User talk:Atcovi/Archive 4

Question from Reception123
User:Reception123 improperly restored archived material, eliminating a piece of it, and added comment and questions. I have undone the restoration, instead, the original material can be seen at the relevant archive section. The following is the new material added by Reception123: —Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:47, 26 December 2013 (UTC)


 * You could try to make an unblock request but I think, after you also edited from this user account they might not be so happy unblocking you. In that time most users were angry with you for some reason so they all went down on you. About "they continued the ban discussion" :  they can't stop a ban discussion just because you are a child or you are an adult, on Wikipedia the admins judge blocking the same for adults and children, they don't make a big difference. Reception123 (discuss • contribs) 05:25, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Responding interspersed. There is no issue of stopping a ban discussion. However, the SEW discussion made certain assumptions about how long it would take for the user to "learn proper behavior," or whatever. Those assumptions are based on age estimates, probably. Younger people can learn far more rapidly, if an environment is conducive to it. Wikiversity is quite different from the 'pedias, in that user education, which includes education in using a wiki, is a major goal here, in addition to the provision of educational materials for nonparticipant usage. On SEW and Wikipedia, the text is the goal.
 * However, I'll suggest, SEW is targeted at users who are not fluent in English or who may be disabled or handicapped in some way. I am merely suggesting that SEW might provide some accomodation for users who are in their target audience. How do do this is up to SEW. It is not necessary, and is not appropriate, to disclose personal information about users, but we can infer disability or immaturity from behavior. What was surprising to me was seeing what would be very minor infractions on Wikipedia, not to mention here, blown up to be outrageous behavior on SEW. It doesn't seem like a friendly place to me, from that. But it's up to each community to develop its own community culture.
 * I advised Goldenburg to not request unblock at this time, but to consider it for later, and I might support him in that. Not now. The ban is a one year ban, not appealable, as stated (that alone is quite weird, to me), but SEW may have its reasons. I support his respecting the ban, and he did not contest his block there, he merely asked for a reason, which he was given. –Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:30, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Goldenburg111, you suspect me as a child, I may be, I may not be but, here you point out that you are a child and on Jasper Deng's talk you point out that you are an adult. I don't know which one to believe. Reception123 (discuss • contribs) 05:49, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I did not see Goldenburg do that ("suspect") Maybe he did it somewhere, maybe I missed it. He implies that he's young, in order to point out that "You cannot compare a child with an adult." He is correct, and incorrect. It depends on the purpose of the comparison. Here, I'll give you an example:


 * If I were to believe that you are a "mature adult," Reception123, fully responsible and aware of what you are doing, I might ask for you to be blocked here. However, that's not my assumption. I do not assume that apparently disruptive users are disruptive in bad faith. Many of Goldenburg's early edits looked like vandalism, and he was being blocked left and right for these, and his editing was generally not appropriate for any wiki except Wikiversity, and here only in user space, for the most part. So I guided him, and he cooperated, with only a few errors, and his problematic edits to other wikis dropped off greatly. As a result, he is becoming a sophisticated Wikiversity user, doing useful work.


 * As an example, he just tagged for deletion a user page created by IP for an inactive editor, the IP recreated that page after a similar page creation some time ago. That was a great catch. Lots of these things get missed here. Goldenburg is a valuable contributor now, returning more value than is spent assisting him. In fact, though, since education is our goal, and that includes his education, I wouldn't mind if there were a net cost. He is worth it. As well, I'm standing for a whole generation of young users, because precedent set with Goldburg here can create far more supportive methods of handling such "disruption" in the future. That, by the way, has been discussed with SEW administrators in the past, there was clearly support for my approach there, and some opposition.


 * Now, how about you, R123? What is your goal here? If all you want to do is pursue Goldenburg for what he did or was alleged to do on SEW, that's not appropriate. This is a safe place. If you, too, can appreciate a safe place, to work on educational materials or your own education, you are most welcome. What do you choose?


 * You did not link to the Jasper Deng talk page. There are three such pages I know of with comments from the user. The one you have in mind is likely here: User talk:Jasper Deng. There, this user makes contradictory comments. When there is apparent contradiction in an evidentiary record, the legal principle is to attempt to reconcile them, through interpretation that uses the ambiguity of language. The legal presumption is that "testimony is presumed true unless controverted." So, is it possible to presume that all of the user's comments are true? No. He has acknowledged lying on SEW, that's in the archive. He was Aaqib. That's fact, not a matter of interpretation.


 * But did he lie here? No. A child can be a "full and mature person," in some sense or other. It's a matter of interpretation. Here, on that talk page, the user was standing for his own dignity, his right to be treated as a "person."


 * He may archive this discussion without comment. He could even delete it without archiving. (That's allowed, but I do not recommend it.) He generally has the right to move on, to let the past be the past, and demonstrate his present character and intentions by his present actions. And so do you have that right. So do we all. Good luck. —Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:30, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Template are picky
. As you can see from this and what your user page now shows, these templates require the month as a number, they do not recognize month names. If you look at the wikicode for the template, you will see that there is nothing there that could possibly recognize text. It is just numbers being compared. Anyway, I think I'll put the equivalent templates on my own user page. Thanks for the hint by example. —Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:01, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Learning the abc's
I noticed that once upon a time you were working on redirects for some of the letters of the English alphabet, such as The Letter H. I've reorganized Learning the abc's into a learning project and moved the existing letter pages under that page, such as Learning the abc's/H. If you're interested in extending your work on The Letter ___ redirects, you can create pages and add redirects for the other The Letter pages. Just a project idea that I thought might interest you. Feel free to ignore if you're not interested. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:38, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Glimmerguard = Shadowjack
FYI. Yeah, he really shouldn't do that, but some people are handicapped or immature or socially disabled, and if we want to allow them to educate and be educated here, we may need to be tolerant. Right? No harm done by what you did, and I've done the same many times, sometimes reverting IP edits to user pages. I just wanted you to know from the history, it's obvious and has been explicitly acknowledged.

Another example is User:Fedosin, who edits his user page all the time by IP, not bothering to log in. I've asked him not to do that, because it makes work for us to prevent vandalism to his user page, but he has mostly ignored that. So ... I don't review IP edits to his user page any more. That's all. Vandalized? Too bad! Natural consequences.

(This user is actually a physicist, and could be even more valuable here than he has been.) —Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:44, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

English Basics 101 Pages
English Basics 101 pages are part of a larger learning project that starts at English basics. The intent of the individual pages isn't clear until you see them from the context of the larger project. At some point they need to be reorganized into pages under the learning project rather than individual titles, but I haven't had the time to take on that project yet.

Before moving content, always check 'What links here' to help understand the purpose of a page.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:32, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

User Space vs. Propose Deletion
This may generate a larger debate than just a post on your talk page, but one of the things I look for when reviewing page content is whether or not a title exists elsewhere. For example, in the case of Mitochondrial Eve, this is clearly a valid educational topic, with content supported by Mitochondrial Eve. On the other hand, there are pages that seem to be much more specific to the individual author, such as homework assignments and personal experience (blog-like pages and personal commentaries).

For educational topics that need improvement, I prefer to tag them with proposed deletion so that they can be improved or removed. Moving them to user space just hides them rather than fixing them. The blog-like pages don't need 'fixing', just proper location either in user space or as a subpage of a larger learning project.

If you'd like to discuss this with a wider audience, please feel free to move the discussion to the Colloquium. Thanks!

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:52, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Dang, I keep forgetting ! --Goldenburg111 19:53, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Something else to consider: There is a template that can be added if you'd like to recommend a move without actually moving the content.  I'd be happy to review your move recommendations, and perhaps Sidelight12, Abd, and others would review as well.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:59, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Adoption on Wikipedia
Note that wikipedia:User:Marcus Qwertyus has agreed to your adoption request. --Goldenburg111 Number2 (discuss • contribs) 22:17, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It's probably harmless, but if you use a different account to refer to yourself as "you," someone might think this is sock puppetry. I'm not sure why you are using an alternative account, but if you do this, I suggest avoiding editing a single page with more than one account. (In this case, such a claim would be preposterous, since the two accounts, by the name, are obviously, on the face, the same person, and you have acknowledged that. Lots of preposterous stuff gets alleged, and people, once they have said something, even when it was obviously wrong, tend to remember themselves as being right. The future gets damaged! —Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:59, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * the Adoption acceptance. Nice. And the discussion with Dr. Blofeld could have gone south fast, but you recovered. Nice. —Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:05, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * . Yeah, a bit early to request rollback. Be very careful, do good work, you'll be a rollbacker there soon.
 * I think you have some old accounts on Wikipedia, only a few edits, that were indef blocked for vandalism in 2010. Two of them, at least, have talk page access still. I suggest you clean this up before it comes back to haunt you. I don't want to say more at this time, I do suggest you arrange for email access, it could be an email for a parent, you would then add the email to your account here. I highly recommend it. You could use a gmail or yahoo address, but the parent option would satisfy many possible concerns. —Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:29, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I never had sockpuppets on Wikipedia. --Goldenburg111 00:54, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I trust that you tell the truth. That is, you think that what you wrote is true. However, this happened in 2010, which is, for someone your age, a long time ago. You may not remember everything that you did. Complicating this could be the use of a computer by more than one person.
 * This I suggest you understand: it may not matter so much what you actually did, but what people looking at the record may think that you did.
 * You were Mabuabsdd.(You seem to have acknowledged this. If I've misunderstood, correct me!)
 * That's a global account. It is locked (which doesn't matter, except that no Mabuabsdd edit can be made anywhere, blocked or not. The complication is that Mabuabsdd is indef blocked on Wikipedia. So you do have a sock on Wikipedia. And people looking at the history of Mabuabsdd there (you should look and know what they will see) will think you had other socks as well, whether those were actually you or not. If you look at the history, you may recognize things, it may jog your memory. To me, the whole thing is tragic. Mabuabsdd was globally locked for practically nothing. Almost all the edits were here. I objected to this on Meta, but dropped it because it seemed unnecessary, since you had Draubb unblocked here and I was able to prevent Draubb from being locked.
 * (The effort was made to lock Draubb, by the same user, who seems to relish trying to get people locked, for trivial offenses. I just called attention to that on meta with regard to an apparently harmless user, blocked on one wiki for creating a user page and putting his own photo on it. "Self promotion, spamming." Locking for stuff like that is a violation of policy, but people get away with it.) I'm amazed that a user could get someone locked who was only editing here, only one edit on Wikipedia, without ever notifying us or the user (Mabuabsdd). There are obviously was at least one naive steward. (Another steward defended you, later.)
 * Take a look and see what you find. Then you can consider what to do about it. There is no reason to expect that the behavior that resulted in the block of Mabuabsdd (or the other accounts, if those were you) will repeat, and blocking is supposed to be only to prevent damage, but ... as you know, sometimes administrators and others make decisions from other ways of thinking.
 * Personally, I'd rather see you helping out here. —Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:29, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Copying from Wikipedia
The Texas page was copied from Wikipedia. When you copy from Wikipedia, you need to leave a note in the talkpage (attribution), from where it was from. Non-opensource material from other websites can't be copied at all (plagiarism).

I have to decide whether, the history along with the not used history should be imported, or whether to start from scratch. - Sidelight12 Talk 14:02, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * We should start from schratch and do research, yes. But I was busy with other personal life tasks. So I just slapped Wikipedia's article. I'll get to work on it later, again, personal life tasks. --Goldenburg111 14:44, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I have blanked the page to start from scratch, remember, I don't want it deleted. --Goldenburg111 14:45, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Take your time. I don't have an idea of how to do the project. If I get an idea, then I'll be motivated (might take a while). - Sidelight12 Talk 14:47, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Help with translations
Dear Goldenburg111, Thank you for your message. I would be delighted to have a continued discussion with you regarding translation work. You can contact me on my talk page or by email with any questions you might have; jrobell@wikimedia.org Thank you and happy new year! Jrobell (discuss • contribs) 16:57, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * So, what type of translation help do you need? --Goldenburg111 20:24, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

A Different Approach
I've studied a bit about conflict resolution, and one of the things I learned was that when engaged in a heated discussion it is important to remember to use 'I' words rather than 'you' words. 'You' words make people defensive. Instead, the focus for my words should be on me, because I'm the one that perceives a problem.

For example, I become concerned when I see someone tell another user to stop doing something. We can't control what other people do (aside from blocking access). Instead, we have to help them understand our point of view, and at the same time learn a little about where they are coming from.

The same is true of revert warring or edit warring. If I find myself tempted to revert another user's edits, I would only do it once. If they revert it back, it's quite clear that's the content they want. At that point I need to stop and consider how I can help them understand a different perspective, and learn more about what they are trying to accomplish. After discussion, if I still feel strongly about it, I would look at creating separate paragraphs, sections, or subpages so that each point of view can be represented in the project.

Feel free to ask for assistance whenever you find yourself frustrated while edit patrolling. That frustration is a good sign that a different approach will be necessary. Doing the same thing over again will only yield the same result.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:22, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

The Constitution of Japan
Well, fixing the capitalization error was something I'd considered. However, this is what I thought. This was one page, linked from nowhere except the deletion nominator's talk page. Fixing the title creates an additional page, a redirect. Dave commented on the Talk page, and that creates yet another page; and with the move, there are now four pages. If it's all going to be deleted, that is probably four pages to delete.

So, if you intend to work on the page, fine that you moved it. However, are you intending that? There was really no sign that anyone actually cared about this page. And then there is the matter of the page name.

Wikipedia uses a flat page structure that is pretty much only organized through categories, as far as anything maintained. "Constitution of Japan" could be a page there. However, however, where a page might best go has more flexibility. I'm working toward eliminating these specialized articles flying by themselves. I don't know why that constitution page was created. We might well have a page on Japan. So we could have Japan/Constitution. We do have a page, Comparative law and justice/Japan, which might properly have (as with all those CLJ pages) a page on the country's constitution, [[Comparative law and justice/Japan/Constitution. Or we could have a project that studies constitutions. So then we could have pages that study constitutions, as subpages of this project.

However, what has happened here is that people, for years, have just done what occurred to them in the moment. So we have no consistent practice. It's like a university with no organized curriculum, no clear division into subjects and subtopics.

What I'm doing is to start thinking about the organization of Wikiversity. It's famous for being quite a mess.

So, if a page name is to be, say, Japan/Constitution, should the definite article be used, as you did? The Constitution of Japan. I'd like you to think about an effect of that. Alphabetization does not sort the name with other similar pages, in a useful manner. That's why in an aphabetized index we'd want the page name to begin with either Japan or Constitution. We don't need the "the" for the name, it's extra, it doesn't communicate anything that isn't communicated without it. The definite article, in English, is used to distinguish some particular thing from, one that we are considering, from a general class of things. We use possessive pronouns the same way. Saying "Japan" accomplishes that. It's not just any old constitution, it is the Japanese constitution.

Ah, and do we capitalize "Constitution"? Secret: We may avoid that issue entirely, by having Constitution be the first word in the page name. As in Japan/Constitution or Comparative law and justice/Japan/Constitution or Comparative law and justice/Constitutions/Japan.

I didn't want to get into this whole matter if the page was just going to disappear!

So what I'd like for you to do, Goldenburg, is consider how Wikiversity might be organized. There is no one "right answer." However, if we don't start working on it, the disorganization will simply increase and become more and more difficult to clean up.

Okay, now where from here? First of all, there is indeed an article Constitution of Japan. If you want to improve our resource, first thing to do would be to link to the Wikipedia article. Notice, no "the." Don't fix that yet! Wait until it's clear what you are going to do. Maybe discuss it. Where would this page go. Are we going to have just one resource, on the Japanese Constitution, or are we going to have a *family* of resources, on Constitutions and then the Constitutions of particular countries, or are we going to have a political atlas of the world, with articles on countries and then on aspects of their government and culture and geography, etc.?

Notice the categories on Constitution of Japan. They are all about Japan, except for the 1947 events category. The category w:Category:Constitutions of Japan is a subcategory of w:Category:Constitutions by country and Japanese law. These reflect, to some degree, the two major organizational approaches I suggested.

The way I personally think of Wikiversity organization is that, if a topic could reasonably be a course at a university or school, it can reasonably be a top level resource on Wikiversity. It would be listed in the "Wikiversity Catalog," as would a course at an ordinary university. At a University, courses are offered by Schools or Departments, linking the classes or courses as part of an overall subject or area of study.

It is possible that we will have courses that don't fit into this model, but identifying them, if they are considered adequately educational, then can suggest holes or gaps in our School structure. My daughter is studying, rather intensely, Cosmetics. How to make them from available ingredients, how to skillfully apply it, etc. She is mostly getting the information from Youtube, plus her own experimentation. What School would this fit under?

Thanks for your thoughtful efforts. —Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:09, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Projects (Texas)
I started up two projects with Texas included: U.S. states and Megaregions. - Sidelight12 Talk 08:31, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

What do you think about that? Do you have any ideas? You may also be interested in the Virginia pages. - Sidelight12 Talk 15:23, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Its wonderful Sidelight, now we have well organized documents about each state in the USA. I'll get to work on it once I am done organizing my Project space. Why can't we add a "history" page for each state? --Goldenburg111 18:36, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * History is included in it. It is about using historical sites that can be visited to tell the story of history. If it is just about history, it will be no different than Wikipedia, which I'm trying to make it different than. Now if someone is able to contribute on theoretical, alternate (unlikely), or aspects of history (a historian telling what probably happened by their own research, or how some figure thought to shape history), they can add that to the subpages. - Sidelight12 Talk 18:43, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * As matters stand, there can be a page for each state. Easy to create as stubs. Each stub can refer to the Wikipedia article on the state. Then, someone who wants to work on a state, as an educational project (for their own learning and to assist with others learning), sections can be added to each state page, there could easily be a History section. If this becomes latge, it can be moved to a subpage under the state page. If a student project is outmoded or not necessarily well done, this can be moved to a specific student project page, under the original page. It may not be necessary to delete the material, even if it is wrong. If the user decides to delete it, and that is their own work, that will generally be respected. (If that work was started as a subpage, it's relatively easy to tell if it is one user's work.)
 * So a page could start as a student project page, it would say so, and custodians would generally support your right to create your personal project as you see fit, as long as it is not misleading by pretending to be consensus. Then such a page can be, with consensus, moved up to become an officially neutral page, not simply your own work any more. It can go either way, you'd move a page down (away from the top level) if someone complains about, and move it up, if there is consensus or you reasonably expect it. Ask if in doubt!
 * Wikipedia doesn't allow subpages in mainspace, it does not allow original research and it does not allow "forks." I.e., more than one page on a topic. "POV forks" are absolutely discouraged. That is, pages about differing points of view on a topic, whereas we can use them here to allow each point of view to be developed and expressed and explored. And criticized. That is part of why Wikiversity has so little conflict. There isn't a single page to fight over, with each point of view, sometimes, claiming to be the "neutral point of view." That boils down to, too ofen, "I'm right and you are wrong." Wikipedia really can break down whenever, say, the state of a scientific field, in the journals (reliable sources) is different from the popular conception (i.e., what most generally knowledgeable Wikipedia editors will think) which occasionally happens. Or when the majority is so convinced that it's right, and that any other way of looking at the topic is wrong, and then it tries to protect the readers against learning about that "wrong point of view." Here, we almost completely avoid that mess.
 * The point is to understand the process of *growing* resources that educate. Having an overall structure is more efficient, and will encourage more work from others. Part of the wiki concept is that, properly handled, the resources will improve with time. Be sure to have fun!
 * Thanks, Sidelight, for encouraging this. —Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:15, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Editing User Space
I prefer to edit my own user space. If you have suggestions on things I should add, please feel free to comment on my talk page. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:06, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Oops, sorry Dave. --Goldenburg111 19:09, 1 January 2014 (UTC)