Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 09:27, 8 July 2006

This user lives in the United States of America.

Archived talk

A few accounts have stated, I think, something about wanting to participate in my edits. They stated as angry accusations that I have done edits all by myself, despite the Introduction and Tutorial encouraging me to do so. Their critical tone hid what they were saying, if anything. However, I'm perfectly willing to use the help me box more often. If you write a message, please consider the possibility that you're wrong and be as calm & polite as possible.

Personal attacks

Chuck, please stop adding the "personal attack" tag when there are no personal attacks. Please refer to the this page - you should not refactor comments on your actions - respond to them instead. --mtz206 (talk) 22:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

It says "Personal attacks are the parts of a comment which can be considered personally offensive and which have no relevant factual content." In my opinion, all of the comments were personal attacks which had almost no factual content. --Chuck Marean 23:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Let's start over

Chuck: Twice now you have removed large discussions from your talk page and , claiming, in general, that you've been the victim of "unfriendly messages," "personal attacks" and that they contain "no factual content." Nothing can be further from the truth. Virtually all of the messages have been in good faith, patient, calm, helpful, and yes, ??sometimes stern, in trying to guide your usage and understanding of the Misplaced Pages project and its various policies and guidelines. Misplaced Pages is not an experiment in anarchy. If you feel the need to continually ignore the guidance of other members of this community, perhaps this is not the place for you. As it is, I fear you are exhausting the community's patience.??

But, let's assume that best and hope you want to stick around and make positive contributions to this encyclopedia project. In that spirit, let me remind you of a few helpful pages:

• Welcome page
• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• What Misplaced Pages is not
• Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines and Misplaced Pages simplified ruleset
• Assume good faith
• Stay cool and be civil
• While you should be bold with edits, it is best to discuss and draft significant graphical layout overhauls

As always, please let me know if I can help in any way. --mtz206 (talk) 03:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I've used italics to show the parts of you're message I consider to be the wrong kind of bold. Using the word to mean impertinent is old fashioned. The modern meaning of the word is confident. I think they mean be confident.--Chuck Marean 05:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The point you are misunderstanding, is that "they" is represented by us. This is a completely volunteer-powered project. The community only works because we stick by the policies/habits/prior-decisions/principles (whatever you want to call them) a sample of which is linked above. Furthermore, Misplaced Pages is only able to maintain its consistent improvement and appearance, and its international appeal, through those same principles.

You are chatting here with aussies and brits and canucks and danes and who knows what else... We are the people who sweep the floors and do the paperwork for this fascinating place.

Because this is such an international project, we often try to use a very formal and unambiguous way of phrasing/explaining/discussing things with eachother. This can sometimes strike people as bossy/rude, but is almost never intended that way. Especially, we don't tend to use subtle sarcasm, which I think is what you intended in the above comment, and possibly how you were assuming the "tone" to be in much earlier messages from us to you? It's simply too unlikely to get across cultural/linguistic barriers. That is the secondary meaning of "assume good faith": please please read all past/future comments on talk pages with the assumption that they were written with a positive spirit/tone/inflection/smile, and with only the best purposes of the project in mind. We all just want this to be the most profoundly important encyclopedia ever created, and would like you and everyone else in the world to help. And that works the most smoothly, if we follow these oft-mentioned routines/habits/policies/principles. That's why it all works. Sincerely, -Quiddity 06:49, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

(After edit conflict with Quiddity, who, from what I can tell, says the same things as I, only much more cogently and succinctly ...) It is altogether fine to construe WP:BB to mean that, pace Mtz, one need not to seek a consensus to implement otherwise contentious edits or to contravene policies and guidelines that command the support of most editors. It is not fine, though, to act on that construction. You seem genuinely not to comprehend exactly what the project is all about, and your response to Mtz certainly helps one better to understand the problems that you have encountered or engendered here.

The they whom you reference is not, as you might understand it, some supreme entity (à la Jimbo) or some nebulous, largely unseen uber-deity for whom we toil; it is by and through the consent of most editors, in view of encyclopedic principles and purposes, that policies and guidelines are promulgated. To be sure, some users (e.g., sysops, bureaucrats, ArbCommers, oversight users) are invested with certain tools that other users do not have (although, of course, these tools mainly oblige one to undertake onerous tasks), but there is no they for whom we edit, and so be bold ought to be understood in view of the beliefs of most editors here, as expressed through their accession to such principles as WP:BB.

You will, I hope, note that the be bold qua undertake to make vast, productive changes imperative suggests also that one not be reckless (contra your interpretation that bold need only to mean confident, irrespective of the consequences of one's actions); indeed, it is suggested that if one is to edit substantially a page on a controversial topic, he/she first review the page history and talk page and, most importantly, discuss changes that have been reverted prior to revert-warring (toward which see WP:BRD). BB also suggests that it is usually worth discussing ex ante major changes to frequently-used pages.

In any event, though, the letter of BB isn't particularly important here, and we often ignore certain rules toward encyclopedic ends. Your understanding of Misplaced Pages, though, is fundamentally inconsistent with that of most users. There's nothing wrong with that, and I expect that I'd have great sympathy for many of your views apropos of the construction of a wiki, et cetera. The solution, though, is not to seek to impose a scheme about which even you would concede there is no consensus. Instead, you ought (a) to comport your editing with that which other editors have asked of you (very generally), mainly with an eye toward implementing changes that aren't likely to be particularly controversial or tend not to improve the encyclopedia, in order that you might benefit from the symbiotic relationship that many of us enjoy with WP; (b) if you should not be a fan of how things work here and don't desire to compromise your ideals/style of work, to find a different project online of which to partake (there are many, and there are surely some with which your style might better fit); (c) edit here productively, working with other editors, and attempt concomitantly to change the minds of other editors as to how we ought to do things .

I apologize for having gone on at length. I have tried, FWIW, to avoid using uncommon words, since you've previously expressed a preference for my writing in such a fashion that the meaning of any particular term might be divined from its context. I hope you will realize that users whom others write off as problematic (in some cases wrongly, such that the project suffers) are often blocked summarily and that the fact that many of us take time to write you here means not that we've a vendetta against you but that, to the contrary, we want you to stay. If you are amenable to discussion, collaboration, and compromise, I'm certain you'll be a fine Wikipedian; if not, this may not be the place for you. Joe 06:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The following quotes are the parts of your letter I find impertinent:from first paragraph"otherwise contentious edits or to contravene policies and guidelines that command the support of most editors. It is not fine, though, to act on that construction. You seem genuinely not to comprehend exactly what the project is all about,"THIRD"not be reckless (contra your interpretation that bold need only to mean confident, irrespective of the consequences of one's actions"FOURTH"The solution, though, is not to seek to impose a scheme about which even you would concede there is no consensus. Instead, you ought (a) to comport your editing with that which other editors have asked of you (very generally), mainly with an eye toward implementing changes that aren't likely to be particularly controversial or tend not to improve the encyclopedia,""cf" ? "discursively" = " by force"? Fifth Paragraph"I hope you will realize that users whom others write off as problematic (in some cases wrongly, such that the project suffers) are often blocked summarily and that the fact that many of us take time to write you here means not that we've a vendetta against you but that, to the contrary, " I consider the above comments to contain false accusations for which the rest of the letter is balling me out. The letter is being bold in the impudent sense of the word. It isn't as inflammatory as the Declaration of Independence, but it does need a more realistic, friendly tone. Also, I've read Misplaced Pages statements along the lines of "Don't worry about goofing up an edit. Edit something. You can't break Misplaced Pages. You can't own a page. Don't be rude. And so on." The directions I've read do not support the idea of submitting my edit ideas to page watchers first. Getting incoherently mad that I don't is therefore ridiculous. The directions could use something like "People are encouraged to edit Misplaced Pages, so if your writing is edited don't be offended." By the way, I looked up cf and it's an abbreviation of Latin for compare. Discursive means by reasoning or thinking. So, I'm not sure what you meant by force.--Chuck Marean 09:27, 8 July 2006 (UTC)