User talk:Snow Rise/Archive 4

Please comment on User talk:Synsepalum2013

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Please comment on Talk:Nutation

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Please comment on Talk:Blood

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Please comment on Talk:SpongeBob SquarePants

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Please comment on Talk:Android (operating system)

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Please comment on Talk:Firewall (physics)

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Please comment on Talk:2013 Central and Eastern Canada ice storm

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

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Please comment on Talk:Comedian

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Please comment on Talk:BeerXML

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

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Please comment on Talk:List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

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Please comment on Talk:Pathology

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Please comment on Talk:Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

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Please comment on Talk:Genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula

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Energetically Modified Cement

Snow:

I appreciate you may see yourself as some sort of "guardian angel" role, but please do not start adding fuel to this. This article has only a small portion of its core references on EMCs as "primary" material. All of them are co-written. All of the "primary material" has been reviewed over the course of over TWENTY YEARS by a number of third parties, including SINTEF, various trade journals and journalists in the trade, WBCSD, U.S FHWA, TXDOT, PENNDOT, CALTRANS, etc.

So can we keep this focused? I have written the section on Pozzolanic chemistry (in concretes) and the section of tribochemistry as examples. Thanks and kind regards 213.66.81.80 (talk) 11:01, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but you clearly do not understand what I and the other editors involved are talking about when we speak of a source being primary or secondary, for the purposes of Wikipedia; please see WP:Sources, an important policy page which as been presented to you several times. Whether the parties writing the material are connected to its inventor or not is incidental in establishing whether they are primary or secondary sources -- if they are conducting research or otherwise making substantive original claims, they are primary sources. Now, I have taken another long look at the sources, and, like the other editors involved, I continue to see the sources involved to be overwhelmingly primary, and most of those few that are not are simply links to websites which are not really useful as sources for Wikipedia. But with over seventy sources on the page, it's possible I've missed something and you'll certainly have your chance to make those arguments (on the article's talk page, where this discussion belongs).

As to my viewing myself as "guardian angel", I'm really not sure what you mean, anymore than I understand what fire I am supposedly adding fuel to, but both comments continue to reinforce my perception of you as unfamiliar with the process of Wikipedia; I came to that talk page because you and the other involved editor were reported to WP:ANI for blatant and numerous violations of WP:Civility, a pillar policy. I arrived to find the talk page a massive battleground of personal attacks and acrimony, with personal opinions lobbed back and forth, and yet nary a policy argument to be found and absolutely zero attempt at consensus building taking place. Frankly, if I'm guardian angel to anything or anyone, it's you, since my involvement may have forestalled administrator involvement, which (if you kept on the way you have been in your attitudes towards other editors), stands a good chance of leading to a topic ban on this subject. Though to be fair, you kind of seem determined to get there anyway. Whether you want to see it or not, the article itself does have issues and you and the other IP editor are clearly not up to resolving them between you (nor frankly do you two have the experience necessary, even if you weren't expending all of your energy on petty personal attacks). I'm not doing anything any other neutral editor wouldn't do to end the ceaseless and unproductive mud-slinging and bring the article in line with our standards -- though, truth be told, it's not the first article I'd choose to be expending my editing efforts on, were I not compelled to by the state of affairs there. And that's exactly why we have ANI and other oversight mechanisms on Wikipedia -- to resolve situations in which inexperienced, biased or simply uncivil and unruly editors cannot find a way to work together or are simply not applying policy before their own preferred method of doing things.

Now I'm not the first editor whose personal (or nefarious) motives you've speculated on, but for your sake, I hope I'm the last as you've already been advised that it is uncivil and not relevant to policy discussion and I can promise you it won't be tolerated indefinitely when weighed with your other voluminous violations of the principle of civility. You will get no traction with your arguments so long as you keep them focused on the motivations of other editors as opposed to the content and how it relates to policy. And that's a problem for you if you want to maintain the page, because I promise that sooner or later a more deletionist-minded editor will arrive there and he will have many weak points upon which to attack the page. Believe it or not, I am involved there to shore up those holes, so it doesn't serve your purposes to treat me like (yet another) adversary or to denigrate my motivations for getting involved (which in reality come down to routine process involvement and an eye for policy, even insofar as it concerns articles that I have no particularly strong opinions on -- not a hero complex).

On a final note, please keep further discussion to the talk page for the article, as I presume it will not include comments of a personal nature but rather pure discussion of the content in question, which belongs at that location. Snow (talk) 19:50, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Formal mediation has been requested

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Please comment on Talk:Investigative Project on Terrorism

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A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	For your relentless composure in the Energetically modified cement incident. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:12, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, why thank you, good sir! Can't say as there weren't moments of exasperation there, but, just one of those situations where you have to remember any extra fuel granted will be used gleefully. An admin took action on the ANI, consequently, so hopefully the article can be cleaned up and salvaged without incident now. Thanks again for bringing the situation to everyone's attention. Snow (talk) 00:37, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Congratulations on your award! Can I just say that was amazing, in a actively-wrecking-train kinda way? Idk how I ended up aware of the Energetically modified cement incident, but I read through the talk page through to the ANI and...wow, just wow. It's nice to see the bureaucracy of Wikipedia function effectively in this case of behaviour obviously incompatible with the desired norms of the project. Can I award Snow something, too, as the uninvolved observer that I am? Az x2 18:00, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you! re. Energetically modified cement

		The Anti-Flame Barnstar
		...is presented to Snow for keeping (ice)cool during the Energetically modified cement incident, and providing a heroic example of how to work within the system to put-out a fire, and not throw gasoline on it. An honor to present them with this honour... Az x2 18:15, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Aw, hey, thanks so much! Just tried to keep the discussion to the point and the facts clear and evident until a determination was made. Still, my first two barnstars this year, and I couldn't be more happy with which two they are -- thanks again! :) Snow (talk) 07:38, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All of that said, I do think I have to preserve somewhere this little gem as the perfect representation of the type of very specific disavowal you would never expect to have to make in your life until you've been a contributor on the administrative processes for Wikipedia: "I had, and continue to have, no particularly strong opinions on the subject of industrial cement." :D Snow (talk) 10:02, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Seahorse

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Please comment on Talk:Unified Modeling Language

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

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Please comment on Talk:Voting system

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Thanks for joining in. I've responded to your question. Homunq (࿓) 14:56, 21 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd really appreciate your further comment on talk:voting system. The better-attended this RfC, the less likely this article will fall back into another patient, 3RR-respecting edit war. Thanks. Homunq (࿓) 21:58, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

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Flame retardant

Why thanks very much! I'm not even sure which of the three (or four? they're a blur) ANI threads I was involved in that you're referring to. See, I was dragged into one just as I was about to go away for a few days, and then I returned to find the person who did the dragging was himself being led before a firing squad. That led to me to think, "gee, what a nice thing ANI is." So I participated in a couple and got yelled at. Oh no! The stress! The stress! But I can take it. Anyway, thanks again. I'm probably going to de-watchlist ANI as it makes my eyes bloodshot. Coretheapple (talk) 18:52, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hahaha; can't I relate to that. I should be abed right now, but I'm trying to make heads or tales of the claims/counter-claims of the "Jews and Communism" brujhaha, which is was one of the discussions I was referring to with regard to barnstar (the other being the one Wondering55 launched). It's a challenging and time-consuming place to contribute, and I try not to make a habit of checking it too often for knowledge of the effect it will have on my time for the rest of my editing efforts (and general sanity), but it's necessary process, interesting in it's own way and good practice for dealing with problematic editors. But yeah, I can't help but think de-listing it is a healthy impulse -- perhaps I should follow suit. :) Snow (talk) 19:05, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes. Now there are a couple of easily solvable problems: World War III and "Mr. Brevity." There's also another I weighed into, as an editor I'm familiar with was getting keel-hauled and I gallantly objected. Well, as you know, gallantry shall not go unpunished. But I tried. Anyway, I did note your contributions to the Wondering page. I'm trying to stay out of it (actually I have to, as Mr. Wondering once advised me never to darken his door again). However, I do hope that whatever the solution, that it is permanent. As for World War III, I am waiting for the Third Coming. Anyway, thanks again. Coretheapple (talk) 19:29, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Wondering... I commented briefly in the ANI a couple of times, hoping there was still a way to build a bridge between him and the other editors (meaning all the other editors as I've rarely seen a group on this project more united in their condemnation of another user), but I only got involved in the discussion on his talk page because, no disrespect intended towards Guy, but there was just something about that ban that didn't sit right with me. I understood the underlying reasoning -- he was wasting everyone's time and showing no signs of slowing down; if anything, any process brought against him he just converted into high-octane text-wall-laying fuel). Even so, I just couldn't point to a particular line he had crossed which was overtly a violation of policy, though obviously he has persistent issues with how he processes the concepts of collaboration and consensus, which was the communal argument against him. The thing is, I think editors should be allowed to be verbose, even excessively verbose; some people are prone to communicating in volume and this is a medium which can accommodate that (and often benefits from it). The open-ended nature of our discussions and the principle of self-regulation in that regard is one of the key facets that allows Wikipedia to work, in my impression, so I view it as a slippery slope to penalize even problem editors for that alone. I know that isn't the only problem people had with him, but everything else (his inability to see his own roles in the arguments, assuming bad faith on the part of others, believing he had attained consensus when he clearly had not, none of which are exactly rare traits on Wikipedia or generally) would have been ignored or simply derided had he in any way been ignorable. But I just don't view "is extremely obnoxious and we despair of how to deal with him" as the best reason to impose an indefinite ban (a temporary ban probably would have been entirely appropriate, though). I guess to me it came down to a Wiki equivalent of the Golden rule (law): better that ten Wikilawyers should be allowed to run their mouths incessantly than that one valued contributor should be feel intimidated about speaking his mind. He was no valued contributor in that scenario, but between this principle and the fact that the ban was imposed during a lengthy proposal discussion to which he was not privy --though he should have been following that ANI thread until it closed, given he opened it, it should be said -- I just felt he deserved one more chance at conforming himself to community standards. But alas, I'm growing as skeptical as any that he has the ability to see the problems for what they are. Anyway, I'm glad that, to begin with, the ANI thread itself worked as it should and that the community saw who the real problem editor was.

And you're most welcome; I hope the rest of your editing for a bit is more tranquil. :) Snow (talk) 20:29, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I'm sympathetic with your position. But to be frank, and I'm sure this will be no surprise to you, I agree with Guy's action. I actually felt initially that some kind of mandatory mentorship would do the trick. But I was kidding myself. Look, Wikipedia is not equipped to handle editors with those kinds of skill-set deficiencies (I'm trying to word things carefully here). I've bumped into many a hard case in recent months but never anything like this. I obviously can't speak for him, but Guy's reasoning seemed to be that there was no practical alternative, and that extending him "rope" would just consume time and energy that is growing in short supply. There is a learning curve we all must mount, but in W55's case it just does not exist. There is no learning to plot on a curve. Look at his most recent talk page post. But what bothered me, and no one has raised this issue (I guess because nobody is from that page) is that the Fort Lee article was just paralyzed.

It wasn't just the talk page warfare, but it was the editing. After he was blocked for 3RR, he stopped reverting and instead pursued an even more frustrating course of action, engaging in repeated, niggling edits, sometimes dozens, that were either unnecessary or unconstructive, required constant monitoring, and made you want to rip out your hair. Existing editors were just one by one losing interest in an extremely long (far too long, actually) and rather well-trafficked article that was increasingly reading like a high school book report because of his edits. Even after he was standing before the firing squad - and don't believe for a minute he wasn't following ANI microscopically - he was starting a discussion topic on the need to adhere to a rigid DD-MM-YYYY date (or maybe YYYY-DD-MM, whatever) format in ref name fields, invisible to the reader, totally uncalled-for by policy. He was doing this while, as he knew perfectly well, his fate hung in the balance. There is nothing in the rule book to deal with an editor like that, and really no remedy except blocking because we're not equipped, we can't cope, the time wasted is excessive, and the damage is just as lasting as it is with a more orthodox POV pusher or vandal. Were it not for his own, self-inflected ANI, the Welcome template seen by dozens/hundreds even thousands of new editors would have been seriously damaged. So that's why I support Guy. Anyway, time to reach for my headache powder..... thanks again. Coretheapple (talk) 20:56, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Fort Lee page is in terrible shape. Though I looked into it in significant detail, all I needed to do on first getting there was scroll down it to know that Wondering's restraint on volume was not confined to his policy discussion. The timeline in particular...oi... Good luck with getting that article back into shape, btw - it's going to take some serious elbow (knuckle?) grease to make it consistent with summary style again. Well, maybe you guys are right, maybe there was simply no recourse left -- certainly I am in the minority in questioning the balance value of the ban. I just worry about the effect such actions have on us the next time we run into a similar, perhaps slightly less egregious, case and we've already used this principle as justifying action. Communities can inch themselves towards significant changes in attitude in this way and I just don't like principles that legislate to the lowest common denominator. I think I would have passed by the whole thing without comment had the block been a temporary one of a couple of months - that seems a more appropriate starting place. Actually I think it would have been superior in terms of results in that by using an indefinite ban apparently felt compelled to give Wondering an "out" clause to utilize in appealing the ban to other admins, which he is (utterly predictably) using to its fullest leverage to try to achieve that end, essentially extending the talk page and ANI discussion into his talk page, the only place he can post right now, and continuing to use up the afore-mentioned time of other editors. Had he been simply blocked for a month or two, the block probably would have stood without many editors feeling the need to discuss it at length and he would have had to accept it and chill for a while, reassess, which is exactly what is needed. But I certainly don't envy Guy the responsibility of mop duty on this one, in any event.

On a side note, what the hell did we do?; my talk page TOC and section edit links have vanished. Is someone experimenting with user space? Snow (talk) 21:30, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I'm glad you mentioned that. I noticed there were no section edit links, but I assumed you designed it that way!

Anyway, as I was about to say, actually I would have to disagree with you on that. He was blocked for 36 hours for edit warring a few weeks ago, and his warfare against that must've set some kind of record. Remember too that while the behavior is uniquely bad, this kind of behavior is amply covered by our current policies and behavioral guidelines, such as WP:DISRUPT, specifically the "IDIDNTHEARTHAT" section. Therefore I wouldn't worry too much about people who are just verbose getting the axe. I'll admit that admins can sometimes be a bit fast on the trigger, but definitely not in this case. Guy was our savior, truly. I would festoon his talk page with barnstars but I suspect it would be considered bad taste so I haven't. Honestly! All the talk about "rope" really concerned me, as, while I'm a patient fellow and fairly thick-skinned, having to constantly monitor a page for fly-bite, constant, niggling bullhockey edits was just becoming a chore. Right now we are in a relative paradise in that article and, dare I say it? We may actually be able to fix it. I just hope that, to be blunt, he is kept away from it. Coretheapple (talk) 21:48, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is to be hoped that any ban reversal will be accompanied by a topic ban for that article or at least strong advise to stay away from it. That is huge traffic article for the project right now and looks frankly clownish. I'm about as busy as I've ever been of late, including in the vein of editing, but I will try to pitch in when I can. I felt bad about ignoring your general request for more eyes before, but I didn't have the time and wanted to stay away from it while commenting in the ANI. Snow (talk) 21:56, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That would be wonderful if you could. And yes, a topic ban, not a request. They don't take. I actually nominated it for GA, purely to get another set of eyes. My next stop: the eye bank! Coretheapple (talk) 22:01, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Please comment on Talk:Unified Modeling Language

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Re: Steven Pinker

Nice GAN, but a quick glance at the article shows you are missing inline sources in many places. Because this is a BLP, I'm concerned that a reviewer might quick fail it. As a rule of thumb, try to have each a citation at the end of each paragraph that supports the text preceding it. If you can't do that, add it at the end of each sentence. Viriditas (talk) 10:17, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Viriditas, thank you for the response. Looking through the article I see your assessment is correct, particularly with regard to the critical "Research and theory" section. My involvement in the article was trivial up to this point, and I would have recommended nomination to another, more-involved, contributor, but looking through the edit history, I couldn't find any one particular stand-out editor, not in recent time anyway; it seems to be one of those cases of a high quality article arising from the efforts of a decent number of collaborators without anyone having taken the lead as to the structure; I'm fairly impressed with it in that regard, which is why I nominated it myself. All of that being said, I do know the man's work and have the resources to attend to the inline citations wanting, though it may take a day or two to collect them. Thanks again for the input! Snow talk 19:05, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking the bull by the horns. I hope a reviewer doesn't quick fail it before you get to it. BTW, you've got a transclusion problem with the use of {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost}} in the heading. It's preventing the "edit" button from appearing in these sections, making it impossible for editors to edit each section. Instead, they have to edit the entire page. There are less buggy options available here. Viriditas (talk) 03:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've called in the Cavalry. Please see User_talk:TParis#Question_about_transclusion_on_a_user_page. Viriditas (talk) 03:31, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Viriditas, thanks so much for elucidating that matter. I noticed the issue arise a few days ago, but haven't had the time for the trial and error or other research to determine which element of the page was causing it. As it happens, I've been meaning to change from the signpost front page template to the talk page posting-by-edition (for easier reference to signpost articles I may wish to revisit), so I might as well just remove it altogether. Nice to have it fixed so easily; I was sure I had an errant bracket somewhere that was going to take half an hour to find in one of the above tables. :) Still, odd that the problem manifested when it did and not previously; I can't account for that, aside from to assume it's something caused by a change to the template itself, but then when the problem first arose, I took a look at other user pages that transclude the signpost in this way and did not see similar problems. Anyway, thanks again for the multiple assists! Snow talk 04:52, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm glad this is already under discussion. I was curious about the article's history and your part in it, and thought to ask you about it before volunteering to do the GA review. It looks to me like the article is not quite ready: are you (still) planning to work on it? I'd agree with Viriditas that as it stands it's not far off from a quick fail, given that it's a BLP with uncited material, and with you that most of it is a well done collaborative effort. Feel free to ping me on my user page when you're ready. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:48, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hallo again, we have progress - the reviewer has marked OK on many of the GA criteria. He wants some text rewritten or extended - please see the GA review. I'll have a go at the lead, if you could possibly have a go at his requests for the body, and we'll have a GA. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:45, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cognition in non-humans

Hi Snow, Thought I'd drop a line here instead of going further off-topic on the ref desk! I think we'd agree that it's silly to define things as solely human phenomena, only because we lack evidence in other organisms. But I do wonder if "cognition" is not too narrowly defined in our article. To me, it seems that certain aspects of e.g. insect and plant behavior could be considered a type of cognition, especially in the realm of decision making. Why would a plant grow towards the light, or a roach run to the dark? Is it not some type of decision, based on information (or at least stimulus or perception)? Even if we think of it as an "automatic" response, akin to an algorithm, is not the decision still made? There's also some conflation I didn't want to get into, with respect to what an individual "chooses" in a circumstance, vs. what evolution has produced in terms of genetically controlled behavior-- maybe the roach has no will or "choice" in the matter at all. I only have passing knowledge of cognitive science, my forte is more towards math and plant ecology. The bits on physiology and signalling I mentioned today are just a by-product of my endeavors. Anyway, fascinating stuff, hope to see you around the ref desks more! SemanticMantis (talk) 22:52, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@SemanticMantis:. You make a number of interesting points. As regards the term cognition itself, clearly a large part of the problem is that the term has come to be used in common parlance (albeit infrequently) in a manner that is not-quite consistent with how it is used by those working in most of the cognitive sciences (though, it is a trans-disciplinary field prone to some variation in this regard). In this field cognition very commonly is used to refer to traits particular to, or at least most fully developed in, humans, such a symbolic representation, abstraction, generalization and so-forth, or to the uniquely human way of processing certain types of information which are common to animals but which we parse in a particular fashion (various forms of spatial perception and communication, language especially, for example). In broader usage, cognition often refers to just suggest the application of thought/information processing by organisms broadly, including the mental and "psychological" states of entities that do not enjoy our particular gifts. It's not that researchers in these fields view human mental processes as absolutely distinct from that of other complex organisms (a good deal of work involves trying to contextualize human abilities within the larger collection of mental phenomenon and determine how we evolved from animal precursors in the "cognitive niche") -- it's just a result of the refinement of distinction via terminology. Personally, I'm not at all opposed to distinguishing between the uses in a relevant article or two, but finding the appropriate sources may be a challenge, as would striking on the right wording to delineate the concepts for a broad audience while maintaining accuracy and verifiability of the claims.

The one thing that you point out that a great many questions in this domain hinges upon is the question of mental impetus and choice; as I'm sure you might well guess, choice is a difficult concept for cognitive scientists to tackle and explain (or even define). As you point out, we are all mechanistic beings and subject to the same physical principles of causation, regardless of the complexity of our neurological and psychological make-up. So can any of our actions (overt or mental) be said to be of our own making? This is a question which preoccupies a lot of attention from cognitive scientists (as it has their predecessors in philosophy and other areas of human inquiry for millennia) and no definitive (or even particularly satisfactory) answers have ever been provided. The line between the fuzzy concept of free will and automated response is not at all clear, and, as we see here, in complicates other divisions of mental phenomena. Still, in practical usage, cognition is moving towards a more and more refined definition, at least as regards the word itself. By the way, if you are at all interested in this field of study, even just incidentally, I can recommend some great reading materials that are balanced towards those with an above-average understanding of empirical principles who are nontheless non-experts in the field, which you might enjoy. If you wish to consider some specific edits to articles pertaining to cognition here, I am at your disposal to parse the sources or help in any other fashion. Snow talk 23:57, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification! I understand that abstraction and symbolic thinking are rather unique to primate brains ;) I didn't know 'cognition' was more narrowly defined in cognitive sciences, so it's nice to see that concept clearly laid out. I do generally prefer precision in terms, so what should I call this ability to respond to stimuli in complex manners, perhaps even "choose"? Insects, plants, and maybe even some computer programs are doing something that a star or a rock cannot, right? Perhaps it's just a broad sort of intelligence... SemanticMantis (talk) 00:46, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, to be fair, there are contexts in which it is paired with narrowing terms to refer to processes that are common to other animals; for example, visual cognition - the complex suite of tasks accomplished by the brain to make sense of visual data -- and for the most part you don't actually see as much as you think you see; the visual centers of the brain apply a huge number of filters to fill in details using pre-programmed expectations (objects usual orient in such a way, colour and illumination behave in such a way), which visual illusions exploit, but which generally are useful shortcuts that allow us to intuit much more about our visual environment than is provided by the raw incoming information and create a stable, cohesive image from information provided by eyes that are constantly darting this way and that and focusing at all multiple depths and trying to resolve particular objects or other stimuli constantly.

But even something like that which seems like a big area of common ground, often sets us apart from other creatures; compared to most other mammals, most of which move and operate closer to the ground and with greater focus on olfaction, we have far superior sight; we are trichromats, uncommon in mammals, have significant focal range, fine acuity. And most other creatures which have highly refined eyesight are even more different from us in the range stimuli that they process with the photoreceptors and optical organs in themselves, to say nothing of how differently their brains my parse that information and derive useful information from it. Our robust visual suite is thought to be co-oped in many different kinds of conceptual tasks to allow for organization of concepts and associations; certainly it is integral to many mechanical tasks; the lack of those facilities in other animals is a part of the reason they don't understand math and will never be able to read a map. I remember an old paper roughly in this same field that was titled "Do Bats Dream in Sonar?", meant, presumably, to underscore the futility (and fascination) of trying to understand another creature's sensory experience, but you really need not look any farther from than a sense that we, nominally, share in order to find we are experiencing very different worlds in very different ways.

As to what term serves best across species, that's a complicated question. Complicated in that the number of different fields informing upon the question leads to a lot of different potential candidates but then also complicated in that number of different and differentiable processes fall under the broad category of stimulus responses you describe. "Percept" certainly works for many different creatures from humans to bees, but not plants or jellyfish, because the term implies the involvement of a mental construct. Pattern recognition of one form or another, be it from instinctual knowledge or from memory, is a common element of perception that can be said to be shared by a large number of creatures, but only those with a fairly well developed nervous system. A plant might detect the presence of another via some form of chemoreception, but it doesn't "know" the other plant is there; any response it makes is the result of a cascade of alterations in chemical pathways, but at no point is this information translated to a mental construct and compared against others, nor is it capable of creating the variety of behavioural responses found in innervated species. The plant may respond aggressively, but never makes a determination to do so.

But this draws attention to a half-answer to your question; in many contexts it's often easier to just describe an organisms behaviour in relation to a stimuli, rather than getting bogged in efforts to interpret it's perception in terms of subjective and quasi-qualitative assessments, an effort that might ultimately prove fruitless. And I don't mean just at our current levels of understanding; there's a school of thought that suggests that our brains are just not constructed to solve certain types of problems -- that we are lucky enough that certain of the situations our brains were designed to cope with in our evolutionary past happen to correlate to the concepts of problem solving we apply in the sciences and other advanced methods for interpreting the world around us, but that we shouldn't expect these gifts to apply to every question we can conceive of and that questions about certain subjective experiences, just as with the question of just what choice is that we touched upon earlier, may be permanently beyond our understanding, at least with our current brains. If you want a term that is general across all organisms, you may only be able to use such behavioural terms. "Responds" works well in this regard and serves to describe both internalized "passive" phenomena as a human being hearing a musical melody and being reminded of a past experience as well as a situation in which a plant is being overshadowed by a neighbor and this stimulates the production of growth hormone causing it to twist out in a certain direction.

Anyway, I know I've gone into some digressions here; when I'm tired my answers to these sorts of questions tend to be more open-ended than they technically need to be. But then, it's a complex subject as well. The long and the short of it is that I think you can get away with saying any organism can "sense" and "respond" to stimuli, but as to how it processes that information and the concordant response, things get fuzzy and complicated when you try to apply intuitive categories of human perception to other creatures. Indeed, it can sometimes be tricky trying to apply our own subjective labels to other human individuals! Snow talk 04:41, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Vernacular

I find the insinuation in this edit comment that I perhaps shouldn't be editing the article anyway deeply unhelpful. Kindly engage instead on the article talk page (here). Thank you. 86.141.190.114 (talk) 07:17, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fyi, I am not in violation of 3RR. 86.141.190.114 (talk) 09:44, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I must also ask you to follow talk page guidelines and avoid making ~~ad hominem~~ personally directed comments on the article talk page (which I find quite patronizing). 86.141.190.114 (talk) 10:04, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you are going to make the charge that I have engaged in an ad hominem attack, you need to be more specific, as it is no small accusation. You are in fact in violation of WP:3RR; you should review the version history if you feel otherwise. Please believe that I am not intending to be patronizing, but I am hitting the upper limit of how many different ways I can explain the syntactic principles at work here to you, and you have been quite bold in reverting edits which (again, not meant as a personal attack, but I can't turn a blind eye to the matter either) employ terminology which you are not using in a way consistent with their commonly accepted grammatical niche in the English language and within the field of linguistics. I'm sorry, but you've staked out territory here which you cannot defend. You're intuition on how that word (which seems to be outside your experience) is used, is incorrect, and it was causing a sentence in the lead of that article to read like gibberish. Low-traffic though the article may be, I'm not just going to let it stand like that because you have a feeling about how the word should be used that is, and again, I must be blunt, reflecting the fact that you don't truly understand it. Snow talk 10:14, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I apologise if ad hominem was not technically the correct term. However, at least half your lengthy talk page comment (including the paragraph beginning "In any event, it is clear to me that you are certainly not familiar with...') regarded my perceived qualities as an editor, my supposed misdemeanours, and your presumed superiority. I think that is both inappropriate and patronizing. The sort of approach that helps deter me from Wikipedia editing. 86.141.190.114 (talk) 10:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That comment is not meant to denigrate your general quality or worth as an editor; at the very least your efforts seem to be good faith and when it became obvious we were not in agreement, you made efforts at discussion on the talk page. So I'm not out to cast you as either incompetent or problematic as a contributor. I do, however, feel that you were notably overzealous in this case, reverting a necessary edit several times without fully understanding the syntactic properties of the terms you were engaging in this behaviour over. If I could have avoided putting it in those terms which I ultimately had to and which offended you, I'd surely have liked to; you'll notice my initial edit summary was quite neutral, and I only got more specific in the following summary and on the talk as to the fact that I felt you were acting without understanding of the term when the situation began to demand it. Regardless, it was not meant to as a personal attack and I wish it had not come to be interpreted in that way -- but, factually speaking, there came a point where I could not discuss how that word is used without pointing out that you seemed to be making assumptions as to its usage rather than relying on first-hand experience with it and the idiomatics of its syntactic/semantic role relative to other parts of speech a statement like the one in the lead.

You may not believe this given the manner in which we've first encountered each other, but I pride myself on trying to put policy and process above arguments based on ego and a sense of authority over the subject manner. I also prize civility as a primary tenet of my activity here and the last thing I want is to deter a new contributor (if in fact you are new; I don't mean to make further irritating assumptions), no matter how stridently I disagree with them on a technical point regarding content -- especially if I feel they are operating in good faith and most especially on an article such as the one in question, which, like most articles concerning non-English classical literature, needs extra eyes. All of that said, I don't know what else I was to say in that situation; I had to make it clear that the usage was not appropriate and that your reversions were detrimental to the clarity of the statement. Moving forward I will attempt to be clear that I am not passing judgement on your abilities as an editor generally when I disagree with you -- but on the more narrow issue of the content phrasing, I feel I was in the right to take a pro-active stance. Best regards, with my sincere hope that further collaboration will be more amicable. Snow talk 11:48, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I look forward to reading your answer to my talk page rebuttal of your underlying argument. May I suggest that if you remain convinced that Latin has nothing to do with this situation (and that The superordinate language in this case is Italian), then consensus would need to be reached for major changes to the Vernacular page, including the sentence "Works written in Romance languages are said to be in the vernacular."

As regards the personal angle, yes I would be grateful if this could end (including the "argument from authority" approach). As a professional writer, I do not take lightly to such disdain. Kindly note that I have tried to confine all personal considerations to this user talk page, where of course you are free to remove them :)
Regards, 86.141.190.114 (talk) 12:26, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Understandable request as regards arguing from authority; as I said on the talk page, I usually look very dimly on that approach and try to avoid it myself, as it doesn't get much traction on Wikipedia; our policies require us to represent what the sources say concerning a subject, not our personal knowledge or perspectives on same. I broke with that principle in this case because I felt this was less a case of WP:Verifiability of a claim and more one of grammar, for which I stress my certitude in the position being voiced. Still, I might have anticipated that it would come across as talking down to someone (though I assure you, my feelings did not rise to disdain; irritation at most, though that should be avoided in its own right -- but very little of that even, once it was clear you wanted to talk things out). You've made a good point, a very good point, concerning "Works written in Romance languages are said to be in the vernacular." (emphasis mine). That is very likely the usage the original author of the lead was meaning to replicate, albeit a bit sloppily and ambiguously, when he wrote the sentence originally. However, this is a much more uncommon, academic, and idiomatic usage, and on Wikipedia we are meant to be favouring an approach of using the most common and easily understood language and avoiding the idiolects of specific fields. Still, now that you point it out, what the original author was going for is much more obvious to me (though again, his/her grammar was slightly flawed). It should have been written:

"Written in the vernacular (specifically the Florentine language), it is considered a masterpiece of classical early Italian prose."

Which in plain language would translated to "Written during the development of the romance languages (specifically the language of Florentine), it is considered a masterpiece of classical early Italian prose." But it would only be interpreted in that way by those who knew what the idiom "in the vernacular" means. That is to say, the original editor clearly has enough experience in classical literature to be familiar with this outdated and somewhat academic term (unsurprising, given the subject of the article) but they also used it in a slightly ambiguous way and, more importantly, failed to realize that the average reader wouldn't know what it means anyway. Better to use a meaning which is not idiomatic, in which each word is it's own unit, so that the meaning is plain even to those readers with no experience in this field. If we write the statement as follows:

"Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of classical early Italian prose."

...then we are using only plain terms, and even if the reader does not know what vernacular means, they can follow the Wikilink and get at least a basic impression -- though the lead of that article does need some tweaking, I note -- and then interpret it in the context of the sentence. If we leave the whole idiom in as "Written in the vernacular", then it will only make sense to the uninformed reader if they read all the way down that article to Vernacular#General linguistic and then connect the dots, a situation we can't really count on happening in the vast majority of cases. Better to speak plainly with general-use formations and avoid the outdated/field-specific language. I know this is a highly convoluted discussion, and I probably complicated it further by not realizing at the outset what the original author was going for (on account of the way he used the parenthetical), but I think we're at the heart of the matter now. Encyclopedic tone is to be favoured in cases like these and I think we ought to avoid the idiom altogether, which the current wording does. Though I'm not disagreeable to changing the wording further if you feel it is still unclear. We might say, for example,

"Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, during its development into Italian, The Decameron itself is widely considered one of the defining masterpieces of classical early Italian prose."

Or just, "Written in the Florentine language, an early Romance dialect that would form the basis for modern Italian, The Decameron is widely considered one of the defining masterpieces of classical early Italian prose."

Lots of superior possibilities occur, actually, now that we're not butting heads. :)Snow talk 22:21, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your interesting comments, including the scholarly one on the talk page. That of course is really the appropriate place for content discussion, but as I'd like to take a break for a day or two I'm replying rapidly here so as to acknowledge your work (something I believe is important among Wikipedia volunteers).

Fwiw, I was the "original author" of the sentence, and I certainly don't pretend it was ideally worded. In particular, the "the masterpiece" blooper was an inappropriately expressed paraphrase the Britannica's judgement, "Stylistically, it is the most perfect example of Italian classical prose...".

Given the historical and artistic relevance of The Decameron, I feel the page is a key one, irrespective of traffic stats. I don't pretend to be the right person to do the work the page is crying out for... What I did try to do was to provide it with a reasonably worded lead [1]. But I wholeheartedly agree that there is ample space for improvement there... Imo, it's important for us to follow the spirit of WP:LEAD here: in particular, given the fame of the topic I feel we should be writing for the broadest readership possible. That was why I insisted in this case. The observation that we both found that each others' wording left something to be desired makes me think that it might be better to rewrite the sentence from scratch (as you seem to be suggesting above). Perhaps to keep things as simple as possible, it might be best to leave out the term "vernacular" altogether?

Best wishes, 86.161.251.135 (talk) 13:38, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think maybe you might be right about that; any detailed discussion about the role of the Florentine language as a vernacular and it's contribution to the development of Italian (and the role of The Decameron therein) can be reserved for a later section where it can be treated in more detail and thus not confuse readers unfamiliar with the concepts. As you're going to be away, I'll wait a few days before making any particular suggestions or edits so we can hammer it out between us as the only active editors there. I certainly agree with you that the subject's weight in a number of topics requires us to treat it with considerable respect to detail regardless of it's traffic and for what it's worth, I think the lead reads very well as a summary of the work's significance within those topics, our disagreement on the wording of the last sentence not withstanding. enjoy your time away (hopefully it's leisurely time away) and I'll revisit the article in a few days time to see if you are back. Snow talk 22:48, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You do recognize that...

I am one of those administrative exemptions you talked about? As an admin who's sincerely attempting to unblock Wondering, you basically just told him to "don't answer the questions". You might want to rethink that. the panda ₯’ 09:04, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry Panda, but I won't be retracting that statement. If you wish to unblock him, that is your prerogative and you can always tell him as much if you think you he will engage and reform his perspectives appropriately, though I think the evidence rather suggests that won't be happening. In any event, I wholeheartedly stand by my comment; that endlessly recursive discussion of every other party there telling him he needs to conform to increasingly personalized standards and him vacillating between half-hearted efforts at compliance and then renewal of his accusations of persecution is accomplishing absolutely nothing. Except to draw a whole lot of editors into long-winded cyclical arguments, a situation which, if I'm mistaken was the exact reason cited to justify the block in the first place. You've exchanged dozens of messages with him at this point, mostly reiterating the same points and the situation is exactly where it was. I'll be frank with you -- I kind of doubt, given the regard you've expressed for him and his approach, that you were ever going to be the one to unblock him, but even if you do want to, he's not going to give you what you want to hear from him before you do. Regardless, he still retains the right to control extraneous content on his page, whether he's aware or not, and he's voiced a clear desire for others to stop criticizing him while he awaits the result of the request. Admin or no, you should respect that, unless you can convince him it's in his best interests to engage.

And actually I'm not sure it is in his best interest, given each side (that is to say, he and everybody else) is only getting more and more entrenched in their positions the longer this goes on and all this process is doing for him is to provide him a shovel to dig deeper. And yes, I do believe that much of this is a result of a concerted effort to give him a chance to dig out, but that's just not the way it's played out, is it? Anyway, you might keep in mind that if this keeps up, sooner or later he's going to figure out that he is within his rights blanking that entire page aside from the unblock request and then you're at risk for the responding editor getting less of an initial impression of how frustrated a good number of experienced editors are with him. Frankly I don't know where I stand on the whole matter; I had more misgivings than most about the nature of his block, but, well I'm no more a fan of his way of doing things than the others who have commented there. What I do know for a fact is that the absurdly long discussion on ANI and his talk page have never seemed to get him even remotely close to what you and the other involved editors (whom he clearly feels are "piling on" him) would accept as evidence of true contriteness and understanding of "what went wrong" sufficient to accept that he can contribute easily. So, no, I don't think I'll be reconsidering my opinion that his objections to the continued commentary there should be heeded -- and not just because he has the right to make that call, but also because I think everybody pulling back from that situation would the best thing for all. Snow talk 11:12, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just to correct, the entire discussion under the unblock request cannot be blanked until a decision has been made on the unblock, as it becomes part of the unblock request. I understand your comments, and disagree with your analysis of me: I am personally prepared to unblock once the request is genuinely WP:GAB-compliant. I do believe in WP:ROPE. the panda ₯’ 11:27, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, for the record, I do take you at your word about that. What I meant above when I said I didn't think you were going to be the one to unblock him was not that I doubted your willingness to give him a second chance, assuming he made the right statement that gave good reason to believe that he could see the problem in a certain light. Rather my doubt stemmed from the fact that the circular argument there never showed any signs of substantially closing the gap between what you need to hear him say and his understanding and acceptance of the same. For what it's worth, though, his most recent message ends with him asking you if he has met your criteria and if you will unblock him, so you still seem to have a window of opportunity to get him to comply with whatever criteria you would require for an unblock, if you sincerely believe that's a wise use of your mutual time. But given he frames the request in a such a way as "Is an uninvolved editor coming? If not, will you please unblock me now?" I'm not sure he's at all closer to what you would require of him; he seems to be just hedging his bets. But I'll let you be the judge of that. By the way, I never knew that about unblock requests -- I always thought that a user was free to delete all discussion about an unblock request on their talk page, up to and including that attached under the template, so long as they left the template itself alone, along with any administrative functions performed within. You learn something new every day. :) Snow talk 12:06, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Snow, I responded to your post on my talk page, but a few days have passed since I was on-wiki and I don't know if your request is extant. As for unblocking, do what you will, but if you do, please have some pity on Fort Lee lane closure scandal and its talk page and keep him out of there, and let him work his magic on fresh subjects please. Things are just getting back to normal there. Give him the "rope" elsewhere, if give it to him you must. Let the behavioral test tube be elsewhere. Coretheapple (talk) 17:28, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Snakebite

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Snakebite. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:04, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your GA nomination of Steven Pinker

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Steven Pinker you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Maunus -- Maunus (talk) 14:00, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I missed the train, but it may work out well this way, as there is an academic side to this that I have only a sketchy knowledge of. As an adjunct deputy assistant reviewer my duties are happily undefined, so I've felt free to do a bit of rearranging per the reviewer's comments... I hope you'll be in there shortly to do whatever's necessary! All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:57, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jews_and_Communism_(2nd_nomination)

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jews_and_Communism_(2nd_nomination). Thanks. MarkBernstein (talk) 21:40, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Steven Pinker/GA1

Hi, are you following the discussion of the Steven Pinker GA? The review is now under way and actions are starting to be needed. I've fielded a couple but as nom it's basically your turn now... Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:02, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, thanks for the head's up. I saw Maunus' initiation of the review yesterday, but off-wiki life has thrown me some unexpected curves the last couple of days and I've only had time for a couple of trivial edits on other pages. I haven't been entirely unproductive though; I've compiled a list of useful articles for augmenting the research section and I'm headed over to the talk page momentarily to touch bases. I'm too sleep deprived to be writing much prose for the article itself right now, but I'll make some trivial edits. Luckily Maunus does not seem to be in much of a rush himself, but I'll make it clear I'm around, albeit slow-moving. Thanks for shouldering some of the process the last two days, btw. Snow talk 07:13, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Great. It's as well for all Wikipedians to recall that "real life" exists. Possibly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:59, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah...of course I might have at least used the last hour I spent addressing a problem editor on another page working on the article. Or sleeping....I gotta stay away from the procedural pages... Snow talk 10:31, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd rather spend a whole day editing an article than an hour on arguing. You've noticed, I suspect, how the ratio of argument to text rises to 10:1, 100:1, 1000:1, ... without limit. When I can't stand it any more, I go for a cycle ride, do some gardening, listen to birdsong, bake something ... anything ... Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:04, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again. We're making progress. I wondered if you could respond to the specific comment "The research section still lacks fleshing out - specially his transition form his work on visual cognition to his work on language and the influence of Roger Brown." I could hunt about on JSTOR but wondered if you could do it more easily - or perhaps point me in a sensible direction? Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Special Barnstar

		The Special Barnstar
		Dear Snow, it has been a great privilege reading your rational and penetrating commentaries surrounding the sordid "Jews & Communism" article at various forums. Your accurate summaries and incomparable logic set the tone for a high caliber debate. I was immensely struck by your uncanny ability to almost "read the minds" of the protagonists and to call a spade a spade correctly from which they could not escape. Your commitment to Wikipedia and to help it is inspiring, even at the cost of entering into controversial turf where you have nothing to gain except the goal of ensuring that Wikipedia remain a respectable and responsible source of human knowledge and not a cesspool of pseudo-scholarship. Thank you so much for your dedication to and love of Wikipedia. Yours sincerely, IZAK (talk) 10:24, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

:) Thank you, IZAK - that means quite a bit to me, truly. Like most everyone who got swept up in the affair, I couldn't have known how expansive the series of discussions would be, but I determined early that if we kept our contributions upon our community standards, and upon civility in particular then everything else would be much more likely to work itself out, which, some snags not withstanding, it did. In that regard, I owe you a bit of a debt; early on in the ANI thread which marked my first involvement in the matter, I couldn't tell left from right, there was so much volume from different parties, and several of your postings were immensely helpful in cutting through that noise to understand what had transpired. I've said before that my pride in this project extends not just from the content we provide but also from the means we've developed for putting it together and collaborating with one-another to that end. A situation like this, contentious though it might have been at times, only reaffirms that feeling for me. Sure, there may be a party or three that I worry didn't take away quite the right lessons I think they might have, but on the balance, we're usually stronger and more sensible editors for each such situation, and more limber in our reactions to the next one. Because of the seriousness of the matter, this was a real test to our abilities and to the responsiveness of our policies and, some hiccups not withstanding, I think we have reason to be proud of both. Thank you for your kind words -- I'll remember them -- and for your own contributions in the affair and general dedication to our project and community. Snow talk 11:01, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much. I love reading your words, you are special. IZAK (talk) 20:58, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Aw, now you're gonna make me blush! :) Snow talk 23:49, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Precious

"collaboration is more than half the fun"
Thank you, editor with "a thorough understanding of how this little project of ours operates", for quality contributions to articles on life sciences, perception, and their people such as Steven Pinker and a revision of Pathology, for work on the reference desk, and requesting the community to comment where "misinterpretation conflicts with many policies, accepted discussion guidelines and broad community consensus", for the image of a username and for "collaboration is more than half the fun. :) ", - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:10, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what to say Gerda, other than thank you for this singular (and yes, very precious) distinction and your gracious and heartening manner of granting it. Of course, you always hope your contributions are being well received and enjoy any evidence that they are, but it's quite another thing -- quite a lovely thing -- when someone takes the time to look at what you are doing across the project and finds it deserving of praise. :) Thank you for deeming my contributions worth that attention and appraisal -- I hope I continue to be found worthy of being listed amongst such a group of editors as this that you have associated me with! Snow talk 12:56, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I usually look a year later and two if people are still worthy ;) (most are) - If you want to work for me you can consider the RfC you proposed. I confess that I find Carmen much more attractive here than what we currently have, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:06, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I was a little surprised to see the previous discussion there dry up at the point that it did, especially given that, to me anyway, it seems pretty cut-and-dry that there's some notable problems with how that situation is being approached across a number of articles. Having just come into the matter with that discussion, I'm basing my appraisal somewhat on relayed information, but if I had to guess, I think the reason no one has taken action to contest this state of affairs (despite the obvious strong feelings many have against the notion of a Wikiproject applying self-defined "policy" to articles its members deem within it's scope is that this subject has already come up before, with very high emotions prompting disruptive conflict of a level that necessitated ArbCom's involvement; I suspect that none are eager to open up that can of worms, no matter how necessary it is to confront the issue eventually. But you're right, the situation is not going anywhere on its own, so I'll work on drafting some wording for the RfC and consider how best to ascertain that a large amount of community input is given, since the core issue is obviously relevant across the project, rather than just the narrow context of the article on Chopin. It's going to require a tad bit of time to get right though, and large blocks of time are a little scarce these next few days, so bear with me if it takes a bit. Snow talk 15:08, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Take all the time ... - the war is on since 2005, I am considered a warrior since 2013 (interesting, they didn't tell me why). For a start, read the Wagner archive (about a year ago) and compare how much more civilized Chopin is, - there's hope. I wonder if we might get the readers involved, - certainly not as long as the status quo is kept ad they will not even see that there are alternatives. I proposed Carmen about a year ago, - silence. I am under a restriction which I came to enjoy: 2 comments max in a given discussion, a true blessing, - only too unevenly granted ;) - I could give you links to thoughts, but feel that the more uninvolved, unbiased and independent you are, the better, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:04, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This has been going on since 2005? :O Do you mean the fight over infoboxes in that scope generally, the block actions by certain members of the Wikiproject in particular, or just acrimony in the domain of articles on composers generally? Snow talk 19:30, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The term "infobox wars" was coined in 2005. (You may have seen that image before.) When I reviewed Richard Wagner for FA (also by Smerus) and mentioned infobox, I was told that it would "damage the article" ;) - I don't believe it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:18, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see, you were referencing spirited disputes over infoboxes in general; I thought maybe you meant this particular situation with Wikiproject Composers arose in 2005. While I'm aware that infoboxes can be sometimes contentious, in my opinion this particular situation is problematic on another level and the nature of the content being debated, infobox or otherwise, is secondary to other very pertinent issues, if the previous history of the conflict has been of the nature described by various editors (from both sides of the issue) on that talk page. Less concerning to me about whether an infobox is ultimately included is the possibility that select members of a Wikiproject view it within their purview to establish "policy" for any article that they can justify as within it's scope. I'm not surprised, given that perspective, that ArbCom has become involved previously, but clearly, sanctions or no, that has not ended the conflict. Though from what I've observed, ArbCom's involvement was confined to the narrower issue of the infobox and the incivility of certain parties; this possibly newer and certainly more broadly worrying issue of organizing editors of like-mind on an issue from within a Wikiproject and then trying to enforce that perspective as a guiding principle equivalent to (or in the context, superior to) general policy and broader community consensus, must not have been present or immediately apparent at the time, since I doubt very much they would have failed to address it. Any RfC will need to be broadly promoted through relevant community channels, not just to put the infobox issue to rest but also to forestall the same tactics being utilized in other, non-related content disputes. From my perspective, the established role for collaboration, Wikiproject or no, forbids the canvasing-like approach in question, but it can't hurt to discuss the matter explicitly to forestall any further activity of that sort. Snow talk 06:39, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are right that the matter is not infoboxes, and the arbcom case wasn't about infoboxes (only I thought so, - English is not my first language, I make such mistakes, thinking something is simple). It was about ownership, and wasn't solved. I look at the way Wikipedia:CITEVAR is used against progress (talk of BWV 183), and see the very same thing, and the worst offender of free editing seems to be Wikipedia:STATUSQUO. I wouldn't mind the whole thing as much if we didn't loose good editors over it, one after the other, see GFHandel (over Bach), Melodia (over Wagner), Ched and RexxS (over the arbcom case, thank goodness RexxS returned), to name only a few. The case almost got Andy (Pigsonthewing) banned, for saying again and again what you said above. (Detail from the case) - "Proceed at your own risk", --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:34, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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WikiProject Dance

Hello, I’m contacting you because you are a participant in WikiProject Dance. Myself and another editor, User:Mwacha are interested in developing some notability guidelines on WikiProject Dance for dancers, dance critics, performers, and other genre articles as there is no such thing at the moment comparable to what I have heard other editors use for Visual Arts, IE “if they are collected in a major museum, then they are considered notable.” There are of course exceptions to this standard but it is nice to have a rule of thumb to help with AfD, and other moderated discussions. We hope to start this discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dance under Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dance#Notability Guidelines.OR drohowa (talk) 18:53, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Your GA nomination of Steven Pinker

The article Steven Pinker you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Steven Pinker for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Maunus -- Maunus (talk) 15:41, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Maunus, Chiswick Chap! I'm thrilled to see the nomination pass -- all the credit for getting it over the remaining hurdles belongs to you two, and the article looks better than ever! :) Snow talk 02:04, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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SYTYCD season 11 edits

Snow Rise, when I built the callbacks section, I used season 10's as a template, which is where "Cha-cha-cha" came from. So if you want a consistent spelling, then old articles should probably be checked, especially the tenth season. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:22, 26 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

BlueMoonset I actually thought that might be the case. I'm planning on doing a major pass-over of all of the season articles in the near future to make sure they are more consistent with one-another and to generally tighten things up; many of the tables in particular could be cleaner. Thanks for note! Snow talk 20:27, 26 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Friendly request

Hello there Snow! I am noticing that you are using some old obsolete HTML <font> tags in your signature (there's a quite lengthy RfC about the use of obsolete code on VPR if you're intrigued), and am wondering if you might be interested in updating it. If you are interested, I suggest replacing:

[[User:Snow Rise|'''''<span style="color:#19a0fd;">S</span><span style="color:#66c0fd;">n</span><span style="color:#99d5fe;">o</span><span style="color:#b2dffe;">w</span>''''']] [[User talk:Snow Rise|talk]]

with:

[[User:Snow Rise|''<b style="color:#19A0FD">S</b><b style="color:#66C0FD">n</b><b style="color:#99D5FE">o</b><b style="color:#B2DFFE">w</b>'']] [[User talk:Snow Rise|talk]]

which will result in a 172 character long signature (6 characters shorter) with an appearance of: Snow talk
compared to your existing 178 character long signature of: Snow talk
— Either way. Happy editing! — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 12:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Technical 13, an overdue thank you for bringing this issue to my attention - I've been following the discussion at VPPRO with interest and though I'm divided on some of the issues discussed in the RfC itself, and have consequently not commented as yet, I appreciate your effort to inform others as to the uncertain continued viability of the old syntax. Snow talk 09:52, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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