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Templates for deletion .. re wp:npa

I'm pretty shocked about the number of attacks on the person who made the nominations, especially that the initial comment was a pretty clear ad hominem attack by User:Saravask which went almost totally unoticed. And the number of people who commented but don't appear to have even read the nominators rational, or the red text on Template:Cquote which clearly states not to use for quotes, and the number of editors who (from their comments) haven't even bothered to find out what a pull quote is.

Yes, editors have a right to create new style protocols through consensus, and I think the deleted nomination was misguided. What is really disappointing is that nobody had the balls to say "hey, I was adding the template because it thought it looked good and trying to make the article I was working on look great, I had no idea it was supposed to be only for pull quotes.." - but I'm long in the tooth enough to know that this is the explanation for many of the good faith additions of this template.

The argument that this article (Pull quote) is "confusing and difficult to understand" doesn't hold any water - it's just another example of "not my fault - I can't hear your arguments" mentality where every error is someone elses fault.

At some point editors need to find out just how unacceptable their behaviour actually is in real life - the original comment by User:67.101.5.104 is essentially vile, sarcastic and cowardly. quote: " the editing community would be better off if Gadget850 spent time improving the short and reference-free article on pull quotes, so that editors and readers alike could be enlightened by his proscriptive understanding of the topic." That's a personal attack - essentially a taunt using sarcasm. Any real person can see that/

If you can propose a way of demonstrating to these people that impolite behaviour (on the internet) is just as bad as doing it in real life (without sinking to their level) - I'd would like to hear it. I'm sick of having to read the disfunctional crap people spout (more often than not in !vote opportunities). I don't want to insult people, but I don't want to be exposed to people acting like total asshats either.. (Sorry for the rant) Imgaril (talk) 22:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Imgaril, Thank you for your measured reply. I fully appreciate your frustration when dealing with editors who do not have the same values as yourself. But as you say resorting to their level will never win and I apologies if you think I singled you out, I only scan read the discussions and yours stood out from the mire so to speak for the wording of your response. I fully agree that the subject needs to be discussed in greater detail and if you look at my response I specifically mentioned that if editors value it's inclusion on purely aesthetic value then that is something that should be discussed and is in my opinion not a reason that cannot be discussed. I just felt that TFD is not the correct place for it and the should be discussed in detail at possibly MOS, and certainly the documentation should be re-written to clearly describe each templates correct usage. No problems for the rant I've had far worse and less eloquent. Regards 16:53, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks.Imgaril (talk) 19:16, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Rober Haddeciyan

Hello there,

I noticed that you removed my speedy tag for Rober Haddeciyan as seven minutes between creation the tagging was insufficient. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this -- are you saying that seven minutes is too long a time for it to be eligible for speedy deletion? If so, could you please direct me to the WP article that states this rule? I did look over WP:SPEEDY, but did not find mention of such a rule. Also, if this is the case, what is the "time limit", as it were? Thanks. – Richard BB 22:33, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

There is no such rule, but an editor trying to find their way round Misplaced Pages should be given the benefit of the doubt whilst trying to create an article that may eventually meet our guidelines and an editor of a newspaper might hold some promise of notability. I'm not saying it will, but if it's clear that the article isn't a spam/attack or promotional piece then my personal opinion is give it a bit of time before deleting it as there's no reward in deterring potential editors. Where it's not blatant what is the harm in waiting a few days with a prod? Please do not take my refusal as a critique of your assessment, every editor has a different set of values and that doesn't devalue your efforts. I hope this answers your question. Regards 22:41, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks very much for the clarification, and thank you for your message to my talk page. I, of course, do not take any offence to your decision, and appreciate the feedback. Happy editing! – Richard BB 22:48, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Location of CNGS

While the ejection point from the SPS protons is below the BA4 building on the French side (46°14′55″N 06°04′08″E / 46.24861°N 6.06889°E / 46.24861; 6.06889), this map shows the target chamber where we get the pions & kaons and the decay tunnel all located at the Swiss side. I think it is fair to say that the CNGS facility, like much of CERN, straddles the Franco-Swiss border.  --Lambiam 15:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Fair point, I only think of it from the access point of view, but you are right. 16:10, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Template testing

Hi Khukri,

I wanted to let you know that Steven Walling and I have been running some A/B tests on user warning templates used by Huggle, to determine whether changing the content of their message has an effect on the recipient (read about it in more detail here and here). We've done two rounds of testing with the level 1 vandalism warning and are getting ready to move on to all level 1 Huggle warnings. Our redesigned draft templates are here:

1. {{uw-test1-rand}}
2. {{uw-delete1-rand}}
3. {{uw-npov1-rand}}
4. {{uw-unsor1-rand}}
5. {{uw-error1-rand}}
6. {{uw-blank1-rand}}
7. {{uw-spam1-rand}}
8. {{uw-bio1-rand}}
9. {{uw-attack1-rand}}

As the creator of a substantial number of the current default user warnings back in 2006, I thought you might be interested in this project and have some useful feedback for us. I'd also love to talk to you about those original templates – how did you design them? Were you using anything as a model or aiming for any specific effect? Looking at their revision history, it's surprising how little the content of most of them has changed in the past 5 years. I'd be really interested to know what you think about that. Feel free to drop me a note on my talk page, shoot me an email, or ping me on IRC (my contact info is on my user page). Thanks, and looking forward to hearing from you! --Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Maryana,

Firstly thanks for looking me up, in someways I've slipped back into obscurity on Misplaced Pages trying to help (or hinder) where I can, but nothing has ever come close to the work I put into the User Warnings system and with the exception of a couple of article it's something I'm certainly proud of and consider somewhat of a legacy. I have to say damn is it that long ago, I've just had a look back through some of the templates, and talk pages and forgotten how much free time I had back then :) It's very kind of you to say I was the creator of a large part of the UW templates, but I think what I did was took the existing system and tried to harmonise it. I think I brought some organisational and project management skills that just got it off the ground, but there were a number of stand up editors who also did alot of work.

At the time there were some leery icons, shocking wording with a lot of particularly aggressive and un-AGF type templates; and I remember when I was doing vandalism patrols quite a few of the templates seemed to miss the target and pages looked downright bloody ugly with all the different wordings templates message etc. Just having looked here it seems I started getting ideas around 12th October 2006 to start harmonising them, and shortly after created this page with a view to standardising firstly the levels, there were 4 levels of one warning, 6 of another, 2 of another type and then I started to think screw it why not the whole system. It seemed to be a project where people wanted to improve things but no-one was willing to blink first. Anyway long and short it bumbled along for about 2 months, working on the overview page trying to garner support and then early January 2007, with a core of about 6 of us, it just suddenly took off. Alot of discussions took place on and off[REDACTED] about what the aim was, direction we would take, style etc. There was certainly opposition, which when you look back at it now seems ridiculous, the lengths we went to so editors could switch the icons off on the templates was ridiculous. The end goal was we wanted a clean, precise but courteous system to warn editors. You have to remember there was far more opposition to boilerplate templates back then, so we were very conscious that we didn't want editors hiding behind the templates, we had to assuage the fears of the more conservative editors but still give everyone an effective tool at their disposal, hence all of the abilities to configure and personalise the templates. Anyway the rest is as they say is history, it rapidly took of and within a year or so I stepped out of templates altogether as it didn't need my input. It's reasssuring to know that we did it right the first time, by the fact that the templates have changed so little in the last ~5 years. Nowadays editors don't give it a second thought. Wanna know what I get a kick out of, our templates are the basis for templates now being used around the world i.e. ar:قالب:Uw-delete1

Regarding the new Huggle system I'd be certainly interested to see your repeat offender rates depending on which template was applied, and I'm always up for innovative approaches to old problems. If I can be of any help please don't hesitate to ask, I think the idea is great so long as the message isn't diluted trying to find varying approaches to issue warnings. We already had that problem with the old system and once fragmentation starts it's a pain to hold together. I think it's grand though one minor critique and this is purely personal mind, looking at the wording, I'm not sure as "I edit Misplaced Pages too, under the username Steven Walling." isn't a tad too patronising, I think they'll have sussed out you're an established editor by the fact you slapped a template on their page :) Templates do tend to have an air of faux authority, which was one of the things we were concerned about at the beginning and new editors seeing these official looking templates appearing on their page would get scared off the project. Hope that gives you some insight and if you need anything more just ask. Regards 21:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply! And thanks for giving me a little more background on the story of en.wiki user warnings – it's an important chapter in Misplaced Pages history!

You and the other editors (are any of them still active?) did a tremendous job on the standardization of user warnings, which was incredibly important in 2006-7, when that huge influx of new users entered the project. Unfortunately, as you may have heard, Misplaced Pages is no longer pulling in those record numbers of new contributors; in fact, all the projects across the board are either leveling off or in decline. What we're aiming for with this template testing project is to get a data-driven glimpse into whether templates are part of what's driving new users away, and how we might change them to be more effective at bringing in good-faith editors and keeping out bad-faith vandals and spammers. I want to make sure it doesn't seem like we're denigrating your work by trying to change it :) I just think it's important to keep re-calibrating the tools we use on Misplaced Pages to fit the continually evolving nature of the project.

Anyway, thank you for your feedback on our templates! With the "I edit Misplaced Pages too, under the username Steven Walling" bit, we were aiming to do the same thing you were interested in doing back in 2006: de-officialize the warning process and make sure that newbies know it's not Misplaced Pages (some scary corporate structure like Facebook, for all they know) that's reverting them, but a human editor just like themselves. From the anecdotal evidence (feedback gathered from newbies in various surveys, as well as comments left by new users on article and user talk), we've seen over and over again that most newcomers have no idea that Misplaced Pages is a community of volunteers who actively monitor all the pages on the site. To them, it all feels very impersonal and intimidating. Maybe there is a better way to phrase that, though, without sounding patronizing...

If you have any more suggestions, please don't hesitate to leave them here, on my talk page, or on the talk pages of the templates. And I'll definitely keep you posted on our progress and findings. I know it wasn't just you who created the uw warning system all by yourself, but it's still very neat to get advice from a founding member of the system :) --Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the main guy with respect to the parsered statements was User:Gracenotes. There was then the core of standup editors User:Kralizec!, User:Kubigula, User:Lucasbfr & User:Satori Son, I nominated all of them for adminship all passing without a single opposition vote between the four of them, showing how much of an asset to the project they were. A number of editors who invested alot of time rarely edit now. The main ones were User:Martinp23 who I think was about 15 at the time, User:Renesis, User:Misza13 & User:Quarl. Though I'd like to claim it, the idea of the uw- prefix came from Quarl here with so little fuss it was just adopted almost instantly. There was then User:Pathoschild who was at the time the only admin involved and our voice of authority when we needed clarification. He did a lot of leg work and had tried to do a harmonisation project previously. Please do not think you are denigrating any of my, and speaking for the editors I mentioned above, work. We did it as a community project and speaking for myself glad it made a difference and glad we have left our stamp on Misplaced Pages. Everything evolves or it dies out.

Regarding the wording of the templates, we eventually agreed that the large part of these templates are issued to people who already knew how Misplaced Pages works, and have or are editing in a mendacious manner. We all felt strongly about AGF and not biting the newbs hence the the level 1 templates even though they said welcome to Misplaced Pages were just a gentle reminder of how to edit.

If I was to do it all again, I would suggest that a better approach would be to differentiate between IPs and registered editors and those new registered editors, who commit an infringement that would warrant a template, would in fact get a glorified welcome template, but the welcome template would be worded to reflect the infringement with they had done, with a link to the relevant guidelines and policies and maybe a précis explaining how Misplaced Pages worked, putting an onus on the person who was willing to leave the template to try and mentor the new users.

Lets not beat around the bush, a lot of these templates are issued by kids on the eternal war of dark and light whose latest incarnation is vandal fighting, vandal war, vandal patrol or whatever secret security club they have invented this month to allow them to believe they are on a crusade. This does more damage than it does good. Like rollback functions I think warnings should now only be issued by those who have been deemed responsible enough, and to be deemed responsible enough they would need to have an apprenticeship time where could only issue good faith warning or the glorified welcome message I already mentioned and then try to guide the new editor. Once they showed they had the temperament for that then could they step up to the level 3 & 4. I'm still a fan of templated messages, but I think they are too open to abuse, being dished out in content disputes and I think this could be an intrinsic reason why there is a decline of editing. There are too many editors who own their articles, who stamp on good faith edits and this is what is driving editors away. We are being punished by our own success in effect. Also editors on power trips where maybe their day to day lives don't give them this level of responsibility can now bully and wikilawyer new editors into submission, and the templates give them the tools and a carte blanche means of doing so. Sorry to ramble but I fully understand the concern you at WMF must be having with this problem.

Anyway I thinks it's rather coincidental that you left this message on my talk page as it's five years to the day where I had my first ideas about over hauling the user warning templates, though it was the 20th October 2006 here when I first mentioned my idea to a winder audience, but if you can see this deleted page here this is where I really started and then brought it to WP:UW where it really took off. Interesting history I dunno, but a good trip down memory lane.

I hope some of this helps and you're welcome to use me as a sounding board for ideas, though looking through your work I believe you are far more expert on the needs of the project than myself, though hope it helps. Regards 09:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is incredibly helpful, thank you! And that's so funny that it's five years to the day – I suppose I should congratulate you on the anniversary :) --Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:06, 12 October 2011 (UTC)