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Video game publisher

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Boiling on the Science Desk

See this edit on the Science Desk. There was an earlier edit that was also inappropriate. Guy Macon, Andy Dingley, I don't think this should be on the RefDesks, please stop.—eric 13:33, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

If you had deleted my comment while also deleting the snarky comment I was responding to I would have let the deletion stand. Your behavior (leaving an insult in while deleting the response) was disruptive, biased, and a clear violation of WP:TPOC. Nobody voted you in as Moderator Of The Reference Desks. Your revert had the effect of retaining false information posted to the reference desks and while deleting a correction of the false information. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:23, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you EricR for alerting us to the totally unacceptable situation that has developed on one of the Reference Desks. The combat between Guy Macon and Andy Dingley is disgraceful, and will be an embarrassment to many of the Users who regularly do good work here.

The tragedy is that the situation is described almost exactly in the Guidelines that are provided for use by everyone who contributes to the Reference Desks. If Guy Macon and Andy Dingley had shown appropriate respect for these Guidelines, there would never have been any combat between them.

The wise folks who compiled the Guidelines must have anticipated the temptation these two would feel to engage in combat with each other. In the lead (2nd paragraph) it says As always, any responses should be civil and avoid anything that could even remotely be considered a personal attack or ad hominem.

In Content and tone, the 3rd paragraph shows exactly how wise these folks were in anticipating the combat we have witnessed. The 3rd paragraph says:

Questions usually attract more than one answer and it is always possible to discern a variation in the quality of these answers. Some answers will show a high degree of expertise and professionalism, and others won’t. If you see an answer you think is amateurish or lacking in technical rigor, simply supply a better one. It isn’t necessary to draw readers’ attention to the fact that you disapprove of one or more of the earlier answers. If one of the earlier answers is inferior to yours, readers will be able to determine that themselves. The only acceptable grounds for making adverse comment about someone else’s answer is if that answer contains advice that is likely to be harmful to readers.

I would like to suggest Guy and Andy go away for an hour or two and read the Guidelines. Become as conversant with them as you obviously are about matters scientific. In particular, study the sentence that says “If you see an answer you think is … … simply supply a better one.” What brilliant advice – simply supply a better one!

Guy Macon has written about other Users posting “false information”, and he has displayed his penchant for angrily denouncing what he perceives to be false information. Clearly, he imagines that false information is unacceptable at the Reference Desks. The Guidelines show that he is incorrect. There is no expectation that answers given at the Reference Desks will be correct! See the 3rd paragraph (quoted above): "Some answers will show a high degree of expertise and professionalism, and others won't." Providing an answer is not giving medical or legal advice, that answer must be allowed to remain on the Reference Desk. If we disapprove of an answer, we simply supply a better one.

The only grounds for making adverse comment about someone else’s answer is if that answer contains advice that is likely to be harmful to readers. If a User is moved to make adverse comment about someone else’s answer he must simultaneously explain why he believes that answer is likely to be harmful to readers! Got it? Harmful to readers.

Before anyone jumps on the angry keyboard, reflect on the fact that I am advising of the existence of a perfectly reasonable set of Guidelines, and asking everyone who contributes to the Reference Desks to read those Guidelines and respect them. There can’t be any harm in that, can there? Dolphin (t) 12:12, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

+1

Plus, if everyone focused as much as possible on the OP question, instead of on other answers, it would be great. Nobody is perfect. Gem fr (talk) 13:38, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm sure it's just a storm in a tea cup. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:48, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

It is. One said the glass is half empty (microwave are not efficient at heating things except water), the other strongly disagree, call names and enter edit war path because he can prove the glass is half full (microwave does heat things that are not water, although not as efficiently). Makes the feud even worse, actually. Gem fr (talk) 13:55, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Please stop saying things that you know are not true. Andy Dingley wrote "The microwave wavelength is chosen so that it's absorbed effectively by water. Dry food isn't heated by it, nor is ice." --posted by Andy Dingley on 21:30, 29 November 2019 , emphasis added. He didn't write that "microwave are not efficient at heating things except water" He wrote tthat microwaves don't heat ice. And when I corrected him, instead of acknowledging the error he he responded with "Go boil some water in an ice cup, then come back and say that".

Dolphin51's solution is a good one. I stopped commenting and let Andy Dingley have the last word. Gem fr's solution -- seeing a content dispute and edit warring to retain the bad information while hiding the correction (and hiding the only reference to a reliable source in the entire discussion) is not acceptable. Gem fr, please hat the entire thread or none of it. You are taking sides, which is OK, but you are also violating WP:TPOC and WP:EW in order to support your side and shut up the other side. That's wrong. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:05, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Makes the food even worse too. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:02, 3 December 2019 (UTC) The whole discussion has been fascinating; hard to tear oneself away.

I suggested an edit to Andy Dingley's post, which he has kindly permitted. Guy Macon has reverted three times each attempt to close down the argument. (→‎Microwaving food: No. You do NOT hat the correction of false information without hatting the original false information as well.), (→‎Microwaving food: No. You do NOT hat the correction of false information (claim that microwaves only heat liquid water) without hatting the original false information as well.See WP:TPOC.), (→‎Microwaving food: Edit warring to retain bad information while hiding correction.) See WP:3RR. DroneB (talk) 14:24, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Funny that you have been counting reverts I just finished counting some reverts myself. See:

That being said, two wrongs don't make a right, and I acknowledge that my 3RR is roughly 2RR too many. I should have stopped after trying no hat and a whole thread hat. I will do my best to not go past 1RR in the future. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:52, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Great. You write that, and then 14:57, 3 December 2019, 5 minute later, in your great peace effort, you just spread the flame further Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:Gem_fr_reported_by_User:Guy_Macon_(Result:_). Wonderful. clap. clap. clap.

Feel free to comment there, anyone.

Gem fr (talk) 17:28, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

DroneB's attempt to stop this was much better than mine.—eric 17:16, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

But it seems that someone (add pointing finger you know where) would have none of it, anyway. Gem fr (talk) 17:28, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

What a brouhaha. Everyone needs to take some chill pills (or ice cubes). ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 20:03, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

We have shown to the OP who never expressed interest in microwaving ice a curiously evolving sentence about the subject:

DroneB (talk) 20:53, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Misquoted how? That's what he wrote, letter for letter. Is it the bolding that you say is a misquote? I was careful to write "emphasis added". He also wrote that our article on Microwave oven is wrong (ignoring the editor who pointed out that the claim was sourced} Also, your "We have shown to the OP" comment is misleading. You just quoted two claims from the thread the OP started and a third from the refdesk talk page.

Again, who is correct about microwaves and ice isn't the point. The point is hiding one side of the dispute without hiding both sides of the dispute. There are two appropriate responses. You could leave both arguments up and let the reader decide. That would be acceptable. You could decide that the discussion became too heated and hide it. That would be acceptable. Selectively hiding the arguments from one side is not acceptable. Hiding the only comment that bothered to give a citation to a reliable source is also not acceptable. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:53, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon Your persistence on 3 december in quoting a sentence that the poster and I had explicitly agreed to redact a day earlier, where you deliberately neglect the redaction and apply emphasis to prolong a dispute, is misquotation. Since you wish there to be a dispute, my contribution is that I found Andy Dingley's response when I approached him on his Talk page to be cooperative and reasonable, while I think you Guy Macon have severely disrupted our collective response at the Science desk in a forlorn search for revenge, see WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. DroneB (talk) 02:43, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Smooth move. You managed to agree with AD to change his claim, but never notified me, then criticized me for not re-reading everything on the page every day just in case someone changed their comment and didn't tell me. Nice. I also appreciate you approaching AD on his talk page but not approaching me on my talk page. Then you capped off your behavior with a personal attack ("in a forlorn search for revenge") that is based upon the assumption that you can analyze someone's internal mental state over the internet. Might I suggest that when you see two editors disputing a claim that jumping in, taking sides, and personally attacking one of the two disputants is not exactly helpful? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:45, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon You asked how the 3rd sentence in the table is a misquotation and that has been answered. Besides being the source of that misquotation for the reason that you explained, you had earlier disrupted the question handling with personalized advice and prediction in: "Don't bother responding to Andy Dingley. I never do. Once he says that ice isn't heated by microwaves, he will never back off and admit that he was wrong. Talking to him about it is a waste of time." This gratuitous advice seems to be aimed at User:Ouroboros who was responding civily to Andy Dingley. I "jumped in" against your advice by contacting Andy Dingly on his Talk page and I am happy that Andy's cooperative response debunked that rude prediction.

Noting (as we must because you tell us) that you are after 23:48 2 Dec 2019 posting to a thread whose content you neglect to monitor, and which has been de-boned of your bone of contention with Andy, the combative energy in your edit-warring posts at ANI to Gem fr is remarkable. Guy Macon I suggest, if you can, WP:RELAX rather than rageing on to probable WP:WOOPS in the hole you have dug. I propose that the Science Ref. desk is best served by rolling back the unnecessary edit war, or simply by deleting the whole question from the archive as a salutory reminder that our high collective abilities count as nothing without WP:AGF by all parties. DroneB (talk) 17:47, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

New archiving solution likely needed

Tonight scsbot, the bot I run which archives the reference desk (and a few other pages), stopped working. The antique HTTP infrastructure it uses is incompatible with security updates being imposed by Wikimedia. I doubt I will be able to fix it; I certainly won't be able to fix it tonight. So RD archiving (and automatic date header adding) will be on hold until either (a) I find the energy to update my infrastructure or (b) we switch to an entirely new archiving scheme. (There are numbers of other Misplaced Pages archivers, and I assume that most/all of them use proper, updated infrastructures that are and will stay compatible with Wikimedia's requirements.)

Sorry to blindside y'all with this, but I was blindsided by this tonight. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:49, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

When I manage a software development project, changes are tested, things that the changes break are identified, and time is allotted to either fix the now-broken software or to notify users of an upcoming loss of functionality. Nobody is blindsided.

I have had long discussion with several WMF developers about this sort of thing. They aren't stupid, nor are they inexperienced. They know all of the above and would do it the right way if they were allowed to. The problem is not in the developers. The problem resides in the management structure they work under and the orders they are given. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:52, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

A recent ref desk question asked what the WMF does with their many millions of dollars. This kind of thing is part of the answer. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 20:58, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Steve, let me know if you want any technical assistance, software-development, or Q.A.'ing assistance. I probably don't have the time to author an archiving solution by myself, but I can volunteer some time to assist you if you're working on it. Nimur (talk) 23:31, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the offer, but see below. —Steve Summit

So it turned out that updating my low-level HTTP fetcher to use TLS 1.2 was (mostly) straightforward, and scsbot is now working again. (Next I have to go back and see if using the latest 1.3 is equally straightforward.)

Sorry to have wasted everyone's time with that epic scramble I touched off to decide on a replacement archiving solution. It wasn't completely wasted, though: I'm not going to be doing this forever, and one day you really will need to select a replacement, so it's good to have started thinking about it. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:39, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

The big picture is this: the WMF has $104 million USD in annual income, spends $81 million USD, and has $134 million in the bank. They are spending like drunken sailors on on things like Wikimania meetings in exotic locations, buying ski trips for executives, and trying to create a search engine to compete with Google. Meanwhile basic functionality like archiving is in the hands of unpaid volunteers with no support from anyone at the WMF and I still have to remember to put ~~~~ at the end of this post. What's wrong with this picture? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:46, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

You've heard the expression "You get what you pay for"? Misplaced Pages is kind of the opposite of that. At least there's some good news: You can get around the tilde typing by putting the template "YesAutosign" on your page. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 21:35, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

In any event, thanks, Steve, for your constant and loyal assistance to the desks. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:13, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Battleground

I am trying to get laymans terms for a math term. There's been no definitive answer to the enquiry. From the outset of making the enquiry I have been harassed, and now a tag team is edit warring an archive template onto the section. You don't have to answer a question if you don't want to and if you can't, then it's none of your bloody business let alone your remit to prevent anyone else from answering it. ~ R.T.G 15:03, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

• Please see: Misplaced Pages:Closing_discussions#When_to_close_discussions ~ R.T.G 15:10, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
• Please see Misplaced Pages:Tag_team#Goals_of_tag_teams ~ R.T.G 15:13, 17 December 2019 (UTC)