extra conduct restriction were significantly strict, I would need to consider whether to remain an admin, or whether I would be able to better contribute without this extra burden. But on the other hand, I'm concerned that we are critically short of admins. Many entries at ANI are currently being auto-archived with NO evidence that ANY admin has even READ them. Others are being closed by non-admins, some after admin comments, others without them. I don't know which is worse.
Anyway, point one being that I'm having a look at recent ARBCOM decisions, but links to the two you particularly found relevant would probably save me a lot more time than they would cost you, and would be appreciated.
Two: The CAPS issue. I'm likely to chime in again on this. Wait until I prepare a user essay on the issues as I see them before you decide whether that's wise, I promise I won't raise it until giving you the opportunity to comment on the new essay material (it may go into an existing essay or be a new one, unsure of that at this stage).
My question is, was I really to blame for the loss of two users? Isn't it more likely that they were put off by the bullying than by the reasoning, however repetitive that might have been?
You've accepted that you came on a bit too strong. The problem with this is that it doesn't just offend the people who are targeted, it also encourages others to adopt similar tactics, and things escalate.
At this stage you have given me no reason to avoid discussing CAPS in the future. Yes, it's a sensitive subject, but I believe there's an advantage to Wikipedia in adopting a style convention that is clear, site-wide, and of benefit to the general reader, and that this would involve greater use of capitalisation than is current. Andrewa (talk) 23:04, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
I should be clear that I brought the ArbCom cases up in a specific and apparently mistaken context, so it might be kind of moot. I accept now that you meant something like "If there really were people aggressively 'enforcing' MoS like a law, the community would remove them", not agreement that the MoS regulars are such people or that you were planning to take action against them. So, the perceived similarity to one of the ArbCom cases was illusory.
To look at those, and get to your point 1, the first was closed 13 October, and was about The Rambling Man (naming names is now not an issue, because I'm not drawing parallels between their behavior and anyone else, just recapping the "public record" cases). It was principally about civility and admin conduct. In the second case (Michael Hardy, closed 1 October), the Principles section has a whole subsection on ADMINCOND, but the case centered mostly on use of admin tools that was not consistent with current expectations, but had been normal when Hardy first became an admin; he had not kept up. CIV/NPA/ASPERSIONS-type stuff was also a big part of it. ADMINCOND really does expect admins to lead by example on that stuff, so, "an admin is ... expected to display a higher level of conduct than expected of other users or face ... sanctions" has long been the case, at least with regard to particular sorts of conduct.
Despite being Mr. Rantypants while I was laboring under misapprehensions earlier, I don't think you're a "badmin" and should give up the mop. There doesn't actually seem to be any correlation between what you do (or don't do) and what was at issue in these near-desysoppings. And, yes, we badly need admins.
ANI: It's a joke. What we should do is return to having WP:RFC/U for community review and sanctions (closed by admins) and have ANI go back to being an adminisrators' noticeboard, perhaps run as a tight ship like AE. ANI is utterly dysfunctional and has been ever since RFC/U was merged into it.
Your point 2: Well, the very reason for my admission of having handled BIRDCON poorly was to concede that being too combative worsened the tone of the whole debate, and was alienating, so, sure I grant your general point. My "sins" were arguing BLUDGEON-style about it, and enjoying the debate for the sport of it. And I got punished for this. Learning experience. When I rescinded the big block of venting up there, that included the blaming you exclusively for the BIRDS editors quitting. It was convenient to shift all blame onto you (or so self-analysis tells me now; it didn't feel like that at the time). While neither of us helped matters, the blame is almost entirely on their own heads. I know for a fact that it was "the debate" (the whole years-long thing and their increasingly singleminded investment in it) that was wearing on them, not a particular debater (despite two parting shots at me as the person who'd most recently pissed them off) or a particular discussion in the debate, because they frequently said it themselves. Thats why I was so happy (for that brief while) when the RM and MR did not go their way yet they were finally reacting with resignation and let's-move-on instead of renewed campaigning.
A caveat: I object to the label "bullying". From MoS editors', indeed from many, many editors' perspective, it was a particular clique of BIRDS editors who were the bullies. They spent ten F'ing years verbally abusing everyone who disagreed with them, which was MoS people maybe 1 time out of 20, and almost always just random users from other parts of the project having "WTF is this ungrammatical crap?" reactions to what they were seeing. I need not (and probably should not) catalogue here the very long list of disruptive behaviors involved, though my log page on the debates has most of it in there somewhere. I curse myself for not having just taken the matter to ArbCom back around 2008 (another MoS editor convinced me not to); it would have been one month of drama instead of 4+ more years of it.
Your caps thoughts: I'm not sure what "adopting a style convention that is clear, site-wide, and of benefit to the general reader, and that this would involve greater use of capitalisation than is current" might mean. We already have a style convention on this, and it's based on what the general-audience and academic (and to a lesser extent, journalistic) style guides recommend. It's known as "down style", i.e. the minimization of capitalization to only that which is required by convention in mainstream writing. If you're thinking along lines like "capitalize the way the specialist sources do", that's not going to fly, and if it did it would open up an truly awful can of specialist-emulation worms, making WP much less readable and sane-seeming. MOS's entire history has been against this, and that direction has served us well. The essay WP:Specialized-style fallacy covers why such a change wouldn't be helpful. If you're aiming for something like "do what the majority of sources do", that's covered at WP:COMMONSTYLE. It is not workable, because it generally cannot be determined accurately, and attempts to determine it are almost always skewed in one particular (usually specialist) direction, especially for topics that do not get a lot of coverage in mainstream books and newspapers. Another perennial idea is "have no rule", i.e. leave every matter that is not a technical necessity to editorial judgement on-the-fly. That's what WP started with, and all it did is lead to constant page-by-page strife; it's why MoS evolved at all. Beyond any of those, I don't know what you might have in mind, but appreciate that you'd care to have my input. I do want to suggest that what we have has been remarkably stable, and that capitalization-related disputes have actually been declining, as have style disputes generally here, along with ratio of heat to light in them (with a few flare-up exceptions now and then, like quote boxes and "comma-Jr.").
PS: I forgot to add that a "COMMONSTYLE" problem is that turning COMMONNAME into a style policy would invalidate a lot of the rest of MoS, including MOS:TM and this would have WP:NPOV and other policy ramifications. It's important to remember that AT originated as part of MoS and was the part of it consensus wanted to elevate to policy; there is no "MoS and AT" conflict, so we should not manufacture one. AT and its NC guidelines explicitly defer to MoS on style matters (in over a dozen places); this is not accidental. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 07:44, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for the ARBCOM links. They will save me a great deal of time and either needless worry or future conflict (and just possibly both).
Agree with most of the comments about style and capitalisation, but not with the tentative conclusion. I'm having a third go at developing a userspace essay on this. Watch this space or see User talk:Andrewa/The Correct Use of capitals.
Re the bullying charge... I'm very glad you object to that. I thought long and hard about what to call it. On both occasions, I certainly felt bullied by yourself, and your suggestion in the latest skirmish that this was oversensitive of me is a vacuous argument IMO, as we want to be a safe place for all good-faith editors however sensitive, and I think that underlies much of our fundamantal policies (and is being eroded by the failure of ANI and some other developments). I do have a thick skin, I would not have survived ten happy years as an auditor without it... it only happened once that someone several inches taller than me and earning five times my salary physically spat in my face because I would not sign off on a document that did not even exist, but many others made it quite clear that they felt I deserved it. Goes with the turf.
May I cite one specific? You accused me of childish debating tactics for asking yes/no questions. If you believe that, then for one thing you should study the Platonic dialogues, and for another it was not a tactic at all on my part but an honest attempt to have a logical discussion (which failed I guess because you know nothing of that branch of philosophy, while I spent a semester studying it, and that failure is not your fault, but your failure to apply AGF to this particular mismatch of minds made you look rather silly to those who have studied logic at all broadly). It was pure rhetoric IMO, and such rhetoric that I think the term bullying is correct.
But I didn't (previously) mean to accuse you of bullying (I have now). My point was rather that you (as you have admitted) came on a bit strong, and this encouraged others, and it escalated into bullying, and this was IMO more to blame for the departure of those three editors than was my good-faith proposal, however naive and irritating I may have been. Such heat is IMO best nipped in the bud, and we disagree on this (you say light sometimes comes from heat) but again I think that the fundamental policies of Wikipedia were designed to do this, and we are departing from this principle to our great cost. If it continues unabated (and it may not, hopefully) then it threatens the whole existence of Wikipedia. The Internet has quite enough places for people to vent their uncontrolled feelings, and we won't attract the editors we need if we become one more of them.
And it could happen really quickly. Another Kodak.
Jimbo is an exceptionally nice guy, and that's a lot of why Wikipedia works at all.
The most spectacular example of this danger I've seen so far has been user:Viktor van Niekerk, who bullied both Janet Marlow (whose user name I can't find offhand) and myself and others in order to get his POVs accepted (for example, he passionately wants the twelve-string guitar article renamed six-course guitar; That was our first conflict). Viktor and Janet are arguably the two greatest living exponents of the classical ten-string guitar, and both were once Wikipedia contributors, and had Viktor's antics been addressed when I first raised the problem, we might have kept both and would almost certainly still have Janet. But it took over a year of off-and-on abuse before I attracted the attention of another admin (and then six days before Viktor was blocked indefinitely, from memory). By then Janet was long gone, and Viktor was committed to tactics of righteous fury (and remember he is an expert in the field). And IMO some of the reason for that is that he was not gently but firmly corrected earlier than he was. We will never know for sure. Andrewa (talk) 19:41, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
