User talk:SR Bryant

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Welcome!

Hello, SR Bryant, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --JW1805 (Talk) 05:06, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reverting

To answer your question, please see Wikipedia:Three-revert rule for policy about reverting. The general rule is don't revert more than 3 times in one 24 hour period. But, in the case of the Flag of Texas troublemaker, he was a sockpuppet of a previously banned user, so 3RR didn't apply. Also, 3RR doesn't apply for correcting random vandalism. --JW1805 (Talk) 05:12, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Can't sleep, clown will eat me 3

Please consider rephrasing your oppose vote, as it is both insulting and runs against the spirit of WP:AGF. Obviously, since you just registered on Wikipedia 48 hours ago you wouldn't know that CSCWEM has been nominated twice before, and after a few dozen people had offered to do so he decided that it was best to self-nominate given the mitigating circumstances of RFA 2. Perhaps you should read Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Can't sleep, clown will eat me and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Can't sleep, clown will eat me too before making baseless and insulting assumptions about other hardworking contributors. Silensor 05:32, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen this pattern too many times in Washington not to be able to spot it when I see it. Clown Will Eat Me will win his self-nomination, and a few months from now either you or I will look like a fool. I hope you will come back at that time and we can determine who ended up with the jester hat. --SR Bryant 05:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am seeing some interesting patterns myself as well, and I'll leave it at that for now. Silensor 05:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can take your not to subtle threats and shove them were the sun doesn't shine, Silensor. I won't be bullied into voting one way or the other, and I think your comments go toward proving my point that something really stinks about this nomination and those supporting it. --SR Bryant 05:56, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you have another account on Wikipedia, you might want to log in with that one instead to vote. The Wikipedia:Requests for adminship page has the following to say about voting and commenting in RFA: "Who may not vote: Editors who are not logged in ("anons"), or do not have an account. Votes of very new editors may be discounted if there is suspicion of fraud such as sockpuppetry." Extra points for your insinuation that all those who are in favor of promoting someone who deserves to be promoted "really stinks". Silensor 06:02, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You do realize that threatening me because I won't change my vote isn't doing your candidate any favors, right? --SR Bryant 06:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is no reason to feel threatened. Your vote will likely be discounted as a new user / sockpuppet, I just wanted to point that out in case you were not already aware of how votes and comments are presently being weighed by closing bureaucrats at RFA. And I do very much look forward to seeing you here a few months from now! I hope you will continue to contribute under this name. Welcome once again. Silensor 06:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings, counselor.

As a fellow member of the bar, I can assure you that votes for adminship on Wikipedia are nothing like what you've seen in Washington. We have a potentially unlimited number of admins, so there is no jostling for seats, and the standards for adminship are not prohibitive - any Wikipedian who sticks around for a few months and makes a few thousand edits without vandalising or otherwise demonstrating bad character or incompetence will generally get the nod. Bear in mind also that adminship is not a position of authority so much as it is an assumption of additional work - deleting nonsense pages and materials which the community votes to remove, blocking repeat vandals, protecting vandalised pages from edits, and so forth. There is lots of this work to be done, and we are eager to put these tools into the hands of those who will do the work that must be done with them.

On a completely different topic, you may wish to add yourself to Category:Lawyer Wikipedians, and I hope you will consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Law. Cheers! BD2412 T 06:04, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the information and I will join your groups. As for the vote, I would have considered changing it given the information you gave me in its non-coercive form. I find it reprehensible that so many others thought they could sway me with their strong-arm tactics, however, and I won't be changing my vote for that reason alone. --SR Bryant 06:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I read the comments directed towards yourself, and I personally find some of them unreasonably harsh, so I'd like to apologize on their behalf, and of course welcome you to Wikipedia as well. =) — TheKMan^talk 07:45, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Per the above, Wikipedia is sort of like Ross Perot's vision of government by town hall meeting - those who address an issue most passionately may not do so with restraint sufficient to allow their message to over-ride their emotion - but maybe others in town would approach the issue differently. BD2412 T 00:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to another lawyer. You seem to have thrown yourself into Wiki with enthusiasm and I look forward to reading your substantive additions to the law pages. As BD2412 says, this is a rough and tumble place, enjoyable as long as you do not take it personally. David91 01:55, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Defining Common Law is quite an undertaking. I won't be too upset if the rest of the world doesn't share my views of it. <grin> --SR Bryant 02:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just like to add another apology on behalf of the commuunity (though I know nothing about law :) ) the attitude shown by some people towards you was uncalled for and I hope it doesnt put you off Wikipedia. Robdurbar 09:29, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely not. It's right up my alley. <grin>

Thanks for the kind sentiments. --SR Bryant 22:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Self-noms

You opposed CSCWEM's request for adminship partly because it was a self-nomination. At the same time, there are contributors with thousands of edits who would make great administrators but are never nominated by others. The best way to get good, hard-working, humble administrators is to keep our eyes open for those who would make good use of their position, and nominate them. You have already met at least one of these people. --American Saga 01:11, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly are the advantages of taking such an action? --SR Bryant 21:11, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have reverted several edits of Zephram Stark, so you are already familiar with the biggest threat to Wikipedia right now. Unlike vandals that make their subversion obvious, Stark questions the status-quo in ways that confuse people and make them commit insubordinate acts. Several of the long-term vandals would not have challenged authority and been blocked if it weren't for Stark. While he may not vandalize articles himself, he is the cause of more vandalism than any other person. He's like a vandal maker, and there's one person who is committed to stopping him: JW1805. Nobody else seems to understand the threat that Stark represents. JW1805 has over five thousand edits, including reverting nearly every edit that Stark's sockpuppets have made. Other people don't care about vigilantly reverting these edits. They ignore the policy requiring every contribution of a banned person to be erased. If Stark is allowed to say anything or contribute to any article, he will confuse more people and create more vandals. That's why JW1805 erases his user pages and user talk pages too. Still, it takes times to submit each check-user request, wait for someone to confirm it and then ban him. If JW1805 was an administrator, he could ban Stark on sight. This would take away the influence Stark has, and he would be forced to leave us alone. --American Saga 00:15, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Zephram Stark clearly threatens "the status-quo," as you put it, put since I'm not yet part of the status quo, I need to know: what exactly are the advantages of taking your suggested course of action? --SR Bryant 02:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's leadership looks for team players to join them. We all have to pay our dues and prove our loyalty through our work before moving up, but when we get the shot at the brass ring it's good to have friends in the group that makes the final decision. --American Saga 00:04, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I’m still doing market research on the candidate. I want to email about fifty more voters before I decide whether to proffer my resources. The candidate has angered enough voters that he might not win a straight election, but that can easily be remedied. We’ll pull a "Truman" to make people more afraid of not voting for him than of voting for him. Instead of a “red scare,” there will be a “stark scare” and we’ll demonstrate how our candidate is the best hope for eliminating the ZS subversive conspiracy. I’ll get back with you in a few more days after I’ve completed the preliminaries. --SR Bryant 22:54, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Those are good words to use: “subversive” and “conspiracy.” The process of standardizing articles is going to anger some people, but they have to understand that without leadership in creating subject matter, subversives like ZS and his co-conspirators would undermine their aims. Edits like this, this and this show that ZS is trying to corrode the benevolent power of established organizations at Wikipedia, especially the charitable and dignified Wikiproject:Judaism. And let’s not forget the comment that sealed ZS’s fate as a prejudiced anti-Semitist: [1]. In building our campaign, we need to be aware of the leanings of the editors who comprise our primary target audience, and format our message to address their concerns. JW1805 is not just a leader in standardizing political history articles that have a broad relationship to Judaism as a religion; he is a valiant fighter of anti-Semitism who could do his job better with more power. --American Saga 18:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like where you’re going with that, but we can expand it to include other religions and powerful groups. ZS has also said f'n Catholics, f'n Atheists, f'n gentiles, and many more. I need to be prepared for any curve balls that come our way, and one of those bosies is that ZS demonstrates and even claims that his own ethnicity is Jewish. --SR Bryant 19:15, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We don’t need to concentrate on what he said about other religions or organizations; the influence of those groups is comparatively non-existent. Also, we never want to show that ZS is targeting religions or influential Wikiprojects. It sounds much worse to say that he has an "ethnic prejudice." His supposed Jewish ancestry is no cause for alarm. Part of his subversion is to gray the black and white lines of right and wrong so he can pretend he isn’t colluding with others to spread prejudice, insubordination and hate. It will be easy to establish that anyone bringing up the other quotes must be anti-Semitist too. Using any variant of the respectable word "Jew" in a sentence without also showing support for it qualifies as anti-Semitism. --American Saga 23:33, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That might be a bit of a stretch for some people. I think we’ll retain more voters if we help to keep the terror surrounding ZS more general. He’s a bad guy. We don’t have to attribute specific motivations to convince people of that. He’s either crazy, prejudice, bigoted, or who knows what, but two things for sure: he’s subversive and he’s part of a dangerous conspiracy. That’s all people really need to know to build fear and get our candidate promoted. We can do that by keeping track of all the insubordinate edits of ZS that our candidate reverts from this point forward: JW1805 reverts of Zephram Stark --SR Bryant 20:14, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Banned sockpuppet

This guy, Zephram, is obviously addicted to Wikipedia, so I doubt he'll stop contributing. Some of his past edits have been pretty good. Instead of deleting them to piss him off, why don't we use them as leverage? We could say, "Play nice or we'll delete all of your contributions." --Cyberus 18:06, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't matter if you think his edits are good. He is banned, and should not be allowed a forum for his edits. --American Saga 00:04, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Freedom of movement

Greetings, sir. I'm aiming to get Freedom of movement (a fascinating and important topic) up to featured article status by summer. Anything you can add - even if just an inkling of information - would be appreciated. Cheers! BD2412 T 00:47, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is indeed a fascinating, and politically charged, topic. I'll leave my comments on the article talk page. --SR Bryant 20:18, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Law selections

Greetings, fellow WikiProject Law member! One of our tasks on this WikiProject is the upkeep of Portal:Law, where we have set up a four week cycle wherein each week one of four key features - the selected article, biography, case, or image - is rotated out. Previous selections can be found at Portal:Law/former selections. Please contribute your thoughts at Portal talk:Law as to likely candidates for future rotations in each of these categories. Cheers! BD2412 T 05:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]