Thucydides411

Please feel free to post any comments or messages for Thucydides411 below:

Hannibal and siege equipment

First of all it is siege and not "seige" equipment. Secondly whoever wrote that Hannibal didn't have the siege equipment to assault Rome lacks some basic knowledge about warfare in this time. Siege equipment was constructed right on the spot. Naturally it could be done much faster if essential (metal)parts were transported with the army, but that accounts for the buildup speed and by no means for the ability to do so (instead of metal leather or ropes could be used, etc., naturally often decreasing efficiency). Hannibal (as Bagnall points out) wasn't able to stay on the same spot for a long time and so he couldn't construct sufficient siege equipment to take well fortified positions, but like all other commanders (for example ALL Roman commanders) of his age he didn't carry the heavy wooden equipment for hundreds of miles from one place to another. So could you kindly correct this or provide a source for any army of this time hauling along giant siege ballistae and siege towers on their march. Greetings Wandalstouring 22:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about the spelling error, but if that were the problem, you could have just corrected it. Secondly, you spelled "Greetings" wrong. You might like to look at the section "Aftermath" in the Battle of Cannae article. This is where I got the siege equipment statement from. If that's in error, then you should correct it. --Thucydides411 23:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I look like a hypocrite now. :) Well, somehow Carthage has its strange edits day today and I wanted to do sth. else. Wandalstouring 23:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Cole Mediation

Thanks for joining up and participating in the Juan Cole mediation page. If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading a bit from the (lengthy) Juan Cole talk page and the evolving discussions on the mediation page, just to see what points have and haven't been covered. With respect to mediation, it might be best not to re-open a can of worms that have been brought up and argued before, but instead to focus that very relevant restlessness that you presumably feel (along with several others including myself) in ways that directly answer current and particular problems on the table for debate on the mediation page.

Right now the specific foreground issues appear to be questions of whether Cole's blog is a RS, whether Karsh's "protocols of zion" quote is biographical or notable (or whether it is less), and how exactly to present them in an article without compromising a tone of neutrality if at all possible. Those are easier to nail down than what someone's motives are, so if you disagree with the content those are the conversations I'd suggest you take a look at and contribute to.

Also, the mediation page is supposed to have a moderator setting things in order and looking for a solution, but he's been gone for a few weeks now and many are waiting for his return before posting at all. As it is right now, he will have lots of catching up to do and things to sort out, and likely will be disappointed with how chaotic the page already is in it's present state, all the more reason to stay on topic. Just some points to consider. Abbenm 06:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I am restless about this, because the "Protocols of Zion" attack is so obviously a political hit-job. Cole has a large body of academic work and has been involved in many controversies, but this is not one that is worthy of mention. I am also concerned that Wikipedia is stating a libel against Cole as if it were just another, normal viewpoint on him. If a respected academic like Cole can be accused of anti-semitism and that accusation translated into their encyclopaedia entry, then we might as well label anyone anti-semitic or racist. I do agree that it is possible to include anything that has been written in a WP:RS in a Wikipedia article, but that is besides the point. The question is whether such a scurrilous attack should be included.

It would be good if the mediator showed up at some point, and this process could finally wind down to a conclusion. -Thucydides411 07:30, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The mediation is not dead, please to not try to force the outcome of it by unilaterally editing it to reflect your POV. Isarig 05:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Once again, that article and that specific section is the subject of mediation. Please do not edit it to reflect a certain POV. The Cole response you are planning to add is the subject of lengthy discussions on th mediation page, and you are trying to force the issue. If you do this, you will leave me no choice but to report you. Please reconsider. Isarig 06:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thucydides, I personally agree with your views on the Karsh comments, but it appears the mediation has not been declared dead yet. According to the rules, such as they are, we must wait until the process has come to some sort of conclusion. Wachholder0 19:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

edit warring on Juan Cole

Over the past 4 days you have removed that material 7 times and have been reverted by 3 different editors; the consensus is clearly against you here. I'm going to look into adding Cole's response to make it more balanced. - Merzbow 22:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Reported for gaming 3RR. - Merzbow 09:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Three revert rule

Warning

Please refrain from undoing other people's edits repeatedly. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions in a content dispute within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. Rather than reverting, discuss disputed changes on the talk page. The revision you want is not going to be implemented by edit warring. Thank you. — Nearly Headless Nick 14:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

New way? What's this about a new way?

I see you have met the editors who hover over the Juan Cole article. I was thinking that, if you wish to have the offensive and potentially libelous material removed, the best way would be to argue in the mediation and talk pages that it is a blatant violation of WP:BLP. Consider the following:

Writing style

Biographies of living people should be written responsibly, conservatively, and in a neutral, encyclopedic tone. While a strategy of eventualism may apply to other subject areas, badly written biographies of living persons should be stubbed or deleted.

The article should document, in a non-partisan manner, what reliable third party sources have published about the subject and, in some circumstances, what the subject may have published about themselves. The writing style should be neutral, factual, and understated, avoiding both a sympathetic point of view and an advocacy journalism point of view.

Remove unsourced or poorly sourced controversial material

Editors should remove any controversial material about living persons that is either unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Reliable sources, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source. In cases where the information is derogatory and poorly sourced or unsourced, this kind of edit is an exception to the three-revert rule. These principles apply to biographical material about living persons found anywhere in Wikipedia, including user and talk pages. Administrators may enforce the removal of such material with page protection and blocks, even if they have been editing the article themselves. Editors who re-insert the material may be warned and blocked. See the blocking policy and Wikipedia:Libel.

Biased or malicious content

Editors should be on the lookout for biased or malicious content in biographies or biographical information. If someone appears to be pushing an agenda or a biased point of view, insist on reliable third-party published sources and a clear demonstration of relevance to the person's notability.

The views of critics should be represented if their views are relevant to the subject's notability and are based on reliable sources, and so long as the material is written in a manner that does not overwhelm the article or appear to side with the critics' material. Be careful not to give a disproportionate amount of space to critics, to avoid the effect of representing a minority view as if it were the majority one. If the criticism represents the views of a tiny minority, it has no place in the article.

Content should be sourced to reliable sources and should be about the subject of the article specifically. Beware of positive or negative claims that rely on association.

I believe the now infamous "Karsh quote" violates these aspects of WP:BLP. I believe you acted in good faith to remove edits you saw as bias & libelous and thus did not violate 3RR. Anyway, these may be helpful points to address if you wish to continue your struggle. Godspeed through Texas, Wachholder0 15:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

You have been blocked

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 24 hours in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for violating the three-revert rule on Juan Cole. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make constructive contributions. If you believe this block is unjustified, you may contest the block by replying here on your talk page, by adding the text {{unblock|your reason here}} .

Heimstern Läufer 05:24, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Thucydides411 (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

I did not edit any section more than thrice in 24 hours. I edited two separate sections, the first of which is the subject of a long-standing dispute. For the second section, I provided quotes supporting my position, as the argument was over a factual detail. This block, especially coming after I had for a time ceased activity on the article, is political.

Decline reason:

Merzbow is right. The reverts don't have to be identical, nor to the same section. Any time you revert more than three edits within 24 hours that are not explicit vandalism, you are violating 3RR, and are liable to get blocked. The more you revert, the harsher the blocks get. This is intended to help editors cool their heads and avoid edit wars. So, calm down and wait out your block. You can survive for one day.

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Also Sie sagen, dass irgendwelche drei reverts in 24 Stunden können mir blockieren, ungeachtet wie begründet sie sind? Und was soll mann machen, wenn es drei bestimmte Redakteure gibt, die als Gruppe den gleichen Text wiedereinsetzen werden? Muss mann in diesem Fall alles akzeptieren, was sie im Artikel sehen wünschen, denn das ist soweit die Geschichte dieses Artikels? -Thucydides411 22:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

From WP:3RR: "An editor does not have to perform the same revert on a page more than three times to breach this rule; all reverts made by an editor on a particular page within a 24 hour period are counted." But yes, 3RR does not require a block, or even a report; your edit-warring has been harmful because you have show zero willingness to compromise on anything, while I fought against csloat's 3RR a few days ago because he is willing to meet others halfway. - Merzbow 08:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Explain, Merzbow, how adding on new subsections to and expanding existing parts of an already contentious section is compromising. You have already demonstrated that you want to include more desultory material in the Controversies section while removing mitigating material. The entire section is an exercise in POV-pushing. -Thucydides411 16:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

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DRN Notice

There is a discussion involving you at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 14:10, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

RE: Minor planets

No script was involved. You are more than welcome to nominate for deletion any articles you see unfit to stay. --Merovingian (T, C, L) 18:30, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

S Hoare

Hi, please continue discussion and allow time, there is no hurry. A citation is not a gold badge for inclusion - WP:SYNTH and such like are policy. Off2riorob (talk) 22:04, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you've also heard of "Be Bold." I've made the required changes. If you want to avoid an edit war, you'll have to explain your position on the talk page before just blanking other contributors' well researched and sourced work. As it is, you're removing solid material which is important to Sean Hoare as a public figure. In fact, you're removing the most important reason why Sean Hoare's death is in the public consciousness from the page. Please revert your own edit, and then explain on the talk page why you think the material should be removed. I don't want to have to get into a revert war with you. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:10, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there some connection between your account an User:Darouet? Off2riorob (talk) 22:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I think we all know how your last accusations of sockpuppeting went. Knock your socks off though. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:53, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

White privilege article

Yesterday I resurrected the "Criticism" section of this article, adding several new entries and renaming it. Yet the editors who invited me to do this, are now moving to, once again, eliminate it. I notice you seem to favor a more balanced approach; your input would be appreciated. Thank you.Apostle12 (talk) 19:00, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

March 2013

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, we would ask that you assume good faith while interacting with other editors, which you did not on User talk:Ndickinson1. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Cindy(talk to me) 23:54, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Cindy. I have to disagree with you. You seem to consider asking someone to refrain from personal attacks a breach of WP:AGF. In the case in question, there was clearly a personal attack. I addressed the issue, and left a short note at the end: "One more thing: Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks." That seems totally within reason to me. You may honestly disagree, and that is your right, but I will ask you to not leave condescending comments on my talk page. I didn't join Wikipedia yesterday, and am familiar with the policies. Thank you. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:07, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Hi Thucydides, some concerns have been expressed about the involvement of a government official in suggesting language for this article. I notice you expressed similar concerns on the talk page. We've had the same problem with multinationals being invited to supply drafts for articles about themselves.

The issue of NDAA and what happened there is being discussed at COIN here in case you have any interest in commenting. Best, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:44, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to you let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You do not need to participate however, you are invited to help find a resolution. The thread is "White privilege". Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! EarwigBot ^{operator / talk} 18:03, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Though this dispute was closed for a few hours, it has now been reopened at the DRN listing page. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 23:53, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Help at DRN

I was looking for someone who might become a DRN volunteer to take on the current listing involving the Copernican principle and was looking through the members of WikiProject Astronomy and saw where you say you're a astronomy grad student. I recall that you've been involved in a couple of DRN matters in the past and know how it works. If you don't have a conflict of interest with any of the many listed participants in that dispute, I wonder if you might become a volunteer and take it on? Even if everyone doesn't weigh in, I'm thinking that this is one that might ought to be answered because at least a couple of the primary disputants have weighed in, and because it is at least indirectly a referral from ArbCom. See also this. I'm strongly suspicious that we're seeing some cheesy fringe here, but I don't have the technical expertise to determine whether the proffered material (best seen all in one spot in this edit) is a relevant response to what was already in the article or is OR by an amateur who is misunderstanding the sources. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:30, 16 April 2013 (UTC) PS: Plus, we'd love to have you as a volunteer, in general. — TM

I don't know any of the participants in the discussion (as far as I know - I don't know the Wikipedia usernames of anyone in Astronomy). When volunteering for DRN, to what level should one be engaged in the discussion vs. merely guiding the discussion? This may be an issue here, since it is my field and I might want to contribute myself to some points in the discussion. Regards, -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:50, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

It's important to remember that in doing DR work that the goal is not settlement at any cost, but settlement within Wikipedia policies and guidelines. And policies and guidelines are clear that articles are to give primary weight to the mainstream, generally accepted, view of things while not entirely omitting significant minority and fringe views. That, then, is the goal that people working in DR need to try to achieve. The style of doing that is largely up to the individual volunteer. In most cases, you generally try to get a clear understanding of the matter and nudge people in the right direction, but some times you just have to render an opinion when policy clearly precludes one side of the issue. (It's not a judgment, because it's not binding, but at least at DRN it does "count" towards consensus.) Other times there's not a clearly correct answer and then you just try to reach a compromise that's good for the encyclopedia. In a case such as this we have the classic dilemma of expertise at Wikipedia: you can't use your expertise to claim some superior authority, but you can use it to better understand the claims and to educate the disputants about their mistakes. That's somewhat easier to do as a DR volunteer than as just another editor in an article discussion. It becomes most difficult when the thing being discussed involves, as I suspect it may here, high-context sources which presume that the reader will have a high level of background knowledge about the subject being discussed but which are being read and offered as sources by people (perhaps people on both sides of the argument) who do not have that knowledge. (A personal hard-learned example: I recently had a lesion removed from my face. A few days later the doctor's nurse called and told me that it had been biopsied as a particular type of skin cancer and that I needed to come in a couple of weeks later to explore my treatment options with the doctor. Between the call and the visit, I looked up a bunch of peer-reviewed medical papers about that kind of cancer and scared myself so bad by them that I called and demanded that my visit be moved up. By the time I went, I was almost a basket case. The treatment option turned out to be, basically, "I'll cut it off, put a band-aid on it, and there's virtually a 100% chance it won't come back. If it does come back, as unlikely as that may be, we'll just cut it off again. It's not going to spread." Those journal articles that made it sound deadly were, indeed, about that kind of cancer, but they presumed knowledge of circumstances and conditions that would have been possessed by a trained physician but were not possessed by me as a layman. [And dammit, I knew better.]) At the same time in this case where there may — and I emphasize may, since I don't know for sure — be some sentiment on one side of the dispute that the mainstream scientific view (i.e. that there's nothing special about the Earth that would suggest that it's somehow the center of the universe) is wrong, I think you have to be very careful, if that is true, not to "pull rank" or claim expertise as a scientist so as not to make the fringe side believe you have a conflict of interest and dismiss any help that you can provide. So it's a edge-dancey kind of thing and you might feel more comfortable, if you do anything at all, to just weigh in at the article talk page rather than take it on at DRN. If you're uncomfortable about DRN, I do have another editor who is already a volunteer there who is at least an enthusiastic astronomy amateur that I can talk to about this. (And you'd still be more than welcome to come in as a general volunteer, of course, for other cases, we'd love for you to join us.) It's absolutely your call, whatever you want to do. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 21:46, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Another volunteer (not the one I had in mind, but a good one) has chosen to take the case. If you would nonetheless care to take part, you're free to volunteer and do so; cases aren't "owned" by the first volunteer to take the case and other volunteers can join in. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 14:55, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. At the moment, I don't think I have enough time to manage the case, but I'd be happy to contribute to the discussion. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:53, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

No, thank you for your comments and help. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:53, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Note

Assuming this was a mistake... be careful. Cavarrone (talk) 22:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, my fault. I meant to append my notice after this section. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:25, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest you reveal your Suburban Express COI before undertaking further edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.147.28.115 (talk) 17:40, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• Hello,

I just wanted to tell you that if you are editing under a COI, as the IP above is claiming, you reveal it and only then edit. NegateVoid and AlmostGrad have been doing so, though the (changing) IP above has been doing so without revealing their COI. Also, I suggest that if your edits are substantial, they be discussed with another editor (preferably CorporateM) or at the talk page first.

Finally, I noted that you changed the year of the article at 3 places to 2019. Is there any specific reason why, or was that an error?

Cheers,

TheOriginalSoni (talk) 18:18, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, the date change was an error. I have no COI on the article, as I've never had any involvement with the company. The IPs and sockpuppets involved on the Suburban Express article have been throwing a lot of unsubstantiated accusations about. For example, I was earlier accused of being a sockpuppet by Thenightchicagodied: [1]. This user was later found to have multiple sockpuppets. I suspect that the same person is behind the many new IPs who have suddenly begun editing Wikipedia with a sole interest in Suburban Express, although since it is Wikipedia's policy not to link IPs with usernames, we won't know whether this is true. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:20, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough then :) I just wanted to confirm if you are having a COI or now.

I agree about the IP on you, but am still hoping they will try to edit constructively than make bare claims. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:22, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

No problem, TheOriginalSoni. I'm not particularly hopeful for the prospects of constructive, consensus editing at that page, myself. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This article is going to remain neutral, that I know. Whether or not the IP co-operates is another question. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:38, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I hope so. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:58, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe Thucydides411 has a COI - he is a veteran with hundreds of edits over many years. Suburban Express has accused anyone who changed what they (Suburban Express) want in the article of having a COI/being a sockpuppet - even if they are users with hundreds of edits - for example, they have accused Legoktm, Thucydides411, CorporateM, and now even you, TheOriginalSoni - just search on the Talk page for these usernames and you will find the accusations. AlmostGrad (talk) 03:59, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Welcome!

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Disambiguation link notification for June 10

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June 2013

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Iraq War. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware, Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; that is to say, editors are not automatically "entitled" to three reverts.
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. (Hohum ^@) 17:57, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this warning is appropriate. User:CJK has begun adding a very heavy point of view throughout the article, based largely on their own reading of primary sources. I have been trying to engage with User:CJK on the talk page, but this user insists on pushing a maximalist position, wherein User:CJK's personal view of the Iraq War must be highlighted throughout the article. The version which User:CJK is pushing is completely unacceptable for a Wikipedia article. I agree that we really need the involvement of more editors. However, pending whatever route we follow - be it dispute resolution or posts to the relevant Wikipedia projects (e.g. history) - User:CJK should agree to roll back to a more neutral version of the article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:16, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Constantly reverting, as you have, is not the way to resolve the situation. A WP:Third opinion may be a good idea as a first step, you could neutrally ask for a volunteer at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history (Hohum ^@) 23:16, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I would like to provide a third opinion. Thucydides411's edits have been very much in the interests of having a factual article that is up to Wikipedia standards. The CJK edits mostly erase factual information that do not support CJK's theories about the Iraq war, and do not provide any factual information. I agree with Thucydides411 that the edit war warning is a mistake. In reality, Thucydides411 and Darouet have been simply helping to return the Iraq war article to a state of being a balanced fact-based article that is up to Wikipedia standards, rather than a one-sided opinion-based CJK editorial that is far below Wikipedia standards. Truthwillneverdie (talk) 19:01, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Iraq War

While I would like to refrain from editing while we discuss, you simply can't expect another user to wait days on end to receive a reply. This process has already dragged on quite a long time mainly because you decided to address rather small details of my very large edits one by one, ignoring the format I laid out to speed up the dispute resolution. At the rate we are currently going the dispute will take a year or so to be resolved.

CJK (talk) 00:51, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

There's no rush. It's important to take the time to get things right.

As to the individual discussions we've had on the Iraq War talk page, I think I've responded fairly fully on your first two points. The last time I checked, which was a few days ago, there was nothing which you had written which needed a new response. Going back and forth endlessly about the same points doesn't get us anywhere.

Others have commented on your other points, and so far, the reaction of other editors has been mostly negative. I will look into them more thoroughly when time permits, and leave my opinion alongside those of the other editors. You are proposing a complete reworking of several large sections of the text. Some patience is to be expected. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:21, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

children's books as sourcing for articles

Please feel free to edit or comment on my new essay on children's nonfiction as sources for various subjects. I read your comments a few months ago in Talk:United States Bill of Rights#Personal point of view - historically incorrect: Inflamatory. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:51, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! -Darouet (talk) 20:30, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi User:Thucydides411, the link to the dispute resolution page is here: WP:Dispute resolution noticeboard/Ferenc Szaniszló. I think with the help of uninvolved editors we may be able to arrive at an agreement. -Darouet (talk) 20:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Mollweide revert

Concerning my revert, the problem was not browser rendering; it was a server-side error that stated the mark-up was broken. However, it seems to have been a glitch; I see no such error now. Meanwhile thanks for the improvements. Strebe (talk) 01:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks, -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:18, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

White privilege

I noticed you discussed editing the white privilege page. There is currently an open discussion on that page which you may be able to contribute to. Ancholm (talk) 13:37, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Operation Defensive Shield

Perhaps we could put in the infobox "Israeli victory (according to IDF)" like here. Or something like that.--Wlglunight93 (talk) 09:21, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

May 2015

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Anzac Day. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and breaking the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. AussieLegend (✉) 19:45, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• I see that you've been blocked for edit-warring in the past, and warned numerous times, so I shouldn't have to explain to you that per WP:BRD and WP:STATUSQUO, when an edit of yours is good faith reverted, you do not immediately revert, as you did here. Instead you open a discussion on the article's talk page with the aim of resolving the issue and, while the matter is under discussion, the status quo prevails. That you opened a discussion is commendable, but removing a valid citation, contrary to Wikipedia:Link rot, WP:BRD and WP:STATUSQUO, is not. You should have opened the discussion and waited for it to end with appropriate consensus, not reverted and then opened the discussion. If you persist in this form of "dispute resolution" you are likely to find yourself blocked again. --AussieLegend (✉) 19:46, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

There's no need to spam my talk page like this. I know my way around Wikipedia, and I haven't violated the 3RR. You're equally at risk of sanction here, because you've already reverted twice, and because you're insisting on a blatantly POV statement, backed by a textbook for children. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:03, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I didn't say you were at risk of breaching 3RR, I said you were edit-warring, which is correct. Notice that I used {{uw-ew}} not {{uw-3rr}}. No, I'm not "insisting on a blatantly POV statement", as I've explained on the article's talk page. "Radical socialism" is not a POV statement, is a reference to a form of socialism, and is mentioned in socialism - see for example Socialism#Mid-20th century: World War II and post war radicalisation. suppose you'd like to remove "radical" from In 1945, the British Labour Party, led by Clement Attlee, was elected to office based on a radical socialist programme. Nor am I relying on a "textbook for children" - the source is a reliable source used by at least two well respected federal government departments, and quoted extensively by one. The message here is though, don't edit-war. Removing a valid source because you don't like it is unnaceptable. Discuss the matter. --AussieLegend (✉) 00:22, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

First of all, you are using a textbook written for children. The "well respected federal government departments" you mention specifically say it's intended for secondary school students. But "well respected federal government departments" are not generally considered good historical secondary sources. You should be looking for the works of actual historians. Whatever we decide to do about the "radical" claim, this source has to go. We don't generally cite children's textbooks as authoritative works on Wikipedia.

Second of all, the way the word "radical" is thrown into the sentence is definitely meant to belittle the criticism of ANZAC day. If the criticism of the commemoration really did come out of the "radical" end of the political spectrum, that should be easy to document, as there should be plenty of historians that say that. But if all you can find is a citation in a secondary school textbook, then that argues that such a bold statement really isn't supportable. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:59, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, which is the original source document, is not a textbook, so your argument falls down right there. The AWM website says nothing about being a textbook. As for "the way the word "radical" is thrown into the sentence is definitely meant to belittle the criticism of ANZAC day", unless you have a reliable source that supports your claim, that is just your opinion and constitutes original research. "Radical socialism" is a form of socialism so you can't make any assumption about use of "radical". Original research is not permitted by policy. --AussieLegend (✉) 01:07, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Can you cite the original article? Who wrote it? Would you also like to include that author's personal opinion, whoever they are, that the criticisms made by the "radical socialists and pacifists [...] missed the mark"? Until you can provide any sorts of details on the original source, like the author, the title of the essay, etc., you're still citing a children's textbook. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:22, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

FFS, did you not read the DVA document? It quite clearly identifies the source as The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, which I referenced above and multiple times on the article's talk page, including links. It is not a children's textbook. --AussieLegend (✉) 03:04, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I read through the relevant section of the secondary school textbook that you linked. It identified the collection of essays that the original source comes from, but not the author of the original source. We know the name of the editor of the collection, but not the name of the actual author of the essay. We also don't know the title of the essay. I've found a journal article that talks about the Australian Labor Party's attitude towards ANZAC commemorations early on, and it makes clear that the "mainstream" labor movement was torn over the day from an early date:

"The ALP's condemnation of war and militarism fundamentally shaped its attitude towards Anzac Day and the ANZACS. [...] The labour movement fully endorsed the 'Anzac spirit' as a form of mateship, but opposed both it and the landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula and the the subsequent fighting as marking the defining moments in the birth of the nation. The bravery of the Anzacs and the solemnity of Anzac Day were both unquestioned and widely respected in labour circles. At the same time, strong opposition was registered to the increasing glorification and national importance attached to 'the Anzac experience'. [...] Labor in Victoria and Western Australia 'banned all school texts which glorified war' and forbade ex-soldiers to promote the 'glorification of war' among state schoolchildren on Anzac Day respectively, while in the country at large there was opposition to April 25, a day of remembrance for the dead 'brimful of poignant grief and desolation, tears and heartache', becoming the occasion for 'rejoicing' and 'cheap-jack jingo speeches by ghoulish politicians' or for 'filling bookmasters' bags'." -- "Australians for Australia": The Right, the Labor Party and Contested Loyalties to Nation and Empire in Australia, 1917 to the Early 1930s, by Neville Kirk. Labour History, No. 91, pp. 95-111 (quoting here from p. 100).

Neville Kirk writes that criticism of and opposition to Anzac Day went far beyond "radical" circles, into the mainstream Labor movement and "the country at large." So I have a source, from a well known and respected journal, Labour History, that contradicts the source by the unknown author that you've cited out of a secondary school textbook. Again, it would be interesting (and important for purposes of evaluating the source and properly citing them) to know who actually authored the original source you'd like to use. But we already know that their claim about opposition coming from "radicals" is contradicted by other historians, as is, presumably, the highly opinionated claim by your unknown original source that the critics were wrong about Anzac Day. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:13, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

"I read through the relevant section of the secondary school textbook that you linked" - I didn't link to a secondary school textbook. The author of what I did link to is Peter Dennis. As for your "collection of essays", that has nothing to do with what is in the article. You seem to have gone off at a wild tangent with that. --AussieLegend (✉) 21:37, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

The citation in the secondary school textbook reads, "Peter Dennis et al (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, OUP, Melbourne, 2nd edition 2008, pages 32-37." I assume that one of the things the teacher would point out to their school children is that "eds" refers to "Editors." In other words, this is a collection of essays or contributed chapters, from different authors, collected and edited by Peter Dennis and others. Peter Dennis isn't, as far as we know, the author of this entry on Anzac Day, although it's not impossible that he is. Have you looked at the original source and checked who the author is? Have you found the original title of the article? It's really bad form to cite a work second-hand, if you don't have access to the work itself. One generally cites the work you found the text in, which in this case, is a secondary school textbook.

In any case, I've given you a citation above, from a scholarly journal, that directly contradicts the author, whoever they are, of the text that appears in the secondary school text. That should be enough to conclude this argument. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:32, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

• "The citation in the secondary school textbook" - Again, it is not a secondary school textbook. The source is a PDF worksheet produced by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which does not produce school textbooks.
• "In other words, this is a collection of essays or contributed chapters, from different authors, collected and edited by Peter Dennis and others." - If you had actually bothered to follow the links that I provided you would have found that the book is primarily by "Peter Dennis, Emeritus Professor, Department of History, University of New South Wales, Australia" with input from "Jeffrey Grey, Professor, Department of History, University of New South Wales, Australia". You are making some unsubstantiated assumptions regarding the publication content.
• "It's really bad form to cite a work second-hand, if you don't have access to the work itself." - The work isn't being cited second-hand. The DVA source is being cited, and that's quite acceptable. As I have already explained, I have read the actual publication, after visiting the library specifically for that purpose. It's a reference publication, not for loan, but access is easily available.
• "One generally cites the work you found the text in, which in this case, is a secondary school textbook." - That's exactly what the DVA source does. Again as I've already stated, we could cite the Oxford Companion to Australian Military History directly, but the DVA source provides us with context for the quote, and the use of "radical". We could always add the book citation to the existing reference and then we would have both the direct citation and context. However, that's not necessary. As I said, take it to RSN if you really have an issue. --AussieLegend (✉) 03:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Why is it so hard to agree that the DVA-provided text is a secondary-school textbook? That's literally how the DVA website describes the book, and it's found under the DVA's section for "Educators," i.e., schoolteachers. If you missed the DVA website's "secondary-school" tag, the book's format, its reading level, and the book's numerous worksheets should have tipped you off that it's an elementary or secondary-school textbook. That the book is written for use in secondary schools is simply a matter of fact. It would be refreshing if you'd acknowledge that and move on.

"As I have already explained, I have read the actual publication, after visiting the library specifically for that purpose. It's a reference publication, not for loan, but access is easily available." Where do you want to have this conversation - here or on the Anzac Day talk page? If you sometimes reply here, and sometimes reply on the Anzac Day talk page, I won't see all of your messages right away, so you can hardly complain about having to repeat yourself. So now that you've been to the library, can you provide a proper citation for the original source? We can't use a secondary school textbook as a source, and that secondary school textbook doesn't contain an unambiguous citation (it lists Peter Denis as an editor, implying that the work is a collection of essays or contributed chapters). If you provide a proper citation, we can finally get to talking about the actual material.

As I've pointed out, the idea that opposition was limited to "radical socialists and pacifists" is flatly contradicted by the journal article by Neville Kirk that I cited above. There was opposition to Anzac Day commemorations in "the country at large," and in the mainstream Australian Labor Party. The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History's entry on Anzac Day reads as a very opinionated document. Just after the statement about "radical socialists and pacifists," it goes on to declare those critics wrong. That's not an objective historical analysis. Given that that entry on Anzac Day is contradicted by the journal article I've cited, and given its strongly partisan tone, I think we should amend the sentence about "radical socialists and pacifists" in the Wiki entry on Anzac Day. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:35, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

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Rula Jebreal

I'm a Palestinian and Palestinian are not an ethnic but nationality.--HailesG (talk) 20:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

HailesG, I think the "ethnicity=" tag is going away anyways, and it looks like it's not displaying inside Infoboxes any more. See this RfC. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:18, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes I know I've noticed, that's better.--HailesG (talk) 20:30, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

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Acela Express

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Your comment

In light of your recent comment at AE, and the fact that we've only interacted for the first time a couple days ago (I think), I got to ask - has someone recently been in contact with you off-wiki in regards to the AE report or your edits in this topic area? Your comments are a part of a pattern by some users, which read like they've been fed scripted information by someone.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:24, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek, you might not be fully aware of this, but EEML is kind of famous in the Wikipedia world, and you're fairly well known for your involvement in it. You may not like that, but when you continue to edit war so prolifically on Russia-related topics, it's sort of hard to shake the old reputation, don't you think? As for past interaction with you, I watch several pages that you've been heavily involved in, and I must say, your propensity to battle is awe-inspiring. It's also disturbing to me, as someone who would like to be optimistic about the Wikipedia project. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:31, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

What does "kind of famous in Wikipedia world" mean? It's not being discussed currently anywhere on Wiki. Probably because it's old as hell and actually, almost nobody cares about it. 99.99% of Wikipedians haven't heard of it, and 99.9999% of Wikipedians don't give a crap about it. So "kind of famous" pretty much implies "off wiki". Which you know is a no-no.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:42, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Are you telling me I'm not allowed to read the Internet? I understand that you don't want your EEML past to be known, but banning people from reading seems like a step to far, don't you think? -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:58, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Wha? No, I'm asking you if you've been contacted about this off wiki. Even if it was just a pointer to some forum or something.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:06, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

As much as you don't like it, many people who've edited Wikipedia for a long time (and that includes me) are aware of the EEML debacle. I see you're very touchy about it being raised, which is understandable. You were part of a cabal that organized off-wiki to engage in each others' edit wars. Given that your behavior on wiki has hardly changed since, and here you are, in 2016, still edit warring about Eastern Europe, it's a bit hard to feel sorry for your situation though. Have you considered editing in less of a warrior mode? Have you considered moving away from Russian-politics-related articles? You might be able to invest your time more productively in less political subjects. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:13, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Have you considered answering my question? Look, the reason I'm asking you, and not somebody else, is because you seem like an honest sort, going by your past edits. I hope my assessment is correct.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:24, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I've answered your question. I get it - you don't like the fact that EEML is known in the community, and you're touchy when it's raised. If you want to shake your reputation, though, take my advice and take a rest from edit warring on Russian politics. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:35, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Thucydides411, I don't think you quite understand how Wikipedia works as yet. Even if EEML were 'world famous', such past indiscretions (how many years since it was archived?) are not brought to an AE. Given the calibre of your statement/s at the AE, and of this thread, your 'advice' to lay off the Russian politics articles to one of the most active Wikipedians across a broad range of articles leans uncomfortably towards WP:HOUND/WP:HUNT. Given, also, that you are essentially a 'newbie' editor, there's a massive disparity between your claims of collaboration problems and the number of edits you've actually made. Such 'advice' is not for you to give, but for the admins and community to decide on. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:39, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Iryna Harpy, no need to condescend here. I understand how Wikipedia works just fine, and have been editing here for a decade. EEML may be old history, but it is very well known (just a quick look at recent Admin noticeboard/incidents will show it coming up several times in the last few weeks), and many of the people involved still regularly edit war in tandem on Eastern Europe-related articles. It's very relevant to the present day, especially as Russia-related issues have sort of blown up on Wikipedia, with the US election, Ukraine and the Syrian Civil War, providing much more surface area for these edit wars to appear. As for giving advice, I'm free to give advice to whomever I please, especially on my own talk page. I can't command, but I can certainly recommend. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:52, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

"many of the people involved" - uh, what? Who are these "many people"? I was on it. MVBW was on it. Both briefly. That's it. And no, you still haven't answered my question - where you contacted off wiki about this? You've evaded the question.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:39, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I beg your pardon, but it strikes me that it is you who is patronising VM in handing out 'recommendations'. Having held an account for years is most certainly not the equivalent of experience (unless you edit under other accounts or as an IP). The fact of EEML reappearing does not make it 'famous', but is indicative of editors like yourself dredging it up to make a WP:POINT. Unless you have evidence that this is still going on years after the fact, it is inappropriate to keep resurrecting it. Suggested reading: WP:ATONED. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:04, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence that anyone atoned for anything. The editing behavior of VM (in tandem with other EEML members) is prima facie evidence that they haven't atoned. I frankly think that the people involved with EEML have been treated with kid gloves, because many people in this community are willing to turn a blind eye towards misbehavior from otherwise prolific editors. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:11, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Dude, that crap was seven years ago, arb com made its decision, seven years ago, if you don't like it tough noogies. All you're doing here is bringing it up to excuse your own disruptive behavior and as a means of intimidation to try and get your way on contentious articles. And believe me, far more people were banned and sanctioned on the "anti-EEML" side (some of them trying to sneak back later as sock puppets). Why? Because a lot of the stuff that was discussed (and that's what it was a discussion list, not a "cabal") on the list was spot on and a side effect of it being brought out was that admins started to pay attention to all the troubles that some users were causing in these topic area. Which is why, roughly, from late 2010 to early 2014, this topic area was actually quiet and collaborative. Unfortunately that's changed again as we've seen a large influx of disruptive accounts which have turned it, once again, into a WP:BATTLEGROUND.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:44, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

It became a "tradition" that a previously unknown 3rd party appears on AE to remind about this very old case, even though it is completely irrelevant to recent AE requests. That had happen so many times! For example, there were actually two people who reminded about this 6 year old case in the previous AE thread, just a few days ago [2], and admins ruled (once again!) that it is irrelevant. Just a few days passed, and you brought this irrelevant thing to WP:AE again! This becomes a comedy. No wonder that VM suspected an off-line coordination. Well, if this suppose to be a harassment, this is not working. Yes, I am a lot less active right now, but mostly because I am busy with real work. My very best wishes (talk) 23:27, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, your insinuation is incorrect. I raised this issue on AE because of Marek's behavior. Nobody asked me off wiki to do so. But when you have experience in an off-wiki cabal, I guess you suspect everyone else of being part of one as well. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:32, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, I personally do not mind if you or someone else coordinates efforts off-wiki. I never do it, but this is my choice. My very best wishes (talk) 23:47, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thucydides, when did Wikipedia become your personal court of law, and all tangible records of 'proof' of penitence become your domain? Your comments on both the AE and the ANE are unconscionable. It seems that you believe WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS applies to your attitude to how you interact with other Wikipedians. Low blows, indeed. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:44, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Iryna Harpy, I never claimed Wikipedia to be my personal court of law. Much to the contrary, if you look above, you'll see who's trying to set up their own little inquisition. I raised Volunteer Marek's history of edit warring in Eastern European subjects in AE and ANI cases that are relevant to edit warring in those subjects. And I told VM that I think it would be more productive for them to put their energies into a subject where they can be more neutral. But I think this has played itself out. It's pretty clear that there are people who take great umbrage at the mention of EEML. I personally think that the issues involved back then are still very much a problem. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

You've now streaked past the post on any claim to be sitting in judgement. You're actively engaged using wp as your court. You've also disregarded the fact that VM has told you that there was a counter-faction to EEML. Certainly, those activities are possibly still going on, but on which side? Will you please respond to whether anyone has contacted you offwiki? It should be simple to answer. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:23, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Iryna Harpy, your posts are getting comical at this point. In one breath, you say I'm engaging Wikipedia as my court, and then demand that I submit to your questioning. This would all be much easier for you if you'd actually read the above thread: [3]. Is your court out of session, then? -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:30, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. I'll take you at your word on the issue. I missed that post due to the hive of activity surrounding this page at the moment. As for any intimation that you're being harassed or interrogated, you are not. I find it sad that you have not considered that if you cast WP:ASPERSIONS, you are bound to attract unwanted attention. I'm sure you can see that WP:ASPERSIONS cuts both ways. It's good to have a sense of humour about one's role as an editor, and I sincerely hope that you can keep seeing the comical side of things... but not under these circumstances again. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:39, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

For the record, I think Thucydides411 is who he says he is. In fact part of the reason why he was the one I came to ask about this issue was because, as I said, he seemed like a decent honest sort. Yeah, that prior has unfortunately been adjusted a bit, but I still believe that to be basically the case.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:07, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek, when a proper biography of Wikipedia is written, EEML will be in it. The EEML case was a fundamental expose on the way Wikipedia works, how it responds to serious abuses, and how article content and ANI cases can be manipulated. It is not ancient history because nothing has changed on Wikipedia since then - there could be dozens of EEML-type cabals operating here right now. There will always be new reminders by editors of your place in EEML because you solo edit in the same subject areas as your cabal editing EEML days, and you also appear to have a bit of a holier-than-thou attitude - willing to bring up the editing history of others while disliking mentions of your own. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 17:19, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Maybe, but how it's portrayed will depend on who writes it. So here is the real history. I've written several times that that mailing list was a dumb idea. For one thing, if it had just been open, rather than private, then there wouldn't have been any problem with it, at least not with 99% of its content. It would've been no different than Wikpediocracy or something like that. It was just people shooting shit and discussing Wikipedia issues. Yeah there was that 1% of its content which was sketchy, which is why there were some sanctions handed out (most of which were quickly vacated since the people involved were actually very productive and well meaning editors). And had it been out in the open that 1% wouldn't have happened. So that was the mistake - making the list private and hidden.

Was it a cabal? Not really. It had a diverse group of editors who often fought vehemently with each other - which may have been how it has been leaked. Hell, I intensely dislike at least two former members and genuinely believe they should be banned from Wikipedia (one has been, more or less). As far as cabals goes it was hilariously ineffective and incompetent.

At the same time, the discussions on the list were about real problems on Wikipedia. These discussed really disruptive users and highlighted how truly disruptive they were. And these discussions were able to do that because if you say some things on Wiki ("that guy is being disruptive by doing x y and z") someone is gonna run to AE or ANI and try to report you for "incivility". There's no benefit to being open and honest on Wikipedia (I really try to be, but that's a good part of the reason why I'm always getting taken to these drama board). And this is precisely why during and after the case there were FAR MORE "anti-EEML" people banned and sanction than people from the list (I can think of a dozen off the top of my head and I'm probably forgetting many). Because the people on the list were generally right - they just went about it in the wrong (and dumb) way. If you're gonna talk about the "history of Wikipedia" and EEMLs place in it you need to also look at how many of the people involved on the "anti-EEML" side turned out to be quite obnoxious and ended up with perma bans. Hell, one of these guys ended up being blocked from ALL Wikimedia projects by WMF itself.

And as was even noted at the time, to the extent EEML had a "POV" it was the "mainstream POV" or what has been somewhat less charitably called "house POV". Reliable sources are key. No fringe crap. Fuck extremist editors from both far right and far left. Wikipedia is a mainstream *encyclopedia* not a social forum or not a place to promote idiosyncratic theories. Now of course, not everyone on the list held these views, but the people who did set the tone for the mailing list.

Anyway, you wanna ask me about it, I'll be happy to talk to you about it, so feel free to send me an email (just don't ask me to revert on your behalf in it).Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

You seem to be genuinely in denial about how seriously wrong some of the discussions were that took place on it (like how to play the system to get list members made into administrators, how to get editors blocked, and what administrators could be approached to - knowingly or unknowingly - do the list's bidding). If that sort of thing was just 1% of it, it was still the notable 1% of it, and I don't recall anyone on the list saying about that 1% "no, stop, going down this route is perhaps wrong". However, my interest in the EEML case is not in its individual members (and people's past mistakes do deserve to be gradually forgotten) or even what the list did, but on how Wikipedia responded to the list's discovery. It revealed Wikipedia's house pov is self-preservation of the status-quo, so in the EEML case it was to minimize any blowback to the Wikipedia concept. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 20:28, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

"like how to play the system to get list members made into administrators" - yeah, that didn't happen.

"how to get editors blocked" - nah, it was more of "why in the world isn't so and so blocked already?"

"what administrators could be approached" - nah, it was more of "this administrator is an idiot, this administrator is alright" kind of thing.

And yeah, some people (in particular the user you confused me with) did in fact say "please don't do that" when somebody on the list started up with that kind of stuff.

I'm not sure how deep of an insight it really is that "Wikipedia's house pov is self-preservation". That's sort of true of any institution.Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:09, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

• Here is my opinion: what people do outside the project is none of Wikipedia business. No one should control what people are talking about in their bedrooms, over the phone or using private emails. People can freely discuss whatever (movies, weather or WP-related questions), and a lot of them are doing this right now. I think the EEML case was very wrong from the very beginning because it was bringing private matters into WP space. And it is ridiculous to bring this over and over again. Everyone who brings it back does disservice to the project. My very best wishes (talk) 21:15, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I completely agree. But that's like complaining that it's the electoral college that decides not the popular vote. You might think the rules are wrong - and they may indeed be wrong - but you still got to play by the rules. Which is why I think having the private mailing list was a dumb idea and should've just done it all in the open in the first place. And it's also why I think the little cabal business we are experiencing now on some articles (they know who they are) should be held to the same standard as have been used in the past.Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:11, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

And BTW, two similar mailing lists have been created by people on ruwiki. In one of these ruwiki cases the creator of the list acted along the lines of Operation Trust, i.e. he created the list only to "give up" it later and had all other unsuspected participants sanctioned. I am 100% sure that the contributor who created EEML (and now effectively banned) was very different and acted in a good faith, but creating this list was absolutely wrong - I agree. My very best wishes (talk) 20:41, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

1RR

Did you notice that you violated 1RR restriction for this page today already twice? My very best wishes (talk) 01:54, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

To my knowledge, I've only carried out one reversion today. Do you have diffs of the reverts you're worried about? -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:20, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for late response, but here is it:

1. [4] - restoration of previously removed and challenged material (it is also marked as revert in your edit summary)
2. [5]
3. [6]

This is an obvious violation of 1RR rule twice during eight hours. My very best wishes (talk) 22:35, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Only the first of those is a revert, and the issue is moot now, since the relevant sentence is long gone. You'll notice I haven't tried since to add it back in.

The second and third edits are not reverts. They're edits to parts of the article that I had not previously been involved in, that were not part of any ongoing editing dispute. In the second edit, I removed one clause from a sentence that was POV, leaving most of the sentence - and virtually all of its meaning - intact. In the third edit, I shortened the summary of McElvaine's article, which was too long, given that it's just one article. But neither of these two edits were reverts. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:00, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

According to the policy, a "revert" means any edit that reverses the actions of other editors, in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material.. Diffs 2 and 3 are quite obviously removals of materials previously placed by other contributors. Yes, they are different materials, but they still count as reverts per above. Note that all 3 edits are separated by edits made by other contributors, so they are not sequential edits (which would count as one revert). Does it make any sense? If you still disagree, then you need an advice from one of admins. I am telling this because anyone may report you to 3RRNB for such obvious violations. So, you must know. My very best wishes (talk) 23:34, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

P.S. I am telling this because you continued violating 1RR on this page even after my post above. For example, this your series of edits (I do not count the bot) and this edit are another violation. My very best wishes (talk) 23:59, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

It looks like you're counting any edit whatsoever as a "revert." If you look at the definition of "revert," it makes a distinction between reverting and modifying text. I agree that if I were to go to some part of the text that you had recently edited, and to substantially roll back your edit, then that would be a revert. You'll notice that I have not been rolling back other editors' changes - in fact, I've avoided editing parts of the article that are under dispute. But you're asserting that any modification to any part of the article is a revert. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:21, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

No, I am not telling that any modification is a revert. I am telling that any obvious removal of sourced information previously placed by other contributors (as in these diffs) is a revert. If you do not stop, someone may report you to 3RRNB or WP:AE pretty soon. My very best wishes (talk) 00:26, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

!RR Violation at Russian Interference

Hi 411. You've violated 1 RR with your recent removal of content at Russian Interference. Please self-revert. SPECIFICO talk 05:07, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

What edit did I revert? I'm doing a regular pass through the article to check sources, more accurately rephrase sentences, move content to where it belongs, delete clauses that aren't supported, etc. I haven't, to my knowledge, been reverting edits. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:12, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I suggest you read the policy defining revert at wp:3rr and wp:1rr. SPECIFICO talk 05:19, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Julian Assange 3RR

Your recent editing history at Julian Assange shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

Just to note - I made one revert. You made three. Four actually in a bit over 24 hours.Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:36, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

As the policy notes, it's not the number of reverts that matters, but the overall pattern of editing. You've re-inserted material that was previously removed, without first seeking consensus. You've also removed sourced material on flimsy grounds (but clearly in line with your political views on Assange), and re-inserted another controversial bit of text that was previously removed about Trump. That's edit warring. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:41, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

This is what you yourself said about your removal of sourced material from another article: "it most certainly is a BLP issue - please don't reinstate contentious material without consenus. Both BLP and DS require that." You'd do well to follow that advice yourself on Julian Assange, which is also a BLP. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:44, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Since you're a fan of Wikipedia essays, here is one: WP:WIKILAWYER.Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:49, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Is that an article about posting 3RR warnings on talk pages in order to try to intimidate other editors, while oneself engaging in an edit war? -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:50, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

No, it's not an article, it's an essay. And no, it's not about templates, but about pettifoggery.Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:53, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

411, It really would be swell if you could drop the speculation and accusation about other editors purported political views. It's kind of like speculating about my dog's religion. She most likely doesn't have any. SPECIFICO talk 21:56, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm not really speculating about Marek, who's very active across Wikipedia in Russia-related issues. Marek gets a bit annoyed when others mention it, so I won't go into it, but you can ask Marek yourself if you'd like. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:01, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I think you miss the point. It is irrelevant. SPECIFICO talk 22:03, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Your editing language

Please read WP:WORDS. You are recurrently using florid and WP:POV language such as this, which contravenes WP:CLAIM. I think you need to cool down on the WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, and stay aware of the fact that this project is WP:NOTNEWS, and that editors do not write as if they were journalists. I suggested to you a while ago that you are going to end up painting yourself into a corner by diving into the deep end. This was advice offered in good faith, despite your not believing that to be my motivation. I stand by that advice, and am offering it again. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:44, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. However, here's what I wrote:

"Shorten summary of Daily Beast commentary. Change 'article' to 'commentary' (it's an opinion piece), and 'stated' to 'argued.' Fix italics."

I don't know how you get from that to "florid and WP:POV language." It looks pretty reasonable to me. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:54, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Another example. Do you want me to pull out all of the "commenting", "proposed" stuff you've inserted into article content? Where you pull multiple single quote words into a single sentence rendering it a choking, convoluted piece of either trying to sway the reader, or to keep the article an 'interesting' read by not repeating said, wrote or stated (I'm not even sure of what your rationale is). I don't think you've grasped that articles are not intended to be a cleverly structured and thought provoking read (i.e., not journalism or an essay): they need to be to the point. It's fine to qualify where, and if, attribution is needed, but consistent usage of 'according to' if the name of the writer of the piece is to be used, or 'article' unless you are trying to emphasise that you believe it to be an op-ed piece. You are using signifiers intended to imply things other than what is appropriate to neutrally presented information. If you wish to be in a position of flexing your 'own voice' muscles, write your own blog. Particularly contentious articles really do require restraint. I understand that you feel as if you're having to rail against extreme views, but it's showing in your work. You are an intelligent and clear thinker, so I'd be sorry to see you invest so much of your energy into making bad decisions as a response to feeling harangued. Okay, I'll say no more simply because I'll incriminate myself as to my own views... and when that happens, I know I'll cease to be of any value as an editor on any level. Happy editing! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:53, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I hope you got something out of writing this wall of text, because I sure didn't get anything out of reading it! -Thucydides411 (talk) 06:53, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

It is an interesting coincidence that the editors in the "Russia definitely did it, and Wikipedia should say so without attribution" camp are not merely worse writers than their opponents, but also appear to be practically allergic to even semi-decent prose, as illustrated by this edit by Volunteer Marek. But I wouldn't read too much into it.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@TheTimesAreAChanging: Your thread technique suggests that this was intended for me. Could you please clarify as to whether this is the case. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:14, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Keep up the good work

		The Anti-Flame Barnstar
		The Anti-Flame Barnstar is awarded for users that have kept cool in conflicts, as well as resolving them. James J. Lambden (talk) 03:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

For keeping cool

		The Civility Barnstar
		For keeping an even temperament and maintaining civility during disagreements. I'm not sure how you do it but it makes wikipedia a better place. Darouet (talk) 05:44, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Notice

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

SPECIFICO talk 15:11, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, SPECIFICO, but you know that:

1. I'm aware of the arbitration remedies, and
2. You're the one who recently violated them.

-Thucydides411 (talk) 16:42, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, SPECIFICO, it looks like you've put my notice on your talk page down the memory hole and "banned" me from your talk page. I think that shows how serious you were in posting these notices on various people's pages. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:25, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Russia Talk Page Archive

That thing you keep reinstating is a talk page violation, as an experienced editor such as yourself should know. I could have deleted it or hatted it but I chose the weakest of the permitted alternatives to remove it. Do as you choose, your actions are on the record. SPECIFICO talk 19:27, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

What rule does that post violate? All I see is that you've repeatedly archived a recent talk page comment, without explaining why. It's not your job to curate the talk page. There are archiver bots that will do that for us. And by the way, I don't appreciate the following sort of threat: "Do as you choose, your actions are on the record." You can leave out these crude attempts at intimidation in your future communication with me. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:48, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

No need to feel insecure, but I visited here to friendly advise you to study talk page policy and guidelines before edit warring violations back on the talk page. SPECIFICO talk 00:47, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

In that case, don't bother with any more "friendly" reminders. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:05, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

DS Violation

You made an edit changing the lede. I reverted it. DS requires you to achieve consensus on talk prior to any repetition of the edit that I challenged by revert. You failed to do so. Please undo your violation and let's go to talk. I've stated the basis of my revert. You may respond on talk and I will engage there with others. Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 04:35, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

You don't understand DS. Your endless talk page messages and threats are really getting tiresome. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:00, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

You just violated DS again. Please self-undo. Nobody wants to go through AE and nobody wants the article disrupted. Use talk. SPECIFICO talk 04:40, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

See my comment directly above yours. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:58, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Arb Enforcement

A complaint has been lodged at WP:AE that pertains to you here ---Steve Quinn (talk) 08:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

February 2017

To enforce an arbitration decision and for violating the page restrictions currently in effect on the page 2016 United States election interference by Russia, you have been blocked from editing for a period of 1 week. You are welcome to edit once the block expires; however, please note that the repetition of similar behavior may result in a longer block or other sanctions.

If you believe this block is unjustified, please read the guide to appealing blocks (specifically this section) before appealing. Place the following on your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Please copy my appeal to the [[WP:AE|arbitration enforcement noticeboard]] or [[WP:AN|administrators' noticeboard]]. Your reason here OR place the reason below this template. ~~~~}}. If you intend to appeal on the arbitration enforcement noticeboard I suggest you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template on your talk page so it can be copied over easily. You may also appeal directly to me (by email), before or instead of appealing on your talk page. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 01:32, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

---

Reminder to administrators: In May 2014, ArbCom adopted the following procedure instructing administrators regarding Arbitration Enforcement blocks: "No administrator may modify a sanction placed by another administrator without: (1) the explicit prior affirmative consent of the enforcing administrator; or (2) prior affirmative agreement for the modification at (a) AE or (b) AN or (c) ARCA (see "Important notes" [in the procedure]). Administrators modifying sanctions out of process may at the discretion of the committee be desysopped."

Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Thucydides411

Moved to WP:AE.  Sandstein  08:56, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Sandstein: As Steve Quinn has made a post at the appeal, I'd just like to address their point. I'm not able to edit at AE, so I'm not sure if there's some way of adding this into my appeal. In any case, this is what I'd like to say:

Steve Quinn writes both that my "talk page comments demonstrate their disregard for lack of consensus and policy based arguments," and that I refuse to "engage in discussions about how to properly deal with the material under discussion." I really urge whoever reviews this appeal to read the diffs of my talk page posts that Steve Quinn posted, because they show exactly the opposite. The first set of diffs show me discussing policy, as explained to us by MelanieN. I think this proves that I was following her policy interpretation in good faith. The second set of diffs show me discussing, at length, the content of the edits, and addressing other editors' arguments about the content and BLP questions. In other words, Steve Quinn's diffs show precisely the opposite of what Steve Quinn says they show. What's remarkable is that while Steve Quinn accuses me of not engaging on the talk page, Steve Quinn themselves thanked me on the talk page for what they called my "well articulated" post: [7].

I think if one looks through the talk page, one will see that I'm actually one of the editors there that most consistently stays on topic, explaining my editing rationale, discussing both content and policy with other editors, and avoiding the personal attacks and bad tone that are all too common there. -Thucydides411 (talk) 09:23, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Coffee: Could you at least address any of the points that I made in my appeal? The frustrating thing about these proceedings is that nobody has explained why new interpretations of policy should be applied retroactively (in a situation in which many experienced editors have themselves expressed confusion about what the DS restrictions imply), and why that policy should be applied only to a single editor, when that editor's behavior was in no way unusual for the page. I feel that some attempt should have been made originally to address these points, and at the very least, they should be addressed in the appeal. -Thucydides411 (talk) 09:47, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Sandstein: To your point that, "To do that, the appeal would have to show that the edits at issue were not in fact violations of the restriction - i.e., that they were not reinstatements of edits challenged via reversion," I'd just like to point out that what you're asking is impossible in this situation. You yourself write that you do not understand what the restrictions actually mean ("I find the restriction at issue (too) difficult to understand and apply"), and we know that several experienced admins disagree with the interpretation I was blocked under. So what am I supposed to prove? That those admins are more correct than the admin that blocked me?

I'm also really shocked that you don't seem to think it's relevant that this block was given completely arbitrarily to me, rather than to the dozen or so other editors who were shown, in the proceedings, to have violated the exact same restriction (assuming the new interpretation of the DS restrictions is the correct one). This just makes a mockery of the idea that arbitration enforcement is carried out in some sort of fair manner. You also dismissed my entire first two points without actually addressing any of the substance of the arguments. The fact that I acted in good faith, following the policy advice of admins, has bearing on whether a sanction is warranted. If I acted in good faith, then a block is punitive, not preventative.

As far as I can see, the original sanction was given without actually addressing any of these points - the arbitrariness of singling out one editor, almost at random, out of a dozen to sanction, and the question of good faith in following policy advice from admins. Yet now you're saying that these issues cannot be addressed in the appeal, meaning that the sanction will stand without any of the obvious questions being answered. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:18, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Laser brain: I don't think you even read my appeal, or that you paid any close attention to the original case, for that matter. I provided evidence that according to the interpretation that admins had given us of the DS restrictions, I did not reinstate an edit challenged by reversion. MelanieN directly told us, "removal of longstanding material actually counts as an 'edit', which under the DS can be reverted and should then not be removed again without consensus." Under that interpretation, the original removal was an "edit," and my restoration of that material was the first "revert." The user that removed that material again was then in breach of DS restrictions. That was the interpretation of MelanieN and NeilN, and it's the interpretation that all of us on the page were using. You take a completely opposite view from those admins on what the DS restrictions mean - one which is opposite from what everyone working at that page assumed they meant. How you can then say that the restrictions are not difficult to understand is beyond me. If they're so simple to understand, then there wouldn't be so many admins and editors confused about what constitutes an edit and what constitutes and revert, and what "long-standing" means.

This is not even to mention the fact that none of you have addressed the complete arbitrariness of this decision, and why you've ignored all requests by editors who commented in the original case to look into the behavior of all involved editors (most of whom reinstated challenged edits, as proven by the evidence provided in the case). Frankly, I don't even mind not editing for a week. What I mind is that the admins each have their own differing interpretation of policy, enforce their personal interpretations completely arbitrarily, and feel no need to explain their decision-making. I don't see why I should spend any of my time contributing to a project where the admins behave so disrespectfully towards the contributors. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I read everything. I reject the premise of your arguments, for essentially the same reasons enumerated by Sandstein. --Laser brain (talk) 20:26, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Laser brain: You would have a point, had Sandstein actually addressed the arguments. But they passed over my points #1 and #2 with a single sentence that didn't actually address them at all. And you're not even trying to defend your absurd statement that the discretionary sanctions are not difficult to understand. Several experienced admins have expressed confusion over what DS means, and they've taken a completely different view from you on it. If it were so easy to understand, you wouldn't have such a radically different view of DS from MelanieN and NeilN, and I wouldn't have been sanctioned for following MelanieN's policy interpretation to the letter.

And by the way, nobody has yet explained how sanctioning someone who followed admins' advice about policy in good faith is not punitive, and nobody has explained why all the other users who also followed that advice and edited in the exact same way were not also sanctioned. None of you feel the need, apparently, to give any reasoning for any of these ridiculous decisions. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:37, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: I've reflected on your words and amended my statement. I don't necessarily think your hands are totally clean (although I believe you are trying to follow the page restrictions), but if yours aren't then neither are several others'. And I think we need serious reform in how we are wording these restrictions if this many people are struggling with them. --Laser brain (talk) 20:46, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for reconsidering, Laser brain. I'm sorry that my above reply was a bit harsh - it's just that the conflicting interpretations of DS have been frustrating to deal with. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:04, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Now that this matter is settled, I think it is important that we step away from the "longstanding" defense, which (although never applicable to a BLP violation) is a rubber yardstick that's being used here for a false argumentum ad verecundiam and that at any rate makes sense only for genuinely longstanding articles and relatively stable articles. SPECIFICO talk 20:32, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@NeilN: I can't edit at the arbitration proceedings (my block is Wikipedia-wide), but I can respond here. First of all, thanks for taking the time to respond to my appeal.

Here is what Coffee says about why I was blocked:

"Thucydides411 (talk · contribs) reinstated two edits that had been challenged without first obtaining consensus, thereby violating the page restriction." ([8])

Coffee's interpretation here is that when I reverted SPECIFICO's removal of text relating to Clapper, I was reinstating challenged material. This is in direct contradiction to what MelanieN told us:

"Actually, according to several discussions at my talk page where more experienced admins explained and interpreted the DS process: 1, 2 removal of longstanding material actually counts as an 'edit', which under the DS can be reverted and should then not be removed again without consensus." ([9])

Here, MelanieN was echoing your comment that:

"Anythingyouwant, I do not interpret the DS wording that way. The removal of longstanding content is the edit that can be challenged via reversion." ([10])

You further clarified that:

"I think the wording carefully specifies "reinstating any edits that have been challenged" instead of "reinstating any additions that have been challenged" for this very reason." ([11])

Awilley agreed with your interpretation of DS:

"I agree with NeilN's interpretation. The wording is meant to favor the status quo and stabilize the article, and it's main function IMO is to get people to follow WP:BRDby preventing them from making a Bold edit and then immediately reverting the Revert (gaming the 1RR)." ([12])

Later in that discussion, you defined "longstanding" for heavily edited articles like Donald Trump as 4-6 weeks:

"And editors will want you to define what "longstanding" means. For me, it depends on the article. For an article as highly edited and intensely watched as Donald Trump I'm generally using a time period of 4-6 weeks." ([13])

So, to recap, MelanieN told the editors at 2016 United States election interference by Russia that whenever an editor removes longstanding content from an article, that is an edit (not a revert), and when another editor restores that longstanding material, that is a revert, which challenges the removal. DS restrictions then prevent that material from being removed again until consensus has been reached to do so. MelanieN linked us to a discussion where you and a number of other admins worked this interpretation of DS out.

When Coffee says that I restored an edit that had been challenged by reversion, they are referring to my restoration of longstanding material. Coffee is using the definition that DS prevents reinstatement of additions, whereas the interpretation that you gave on MelanieN's talk page (and which she relayed to us) was that removal of longstanding text is an edit that can be challenged by reversion. I assumed your definition was correct when I challenged the removal of longstanding material. Again, Coffee's interpretation, that I "reinstated two edits that had been challenged without first obtaining consensus," is in direct contradiction with how you, MelanieN and Awilley defined "challenge," "edit" and "reinstate" in your discussion of DS.

In the appeal, Darouet clearly documents the series of edits and reverts in question: [14]. This series of diffs shows clearly that I was acting in accordance with the interpretation of DS that you, MelanieN and Awilley elaborated.

I acted in good faith, according to what I thought were clear policy guidelines handed down by admins. If those policy directives were wrong, that's fine, but I simply think it's punitive to receive a block. Sandstein has said that sanctioning an editor who follows admin advice on policy is fine, because admins aren't bound by what other admins say: "any one (or several) administrator's interpretation of a specific restriction is not binding on other admins, the only binding guidance is that of ArbCom." ([15]) I respectfully disagree. I don't think that's a fair way to hand out sanctions, and it's inherently punitive (rather than preventative) to sanction editors for following admin advice on policy. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:33, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It's jaw-dropping to see Thucydides putting words into the mouths of @MelanieN:, @Coffee:, @Awilley: or misappropriate and misapply their words entirely out of context. This has been pointed out to Thucydides very many times by many different users. SPECIFICO talk 21:09, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: If you think I misappropriated or misapplied their words out of context, you're free to point out how. But I didn't do so. I carefully read what they wrote about DS policy, and I tried to represent it above as faithfully as possible. If you're going to claim I'm misrepresenting their words, there's some burden on you to actually provide evidence of that. Otherwise, I'd appreciate if you'd strike through your accusation. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

What? They are being directly quoted. -Darouet (talk) 21:33, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Many editors have explained this in detail on several pages. And edit warring your preferred version is never OK.

Okay, SPECIFICO, I'm kindly asking you to refrain from posting here further. Your posts are all noise and no signal, and the conversation is already complicated enough to follow without more noise. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:52, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

@Sandstein: I was wondering if you could remove SPECIFICO's comment from my appeal. SPECIFICO makes a lot of claims about my editing (e.g., "longstanding disruptive editing in a American Politics"), but doesn't provide any diffs. As far as I can see, SPECIFICO's contribution is just a series of unsubstantiated claims and accusations. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:11, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Anyone who looks at your talk page and its history can see that the matter of your disruptive editing is known to many editors who have urged you to stop it. It has been documented and substantiated, not just "claimed," by many editors. Sorry for posting here, but I reserve the right to respond on any thread where you discuss me with others. SPECIFICO talk 02:31, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

When you comment on arbitration cases, you're supposed to substantiate your claims. You haven't done that. As for the "disruptive editing" claim, I think what the above shows is that you and a few editors who have taken a certain position on the 2016 United States election interference by Russia have been very prolific in issuing warnings, coming very close to wikihounding. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:54, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I have substantiated my evidence at AE. I hope that the Admins have found it useful. I have sought their guidance and tried to follow the form and substance they require to exercise their role there. Your denials, as I've said elsewhere, seem to demonstrate that your block was a necessary prophylactic. SPECIFICO talk 04:03, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think I have to respond to your last comment. I think any reasonable person can see that you didn't provide evidence in your comment at the appeal. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:42, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments by NeilN

There are two separate editing restrictions in place for that article, both independent of each other.

• Consensus required: All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion). If in doubt, don't make the edit.

Any edit means any edit, whether addition of new material, the tweaking of long-standing existing material, or the removal of long-standing existing material. The meaning of "long-standing" changes from article to article. As with Donald Trump, I would take it to mean 4-6 weeks for this article. One this challenge has happened, no editor should be re-doing the addition/tweaking/deletion without obtaining consensus.

• Limit of one revert in 24 hours: This article is under WP:1RR (one revert per editor per article per 24-hour period).

This is the more prosaic WP:1RR. It is somewhat superfluous given the above, but is useful to stop individual editors from edit warring over new material. Scenario:

1. Editor A adds new material - this is not a revert, obviously
2. Editor B removes the new material - this is their first revert
3. Editor A reinstates new material - this is their first revert, but violates the "consensus required" restriction
4. Editor B, relying on the "consensus required" restriction, removes the new material - this is their second revert, violating WP:1RR

It can also work out this way:

1. Editor A removes long-standing material - this is their first revert
2. Editor B reinstates the long-standing material - this is their first revert
3. Editor A removes the material again - this is their second revert, violating both the "consensus required" restriction and WP:1RR
4. Editor B, relying on the "consensus required" restriction, re-adds the material - this is their second revert, violating WP:1RR

WP:1RR is there to tell you that even if the "consensus required" restriction is violated, Editor B still can't edit war. It also keeps things under control if there's a dispute about what is "long-standing". --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Response to Coffee

@Coffee: "So, are you saying there wasn't a violation or that because he misinterpreted the letter of the restriction, and of other administrator's views on the restriction, there can't be a violation?" I don't think I misinterpreted MelanieN's views on DS. Here's what she said:

"Actually, according to several discussions at my talk page where more experienced admins explained and interpreted the DS process: 1, 2 removal of longstanding material actually counts as an 'edit', which under the DS can be reverted and should then not be removed again without consensus." ([16])

I restored longstanding material to the page, which MelanieN says above is in line with DS.

As to what "longstanding" means, you write that

"As these edits weren't able to stand for even 40 days without being challenged, I can only see the stated misinterpretation by Thucydides411 to be an attempt to do just that."

But in the discussion that MelanieN pointed us to NeilN specifically defined "longstanding" as 4-6 weeks:

"And editors will want you to define what "longstanding" means. For me, it depends on the article. For an article as highly edited and intensely watched as Donald Trump I'm generally using a time period of 4-6 weeks." ([17])

The material that was deleted had been in the article for more than 5 weeks, so it meet's NeilN's definition of "longstanding."

You can take a different view of what "longstanding" means, and what constitutes an "edit" vs. a "revert." But I was trying to edit according to the policies that MelanieN and NeilN had spelled out for us. I'd actually like some clarity on what the DS restrictions exactly mean, and it would be extremely helpful to get some definitive guidance. But to be sanctioned based on an interpretation of DS that I had been explicitly told by an admin on the talk page was wrong (see the quote by MelanieN above) seems wrong. I'd like to abide by policy, but I'd like for that policy to be predictable, rather than dependent on which admin I'm talking to. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Not sure to respond to this, so feel free to refactor as needed. I think you are extrapolating too far on what NeilN said. He said that his personal interpretation of "longstanding" on an article as highly edited and watched as Donlad Trump was 4-6 weeks. He did not say that interpretation would be shared by other admins or that it would extend it to other articles. There is not a set definition of "longstanding" and the actual length of "longstanding" will very from article to article and from admin to admin. I still haven't been able to wrap my head around the current dispute, but I dun't really understand how "longstanding" is relevant anyway. The contested material was being added and removed prior to your reverts, so it appears you were participating in a slow edit war. Is your argument that there was some "status quo" to have the contested material included, and that because you were edit warring to include the material you did not violate the sanctions? ~Awilley (talk) 17:25, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

@Awilley: On the talk page of 2016 United States election interference by Russia‎, MelanieN specifically told us that if editor A removes longstanding material, and editor B reverts the removal, then nobody should try to remove it again without consensus. MelanieN told us that to remove it again without consensus would be a violation of DS. Here's the series of edits that I was blocked for:

• SPECIFICO deletes longstanding material: [18]
• JFG challenges that removal by reverting it: [19]
• SPECIFICO removes the material again, (violating the DS restriction on restoring an edit that's been challenged): [20]
• I revert SPECIFICO's removal of the longstanding material - the removal didn't have consensus: [21]

By the interpretation that NeilN has laid out of DS, SPECIFICO should not have removed longstanding material a second time, after it had been challenged. That material had been in the article longer than 5 weeks, and the article is very heavily edited (recall, NeilN wrote, "For an article as highly edited and intensely watched as Donald Trump I'm generally using a time period of 4-6 weeks"). After JFG challenged SPECIFICO's edit, SPECIFICO should have gone to seek consensus for the edit on the talk page. After they removed it a second time, which was a clear violation of the DS rules that MelanieN had explained to us, I reverted what I saw as SPECIFICO's clear DS violation.

Now, SPECIFICO claimed that their edits were exempt from the DS restrictions, because they supposedly involved a BLP violation. I and several other editors thought these BLP claims were extremely tenuous (they amounted, essentially, to the idea that mentioning a well known political scandal involving a high-ranking public official violates BLP). On the talk page, JFG laid out the reasons why the material involved was not a BLP violation: [22]. I also explained exactly why I thought there were no BLP problems with the text, and Steve Quinn (the editor who brought the case against me) thanked me for my "well articulated" comment: [23]. Several editors (myself included) urged SPECIFICO to bring any concerns they might have to the BLP noticeboard, where uninvolved editors could give their opinions.

All along, I've said that if MelanieN (and NeilN, in the discussion that MelanieN linked us to) was wrong in her interpretation of DS, then I'd be willing to abide by the correct interpretation. But I was clearly editing with that interpretation in mind. I don't think it's appropriate to sanction an editor who tries to follow the rules in good faith. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:22, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

@Awilley: @NeilN: @MelanieN: This discussion needs to be on a public page. I have commented here only to have another editor erase my comments, and now I see myself disparaged by an editor who continues, despite repeated requests to desist, to misrepresent my view and other editors' views on this matter. Any further discussion should reside at ARCA where we can have the benefit of the appropriate attention to this site-wide matter of importatnce. SPECIFICO talk 20:20, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: I've already told you not to make accusations on my page unless you're going to substantiate what you say. You've now accused me, several times, of misrepresenting others' views, but you haven't bothered to actually back up those charges with diffs or quotations. I really encourage Awilley, NeilN, MelanieN and others to see how SPECIFICO has thrown around unsubstantiated accusations here, and to take that into account when considering SPECIFICO's statements about me and other editors. Here we have an editor who's been extremely prolific in carrying out contentious reverts (in just the last several days, [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32]) and who's been going around to people's talk pages and issuing threats (just recently, [33] [34]), yet who is trying to get all sorts of other editors, who have edited much less aggressively, blocked. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:47, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm looking deeper into the slow edit war that seems to be at the root of this. Anything I'm missing in my timeline here? ~Awilley (talk) 01:13, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Awilley: I added some bits to your timeline, hope this helps. — JFG ^talk 04:18, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Coffee: From your latest post at AE, it seems that you weren't aware of the editing history when you handed down my sanction. How is it that one admin can hand down a sanction after only a cursory glance at a case, but several other admins who look into the case in detail and disagree with your ruling cannot overturn it?

I'm also quite stunned that you can look at the editing history and come to the conclusion that Darouet, JFG and I were gaming the system. If you look at the editing history, and the talk page discussion that goes along with it, you'll see that a few editors were combing through the article and deleting any material that suggested something other than the official US government narrative, and then giving extremely flimsy and cursory justifications on the talk page. A number of editors, including myself and the two others you said were gaming the system, explained in detail why we thought the deletions were wrong. For example, we explained in detail why mention of Clapper's false Senate testimony is not a BLP violation (he's a public figure, the fact that he gave false testimony has been widely reported on, and the article did not state in the voice of Wikipedia that Clapper's testimony was false, but rather attributed that claim). I'd be much more inclined to say that the editors who removed that material on flimsy grounds, and then have systematically tried to get the editors who disagreed with them on the content question blocked, are the ones gaming DS. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:02, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Reply to Sandstein

@Sandstein: You wrote that, "I find the restriction at issue (too) difficult to understand and apply." So when are you going to overturn my sanction? That's the only principled course of action left in this case. It's clear from the diff history that I edited in good faith, according to the policy interpretation that MelanieN and NeilN laid out. You yourself say that you don't understand the restrictions, and since MelanieN "violated" these restrictions in exactly the same way as I supposedly did, it's clear she didn't understand them either (at least, her understanding was totally different from Coffee's). At this point, it's almost sort of a joke that I'm sanctioned - for an offense that you admit to not understanding, whose definition Coffee, MelanieN and NeilN disagree on, that Laser brain has said was applied unfairly, which half a dozen editors "violated" in the exact same manner as I did, and which has now been deemed so confusing that it's now no longer in force. So when is any admin going to own this mess-up and remove my sanction?

I don't really care about not being allowed to edit for a week. I'll even voluntarily abstain from editing until the end of the week. It's just the fact that I've been sanctioned unfairly, on grounds that nobody quite seems to be able to explain or agree on, that annoys me. Again, the only principled thing to do is to remove the sanction, and I'm just waiting to see if any admin will actually admit that obvious fact. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:32, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

I think the restriction wasn't a good idea, but it still applies and you violated it, so, dura lex sed lex. Sorry, I don't currently have the time to follow this matter further.  Sandstein  05:48, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Sandstein: How do you know I violated it? You don't even understand the restrictions (nobody seems to understand them, or at least, everyone has a different understanding). According to the interpretation that MelanieN and NeilN gave, I didn't violate the restrictions. And of course, if their interpretation is wrong, then MelanieN violated the restriction, as did half a dozen other editors on the page. You could, of course, resolve the matter right away by removing the sanction. Given the circumstances, that's the only principled thing to do. -Thucydides411 (talk) 06:23, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Reply to EdJohnston

@EdJohnston: I feel strongly that a ruling should be made on the appeal, rather than just letting the sanction lapse or imposing a general "reset." At this point, I think the appeal has shown that:

1. I acted in accordance with the interpretation of DS that had been given to us by MelanieN on the talk page. This interpretation was elaborated by NeilN, Awilley and MelanieN on MelanieN's talk page, and MelanieN pointed us towards that conversation when she explained DS policy to us. This shows that I was trying to follow policy in good faith. I wasn't aware of Coffee's alternative interpretation of DS, which was only brought up after the fact, during the AE case.
2. Even if one accepts the principle that an editor who tries, in good faith, to follow policy guidance given by admins can be sanctioned by a different admin who takes an alternate view of policy, there's another problem: I was arbitrarily singled out for sanction, out of the half dozen editors (MelanieN included) who violated Coffee's interpretation of DS. The fact that numerous editors violated Coffee's interpretation of DS was, I think, proven conclusively during the initial case.

If you don't agree with that factual basis, let me know, and why. It's all in the original case and the appeal, and if you'd like, I can provide diffs for any of the above that you disagree with.

At this point, I really have no idea why I'm sanctioned, and I don't know what I can do to avoid future sanction, other than withdrawing from editing contentious subjects entirely. An admin gave us a very clear policy interpretation. I and most editors followed it. But when the AE case came up, suddenly there was a new policy interpretation from a different admin, and of all the editors who violated that interpretation, I alone was sanctioned. Multiple admins commented that the DS restriction at issue was too difficult to understand - no matter.

What's the point of this block? What did I actually do wrong? And don't tell me that I reinstated a challenged edit without consensus - based on the very clear guideline that MelanieN laid down, I was the one challenging an edit that another user had made. This was normal Bold/Revert/Discuss behavior. An editor removed longstanding content. I reverted their removal. I laid out my objection to the removal in great detail on the talk page. That was perfectly in line with what MelanieN told us we should do, and with the policy interpretation that NeilN has given in the AE appeal.

So I'd like a ruling on the AE appeal, and I think it's obvious that anything other than an overturning of the original sanction would be almost comical at this point. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:25, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:AC/DS#Appeals and modifications your block can be lifted only if there is a 'clear and substantial consensus of uninvolved administrators'. It is unlikely there will be such a consensus in the next 24 hours. Opinions may differ as to who should have been sanctioned but, we can tell there was a lot of trouble on that article and a lot of people were reverting one another. It's fair to assume that not everyone in that group was innocent. You yourself made about 50 edits of that article since January 1st, so you are a major participant. I'm not sure I would have closed the original complaint with a block of your account, but I was not the admin who decided that. When considering an appeal, the only question is whether the previous admin's action was within discretion. EdJohnston (talk) 02:48, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@EdJohnston: "It's fair to assume that not everyone in that group was innocent. You yourself made about 50 edits of that article since January 1st, so you are a major participant." That reads a lot like, "You edited a lot, so you're probably guilty of something." I'm sorry, but I feel a little insulted if that's your reasoning for not responding to the facts of the case, which I've given above. This sanction, and the response of a few admins to the appeal, really is Kafkaesque. Nobody seems to be able to quite explain why I was sanctioned. The only admin who gave anything close to an explanation (Coffee: that I supposedly restored a contested edit without consensus), takes a completely different view of what "restoring contested material" means from the other admins. According to the interpretation of other admins, I did precisely the opposite: I contested someone else's edit, and they reverted without consensus. Moreover, I was clearly following policy guidelines, given directly by an admin active on the page, in good faith, making the sanction purely punitive. If you agree that I was sanctioned based on a new, post facto interpretation of DS, that the sanction was punitive, and that I was arbitrarily chosen to be sanctioned, then you should add your name to the list of admins who support removing the block, and we can be done with this affair.

I really think I deserve some sort of judgment on the original sanction, rather than just letting this lapse. I think it's obvious that the original sanction was wrong, and I don't see how anyone could defend it. And I've noticed that nobody's really trying to defend the rationale anymore - now several admins seem to want the issue to just expire, which I take as a tacit admission that the sanction was in error. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:50, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes I'm sorry I thought you deserved an answer to your appeal. By simply letting it expire, the admins did you a disservice. I personally can't understand how an appeal about a sanction numerous admins thought was too difficult to understand and which was revoked shortly after your block wasn't quickly closed with a unblock. Mr Ernie (talk) 19:03, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Restrictions

Even though another editor who was blocked for violated the restriction has been blocked and unblocked, you're still blocked. Even though the justification for your initial block was not unanimous, you're still blocked. Even though numerous administrators have called the restriction too difficult to understand and apply, you're still blocked. Even though the restrictions have in fact been removed from the article, you're still blocked. Sorry about all that, but at least it will expire soon. I hope you've learned a valuable lesson about how Wikipedia really works. Mr Ernie (talk) 22:28, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is a disappointing lesson in how Wikipedia works (or doesn't work in contentious areas). Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of it is how the very admins who elaborated what DS policy means and who told editors at Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections to abide by that interpretation then didn't stick up for me when I got sanctioned for following their policy advice. Thanks for your message. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:49, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Your above research into the interpretation of Consensus required has come up a few times in my searches. I just found that there was an Arbcom clarification request which resolved this. [35] Kolya Butternut (talk) 16:31, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Invitation to DRN re UNDUE Ali Watkins article on Russian interference

You are invited to discuss UNDUE issues relevant to SPECIFICO's revert of my inclusion of the Ali Watkins article at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. Humanengr (talk) 03:22, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

video Russian interference with the 2016 election... on election night... 67.233.35.234 (talk) 18:59, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Recent edit

I felt that the consensus was there to add the material, so I made the edit. My suggestion would be to perhaps remove your latest comment on Talk. Otherwise, it might go back to "he said, she said" again, which would not be productive. :-).

That said, it was a good summary; thank you for making the effort to get more info added to the article. I enjoyed learning about this scandal, since I'm interested both in politics and in academia. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:32, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@K.e.coffman: Thanks for getting involved. Yes, it looks like there's a general consensus for the edit. I'll try not to get engaged in any "he said, she said" discussion. I agree it's most productive to stay at the level of discussing article content. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:44, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Since I believe that you speak German, could you do me a favour and let me know if this proclamation says anything interesting? Or just run-of-the-mill propaganda? K.e.coffman (talk) 01:07, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

It's addressed to the troops. It's congratulating them on their performance during the invasion of Poland (Galicia, specifically). Since the soldiers would know what they had done, I assume the outline the document gives of where they fought is accurate. It says:

• They captured Galicia extremely quickly, gaining a week over all others (other units fighting elsewhere, I assume)
• They fought off attacks for 9 days during the siege of Lemberg. The attacks came from inside and outside the city.
• Something about defending narrow passages between lakes near Grodek and an attack on Dobrostany, both of which supposedly dealt a death blow to "the enemy."
• A claim that they took 10,000 prisoners.

I'm not sure if any of that information is useful. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:03, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

3RR applies to talk pages too

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Talk:Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. --MelanieN (talk) 19:43, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I know about 3RR. I'd appreciate if you'd stick up against censorship of the talk pages as well. Certain editors believe they own the article itself, but to take ownership of the talk page and remove comments they simply don't like is really beyond the pale. I expect to see you and other admins stand up against this. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:20, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually I myself often either remove or hat this kind of comment, per NOTFORUM. I believe this comment was removed by three different editors, or maybe four, so it's not a matter of one individual "owning" the page. --MelanieN (talk) 21:05, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

The IP commented directly on the article - specifically on how it is written. If the IP had offered an opinion on the subject itself, that would fall under WP:NOTFORUM. But the IP commented on the way the article is written, which is exactly what the talk page is for. I don't like the idea that editors can remove criticisms they disagree with from the talk page. I don't see any justification for it in policy, and I find it disappointing that this sort of behavior (removing unwanted criticisms) is getting a pass, while I get sanctioned for restoring a legitimate comment to the talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:23, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. BullRangifer (talk) 07:11, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Striking after seeing the ban notice below. Be more careful in the future. Edit warring is not good, even if you're right. -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:15, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Notice that you are now subject to an arbitration enforcement sanction

The following sanction now applies to you:

You are banned from the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections article and its talk page, for 3 months.

You have been sanctioned for edit warring on the talk page and restoring challenged edits without consensus. This occurred only months after receiving a block at AE in February for similar conduct.

This sanction is imposed in my capacity as an uninvolved administrator under the authority of the Arbitration Committee's decision at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics 2#Final decision and, if applicable, the procedure described at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions. This sanction has been recorded in the log of sanctions. If the sanction includes a ban, please read the banning policy to ensure you understand what this means. If you do not comply with this sanction, you may be blocked for an extended period, by way of enforcement of this sanction—and you may also be made subject to further sanctions.

You may appeal this sanction using the process described here. I recommend that you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template if you wish to submit an appeal to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. You may also appeal directly to me (on my talk page), before or instead of appealing to the noticeboard. Even if you appeal this sanction, you remain bound by it until you are notified by an uninvolved administrator that the appeal has been successful. You are also free to contact me on my talk page if anything of the above is unclear to you. Lord Roem ~ (talk) 21:53, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I see a disappointing pattern emerging in this administrator's enforcement actions in election-related topics. As an occasional participant on that talk page I've seen more disruptive behavior persistent and unaddressed. Best of luck if you choose to appeal. James J. Lambden 🇺🇸 (talk) 22:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Hey there. Just in case you didn't see, I've replied to your question on my talk page. If you have any further questions, please let me know. If you'd like to appeal, the instructions are located in the sanction template above. Best, Lord Roem ~ (talk) 23:06, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi Thucydides411. After reviewing some thoughtful feedback on my talk page and elsewhere, I've decided to reduce the topic ban to a warning. Please refrain from edit warring in the future, whether on the talk page or the article itself. You are no longer restricted from editing on the page. Feel free to remove the template above if you wish. Many thanks, Lord Roem ~ (talk) 21:04, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi Lord Roem. Many thanks for reconsidering. I'll try to avoid any warring behavior in the future. I admit that this dispute, over deletion of a talk-page comment, was rather inane. Regards, -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:09, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Warning

You have continued to push your point of view that the Russia election interference is "alleged", recently going as far as to make provably false statements to support it. I have lost count of the number of editors who have repeatedly asked you to stop beating a dead horse and rehashing this. It is clear that you do not respect the consensus that was reached long ago in this matter because you keep bring it up.

Consider yourself warned that if you continue disrupting discussions in this fashion, I will raise the issue at Arbitration Enforcement with the recommendation that you be topic banned.- MrX 17:02, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@MrX: I'm not disrupting discussions in any fashion. You're simply trying to intimidate me because of my disagreement with you over content. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:06, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The vast majority of editors who have researched the subject disagree with you. That's how consensus works. You just keep repeating the same implausible assertion over and over, and yet minds have not been changed. It's time to stop doing that.- MrX 17:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

A majority of editors disagree, but a significant minority agrees with me. Moreover, the reliable sources support what I'm saying, as has been shown over and over again in our discussions. You're trying to shut down disagreement on the talk page with the threat of AE. I'm not going to respond to crude intimidation tactics. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:14, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

You have a friend in high places

Steve Bannon Boasts About His Love of Thucydides for All the Wrong Reasons.

It's just a curious thing I found and it made me think of you. I haven't even read it, but thought you might find it funny. Have a good day. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:40, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Russian interference

I agree with you to a point on the JAR report, but SPECIFICO has decided to completely revert my edits [36]. DN (talk) 03:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

@Darknipples: Welcome to the Russian interference article. You won't find any willingness to compromise there. Escape while you still can! -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:36, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate the humor. It is sometimes the only way to deal with the stark inevitability of it all. You and I will have to work towards consensus, but that is a challenge that I look forward to. DN (talk) 03:42, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Welp, it's out now, since Space's edit. Not much I can do now. This is why building consensus is critical. See you on the front tomorrow...DN (talk) 04:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I worked on this particular issue a long time. We even had an RfC, where a majority of editors were for including the criticism. It's not for lack of effort that there's no consensus. This should really be a straightforward, uncontroversial issue - the JAR is a major element of the story, and there's a mainstream view of it that we should present. Because of the perceived political implications of that mainstream view, however, building consensus is far from straightforward. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:29, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Hey man, I am just cog in the wheel of a machine trying to make revolutions. I have no real allegiance to politics one way or the other, I'm just here to keep it spinning. DN (talk) 04:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Good luck. DN (talk) 05:33, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	I will look into it right away. Thank you for being patient. DN (talk) 20:57, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

My thinking is that the cite is either in the body, or that is just got moved around somewhere in the paragraph. Just give me a few moments to check. DN (talk) 21:03, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

@Darknipples: Even if the citation exists somewhere in the article, the sentence has to be rephrased with clear attribution. Right now, the sentence sounds like it's coming from Wikipedia's authoritative voice, which would be a violation of WP:NPOV. Nevertheless, if there isn't a citation for the sentence, it has to be rephrased to something that is actually supportable by the references (e.g., the sentence that I wrote). -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:59, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

User page vandalism?

Is this old edit by a logged-out user something you want to keep, or something that you just didn't notice? You've edited the page several times since then, so I thought I'd ask instead of reverting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

How nice of you. Thanks, but I can handle my own page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:04, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Carr statements

What is the point of this [37] when you know from the Talk page discussion [38] that you participated in that there is no consensus to include? That's not going to persist, and it's just edit warring. Geogene (talk) 00:20, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

What talk pages are not

Article talk pages are for disusing the article and how to improve it, not other edds, please stop.Slatersteven (talk) 18:32, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

@Slatersteven: You'd have more credibility if you had objected when Marek originally brought up accusations about sanctions. If you only object to mention of WP:EEML, but not to Marek's accusations, then your objections are purely partisan, rather than principled. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:35, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

I sugest you re-think this attitude, and stop making accusation of bias. I have not singled you out Stop the personal attacks please.Slatersteven (talk) 18:39, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Go ahead and remove all the attacks, beginning with Marek's, if you want to prove your lack of bias. If you leave Marek's attacks untouched, but remove my responses, you can't complain about accusations of bias. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:41, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Slatersteven (talk) 18:54, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Thucydides411

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Thucydides411. - MrX 19:46, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Notice that you are now subject to an arbitration enforcement sanction

Per this discussion at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, you are banned from all edits and pages related to US-Russia relations for three months. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the question of Russian interference in US elections. GoldenRing (talk) 12:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

@GoldenRing: What do I care? As I said at the outset, the proceedings were a sham aimed at intimidating and/or sidelining someone who hasn't gone along with the effort to whitewash the Russian interference article. The editors who commented there have been mercilessly hounding me for months (see the passages Darouet posted), but they then come in and pretend to be the poor aggrieved party. I comment on the content of an RfC, and they respond with all-caps personal attacks on me, threats of sanctions, and all sorts of other vitriol (again, see the evidence presented in the proceedings). But I respond once and boom, down comes the ban hammer. And this after I was told repeatedly by old wizened admins that civility doesn't matter (e.g., when I complained about being called a "liar" and an "idiot" on multiple occasions, and was scolded and threatened with sanctions for reporting it). As I said, the proceedings were a sham. I didn't expect anything more. -Thucydides411 (talk)

@GoldenRing: Does this topic ban extend to the article Useful idiot - specifically, its etymology and usage during the Cold War? -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:54, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes. GoldenRing (talk) 09:54, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

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Useful idiot

Sorry for not responding to your last comment, but I explained everything already several times, and do not want to be blamed of bludgeoning the process or WP:TE. Happy editing, My very best wishes (talk) 05:35, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

BTW, since this is an etymology/language question, let me ask you this: do you know Russian? Anyone who really knows Russian language and history would be expected to tell something like this. Yes, that user knows the subject. My very best wishes (talk) 05:43, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I haven't meant to accuse you of bludgeoning or tendentious editing - I'm sorry if any of my comments have come off that way. I think it's good and important that you're discussing the sources. I just think that you've misinterpreted them in a number of places:

1. The Russian-language source you've been citing as evidence for Soviet usage of "useful idiot" was not published in the Soviet Union, but rather in France.
2. You've claimed that Safire recommends attributing the phrase "useful idiot" to Lenin, but this is a misreading of Safire's article. He says that if people want to attribute the phrase to Lenin, they must qualify that attribution, to make it clear that the attribution is not verified.
3. You've argued that the Oxford English Dictionary contradicts itself, because it cites a Washington Post article in which the author apparently attributes the term to the KGB (I say apparently, because I've found the article on LexisNexis, and it turns out that the Washington Post author is quoting a student at a town-hall meeting). But that supposed contradiction is based on a misunderstanding of how the OED works. The OED gives its own definition and etymology of "useful idiot," and then gives examples of historical usage of the term. The Washington Post snippet is merely given as an example of usage. The OED does not endorse the views expressed in the Washington Post article. Thus, there's no contradiction.

I think it's important to be clear about what the sources say, and to look carefully at each source that's brought into the discussion. You've been mixing up concepts like "used in the Russian language" and "used in the Soviet Union," and claiming that the OED contradicts itself (when it plainly doesn't), or that Safire says things he doesn't say. I think that's led to the discussion becoming very confused there.

By the way, I don't speak Russian. I do know a thing or two about Russian history. If you think I've mistranslated anything from the Montgeron article, let me know. -Thucydides411 (talk) 06:35, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I disagree (see my comments on talk page), but can't argue any longer for a couple of reasons. First, I do not have time for that. Second, my account is not really anonymous as you are probably aware based on your previous comments elsewhere. So, let's just say I am no longer comfortable editing from the non-anonymous account. Good bye. My very best wishes (talk) 21:57, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Near-Earth Object Camera edits

That whole thing could have been avoided had you simply provided the exact URL you found that phrase at. Simply saying "it's in the source" when it isn't actually at the cited URL is not helpful. Please be mindful of this in the future. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:16, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think the user who originally reverted made any good-faith effort to check the source. There are a number of tabs on the left of the page, and the information is prominently displayed on the home tab. This particular user has been stalking me across Wikipedia, and this is simply the latest page they've showed up at the revert my edits - hence my curt response. They don't even edit astrophysics-related articles, as far as I can see. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:28, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I asked you for a link or quote of the source text. Your behavior was disruptive. I wasted time searching, and now at least 2 other editors have done the same. You chose to edit war. Please see the notice I have left for you on my talk page. I'm at this page because you are discussing me. Do not make WP:ASPERSIONS and if you have any behavioral concerns, this is not the proper venue for them. It should be evident to you from this incident that when you make bad edits and act disruptively, many other editors will notice and will call you out. SPECIFICO talk 00:18, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Thucydides: well, as an editor who has never interacted with you before, I can tell you that I would have made the exact same reversion. When citing a statement, the exact URL should be provided specifically so that other readers do not have to hunt around a website to find the source. Otherwise we'd just cite the main NEOCam webpage and not any of the subpages. — Huntster (t @ c) 00:34, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Hunster, with all due respect, I don't think you're really aware of what you've stepped into. The user who reverted is not interested in whether the material is well-sourced, and I very much doubt they did the very minor amount of work required to try to verify the information. They're at that page for precisely one reason: they've been following me to various articles, in order to remove my contributions, and as you can see (check their talk page), they're now itching to escalate this into some form of enforcement action. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:57, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

With all due respect as well, I was going to revert one of those edits myself on the NEOCam page but was beat to the punch. If there is a user issue at play, take it to the Admin board. My only point here was to ask that you please be as specific as possible when dealing with sources. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:31, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

That would have been a shame, since it would have meant removing factual information about the key mission goals. A more productive approach, if you didn't like the citation, would have been to modify the URL to point to the home tab. I didn't want to cite essentially the same web page twice, and thought that the information is extremely easy to verify once you're pointed to that web page. Reverting would have been unproductive. -Thucydides411 (talk) 07:46, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Let's just stick to the facts. The citation for your text did not point to anything that verified the content you added to the article. Each editor is responsible for her own contributions to Wikipedia. I looked at the edit and saw it wasn't verified. Because the text related to the mission of NEOcam, I also checked the "Mission" link on the NEOcam website. That page also did not verify your content. That's already more work than we expect our readers to do when gathering information on Wikipedia. I explained in my edit summary that the information was not verified and asked you to provide verification.

Then, instead of correcting the article and furnishing verification, you edit-warred, and now you have continued to make a tempest in a teapot with denial of the issue -- even after multiple editors have confirmed your error/misdeed and you have doubled down now with WP:ASPERSIONS against me. Your recent behavioral history is pretty dismal, with several Arbcom Enforcement sanctions and a history of complaints, spurious appeals, and denials each time.

When others take the time to articulate a reasoned concern, it would be much more constructive to step back and consider their message. I hope you will consider this one. SPECIFICO talk 13:01, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

SPECIFICO, how did you find the article NEOCam?

When others take the time to articulate a reasoned concern, it would be much more constructive to step back and consider their message. My reasoned concern is that you're stalking me. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:54, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I still don't see that the citation after the "exploration" bit has a link to a page that refers to exploration. You might want to wrap this up by checking and making whatever fixes are needed. SPECIFICO talk 20:08, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

You didn't answer my question. Any comments on the article go on the article talk page, not here. If you comment here again, I want you to explain how you found the NEOCam page, and how it does not constitute stalking. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:58, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

You would save yourself a lot of this constant aggravation if you'd read the WP site policies and guidelines. Pardon me for saying so, but it will make you a better editor and you'll have better interactions within the community. If you don't fix the article text, somebody is undoubtedly going to react the same way the most recent 3 editors have and remove the unverified content. That's the important point. SPECIFICO talk 00:03, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

SPECIFICO, you stalked me to a page you would normally never edit, and reverted one of my contributions there. You were looking for a confrontation, not to improve the article. This is not the first time you've done this. Don't follow me around, seeking confrontation, deleting useful contributions to the encyclopedia, and then lecture me about site guidelines. You know the guidelines about harassment, and you're perfectly aware that you're violating them. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:41, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

I already cautioned you about WP:ASPERSIONS. Please follow that link and read what it has to tell you. There is no harassment. You can read that link as well. SPECIFICO talk 00:52, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

You know very well what you're doing. Stop doing it. I've let you respond here a few times, as an exception, because your behavior was at issue. It's clear that you're not willing to admit what you've been doing, so there's nothing more to discuss here. Please do not post on my talk page in the future. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:37, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

About that block

Hi, Thuc! You asked about my "involvement" at the Trump articles and that's a fair question. It's true I rarely take admin actions at those articles where I am involved (my exceptions: to protect pages, to revdel certain edits, and to block obvious vandals and socks). What I normally do, if I observe a problem like a violation of the DS, is to warn the person and make sure they understand the rules. That's what I would have done in this case except that there were FOUR violations in quick succession. It was clear the person didn't understand or didn't intend to follow the rules, and I felt a block was necessary to stop the behavior. Hopefully they will learn from the explanations they are now getting, and not do it again. --MelanieN (talk) 06:49, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Melanie. If you look at the thread I linked, about the time you told me you were involved, you'll see how egregious the behavior in question was. I think the admin decisions in American Politics articles have been heavily slanted in one direction, and it's had a huge effect on how those articles have developed - mostly in that they've come to be overwhelmingly dominated by editors on one "side" (I wish that term didn't apply, but it's the best way I can describe the situation). There's been a chilling effect on editors who would normally be opposed to something like removal of notable criticism (as is happening at the article for Alliance for Securing Democracy), while the editors who would support that removal have been emboldened. Just look at how the thread I linked played out - when it became clear that there would be no sanctions, the insults continued. -Thucydides411 (talk) 06:57, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, and my involvement there was what I explained I would normally do when I see a DS violation: warn the person. In that case I combined the warning with a non-admin action - hatting - and that seemed to be effective in stopping it. Sorry if you felt something stronger was needed, but in a borderline case like that I am just going to try to make the behavior stop; I am not going to apply sanctions. You would do better to point something like that out to an uninvolved administrator. --MelanieN (talk) 07:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

They repeated their insult immediately after you warned them, so it wasn't exactly effective. The really infuriating thing is that I'm certain that if I were to behave in such a manner, I would be blocked almost instantly - maybe not by you, but there's no doubt some admin would step in. I think that goes for just about anyone on the same "side" of the debate in the "Russian interference" article. I actually tried bringing that same editor to WP:ANI once for another obvious string of insults (later on, so the hatting and warning clearly didn't do the trick), and the whole thing nearly boomeranged against me. It was really amazing to see how invulnerable some people are, and how much politics matters in application of site policy. -Thucydides411 (talk) 07:13, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Useful idiot

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.
You need to use the article talk page. Coming fresh off your TBAN edit warring is not going to end well for you. Especially in your tag team. SPECIFICO talk 07:58, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

You tried to slip major changes into the article under the misleading edit summary "ce" (for "copyedit"): [39]. Then, you reverted twice ([40] [41]), in response to two different editors, to reinstate the major edits that you had tried to slip in. Now, you leave a threatening message on my talk page, accusing me of edit warring after you've:

1. Used misleading edit summaries.
2. Subsequently reverted twice, in response to two different editors.

Rather than trying to intimidate me into accepting your edit warring, why don't you actually explain the changes you're trying to make on the talk page? You knew they'd be controversial, which is probably why you mislabeled them as copyedits.

Because of your history of stalking me (including to the Useful idiots page) and harassing me (see the above talk page, for example), I've asked you not to post here. I'm leaving this section up just because of the sheer absurdity of you accusing me of edit warring after you reverted twice. Don't post here again. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:12, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I also just noticed what you did with the title of this section: "u. idiot," as in "you idiot." Of course, you'll claim you were just shortening "Useful Idiot." Very clever. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:14, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Instead of all this deflection, why don't you just use the article talk page to express your concern about my copy edit. If you believe that I added or omitted significant information, that should be easy for you to explain and you can present a better alternative. The text was not well-written. It was confusing, repetitive and disjointed. I improved it while remaining faithful to the sources and the context of the article. Did it ever occur to you that you keep getting into trouble for good reason and that it would be easy to take a more productive path if you'd focus on content and not contributors? SPECIFICO talk 13:17, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

SPECIFICO, stop harassing me. You can discuss Useful idiot at Talk:Useful idiot is you want. Further harassment here will be unceremoniously deleted. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:48, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

AE - notification of you being mentioned in a report filed against VM

Due notificiation, as I mentioned a diff directed at you by VM at AE, specifically this. The AE is about Eastern Europe/BLP - which Alliance for Securing Democracy would seem to fall under due to be an organization aimed at countering Russia.Icewhiz (talk) 07:30, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

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RfC at Iraq War casualties article

Hi Thucydides411,

What do you think about starting an RfC at the article? Something like this perhaps:

title: "== RfC about neutrality of article =="

topic: hist

statement: "Should the material added by Snooganssnoogans since October 13, 2017 be forked to another article dealing with criticism of the higher casualty estimates?" Jrheller1 (talk) 04:14, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jrheller1: I think the sources are clear enough that there's no basis for such an article. It would be a POV fork representing a fringe view, as evidenced by the small citation counts on the articles Snooganssnoogans is using to support the criticism. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:19, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

There are no sources calling Spagat's work "fringe", so I don't think we can call it that on Wikipedia. Spagat's views are definitely a minority (based on citation counts), but that is not necessarily the same as "fringe". Even if Spagat's position is a "fringe view", that doesn't necessarily mean there shouldn't be an article about it. There is an article on "tired light" theories, for example. There are enough publications of the work of Spagat and his co-workers in peer-reviewed journals for an article. Jrheller1 (talk) 15:36, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! --MrClog (talk) 19:33, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Pinging

The ping isn't necessary. I'm watching that page. Geogene (talk) 00:41, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

RFC at WikiLeaks talk page

Hello Thucydides411,

I created an RFC discussion at the WikiLeaks talk page here.

Nothing more to say

Except, I wouldn't try telling other editors where they can comment and where they can not. - FlightTime (open channel) 01:21, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I reserve the right to remove intimidation, harassment, etc. from my talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:27, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I said nothing about removing, of course you can remove stuff off your talk page. Please re-read my comment. - FlightTime (open channel) 01:32, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but if you don't have anything productive to say here, you're not welcome to comment further, and I will remove your comments. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:34, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Maria Butina

Interested to know a few things you referred to in your revert summaries: why you considered my edit vandalism, what lewd language you are referring to, and for what reason you think “convicted felon” is not relevant enough to belong in the first sentence of the article. Thanks. Ponydepression (talk) 22:18, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Discussion of the article should go on the talk page of the article. As for the lewd word you inserted into the article, just look at the diffs. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:57, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

There's no reason why you can't discuss your reverts here. You accused me of vandalism in an edit summary. Would you agree she is most notable for the investigation and resulting conviction? Do you feel my edit was not in good faith? And I see the reason for the "lewd word" you referenced. It was unintentional and a result of the cloud-to-butt chrome extension. Ponydepression (talk) 03:23, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

The reason not to discuss edits to the article here is that other editors should be privy to discussions about the article. Your edit looked very much like vandalism: adding the word "butt" into a random link and calling her a "convicted felon" in the first sentence. I'm sorry if I had the wrong impression, but however you added that word in, you shouldn't do it again. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:54, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Iraq war

Hi, I don't want to annoy editors who have that article in their watchlist with this boring debate. Everything can be called opinion/point of view, when do we present a point of view as a fact in Wikivoice? When there is no disagreement or no contrary POV. Yet you didn't provide any reliable sources that disagree with what Cheney said. Also POVs are not removed from Wikipedia if they are from reliable sources, all point of views should be presented in Wikipedia but attribution is required.--SharabSalam (talk) 23:23, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@SharabSalam: We present a "point of view" as a fact when a reliable source, such as a newspaper article or a book by an expert in the subject, states it as a fact. We do not present it as a fact when the source making the statement is not a reliable source. We can present opinions, but they have to be clearly identified as opinions, and attributed to whoever made the statement.

In this case, you're taking a statement made by Dick Cheney, and presenting it as a fact. You haven't presented any newspaper article, academic paper, book written by an expert, etc. which claims that what Cheney is saying is true. Dick Cheney himself is not a reliable source. I'm not saying this because I have anything against Dick Cheney, and I don't even necessarily disagree with what Dick Cheney is saying. I'm saying this because if you read WP:RS, it is perfectly clear that politicians are not reliable sources for statements of fact. Dick Cheney is just an individual politician giving his opinion, and politicians are often wrong, they often lie or distort the truth for political purposes, and they're not generally reliable. It doesn't matter if you think that Dick Cheney knows what he's talking about. He's not the equivalent of the BBC or Reuters news agency. He's an individual who can say whatever he pleases, without editorial control, without fact-checkers proofing his statements, without an official process to correct errors in what he says and issue retractions.

If what you're claiming about Wikipedia policy were correct, then anyone could take any claim any famous political figure made and write it into Wikipedia as fact, without attribution. Can you imagine the mess that would create? Every partisan statement by any famous politician would suddenly become a "fact" on Wikipedia.

You keep asking me to find sources that contradict Dick Cheney. That's not necessary. He's not a reliable source for statements of fact. If you had presented a news article in, say, the Boston Globe which stated, "The American withdrawal from Iraq left a power vacuum that allowed the rise of ISIS," then you could demand that I find a source that contradicts the Boston Globe. But you're not. You're asking me to find a source that contradicts the unreliable statements of personal opinion by a politician.

I don't really want to harangue you, but I see that you're relatively new to Wikipedia, and the interpretation of Wikipedia's reliable sourcing policy you're expounding is very wrong. If you want to present something as a fact, rather than an opinion, you need reliable sources, and politicians do not meet Wikipedia's criteria for reliable sources (except to report their own opinions). -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:28, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Russiagate

I notice that you use this term quite a bit and am curious about what you mean by it. I suspect you're referring to the myriad Trump-Russia investigations. Is that correct? If not, what do you mean? -- BullRangifer (talk) 19:21, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

It's a commonly used term for all Russia-related political scandals in current American politics. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:00, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Ah, so you're using it in a general sense, not the GOP/Trump sense to imply that the investigations are not legitimate. Got it. -- BullRangifer (talk) 22:41, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Lots of people of widely varying political persuasions use the term. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:23, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Heh, I actually had the same question as BR. I thought it had a meaning like the word "Spygate". ~Awilley (talk) 00:34, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Enter "Russiagate" into your favorite search engine. It refers to the sum total of all the many Russia-related scandals over the past few years. Appending "-gate" onto words to name a scandal has transcended the English language now, and is even used in other languages: see, for example, this recent article in a major German newspaper. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:38, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Indeed! It's funny how the name of one building has leant so much to the language. Before Nixon, the Watergate building was a rather anonymous building. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:53, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Adding "gate" adds the implication of a scandal of some type. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:55, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Und er ist Gewerkschaftsmitglied ...

... noch ein Argument für Dich: http://the-pen.co/this-is-a-copncerted-attack-on-press-freedom --93.211.223.124 (talk) 03:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Questions about Stephen F. Cohen

You wrote:

• @SK8RBOI and BullRangifer: I would be careful about trying to sort people into "left" and "right" bins so easily. Stephen Cohen's political views are quite likely to the left of those of most of his critics. I don't think anyone would call Noam Chomsky "right-wing" or compare him to Alex Jones, but Chomsky has espoused similar views about Russiagate as Stephen Cohen has. I am worried, however, that perceptions of what "side" Cohen falls on are being used as a criterion for whether or not to mention his views. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:59, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Regarding your first sentence, I don't recall what I wrote about this. Would you please refresh my memory? What did I write that inspired the above?

Regarding your last sentence, that isn't a factor at all for me. My objections are purely related to factual accuracy and his denials of proven facts. That renders anyone, regardless of their standing on the left/right spectrum, an unreliable source, at least for certain issues, even if not for others.

I know that The Nation (which I practically never read, even though I'm definitely left of center) is considered slightly left of center, but Cohen has been taking pro-Putin and anti-American-Russia-policy positions for several years, including supporting the American "deep state" conspiracy theory. He's very much against the conclusions of American intelligence agencies, instead choosing to believe Russian intelligence. He also seems to think that admitting that America has interfered in foreign elections for many years (it certainly has) makes Russian interference in America's elections okay, and only a minor blip at that. That ends up making him a defender of the narrative put forth by Putin and Trump.

Help me understand this, because I was not aware of him until very recently. Where does he really stand on all these issues?

Also, regarding Putin, I don't see it useful to place him on the old American/Capitalist vs Russia/Communist spectrum as he's just another corrupt right-wing nationalist autocrat now. That makes Putin and Trump natural allies. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:47, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

@BullRangifer: I don't think you've accurately described Stephen Cohen's views above. You've made a whole number of claims (support for Putin, for example) about his views. Can you provide direct quotes from Stephen Cohen to back up these assertions?

"Regarding your first sentence, I don't recall what I wrote about this." Sure, I'll refresh your memory: " He's on the same side as Trump, Putin, Hannity, Limbaugh, Bongino, and Alex Jones" ([42]). Trump, Putin, Hannity, Limbaugh, Bongino and Alex Jones are all considered right-wing figures. I don't see how they are on the "same side" as a left-leaning Princeton professor who gives a generally left-wing critique of Russia hawks in American politics.

"Regarding your last sentence, that isn't a factor at all for me. My objections are purely related to factual accuracy and his denials of proven facts." That proposition is undermined by your frequent political statements (e.g., calling Putin and Trump "natural allies," calling Trump a "spider," carelessly smearing Stephen Cohen as somehow similar to Alex Jones). If you don't want to give the impression of politically motivated editing, then don't make such statements. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

I did come to the right place, because you no doubt know more about his views than I do. All I know about him is the views that have been presented at Spygate, but I'm not familiar with his views in general, or his past views. I've just done a bit of reading on his biography here, and some of his articles online, probably mostly from The Nation.

Has he been considered left-wing? I listed him among those people because they take the same position on the "deep state" and the Russiagate/Intelgate/Spygate matters, or am I wrong? If he's been considered left-wing, maybe it's possible for him to be left-wing on some matters, and right-wing on these matters. Is that possible?

Keep in mind that my comments and personal beliefs are different than my editing. I try to keep them separate. I'm sure that many others do the same, and that we sometimes fail, but we try.

I have never called Trump a "spider" in a literal or pejorative sense, only used the analogy of a spider's web and spider in the center of the web. It's an analogy. That's all. Any boss has that function. The boss dictates/suggests/approves what their underlings do in his service, and they report back to him. The boss has the control and ultimate responsibility. The "buck stops" with the boss, except never with Trump. He doesn't accept responsibility for any negative results.

The difference between Trump and ordinary bosses is his modus operandi. He suggests and alludes, rather than clearly commands, which is why his own lawyer, Michael Cohen, and law enforcement and intelligence professionals say he acts exactly like a mob boss.[43][44][45][46][47]

He has even been known to refuse to accept information from his underlings, saying "I don't want to know."[48] (Trump was trained by Roy Cohn, a mafia lawyer.[49]) Mob bosses always maintain plausible deniability. I don't know if he learned those habits from his father, Roy Cohn, or if he has developed that habit on his own, but that's how he operates. That's also part of the reason the FBI's investigation of Trump and his campaign was opened as an "enterprise CI [counterintelligence] investigation" ergo a RICO investigation, which, among other things, covers "systematic public corruption", with a focus on organizations, and only secondarily on individual members. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:58, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

@BullRangifer: The statements you're making and speculation you're engaging in here about Trump are highly political. This is all completely unnecessary to building an encyclopedia, and it gives the appearance of politically motivated editing, as I said above.

"I have never called Trump a "spider" in a literal or pejorative sense": Calling someone a spider sounds pretty pejorative to me. I understand, of course, that you were not literally calling him a spider. Figuratively calling someone a spider is definitively a highly negative characterization.

Regarding Stephen Cohen, I asked you for specific quotes from him to back up the claims you're making. "I listed him among those people because they take the same position on the "deep state" and the Russiagate/Intelgate/Spygate matters, or am I wrong?" Please quote exactly what Stephen Cohen has said, and tell me how it is at all reasonable to compare those statements to those of Alex Jones.

"If he's been considered left-wing, maybe it's possible for him to be left-wing on some matters, and right-wing on these matters. Is that possible?" Do you consider Noam Chomsky's views on Russiagate to be right-wing? There are a number of left-wing commentators who are critical of Russiagate (Chomsky, Greenwald and Taibbi, to name a few). -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:12, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Whoa! Slow down with the personal attack. I doubt you intended it that way, but that's the effect. I came here seeking more accurate information about Cohen's views and a relaxed and informal discussion, and you responded with this: "it gives the appearance of politically motivated editing, as I said above." Yes, I noticed you had said it above, and thought I countered that ("Keep in mind that my comments and personal beliefs are different than my editing...") so you wouldn't return to that train of thought, but instead you doubled down. That's not good. Please retract that accusation as it rebounds on you and all editors who express any personal POV.

Your attack has inspired me to add a paragraph to my essay. Please read the second paragraph here. (Relax, I haven't dedicated it to you. ) We all have personal points of view and should not have such accusations thrown at us when we express them. That creates a chilling effect. In this case, it also acts as a diversion which leads away from the topic.

I have already learned some things from you and want to learn more. We're colleagues and I respect your knowledge on this subject. You know far more about it. I'd be happy to answer your questions above, but we need to get this obstacle out of the way. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:43, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

@BullRangifer: If you continually write long political statements in Wikipedia talk pages, then people will get the impression that your editing is politically motivated. It's simply not appropriate to write a paragraph explaining how you think Trump is similar to a mafia boss. Wikipedia is not the place for that. It is of little comfort when you write, "Keep in mind that my comments and personal beliefs are different than my editing". Now, you're here asking me to provide more insight into Stephen Cohen. Shouldn't you have looked into his writings a bit more yourself before smearing him as being somehow similar to Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh?

Just picture how this looks from my perspective. An editor who repeatedly writes long political statements on talk pages starts attacking a prominent Princeton professor who is a critic of Russiagate, making wild comparisons of the professor to Alex Jones. The editor then admits to not knowing much about the Princeton professor they've been attacking, while at the same time indulging in irrelevant statements about Trump supposedly acting as a mafia boss. Am I supposed to believe that this editor's actions are not politically motivated?

You shouldn't be making these sorts of political statements here. You shouldn't be carelessly attacking Princeton professors in the way you have. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

The point is about "editing", not personal opinions. Without evidence, you shouldn't be making such personal attacks on me, especially when I came here in good faith, not to an article talk page, trusting that you'd be able to help me understand Cohen better. That's what I wanted, not for you to deflect and focus on my own personal POV, which were informed by my sources and Cohen's writings. Now you're tripling down, and that's not helpful. Will you agree not to say that again? Only if you have a direct diff of an edit which violates policy do you have any right to object and say such a thing (that would still be a personal attack to mention an editor's motivation) and say why my edit violated policy. Keep my personal opinions and my editing separated. That's what I do in practice when editing, and you should be able to do the same, otherwise what you said applies just as much to you, because you are well-known as a firm Trump defender here. Has that led me to accuse you of "politically motivated editing"? No, I have not done that. Please extend me the same courtesy and assumption of good faith. You wouldn't deserve such an accusation, and neither do I.

You had objected to what I wrote about Cohen, which was based on what I had read of his writings, but I'm not an expert on him. I expected you would know more about him and would share why I was wrong. Maybe mentioning such outliers as Limbaugh and Jones was too provocative, but on the subject of Russian election interference and investigations about it, they all do share the same POV. That's undeniable. They either deny or minimize the interference, believe in a deep state plot to undermine Trump, believe that Hillary is corrupt and misused the Trump Foundation for personal gain, believe that she--and not Trump--colluded with Russia, believe the dossier is totally fake and fictional, believe the FBI has been involved in a political hit job, rather than properly investigating much suspicious behavior. Am I wrong? Do they not share those views? Does Cohen not share those views? That's what I want to know. Maybe he only shares some of those views? Tell me more about his real views. Help me sort it out. -- BullRangifer (talk) 18:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

The problem is with your political statements on talk pages, not with me for asking you not to make such statements. If you want a specific diff, look no further than the above statements about Trump supposedly acting like a mafia boss. What makes you think that that is in any way appropriate for a Wikipedia talk page? -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:08, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

That was in direct response to your accusation that I called Trump a "spider", in which I explained that I used the term in the normal spider's web sense, in which a boss is seen at the center of the action, and underlings are out on the spokes which lead to the center. That's a totally normal and everyday analogy. Then, to show the idea of a mafia boss was not my invention, but found in RS, I provided six sources, one of which is sworn testimony from Trump's own lawyer, which described how Trump is not like an ordinary boss and is described by RS and treated by law enforcement like a mafia boss. That's why the investigation was opened as a RICO investigation, rather than a garden variety criminal investigation. The investigation has always worked from the periphery of the web toward the center. Standard police practice.

Now how about your personal attack above? I haven't filed a complaint yet, but personal attacks are not allowed on talk pages, even personal talk pages, so please take care of that matter. I was acting in good faith when I came here and didn't expect to be treated like this. You're above that kind of behavior. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:16, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

It all began with an innocent question. Thucydides you really are a spider at the center of a web of calls for editors not to refer to living people as spiders. I mean of course you are a metaphorical spider, not an actual, living spider, and my comment is not intended to be pejorative. Does that make sense? It's just an innocent question, I can assure you your response won't be... used against you. -Darouet (talk) 04:53, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

BullRangifer, if you believe that the admins will agree that calling Trump a "spider" and likening him to a mafia boss is appropriate on a talk page, then feel free to file a complaint. Otherwise, I think I've made my views clear to you. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:58, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, I don't know your mother tongue, but in English it's a common analogy, and when properly sourced is perfectly fine, even in an article (and it likely is in some article here). I provided six sources.

Do you think it's okay to violate policy and personally attack me? How would you react if I treated you so poorly if you came to my talk page in good faith seeking help, and I then personally attacked you?

If you continue to refuse to address this matter of your incivility and continue to deflect, then we're done here. Someone else will have to help me understand Cohen better, but I thought you'd be the right person. I still don't know if you are, since you haven't engaged properly. Maybe you don't know any more about him than I do. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:17, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

It just dawned on me what part of your objection to how RS describe Trump as similar to a mafia boss. When I referred to those descriptions, I made it clear above that I was (1) referring to his leadership style. I was (2) NOT referring to the types of crimes normally associated with the mob. Those are two different things.

1. Trump's leadership style uses code language rather than direct orders, maintains plausible deniability, and refuses to accept responsibility for anything negative. That's typical for the leadership style of a mob boss, and is likely part of why RS and Michael Cohen describe his leadership style that way.

2. I was NOT referring to crimes with that mention, and certainly not even thinking of the typical crimes associated with the mob, such as murder, extortion, blackmail, drugs, and prostitution. I dont' think he's been involved in such things. Whether RS do is unknown to me. Since our articles are dealing with investigations of alleged crimes by Trump and his campaign, let's make sure we don't think they are investigating those types of crimes. I don't think so. We do know that the FBI, Mueller, and other law enforcement agencies are investigating the following alleged crimes: illegal connections with Russians, money laundering, payoffs/bribery, illegal campaign finance matters, misuse of Trump's "charitable" foundation as a personal slush fund, tax fraud, and insurance fraud. Mueller immediately farmed out everything other than possible collusion and obstruction of justice to states attorney's general so Trump couldn't issue pardons. (All other investigations were stopped by Barr.) Mueller then kept and investigated the two things for which he, right from the beginning, knew he could not and would not seek to issue a negative judgement, IOW one for which Trump could be convicted. He didn't even investigate with that end in mind, because the DOJ rules don't allow it. He did investigate in such a manner that he could give a positive judgement, IOW declare Trump to be innocent, if he could. He could not, and said so. Therefore he kicked that ball into Congress's court for them to deal with.

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding. It was his leadership style I was referring to, because that's what RS are referring to. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:07, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but I have also been informed by this article about Cohen:

• Is This Professor ‘Putin’s American Apologist’? The Chronicle of Higher Education

The article explains how Cohen, an aging old-school leftist, could support Putin and distrust America:

• "Writing in The New Republic, Isaac Chotiner called Cohen "Putin’s American apologist." Jonathan Chait in New York magazine labeled him a "dupe" and "a septuagenarian, old-school leftist who has carried on the mental habits of decades of anti-anti-communism seamlessly into a new career of anti-anti-Putinism." Cathy Young in Slate said Cohen was "repeating Russian misinformation" and "recycling this propaganda." And there are many others who share those views, even at the magazine his wife runs."}}

Some interesting perspectives. Cohen seems to be one of several radical leftists whose old left-wing sympathies with Soviet communism are transferred to Putin, even though he's a right-wing autocrat. Putin is like various other Russian and American intelligence people. They are rarely attached to any particular political party, left- or right-, because they know what's really going on. They see through the political circus and just deal with real world information in their efforts to protect their homelands. They are apolitical warriors. -- BullRangifer (talk) 21:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Armed insurgents in 'Collateral Murder' video

Regarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike and the presence of armed insurgents in the 'Collateral Murder' video, you claim this article "says there had been insurgents in the area earlier in the day. Stop with the original research."

Please learn to read a little more thoroughly. It in fact says:

"In the first strike, the crews of two Apaches directed 30 mm cannon fire at a group of ten Iraqi men, including some armed men, standing where insurgents earlier that day had shot at an American Humvee with small arms fire."

And later (with references):

"In the video on the morning of July 12, 2007, the crews of two United States Army AH-64 Apache helicopters observe a gathering of men near a section of Baghdad in the path of advancing U.S. ground troops, some armed with AKMs and RPGs."

Now please go ahead and unrevert your reversion at Julian Assange!

Rosenkreutzer (talk) 10:59, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

The Wikipedia text you point to does not say that they are insurgents, and the claims of RPGs and the presence of insurgents come from the US military. Wikipedia is also, as you know, not a reliable source. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:23, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

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I'm Sorry for getting mad at you over the Iraq War in 2013.

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Guizhou problem

Hello- the image (File:China administrative claimed included.svg) that appears on the China page has an incorrect Hanyu Pinyin form (Gùizhōu should be Guìzhōu). I don't know how to edit .svg files- do you have any idea how I can do this? What software would I use to edit an .svg??? Thanks for any help. Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:36, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I've uploaded a corrected version of the file. The most straightforward way to fix small labeling problems like this in an SVG file is to open it up with a text editor. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:53, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

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pings

I've already said all that is useful to say at DS, so I'd appreciate not being pinged further. DGG ( talk ) 03:44, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Unfinished business at BLP/N

You should respond to my pings at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Unsourced claims about a living person being involved in a criminal conspiracy.

Making seemingly false accusations against two editors and then not providing evidence is wrong and cowardly. Please do the right thing. Either present your evidence or retract your accusations. As I wrote there, I will happily retract anything I've gotten wrong, so explain it to us there. We are waiting. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:19, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

You seem to want to get into some sort of political debate. That's not what Wikipedia is for. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:13, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

You are the one who made accusations against other editors. That means you have the burden of proof, IOW you must provide evidence of wrongdoing or retract your accusations.

A political debate is not needed. An explanation of your understanding of the facts is what's needed to help us understand why you made the accusations, because an accusation is not evidence. Without evidence, they are just personal attacks and abuse of the BLP/N drama board and will be part of the record that will count against you at times when you are in trouble. You don't want to leave such loose ends laying around. Do the right thing and fulfill your duty, a duty which you imposed upon yourself when you started making frivolous accusations against SPECIFICO and me.

This isn't some minor disagreement. You made it major by making it personal and actively escalating it (when you didn't get support) from Talk:Julian Assange to User talk:Drmies#BLP violation at Julian Assange talk and then to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Unsourced claims about a living person being involved in a criminal conspiracy.

As near as I can tell, SPECIFICO did not use the word "conspired". You are the one who did that in your false accusation against him. And as for your accusation against me, you haven't yet provided any evidence that I said anything that is not factual. -- BullRangifer (talk) 14:47, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Guy (help!) 10:57, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Regardless of the lack of diffs or behavioral problems identified, I've got a funny feeling it will result in sanctions... Mr Ernie (talk) 11:59, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Mr Ernie, there's something comfortingly familiar about running into your eternal assumption of bad faith. Bishonen | tålk 17:10, 5 March 2020 (UTC).

Forgot to ping Mr Ernie. Bishonen | tålk 17:12, 5 March 2020 (UTC).

Sorry Bish but it’s hard to come by in that topic area. I agree with you that I could use more of it. I try my hardest to minimize my involvement in that area because of that. But sometimes I see something on Fox News that gets me worked up. For some reason the ping still didn’t work. Mr Ernie (talk) 17:53, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Just clarifying - . Mr Ernie (talk) 18:17, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Topic ban warning

You are coming close to a topic ban from Russian interference in the 2016 US election (yes, another one). Please see my comment here. Bishonen | tålk 17:10, 5 March 2020 (UTC).

The D in BRD stands for Discussion

Please actually discuss your reversions at Talk:Tedros Adhanom instead of simply edit-warring out data you don't like. WP:BRD-NOT specifically states BRD is not an excuse to revert any change more than once. If your reversion is met with another bold effort, then you should consider not reverting, but discussing. The talk page is open to all editors, not just bold ones. The first person to start a discussion is the person who is best following BRD. I have given you over 8 hours to engage in a discussion I began at the talk page, you have simply refused to participate. This type of behavior is tiresome. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 07:54, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Not everyone is active on Wikipedia at all hours of the day. I've responded on the talk page of the article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:55, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

If you had time to watch the page so closely that you reverted both of my edits within minutes, I find that to be a dubious response. Regardless, I have responded (with many, many sources) on the talk page. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 09:27, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

In private, you're free to find it however you'd like. Please adhere to WP:AGF in your future posts on my talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 09:50, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: If I can comment here, I don't think that @Coffee: here was not assuming good faith. It is just that two very quick reverts can be perceived in a certain way. Could you please adhere to WP:AAGF in your future talks with people? Thanks! PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 23:49, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I think the failure to "assume good faith" is the accusation that Thucydides411 "refused to participate" in discussion. -Darouet (talk) 17:38, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

My statement was not an assumption of bad faith, it was a statement of frustration. There's a reason our community has a long-standing consensus to require explanation/discussion for reverts of good-faith edits, as it potentially damages proper collaboration and can make a heated dispute out of what could be a simple disagreement (that could be resolved). Hell, even when I revert blatant vandalism I still take the time to notify the user, in detail, why I did it. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 19:00, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

@Darouet: It is just that in WP:AAGF it is mentioned "When involved in a discussion, it is best to think very carefully before citing WP:AGF.". Which is why I added a reference to it. And yes, there were two reverts back to back without an explanation in the discussion. I will assume that it was a mistake and that it will not happen again. May I remind you that @Thucydides411: was very prompt to ask me to revert my attempt at creating a sub section citing the controversy around Tedros, making his explanation about the fact that he's not always online a bit fishy. But then again, it was a mistake obviously. I also want to note that Thucydides411 did not respect WP:AGF when they wrote what I perceived as a threat of retaliation because of my edit. I had just learned about BRD and that's what I was attempting. If it was in fact a threat, please don't do it again, as I will be forced to take action on it. PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 19:31, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

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Doug Weller talk 09:52, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Why are you like that?

You wrote: "The fact that the people who wrote that analysis didn't know this basic fact about China tells you something about the reliability of the rest of their analysis".
When it was you that messed-up the dates, by what I think was not reading the report on your part. Why are you like that? PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 22:26, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I am sorry for the editing of that other page. I can rephrase this better, I think it's a bit of a language barrier from my part. I only want to know if you have read the report I sent before replying by assuming that they didn't know the dates of the Chinese national holiday. I thought that editing in wikipedia implied reading the references that other people sent before commenting on them. I am still new to this, can you help me understand? PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 23:34, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I have read the report, and some news articles about it. I was struck by how unaware the authors were of the Chinese holiday calendar (I didn't see the Chinese national day mentioned anywhere in their analysis), and by how noisy the data they're using is. Their measurement of "activity" around the lab jumps wildly from one week to the next, even outside of the times they're claiming the lab was shut down. I don't find the report at all credible or convincing. They're using location data of a few phones to make claims about when and where CoVID-19 emerged. That's just absurd. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:46, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Well, it was not mentionned probably because it's not in the same week. Also, it is obviously a very redacted report and I do agree that people need to replicate their results in order to get a good view of it. I think you misread the report, let me remind you that on page 7 they talk about the device traffic in and around WIV in what seems to be a heatmap. A heatmap is usually a kind of 2D histogram representing the density of points, here mobile devices, and it is used to represent data that have high positionnal density. We can assume that it is more than a few devices then, can we? And, also on page 7, you can see that on the second picture this density map, representing the different roads arounf WIV is completely empty. I am trying to see clear here as to why someone would come to your conclusions. It seemed to me that the only reason could be because you didn't read it. But now that you said you read it, I don't see any other reason. Can you elaborate please? PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 00:08, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Unbalanced Article - Huawei

In the Talk:Huawei I replied to your suggestion that the controversies surrounding the company were overpowering the page. Since it is a larger geopolitical issue involving many different incidents in many different countries it may be better to confine it to its own page. However, I am not sure about the editorial precedence for this. If you think it is justified then that would result in the Huawei article at least being cleaned up. If this controversial items were moved to an 'event' page do you have any suggestions for a title? Also, another idea is to merge a lot of it into Criticism of Huawei which seems to cover the items you are referring to. If the controversial items are removed I could add some more business related facts to the article to fill it out more. --Ian Korman 06:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by IanKorman (talk • contribs)

WIV discussion

Thank you for continuing to keep the WIV page under control and free of NPOV/FRINGE/etc. conspiracy theories. There are a lot of us out here who really appreciate your work (and patience...). If I was involved on that Talk page, I would have brought things to ANI or at least NPOV or FRINGE long ago, considering how egregiously NOTHERE and RGW some comments are. JoelleJay (talk) 02:00, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@JoelleJay: Thank you for your message of support. The WIV page and related pages are garnering a lot of attention, and I wish there were a larger number of experienced editors working on them. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:28, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

After seeing the latest flurry of Talk page posts, I'd actually really suggest this be brought to ANI. There have been like 4 or 5 different non-MEDRS sources pushed incessantly, and if those sources don't get into the WIV article they'll just be promoted at COVID-19 in China. JoelleJay (talk) 02:33, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

@JoelleJay:, @Thucydides411: "For example, biomedical information in an article about a chemical substance or a form of alternative medicine requires sources that satisfy the high standard of WP:MEDRS. Some editors try to prevent the inclusion of information on non-medical aspects such as history, statistics or legality by insisting that only medical publications, or even only medical reviews, can be used in the article. (This was even easier before MEDRS was corrected to state its scope as biomedical information in all articles, as opposed to all information in biomedical articles.)" [50] and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Status_quo_stonewalling#Manipulating_an_admin_into_helping PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 17:31, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

ANI Notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. --PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 20:00, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Apology

I just wanted to come in here and offer you a proper apology for my behaviour on the WIV talk page. I realized yesterday that my perception of these interactions were altered. I thank you for your patience and I hope that in time you can forgive me. I also noticed that you seem to be interested in physics. It would be my pleasure to provide help related to nuclear/radiation physics if you ever need it. I again want to apologize and thank you for your patience. PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 17:55, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@PhysiqueUL09: Thanks. No hard feelings. If I ever see a nuclear/radiation physics article that needs work, I'll let you know. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:38, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Re: Removed section on international inquiry

Hello, Thucydides411. You have new messages at Talk: Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Message added 17:31, 8 June 2020 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

The 1619 Project

You saw I reverted you, no doubt. I'll repeat: there is no need to link a mass of material to a clearly partisan website verifying that these people protested, when one single reliable source attests to it. Adding the WSJ piece, an op-ed by a right-wing character, does not make those links any more valuable, and I just find it odd that you make these edits, which just look like spam to me. So besides that source obviously being partisan, unnecessary, and in triplicate, it's also in the lead that you made this edit, burdening the reader's load. Not good article writing, sorry. Drmies (talk) 14:18, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

That "clearly partisan website" (WSWS) interviewed some of the most famous American historians - there are quite a few Bancroft Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes and Pulitzer Finalists in there. Those interviews and the WSWS' own criticisms have been widely commented on, including in the WSJ Op-Ed (whether "of a right-wing character" or not, discussion in the WSJ shows significance), multiple articles in the Atlantic ([51] and [52], both "of a left-wing character"), an editorial in the American Historical Review ([53]) and a rebuttal letter also published in the AHR ([54]), and the Boston Review ([55]). Commentary from partisan sources is perfectly allowable, as you well know, as long as it can be shown to be significant and is appropriately attributed. Given the amount of secondary commentary on the WSWS' interviews and editorials, they obviously clear that threshold.

You're removing long-standing content without consensus to do so. Please self-revert and make your case on the talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:49, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

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August 2020

Please stop your disruptive editing.

• If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor, discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page, and seek consensus with them. Alternatively you can read Wikipedia's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant noticeboards.
• If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, seek assistance at Wikipedia's Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

If you continue to disrupt Wikipedia, as you did at Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, you may be blocked from editing. This is nothing but disruptive. The author is a professor, the book is published by a university press. If you want to take issue with that, take it to WP:RSN. Drmies (talk) 00:51, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Drmies: I've explained the problems with the source to you. Rather than trying to intimidate me, answer the substantive issues on the talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:37, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Didn't you get brought up at ANI, or some arbitration case, for stifling every single talk page discussion with walls of texts and wikilawyering? The problem has been explained to you, and you persist in thinking that somehow you know better than a published scholar, who is being cited from a book published by a university press. It's your problem, not mine. Drmies (talk) 12:55, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Drmies: I don't know what case you're talking about, but I recall that you've (unsuccessfully) tried to get me banned before. You say you're an academic, and I see no reason to doubt that, so I'm certain that you understand, "Scholar A published an essay claiming X" does not mean that "X is correct," particularly when X is contrary to what scholars B, C, D, E and F have all published on the exact same subject, and characterized it completely differently from X. We have at least two policies that apply to this: WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE. Minority viewpoints should not be presented more prominently than majority viewpoints, or without any reference to the majority viewpoint; and viewpoints should be presented according to their weight in the literature. I'm not explaining anything new to you, though. I've made a compromise proposal on the talk page (See the "Discussion" section of the RfC), and you'll find that I'm very reasonable and willing to come in the direction of your concerns, if you'll do the same for me. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:38, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

You paste "dubious" next to a correct citation from an academic book. So no, I don't see much reasonability there. This is the operative comment on the talk page, combined with that "dubious" tag. Drmies (talk) 14:45, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#"Dubious"_citations_from_an_academic's_book_and_article Drmies (talk) 15:10, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

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Julian Assange

Please try your scare tactics on someone else, POV pusher. --Calton | Talk 18:42, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

@Calton: I'm not trying to scare you. I'm asking you to abide by the rules in place at the article - rules that we're all bound by. You violated the rules, but as I told you, I'm not reporting the violation. I'm just asking you to follow them in the future. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:44, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Thucydides, if you keep up your behavior -- despite all the warnings and other editors bending over backwards to explain content and policy -- the community is going to exhaust its patience. That's just a fact. I see very limited support and often no support at all for the views you present. Your reinstatement of the content at Assange is your second recent violation of Consensus Required. The violations will be quite evident to Admins reviewing the talk page and seeing no consensus for your edits. I won;t use a template, but please consider this warning. SPECIFICO talk 20:10, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

You've got the "consensus required" restriction exactly backwards. Removing longstanding content requires consensus, as you know. I don't know what you're playing at by misrepresenting the restriction here. You're also misrepresenting the state of affairs on the talk page. I see considerable (in fact, majority) support for my positions on the recent content questions. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:51, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I presume you are aware that the Admin who placed that restriction has posted to the Assange pretext thread confirming what I have told you at least half a dozen times. Given your response, I will not post any further warning. SPECIFICO talk 21:47, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

In your recent WP:AE case, every admin agreed that unless your edit fell into the BLP exception, it would be a violation of the "consensus required" restriction. Admins were divided over whether the BLP exception applied to your edit, with some stating that it did, while other stated that it didn't, making your edit a straightforward DS violation. Given that, you know that the general interpretation of the "consensus required" restriction is exactly opposite to what you're claiming here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:51, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
	I appreciate your relentless work to prevent wholesale blanking of various articles as a result of deprecated sources. Your efforts do not go unnoticed, and you are not alone! Albertaont (talk) 04:02, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Just saying hi

Ive only opted to edit into a talk page three times in my life, the second being the useful idiots page, this the third. And I ended up on a whim clicking on your username and got lost in the wiki subcultural world on your talk page for a pleasant moment. Pointless courtesy hello. Thats all :) 199.66.13.72 (talk) 21:51, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

AMNI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Flaughtin (talk) 23:18, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

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Djm-leighpark (talk) 00:02, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

US intellectual tradition in political reforms

Hey. Thank you for your considered statements over the last couple weeks at Talk:United States Electoral College. I wanted to expand on a string of Congressional reform addressing state mal-apportionment in federal elections. I noted previously, efforts to curb state majority abuses included three Acts of Congress passing both House and Senate in an effort to shape political communities that resembled the underlying populations geographically, socially, and ideologically (the culturally-related basket of religion, ethnic practice, and politics): contiguity (1842), and compactness (1872), including equal population (1911) (but only for a few sessions at a time, and never enforced).

If we expand the observation from listing Acts of Congress to exploring who was sponsoring them, the topic takes on an interesting aspect of US political intellectual history. The 1842 legislation was sponsored by Jacksonian Democrats, the 1872 by Lincoln Republicans, and the 1911 by Republican and Democratic Progressives. Wiki-fencing on Talk pages notwithstanding, I understand the impulse to the National Popular Vote generally to be aligned with that intellectual tradition. To take another page from the same democratizing impulse, if the states abuse their Constitutional duty to elect US Senators by their legislatures for thirty consecutive years as they did in the Gilded Age, then the American people will pass a Constitutional Amendment taking the abused trust away from the bad actors subverting their democratic republic.

So it is, that if the states do not refrain from the egregious anti-democratic practice of winner-take-all selection of their presidential electors, I expect that in due time the American people will take away the state legislature role in choosing a president, in one way or another. I will regret the loss of political community that might follow uniform standards for redistricting by equal population, contiguous boundaries, compact shapes, and respecting political boundaries aligned with the state geography. But the voting people are sovereign, at the very least, even if the non-voting populations of the voters' neighbors who are immigrants, young, and transients are left out of the national equation the future.

But whenever a persistent political majority takes form of the same opinion, it must be allowed to prevail, or we lose the American experiment that the London Economist last week noted is the political reason that Americans respect themselves and why others around the globe in turn respect them. - TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 16:44, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I didn't know about the various Congressional acts you mention governing apportionment. I looked up the 1842 Apportionment Act and found that there's no Wikipedia article on it. The same goes for 1872 Apportionment Act. Maybe those would be good articles to write. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:47, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree, even as a stub. I've copy-pasted your reply on my Talk, so I don't forget going forward. Thanks. - TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 17:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

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Do you wish to make a statement? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

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BLP violation?

"Reverting these additions again, because they're a BLP violation and therefore can't be left in while user behavioral issues are addressed." Could you elaborate on how there is a BLP violation? CowHouse (talk) 14:48, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@CowHouse: I was trying to return to the version before the addition of suggestions that Shi Zhengli believed the virus could have come from her lab. I'm sorry I caught up your edit in the revert. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:27, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not asking about the original edit. I'm talking specifically about this edit (which I believe accurately represents the source): Shi initially considered if the virus could have come from her lab. She told Scientific American that she "had not slept a wink for days" until test results came back which confirmed that none of the genetic sequences matched any viruses from bat caves that her team had sampled. At the moment, the page doesn't mentioned the reason why Shi said the virus has nothing to do with her lab. There is only her uninformative response that "my time must be spent on more important matters". How is it a BLP violation to say she asked herself whether it was possible until test results showed that it wasn't? I think it's fine to include as long as it is clear to readers that she only asked herself "could they have come from our lab?" at a time when very little was known about the virus, and before the scientific community knew enough to refute a lab origin. CowHouse (talk) 16:14, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I think the description should stay as close to her words as possible, and not make inferences based on it. I would be okay with saying that she verified that the novel coronavirus did not match any viruses her team had sampled. I agree that the statement about "more important matters" is relatively uninformative, and I think it can be cut. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:20, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Based on what the source says, I don't see what's wrong with my summary: If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” [...] Shi instructed her group to repeat the tests and, at the same time, sent the samples to another facility to sequence the full viral genomes. Meanwhile she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.” If you believe it makes a substantial difference we could include the exact quote "Could they have come from our lab?" instead of "Shi initially considered if the virus could have come from her lab", but I'm not sure what inferences you're talking about. CowHouse (talk) 16:36, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Since we're discussing article content, I've replied at the article talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:49, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion on MEDRS/RS debate regarding fringe lab leak theory

Your comment on whether MEDRS are mandatory before editing a claim implying the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy/fringe idea is requested by this Diff in this page, please take a look. Forich (talk) 02:44, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

January 2021

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Investigations into the origin of COVID-19, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. If you only meant to make a test edit, please use your sandbox for that. See Talk:Investigations into the origin of COVID-19. Please reach consensus first before removing any well-sourced content. Normchou ^💬 15:26, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

You reverted a whole set of edits by three different users without giving any explanation beyond Unexplained removal of content, yet you're accusing me of not giving valid reasons for my edits? Here are just some of the changes you made with your revert:

1. You restored a sentence that presents the mainstream scientific view on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 on equal footing with conspiracy theories.
2. You removed all the well-sourced (and heavily covered in RS) information about pressures put by the Trump administration on US intelligence to pursue the lab leak hypothesis, and you removed reporting on foreign governments' assessments of the Trump administration's claims.

-Thucydides411 (talk) 16:02, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Re: "equal footing". If there are sufficient reliable, verifiable sources that indicate your "mainstream" views are more prominent, you can simply add them all and their mainstream status will automatically be reflected in the article. If not, then your claim of what constitutes "the mainstream" is vacuous WP:PROVEIT. Re: "you removed new information". Actually, because of your obfuscating edits (removal of a large chunk of well-sourced texts while at the same time adding new texts), I am now working on adding back the materials that you have introduced. Normchou ^💬 16:13, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

We've been through all of this at both Wuhan Institute of Virology and WP:RSN. It's becoming increasingly clear that Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 is simply a WP:POVFORK for conspiracy-theory material that has been rejected at other pages. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:16, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, except that per WP:POVFORK, the accusation of "POV fork" should only be done under extreme circumstances, unless the accusing editors themselves are prone to POV-based judgements. Normchou ^💬 16:19, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

An editor argues endlessly for inclusion of conspiracy-theory material at one page, but gets nowhere. They then go and create a second page, and fill it up with all the conspiracy-theory material they weren't able to include at the original page. How is that not a WP:POVFORK? -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:25, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

A Wikipedia article does not belong to an editor WP:OWN. As far as I can see, there is a lot of potential in editing this article to have well-sourced, balanced (per the definition in WP:BALANCED, which might be different from yours) views presented in a way that meets the objective of the project WP:5P. Normchou ^💬 16:32, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how WP:OWN is at all relevant here. As I said, the new article is being used as a way to include conspiracy-theory-material that was rejected elsewhere - not just by me, but by several editors. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:52, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't think so. The new article is still largely work-in-progress. I know of a lot of relevant, well-sourced materials that can be added to it, and I may choose to add them myself later. If there are specific aspects that you'd like to contribute and discuss, feel free to do so. Grandiose claims without substantial evidence such as "this is conspiracy theory" is not a valid reason to censor viewpoints and possibilities that one simply dislikes WP:NOTCENSORED. Normchou ^💬 17:02, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

You know what the "specific issues" are. They're not small details: the entire article focuses heavily on conspiracy theories, with almost no discussion of the mainstream scientific view. Even in the section on the US "investigation", you deleted all the material about pressure from the Trump administration on the intelligence agencies to come to a pre-ordained conclusion, and about the response by foreign intelligence agencies to the Trump administration's claims. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:07, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I will not say this again, but if there are sufficient reliable, verifiable sources that support your "mainstream scientific view", you can add them and their mainstream status will be duly reflected. Otherwise, your view is not really "mainstream" per Wikipedia's principles. This is the way Wikipedia works if you still need a refresher WP:NPOV. Regarding the new information and sources you added in your obfuscating edits, I am already in the process of adding them back [56], but I have also found inaccuracies in your summarization and synthesis, and that is why this may take some time to be finished. Meanwhile, it is probably advisable for you not to revert any more contributions by other editors today. For specific issues that are related to this article, please discuss them on the article talk page. Normchou ^💬 17:26, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to engage in subtle vandalism by making unexplained changes to information, you may be blocked from editing. Normchou ^💬 13:59, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

@Normchou: Read what is and is not vandalism: WP:VANDALISM and WP:NOTVANDALISM. False accusations of vandalism are frowned upon by the community. All of my edits were explained with summaries, and my edits were well sourced and in good faith. Please strike your above accusation. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:56, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

ANI notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Normchou ^💬 19:22, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I missed the AN/I thread while it was open (as I don't log in here much anymore), but just wanted to endorse its conclusions and to thank you for your work on the Covid-19 article. Normchou was obviously out of line in multiple ways—I appreciate the work you're doing to keep the article accurate and informative, and I'm sorry you had to deal with his disruption. MastCell ^Talk 18:44, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, MastCell. I appreciate it. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:52, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for being a voice of reason

Once again we got caught in the tale as old as time where a few rabidly active editors who insist on “reliability of sources” over actual reported facts squat a page and feign ignorance to exhaust any opposition. Thank you for not leaving me alone in trying to actually find proper sources and question the mainstream heavily Western biased narrative. I hope we can do so on other articles as well to help set a precedent for being a more neutral encyclopedia. Deku link (talk) 19:45, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

@Deku link: Reliability of sources is incredibly important, but I find more and more that what reliable sources say is being misrepresented. This isn't a problem specific to any individual editors, but something I've noticed more generally on the encyclopedia. One of the problems is a failure to distinguish between reported speech ("John said it's cold") and factual statements ("It's cold"). Another problem is a failure to recognize bias in sources, and a tendency to rely very heavily on a small subset of sources, such as DC think tanks or US government statements, which represent a fairly narrow point of view, and which may have strong political motivations. I don't think of any editors as rabid though - I like to think we can all get along and be reasonable! -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:59, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

You're right, I tend to get a bit too heated on internet discussions. I think passion is important and it's not just an issue with a few editors. It's definitely part of wiki culture that I think bleeds over into otherwise good meaning people. Either way, I agree with the reliability of sources, my point was more so that there is a tendency to tap the sign on reliability so to speak even when the focus is more on the actual content of the sources and what claims are made. Deku link (talk) 21:01, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, extraordinary claims should have very strong sourcing before they're put in Wikivoice, and finding one generally reliable news website that makes a comment in passing and then "tapping the sign" shouldn't cut it. I wasn't around on Wikipedia during the run-up to the Iraq War, and Wikipedia barely existed then, but if such an event were to occur nowadays, we would definitely have an article along the lines of, Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, which would begin with the line, "Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction are chemical, biological and nuclear weapons possessed by Iraq." The references for that sentence would be a slew of news articles reporting on American and UK allegations of Iraqi WMD. On the talk page, editors who complained that it is a violation of NPOV to put these allegations into Wikivoice would either be told that this is somehow not a Wikivoice statement, or they would be pointed to this Washington Post Editorial Board statement: Irrefutable: "AFTER SECRETARY OF STATE Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction." Or, they might be pointed to think tanks like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which in late 2002 stated, "Iraq almost certainly does not have nuclear weapons; but it almost certainly does have large numbers of chemical weapons and some biological weapons or agents." -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:33, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

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Deku link (talk) 19:24, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

RS discussion on Xinhua

Just wanted to let you know that I've opened up an RS discussion on Xinhua's usage for Id Kah Mosque since the dispute resolution concluded to take the issue there instead. Felt like informing you and the others involved, although it appears they already beat me to the punch in responding to the discussion. Deku link (talk) 22:18, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Personally, this is starting to feel like a constant uphill battle to me (re: Chinese sources for articles of this type). While I've learned I need to assume good faith and have more patience than I did earlier this month in similar discussions, it does start to become evident that many of the editors that refuse and easily verifiable claim like in this situation would not bat an eye if the source didn't have to do with China. I will not sling accusations of sinophobia, but it's almost reaching those levels in my mind. The repetitive badgering tactics and refusal to acknowledge the reality of the situation is also becoming quite taxing in these discussions. Deku link (talk) 14:11, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

There clearly is an issue of WP:SYSTEMICBIAS on Wikipedia, and it's being fueled by the increasingly Cold-War-like environment. The important thing is for Wikipedia to remain a global encyclopedia. I don't think Wikipedia is living up to that ideal at the moment. There's no point banging one's head against the wall, but one also shouldn't give up arguing for neutrality and a global perspective. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:48, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

It's not just about 'Chinese sources for articles of this type', but as the deprecation of CGTN (primarily based on airing one specific interview) has shown, all articles relating to China have fallen victim to this. And recently China Daily was close to deprecation too. Due to the sheer amount of extremely active hawkish editors, the reliable sources discussions have a predetermined outcome. As more and more English-language Chinese media get banned, this will make articles covering China rely on less accessible sources like books or local newspapers in Chinese, until the most likely end goal is reached of banning all .cn domains. Pieceofmetalwork (talk) 18:27, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

ANI where I mentioned you

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Ruling Party BLP violations. Thank you. I mentioned you as I asked for a partial block of Ruling party due to their continually adding back information only sourced to Wikileaks and you, like me, looked for other sources but found none. Nil Einne (talk) 08:27, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Typo

You accidentally added a cloud emoji to Nil Einne's post at AN/I. At least I hope it was an accident; if not, please pay a visit to WP:TALK. I think you'll want to remove it. Cheers, BlackcurrantTea (talk) 15:30, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Okay, that's somewhat humorous. I don't know how I managed to add that emoji, but I've removed it now. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:36, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Essay on RSP discussions

I've written a brief userpage essay on my opinions on RSP. Since this has been a subject both of us have discussed heavily recently and a moratorium is even being proposed on RSP discussions, I thought it might be of some interest to you. [57] Paragon Deku (talk) 03:42, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

Why did you undo the change I made to the Shi_Zhengli article? The article is misleading, it implies Daszak is an independent source whereas he's is Shi Zhengli's close colleague and client. He subcontacts work to her. See https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ --Zeth

I don't think "subcontracting" is the correct terminology here. They have collaborated in the past on sampling viruses in China. It might be worthwhile to note that Daszak has collaborated with Shi Zhengli, but the scientific point he makes in that quote is substantive and highly relevant. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:36, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Quote from the article above "The grants were assigned to the prime contractor, Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who subcontracted them to Shi." I'm sure there are a hundred virologists that can be quoted that will say the same thing without the conflict of interest. --Zeth

The article is written by a non-expert, which might explain his incorrect terminology. Science journalism tends to contain a lot of errors, because it's often written by people who don't understand the underlying science very well, or how research works, for that matter. Peter Daszak is widely viewed as one of the world experts on the ecology of pre-pandemic viruses, and he has done research on the very subject he's talking about in the quote. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:20, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Community Sanctions Alert

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— Mikehawk10 (talk) 22:57, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement § Normchou

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement § Normchou. Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:17, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

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For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

My very best wishes (talk) 17:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

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Squaring the Circle

You responded to me here, but that topic has been closed.

You said: You're arguing below (in the Caixin section) that we should have some sort of blanket ban on Chinese sources because they're possibly subject to the Chinese government, but here, you're arguing that we should take factual claims (mostly about China) made by a group set up by the Australian government and funded by US weapons manufacturers, the US State Department and the Australian Ministry of Defence at face value. I can't square that circle. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:26, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

The answer is simple: Where an organization gets its funding doesn't really matter for factual reliability, what does matter is what policies and practices the organization implements with that funding, and what regulations it is subject to, among other things. Some organizations that get funding from their government are reliable (e.g. the BBC) while others are not (e.g. RT), so a model that focuses on funding to determine reliability is just plain using the wrong variable and will give wrong answers.

To construct another example: Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Lets say he also hires a PR firm to promote himself. The Post's coverage of him is most likely reliable because of its institutional structure (journalistic firewalls and the like), while the PR firm's is not (because it's there to spin things to make him look at good as possible). The relevant variable isn't funding, but rather it's institutional practices and purpose.

Some other points:

1. You're mistaken if you think I'm arguing for a blanket ban on Chinese sources. I'm not.

2. Chinese news sources are subject to government management of their content based on political considerations, and domestic topics aren't free from that management (e.g. [58]). I actually linked in my Caixin comment to some of the directives all Chinese news organizations get from their government. There's also a extensive general censorship regime in place in China. Those facts are extremely relevant and need to be acknowledged and carefully considered when using mainland Chinese sources. - GretLomborg (talk) 21:18, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@GretLomborg: ASPI is a think tank. ASPI was founded by the Australian Department of Defence, and its funding comes from that department, the US State Department, US weapons manufacturers and a few US allies. It's clear that this organization has very close connections to the Australian and American military and foreign-policy establishments, and it even boasts about that on its website, saying that its job is to provide expert and timely advice for Australia's strategic and defence leaders. If you just glance at ASPI's list of publications, most of them are reports on how Australia and the US can militarily and diplomatically counter China, or reports accusing China of human rights abuses. I just think it would be absurd to pretend that this is some sort of neutral observer, akin to an independent public broadcaster.

Caixin is a highly respected financial news organization in China. It also reports, to some extent, on other issues in China. During the pandemic, it has had some excellent reporting on the situation in China, some of which has been highly critical of the government. For example, Caixin published the most detailed investigative report that any news agency in the world has done on the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan. Caixin is the main reason why so much is known about the initial response in Wuhan, and other news agencies have largely relied on Caixin's investigative reporting for basic facts about these events.

You're not explicitly saying we should ban all Chinese sources, but then you're arguing that they're all tainted by Chinese government control, and that that's "extremely relevant" and should make us hesitant to use them. Yet you haven't actually provided and examples of Caixin's supposed unreliability. In contrast, as I demonstrated in the thread at WP:RSN on Caixin, Radio Free Asia, Bloomberg, Time Magazine and a host of other Western sources have propagated a conspiracy theory about the death toll in Wuhan that is wildly inconsistent with scientific studies (RFA has inflated the death toll by factors of 9 to 50x). To arrive at its vastly inflated estimates, RFA actually took an accurate Caixin report about people picking up urns of deceased relatives after the Wuhan lockdown ended, distorted it (to claim that the deceased were all CoVID deaths, as if people had stopped dying of other causes during the outbreak) and added in speculation from social media. In this case, Caixin accurately reported on an issue in China, but a whole host of news organizations we normally consider reliable took that reporting out of context and propagated a conspiracy theory that we now know, based on scientific research into the death toll in China, to be false. This is all to say that Caixin is often more reliable (and knowledgeable) when it comes to Chinese domestic issues than many American and European news agencies, and that discouraging its use would be misguided. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:58, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

"RFA has inflated the death toll by factors of 9 to 50x:" I vaguely recall already arguing about that specific article, so I'm not going to waste much time on this again. That article didn't "propagate[...] a conspiracy theory", but rather it was an early-ish journalistic reporting on what people were saying on social media when things were much more unclear. You're committing an error of anachronism if you expect such an article from 2020.03.27 to reflect a scientific study from 24 February 2021, almost a year later. If journalism was that good, why bother with the study? Obviously any Wikipedia article should not source death statistics from the former, but should use something like the latter instead. About all that particular RFA article would be good for now is for statements about skepticism of official results (which, to emphasize, is what it was actually reporting on).

"Yet you haven't actually provided and examples of Caixin's supposed unreliability": why would I have? You should read that discussion again, and pay attention to the context of my comments. You'll see I offered no opinion on Caixin and only responded to someone else's proposal of a general rule for mainland sources. I did provide examples of the stuff I was actually talking about.

"In this case, Caixin accurately reported on an issue in China, but a whole host of news organizations we normally consider reliable took that reporting out of context and propagated a conspiracy theory that we now know, based on scientific research into the death toll in China, to be false.: I addressed the "conspiracy theory" misrepresentation above, but I'll only emphasize here that Wikipedia shouldn't be using early 2020 news reports from any source for COVID death statistics, because better sources exist (e.g. the BMJ article you linked). The problem with news reports is that they have to be timely, that timeliness requirement often introduces error because they don't have the luxury of waiting until everything has been perfectly worked out. That doesn't mean an error like that makes a newspaper unreliable, it just means they're a different kind of source with different strengths and limitations. - GretLomborg (talk) 04:38, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@GretLomborg: There are two problems with your defenses of Radio Free Asia's reporting on the death toll in Wuhan:

1. RFA continued suggesting wildly inflated figures, even after several scientific studies had come out. In February 2021, RFA published an article suggesting a death toll of 150,000, a number so large that it is almost impossible, even if every single person in Wuhan had been infected. This is months after serology studies (such as this one in JAMA, from October 2020) began coming out showing that only a few percent of people in Wuhan had actually been infected. RFA's reporting did not become more accurate over time. It became even more absurd.
2. Even taking RFA's reporting on its own and ignoring the scientific studies, the reporting is terribly sourced and hugely irresponsible. The articles rely heavily on rumors from social media and speculation from random people with no expertise, such as Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang and resident of Hubei province. The first article is filled with lines such as, Some social media posts have estimated, and is provocatively titled, Estimates Show Wuhan Death Toll Far Higher Than Official Figure. This is not just good-faith, early journalistic work that turned out to be inaccurate. It's incredibly irresponsible misinformation about a pandemic, based on completely unreliable sourcing such as social media rumors. If the shoe were on the other foot and Chinese state media had written an article like this about the death toll in the US, I have no doubt you (and I) would label it disinformation.

The first RFA article and the articles in Bloomberg, Time and other outlets that it spawned were, in fact, used on Wikipedia (see "Downplaying early signs") to label China's official death toll (which turned out to be pretty close to the subsequent scientific estimates) "misinformation" in Wikivoice. I don't know about you, but I think that's a mini-scandal in itself: a Wikipedia article on CoVID-19 misinformation being used to push actual CoVID-19 misinformation.

Downgrading a high-quality source like Caixin, which arguably has a much better record of reliability than many major American news outlets when it comes to China (this certainly holds true in the urn conspiracy theory reporting we've been discussing), as part of some general policy on Chinese sources, would exacerbate the types of problems with sources on China that I've been pointing out in this thread. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:37, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

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NPA warning

Your comment here verges on WP:NPA [59]. I did not question the trustworthiness of Chinese scientists because of their nationality. Please address the matter of Chinese government censorship on Chinese scientists on COVID-19 research. In case you haven't read it yet, here is the AP Report about the censorship. LondonIP (talk) 19:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@LondonIP: In effect, what you're calling for is a blanket ban on citing scientists of Chinese nationality, even if their scientific peers and leading journals like Nature and The Lancet deem their work to be worthy of publication. Whatever rationalization you give for that, I have to say that I find your suggestion extremely troubling. I'm not trying to attack you personally, but what you're suggesting is truly outrageous. I suggest you stop calling for this sort of nationality-based discrimination in sourcing. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:22, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Please read the AP article and WP:NPA. You are attacking me personally when you claim I am advising caution against sources by Chinese nationals without address the Chinese government censorship their publications on COVID-19 are subject to. LondonIP (talk) 01:00, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm familiar with both. There's no room in this project for calls to discriminate against certain nationalities when choosing sources. If you view this as a personal attack, there's nothing I can do. The problem is your call for nationality-based discrimination, not my criticism of such. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

If you read the AP article, then you know I do not reject publications of Chinese scientists because their nationality, but because (as the AP reports) the Chinese government has a gag order on all COVID-19 related research. Please do not accuse me of such xenophobia, as you did thrice before this warning [60], [61], [62], and twice again after this warning [63], [64]. I have no prejudice against Chinese people and I highly respect Chinese scientists working under these difficult conditions. LondonIP (talk) 23:45, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

The fact is that you're calling for an effective ban on citing the work of certain scientists, based purely on their nationality, even if their work has been accepted into the world's most prestigious journals. You can justify that using whatever theory you'd like, but I think that that would be an outrageous policy for us to implement. If you're offended by me saying that, there's nothing I can do, except to tell you not to keep advocating for discrimination against scientists of one nationality in our sourcing policy. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:55, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Please do not put words in my mouth. I did not call for an effective ban on these sources. My position is that we can't use specific publications of Chinese scientists in a specific area of research subject to a Chinese government gag order, as revealed by a AP report that is itself covered in multiple secondary sources like the BBC and PBS. You claim to be familiar with this AP report but you refuse to discuss it, and instead accuse me of xenophobia. LondonIP (talk) 00:11, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

And my position is that you're in no position to tell the editors and scientific reviewers at world-leading journals like Nature, The Lancet and The BMJ that work by Chinese scientists can't be trusted. We're not going to stop using publications in these premiere journals, which have rigorous peer review and editorial policies, because you read an AP news article and now believe that Chinese scientists' work is suspect. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:08, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

You can refuse to discuss the AP revelation about Chinese government censorship here on your user talk page, but if you accuse me in the article talk page of having xenophobia towards Chinese nationals, I will have to file a complaint at the appropriate venue. LondonIP (talk) 02:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

If you file a complaint, I will fully explain that you are calling for peer-reviewed scientific papers published in Nature, The Lancet, The BMJ and other leading scientific journals to be rejected as sources if the authors are Chinese, and we'll see what other Wikipedians think of your suggestion. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I've asked you a number of times to show me the text in the peer-reviewed scientific papers that you say supports your position. So far I haven't seen anything. LondonIP (talk) 00:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Support which position? -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:22, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

COVID-19 Barnstar

		COVID-19 Barnstar
		Thank you for all your contributions to COVID-19 related articles. Wonderful additions to Zero-COVID. Moxy- 03:57, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Moxy! A bunch of editors there have done a really great job filling out the article very quickly. Thanks for your contributions as well! -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:58, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Ping

I have received a few pings from you recently and am sorry not to have checked back yet. It's on my TODO, although I also have limited interest in constantly reading that page... Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 03:55, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Massive reverts and WP:FIXIT

This revert [65] is concerning on multiple levels. You were reverting three different edits. Which are you describing as "editorializing"? One? All three? Or are there three different justifications for your reversions of the three edits you reverted? If so, why not describe them? Furthermore, the version you restored fails WP:V. Lastly, your revert message describes "obvious editorializing". That fails to describe specifically what you consider "editorializing". Lastly, the phrase "obvious editorializing" is itself concerning as WP:EDITORIALIZING mentions "obviously" as a word to be cautious with. Adoring nanny (talk) 17:33, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Anyone can look at the recent additions I reverted and recognize them as obvious editorializing:

• Adding in "Chinese Communist Party (CCP)" to the first sentence.
• Claiming the "CCP" hid information in the first sentence of the lede.
• Adding in a lengthy claim to the first paragraph of the lede about scientists being prevented from publishing the genome. This is way too detailed for the lede, and you wrote it in a way that paints it as an attempt to hide information about the virus. The delays in publishing were based on two factors: a desire to confirm the sequence before publishing it, and rivalry over which group would get the honor/credit for publishing the sequence first. This is far too detailed to describe in the lede.

This isn't neutral writing by any stretch of the imagination. Readers can form their own opinions of the Chinese government's response. There's no reason to hit them with editorial comments in the first few sentences. A good rule of thumb is that if the reader can tell the POV of the editors, then the article is poorly written. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:51, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

You might want to check WP:EDITORIALIZING. It is mostly about use of adverbs. It also goes into connecting words such as "however' that can introduce an implication that is not present in the source. So, for example, adding in "CCP" somewhere, does not fit any of those categories. As for the claim that the CCP hid information, this is supported by multiple portions of the article. Again, this does not fit "editorializing."

Furthermore, if you don't want to believe me, look at the revert of your revert, which plainly states that it was "not editorialization".[66] This revert was by a different editor who frequently conflicts with me.

Next, I have got to say that I am concerned by your failure to hear that this type of edit, where you apply a single label to multiple edits, without going into each of the issues, is problematic, especially considering that I've explained that the label does not apply.

I have been similarly concerned by your mass removals of sourced content.[67][68][69] Again, this is a concerning editing pattern.

The upshot is that there are multiple concerning patterns to your editing. I find myself considering whether or not it needs to go to WP:AE. I am not a drama queen, and I try to avoid that kind of thing. However, when I notice that there are multiple concerning patterns to your editing, and that you do not appear to have taken proper notice of my concerns, the chances that I will do that go up. Adoring nanny (talk) 00:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

What a delightful note. Keep in mind that WP:BOOMERANG applies at WP:AE. If you feel that your own editing history will stand up to scrutiny, then feel free to follow through with your blunt threat. Otherwise, I would request that you save your comments for article talk pages, and refrain from posting again on my talk page. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:43, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Random stats Zero-COVID

I removed these random stats as they are meaningless without portion stats population.. ie 4000 infections is what percerntage of the population of an area...is 4000 good number or bad...in its current form the data has no scale for evaluation.--Moxy- 17:03, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi Moxy, I understand, and I've responded on the article talk page. I think that we can provide some context, rather than removing the stats altogether. I think that it's actually important to include the stats, precisely in order to give context. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I have not been following the ongoing talks in multiple locations about China stats that I see are all over after looking at this ....that said that linked information leads me to believe there is a combined effort here....is there other? Moxy- 19:07, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Do you have an opinion?

See Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Zero_COVID.Moxy- 01:06, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

For the record.

I don't want you to get the wrong idea about my position on UPA, OUN, UVV. In my view, personally, I find their participation in genocide disgusting, revolting, etc. But wiki prohibits you or I from voicing our personal views in any article. Therefore, to keep with WP:NPOV, we have to describe them as the sources do. I don't want the article to get deleted. I feel that if you added their role in the Holocaust to the article it would be perfectly acceptable, and it might even make the article better. So I hope you do add it. I mean what do you have to lose right? If the article stays, then you've put in what you feel is important. If the article is deleted, then you've lost nothing. So I really hope you do. I'd like to see additions, I'm sure they'd be great. Best regardsBetsyRMadison (talk) 19:36, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your message here. My view is that the article is hopeless in its current state. It would be possible to write an article about the UPA Insurgency (under that or a similar name, but not under the name, "Ukrainian Insurgent Army war against Russian occupation"), but it would have to be a complete rewrite. The current article just reads as fascist apologia.

This subject is already covered in Ukrainian Insurgent Army. If the relevant sections of that article become too unwieldy, they can be split off into a dedicated article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:38, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Fair enough. But I really do feel you could make it a better article. Best regards, BetsyRMadison (talk) 22:43, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

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September 2022

Hi Thucydides411! I noticed that you have reverted to restore your preferred version of Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China several times. The impulse to undo an edit you disagree with is understandable, but I wanted to make sure you're aware that the edit warring policy disallows repeated reversions even if they are justifiable.

All editors are expected to discuss content disputes on article talk pages to try to reach consensus. If you are unable to agree at Talk:Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, please use one of the dispute resolution options to seek input from others. Using this approach instead of reverting can help you avoid getting drawn into an edit war. Thank you. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:00, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

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