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== removal. ==
== removal. ==
{{hat|This debate isn't making progress. Just... let it go.}}

Decided to be BOLD and nip a potential off-topic debate in the bud. I suppose it'll cause another debate here, but better here than on the "reader-facing" page.
Decided to be BOLD and nip a potential off-topic debate in the bud. I suppose it'll cause another debate here, but better here than on the "reader-facing" page.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous&diff=424696821&oldid=424696085 Diff]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous&diff=424696821&oldid=424696085 Diff]
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:Cool out, guys. I have no idea what you're arguing about, because apparently somebody "redacted" all the context for this discussion. Frankly, I don't ''care'' what you're arguing about. [[Wikipedia:Wikibreak|Take a break]], relax, and when you're ready to contribute to the encyclopedia, we'll be glad to have you all back. [[User:Nimur|Nimur]] ([[User talk:Nimur|talk]]) 20:57, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
:Cool out, guys. I have no idea what you're arguing about, because apparently somebody "redacted" all the context for this discussion. Frankly, I don't ''care'' what you're arguing about. [[Wikipedia:Wikibreak|Take a break]], relax, and when you're ready to contribute to the encyclopedia, we'll be glad to have you all back. [[User:Nimur|Nimur]] ([[User talk:Nimur|talk]]) 20:57, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
{{hab}}

Revision as of 21:03, 18 April 2011

[edit]

To ask a question, use the relevant section of the Reference desk
This page is for discussion of the Reference desk in general.
Please don't post comments here that don't relate to the Reference desk. Other material may be moved.
The guidelines for the Reference desk are at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines.
For help using Wikipedia, please see Wikipedia:Help desk.

92.15.8.14

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
OK. I'm pulling rank again. As an uninvolved administrator I am closing this, and a thread below down. Reciprocal "Please block/ban/deal with this editor" stuff isn't good. If you've got a genuine problem, deal with it on their talk pages, or try a dipute resolution method. Calls for a kangaroo court in the context of this talk page aren't a great way to fix problems you are having. --Jayron32 20:40, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

92.15.8.14 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

The user has done nothing but ridicule Americans, while making no attempt to answer the OP's questions, so I'm in process of deleting his garbage. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:01, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Don't do that again, please, Bugs. Your post to his talk page was as rude as his one snide remark. If you can't handle an editor you whom you think is a troll without getting bent out of shape yourself, then leave it for someone else to deal with.
I also don't understand why you decided that you should make this removal, for instance. Aside from pointing out (correctly) that your response seemed to address a twentieth-century U.S. burial rather than the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English burials the original poster was asking about, I don't see anything offensive there. Criticizing your post isn't a personal attack, though dismissing everything another editor has said as 'garbage' may be.
As a gesture of good faith, save for the post that mentioned Americans you should probably put back the comments that you deleted. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:40, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you wish to restore his negative and ignorant comments, feel free. But rest assured that if you do so, then (1) I will rebut those comments; and (2) I will remember this the next time someone here yells at me for posting comments that are more useful than the ones the IP posted. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(1) is exactly what you should have done in the first place. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. There was a lengthy discussion here recently about not getting into arguments in front of the OP. Another option I thought of was to simply delete that junk and not mention it here, but I thought it better to report it. If you really think the guy's comments were useful, you can put them back. I'm certainly not going to, since I thought they were junk and I still do. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:59, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Getting into disputes about factual information relating to the OP's question is both condoned and encouraged. Getting into arguments about workings of the Ref Desk itself (e.g. user behavior) is generally not. If you think the poster is factually incorrect, please feel free to argue your point, obviously. Honestly I don't see what's gotten you so worked up here. He thinks you're wrong. That's not an extremely novel assertion. Everyone thinks we're all wrong sometimes; sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:09, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Having everything that one could want or wish sometimes does bad things to people. "Indeed, it sometimes makes them naughty, as it has made the people in America." - Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand why any of these posts were deleted. The removals were completely inappropriate.
If it was against policy to point out when BBugs's reply didn't answer the question as-written, we'd all be blocked. APL (talk) 14:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If I say something that's not correct, would it kill you to simply say, "That's not correct"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:04, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Probably not, but it might. Being a sarcastic jerk is pretty fundamental to my nature. It isn't healthy to hold it in.
However, Let me try again in a more serious tone : The posts you've removed appear to me to be completely appropriate and correct criticisms of ref-desk answers. Other users commonly make similar criticisms of posts made both by you and by others. I doubt you would have removed them if they had come from a named user. APL (talk) 18:36, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I removed them specifically because (1) they were attacks on others, in front of the OP, which are not to be done, as per recent discussions here; and (2) they made no attempt to answer the question posed by the OP. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:47, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just wondering if this constitutes tacit consent for us to quietly delete BBugs' off-topic or incendiary contributions. — Lomn 14:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, as long as you report such deletions here, as I did. And I shall do likewise with others' incendiary comments. Like the IP's comments in this case. However, as I've said about eleventeen times now, if you think the IP's comments add value to the discussion, go ahead and put them back. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:42, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the edits you made were edit warring to remove comments that were critical but not 'incendiary': [1], [2], [3], [4]. This post by 92.15, while a bit snarky, is not a justification for damnatio memoriae—certainly not without a prior discussion here. Additional careless wholesale removal of another editor's posts may lead to blocks or other editing restrictions for you, Baseball Bugs. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:43, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not incendiary to you, because it wasn't you that was being attacked. If you want to add back the IP's highly useful and informative comments, go ahead. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Bugs, I believe I've suggested this before, so please forgive me for repeating myself. It's clear that your interactions with IP editors are highly-charged. I think it would be best if you avoided direct interaction with IP editors at the desks.* No removals, no name-calling, no snide asides, that sort of thing. Similarly, I think it would be useful for you to stop trying to re-cast these recurring issues onto IP editors (as you've done "about eleventeen times now", including at least twice in this particular indent cycle). As with IP edits that you don't like, simply ignoring critical comments (including this one) would be preferable to recurrent finger-pointing.
*Yes, I think it's fine if you continue your work removing long-term banned users and the like. Your judgment is such that I don't see the need to try to wrangle every last iota of possibility into the above. — Lomn 17:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As usual, the drive-bys are afforded more respect than those who actually try to answer questions. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your poor behavior, and no one else's, is responsible for the respect others accord you. It's not a zero-sum game -- I'm more than capable of finding both parties' behavior lacking in these Bugs-vs-the-IP spats (and I often do). The core problem is that it's repeatedly Bugs-vs-the-IP (and that the IP's behavior is rarely the worse of the two). — Lomn 19:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As usual, the clique pulls together and looks for a scapegoat. Next week it'll be Cuddly, then somebody else. Humbug. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Bugs ... you're part of the 'clique'. We're just asking that you to abuse the outsiders less. (Don't believe me? Post as an anon for a few weeks.) APL (talk) 01:07, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is this[5] an appropriate comment for an editor to make, lecturing the OP about capitalizations? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:17, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Eh. Since it's a follow-up to a SOFIXIT/edit-the-encyclopedia suggestion, there's a reasonable case for that sort of editorial advice. I'd find it less appropriate if it were a one-off criticism without that context. — Lomn 17:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's a particular ref desk denizen who upper-cases every word. The guy's been asked about it but he won't change. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"The guy's been asked about it but he won't change" - words we can all usefully meditate on. Isn't that right, Bugs? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:02, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Vandalism/censoring of mildly critical comments

In my questions "Raised churchyard graves" and "Farmhouse or Hall" I posted replies querying if modern American or contemporary Guatemalan practice really had any bearing on practice in England two or three centuries or more ago, as the American (?) posters seemed to think. There replies were not at all offensive but part of normal debate.

There replies were removed, as were my further brief comments wondering where my replies had gone.

So who or what removed them please? Surely this is at least against etiquette? It rather sinister if one cannot debate the subject.

Reading the comments to those questions, I'm surpised and saddened that most of the commentators seemed oblivious to, or refuse to accept, the idea that contemporary practice in American etc is unlikely to be extrapolatable to England of centuries ago. I tried to make this comment on the page. 92.24.184.41 (talk) 10:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, now I've noticed your debate above. 92.24.184.41 (talk) 10:34, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry about that, it was just Bugs being over-vigilant. He's a good sort really. You didn't have to bring the whole Atlantic divide into it, by the way: it's just that there's a strong compulsion for a well-meaning answerer to charge in and say something irrelevant that they know about, rather than say nothing. Happens all the time, people trying to make things fit the question that come from the wrong century or the wrong country. You can call it fluff, or froth, or something, and we try to reduce it, but it will always happen, and anyway sometimes it's interesting. No need to suggest that Americans are ignorant about foreign cultures, which is no more true a stereotype than the one that says us Brits have bad teeth (both things seem to me to be very slightly true, but are highly subjective and somewhat forgivable, and don't need mentioning). 81.131.0.64 (talk) 11:52, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since the above and below sections have both been closed for comment, let me do so here. If I was mistaken in seeing that something had been deleted when it had not been, then I'm sorry.

I'm disapointed that none of the text below discusses the request/suggestion that Baseball Bugs is given a temporary or longer ban for deleting other peoples responses. The responses were part of the normal discussion of politely querying wether someone's assertion is true or relevant. Not just deleting people's postings, but deleting other people's brief querying of what had happened to their missing postings as well, so that the casual reader could not even tell that something had been deleted. As far as I recall there was another similar request or complaint along these lines that has rolled off the top of the page. His stated reason was that they were anti-American (like McCarthyism), but this is not true. I think the real reason is that he does not like anything that could be interpreted as mild criticism of himself or of his nation, and as I was an unregistered editor, he felt safe in deleting it, 1984-style. I confirm that I have been contributing to Wikipedia for years, and I do not wish to register as I do not want to get involved with personalities, such as this episode.

I know which postings of mine have been deleted. To the casual reader you would never even know I had made them. Has Baseball Bugs been doing this with other people's postings that he does not like also?

The other less significant bad behaviours are 1) making irrelvant postings that divert the discussion away from the subject, and 2) trying to make (unfunny) jokes. I do hope that these pages can be prevented from insidiously descending into a bear-pit where only "bears" want to be, as has been the fate of so many other forums. Thanks 92.28.242.164 (talk) 11:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW I would support a temporary ban, although knowing this editor such a sanction would be unlikely to have any long-term effect on his behaviour. --Viennese Waltz 11:48, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would have an effect on his behaviour, but even if it did not it would at least give us some relief during the ban. 92.15.19.232 (talk) 13:06, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As you can see from the "removed a question" below, zapping apparent trolling is not so unusual. Meanwhile, I was advised to be more careful about deletions, and I have taken that advice. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There was not any "apparent trolling". 92.15.19.232 (talk) 13:02, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Are you talking about that other IP user's comments? Well, to me they looked like trolling. Hence the term "apparent". However, if you think that other user's comments add value to the discussion, then go ahead and add them back. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A temporary ban for Baseball Bugs please?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
See thread above. I am closing this down. Bugs asks for sanctions against 95.15... 95.15 asks for sanctions against Bugs. No one is getting sanctioned today. --Jayron32 20:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone agree that Baseball Bugs should be given at least a temporary ban, and be encouraged to join a chat forum instead?

She/He must have more responces on these pages than anyone else. Most, or amost all of the responses do not provide any information relevant to the question, although they might share a 'keyword' in common, and simply divert discussion off at a tangent. I dread getting one of his responses to a question I might ask, as that means subsequent replies will be irrelevant, and recent experience suggests that any comments he does not like will be simply deleted without trace. Note the more to-the-point and relevant replies and mature discussion on the Language or Mathematics boards, where Baseball Bugs seldom goes.

Now, and I understand in the past, he has taken it upon himself to delete responces that, although part of the normal debate regarding what is or isnt true or relevant in answering the question, could therefore be seen as being mildly critical of his replies.

Such shameless and tyranical behaviour described above, with the implication that he is unaware of its immaturity and wrongness or how it reflects on himself, suggests to me that he may be someone who is very young.

I also note that the question I asked here yesterday, asking why my reponces had disapeared, has itself disapeared without trace or comment. Could it be restored please?

I'm keeping a copy of this so that I can re-post it if it gets deleted. Thanks. 92.15.20.189 (talk) 10:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, suddenly my question that previously seemed to be deleted has now re-appeared, I don't know why. 92.15.20.189 (talk) 11:01, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your question (one section above) had never disappeared. We don't ban people here for being chatty; most of us are chatty at times. Instead of banning each other, we try to gently nudge each other back on track, when things get out of hand. Regarding the removals, Bugs has been told, in no unclear terms, not to do this again, and he has been informed that a repitition of removing critical comments like that might actually result in some sort of temporary sanctions. I'm sorry your comments got removed, but I think we can drop this whole issue now. If he removes your comments again, bring it up here. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I get less cross with Bugs' "witty" one-liners than I do with IP editors asking for other editors to be blocked when they haven't even bothered to register themselves. HiLo48 (talk) 11:33, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is no requirement to register here, and as long as that is our policy, we shouldn't be discriminating based on whether an editor has a registered account or not. People who don't like this policy of allowing unregistered users to edit, can try to change that policy, but the reference desk, in particular, is not the place at all to do that. We get plenty of unregistered querents, and have a number of very helpful unregistered volunteers too. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:43, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to deal with unregistered editors when they are new and still learning the ropes, especially on pages like these, but I see a touch of arrogance in someone who has chosen to not fully join the project asking for a very established editor to be banned. HiLo48 (talk) 12:05, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean "deal with"? That seems a little high-handed in itself. As Sluzzelin pointed out, the mere fact that an editor is unregistered says nothing about their longevity with this project. For all we know, they may have been around for a number of years, rendering sterling service. Many people edit from work, but some of them are prevented from logging in, so they appear as unregistered. In any case, registering can mean as little as giving oneself a user name, in which case the rest of us will still know no more about the editor than before they registered. It's a false distinction that's best avoided. People have been trying to tell Baseball Bugs that for years, with little success. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:18, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding questions disappearing and reappearing, the reference desk pages have been a state of brokenness for me for several weeks, and you may be having the same problem. Often I see a page several days old. Then when I retry later I may see a more up-to-date page. Then later still it goes back to the days-old version. Purging cache has no effect (or, certainly, no lasting effect). I wish someone would fix this. 86.176.214.76 (talk) 13:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On occasion, for reasons I have never figured out, Wikimedia's cache and proxy servers treat logged-in users differently than IP/not-logged-in users. A basic introduction to Wikimedia's servers may help explain the complexity involved in serving a page to you. Wikimedia engineers and developers are making tweaks and technical changes all the time. Sometimes "glitches" happen, and old caches are delivered. More details, PHP caching, ..., squid caching, memcached caching, database caching, load-balancing, and so on. Add on top of that - any proxy and cache between Wikimedia and your web-browser (at least three distinct places are suspicious when "mysterious" caching is taking place: at the Tier-1 network, at the ISP, and at your client machine's operating system). The stock answer is to try Wikipedia:Purge. Unfortunately, the more you learn about enterprise server architecture and cache hierarchy, the more you will understand why Wikipedia:Purge doesn't actually guarantee the most up-to-date page version. Nimur (talk) 17:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I've been using Wikipedia for many years and I know that occasionally stale pages are presented. This recent problem with the reference desk is a different order of magnitude and has arisen fairly recently. More often than not I get a stale page (sometimes hours old, sometimes days old) and/or a page that is erroneously read-only. 86.160.208.94 (talk) 17:44, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Me too. The desks often display as if they're semi-protected even though they aren't. Yesterday the science desk loaded with the old monobook css for some reason, completely randomly. 82.43.90.38 (talk) 17:47, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Physiology and common sense

Riddle me this. Someone stated a self-observed fact about his own body and asked for explanation. He got answers, apparently good ones. For some reason he wasn't immediately pilloried and censured as a vile seeker of forbidden medical advice. I would not have thought that possible. Am pleased with the outcome, but puzzled. Are the self-appointed defenders of whatever-it-is-they-defend asleep? –Henning Makholm (talk) 17:48, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't a restriction on providing information about anatomy and physiology. As far as I read the question, Wnt was most interested in the mechanics of jaw movements ("the mechanics mystify me"). The best answer pointed out the article on the temporomandibular joint. This seems perfectly appropriate to me. If Wnt had asked something like "my jaw suddenly popped out of joint, what should I do?" or "what is causing the jaw pain that I'm having?" that would be different and subject to the usual restrictions on medical advice. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 18:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But he did ask (only very slightly paraphrased) "what is causing the restricted jaw movement I'm experiencing?". If the first editor to respond had instead blanked the question and replaced it with "medical question removed -- go see a doctor if you think your failure to move your jaw in certain directions may indicate a medical problem", wouldn't the overwhelming consensus here be that the removal was proper, and that the OP's protestations of mere curiosity was just as "guise" for asking a medical question? –Henning Makholm (talk) 18:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Although he stated it in first-person, to me it reads like he's asking a more general question. Also, he's an established editor as opposed to someone coming in from nowhere. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:15, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The addition of personal details does raise the legitimate question of whether Wnt was asking an "is this normal" type of question, which would not be appropriate for us to answer, because it would require some type of examination or other evaluation of whether there was truly abnormal jaw movement involved. But I don't get the sense that Wnt thinks his jaw movement is "restricted" in any pathological sense but rather in the sense that any given joint has certain range of motion restrictions. If another editor had removed the question I would have thought it was a little excessive but I probably wouldn't have argued very strongly against it. In general, it probably would have been better phrased to say something like "in my understanding, the human jaw can move front to back and side to side but cannot rotate left to right -- can someone explain the biomechanics of the jaw to me?" --- Medical geneticist (talk) 21:58, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that the usual criterion is not whether the poster himself thinks his observation points to anything pathological, but whether it is logically conceivable at all that his observations could possibly be symptoms of something dangerous, whether or not any real condition they could be symptoms of exists, or is known to anyone on the refdesk. The usual argument is that it doesn't even matter whether what he writes is or is not objectively abnormal, because he might conceivably have a real medical problem with his jaw and just have failed to describe his symptoms clearly enough for them to be discernible from the text he wrote. Therefore, if he were allowed to read on the refdesk that his description sounds normal, he might be deterred from seeing a doctor about the jaw and we could suddenly all wake up to headlines of "Victim Of Gnathal Agnotosis Sought Advice From Wikipedia, Was Told Not To Worry". I don't think much of this line of reasoning, but I sincerely thought it was so entrenched in consensus that it surprises me it's not being used here. I must have misunderstood the boundaries of its application. –Henning Makholm (talk) 02:35, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see it as a question along the same lines as, "Why can't I bend my knee backwards?" which is not just him, but pretty much everybody, unless they've had their knees severely damaged somehow. In any case, Wnt is a frequenter of this page, so he might offer some clarification at some point. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:20, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In the past, everyone else who asked such questions have been silenced with the argument that even confirming or denying whether it is normal for knees to bend backwards would constitute a medical diagnosis and therefore be verboten ... I'm not complaining that this rule has apparently changed, though. Or was it always the case that "I presume I'm typical" were the magic words that let the speaker get away with asking physiological questions that are off limits to the hoi polloi? –Henning Makholm (talk) 01:33, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you think Wnt's question is in fact a request for medical advice as opposed to simply "How does the body work?", feel free to argue for its removal. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:39, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Most of us on here can tell the difference. Can you really not, or are you just trying to make a point? --Mr.98 (talk) 01:48, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If I were going to break WP:POINT, I would have removed the thread and instructed Wnt to see a medical professional, rather than start a talk page thread. I really don't see what separates this from many other cases where a poster was also (clearly, to me) just trying to satisfy idle curiosity, but was told to go bother a doctor instead. –Henning Makholm (talk) 02:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to box the other editors' comments and advise the OP to see a doctor. ("Bother" does not compute. Doctors get paid for their services.) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The question was clearly an anatomy question. If you replace "me" and "I" with "You" or "Someone" you still have the same question. APL (talk) 17:27, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes questions have been closed as medical, even though the questioner believed they were asking a generic question about a normal condition, and just trying to establish biological facts - I remember this happening at least once. Possibly it was a question a while back about cold wrists which was framed in this way.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:39, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think reference deskers agree that they share a very basic knowledge of what is medically normal, and are willing to make assertions to questioners about it, too, provided the assertions don't appear even slightly controversial (or especially knowledgeable) to anyone.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:34, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

removed a question

I have removed a question. Let it be known henceforth that I intend to take a zero-tolerance approach to any further pointless questions from that IP. Looie496 (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a question, it seems harmless enough, though a bit odd. What's the history with that Kansas IP range? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:53, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(See below first) IIRC they're the one who wants to go to India to get their braces (asked twice, claimed it wasn't them despite similar IPs same geolocations/ISP); really, really like bidets/Japanese toilets and feel the need to convince us/everyone else of that; all their friends are holding grudges; for this and other reasons may want to join the South Korean airforce (being part? Korean); are worried the US economy is going to collapse; for this and I think the earlier reasons may want to move overseas to escape their student loan; may become homeless some time in the future but will keep their laptop and brilliant skills so need to find ways to make money; need to find ways to make money anyway with their brilliant skills (or something); and I'm pretty sure plenty of other things I can't recall off the top of my head. P.S. I'm only mentioning what I recall them having said in the past, please don't presume I'm saying any of those things are true or false or that this is a personal attack on them. Nil Einne (talk) 20:34, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ugh. Sounds all too familiar now. Good removal. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:39, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I didn't check the diff until now. The IP I am thinking of was the 70.179.169.x one. They also Geolocate to Kansas (the other one is a uni IP) and they're asking similar questions at the moment so I'm guessing it's the same person but I haven't looked enough to link them myself and I don't recall having made the connection before. Nil Einne (talk) 20:46, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so there may be some uncertainty. I'm hoping Looie will step in here and shed some additional light on the matter. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is clearly the same editor as 70.179.169.115 (talk · contribs), whose last question was also some nonsense about fireplaces. Looie496 (talk) 23:19, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit irked how much time we waste debating whether somebody's question is legitimate. Ultimately, our Reference Desk mission-statement says it all: we are a reference desk. So, let's template up something along these lines:
Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. This is a resource to assist Wikipedians who are seeking encyclopedic references. Questions that do not fall into this category will be deleted.
This is very simple and polite; we don't need to waste time debating whether the OP is wasting our time. Nimur (talk) 23:37, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How would that change anything? The legitimacy of "I hope to find some objective stats on calories burned while doing various activities, including cleaning a fireplace. Also, links would help." doesn't have to do with whether or not the questioner is asking for encyclopedic references. Taken literally as written, it's asking for encyclopedic references. Looie's claim in removing it is not that the question wasn't asking for encyclopedic references, it's that the questioner was just wasting peoples' time and didn't actually care about the answer. Most of the "is it legitimate or isn't it" debate is similar situations - they hinge not on whether the question is seeking encyclopedic references, but instead on whether or not the questioner is trolling or attempting to waste peoples' time. From my point of view, most of the back-and-forth in such debates is due to the uncertainty of people trying to mind-read the intents of posters: "Is he or isn't he honestly looking for an answer?" (as well as "Is he asking about pathophysiology of boils out of general interest, or because he wants medical advice about his own boil?") Saying that we only answer requests for encyclopedic references won't change the fact that people will bicker over whether or not the request for encyclopedic references was genuine or not. -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 00:29, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It could be worth a try. The worst that would happen is that it would be ignored, so we'd be no worse off, and someone might actually pay attention to it. Speaking of which, dealing with these trolls often depends on someone paying sufficient attention to patterns to realize when we're being trolled. In this particular case, if this had been the only question the guy had ever asked, it was at least in theory somewhat answerable, maybe by finding a chart about burning calories for various kinds of activities, although I have doubts that such a chart would include the activities of a chimney sweep. However, Looie recognized the pattern and tossed it into the bit bucket. And his reporting of it here served an educational purpose, in raising our level of alertness to that guy. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:49, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying no to any proposal to add reasons for deletion. And a template isn't necessary - who will even remember what the name of it is? It's sufficient just to say what is said above, in plain language. Wnt (talk) 01:57, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would not support the introduction proposed above. The reason is that although the reference desk is functionally a place to seek references for Wikipedia articles, most anonymous editors probably realize neither this nor the definition of "Wikipedians". Although I agree that the aforementioned series of questions seems pointless, we should refrain from removing any AGF questions even if deemed unencyclopedic as we do not currently have as strigent of WP:NOT restrictions for the refdesk as we do for article space, and it would be more productive only to remove questions deemed innappropriate trolling by consensus (except obvious cases). ~AH1 (discuss!) 19:03, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Even the trolls think they're doing the right thing. AGF is meaningless. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:10, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reverting massive unsummarized deletion

Is there an editor who is both able and willing to revert this massive unsummarized deletion?
Wavelength (talk) 05:50, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it. I'm willing to grant Hanlon's razor as the explanation for this one; looks like some IP editor edited an old version from the history and screwed things up horibly. I put things back the way they were, and re-added any material that had been added by other editors since this weirdness. All is well.--Jayron32 05:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Scsbot not working?

Hi. I've numerous times had to manually add the Level 1 Header for the current or a past date because the bot did not add the heading, leaving the section 20-something questions over a two-day span, and I suspect that the bot has a glitchlag. Thanks. ~AH1 (discuss!) 18:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For various reasons, the portion of the bot that adds date headers is not quite as reliable as the portion of the bot that does the actual archiving. (The actual archiving, by the way, is not done based on the date headers.) And for various other reasons, this has never been a high priority of mine to fix, but I'll see if there's something I can do. —Steve Summit (talk) 11:35, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

removal.

This debate isn't making progress. Just... let it go.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Decided to be BOLD and nip a potential off-topic debate in the bud. I suppose it'll cause another debate here, but better here than on the "reader-facing" page. Diff APL (talk) 15:09, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have also BOLDly removed the triggering comment, <redacted>. That comment is every bit as off-topic as my comments which you removed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:42, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
... and I was BOLD and removed an inflammatory (likely) mischaracterization of the comment. Let's keep it civil, people. -- 174.21.254.3 (talk) 17:02, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
<redacted> OK, <redacted> OK, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:08, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've been BOLD and removed part of Bug's previous comment. Partially because it's his usual bashing of Anon users, but mostly for comedy value. APL (talk) 18:18, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The usual double-standard among the ref desk clique - anon's can take shots at anyone and seldom suffer any slings and arrows. Maybe I should start editing via my IP so I could get the clique to defend me if I act like a drive-by. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If the IP had tried to start a political debate, or to "get in the last word" after it had been made clear it was inappropriate I would have deleted the comment outright, instead of deleting part of it for comedy value.
If you take offense at my light-hearted attitude feel free to say so, but if your problem is that you weren't allowed to make tangential political jibes, then frankly I believe that, as a long-time named ref-desker, you are getting deferential treatment that an IP editor would not receive. If the number of politically charged snipes, off-topic remarks, and jokes that appear as though they might be legitimate answers to anyone who doesn't 'get' them, came from a consistent IP address, I'd be here advocating that it simply be banned and save everyone the trouble. I suspect you'd be right behind me on that. (Of course, I always advocate the Scientific Method. You've got your hypothesis. Now try an experiment! Anyone can log out for a week and edit as an IP.) APL (talk) 18:47, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The other editor chose to make an off-topic political statement, and I chose not to let it stand unchallenged. But don't be so sure of what I actually do take offense at, nor of what my complete views on capital punishment are. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I got even BOLDer and removed the rest of it, again partially for comedy value, but also because I'd hate to let Bugs provoke a political debate by trying to "get in the last word". APL (talk) 18:21, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Concur with APL's removal. Concur on the content of Bugs' counter-removal, disagree on Bugs being the one to make that removal, definitely not happy that it was a stealth edit to the comment. That misrepresents what User:Marco polo posted and is heavily frowned upon here, as I'm sure the participants are aware. — Lomn 17:28, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How does it misrepresent his statement? The factual part remains. The editorial comment has no relevance to the factual part. I could have removed the "proud" part and merely left the comment that he lives in one of the 14 (as do I, by the way), but even that has no particular relevance to the fact. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:28, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You did not note that you had altered his signed comment. However, I now find your repeated willful continuance of poor behavior and/or judgment during this issue to be the item of greatest concern. You should not have removed MP's words yourself (it looks bad, given that your comment had just been removed). You should not have removed MP's words without specific notice of having done so (per widespread RD and WP consensus). You should not have dragged your longstanding feud with IP editors into this discussion (see dead horse, thataway). You should not have continued your baiting comments regarding MP, who's not even in this discussion, below. And I shouldn't have to lay this out, because you've been here for years and shouldn't need this sort of babysitting. There was a very simple solution to all this when you saw MP's original comment, and that is to redact the "proud" bit and make a note of "let's please avoid the political aspects of capital punishment, thanks" or the like. You chose a course of action bearing no resemblance to a simple solution. — Lomn 19:54, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No one notified me, either. I merely happened to see it here. Nor did anyone else seem interested in removing the equally-off-topic comments of Mr. Polo. Thanks for demonstrating, once again, that the clique's double-standard is alive and well. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:00, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This may sound like a radical idea, but how about if Marco himself speaks up instead of everyone here speaking for him?Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:24, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What?!? You've tried to speak for him twice in this thread alone. It was deleted both times. APL (talk) 18:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
< Three Times! --apl > I would like to hear what he has to say on the matter, though. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:02, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You keep deleting my comments. Do they hit too close to home for your comfort level? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:11, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. APL (talk) 19:12, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Then there's no logical explanation other than the old "I don't like it" argument. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:16, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cool out, guys. I have no idea what you're arguing about, because apparently somebody "redacted" all the context for this discussion. Frankly, I don't care what you're arguing about. Take a break, relax, and when you're ready to contribute to the encyclopedia, we'll be glad to have you all back. Nimur (talk) 20:57, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]