User talk:Nergaal/dead

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Podesta

OK, at this point you seem to be not getting it to a fairly high degree, so I am going to make this a formal warning. John Podesta is a living individual, and there are several other living individuals identified either explicitly or implicitly in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The claims have been completely discredited. They are fabrications. There is zero credible evidence to support them, and reliable sources are unanimous in identifying this as a deliberately false story. I strongly suggest you walk away at this point because if you continue to promote false equivalency on this then I will have to block you for violating WP:BLP. This is not a drill. Facts matter, especially when living individuals are involved. OK? Guy (Help!) 23:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I closed the discussion because you are digging yourself a hole. If you want to end up topic banned under WP:AE then go right ahead, but I am trying to avoid that. this is WP:DEADHORSE territory. Guy (Help!) 10:21, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@JzG: Seems to me that I arrived in the middle of a battle between two sides. I personally think the theory itself is idiotic. But, I do hope you do realize that the amount of effort everybody seems to put into twisting every word even in remotely-related articles like the Swan guy is sure to make even skeptics of the theory at least have questions about it.

All I did is try to bring out some actual preciseness in the wording used on Wikipedia. To me seems that sources say it is false, but that there is a certain amount of effort to push the post past that, and say that everybody, individually, debunked the theory. If sources say "X says Y is false", but wikipedia says "X debunked Y", or "X criticized Y", plenty of people will wonder if there is an agenda and if there is an actual bias around here. I personally believe preciseness around controversial topics is best defense against wild claims and crazy people. But if you guys want to feed those crazies then have fun with it. Nergaal (talk) 10:39, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, but I think you're missing the point. Not one reliable independent source presents this conspiracy theory as anything other than bogus. I edit a lot in articles around quackery, this is a technique absolutely beloved of the supplements, complementary and alternative medicine (SCAM) industry. SCAM vendors will put out a blatantly bogus claim, it will be debunked by three or four sources, and the SCAM proponents will then try to contextualise this as minority pushback against a perfectly valid view. WP:NPOV allows (and indeed requires) that we treat this conspiracy theory as the nonsense it clearly is. And to be clear I don't mind chatting about it here or at ANI, but the closer we get to article space the more of a problem this becomes, due to the BLP issue with Podesta. Do you see my point? Guy (Help!) 10:54, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@JzG: I am not arguing about defending quackeries, what I am saying wikipedia should do as little "interpretation" of the sources as possible. IMO if there is any synthesis, it should be after we present the sources exactly the way they say it. Right nowUntil a couple of hours ago the intro to pizzagate says/implies that Fox debunked the story, but I honestly cannot see any direct/primary source saying that. Similarly down the text, the article states that some sources criticized the theory, when in fact (to me) they just reported it to be false without any clear analysis. I genuinely think the article should stay away from saying "pizzagate is a false theory" and just report the facts that "all major sources claim the theory to be false"; or "multiple major sources have debunked it". Anything else seems NPOV and falls dangerously close to agenda-pushing. Nergaal (talk) 12:19, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Just to clarify my point: with SCAM and autism vaccines you can find scientific reports and even famous retractions. The equivalent with pizzagate would be the original authors to come and retract the claim/story, or have impartial outlets disprove it. I would not compare the level of reliability of current news sources that are unabashedly partial to the scientific process of peer review. Maybe even the latter is not fully objective, but it is at least declaredly impartial. If a (news) source is openly partial, it can't be assigned much weight. Nergaal (talk) 12:39, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Quackery was an example, a parallel area where I suspected we might agree. The issue is not SCAM, the issue is the way SCAMmers promote bullshit, whihc is identical tot he way fake stories propagated during the elections, specifically including this one.

No SCAM proponent ever withdraws their papers just because they are proven wrong. In fact, even being refuted and retracted won't stop them from being promoted (as with Wakefield's fraudulent MMR-autism paper).

The original authors of the pizzagate conspiracy theory are unlikely to come forward and admit it was a hoax, and we don't need them to. Hitchens' razor: that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. There is no evidence of child abuse, the police have said this. There is no credible source supporting the claims of pizzagate. All credible sources say it's false. Not probably false, but absolutely false, as in complete invention with no supporting evidence whatsoever. There is no reason why we would even consider weakening that conclusion, because it is robust. Guy (Help!) 14:25, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Up to a point, I agree with you 100%. But what I don't understand why do policing. We are not police, we are not an advertisement media. We present objective facts without personal bias. Or at least personally that is what an encyclopedia should be. If all sources say it is fake, then say exactly that: all (credible) sources say it is fake. If There is no credible source supporting the claims of pizzagate then state that and give a put a reliable source to it. If All credible sources say it's false then state that. If absolutely false, as in complete invention with no supporting evidence whatsoever then say that and put the police report (or whatever agency does it, not a media source that half of the public "doesn't trust"). What I don't understand is why say instead "falsely claimed that John Podesta's emails [...] contain coded messages referring to human trafficking". Did a police investigator say that the "coded message" is not-existent/false/unsubstantiated? A coded message is, technically, hard to disprove. Unless there is an authoritative source stating that, isn't that NPOV to put it? The strongest conclusion is not the one that most clearly makes the guy innocent, but the one which is best supported by the provided facts/references. Otherwise it is indistinguishable from an entity trying to push an agenda based on personal feelings/opinions. Nergaal (talk) 15:57, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

Apologies, I should have checked to see if anyone had alerted you to these DS, which may well have informed your approach. The articles on Pizzagate are covered. There are also DS around biographies. I saw a DS alert but I see now it was GanmerGate, which is related but separate. Guy (Help!) 10:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

March 2017 WikiCup newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. It would have been 5 points, but when a late entrant was permitted to join the contest in February, a promise was made that his inclusion would not result in the exclusion of any other competitor. To achieve this, the six entrants that had the lowest positive score of 4 points have been added to the 64 people who otherwise would have qualified. As a result, some of the groups have nine contestants rather than eight. Our top four scorers in round 1 were:

• Cas Liber, last year's winner, led the field with two featured articles on birds and a total score of 674.
• Iry-Hor, a WikiCup newcomer, came next with a featured article, a good article and a tally of 282 bonus points for a score of 517. All these points came from the article Nyuserre Ini, an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh,
• 1989, another WikiCup newcomer, was in joint third place at 240. 1989 has claimed points for two featured lists and one good article relating to anime and comedy series, all of which were awarded bonus points.
• Peacemaker67 shared third place with five good articles and thirteen good article reviews, mostly on naval vessels. He is also new to the competition.

The largest number of DYKs have been submitted by Vivvt and The C of E, who each claimed for seven, and MBlaze Lightning achieved eight articles at ITN. Carbrera and Peacemaker67 each claimed for five GAs and Krishna Chaitanya Velaga was well out in front for GARs, having reviewed 32. No featured pictures, featured topics or good topics yet, but we have achieved three featured articles and a splendid total of fifty good articles.

So, on to the second round. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 13:52, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

POINTy disruptions on WP:ITN/C

Hi there. I see you have left a similar message to my nomination on WP:ITN/C that Modest Genius labelled and hid as per WP:POINTy. I feel it is disruptive and is disrespectful to my efforts as a Wikipedian, when I had nothing to do with whatever your grievance is at WP:ITN/C. I'd ask you to consider voluntarily removing your comment from my nomination. Thanks! --Natural R_X 23:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

March 2017

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. Your edits appear to be disruptive and have been reverted.

• If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor, please discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page, and seek consensus with them. Alternatively you can read Wikipedia's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant notice boards.
• If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, please seek assistance at Wikipedia's Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

Please ensure you are familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and please do not continue to make edits that appear disruptive. Continual disruptive editing may result in loss of editing privileges. Thank you. 331dot (talk) 23:48, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sure that helps. I agree the horse is dead, but don't template the regulars. GoldenRing (talk) 11:33, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

@GoldenRing: I appreciate your advice and was aware of that essay, but the template seemed applicable to me and it said what I wanted to say better than I could. Thank you, though. 331dot (talk) 20:41, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• I would much prefer not to, but if you continue to post pointy comments to most ITN nominations I would consider starting an ANI discussion. I understand that you are disappointed about the result of the 'jewelry' nomination and have legitimate concerns about bias, but the result did not go your way and it's time to move past it. 331dot (talk) 20:41, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
• I'll second this request. This sort of trolling makes people less and less likely to take you seriously, in which case you'll never have any chance of rectifying the pro-UK bias and ITN will forever be dominated by boat races and not-quite-the-oldest jewelry. Please try to keep your ITN/C comments on-topic so as not to confuse people who are trying to gauge consensus in good faith. Thanks. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:45, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
• Yeah, c'mon. I'm British, and I thought the jewellery one was weak, and don't get me started on the Boat Race (only 3 weeks till the next one, hurrah!. But making comments like that doesn't get you anywhere, except perhaps a topic ban if you keep doing it. Black Kite (talk) 10:02, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
• Again with this, Nergaal? Come on, please don't let's get the drama boards involved. Dial it back.--WaltCip (talk) 13:33, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
• And again? Seriously? Let it go, for goodness sake. Black Kite (talk) 13:23, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
• I'm not trying to get you in trouble, I'm just saying that stuff like this is outside the range of discussion and is purely disrupting the ITN space. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 18:00, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. 331dot (talk) 19:20, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Report about edit warring

I have now reported you for edit warring. Dnm (talk) 00:12, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions

Both yourself and Dnm should be made aware of the Race and intelligence discretionary sanctions. Thanks. El_C 04:35, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Your last use of rollback

Undo it or lose your rights, please. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 08:27, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

• And I'm being very lenient considering you used it out of process, twice. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 08:28, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm losing my patience. You have until 08:40 to undo your edit, with an explanation of how you violated the policy in the edit summary. If it isn't done by then, I will revoke your rollback rights. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 08:34, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

??? It is 8:35 and I don't have that option. I was on the talk page. Nergaal (talk) 08:36, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

You've made two edits to the talk page since I warned you. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 08:37, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I was replying. Nergaal (talk) 08:37, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

If it's not removed, bye bye rollback. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 08:38, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

What exactly are you talking about? Nergaal (talk) 08:39, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

You mean this: "The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit." Nergaal (talk) 08:39, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Since you clearly have issues understanding our policies, and apparently how to edit at all, I've revoked rollback from your account. Good day. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 08:41, 28 March 2017 (UTC)