User talk:Black Kite

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User:Are You The Cow Of Pain? = Sock

Sigh. It's pretty frustrating to expend the effort to interact positively over a period of months with someone who can conservatively be called an ardent and combative deletionist... only to find that they were never playing by the rules to begin with. Given the past history of both inclusionist and deletionist radicals participating loudly and frequently at AfD only to be later unmasked as socks, do you think an exception to "Checkuser is not for fishing" is in order? That is, if someone rapidly starts participating widely in AfDs with what an uninvolved admin sees as a pattern of advocacy that is consistent with one or more indef'ed or banned editors, a protective/preventative checkuser may be requested. Frustrated and brainstorming here--your thoughts are welcome and appreciated. Jclemens (talk) 01:14, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

It's a place we've been before (deletionist sock farms that is). CU isn't the be-all and end-all - main thing is keeping vigilant, and improving sourcing to sway more non-aligned editors (sigh). Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:34, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Aye. To be honest, it's fairly obvious when they appear. Perhaps we should be similarly vigilant though about established editors that spam AfD with votes with utterly negligiable rationales. I couldn't possibly give you any examples of those, though :) Black Kite (t) (c) 23:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Eh, people who never show any originality as !voters (and there have been plenty on both sides) may be annoying, but I don't get the feeling they actually affect the outcome all that much. At least we can presume that such one-note !voters are being sincere, even if their standards are not Wikipedia's. Jclemens (talk) 02:33, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, that one went over my head - what happened in 1958...Man U plane crash...ummm...? Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:31, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, it was a bit lateral, I'll email you :) Black Kite (t) (c) 19:47, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I am all ears. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:56, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Nothing to do with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1958 Australian network television schedule (weekday) is it? Or a highly cynical reference to the European Economic Community? Alzarian16 (talk) 10:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not, but I hadn't seen that AfD before - goodness me, there's some - I'll be nice - "interesting" rationales in that, on both sides! Black Kite (t) (c) 19:50, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I was sure I had it! I want to know now, can you email me as well? Alzarian16 (talk) 17:14, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Deletion nomination spree

I was just curious, if you had any self-imposed limit on how many deletions in one day to the same wikiproject becomes impolite? I work 62 hours a week, go to college, and deal with a sick wife, to find your work. Well, I can't counter them, or research that many articles. You win. Congrats. I have to take some time off at the hospital for the week coming. Enjoy yourself. Mathewignash (talk) 23:50, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

• Seriously? I haven't nominated anything for a while, and then I nominate a dozen articles? That is a self imposed limit - if you haven't noticed, there are hundreds of articles in the same state - are we supposed to ignore them? I'm sorry for your personal issues, but if these articles had been created properly in the first place, the question wouldn't arise. Black Kite (t) (c) 23:55, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
  • I'd ask that you consider the impact in RL actions like this can have. I've never understood why we worry so much about BLP issues as being harmful to people but ignore the stress and harm done by trashing editor's work here. Yes, those articles likely don't belong here, but most people can't improve 12 articles in 7 days so even if they are supportable he's got an impossible task. Harming real people is harming real people. Hobit (talk) 01:46, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
    • And I was supposed to know about the editors RL issues before I nominated a very small percentage of the hundreds of sub-standard Transformers articles for deletion, was I? Come on Hobit, it's 12 articles, not 120. How long does it take to find sources for 12 articles - especially as with some of these, there clearly aren't any? I should be irritated at your last sentence, but I think it's best if I just ignore it, I think. Black Kite (t) (c) 09:14, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
      • Agreed, you couldn't know. But once you did you had options. And sourcing 12 articles isn't trivial if sources are scarce and time is limited. I certainly don't mean to offend, but I will point out that tearing down things people put work into hurts. Sometimes that needs to happen (both articles and things in real life) but being aware of the pain caused can be helpful. Hobit (talk) 13:19, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
        • I know exactly what you're talking about; but many of these articles have been tagged for notability, trivia, plot summary, non-free image abuse and lots else for months (if not years) and nothing is ever done until the "delete" option is activated. I don't really know what else I can do - I mean, that selection of 12 articles is one initial letter (G) from one sub-category of the entire collection of TF articles. At this rate cleaning them up would take years, because the creators don't seem to have any interest in doing it until deletion is threatened. Black Kite (t) (c) 13:27, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
          • Would pointed recognition help? I'm completely agreed, as I'm sure most are, that cleanup is preferable to deletion, and know from experience that it is far better to motivate volunteers with carrots than sticks. Jclemens (talk) 19:22, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
            • If you can think of any carrots that might help here, I'd seriously be glad to hear them! Black Kite (t) (c) 19:41, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
• User talk:Mathewignash you are acting as if there is some conspiracy to delete all TF articles. Dwanyewest (talk) 01:18, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
  • The socks in the area might lead a reasonable person to believe that. I certainly don't think Black Kite is part of that, but there has been a lot of AfD activity in that area recently. Merging and creating lists would seem a more reasonable direction to go... Hobit (talk) 01:46, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Nevertheless alot of mediocre TF articles have been tolerated for years and now inclusionists are crying its not fair articles are been deleted when all they present as sources are fanistes and other poor sources as evidence of notability. Dwanyewest (talk) 02:32, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
    • If people took half the effort they spent participating in AfD's and just merged the stupid articles intelligently and thoughtfully into lists and/or sourcing the more notable among them, the problem would be a good bit closer to solved. I'm not exempting myself or any side from this critique--I wish the system rewarded editing more than advocacy, but it would be incorrect to say that it does. Jclemens (talk) 02:36, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
      • If that's the result of these AfDs then that's fine and dandy. The problem is that (a) tagging articles for improvement doesn't work - no-one ever does anything. (b) tagging them for merge is the same, and I've no idea where they should be merged (c) PRODding them - until recently - just resulted in someone removing the PROD. Perhaps it would be best if someone went through all the character articles and - apart from the obviously notable ones - just redirected them all to lists. The history would still be there to improve the article if necessary. Black Kite (t) (c) 09:10, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
• If some of these articles were merged Inclusionists would moan that certain articles shouldn't be merged. And the quality of the sources as evidence as justifiable notable is dubious at best. Can inclusionists who may be reading this really wish to tell sources such as these of a good quality. [1] [2][3][4][5][6] . Do you really believe they are independent I don't because there are WP:FANSITES. Inclusionists use rubbish this like this as evidence like this and can't or won't find better evidence scream WP:ITEXISTS and wonder why their favourite character being nominated for deletion. They only have themselves to blame. Dwanyewest (talk) 03:06, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
• Perhaps someone can approve a bot or automated program to nominate all the transformers articles at once? Tedescoboy22 (talk) 05:10, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Generally gets (justifiably) opposed -is a non-starter. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:25, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
    • The AfD page simply wouldn't cope with 500-1000 items in one go. And you'd have to write separate rationales for many of them as well. This is the reason why I'm doing this in very small chunks with time allowed in between. Black Kite (t) (c) 09:14, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
• To those complaining about having not enough time to defend articles nominated for deletion:

1. Some topics just couldn't possibly be notable, like Poison Bite[7]. Trying to prevent their deletion was attempting the virtually impossible.
2. Many (most?) of those articles have been around for quite a while, notability was not established during that time, as if the editors of those articles forgot about inclusion criteria until the AfDs came, and failed to find good sources when they had to. There might have been some topics which got deleted due to long-term negligence in regards to source-finding. (Energon (power source) is possibly one of them.)
3. Wikipedia is a volunteer service, if you take too much time editing Wikipedia and it ruined your life, that was by your own choice. Sorry if I'm being rude, but that's how wikis work. -NotARealWord (talk) 13:02, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

What people are ignoring in all of this is that someone put effort into sharing information on non-notable topics. It's one thing to delete vandalism, misinformation, or promotion, but all too often people looking to delete something list "fancruft" as if it were an intentional disruption or malevolent insertion. It's neither. It's the attempt of people who don't necessarily play "the wikipedia game" to add material they care about. Jclemens (talk) 18:48, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is saying it's intentional disruption; there have been cases like that, but this is an area - and it isn't the only one by a long way - that has a lot of fans who have decided to add every trivial detail of the franchise to Wikipedia. And of course, a lot of this was added before we guided new article editors as we do these days. However, there isn't really a lot of excuse for experienced editors to keep adding more and more non-notable information even when their previous articles have been tagged for improvement and in some cases deleted. Of course people are resistant to their work being deleted, but that doesn't mean we can shy away from cleaning it up to meet our standards if they won't do it themselves - and sadly the evidence is that in most cases they can't - or won't - do this. Black Kite (t) (c) 19:45, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

It's not as if all the people who make the AfDs simply hate Transformers (maybe some of them do, but that won't win an argument for them), User:Khajidha and I are both experienced editors at TFWiki. Plus, I started a page about the TF fan club stories on TV Tropes. It's more that we'd like to get rid of articles that don't belong here in Wikipedia. WP isn't the only place to add information on the internet. NotARealWord (talk) 07:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I don't hate them at all. In fact, these discussions prompted me to go rummage around out in storage for two boxes of them which I hadn't looked at in probably 10 years or more. All G1 era, and if I clean off the embedded dust and such, might bring in some nice eBay loot. What I do hate is fanboy minutiae, which is what the vast, vast majority of these articles are. How much time someone put into it is an empty argument, as the material can be easily transwikied to wikia and retained. Tarc (talk) 14:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

And where the material will probably languish in typo-ridden obscurity for everafter in some backwater. The beauty of wikipedia is its crossfertilisation and improvement of articles by editors passing by, and the more rigorous application of sourcing and formatting making a more polished-looking and comprehensive 'pedia. I prefer to have my knowledge base unified not pigeonholed. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:36, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I prefer that as well, but only for subject material that is deemed important, not for every scrip of information in existence. Tarc (talk) 15:36, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

(ec) The problem with Transwikiing is that it fragments knowledge rather than collects it. It's one of my pet peeves with Wikipedia: perfectly good things (not attack/blp vio, copyvio, hoax, etc.) get shuffled off elsewhere... and there's no good way to get there from here. At best we get a soft redirect, but only if the knowledge is moved to a Wikimedia project, or maybe an external link. Wikiquote, Wikispecies, etc. are all well and good, and I have no problem with fictional topics being dealt with in minutae on other wikis. But if someone wants to look for Estelmo at Wikipedia, they should get a direct link to the information they're seeking. Current deletion and interwiki connectivity practices preclude that. Jclemens (talk) 15:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

If people try to look for stuff and they find that it isn't here, there's always Google and other search engines. NotARealWord (talk) 19:09, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

For the hundreds of NN character articles, either redirect the really trivial ones and merge the ones with some info, to character or overarching articles and have a link to TFwiki. I'm actually not opposed to soft redirects in some cases, though. Black Kite (t) (c) 19:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Ken Zaretzky (new article in my userspace)

Hi Black Kite, Back in August Yesimhuman appealed the deletion of an article on Ken Zaretzky. The Administrators in the appeal upheld the deletion (based on notability) because the procedure had been followed correctly but suggested that a new article which better showcased Ken Zaretzky's notability in his field could (should?) be written.

You as part of the appeals process (I'm new to Wikipedia, I don't know all the correct terminology) had offered to yesimhuman to look over the new draft and make suggestions, give ideas, etc. Yesimhuman asked me to write the new article because he doesn't have confidence in his abilities as a writer. I have written a new article which is now in my userspace. Yesimhuman did help me with a lot of the facts on Ken Zaretzky. Could you please take a look at it and tell me if it is ready to submit to Wikipedia and if not please give me any ideas or suggestions you have to improve it? Please note that the category tags at the bottom of the article are intentionally misformatted so that the article won't show up in any categories until it is ready. Thank you! Youngshakespeara (talk) 18:06, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

• It looks better to me, but I wouldn't like to say whether the subject is completely notable or not - your best idea is to open a new entry at WP:DRV pointing to your userspace draft so that others can decide. Best, Black Kite (t) (c) 18:11, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Two battlegrounders

I'd appreciate your looking at User talk:VernoWhitney#Two battlegrounders. I'm assuming that, like VernoWhitney, you're familiar with the archives at Wikipedia talk:Article Rescue Squadron and most of the past year's back and forth here. You'll also probably want to review why Colonel Warden feels aggrieved here, in light of the fact that things like Snottywong calling him "rabid" do go unremarked. (Then there are edit summaries like this one.) Uncle G (talk) 15:46, 30 September 2010 (UTC)