User talk:Catherineyronwode

Battlefield Wikipedia

Your user page comments are entirely correct: Wikipedia is designed to be a battlefield. I try to teach this to my students, both by encouraging them to participate and by showing them select diffs, but my scope is limited. It is my sincere hope that, as a notable author, you might share your understanding of Wikipedia with a more general audience. Perhaps you could get an editorial published on the topic. - Lanny 01:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.121.221.174 (talk)

• Wikipedia was not the product of intelligent design. It was initiated as a stopgap measure and its success and development since seem to be a good example of evolution. This is, of course, driven by the survival of the fittest and so it behoves us to be fit. The predators and parasites that have occupied various ecological niches are to be expected. Imagine yourself to occupy a different niche, choosing a suitable totem to symbolise this. Catherine might be a great tree or wood, for example - indifferent to the foxes and wolves, as it steadily grows and endures. Myself, I might be a squirrel that plays in its branches ... Colonel Warden (talk) 10:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Couldn't agree with you more, cat. The whole place is a battlefield. You can either keep fighting or give up; I prefer to keep fighting, because when we give up, "they" win. I work mostly with comics articles and RPG stuff (how ironic), and those and any fiction suffer just as much from dealing with people with a battleground mentality as anything else, and perhaps moreso. 204.153.84.10 (talk) 22:41, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I have to say, you make some very good points. I don't think it is all necessarily evilly intended -- or even intended at all -- but the way the process is structured is essentially guaranteed to create a battlefield scenario. And the more important - esp. socially -- the topic is, the more intense the battle aspect inevitably becomes. I'm not sure I will keep doing it (editing), but I do get occasional glimmers of hope when I see an article land in a stable position with a reasonably accurate and balanced presentation. And I have to note the irony that you are still out there editing away yourself, many months after the battlefield manifesto. Cheers. Pechmerle (talk) 07:09, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Ironically the more important an issue is the less likely it is that the rules will actually apply to it. Wikipedia claims "Neutral point of view is determined by its prevalence in reliable sources, not it's prevailance among editors." This is a set-up for failure as has been proven. With editors making the determination it will invariably be the editors' view that prevails. A neutral view is inherently incompatible with such an editing philosophy. The only way forward is multiple points of view and since it is impossible to make this change the way wikipedia is set up somebody else will take the lead. Biofase ^flame| stalk  17:05, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The only real way forward is to have real editors, who are empowered to make substantive decisions, not just enforce (inherently flawed) process rules. It doesn't even have to be undemocratic, which I expect would be the biggest initial squawk. We could elect those who take on that role. A transition to that from where WP is now would be immensely difficult. The probable alternative is that over time WP becomes less and less relevant, and is no longer regarded as an encyclopedia. Heck, it isn't a true encyclopedia now, with the huge amount of fluff both as articles, and within articles. And, as now run, enormously too much energy is required to ever get an article on a controversial topic into something resembling reasonably accurate but balanced shape. Oh well, WP was an interesting idea. Pechmerle (talk) 06:28, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Multiple points of view are already in action on Wikinfo. Whether people should give up is a difficult question. There are arguments on both sides. Against what's said above there's the point that, if all the honest editors give up, leaving propagandists to take over & carry on the war against each other, Wikipedia would quickly become totally discredited, &/or forced to change. I can't tell people what to do. I'm a bit inconsistent. I no longer edit articles, but I still post comments. Peter jackson (talk) 09:25, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm a nooB editor, active a few months, thinking seriously about giving up. The battling is wearying, no fun. And I agree that in many ways Wikipedia is designed as a battleground, and invariably leads to all kinds of feuding. Does Wikipedia attract people who like to argue? Perhaps. I can be rather stubborn, argumentative at times. And while as individual battlers we may not like having to battle, perhaps in many cases the overall result is positive for readers -- that is, does the battling mean that the good ideas win out? Or does the spam and junk and crap win out? I haven't figured these things out yet.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:29, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Three factors aggravate things, in my view. (1) Wikipedia's anonymity (identities traceable not to real people but only computers) (2) the unfair imbalance between long creation time and fast deletion time and (3) rule complexity. Taken together, these three factors mean that Wikipedia is a perfect place for bullies to satisfy a personal need for power. A user armed with rules and a bent for destruction can have a field day pushing people around. And perhaps we might use the term Wikibullies to describe experienced yet secretly destructive users who browbeat fellow editors with narrow interpretations of complex rules and mask aggressiveness with a facade of helpfulness and an image of "following the rules". They sour the atmosphere. They poison the place for constructive editors. They don't contribute constructively. It's my hunch that a small group of editors in Wikipedia are Wikibullies who wreck the place for many others. There is community discussion about why many good editors keep leaving, and one hypothesis is that they are discouraged and frustrated by destructive people playing power games.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:29, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Strange Bedfellows

Catherine, I suspect that were we to compare positions on a list of major and minor issues in spiritualism and religion, politics, culture, sociology and history, we would agree on just about nothing. But it's fitting that I see you as an important ally in the one arena that has the ability to trump it all: Freedom of Thought. Please do not let thought-suppressing cabals of Wiki abusers blunt your determination to seek true neutrality, inclusiveness, and real world balance in treatment of faith topics. These cabals (especially the so-called ID Cab) stand for suppression of free thought, censorship of ideas, disrespect of spiritual and religious faith, and single-minded advancement of an intolerant and narrow-minded point of view. Folks like you are the only thing that stand in the way of their goal to denude Wikipedia of all but their "politically acceptable" thought. Good luck in all you do!24.21.105.252 (talk) 19:43, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

fyi re "hostile cite-tagging"

• Wikipedia talk:Disruptive editing#Not just fact tagging

Jack Merridew 09:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

And your point is?

working through the lower chakras is a bitch. and thats what were here for, in one model of reality. its getting very dark in here, hope the light breaks through. or maybe were all trying too hard to stay in the light, ignoring the darkness. wheres walt kelly when we need him? Mercurywoodrose (talk) 03:31, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Alien Encounters

I was meaning to drop you a note about this when it was AfDed but it got rapidly kept so is OK but I thought it worth seeing if you had any extra sources, especially from your time as editor. (Emperor (talk) 16:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC))

Thanks for the note -- i added some more notable names and a ref. cat (not logged in) 64.142.90.33 (talk) 07:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. (Emperor (talk) 21:46, 21 April 2009 (UTC))

Serial killer article

I haven't written about serial killers in awhile but I'll see what I can do. [[User:HumanFrailty]] (talk) 08:49, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Dante Arthurs and M J Anderson

I just wanted to let you know that I have deleted M J Anderson from the page People speculated to have been autistic because of the feeling that it should list only deceased people, or, more properly, people who've been speculated to be autistic only after their deaths. This is a controversial article and this policy may change; the last time a murderer was added to the AS list there was an all-out edit war. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 18:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Replying to your comment on my talk page. Actually, there is a notice on that page that says not to add living people, but I think editors tend to overlook it, and besides, there was already one living person on the list until today as the result of an unfinished edit conflict, so clearly the rule wasnt being upheld (including by me). Perhaps my saying that I had a "feeling" it should list only deceased people wasnt the best wording. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 02:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

It happens. No problem. cat Catherineyronwode (talk) 03:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer!

Note that I've just now reverted the redirects (they weren't done by me! {smiles}) of those articles about convicted or accused Craigslist killers. Again, Catherine, thanks. ↜Just me, here, now … 04:47, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't change "Craiglist killer" into a dab...

CATHERINE.......

Probably "Too Long, Didn't Read" - sorry.

1. .......I didn't change Craigslist killer to a dab...V did.
2. After which I restored it. Then V insisted it was a dab. So I restored it again and this time moved Craigslist killer to List of Craigslist killers (the reason being that a list is not a dab so V couldn't then f* with it).
3. Then V started a second article named Craigslist killer. (You can do that after an article has changed names by simply going to the original title's redirect page and editing it to instead start a new page. Which V did to make a brand new dab.) So, anyway, your article was saved as a "List" article -- and, also, V got his "dab"....
4. Then I turned his dab into a redirect. (This I did cos V INSISTED in listing accused folks' names plainly as "Craigslist killers" which is a Wikipedia Biographies of Living Persons vio!)
5. Wikidemon tagged the original article (which was now titled "List of") with a tag suggesting it be reworked for various reasons. Than I deleted this tag saying the article should either go for review at Articles For Deletion or remain untagged.
6. Anyway, I ended up tagging the "List of" article for deletion review, but then "voted" for its being Kept. (BTW if there are substantial votes to keep an article it isn't deleted. It doesn't take a majority to keep or anything. And even if a majority of folks would vote for a nominated article to instead be merged somewhere, even in a case such as this such an article still wouldn't end up being deleted. At least not before whoever is working on the article merges it somewhere (the target of which would always be chosen by actual writers of the article in any case). So, in other words, there's little to fear from a Articles For Deletion reveiw and much to be gained. That is, once an article passes, then people such as V who basically hang around simply to blank and reblank etc the article then have to accept the consensus of the greater community and lay off. Got it?)

I know there's a lot of words in the last enumerated item, but I hope you were able to follow it. {smiles}

Anyway the bottom line is I didn't turn the article into a dab!

Love, ↜Just me, here, now … 06:07, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Oy. cat Catherineyronwode (talk) 18:13, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

A headsup that a discussion wrt the possible renaming

of "Internet homicide" may commence here. ↜Just me, here, now … 19:23, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

has commenced here. ↜Just me, here, now … 20:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I've suggested a new name here: Talk:Internet homicide#Proposal. If you could make a comment there I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks. ↜Just M E  here , now 06:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn's tactics

Sorry to bother you with this but while looking through talk pages yours came up. I see you have a long history with the subject in question. Most recently he's making his biased comments on Talk:Creation–evolution_controversy. Now when challenged that these are in fact his views he's falsely reducing the discussion to an archive claiming as his reason: "Off-topic. This page is for discussing (preferably specific) improvements to this article, not who is a "real scientist"". What the heck, HE brought it up and now he wants to bury it because supposedly there's no discussion relating to the topic. Biofase ^flame| stalk  00:25, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Arrivederci

Ciao Catherine, it was good to know you. [1]. Malcolm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.52.139.29 (talk) 16:21, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Folk like you who do care

Hi Catherine, having read the wonderful essay "What is Wikipedia?" on your user page, I thought maybe you might like to have a look at a couple of possible ways ahead by folk like you who do care:

• WP:Areas for Reform
• WP:Development committee

and just recently:

• Wikimedia strategic planning: Call for proposals

With good wishes, Esowteric+Talk 13:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I contributed a bit on this page:[2] Catherineyronwode (talk) 03:42, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow

Gwen wiped your commentary right off the Dugard case's talkpage. ↜Just M E here , now 01:51, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

And i restored it. What's going on there? Talk to me! --cat Catherineyronwode (talk) 02:52, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, let's see, cat. I think Gwen maybe has got to balance a tendency not to be at all gunshy with a need to stay out of getting in all too many of brouhahas, in order for her reputation not to suffer (generally speaking -- ?) I think, however, in the aggregate she's a plus. Having people who will go the distance for what they perceive as best for the project (the "not-being-gunshy" bit) comes in handy, in many cases, I'd guess. (I don't really watch her -- or even other admins, for that matter, so I'm just guessin here.) Also she's a good writer, talented with words (a skill you appreciate, I'm sure!) ↜Just M E here , now 03:10, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. After i restored the material, she did not remove it again, so, fingers crossed, it was just a slip of the mouse. --cat Catherineyronwode (talk) 03:49, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

She's over in England. So... lol ↜Just M E here , now 04:09, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Still blushing over this, even if it was but a slip of the mouse. Thanks for taking the time in letting me know it happened. Cheers, Gwen Gale (talk) 11:07, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

When the cat's away, the mice will play... *Dan T.* (talk) 11:54, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Example of Battleground Craziness Which Cat talks about

I'm a nooB editor, active a few months, revamped substantially a business article, then got into a protracted battle with another editor. What follows is MY side of a dispute over a business article. (the other editor thinks I'm the harasser) I removed his/her name and references to the article because I don't want to continue the war with this other editor; but I thought it might make interesting reading? And it illustrates what Cat is saying on her user page about battling, and why it can make Wikipedia less fun.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Battling -- (my side of a battle over a business article)

(what follows is me trying to explain to the editor I'm battling with about a dispute over a business article)--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• In a spirit of fairness I wanted to relate my concerns because I don't think we're operating on the same page.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• I'm a handyman from New Jersey. I have no financial interest in (business name omitted). I don't own its stock. I'm a nooB (newbie) on Wikipedia, active a few months. I've contributed substantially (sometimes major expansions) to articles on Dana Delany, Statistics New Zealand, Sassa Jimenez, Suza Scalora, Allegheny College, and contributed to New Zealand, Wellington, others. I try to write quality articles.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• I came upon the (business name) article perhaps a month ago. It was covered with flags like "reads like an advertisement", "no references". It was troubled. It did look like an advertisement. I wanted to learn about software and write something respectable. So I worked perhaps ten hours researching it intensively, rewriting, with lots of references (at present there are 92). The article's size expanded from 13K bytes (Aug 3) to 80K bytes (Aug 21). I tried hard to make it fair, neutral, respectable. I put plusses and minuses about this firm -- expansions, contractions, acquisitions, layoffs. People looking over the article will agree it's fair (not an advertisement any more). I tried to make it visually appealing so I spent another hour or so combing through Wikimedia's difficult-to-search picture databases and got pretty good ones (not perfect, sometimes somewhat irrelevant I admit) -- software diagrams, picture of silicon, picture of a mainframe computer and so forth. Further, I found SEC accounting data which I organized into accessible wikitables -- perhaps another few hours of my time, typing in numbers, double-checking, aligning columns. There wasn't one easy-to-get file. SEC data, as you know, is accounting data required by law with penalties for inaccuracies. It originates with this firm; but the SEC publishes it. The business community relies on SEC 10K data. It has great data describing the business -- employee numbers, profits, expenses, paychecks, great stuff. So, is SEC data primary or secondary? It's a judgment call, isn't it? I judged it worth including. And I think most people would agree with me here.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• During my research, sometimes secondary sources didn't cover important points which I felt readers needed to know, but company sources did and for which I had no reason to doubt. For example, "The first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange with its symbol (omitted) was August 12, 1988". Another: XX was CEO when the company was divided into two divisions. Why would this firm lie about these things? Are they controversial? I doubt it. That doesn't ring right to me. So I included this information, knowing that yes, it's based on primary information but perhaps, in future, other editors will find a better secondary source; in the meantime, it's better than nothing, not controversial. And I included the reference so people could find where I got this stuff. These are judgment calls. Are they perfect? No, but nothing is perfect, and I'm trying my best. But overall, there were few instances, in my view, when the data was "primary" or company information -- mostly it was from respectable newspapers like the NY Times, WSJournal, Houston Chronicle. Look over the references.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• In short, I think I improved the article substantially. It's respectable, neutral, fair, with plusses and minuses (for example, the SEC data brings out that growth during the 2000s period was lackluster), perhaps a bit boring. I bet most Wikipedia editors would agree it's a pretty good article, probably not great, but better than before. It has 92 references. Most lines had references. It's better than most business articles presently; for example, the Verizon article has only 27 references; Exxon has few references, Microsoft has 118 references but it's a much better known company (and more controversial perhaps) than (firm name omitted); Kraft Foods has 9 references; and General Electric has 40 (as of Sep 5 2009). Most business articles use SEC data in various forms and often refer to company information.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• That's what I did. I tried to contribute constructively.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• Let's look at you (user name omitted). You've been on Wikipedia since 2006, following this article since Feb 2009. And I've looked through your interactions with Wikipedia. You're an excellent spam-fighter, removing dubious links actively. There's lots of spam; I sincerely appreciate your efforts (and awarded you a medal for your efforts.)--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• But my concern here is you're confusing the article for spam. My sense is you seek to gut this article. I've worked hard to make it respectable. It matters to me what happens to it. If it's gutted, then I'm wasting my time on Wikipedia. Why create ANY article which will be destroyed? It gets to the heart of my participation here if the hard work I do can be stripped bare for what I consider to be trivial reasons. And I'm not saying I "own" the article as per WP:OWN because I hope future editors will build upon it, correct mistakes, and improve it as time goes by, and I'll support constructive efforts.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• You've suggested the article is "too long"; you deleted about ten pictures and diagrams which I thought added visual appeal; you've reverted my edits; you've pasted vague tags like "Cleanup" and "Wikify" without explanations about what is meant. A tag can be helpful if it summons other editors to help or points toward specific fixes; but tags can be destructive if they're used as a form of vandalism and a prelude for unnecessary future deletions. You've made statements like "given how huge this article is" and "the SEC filings are all primary sources" and "a large percentage of the sources are primary ones" suggesting you're pushing to eliminate entire sections.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• Consider how easy it is to destroy on Wikipedia. One can remove whole chunks with a mouse click -- the revert button, the undo, poof -- gone. It took you a minute perhaps to chop out pictures which took me an hour to paste in. While it takes me perhaps ten to fourteen hours of hard work to research this subject, you could slice it to bits with a few button pushes, or reduce it to a stub. Wikipedia articles are like sandcastles which take time and effort to build but can be knocked down with a few swift kicks. Further, Wikipedia's complex rules can be misused by a user with a destructive bent to frustrate well-meaning editors, to gut articles, to wipe out quality work, to trump good judgment calls by citing a rulebook.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• These three factors -- (1) Wikipedia's anonymity (identities traceable not to real people but only computers) (2) the unfair imbalance between long creation time and fast deletion time and (3) rule complexity -- means Wikipedia is a perfect place for bullies to satisfy a personal need for power. A user armed with rules and a bent for destruction can have a field day pushing people around. And perhaps we might use the term Wikibullies to describe experienced yet secretly destructive users who browbeat fellow editors with narrow interpretations of complex rules and mask aggressiveness with a facade of helpfulness. They sour the atmosphere. They poison the place for constructive editors. They don't contribute constructively. It's my hunch that a small group of editors in Wikipedia are in this category of Wikibullies, but they wreck the place for many others. There is community discussion about why many good editors keep leaving, and one hypothesis is that they are discouraged and frustrated by destructive people playing power games. And I hope you are not one of these types.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• Constructive editors pitch in and help. They fix things. They improve. They offer concrete suggestions. They don't act like some imperious forever-unsatisfied foreman with arms crossed, hissing, threatening to shut down the whole railroad down because a few ties aren't aligned. They don't nitpick. They fix the ties. If sources need improvement, why not hunt for better sources rather than use it as an excuse to excise chunks of articles? If the lead paragraph seems short, why not combine it with the overview? But you didn't do any of these things. A constructive approach would be to realize that almost all articles on businesses are lackluster, promotional, poorly written advertisements -- why not focus on improving those articles instead of the (name omitted) article which is in much better shape, with much better references?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• I studied your interactions with other users. I rarely found additions. When you "contribute", articles shrink in terms of byte count. No doubt some of this is spam removal (which everybody supports) but in my view, with this article, you're being destructive. I'll try to keep faith that your purpose here in Wikipedia is constructive, but evidence points otherwise.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

At present, the battle (I hope) is over, but I'm thinking about how this happened and how to prevent it in the future. For me, it makes Wikipedia less fun; stepping back, one could think that the structure of Wikipedia almost encourages such fisticuffs. And, when there's some civility and genuine respect for the rules, I think everybody benefits from "fair" battling; but when it becomes a mud-sling-fest, everybody loses.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Your experience parallels mine, and it is interesting that it took place in an entirely different interest-sector, namely business, a very materialistic and fact-checkable area in which deletions cannot be said to be based on purely ideological grounds. Thanks for posting this here, but i would also hope you post it somewhere that some of the bureaucrats might see it. Wikipedia is seriously losing writers (falsely called "editors") because we are all so tired of donating hours of research and writing time for deletionistic target practice.

For me, the temptation to write for Wikipedia is based in part on the coolness of wiki markup language, so this year i paid a tech person to create a wiki for me. Now, when i return to articles that i wrote and researched years ago and find them half the size they were, ruined by deletionist editors, i dont fight. I just go back in the article history, grab my own text and any other good text that was part of the pre-deletionistic Wiki collaboration, and host it at one of my own sites, either in html or in my own wiki. My largest site is rated at about 71,000 in the alexa.com ranking system (WP is at about 7 on their scale, i think), so it gets a fair amount of traffic -- and actually, because i focus on only a few topics there. the traffic is keyword specific and i think the articles are getting seen as much there as they would be seen here at WP.

Wikipedia is not writer-friendly and thus it is foolish of us to waste our time writing well-researched articles here.

These days, when i feel tempted to write for Wikipedia, beyond un-logged-in touch-ups and grammar fixes or additions to current events articles, i just stop. I literally "just say no."

Cordially, cat yronwode Catherineyronwode (talk) 01:53, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

An Experimental Democratic Boobocracy

This is the text of a piece i wrote at mediawiki commons, where a discussion is brewing about the loss of writers (so-called "editors") from Wikipedia. The repost here is due to the fact that fewer people will read it were it was originally posted.

Wikipedia versus Writers

After years of writing for WP (which WP denigratingly calls "editing"), i started my own wiki on a topic-cluster that was having content retention problems at WP, using mediawiki software and limiting my staff to three writers. We are doing great. We enjoy the work, we are open to adding new, qualified writers (and, yes, we credit these contributors as WRITERS, not mere "editors"), and the site is thriving in its own way.

The topic-cluster i selected for my wiki experiment was Folk Magic, including Southern Black folkways; world-wide religious belief in clerical divination, including 19th and 20th century religions such as Spiritism, Spiritualism, and New Thought, and the attendant biographies of personages associated with the development of these religions; and a survey of the divination practices developed by various ethnographic groups, e.g. Scottish and Irish tea leaf reading, Scandinavian egg-divination, African American dream divination, Anglo-American rural dowsing and doodle-bugging, Chinese I Ching fortune telling, etc. In the interest of full disclosure, i will note that i am a published author on these subjects, and also a "notable wikipedian."

These topics were virtually taboo at WP, due to "ownership" by atheistic and skeptico-scientistic materialists who would not permit even mere descriptions of these subjects to stand in the encyclopedia without injecting their negative commentaries, which often took up 50% or more of a given article after they revised it. They often sub-headed their attacks on the material "Criticism," and, yes, they included "Criticism" of everything from the lives of 19th century New Thought authors to the fact that Cantonese-Americans born in the USA often use a system of divination employing 78 strips of bamboo dedicated to the Buddhist goddess Kwan Yin (Guanyin). After 3 1/2 years of attempted contributions to WP on these topics, during which i watched my texts repeatedly defaced by POV-pushing and admin-supported "skeptics" and drive-by racists (you haven't lived until you've found an article you spent 12 hours composing littered by the words "Niggers and porch-monkeys"), i simply collected my texts and took them elsewhere, to a cooperatively-owned non-profit wiki in which contributors manage their own content.

Can WP do what we did? I doubt it, frankly. The "democratic experiment" inherent in WP is going to contiue to run its full and entropic course. Like Usenet, and like the ODP/DMOZ, Wikipedia has peaked as a social network for intellectuals and is on the downward slide. Bandwidth is now so cheap that any author worth his or her salt can create a relevant domain name and host essays and topical articles that will easily be found by google's search engine. Why would any writer donate writing to WP, where writing is called 'editing" and bozos can abort an entire page and admins can "own" a topic and destroy content at whim?

My most popular site -- on the obscure topic of folk magic, and all written by me in html -- now has a rank of 71,000 at Alexa. Our collective new mediawiki site -- on the aforementioned obscure topic-cluster -- only went online on June 6, 2009 and already ranks in the 1,000,000 range at Alexa. We expect it to rank under 100,000 within three years.

Yes, i still write for WP, mostly bcause i am a polymath and when a passing news story outside of my chosen field catches my eye, i like to contribute, but i do so as an IP, and as a result i exprience considerable arrogance and abuse from admins.

So good luck, WP -- but you've already lost a lot of "experts" and professional writers. Bandwidth and hosting are chickenfeed-cheap; we have Yahoo Groups, MySpce, and Facebook for our social friendship needs; and we take enough pride in our work that we like to call it "writing" not "editing" and we like to see it stand out, undefaced, whole, intact against the ravages of a mindless boobocracy and WP's croneyistic cabal of "owning" admins and "editors."

Cordially, catherine yronwode, the IP known as "Ol' 64" -- 64.142.90.33 03:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Cheyenne descent

Tura Satana is of Cheyenne descent alright, she told me so herself. If in doubt, feel free to contact her through her website or her MySpace site. Best wishes, Frankly speaking (talk) 16:04, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I doubt i will revisit that list, though -- i was just doing a drive-by cleanup of the Cherokee Descent category -- so feel free to work on it yourseelf, okay? Cordially, cat yronwode

BTW, Letterman

My reply there is a little snippy, but just wanna assure that it isn't directed at you or your addition of the cite even though I think it is unnecessary. I've had more dealings with grundle2600 on many political articles than I care to, and today is just par for the course. Tarc (talk) 13:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

David Letterman

With respect to the quote, you are advised to stop restoring the text without a solid consensus on the talk page. Keep in mind that I am making this call as an administrator under the terms of the "biographies of livig persons" policy. If there is consensus on the talk page that it does not suggest an issue that as yet is not verifiable, then it certainly can be restored - but not before. You are free to challenge this call through the appropriate channels if you feel it is necessary, and I can provide appropriate links if you need them. Keep in mind that I am writing to you and discussing this at length because I do not wish to see a well-meaning contributor possibly incur a block over what should be a simple direction to discuss first. --Ckatz^chat_spy 04:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

You are threatening to block me from Wikipedia over a five word sentence David Letterman told millions of viewers on nationally broadcast television and which has been printed in hundreds of newspapers. Groovy, cat Catherineyronwode (talk) 04:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Catherine, I am not threatening you with anything. Furthermore, I have gone out of my way to try to discuss this with you in an effort to avoid any potential issues that could arise from this. The BLP policy is much more restrictive than other aspects of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and administrators are tasked with using extra vigilance in overseeing them. All I am asking of you is that you get consensus on the talk page for your text. Nothing more, nothing less. --Ckatz^chat_spy 04:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Sock / wife?

What is your relationship to Self-ref (talk · contribs · logs)? — [[::User:RHaworth|RHaworth]] (talk · contribs) 11:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

He's my husband. His name is nagasiva bryan w. yronwode. You can view pictures of our wedding here. Enjoy! Oh yes, and please assume good faith. Thank you very much. cat Catherineyronwode (talk) 04:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Catherineyronwode! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 3 of the articles that you created are tagged as Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to insure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. if you were to bring these articles up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 683 article backlog. Once the articles are adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the list:

1. Richard Cavendish (occult writer) - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
2. Anna Riva - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
3. Draja Mickaharic - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 19:26, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Country Turtle Records

Hi Catherine, could you please be so kind as to have a look at this and tell me if I'm completely wrong in my opinion about that label's notability !?! StefanWirz (talk) 09:47, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

AN/I

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Rami R 19:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I looked through the edits of Sundae and there clearly was quite a bit of IP vandalism that day. I could see you thought Rami R meant you when he referred to IP vandalism but if you think about it - that seems unlikely doesn't it? He has explained. In the circumstances, continued insistence that you were called a persistent vandal and an edit summary saying "fuck you" was a bit over the top and certainly uncivil. If editing in a state of annoyance it's always best to click "show preview" first.Fainites ^barleyscribs 20:29, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• I wanted to make sure you understood (someone else already mentioned it too) that the page got protected because of vandalism from other IP addresses, not from you. Fwiw, I've always liked your writing. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 09:15, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

• I don't know if you saw what I wrote at ANI, so here it is:

Looking at the sequence of events during the 3rd, the key facts you overlooked were the request for page protection, the timing of the vandalisms, and the timing of the fulfillment of the request for page protection:

1. I'm seeing questionable (mostly vandalistic) edits by other users at 23:47 on the 2nd, then on the 3rd at 01:00, 01:28, 01:29, 02:03, 02:19, 02:28, 03:04.
2. I'm guessing Google posted their thing no later than 04:00 UTC, as that would be midnight EDST in the US.
3. More questionable (mostly vandalistic) edits by other users at 04:16, 04:20, 04:23, 04:55, 05:05, 05:22, 05:47, 05:48, 06:04, 06:26, 06:41.
4. Tbhotch requested protection for the Sundae page at 06:47, due to the Google thing.[3]
5. More questionable (mostly vandalistic) edits by other users at 06:49, 07:25, 07:34, 07:49, 08:17, 08:20, 08:22, 08:25, 08:29, 08:31.
6. Your first edit as an IP came at 08:33 and the last at 09:46.
7. Rami fulfilled the RFPP request and semi'd Sundae at 09:48.
8. You begin editing using your login at 09:51.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:07, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. I wasn't looking for an apology. I just wanted you to realize that there had been vandalism, earlier than your updates - and that it was the 3-hour delay in getting the page protected that was no small part of the problem. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Copying of Wikipedia article(s) w/o compliance with licensing terms

I notice that you have apparently copied articles from Wikipedia to the readersandrootworkers.org Wiki with which you are affiliated. However, readersandrootworkers.org is not an open-source licensed site and you have not provided the required notices and links acknowledging Wikipedia as the original source for the copied material. (see WP:COPY).

For example, on the page List of Spiritualist Organizations, you claim "This List of Spiritualist Organizations was compiled and is maintained by catherine yronwode", but you do not acknowlege Wikipedia as the original source. From the article history, one can clearly see that the original article was not created by you, but rather by User:Lucyintheskywithdada on January 8, 2008. Your first edit to the article would appear to be on June 8, 2008. Therefore the article is not solely your own creation and you have plagiarized the work of others without providing the required acknowledgements.

The readersandrootworkers.org domain was not registered until February of 2009 and could not have been the original source of the article. By mid-February 2009, list of Spiritualist organizations had been edited by a number of registered Wikipedia users besides yourself, including User:Lucyintheskywithdada, User:Pegship, User:Rev Dan Kivel, User:Benjaminmaule, User:Chazzmania, User:Shabicht, User:Ableowned2, and User:Ntsimp. All these contributors have to be acknowledged one way or another on your site. The easiest way to do so is to provide a direct link to the version of the Wikipedia article which was copied along with the required licensing notices.

All copies of Wikipedia articles require that a notice be placed in the copy indicating the origin (Wikipedia) along with a link to the version of the article that was copied. See Reuser's rights and obligations. This credit is required by the CC-BY-SA and GFDL licenses under which you are allowed to copy works from Wikipedia to which others have contributed. Please place such acknowledgements and links on any and all copies you have made of Wikipedia articles.

In addition, the site readersandrootworkers.org does not appear to be licensed under either the CC-BY-SA or GFDL licenses. The open source licensing which allows you to copy Wikipedia content requires that all works derived from Wikipedia content also be licensed under the same terms as Wikipedia so that others may copy and modify your version of the work. If your site is not so licensed, you must include such a license on each page that derived any content from Wikipedia or you may not use Wikipedia-derived content on your site.

If this non-compliance with Wikipedia licensing requirements is not corrected, I will be reporting the violation to the WikiMedia Foundation and the owners of readersandrootworkers.com may receive notice that they must comply with the licensing requirements or take down all Wikipedia-derived material. This applies to every page on the site that has even a single sentence copied verbatim from Wikipedia.

Thank you. Yworo (talk) 15:18, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, actually you are mistaken, but i understand your confusion. The material was not copied from Wikipedia. In fact, i donated material from my own list TO Wikipedia.

The list of Spiritualist Organizations formerly at Wikipedia, as well as the list currently at readersandrootworkers.org, derive from an out-of-copyright book called "Who's Who in Occultism, New Thought, Psychism, and Spiritualism: A Biography, Directory and Bibliography Combined in Distinctly Separate Sections" a.k.a. "Hartmann's Who's Who in Occult, Psychic and Spiritual Realms in the United States and Foreign Countries," written by William C. Hartmann and published by the Occult Press in 1927 -- hence the long list of "defunct" organizations it contains.

Portions of this book were apparently copied to Wikiedia by previous editors before i contributed to the page.

During the 1990s i transcribed Hartmann's list (by hand, before scanning!) and maintained my own electronic copy of this list on my hard drive. I updated my version of the list, adding URLs for contemporary organizations and also the names of defunct organizations that Hartmann had not listed.

When i found that Wikipedia had an updated version of Hartmann's list online, complete with the list of "Defunct Organizations" i was quite thrilled. It was amazing to me that Wikipedia would actually maintain such a useful aid to Spiritualist scholarship. In the interest of helping out Wikipedia -- and especially in the interest of heightening public awareness of the many African American contributions to the religion of Spiritualism -- i added numerous organizations to the Wikipedia list from my own hard-drive list, because the original 1927 compilation by Hartmann, coming after the expulsion of Black Spiritualists from the NSAC in 1922, and written during an era of extreme racial segregation amounting almost to apartheid, had completely ignored or overlooked them -- and so had the original Wikipedia editors who had apparently uploaded their own copies of Hartmann's list to Wikipedia and did their own research and expansion into web URLs for surviving organizations.

After i contributed entries from my own version of the list to Wikipedia, i continued to update and upgrade my version on my hard drive. In 2009, i uploaded my hard-drive version to the readersandrootworkers.org site.

The two pages -- Wikipedia's and mine -- have resembled one another and have also diverged quite a bit over the years.

For instance, my readersandrootworkers.org page maintains a sub-list of "regional and denominational directory sites of Spiritualist Churches." the Wikipedia page does not include this material.

In my role as the lead editor at readersandrootworkersorg i have consistently maintained my list at the readersaandrootworkers.org site, but i have not consistently maintained the list at the Wikipedia site, as that was a volunteer project. Occasionally i returned to the Wikipedia list to prune spam links and to add overlooked African American organizations, both contemporary and defunct, but i noticed that Wikipedia's version of the list continually degraded, so i felt that i was wasting my time there.

At one point, for instance, i noticed that a portion of Wikipedia's version of the list was no longer in alphabetical order, whereas Hartmann's original list, and therefore my list of the 1990s, have always been in alphabetical order.

At another time i noticed that links to non-qualifying sites had been added to the Wikipedia list (i.e. links to sites that were not "organizations" consisting of several churches, but rather were individual churches or single individuals). I eliminated these from Wikipedia's list as i had time or inclination to do so. Such non-qualifying sites were never part of the readersandrootworkers.org list, of course.

I did not recently do much to bring Wikipedia's version of the list up to conformance with my own list until last week -- and i did not even have time to finish that job: The list of defunct organizations at Wikipedia had inexplicably lost entries from the first portion of the alphabet and i intended to restore these when, almost immediately after my pass through the page, you deleted all the data anyway.

Over the years there have been numerous duplications of various states of the Wikipedia version of the Hartmann list, but the readersandrootworkers site is not one of those iterations -- in fact, the information has run in the opposite direction -- from my original research, from my delving into scholarly books on African American Spiritualism, and from my own list to Wikipedia's list, due to my efforts to help improve Wikipedia's list.

As far as i can determine, my readersandrootworkers.org version of the list has not been duplicated by other sites. A quick check would be to look for the "Colored Spiritualist Association of Churches" or the "Divine Spiritual Churches of the Southwest" or one of the other African American denominations that i added to Wikipedia the day before you deleted the page content. If a copying site does not contain those organizations, it was copied from Wikipedia, not from my site.

You are correct, by the way, that readersandrootworkers.org is not part of the Wikipedia copyright agreement group. It is a private wiki, using media wiki software.

Thank you for asking about this, and please, do not hesitate to ask me about other material that i have written elsewhere on the web or that i have written and donated to Wikipedia. I am always glad to be of assistance.

Cordially. catherine yronwode 64.142.90.33 (talk) 18:29, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

A book published in 1927 is probably still protected by copyright. Generally, only books published before 1923 are in the public domain. Also, even if the book is out of copyright, it's plagiarism to copy material from it without crediting the source, which you didn't do, either on Wikipedia or on your own site. Yworo (talk) 18:52, 25 May 2011 (UTC)