User talk:Kiefer.Wolfowitz

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 11:37, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Glad to see you back

Hey Kiefer. I'm glad to see you back now that the whole mess is over. Ryan Vesey Review me! 15:51, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

God bless Captain Vere!

Thanks Ryan. Don't be afraid of conflict, unless you live in Scandinavia or Minnesota! ;)

It was a fair block but unbalanced by a block (even of an hour) of the administrator insulting you. Perhaps the juxtaposition of the "puling masses" and insults of you before my replies in kind will help educate the community about double standards, and help our better administrators remember the importance of holding all accountable, not just non-administrators....

My expectations are low as far as the educational benefits of such conflicts however. Perhaps you remember that a severe NPA violation occurred at an RfA (perhaps also with a block of Malleus) and I feared that MF would leave the project. So I left a firm behavioral message on MF's page (to AB). This was (justly) criticized by Bbb23---who however was silent when Malleus was abused. Let us hope that Bbb23, who looks like his RfA will succeed, will resolve to be more even handed, and to protect even unpopular or minority editors from NPA and incivility.

To me it was bizarre that, given the stress of an RfA, there was so little concern with NPA and incivility directed at you at ANI and my talk page.

I am pleased that you continue to do what you think is right, even if you must disagree with or criticize friendly editors. True friends are not codependents.

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:21, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Welcome back. Intothatdarkness 16:09, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the good wishes and kindnesses during my time of troubles. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:22, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

You're quite welcome! I tend to prefer dealing with the "straight-talkers" here. Intothatdarkness 16:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Straight talk is admirable, and replying in kind (particularly when a guest is insulted on one's talk page) understandable perhaps....

There is no excuse for either

• partisan enforcement of civility and NPA, by Sarek of Vulcan, following Sarek's having warned Kazfiel at ANI against "puling masses" or
• of writing "editing like an asshole" (for which 3+ apologies have been written).

Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:31, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Intothatdarkness 13:43, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Oxbow (band)

I think perhaps you need to step away from this article and allow it to be constructively worked on. There are a wealth of sources that cover the band. Requesting a citation for the title of the band's first album was a little OTT - the Allmusic bio confirms it and facts such as this are easily verifiable. --Michig (talk) 18:00, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Michig, I accepted your comment as good faith. However, you mischaracterized that citation-needed, which was motivated by the fan-boy hoopla you re-inserted ["created an international following that has been growing ever since". I should have caught your mis-characterization before. However, one forgets the details dealing with your re-insertions of "last of the great bluesmen", vocals "between Robert Plant and Nick Cave", and "album of the year", and "most unique" sound. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:28, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I thought I just thanked you for adding references, and I tried to help you with copy-editing. Is your tone really appropriate?

You did have a BLP violation about a person's behavior towards fans, that needed another citation, preferably to something that looks like a reliable source---just to have the appearance of compliance with BLP. (If I queried the triviality about the album title, then I'm sorry for that mistake.)

I have little interest in the band, apart from reducing damage from a fan/member who promoted it across WP, e.g. on guitar tunings. However, I did remove the vacuous "unique sound", etc. Perhaps Demiurge1000 can help you with copy editing?

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:22, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

BLP violations?

Is it compatible with WP:BLP for the article to state that a living person has a compulsion to display his penis on stage and that the person has choked out a fan at a concert, with two weak references? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:16, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd call it a weight problem more than anything. Almost 20% of the prose, on the article for the band, is about his poor habits. Ryan Vesey Review me! 20:07, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ryan,

Have you read Stanley Crouch? He has raised issues about middle-class white audiences buying/promoting racist sexual-stereotypes in blues or stereotypes of criminality in "gangsta rap" (which is very popular in Sweden), etc. Like Stanley Crouch in his review of True Romance in Notes of a Hanging Judge, I prefer my scary black men to be Gary Oldman. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 12:57, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

"Most unique"

We call this truth self-evident: A "journal" that calls something "most unique" is not reliable. ;) Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:48, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia has nearly 600 "most unique" phrases. (At least one, "the most unique visitors" made sense, albeit occulted from the "the most unique-visitors".) Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:37, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I just looked through some of those, there are a number of "very unique" things, as well. If I were more technically knowledgeable I'd program AWB to pick those off, but a few are in quotes at least. Mark Arsten (talk) 04:32, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

That would be a useful additon to AWB, and give people something constructive to do, unlike impoverishing the semantics by replacing the two (or three) fields for month and year (and day) with one date field. :)

"Most unique" is redundant but arguably informative since

"less unique" = "non-unique".

The descriptor "very unique" is a worse abomination, seemingly conveying only that the speaker or writer does not think.

(In the foundations of mathematics, especially mathematical logic and set theory, the introduction of uniqueness is delicate: I should review the iota operator and definite description.)Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:27, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

What about "verily unique", is that Ok? Mark Arsten (talk) 22:26, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I had to read it twice to catch the "verily:

:D

It literally is as good as "truly unique", although it sounds archaic. If you have a serious question about it, I would consult the OED. I don't have a dictionary handy. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:31, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

An administrator exemplifying civility: Continued

Yes, you thanked me for adding references, then removed sourced content. Thanks, though, for staying away from it long enough to allow it to be improved.--Michig (talk) 21:35, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

You had a BLP violation with one flimsy "source". Look at my articles if you want to see what a reliable source is in an encyclopedia. (12:23, 18 July 2012 (UTC))

Well, I suppose that I should wish you many hours of listening to Oxbow, since you seem into that sort of thing. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:39, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I was sincere in suggesting that you ask Demiurge1000 for help. He's shown interest in the article and he does a lot of good copyediting. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Whatever. You should be more careful in future with your use of proposed deletion. --Michig (talk) 21:59, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

You should improve your command of English so that you do not repeatedly inflict "most unique" etc. on the innocent reader.

You should understand the PROD policy, which gives a choice to either improve the article or delete it. You have improved the article so that it does not obviously deserve to be deleted (although why anybody would want to read it is beyond me...). Congratulations on your achievement. 22:15, 17 July 2012 (UTC) BTW, I had Googled the band and had foreseen that the article risked being a BLP minefield---a judgment vindicated by the initial revision of the article (sadly) briefly (happily)---before I PRODded it. I rarely PROD things. 12:30, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

The article is now in good (and better) shape. Well done, Michig! Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:24, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

The reliable-sources noticeboard agreed with the other editors that Michig's ("Adam Anonymous" at D i S) source was unreliable. Michig's tone remained the same in responding to other editors at the noticeboard and the article's talk page. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:33, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

That RFA

Thanks for amending your comment in that RFA. As someone whose edits are mostly of a minor and unimportant nature I'm very conscious both that one shouldn't take edit count at all seriously and also that such candidates need to mention something a little more substantial in Question 2. ϢereSpielChequers 23:12, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, but admitting an error comes easier to me than to most. I have had more practice! Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:31, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Denial of Death

You don't have an e-mail link, but I'm curious to know what are your criticisms of Denial of Death. --TimL (talk) 02:49, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Tim!

The book can live without my comments. I really have no interest in it, apart from a memory that Jim Morrison liked it. (I carry around a lot of useless information.)

In our previous discussion, I mentioned the book's "theory" of mental illness and my concerns that an unsourced presentation of it did not serve the public interest.

From the article, I was astonished to read about the book's account of mental illness, and my personal reaction stands: Poetic, pseudoscientific, and anti-scientific accounts of mental illness do not meet the standards of WP articles on human-health issues. I suppose one should investigate whether Brown's theories were evaluated by health-care experts, beyond repeating them, in an article. But this is largely speculation, with which others probably disagree, and these thoughts are rather tenuously based on WP policy, if at all! :)

More to the point, or rather---finally to address the point. WP articles should be based on reliable sources, of the highest quality possible. If you can source any of the article's statements that have been deleted, then please do! Find reviews in e.g. the American Psychological Association journals, for example.

(Look at the article on guitar tunings, which is largely unsourced, and imagine how it is difficult to get editors to work on cleaning it up. The kudzu is driving out quality!)

Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:28, 20 July 2012 (UTC) 11:27, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Kiefer. I'll have to go back and read the deleted content. However the article is not (should not be) about human-health issues, it (should be) about the book and possibly the book's take on human health issues. While arguably not a good source for human health related articles, the book is a good source for, well, the book. The book is largely about heroism as man's main drive to "deny" his own mortality, it does posit that mental illness results from a breakdown of heroism. The book itself is extremely well sourced. I'll have to look at some other articles on books (perhaps esp. pulitzer prize winning books) and see how they are written. What Jim Morrison do you refer to? The famous musician (and only one I am aware of) died 2 years before DoD was published. --TimL (talk) 16:29, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Tim!

Yeah, I had a nagging suspicion that he died too early. Maybe it was another Norman Brown book? Not Norman Mailer or Father Brown, I think. :)

The usual heuristic is that you read a few articles or books on the topic, then write from memory, and then double check your work (looking at the sources, after you've written in your own words) and fix the snafus---like mixing up books or introducing time-travel---like I just did. :)

The usual standard for a beginning article about to be DYK-checked is one citation per paragraph as a minimum.

You are correct that book articles have their own standards, and you should ask for another opinion at one of the relevant projects (before following my other advice!). Maybe you could work a bit at Encylopedia Brown following the death of the series author Sobol, to get the hang of things? Then come back and tell me about my bad advice over the last year! ;D

Warm regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:51, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. Denial of Death was written by Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist  :) --TimL (talk) 22:49, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Yogurt

I didn't want to muddy up the place with text there, but I had to just say: Best. !Vote. Ever. Nicely put, Kiefer. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © (WER) 12:36, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Dennis! I was inspired by convention T. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 12:52, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

don't cast bread under bridges

For me or for you?

86.24.46.135 (talk) 23:57, 22 July 2012 (UTC)