Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:28, 24 September 2007

Hello Kevinp2, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Here are some recommended guidelines to help you get involved. Please feel free to contact me if you need help with anything. Best of luck and happy editing! CobaltBlueTony 20:43, 21 August 2006 (UTC) Getting started Misplaced Pages Tutorial How to edit a page The five pillars of Misplaced Pages Manual of Style Be bold in editing How to write a great article WikiProjects Getting your info out there Cite your sources Neutral Point of View Point of View Verifiability Uploading images Image use policy Getting more Misplaced Pages rules Policy Library Getting help New contributors' help page Where to ask a question Help Desk Frequently Asked Questions Getting along Wikipedians Wikiquette Civility Sign your posts Conflict resolution Getting technical Pages needing attention Peer review Utilities Village pump

Your Mediation Cabal case

Good Evening (GMT time); I have accepted your Mediation Cabal case - requested by Kevinp2 - on behalf of the Mediation Cabal. Mediation has commenced at the case page, where you are invited to participate. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me via email or my talk page; I will try to answer all your questions as fully as possible in so far as it does not compromise my neutrality. Kind regards, Anthøny 09:16, Saturday May 19 2007 (UTC)

walther

You may want to have a look in on Talk:Walther P22 again. Griot has canvassed only those users who want to keep the VT mention in the article, so I am alerting those who were not yet contacted. There has been discussion on WP:ANI about the outcome of the previous polls. Your continued involvement in the discussion(s) would be welcomed. ··coelacan 22:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Joyce Foundation

Hello. I was wondering if you you would be interested in reopening the mediation case for this article. User:Hipocrite has come back from "retirement" and rather than discuss the changes he makes, he is just flinging about accusations of sockpuppetry and stalking me to other pages. Thanks. Homefill 17:55, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, the mediation case ended when User:Hipocrite retired and walked away from it. I have no interest in reopening it. However, I will weigh in Kevinp2 21:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Your conduct on the Gitmo page

Hello,

I just happened across your discussion with others at Talk:Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Disagreements happen on Misplaced Pages and it is better for everyone involved if they are resolved quickly and according to existing Misplaced Pages policy. First of all, your conflict resolution skills could using some augmenting. I see that you are having a significantly difficult time communicating exactly what you think is wrong with the article with the other editors. When they seek clarification, you accuse them of having agendas and certain political beliefs when in reality, none of this maters to Misplaced Pages. Officially, Misplaced Pages is here to represent all mainstream viewpoints. If you believe that a viewpoint is under-represented, the best thing you can do is start adding content to represent it. About the worst thing you can do is load up an already oversized article with cleanup tags that convey little information about what is really wrong and engage in frustrated conversation with other editors on the talk page.

There is a difference between helping to make Misplaced Pages better and being on Misplaced Pages to further your own political beliefs. By following these rules, you'll leave little room for question as to your motives for being here:

• WP:CIV - Civility is a code for the conduct of editing and writing edit summaries, comments, and talk page discussions on all Wikipedias. Wikipedians define incivility roughly as personally targeted behaviour that causes an atmosphere of greater conflict and stress. Our code of civility states plainly that people must act with civility toward one another.
• WP:NPOV - All Misplaced Pages articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly and without bias all significant views (that have been published by reliable sources). This is non-negotiable and expected on all articles, and of all article editors.

Please note that others brought these rules up to you and you seemed to ignore them. Take this message as the view point of an outsider. You have violated WP:CIV, with out a doubt, and this behavior is not constructive. Please remember that when engaging in editing disagreements with others, that you (and this is a reflection you personally, Kevinp2, not some greater "you", all though this does in general refer to a lot of people as well) will need to actively work to not "pour gasoline on the flames" as it were. For instance:

I have little hope of dissuading you from your POV crusade. Carry on and scribble in your caricature here as you please. - This sentence is completely unnecessary and serves to do nothing except make the situation more stressful for everyone involved.

In closing, please take a moment to consider your actions and your words and how they may effect other people. Please actively work to remain civil and constructive and instead of spending time debating stuff with others in an aggressive manor, work to represent all view points in the article and make sure they are properly cited. Your current conduct is disruptive and not welcome, however, you are very welcome to edit here.

If you have any further questions I am willing to answer them, please leave a message on my talk page and I'll reply on yours. I look forward to editing with you in the future. :-) Triddle 18:06, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

personal attacks

I have been very patient with your descents into personal attacks. I am sure you think your contributions to the[REDACTED] are all useful. But, not only is it not polite, but your personal attacks are violations of wikipolicy> My patience for personal attacks is at an end.

You wrote:

"You will continue to write one-sided articles like this one that deliberately cast one side of the war on terror in an unfavorable light - the side whose difficult and dangerous work allows you to write all this in safety and comfort - while remaining silent on the atrocities and inhumanities of the other."

I am not responding on Talk:Bagram Theater Internment Facility because it doesn't have anything to do with Bagram.

Your complaint is just plain factually incorrect:

1. I dispute your assertion that I "...deliberately cast one side of the war on terror in an unfavorable light..."
2. Your assertion that I "remaining silent on the atrocities and inhumanities of the other." -- this is incorrect. I have written on atrocities committed by the other side.
   • If you come across references to incidents where you think "the other side" has committed atrocities, or otherwise done something meriting coverage, that you think could best be covered by me, feel free to forward those references to me.
3. I dispute your implied criticism that I am impeding efforts that would make us safer, and that my efforts make use less safe.
   • Counter-terror efforts, or initiatives that are called counter-terror efforts, can make us less safe.
   • I respect any patriotic person who joins their country's armed forces, in order to protect their country, or to protect world peace -- so long as they obey the rules of war.
   • When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Ivan Frederick's family started a website, now 404. Frederick was the most senior NCO involved. The web-site said he had doubts about the legality of the orders he was given. I had heard that GIs were only obliged to obey legal orders. I didn't understand why he hadn't told his superiors he was going to decline to obey the orders whose legality he doubted. I wrote the contact name on his family's web-site, and asked that. They didn't respond. But over on another web-site some Americans who had experience with the US Armed Services explained to me that the consequences of disobeying what you thought was an illegal order were extremely serious. Serious even if you were correct. See how much at risk Rumsfeld put Joseph Darby. And very serious if your JAG ruled that you were wrong to disobey. So, I am more sympathetic to Frederick.
   • So, I continue to respect the efforts of soldiers who think htey are obeying lawful orders -- even if those orders don't turn out to be lawful. The over-all disrespect that may people had for Vietnam Vets was a cruel mistake, because, even if some of them committed atrocities, I believe relatively few of them realized they were committing war crimes at the time, or were in a position to protest at the time.
   • But my respect for the sincerity of the sacrifice made by patriots doesn't induce me to therefore place value on the campaigns they were involved in, just so no one thinks their sacrifice was in vain.
   • I won't agree to the suppression of material sourced, from authorititative, verifiable material in order to show one side in a better light. If you thiink that the wording of that material does not comply with the wikipedia's policy of presenting information from a neutral point of view, or some other policy -- well then explain, in enough detaile to be useful -- why you think it doesn't comply. Please be civil. Please refrain from personal attacks.
   • I can't help wondering whether the intensity of your feelings might not erode if you allowed yourself to consider that some DoD initiated make us all less safe, rather than more safe.
     • Admiral Harry Harris, the previous OIC of JTF-GTMO, stated that "there are no innocent men in Guantanamo". Maybe you believe him, and therefore resent any efforts to provide coverage of material about the captives. But what if his statement was incorrect?
     • We all have limited resources we can expend on counter-terrorism. We can't protect against all risks. We have to set priorities, and make choices about which risks we guard against. And we are at greater risk if we base those choices on bad information.
     • So long as Guantanamo contains guys held there through malice, deceit, garden-variety mistaken identity, or poor bookkeeping that has prevented the information that would clear them being considered by those in a position to release them the detetion of those innocent men poses a risk to our safety.
     • Some of the captives in Guantanamo are deceitful stool-pigeons. One captive, known by the guards as "puff-daddy", bragged about denouncing all his enemies. He hated all the captives. He hated his life on the outside. He likes Guantanamo. He said he could never live a happy, normal life, on the outside, because he had a micropenis. As a compliant captive he was rewarded with a steady supplment of pizza and other fast food, and with recent videos, which he would watch, with his interrogators. The Guantaanmo lawyers compared notes, and believe that denunciations from one captive, maybe this guy, were being used to help justify the continued detention of 270 captives.
     • FWIW this puff-daddy sounded like he had lost his mind.
     • I put it to you -- does this pass your sanity check? If your campus was captured, could you dream up denunciations of 270 of your fellow students? Do you think your interrogators would believe you if you denounced 270 of yor fellow students?

Now the[REDACTED] is not for advocacy. So, my opinion of the risks to our safety through malice or incompetence on the part of DoD counter-terrorism analysts doesn't belong in article space.

However, if the information I used to reach my conclusion can be referenced to verifiable, authoritative sources, if it is written so it complies with the wikipedia's policy of neutrality, and other policies, if it is really significant, then that material does merit coverage. I believe it does merit coverage.

You have differed as to whether the material I have covered satisfied the wikipedia's policies. But you haven't been specific.

That is a mistake. You have to be specific.

Suppressing the material simply because you think it shows one side in a bad light is counter to the wikipedia's policies.

I am going to repeat what I wrote at the beginning of this note -- my patience with your personal attacks is at an end.

I responded here, rather than on Talk:Bagram Theater Internment Facility because most of this discussion is not on topic there, and I didn't want to embarrass you there, which I think is a more public forum than your talk page.

Candidly Geo Swan 15:42, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This goes well beyond "being specific", Geo Swan. Like I said, we are wasting our breath arguing with each other. You retreat to demanding "no personal attacks" while systematically slandering an entire country. Your articles are hit pieces and you have written hundreds of articles that start with the premise that the US, its government and the individual men and women, often mentioned by name, who work for it are engaged in egregious and criminal conduct. You provide one-sided coverage that only suits your view. You make little effort to present any contrary evidence or balance, although I will grant you that you at least don't try to suppress it when others provide it. If you can't take a look at your Bagram Theater Internment Facility and see how slanted and one-sided it is, then there is little to say to you. Like I said, I agree to disagree and will continue to correct your more egregious slanders. I have no problem with this discussion being on Talk:Bagram Theater Internment Facility - I have no problem with pointing out how one-sided your contributions are in any forum. WP:CIVIL does not mean WP:DONTEVERCRITICIZE and I will continue to watch and correct bias when I find it. This situation may not please you, but it doesn't please me either, so we have at least that much in common. Have a good weekend. Kevinp2 17:29, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Formal block warning - your behavior must change

Hello again Kevinp2,

The last time we engaged in correspondence I informed you of aspects of your behavior that were contradictory to the goals and spirit of the Misplaced Pages editing process. Unfortunately for you, me, and the entire Misplaced Pages community, you have chosen to ignore my advice and warnings and continue the pattern of the same behavior. Let me be very clear: if you continue this behavior, regardless of how beneficial you think it may be, in violation of the very rules you agree by when you become a member of the Misplaced Pages editing community, you will be blocked for successively longer periods until it becomes impractical for you to do anything except read the Misplaced Pages. This is not what I want nor is this what the blocking policy encourages, however, if you do not change your behavior, it is the only recourse left.

Let me give you some concrete examples of your interactions with members of this community that have been in violation of the rules:

Any article that you write on this subject will be one-sided propaganda.

Violation of Misplaced Pages:Assume Good Faith, Misplaced Pages:No Personal Attacks, and Misplaced Pages:Civility

Of course you think it is incomplete - it does not bash the US to your satisfaction!

See above.

You just don't get this basic point.

WP:CIVIL

I don't know how to make this any more clear. This behavior must stop. Here are my suggestions: stop being the Misplaced Pages police. You do not know the policies well enough yet to be effective at it. If you wish to assist Misplaced Pages in that capacity, join one of the formal projects for it, where they can help you achieve such things effectively while staying inside the structure and rules that Misplaced Pages has defined.

This is your formal warning. Next time I see such behavior I will block you. Please feel free to respond to this on my talk page if you have any further questions. If you feel that my comments are are incorrect or that I am not properly quoting Misplaced Pages policy, I encourage you to do further research on the matter and communicate with others to gain a fuller understanding of the rules that govern the community you are now a member of. Triddle 17:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Triddle, my response is here as you requested. Kevinp2 03:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi again Kevin,

Lets work through your response backwards. You are correct that working to make sure an article is NPOV is a problem that Misplaced Pages has and that it requires a lot of effort to combat. I don't necessarily agree that we all share the burden of fixing that particular aspect of the encyclopedia but really any all all constructive work on the encyclopedia as a whole is welcomed. As for avoiding Geo Swan, in the absence of any other solution avoiding him sounds like something that is workable. If you find that you butt heads again I recommend you begin following the formal dispute resolution process as defined in the Misplaced Pages policies. It's there to help everyone remain cool while editing and the people who are in charge there take it pretty seriously.

Yes I am a Misplaced Pages administrator. I do not flaunt it around because some people believe there is an administrator cabal. Yes I can block you. Please note that I do not even have to warn you before I block you. I could have blocked you before I even left you the first note. In fact, it would have been LESS WORK for me to block you originally than to correspond with you at all and no I would not have gotten in trouble for it, however, it would certainly be viewed as a less than effective way to remedy your behavior.

Personally, I find it interesting that you would like to quote Misplaced Pages policy so literally, such as This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary. when referring to Assume Good Faith. If I took as strict a definition of that rule as you seem to be doing with it, I would have blocked you a long time ago, as you have repeatedly demonstrated lack of ability to adhere to the rules of the community (yes, we are getting there, working backwards.......). As far as GeoSwan's edits are concerned, I clicked on the link you supplied to his edit history and saw a lot of maintenance work. I didn't see anything that I considered worthy of my attention; granted I spent about 45 seconds looking at edit comments and checking some diffs. If you would like to provide me with some more concrete evidence, such as list of URLs that refer directly to edits you believe to not be in good faith, I would be willing to review them at let you know how I feel about them.

However, to be honest, the reason I contacted you is not because of your edits but because I read the talk page you were conversing with other editors on, and your actions were not in the spirit of the community here. Also, I'm reminded of something my mother repeatedly told me "two wrongs don't make a right." So just because the actions of another are not proper is not an excuse to behave improperly yourself. Perhaps I'm just going off on a lecture at this point but I feel as if you believe you know you are breaking the rules and feel justified in doing so because it will ultimately make things better.

What would you do when you find someone, who appears to be pushing a point of view in hundreds of articles? - This is easy. The first thing I would do is click on help in the box on the left hand side, then click on 'dispute resolution' in that page. Secondly, and I'll grant that this is not as intuitive, but large scale POV pushing like that is considered vandalism as well, which is blockable behavior. To head in that direction, you would probably want to start at the administrator's notice board so someone with authority can get involved.

As for the bagram article, I started reading it, and honestly, I gave up after a while. It's way too big and detailed for the subject mater. It's also atrocious to read because half of the content is editorial tags and I didn't see a single source quoted so I have a feeling the entire article is not up to guidelines. I would be inclined to strike the entire thing from the encyclopedia but do such a thing would require a vote even though I am privileged enough to delete an article at any time. Another way to proceed with that article would also be to have peer review check it out. I think any of those are infinitely better than insulting others and making Misplaced Pages uglier overall (with the edit tags that is).

Is it your position that Misplaced Pages's policies demand that you stay quiet and never challenge this? No this is not what the policies say in any manner nor do I have any understanding how you could understand anything in our correspondence to indicate that this would be the case. I think this is an indication of a trouble with communication which is probably causing the stress levels that are getting reached in the first place. What I had been saying is that you are not allowed to insult other people. You are not allowed to insinuate that they are performing actions. You are not allowed to berate or degrade them in any way. You are not allowed to converse with people in a way that in general makes[REDACTED] a more stressful place to be. In general, I was telling you that you may not do any of the actions that you were doing, and not that there is no way to achieve the goals that you desire. If you wish to achieve certain goals you must find a way to do that with in the rules of the community as a whole.

You never acknowledged my response above in any manner You are correct, I did not. Please note that I explained to you that if you had any questions that you may ask them and I would answer them. I did not tell you to please feel free to leave a few paragraphs of statements (note that statements are not interrogative) and that I would present you with a detailed analysis of your observations. In reality, when I read your response to me, I was irritated, and rather than do something rash like violate the very rules I was trying to explain to you, I walked away and ignored the situation (which is one of the acceptable things to do instead of making things worse).

If you want to intervene in this dispute, can I ask you to stay consistently involved? Hold on there - back things up. I'm not involved in a dispute by any means. I'm involved in informing you of how your actions are in violation of[REDACTED] policy. I'm not here to take sides in a dispute or get involved in a dispute in any way. There is an entire department of the Misplaced Pages who handles disputes, I'm not involved with them, nor do I want to be. You are misunderstanding the situation at hand.

I hope that explains things to your satisfaction. Triddle 06:49, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Triddle, Thanks for your response. I have some in return:

As for the bagram article, I started reading it, and honestly, I gave up after a while. I request that you read the original article before I started tagging it. As a direct comparison, I offer Bagram_used_as_detention_center. In this text, which is really a small subsection of a different article, the different points of view are adequately represented (Full Disclosure: I edited the latter section and included all viewpoints for fairness). I consider this to be balanced, which Misplaced Pages should be, rather than yet another one-sided US-bashing leftist screed. This is the point that I am trying to make - that Geo Storm's articles are written in a one-sided fashion, with little to no balance. I don't have a problem with individual facts or sections - I do have a problem with how they are stitched together to give the idea that the the US is always engaged in egregious and criminal conduct. This has happened in hundreds of articles and it has to stop before Misplaced Pages starts to look like pre-1990s Pravda on this subject. What mechanism does Misplaced Pages have to prevent this kind of large scale POV pushing?

I can understand that you don't want to get drawn into mediating a content dispute, but I also want to gently point out that you are focusing on the issue of my civility without paying much attention to the context in which it is coming up. I am not making these statements about any other person or issue. I would like to point out that perhaps the context also deserves some attention.

Yes I am a Misplaced Pages administrator. I do not flaunt it ... I can certainly understand that you don't want to flaunt it but may I request that you have this list updated to add your name? I think it is only fair that authority be clearly apparent. Many moons ago, I was threatened with a block with someone who, as I later discovered, was not an administrator at all.

In reality, when I read your response to me, I was irritated ... Triddle, this really leaves me at a loss for words. This was my original response to you. I have re-read it three times and with the possible exception of one sentence, cannot see why you are irritated by it. I clearly and civilly explained my position to you. I think you are being a little unfair here. What exactly irritated you about it? My comment was on your user talk page, not even on an article talk page.

No this is not what the policies say in any manner... You are not allowed to insinuate that they are performing actions. But these two sentiments contradict each other to some extent. How am I supposed to communicate my concern that Geo Storm is engaged in large-scale POV pushing? I am willing to admit that my statements like "Any article that you write on this subject will be one-sided propaganda" are inflammatory and I have already decided to not use this kind of language in the future. What would you say to: "I am concerned that this article by Geo Storm is one-sided", or "Articles edited by Geo Storm tend to be one-sided". This is my genuine concern. How do I express it? I do not believe that WP:CIVIL and WP:Assume_Good_Faith require that a genuine and serious concern like this be suppressed. If we are in agreement on the basic concept, I will work on the language that I use.

Thanks and regards Kevinp2 14:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Kevin, I do not wish to be rude, but I've spent more time coresponding with you over these few incidents than I've spent editing[REDACTED] in the past 2 weeks and I do not consider this to be an effective use of my time. Frankly, I don't understand where the ambiguity is in what actions you can and can't perform. I understand that stopping communication with another editor is the least desired form of dispute resolution but with you it's the only one I can think of. I highly suggest you start using the community as a whole to learn how to communicate more effectively (yes, this does exist on wikipedia, use the community pump link).

Why was I iritated at you for your original response? Because I clearly told you behaviors that you may not engage in and you responded with "well, if I break the rules, I get what I want!" which frankly is in extremely poor taste. Also, this idea that you can break the rules if it makes Misplaced Pages overall better is flawed.

1. The behavior of other editors does not matter at all when it comes to your behavior.
2. Misplaced Pages has rules and procedures that must be followed especicially in regards to how you interact wit other editors.
3. I've informed you about other approaches to take to resolve your problems with Geo Swan and you consistently come back to "but I don't understand what to do!' I'm sorry, but I don't understand how to explain this to you any more effectively, so I'm not longer helpful.

In addition, you seem to be completely ignoring what I am saying. Lets paraphase a little:

Triddle> You may not insult people.
You> But if I insult people, things are better.
Triddle> You may not insult people.
You> But Geo Swan is doing things I don't like!
Triddle> You may not insulut people.
You> Well I really think the context is important.

NO IT IS NOT. The context does not matter. The things that Geo Swan does do not matter. Your actions mater and that is why I am focusing on them. CLUE UP. If you keep behaving like this you are going to get blocked eventually and if your behavior still doesn't stop after that, you'll probably be blocked indefinitly. (note the lack of an invitation to respond to me). Triddle 16:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Triddle 16:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)