User:Ironiridis/Discussions

Archive of interesting discussions

Discussions with User:Vonbergm

"May I ask"/"My develop vote on the Iraqi bioweapons article"

more precise what you think need to be changed in U.S. claims of Iraqi bioweapons labs contradicted in classified Pentagon report filed on 27 May 2003. As you dont until now edited I am curious as I find it very hard to understand Mrm:s objections. international 18:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Funny, I have exactly the same question. You say "Develop, needs improvement, sorry." Not sure what you apologize for, but would you care to specify what kind of development it needs or to help out yourself? --vonbergm 16:28, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Concerning this version of the article, which was current when I voted, I noted the following problems:

• Title of article was simply way too long
• This is a run-on sentence:

On May 27, 2003, two days before President Bush made public statements on these trailers,
asserting that "We have found the weapons of mass destruction" and the CIA published their
whitepaper detailing how these trailers were allegedly used to produce biological weapons,
a fact-finding group comprised of U.S. and British civilian experts that investigated the
labs concluded unanimously that these had nothing to do with biological weapons production
and relayed their results back to Washington, according to the Washington Post.

• "The Washington Post" is inconsistently capitalized ("the" vs "The") and italicized.
• The paragraph beginning with "The Iraq Survey Group reported in September 2004" has a stray quote mark, or is missing one.
• Dates are formed inconsistently, some with numeric suffixes ("24th" vs "24"), some with commas and some without ("May 24th, 2003" vs "May 24th 2003").
• The last source does not properly use the source template.

These are all things I noted in a brief survey of the article. They stood out to me as cosmetic problems. They don't directly apply to MrM's objections, however, a vote for publish versus develop was called, and I felt this article needed continued development. I didn't have time to make the changes myself; I would have if I wasn't at my day job at the time. irid:t 08:05, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the construktiv remarks on the article. I will imidiatly try to adress them if not allready fixed. :) international 10:01, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, I appreciate the constructive suggestions. I would have preferred if you had from the beginning left a comment that roughly reflected your objections like "Still needs minor copyedit, not time to do it myself right now." This does not take more time but does move the article forward. I am not a fan of these type of votes, but if you decide to cast a vote in this circumstance you should be more aware of the context. Your suggestions on how to "develop" the article do not fit under the context and language of the vote that was called. Your comment failed to specify that and contributed to the unnecessary delay of publication of the article. No hard fellings, just my thoughts on this. --vonbergm 19:01, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, however, the description of the poll started with

Mrm write he has "actionable objections" against this article in its present form.

Given that, I looked to find actionable obections about the article. I can't read MrM's mind, nor can I be expected to read, in depth, the entirety of that talk page while I'm at work. I was watching the edits fly by on the IRC channel, and I checked in and saw the vote. After a brief overview of the article, I found the items I mentioned above. I said "sorry" at the end because I knew this was obviously an issue of contention. I wasn't trying to take sides, but my honest opinion was that the article wasn't ready for publishing. Perhaps if you specifically wanted information about MrM's objections, you should have held a poll where only he could respond. In any case, thank you for your work on that article. irid:t 01:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I, as well as other users, have made numerous requests asking MrM to explain his objections. (See this list) I did not call for the vote and did not participate in the vote as I find this type of poll not constructive. If you choose to participate in such a vote, I argue that you should be well aware of the discussion and possible consequences (and misinterpretations) of your vote. --vonbergm 19:04, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I would, conversely, argue that it is not my duty to instruct people how to interpret my vote. The vote, as I saw it, only asked whether there were actionable objections to the article as it existed at the time. I said there was and I didn't believe the article was of a high enough quality to be published. The vote was started in light of MrM's objections. The vote did not say that the only valid responses were in direct relation to those objections. The fact that these things were at fault with the article was significant, were they not?

I do appreciate your attention to this issue; it's important to maintain scrutiny of other users when it comes to collboration. What I did probably seemed to you to be a "by default" support of MrM. Thank you for not allowing the life of a sock puppet to be comfortable. irid:t 19:16, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

"A question"/"An answer"

I was looking over the ArbCom case regarding MrM... I was wondering what your intent was in this addition. I don't understand what you expected to get out of this. Do you expect all users to openly acknowledge this? Because I can assure you that you've also made POV edits. irid:t 03:52, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

You are right I have made POV edits, and have realized it only afterwards. And hopefully that will help me avoid this in the future. The way the "remedy" is formulated, pretty much anyone on this wiki could make such an acknowledgement. So in some sense the statement is vacuous. The value I see in it is that from reading MrM's comments I feel that he somehow believes that he has never made a POV edit. His comments on talk pages read as if he was beyond POV concerns and acts as an absolute POV and policy guardian. (I would even deny the existence of an absolute NPOV or policy position.) I am sure that there are people that have done much more POV edits than MrM, in fact I am sure that there are people involved in this dispute (possibly myself) who have done more POV edits than MrM. But if you cannot acknowledege these weaknesses, this will poison the wiki. I value MrM as an editor and I value him as a corrective voice to check for issues that I might overlook in articles, partially because of my personal bias. But if he cannot change his perspective of his position in this wiki relative to others and POV and policy issues, then I do not see how his contributions can be beneficial to this wiki in the long run.

A long explanation, and not a very good one, but I hope you get the general idea. Maybe you have a way to read MrM comments that suggest something else and I would be interested to hear it. Or another way to address this issue, as it seems that the one I suggested was a little naive and I apparently did not think it through enough as the response was quite predictable. --vonbergm 05:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

"1 month"/"Regarding my block on Neutralizer"

I am a little disappointed at your judgement about the length of the block you first handed out. I don't believe that blocks of this length are backed by policy, unless there is a large concensus. Moreover, I question the effectiveness of such a block and really don't understand your motives. That said, I am happy to see that you have agreed to a much shorter block, which btw I fully support. --vonbergm 16:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Policy backs a 30 day block for continued site disruption with several previous warnings. Given that Neutralizer had been previously blocked 24 times, and considering his already stated intention to be unavailable for about a month, the block boiled down to a 1 week block effective after his return. Given the unprovoked nature of his attack on MrM, I felt this was very appropriate. irid:t 17:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I still disagree on the appropriateness of a 1-month block in this case, as I fail to follow your argument. In particular, the block count in itself cannot be used as a reason, only a more detailed analysis especially of the recent block history can be used to justify such a block. Moreover, I fail to see at all what bearing the users personal decisions about vacation time has on blockin policy and its application. And although a block of up to a month in duration allowed by policy as the maximum block length, I argue that this is not up to the whim of a single administrator but should receive more discussion beforehand. I have not talked to Neutralizer on his motivation for the comment, so I cannot comment on your assertion that Neutralizers edit was "unprovoked", but I assume you did. In summary I still argue that a 1-day block is quite appropriate, given the blatancy of the attack. --vonbergm 18:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, Neutralizer had previously established that he would not be using the wiki for a period of approximately 30 days. Given this, a 24 hour, 72 hour, or 1 week block would be pointless; he wouldn't even be around to notice. I chose the block level that would impact him, 30 days.

Secondly, I mention Neutralizer's block history as an indication that he has previously disrupted the site a number of times and his "short term" blocks have proved ineffectual. A more signifigant block was needed, in my mind, so ensure he felt the weight of his actions.

If you view the recent activity of MrM before the comment was made on his talk page, you'll see no significant interaction between the two users. In fact, Neutralizer had been "on vacation" during that time. I call that unprovoked. Consider also that he had written the offending statement previously on a different page, erased it, then reposted it on the talk page about 5 days later. irid:t 19:07, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

You seem to hold a view of blocking and its benefits that differs quite significantly from mine (and such difference in opinion is bound to appear on a wiki like this). I have seen a lot of improvement in Neutralizers behaviour. You assert that this is not due to short time blocks (and I agree to the extend that I believe that feedback from users that he trusts probably had a bigger impact), or you simply negate the existence of any development in Neutralizers editing behaviour. I firmly believe that blocks should be aimed at modifying the users behaviour, rather than punishing him. In other words, punishment should only be a secondary consequence of a block, and I would never use this aspect to argue for a block. (Obviously, this argument does not apply to vanadism.) Btw, you probably want to modify your statement on the Action Alerts page to reflect the current block length. --vonbergm 19:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)