User talk:Andrewa/archive2

Contents

1 Transwiki 2 Information Habitat 3 Roman Catholic Church 4 Greeting 5 Requests to see deleted pages 6 Thread mode

Transwiki

Ah... in theory, a redirect to the log exists at transwiki. In reality, it won't exist unless someone has made it. The example on meta was made up, and there wasn't actually an existing log on fr: until I just created it at fr:Wikipédia:Log de transwiki.

There isn't one on the Sep11 wiki for a different reason. One of the aims of the transwiki namespace was so that people unfamiliar with a project would not have to learn about formatting. However, on Sep11, there is no set formatting, and no regular participants to move things out of the transwiki namespace, so on that project, articles are placed straight into the main namespace and not logged.

Sorry for the confusion. I'll add some more instructions to the page later. The idea is still a work in progress, so it's helpful to find where improvements are needed in the instructions. Angela. 06:38, Apr 17, 2004 (UTC)

Information Habitat

Moved from user:andrewa/sandbox:

Hi Andrew, I hope you will forgive this brief note, which is just to let you know that through serendipitous events, I discovered your sandbox and have left a message in User Talk:Andrewa/sandbox and am not quite sure if you will notice it. In peace. IH

Moved from user talk:andrewa/sandbox:

Dear Andrew,

Thanks to Wikipedia being down for a couple of hours, I discovered the wikipedia irc channel, and immediately say the message about other wikipedia channels, which I went to when Wikipedia was back up, discovering, inter alia, #mediation.wikipedia - which I plan to visit tomorrow - it's almost 2 am now - and #enrc.wikipedia, which I logged into and found interesting as a way of geting a sense of what is being posted. I might add that I edited the page, adding my IRC nickname, correcting a couple of typos, and making the list of IRC channels clickable,

I checked back on #enrc.wikipedia from time to time and noticed your entry for User:Andrewa/sandbox. Given your role re the VfDs for pages I have created, I naturally decided to look at the page, which I discovered to be dominated with images of the peace cubes and links to pages I had created and - pages where you were appear concerned that I might emerge under another name - which I am not planning to do - except that I would like to change User:Information-Ecologist to User:Information Ecologist, if that can be doene easily, as there will be times when I may want to contribute to Wikipedia in a personal rather than an organizational capacity, and since creating that user name, I discoverd that ther is no problem with spaces in user names

Given that it seems clear that were are on each other's minds these days, and that we both seem to want to find a win-win resolution I wondered whether it might be helpful if we could communicate in a real time conversation, either:

by phone, which is somewhat problematic mostly due to the time differential (I live in New York city) and my not having a sense of your schedule; cost is an issue as I am on a very limited budget, but not prohibitive as I use relatively inexpensive phone cards - or

using IRC - either #mediation.wikipedia or a separate chanel - eg #ihwil.wikipedia - as I have found IRC to be an excellent medimm for thoughtful and constructive dialogue Btw, I tried again to phone a while ago, but your line was busy each time I called, and you hadn't been in when I phoned about ten days ago so it does seem that IRC would make more sense.

If you are open to this, could you leave a message here and I will come back tomorrow.

Incidentally, given my interest in your sandbox, your rationale for marking all edits as minor is no longer valid and although it doesn't bother me personally if you mark them as minor - I will still look at all the changes - there is much to be said in favor of maintaining accurate records.

I have to go to bed now, which I will do after posting a brief note in your sandbox to let you know I have visited it and made this entry - in case you don't notice that there is a message her, and I look forward to a response from you.

In peace

Information Habitat 06:53, 2004 Apr 19 (UTC)

PS. I would be interested in any comments you might have on the revisions I made today to Florence Nightingale

Reply:

G'day Robert

I'd prefer to communicate via talk pages, or by personal email to andrewa @ alder . ws (leave the blanks out of course). However if you wish to telephone, the best numbers are:

• + 61 (2) 9441 4476
• + 61 (4) 2525 4476 (mobile).

The telephone number you tried before is actually no longer mine (although I did get your message), and is often occupied by an Internet dialup connection, as you have discovered. Try to take timezones into account please if telephoning, even my mobile is normally on while I'm asleep next to it.

The sandbox talk page is probably not a good place for this discussion, I would not have looked there except by accident, nor is the sandbox itself. Not that it does a lot of damage, it's just annoying and unnecessary IMO, because those pages have a purpose and it's not that, and I get no automatic notification of messages there. This is however exactly what this page is here for.

I'd be delighted to hear from you here, or by email. These are my preferred methods because they allow non-synchonous communication. Andrewa 13:35, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

• Andrew,

Thanks for your message today. I will follow through in the morning on the requests for speedy deletion, and will also explore refactoring - I just glanced at it so far - and also the SQL Query, and will double-check Florence Nightingale for spelling and syntax errors. As you may have seen, I have created Information Habitat/Sandbox into which I have pasted a copy of your sandbox and have done some reorganizing and sorting to see what I can learn from the information you had assembled & have also created Information Habitat/Contributions whre I am organizing my user contributions.

In peace. Information Habitat 05:01, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

Roman Catholic Church

Why did you delete this? It seemed like a good potential article to me, or a redirect if not. But more important, it was listed on VfD and the vote hadn't yet completed. Or have I missed something? Andrewa 22:25, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

My apologies. I was unaware that it was on VfD. Snowspinner moved the content to Criticism of the Catholic Church. That left a redirect from Roman Catholic Church to Criticism of the Catholic Church, and being not knowing about the VfD discussion, you can see why I wouldn't want to leave THAT redirect in place ;-). Sorry for the confusion. If the VfD discussion has not yet noted the new location of the material they were discussing, I'll post a comment there. Isomorphic 22:40, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oh, and the reason I didn't redirect to Catholicism, as someone has now done, is that I wanted to preserve the distinction between the Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church, which is commonly misunderstood but significant. I'm still hoping that someone will write a real article at Roman Catholic Church, and move over some of the material from Catholicism.

Greeting

I'm flattered. :-) Sure, feel free to use my greeting, and feel free to suggest changes to it. I spend a fair amount of time on issues related to newcomers, but I'm an inconsistent greeter myself – I do it when it suits my mood, or when a new user catches my eye. As you said though, I do keep it updated. Actually it just went through a major change as I deleted a lot of links in favor of a link to the Tutorial. That's part of the original motivation for the Tutorial, actually: to keep the welcome messages shorter and more flexible.

Happy editing, Isomorphic 08:57, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Requests to see deleted pages

OK, here's my first one. Can I see the page history for Donald Adams? anthony (see warning) 23:49, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

15:10, 24 Mar 2004 . . Jiang () 
16:05, 3 Sep 2003 . . Tim Starling (Moved to  sep11:Donald Adams) 
11:21, 12 May 2003 . . The Cunctator (Restoring stub.) 
08:53, 12 May 2003 . . Kingturtle (moved to 9/11  wikipedia) 
13:45, 16 Sep 2002 . . The Cunctator (entryfying) 
13:44, 16 Sep 2002 . . The Cunctator (moved to "Talk:Donald_Adams") 

• Toshiya Kuge

18:07, 27 Mar 2004 . . Jiang () 
17:30, 28 Feb 2004 . . KIZU () 
04:41, 24 Nov 2003 . . WhisperToMe (Link Tokyo) 
16:17, 16 Nov 2003 . . WhisperToMe (+Linking to wards) 
04:28, 3 Mar 2003 . . The Cunctator (Restoring, link to sep11:) 
22:40, 1 Mar 2003 . . MyRedDice (move to sep11.wiki) 
14:01, 21 Feb 2003 . . Maveric149 ( (soccer)|) 
07:55, 22 Aug 2002 . . Ktsquare () 
01:51, 26 Feb 2002 . . Conversion script (Automated conversion) 

Also related talk pages if available.

Would you mind terribly listing all requests explicitly as links in future? If you don't do this it just means I need to.

I'd also request that you don't refactor your comments to my talk page once I have replied to them, despite your disclaimer. Of course I can't force you to do this. But I find it ironical that you claim to value accuracy, and then write comments that are patently inaccurate.

This page works on the thread model. You are free to request any model you like for pages you create, and I for one will comply with this request. But the model you advocate doesn't mix well with the thread model, and the results are so misleading that to my mind inaccurate is the best term for them. Andrewa 03:31, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

• talk:Donald Adams

12:32, 20 Aug 2002 . . 198.26.130.37 () 
01:51, 26 Feb 2002 . . Ted Longstaffe (*) 
14:17, 14 Feb 2002 . . 64.80.247.xxx (*) 
05:03, 5 Feb 2002 . . 64.80.247.xxx () 
04:51, 5 Feb 2002 . . 64.80.247.xxx (*) 

• talk:Toshiya Kuge

17:27, 28 Feb 2004 . . KIZU (Question of an EAFL Speaker.)

Thread mode

I'd also request that you don't refactor your comments to my talk page once I have replied to them, despite your disclaimer.

No problem. It's your talk page, after all. I'd ask that you don't refactor my comments either, of course. And I assume making an addition a couple minutes later when the comment has not yet been replied to is acceptable (something I've just don't done now). -anthony

Perfectly acceptable. I do it too. All I'm trying to achieve is an environment where efficient, open discussion can occur. Andrewa 21:43, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This page works on the thread model. You are free to request any model you like for pages you create, and I for one will comply with this request. But the model you advocate doesn't mix well with the thread model, and the results are so misleading that to my mind inaccurate is the best term for them.

That's why I warn people not to reply to my comments without explaining whatever they are referring to. -anthony

This warning has effectively gagged me on occasions. Whether this is deliberate or not, it's the effect. Thread mode works well. I think your deliberately disrupting it is misguided at least.

Would you like to experiment with genuinely (that is, mutually) unthreaded discussion below? I'm at least as interested in this experiment as you are. I just think that your unilateral adoption of it on Wikipedia infrastructure pages is not good. Andrewa 21:43, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Whether the intended effect is to gag you depends on what you intended to contribute. To some extent the intended effect is to gag the irrelevant banter that so commonly occurs in a threaded discussion. I don't feel I have adopted it unilaterally. In fact, anyone is free to make comments in any way they want on any page. I just ask that you don't edit mine, and allow me to edit mine. I really think that's something which is allowed without a warning. And my intention is not to use it in all cases. I wish there were some easy way to have multiple signatures, but since there isn't I simply put the warning on every message I sign. As for experimenting with unthreaded discussion, using this topic as the example, I've already posted most of my argument on User:Anthony DiPierro/warning. Feel free to add a counter-argument there, if you'd like. If I get a chance I might add some responses to your counter-arguments, but this topic isn't really a high priority of mine. By the way, also see Talk:Drug_addiction, specifically the sections Drug addiction should be kept as a page separate from addiction and Drug addiction is addiction for an example of unthreaded discussion in action. -anthony

I'll attempt a reply. Anthony's comments from above are in italics below, in accord with his wishes.

Whether the intended effect is to gag you depends on what you intended to contribute. That seems to mean very little, except to foreshadow an insult you intend to make below. To some extent the intended effect is to gag the irrelevant banter that so commonly occurs in a threaded discussion. That seems to be a thinly veiled insult. What is irrelevant banter is a matter of opinion. Let me be more explicit.

There are times when you have made comments that were IMO patently ridiculous. Without your warning, such comments would have received a comment from me, hopefully a constructive one that would have allowed you to reply. However my comment would have been short, as thread mode allows, and would have taken little time to compose. I was not prepared to take the far greater time needed to compose a self-contained comment (such as this one). So either you got away with a ridiculous comment, or you missed an opportunity to clarify it. We'll never know which, as your comment is now buried in the history and there's no easy way to retrieve it. But either way, IMO the discussion was poorer for my being unable to answer you.

Far from gagging irrelevant banter, the effect I notice is it frees you to indulge in it without challenge. I take responsibility for what I say, but you seem to use this warning to avoid taking responsibility for what you say.

I don't feel I have adopted it unilaterally. In fact, anyone is free to make comments in any way they want on any page. True, and irrelevant. I just ask that you don't edit mine, and allow me to edit mine. The only time I have edited yours was once, to revert changes that disrupted a thread by answering the comments that I had added subsequently. I apologise for that, I hadn't realised at that time what your warning meant. I had read it but it had made no sense to me. I do point out that these were comments you had indented as part of a thread, so IMO your warning was not consistent with your own actions on this occasion.

I really think that's something which is allowed without a warning. Then why do you add the warnings?

And my intention is not to use it in all cases. That's even worse IMO. It means you can ambush us whether we heed the warnings or not. Could you please be explicit as to which of your comments are covered and which are not? This problem is already hinted at by your warning, and to some extent by my own disclaimer, linked to above. See also below for a possible contradiction here.

I wish there were some easy way to have multiple signatures, but since there isn't I simply put the warning on every message I sign. Such as this one? You've contradicted yourself twice here. Firstly, you've managed it below. Secondly, your warning says all posts. Or it did, have you changed it?

As for experimenting with unthreaded discussion, using this topic as the example, I've already posted most of my argument on User:Anthony DiPierro/warning. Feel free to add a counter-argument there, if you'd like. If I get a chance I might add some responses to your counter-arguments, but this topic isn't really a high priority of mine. You have already posted a link to my arguments on your page, thank you (seriously, thank you, I appreciate it's posted in good faith). You don't want to answer them using genuine, mutually unthreaded mode as offered, but you seem to have found time to answer them here using your personal semi-threaded mode, don't you? What does that tell us, do you think?

By the way, also see Talk:Drug_addiction, specifically the sections Drug addiction should be kept as a page separate from addiction and Drug addiction is addiction for an example of unthreaded discussion in action. -anthony Yes, that page is an excellent example of both threaded and unthreaded discussion, and both used to good effect. But did you notice that they are clearly separated? Andrewa 20:16, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There are times when you have made comments that were IMO patently ridiculous. Without your warning, such comments would have received a comment from me, hopefully a constructive one that would have allowed you to reply. However my comment would have been short, as thread mode allows, and would have taken little time to compose. I was not prepared to take the far greater time needed to compose a self-contained comment (such as this one). So why not point out my ridiculousness, maybe on my talk page, and allow me to correct it?

There are several reasons, but the most important was that doing that would also have taken far longer than a quick, inline comment such as this one.

So either you got away with a ridiculous comment, or you missed an opportunity to clarify it. We'll never know which, as your comment is now buried in the history and there's no easy way to retrieve it. If the comment is gone then I probably realized the problem with it. Since I don't know what in particular you're talking about I can't say for sure, though. But either way, IMO the discussion was poorer for my being unable to answer you. For what, 10 days? How is the discussion now? Poorer? Better? Neither? I take responsibility for what I say, but you seem to use this warning to avoid taking responsibility for what you say. I don't feel that taking responsibility for what you say involves keeping everything you say around for eternity for everyone to see. Correcting a mistake is not avoiding responsibility.

Agree. That's not the point at all.

I do point out that these were comments you had indented as part of a thread, so IMO your warning was not consistent with your own actions on this occasion. Actually, it wasn't indented until you indented it.

Good point. I think you may have fallen foul of this on other occasions, but I take your point that this wasn't one of them. Rather, it was my mistake. As I've said before, I didn't at first understand your warning.

I wish there were some easy way to have multiple signatures, but since there isn't I simply put the warning on every message I sign. Such as this one? You've contradicted yourself twice here. Firstly, you've managed it below. Secondly, your warning says all posts. Or it did, have you changed it? I wouldn't say "-anthony" is a signature. Not in the sense of the word I was using it above, anyway. And, yes, I guess I've contradicted myself by saying "all comments I make...are subject to change without warning" and promising not to make changes to my comments I make here. But "all comments I make except for those on the User talk page of Andrewa" just sounds stupid.

Agree. How about "I take responsibility for the effects that my edits have on the sense of other people's comments, in the spirit of Wiki culture"? You'd then have to abide by this, of course.

And my intention is not to use it in all cases. That's even worse IMO. It means you can ambush us whether we heed the warnings or not. Could you please be explicit as to which of your comments are covered and which are not? All comments are covered except those I make on your user talk page. I don't intend to use it in all cases, but I reserve the right to.

Hmmmm. OK. I'm flattered that you make an exception just for me. I suspect that other talk page owners would like the same, but that's their problem. Now we need to deal with community pages, which will be trickier. A little progress I think.

You don't want to answer them using genuine, mutually unthreaded mode as offered, but you seem to have found time to answer them here using your personal semi-threaded mode, don't you? What does that tell us, do you think? Are you referring to the fact that I listed three of your points on my page as semi-threaded? That tells us that you don't understand my intention (I never said anything about "mutually unthreaded", for example), and it also tells us that I am quite flexible. I don't intend there to be strict rules about this sort of thing.

No. I'm not referring to that at all. I'm referring to your ongoing discussion here. But as you have now started to contribute to the unthreaded discussions below, the point isn't of further importance IMO.

By the way, also see Talk:Drug_addiction, specifically the sections Drug addiction should be kept as a page separate from addiction and Drug addiction is addiction for an example of unthreaded discussion in action. -anthony Yes, that page is an excellent example of both threaded and unthreaded discussion, and both used to good effect. But did you notice that they are clearly separated? Why yes, yes I did.

Great. The point is, this separation is important. It's not an example that supports the practice of destroying threads without this structure.

I think this thread is a great example of the problems with threaded discussion. It seems we've both wrote a lot, and said very little. For instance, in that last paragraph, you make a good point, and ask a supposedly rhetorical question, but I have no idea what your intention is to tie that into the rest of the discussion. I'm beginning to wonder if you're just being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. Are you trying to get me to change my policy of modifying my comments? Because that just isn't going to happen. What exactly is your intention with this discussion?

anthony (see warning) 23:12, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What a mess. Sometimes the italics above are your words, sometimes mine. It doesn't need to be that bad IMO, but I agree it's difficult. That was part of the point of trying it. Mixed mode can't work IMO. It gives us the worst of both worlds.

Because this isn't really a threaded discussion above. Your offer to respect the rules of my page only goes halfway. I'd like to intersperse my comments into yours. Without this there is little point in indenting, we could just assume that the comments are in order as we go down the page.

Is this what you want? I don't understand how my offer only goes halfway. -anthony

Perhaps I am being too cautious. I wanted to avoid any misunderstanding.

Would you agree to continue in full thread mode, such as we normally use on the Village Pump for example? I'd like to reply to many of your points above. May I do so between your paragraphs? Or better still, may I interrupt the paragraphs between your sentences?

You can do anything you want with my comments. Like I said, this is your page. -anthony

And as I've said below, I think you're confusing the issue. My warning is not really about threadmode vs. unthreadedmode. It's about whether or not comments can and should be changed after they are written. I do this on many pages, including the Village Pump. -anthony

See #What does unthreaded mean? below.

I will reply to a few points here. I hope by this discussion to learn myself and to give you and others the opportunity to learn too, and that we'll all be better able to contribute to Wikipedia as a result. I'm not enjoying this as an argument, I have better things to do than argue. IMO your warning does still need updating, I agree that your proposal to mention my talk page as an explicit exception there sounds silly, but I think that you can do better if you try. I don't expect you to abandon the policy of modifying your comments, nor want you to. Ideally, we'll come up with a convention that allows you and others to do exactly this on talk pages, the Pump and similar pages without any of the problems I see at present. That would really rock. Perhaps a rewrite of your warning is all that it would take, I don't yet know. Andrewa 07:08, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Was your problem the fact that I accidently signed my regular signature above? Because, that was an accident. An accident I can't really fix while respecting your request not to edit comments I make on this page, though. -anthony

No. My point was that using multiple signatures is not all that difficult, and preferable to pointing to an inapplicable warning. But the best thing IMO would be to rewrite the warning so it was generally applicable.

By the way, you didn't address my following point: "I do point out that these were comments you had indented as part of a thread, so IMO your warning was not consistent with your own actions on this occasion. Actually, it wasn't indented until you indented it." -anthony

Quite right. I only responded to a few of your points, while I cleared up any possible misunderstanding about what you considered fair treatment of your comments here. I've replied now.

Eight indents is about my limit before taking action to reduce them, otherwise even a simple two-person discussion starts to suffer from what Meatball calls ThreadMess, and this hasn't been a simple discussion. So we should think of some sort of archive and/or refactor. My preference would be to continue all these discussions in unthreaded mode, below, and to archive this threaded section. Andrewa 20:02, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)