Taxman

Note: I strongly prefer to keep conversations intact. I'll usually respond only here to comments made here unless you request me to do otherwise. Likewise I will respond on your talk page to any comments made there, and I'd request doing the same. Thank you, and happy wikiing.

For older discussion see: Archive1, Archive2

IUPAC review request

Could you look at the IUPAC page and do a quick review on it? Thanks. Salamakajakawaka (talk) 21:32, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Request

To anyone reading here, please peer review an article to help it reach a higher quality level. Keep in mind the featured article criteria and consider some featured article advice, both of which should help give you ideas of where an article needs improvement. Thanks - Taxman ^Talk 14:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Re:Script check

Hello Taxman, I hope you are doing well. Yes, some of the former scripts were an attempt to vandalize the page with inappropriate lanugage (see this revision). However, I have corrected the script titles. Actually, neither of your versions are the official ones. The Bollywood film industry usually transliterates the film name into the Devanagari and Nastaliq scripts. As a result, the official version of the film title in Hindi would be माई नेम इज़ ख़ान (mai ném iz khān). I also corrected the latter script which is properly rendered مائی نیم اِز خان. A useful tool for you might be the Hindi-Urdu Transliterator, from the city of Malerkotla. Even though, it is by no means perfect, it may aid you when you are checking transliterations next time. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 16:29, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. I'm trying to think of a Bollywood film I've seen with an English title to see what you mean, but I'll take your word for it. I don't even know what one would consider official other than the certificate they sometimes put on the beginning of the movie or the title screen. I assumed they would translate, but if they go with an English title, transliterating is just as appropriate I suppose. - Taxman ^Talk 16:43, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I also left a note on my talk page. My thanks to Taxman for pointing out my mistaken rvt. It was a mistake on my part and I'm glad Taxman caught it. My Name Is Khan has received a great deal of vandalism from both IPs and registered users and thus this one slipped by. I think all that this article needs is more editors to watch it, particularly editors with this type of expertise in Hindi script. It would be great if you could both keep the article on your watch list. The more editors that are watching it, the less need we will have for semi protection. Thanks again for catching this and for your help with this article. -Classicfilms (talk) 17:18, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

A question on RTV re: User:Jtkiefer

Was reading through some unsuccessful bureaucrat request pages and couldn't help but notice the above user who ran five months in a row. Then I saw his notice where he said he was allowed to start anew with a fresh account with only a select few knowing the name for the express reason of erasing his troublesome history here. Did this happen? If so, I have some questions about this that I hope you can answer.

1. Was this allowed under policy at the time? Is it still? Is there an "under a cloud" exemption if you tell the bureaucrats?
2. There has been an issue of undisclosed socks like this being made administrators with the full knowledge of other admins. Can I be assured by you that the same didn't happen here?

I'm sorry to dredge up old history here, but I was frankly shocked to read the whole incident. It seems contrary to my admittedly newbie understanding of RTV and socking as wikipolicy. Auntie E. (talk) 02:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

He was allowed to get a new account with the express agreement that he would not be allowed to run for RfA or any other type of trusted position without either disclosing the account relationship himself or having it disclosed involuntarily. He also agreed to various checkuser inquiries and those have been performed. He most certainly would not be eligible to ask for his bit back for several reasons and has not so asked. He also hasn't requested through RfA again, so he is not an admin and the issue hasn't come up. I admit it was a strange method, but it worked in this case, and we had a lot of evidence to support that it would work. He has been a good user since and no issues have come up. To answer your specific question, there wasn't exactly policy that covered it, there was just an agreement among those involved that it would work.

To answer your general questions, there is no under a cloud exemption if you tell the bureaucrats. If there is a cloud, they must go through RfA. Recent Arbcom cases and community response have also made it clear that the community will not accept the hiding of past misdeeds at RfA. Past cases of undisclosed accounts being made admins were (in all cases I am aware of) cases of protecting the identity and safety of admins from stalking, outing, etc. and the generally held opinion is that it doesn't work and they should just build up a new history and go though RfA again. - Taxman ^Talk 16:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, good to know about the RFA deal. But still, ignoring the bit about him being a former admin, it still seems unusual for any user to be allowed to "disappear" into a new account unless 1) he is an editor in good standing, and 2) it is necessary for reasons of privacy. I don't see either issue at play here. In fact, it looks like he was given special treatment beyond that given to other abusive sockers. I mean, not being able to run for RFA again is a small price to pay to buy a clean slate. I feel the wiki should be open and aboveboard unless absolutely necessary. We are a very forgiving lot here for most misdeeds, but secrecy is not one of them. Here, the coverup is always worse than the crime.

Forgive the rant, just my gut feelings on the matter. Anyway, it was a long time ago, a generation in wikiyears. I doubt I would see anything like that happen in our current climate. Auntie E. (talk) 21:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Changing My User Name.

I have decided to change my user name to Rondo.--Remisx (talk) 18:27, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Consensus?

Since our very first interaction, I feel you have not been assuming good faith on me.

I just decided to go through the so-called consensus Anupam and you are talking about again. So here you have it (I'm copying what I wrote on Talk:Bollywood:

• The so-called poll. First of all, there were only 7 editors participating in the poll, and editors who opposed to having scripts did not even take part in it. The entire discussion remained without sources and without focus. And it actually dealt with scripts for actors' articles, not films!! Zora, as always spoke of provocations etc. Users including Plumcouch, Elyaqim and Nichalp opposed to having Urdu. There was no consensus on this discussion at all.
• Discussion 1: Now, please tell me what "discussion" you are talking about! What consensus are you talking about?! A user just posted a comment about the general addition of scripts in film articles, Zora replied and he replied back.
• Discussion 2 and discussion 3 are actually one discussion with two sections (Zora has a habit of starting new messages in new sections like she did here; expectedly, Anupam used it to add two links to his list). There is absolutely no consensus here. On the contrary, it's one big mess. No sources were cited by anyone. The same intense arguments as the ones you can find here. Nobleeagle, Bharatveer, Dbachchman against Zora, Ragib (who's disappeared from this discussion as I cited the certificates he wanted me to cite) and Anupam (who as always cites specific film posters and in that discussion cited two unreliable sources). A user named Bakaman put it all very well: "There is no consensus reached on this page. All I see is large assumptions of bad faith and OR"
• The most important link which Anupam keeps ignoring is the one in in the fourth archive in which Zora declares that the old discussion and the so-called poll are over and dead. Yes, they died a premature death. This is the most important link which clearly proves that there wasn't any consensus.
• This clearly shows how Anupam mispresents the entire issue and that you just misinterpreted it (though he clearly is not the one who takes decisions here as Anupam pretends).

On the AN discussion you clearly implied that I was acting unfairly, while I think you are the one does it. You also ignored the fact that Anupam violated WP:CANVASS. You say it does not matter if a discussion was declared as death, but for you to say that it's still relevant is okay? That's not what I expect from a bureacucrat to act like. I think I deserve a reply. Shahid • ^Talk2me 21:42, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I've assumed good faith. You've gone on to prove otherwise. When you say things like "The most important link" is the fourth one and act as if that somehow invalidates everyone else's opinions and the consensus, you either are acting in bad faith or don't understand what is important. Anyone that reads through the volumes of what has been written will find it clear who is the one misrepresenting things. I'm willing to leave it at that. - Taxman ^Talk 22:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikibooks

I've been doing some work on the Hindi wikibooks and I came across an article by you which uses and advocates iTrans transliteration scheme while IAST/ISO 15919 is becoming the de facto standard and is accepted by over 158 institutions. For somebody starting out it might be harder to read than iTrans, but it provides accurate pronunciation while there's no guarantee of the same in iTrans. Oh btw I was hoping I could get some help from you arranging the articles over there :) Shyboy16 (talk) 06:01, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't recall writing that specifically, but iTrans is very simple for beginners and doesn't require any special fonts. I also can't think of a situation where iTrans is phonetically inaccurate, but I'm no expert on the transcription systems. All I know is different books use different systems unfortunately, and some even invent their own. In any case the most important thing for Wikibooks is to be consistent. I do need to help out more over here, I haven't been that active in my Hindi learning lately, but I have quite a large number of resources. Some of them I downloaded for free and I can point you to. - Taxman (talk) 13:38, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes consistency is what we badly require there at wikibooks. I am having a hard time converting all the iTrans and other transliteration scheme to IAST. iTrans is of course easy but it is sometimes ambiguous while introducing new words to a learner. Speaking about the text available on Hindi on wikibooks, most of the articles seem to be written in a very amateur manner and I'm actually rewriting all the articles from scratch! Thats too much work for one person. If you have any downloadable resources on Hindi, that'd be most welcome. Even though I'm a native speaker, ready reference is always helpful. 117.197.249.3 (talk) 16:33, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

As you speak hindi

Could you maybe translate this request. as this user might not speak english :( ...Sicherlich ^Post 18:43, 27 June 2010 (UTC) you were recommended by Merlissimo

already done - thanks anyways :) ...Sicherlich ^Post 19:19, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't get to it faster. Most educated Hindi speakers speak or understand at least some English, so I'm not surprised someone else resolved it since you did a good job catching people's attention. BTW, for me speak is generous, I can only speak Hindi decently in relatively limited domains. It was someone else that changed my language ability to level 2. :) - Taxman ^Talk 02:18, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Nadu_Newsprint_and_Papers

Request to our Wikipedians,
I'm very happy that my First Article has achieved B-Class on the very first day. After our fellow wikipedians comments, i have worked a lot to Improve my article. I have added a Lot to the article - Images,logos,Geographical Co-ordinates,Charts, Block Diagrams, Tables, National Stock Exchange Details, Criticism for Neutrality of the Article, Many Government web sources for proven references, etc. I have put all my effort to make it achieve Good Article Status. Now, I kindly request you to review My Article & provide your valuable feedback.
Raj6644 (talk) 13:43, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Can you help...

Can you review this? I see that you are on the volunteer list for PR. Thanks for your time, Kayau Voting IS evil 06:46, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

the Public Policy Initiative Assessment Team wants You!

Hi Taxman, I got your name from the Editorial Team participant list, and saw that you have a strong interest in article review. I wanted to tell you that we will be testing out assessment metrics in the Wikiproject: United States Public Policy, and I was hoping you would be interested in assessing articles with the Public Policy Initiative. There is more info about assessment on the 9/13/2010 Signpost. If you're interested or just curious you can sign up on the project page or just contact me. Thanks! ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 21:41, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

That's a little too far outside my interests, but thanks for the thought. Good luck. - Taxman ^Talk 14:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Please Peer Review

You have been listed as a Peer Review Volunteer. I have nominated Institute of Chartered Accountants of India for peer review. Please peer review the same if you can find time. R.Sivanesh ✆ 14:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Help request

Please help with project at User:Ravensfire/Taxation in the United States. Your input would be highly valued. Oldtaxguy (talk) 02:44, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Question on old RfA on yours truly

I just realized it has now been four years since this occurred. I'm not trying to give you hard time but, I was wondering what you think of what happened in that RfA now, with the benefit of hindsight? Do you think that the result was fair and above board? Do you feel that the representations made to you were honest and forthright? Is there anything that you could have done or should have done differently? Cla68 (talk) 07:43, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Need peer review on language learning through literature

I've written an article about Literature Circles in EFL 'English as a Foreign Language', teacher accompanied classroom discussion groups among EFL learners, who regularly get together in class to speak about and share their ideas, and comment on others' interpretations about the previously determined section of a graded reader in English. I'm wondering if you would have time to peer-review.

(Osmanbedel (talk) 17:36, 27 September 2011 (UTC))

devanagari numerals not part of alnum set in wikipedia software

Hullo Taxman,

Hope you're doing great. As you're an old wikipedian, I have an issue and I thought to discuss with you. This is specifically to the usage of Devanagari numerals [१, २,३...८, ९] in titles of hindi wikipedia. I tried creating page hi:२०१२१ but it threw an error, see अनुमति त्रुटि, saying there are 5 or more non-alnum chars of any script in titles.

It seems that devanagari numerals are not part of the charset of alnum of all scripts in wikipedia software, or it could be policy decision not to use devanagari numerals, I am not sure. Could you please take up the issue or take this discussion further in relevant direction? Thanks.

--sbharti (Talk) 13:48, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

It was configured by admin on hindi wikipedia, so It can be solved by the admin. Thanks :-) --sbharti (Talk) 02:12, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, It would find a long time to find where that was configured, but if you know, that might help. It's a little out of my area, but I can try to help. - Taxman ^Talk 04:46, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi

Hi. Please "ping" me next time you're around, I would like to ask your opinion on something. Thank you : ) - jc37 16:21, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi.

There have been a couple RfAs that I have commented in where I actually felt bad for opposing, but that the person (to me) was clearly not rdy for the tools. I then end up putting myself in the neutral section, just because.

Give me a moment, and I'll see if I can find a few in particular I'm thinking of.

Basically, I would like to ask you to assess what I said/did, and maybe give me some insight.

Thanks in advance : ) - jc37 04:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure, I'll see what I can do. In general though, if you feel they really aren't ready, go for the oppose. If you feel bad because you are unsure or something, then neutral seems appropriate. But if you're only feeling bad because you're going against the tide, then don't. Do what you think is right and, as you feel appropriate, reasess based on input from others. - Taxman ^Talk

You know, it's hard to express in words what I'm trying to "get at". So my apologies in advance.

Here are 2:

• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Lady Aleena (I was mentioned in 2)
• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Figureskatingfan

And here's another but for different reasons.

• Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Dreadstar

And for contrast

• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Dpmuk
• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/CapitalR

There are likely others, but going through my edit history looking is taking longer than I thought it would : ) - jc37 05:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Found another - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Moni3 - jc37 05:58, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Moving to neutral doesn't seem to be a major problem in those, when I judge consensus I weigh the strength of the arguments anyway. What it can do is make it slightly unclear how strong your position is or if you are rethinking them and don't feel as strongly about your arguments. Then the advice above comes in I guess. The only other thing is it seems to me that you may be missing the forest for the trees in some cases. You're extremely intent on candidates having a highly detailed policy knowledge and things like immediate need for the tools. Once I've had a chance to take a step back I've realized that's not as important. What's most important is to separate out bad apples, those that would cause actual damage. As long as someone is here to help out the project it doesn't matter if they don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of policy, that can be learned as needed. Lots of people that can really help the project progress with admin tools don't have multiple hours a day to memorize the policies, but they can still do the right thing. By selecting only for people that have extremely high edit counts and encyclopedic policy knowledge, many valuable people will be missed. Then again this project is all about the articles, and everything else should only be focused on to the extent that it furthers that aim, and with the minimum wasted effort possible. Unfortunately it's easy to get caught up in all the policy and other meta stuff, so I'm not blaming you, just suggesting a slightly different approach. - Taxman ^Talk 18:57, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts : )

I guess part of my concern is that we've seen so much abusing of adminship (and it's like next to impossible to remove adminship from such a person typically), that I'm hesitant to blindly trust candidates. That and while you clearly have a clue concerning consensus, my experience is that more than a few think that consensus = voting. It's part of why I felt this was the minimum of what I wanted to see in candidates. Especially since a lot of what admins do with the responsibilities and tools are the "meta stuff" : )

(And of course, asking those general questions is an opportunity for the candidate to at least learn some about what they're in for before picking up the tools.)

With that in mind (and maybe I'm already contrary to the approach you suggest) where do you think I'm "over the bar", as it were? - jc37 22:39, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I could tell you what I think, but if you want to know, it would be far more valuable for you to come up with what you think. - Taxman ^Talk 02:46, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Lol, no fair using one of the reasons I respect you against me (wisdom gained through experience is only supposed to be used on someone else, right? : ) - jc37 04:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#My_opinion - Thought you might be interested based upon the above : ) - jc37 22:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I had to go to the archive to read that, but since you asked, I'll give you my opinion. I basically agree with David Levy's comments, and feel that it is a large part of the problem. Fear that someone might misuse something is misplaced if they can be trusted to know when not to. But I also agree with you that removing admins is too big a deal. I just think that's a harder problem to fix, and so many hours have been spent trying to find a solution to it without success, that it's better to focus on the other part, finding trustworthy people. - Taxman ^Talk 02:54, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear Taxman,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the communityHERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your nameHERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar — Preceding unsigned comment added by 35.9.115.210 (talk) 20:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC)