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Vsmith (
talk) 15:43, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
I've undone your changes to astrology. Please discuss major changes and don't remove referenced information without giving a reason either on talk:Astrology or at least with edit summaries. Vsmith ( talk) 15:43, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you. -- SineBot ( talk) 17:25, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has permitted administrators to impose, at their own discretion, sanctions on any editor working on pages broadly related to pseudoscience if the editor repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process. If you continue with the behavior on Astrology, you may be placed under sanctions including blocks, a revert limitation or an article ban. The committee's full decision can be read at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#Final decision. NW ( Talk) 15:25, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
Please see [1]. Moreschi ( talk) 16:47, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
Moreschi I have asked you several times on the administrator's noticeboard if you would be specific about the reason you have banned me, but you keep evading the question. The best I have had from you is that you thought a particular edit pushed a POV (not realising that I was not deleting the controversial comment but discussing its wording in the talk section); and then you made a general statement to say that your reasons are perfectly clear [for banning six editors]: "meatpuppetry, edit-warring and POV-pushing are not permitted". Please be specific if you think one or all of those criticisms apply to me - an indication of where and when I am supposed to have done this will be appreciated too, but if you are not prepared to do that, at least could you confirm which of the vague criticisms that have been indiscriminately applied to a large number of editors you accuse me of personally.
Also, I would like to ask you to recognise that your actions were hasty and unsupported, based on a suspicion that editors were colluding together following your discovery of an off-wiki blog that clearly belonged to someone who was editing the astrology page. The editor involved, Apagoneron, has now revealed himself and explained his actions. This external activity did not involve me, and please consider that I have never been significantly involved in the points of discussion that were the focus of that editor's input. This being the case I would ask you to please end this unsupported ban before creating the need to enter into arbitration. On a technical point I also don't believe that this ban is a legitimate one, because (besides failing to be clear about what I am supposed to have done wrong even after banning me) there was no prior warning of what I might be doing wrong, by which I could explain, justify or correct my editing behaviour. Also I would argue that you have a conflict of interest which prompted you to act thoughtlessly and rather brutally, in banning a whole collection of contributing editors for no other reason than they were contributing to the consensus of opinion on that page at a time when important points of policy on edits were being discussed - and that after removing enough editors to change the consensus of the discussion, you then entered the discussion yourself and attempted to steer it along a direction of your own preference. The page is now at a stage where very significant changes are (hopefully) about to be made. I would like to offer the benefit of my experience and offer constructive advice on this process. So now that Apagorenon has explained himself, can you please revert this action quickly and allow the discussion to continue without the worry of the consensus being distorted or deliberately biased. Thank you, Costmary Costmary ( talk) 09:38, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
For the record, this is my response, which I have submitted for expected guffaws and ridicule on the adminstrators noticeboard and his talk page:
Moreschi I would not suggest that you have been seriously involved in the post-banning discussions, but you have shown an involvement, and that shouldn’t have been the case, since you’ve now lost the right to present yourself as an uninvolved administrator.
But finally – thank you – you have specified your cause of complaint against me. Although actually, by saying that this collective offering is only about a 10th of what you could write, you are not being specific at all, but vague again, pulling together a collection of individually-groundless criticisms to propose an argument that we are all ‘in’ on some kind of mass conspiracy that has led to a concerted campaign to edit-war.
Well you are wrong, but I have found that people tend to see what they choose to see here, so I guess your version will remain the official one. I’ll state my case for the record, as I have no doubt that an appeal to arbitration will be comparative in its judicial discrimination to your standards.
I openly admit to asking Wendy Stacey to comment in her official capacity as Chair of the Astrological Association of Great Britain, since those "reams of text" that you say "don’t lead anywhere" in the talkpage, were not designed to lead nowhere, and it’s actually shameful that they did. This was the result of some editors preferring to censor discussion rather than engage in it. I had offered clear arguments against a ridiculous point that needed to be removed from the lede, which maintained that astrologers "‘read’ the stars but don’t actually make use of them" or some such. The point is so ridiculous that there is no defense for it except the contorted, out-of-context inversion of the references I supplied after being requested to do so by an editor whose obstruction has definitely negatively affected the quality of the page content. Even in his admission that he lacked the necessary knowledge, this author demanded to define astrological practice in a way that would not be recognised by any astrologer. Not knowing that anyone could consider it to be a breach of policy I asked Wendy Stacey to comment, to bring that point to an end after the numerous references I offered were all ignored. The matter should have ended at that, since the debate concerned contemporary practice and she spoke as a representative of a professional body of astrologers - but it didn’t!
What I now realise is that it wasn’t for me to provide references to disprove the obstroculous editor’s ridiculous and unsubstantiated point – it should not have existed in the first place since it wasn’t reliable knowledge attributed to a credible source. There should have been no ‘edit war’ there, and if there was, then take to task the editor who insisted on making that discussion as long and as drawn out as it was, simply to make sure that his factually incorrect point of ‘irony’ got expression.
You have indicated 6 instances of suspected policy breach on my part – this point probably underlies most of them. You are wrong. Look at that page with your eyes open to what was really going on there: bigotry, bias, clinging to corrupt content in order to push a non-neutral POV. Being a new user I asked for administrator assistance at that point, and was told to “thrash it out through discussion”. That is what I tried to do and this is what generated what you now describe as a ‘time wasting’ discussion. In the process I asked for mediation – the obstroculous editor refused. I asked for 3rd party assistance – someone came in and said that he couldn’t get involved because more than two editors had contributed (but only one was being obstinate). Upon recommendation I raised an alert to ask for more editorial contribution from other Wikipedia editors – that’s why we got an influx of interested parties with widely differing POVs, and that’s why the astrology page (which anyone can see is full of flaws and badly put-together text, being the colleted results of territorial in-fighting of past editors) became so controversial again and full of new activity.
Your assumption of bad faith on the part of everyone who expressed a certain POV is like a witch-hunt based on unfounded allegations and negative speculations. Here we go with eagle-eye. I have no idea who eagle-eye is, but already smell the unpleasant aroma of someone being about to be censored for daring to express an opinion on the discussion page (!). Why don’t you include a notice “new discussion that we haven’t already had and agreed upon ourselves is not welcome here”? Why don’t you do a little tinkering with the wording of the 2nd principle of the Wikipedia ‘5 pillars’ policy so that it actually reads as it is being interpreted on the Astrology discussion page:
You have failed to make allowance for how I have shifted in my position to try to gain consensus, beyond what I personally believe. You have pointed to edits I made on the first day I joined as an editor, when I didn’t know the policies and made mistakes I later recognised and apologised for. You pointed to mined examples of edit changes that are disconnected to the discussion where my reasoning was justified. You have proposed that I have a non-neutral POV, when I do not. Your only assumption for this reduces everything I have contributed (as everything ultimately is reduced on that page) to an issue over the pseudo-science reference in the lede, and my argument that this was relevant but not such a dominant factor that it needed such stark notice and contrived highlight, so that it was mentioned twice in the lede, whilst the historical, cultural and philosophical significance of astrology, and the proper definition of what it is essentially is, was being wilfully ignored (except in dismissive terms that underlined the obstroculous editor’s need to express an imagined irony).
In short Moreschi, you have contributed to the reason why Wikipedia struggles to be taken seriously as credible reference of information, which I hope one day will be corrected.
I am going to leave a few suggestions for administrators below, in the full knowledge that they are likely to be met with the familiar chorus of guffaws and one-line insults that come from those who have learned how to quote policy procedures in such a way that the policy-intention can be evaded. Sorry if my comments lack the undertone of politeness and good faith requested, but I am frustrated, angry, and sad, that all my genuine and well intentioned efforts have been reduced to this.
Costmary ( talk) 16:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your e-mail. In order that other administrators who have opined on these topic bans can read my message, I am posting my reply to you here. I must impress upon you the magnitude of the intolerance that the Wikipedia community has of attempts to undermine our policy on a neutral point of view (NPOV). I put it to you, per your contributions at Talk:Astrology#Consensus? (specifically, your interaction with User:Kwami), that you are nonobservant of the NPOV policy. In your e-mail, you talk about appealing the topic ban. Whilst I will be happy to assist you in the procedural aspects of submitting that appeal, I first ask you how you reconcile your claim that you are "not pushing a pro-astrology POV, but seem to have suffered as a result of concern that I might be" with your approach to the point of view of the Astrology article as established on the talk page.
I gather from the current ANI thread that an off-wiki blog is material to this matter, but I'm struggling to make the connection. I am deriving my conclusions exclusively from your talk page comments and other edits to the Astrology article. In any case, I see it like this: you have been topic-banned from the article because you have edited it in a non-neutral way. Any appeal you submit would therefore be unlikely to succeed, unless there has been something that I have misunderstood, or unless your appeal is a claim not that you have not edited non-neutrally but is a request for a second chance.
You call me in your e-mail a good administrator with an honest desire to see good information on Wikipedia; thank you, and I certainly hope that is true. Your contention that Astrology is not a psuedo-science, I respectfully say, is by no stretch of the imagination good information. I hope that you do not perceive my observations to be unfair, but they are founded on much experience with editors who would seek to manipulate a Wikipedia article in order to make it non-neutral (and thereby severely degrade its quality). I now have your talk page on my watchlist and will see any reply you post here. Regards, AGK [ • 22:02, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Your comments at the Administrator notice board are accepted as sincere and appreciated as such. They deserve a less than dismissive, combative response. Like you, however, my opinion hasn't changed. I spent a long and increasingly nonplussed night, and the following day, reading through the change history of the astrology page for three years, and through the accompanying discussion. The overwhelming impression I gained was that a dedicated group of editors attempted to impose an irrational agenda on an encyclopaedia.
To be clear, by irrational I mean that no rational argument was employed or responded to. Instead, irrational demands to accord to personal beliefs the same respect and standing as credible sources were being endlessly repeated as a matter of personal faith. That cannot be allowed to stand for two reasons - 1.) Wikipedia doesn't actually give a shit what you or I believe, and says so quite clearly in its rules and principles. Wikipedia cares only about what you or I can cite from reputable sources; and 2.) the rhetoric of faith, particularly of the kind that is intolerant of opposing points of view, has been rightly excised from encyclopaediae to ensure the information presented is neutral enough to allow anyone of any faith (or of none at all) to draw their own conclusions.
If you say to me that there was no collusion between you and the other so-called 'pro-astrology' editors, I must accept your statement in good faith. But I must also point out to you that the repetitious and uncompromising restatements of the same positions over and over had all the appearance of an orchestrated effort to prevent resolution of conflict or accept counterpoints as valid when rationality alone would have demanded it. For example, you have yourself pointed out the ridiculous nature of a proposition that astrology has nothing to do with stars. How do you think any rational person looking at the enormously lengthy, unenlightening and repetitive debates about matters of belief rather than evidenced representation should react? At what point is it reasonable to demand that a pointless debate cease and certain ground rules are accepted?
Just to be clear about my premise here: I call some of the people I suspect of collusion 'pro astrology' in quote marks because I think they have actually done more harm to any respectability or social acceptance of astrological practices than any hundred sceptics by behaving like fascist thugs, figuratively ganging up on all who dared to question their views, beating them to the ground with illogical rhetorical devices, using pejoratives that amounted to written bullying, and clearly coordinating tactics for denying rationality in the debate by employing rhetorical strategies that were made famous by the Jesuits during numerous heresy trials over several centuries in pre-modern Europe, and used extensively in Nazi show trials last century. It is a matter of personal principle that raises my hackles when anyone assumes I am so ignorant I can't recognise someone is trying to manipulate me that way, hence my progressively sharper, but never rude, responses in the astrology discussion over the past couple of days. I am downright furious if someone thinks they can bully me with irrational claptrap, hence my determination not to step away from that debate, which was my initial instinct. The challenge for me will be to maintain rational objectivity - that is to recognise in even my most implacable rhetorical opponents the faintest glimmer of valuable contribution.
It is not that I believe Wikipedia rules are always right, but they are actually better than most of the half-arsed demands I've seen made by lazy thinkers (not just in the astrology page) to be taken seriously when there's no reason to do that. You cite the comment before mine on the admin pages. That editor had the gall to describe himself, and maybe some others, as subject matter experts! Yet my reading of the astrology article made it pretty clear to me that the citations for the theory and practice of astrology were so poor that if there were subject matter experts present in the debate, they remained silent about their expertise for years. Isn't it characteristic of subject matter experts to be able to rattle off any number of citations and authorities or precedents?
So, Costmary, these are the reasons for what I do on the astrology page. Lest you are in any doubt, I have had my run-ins with admins, and fierce disagreements about how Wikipedia policies and guidelines have been interpreted by them.
But there is one common ground: most of them will respect rational, reasoned, principled argument. And I do too, being prepared to yield on almost any issue if persuaded rationally.
Wikipedia and all the topics in it do not belong to me, and aren't tools for my self-validation, gratification or ego masturbation. There are limits, such as points of principle. I wrote to an admin the other day that consensus isn't always a sustainable justification for doing things: just because, say, a whole bunch of people could agree that killing Billy Bloggs or Mary Jones is the right thing to do, that is no reason for me to yield to that consensus. But that kind of example is rare in life, and hopefully in Wikipedia.
I hope that I have now illustrated that while I disagree with your methodology on the astrology page, I don't wish you ill, nor do I think that there won't be opportunities for us to work collaboratively and positively on projects and towards outcomes that we both regard as positive for shared or separate reasons. It is on that basis that I urge you not to lose heart because you feel aggrieved about this issue. Take time out to reflect, regroup, dissolve the bad karma, etc. Then return fresh and maybe avoid polarising topics for a while. Wikipedia needs you and and all the others I oppose on this issue. We would be a poorer collective intellect if we lost you because of this one disagreement.
I hope this discourse has not been too long, too boring, too patronising, or too late in the piece to find receptive eyes and judgement in you. I wish you well and hope to encounter you here again under more congenial circumstances.
Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 13:48, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Reading what you had to say about your astrology page experience makes me think that you had an incredibly bad first contact with Wikipedia, which convinces me even more that you should not turn your back on on it. What you experienced is atypical, not indicative.
There are thousands of people here you'd just love to death, and they you. And there are thousands more who are gruff and dismissive, if only because they are busy and bad at interpersonal communications.
I firmly believe, having read your words, that you are the sort of editor Wikipedia needs as a longer-term contributor, and that this will happen only if you see the benefits in sticking around.
Reviewing in my mind your experiences as you relayed them to me, two things went terribly wrong for you straight away: 1.)you had no exposure to the considerable discussion about Wikipedia etiquette that has been developed over a decade to guide editors in how things work here; and 2.)no experienced editor took you aside to explain the significance of what was happening to you while it was happening. That's unfortunate, but not really anyone's failing so much as a fact of life in a community of interest that is as harsh and nasty, and as rich and rewarding, as the world outside it.
So let me start where someone else should have. First, I am not an administrator, nor really what you would call an experienced editor at Wikipedia. What I say to you is on my own behalf. You can look me up on my user page here. My own philosophy on Wikipedia has evolved since the early 2000s to not editing anonymously anymore, to using my real name as a sign that I accept all consequences and responsibilities that flow from my own actions.
I notice that you have never created your own user page. See here for how to do that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_page. Playing in your own user space gives you an opportunity to make mistakes that no one will give you grief about.
I also highly recommend that you read some of the stuff that comes off this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents/Getting_started. This isn't an assignment, but if you're ever in front of a computer for a few minutes with some spare time, it's not a bad intro to how things work here.
From these two starting points, your inquiring mind will draw you to other information, resources and interesting things in the Wikimedia space. It's a matter of exploring and absorbing. Wikimedia is the overarching project that includes Wikipedia, but many other information-related endeavours as well.
Every page you travel to will have a talk page where you can find existing Wikipedians discussing the issues that interest them. Those discussions are mostly signed. By clicking on a signature you can go to an editor's page, and once there, seek help, advice, assistance, or just leave a comment. That's how you get to know stuff here. You just have to know when to ask, and not to be disheartened if you get no reply, a reply days later, or an off-putting one. Everyone here has a life outside Wikipedia and not everyone writes with an eye to how it reads back.
I won't blather on much more, except to say that Wikipedia's purpose is not to offer a platform for opinions and self-validation. It is not a social medium. It is an encyclopaedic endeavour. It is the biggest information endeavour in human history. It doesn't really care whether you and I live or die. Only other people do. So don't confuse the work done here with the character of the people who do it. They must be separate qualities. The work is impartial and uncaring. The people are as infinitely varied as the ones you meet in the world.
I strongly urge you, again, not to retreat from Wikipedia. Take time out, by all means, but look some more, talk some more and absorb what makes hundreds of thousands of people roll up their sleeves and give their time freely to constantly create Wikipedia.
If you do that, and you come across stuff you don't understand or need help with, ask. Ask me, ask others. No question is ever silly or a bad reflection. Not asking is the only way to fail.
Give it some time, then apply to have your ban lifted. Ask me how to go about doing that if you want, but probably more useful for you would be to ask someone who is an administrator, and not one who was involved in the astrology debate. I have taken the liberty of asking a Wiki guide (a volunteer to act as a guide to new editors at Wikipedia) to drop in on your page and say hi.
Take the time to ask the questions you want. Start slow and briefly so you don't overwhelm whoever it is. No one took my hand when I first got here, and I got the shit kicked out of me a few times, but I always came back for more, and there were people who offered help, people I approached myself, and people who just dropped by out of the blue to offer kind words and assistance. That, not the astrology shit-fight, is my perception of what Wikipedia is all about.
I'm always here if you need a chat or some pointers. But I have particular views and you should be exposed to more than just those.
I repeat, I wish you well, and hope you decide to stick around Wikipedia.
Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 00:01, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I'd suggest that a better path for you would be to find some other articles to edit here for a while. I'm no admin, and not even a very involved editor, but I can tell you what I've seen work well and what hasn't.
Looking at your edit history, you behave and appear at least superficially to be pushing a point of view. Posting on Jimbo's page, etc, mostly make you look a lot like another in a long line of POV pushers that rant and rave and then quickly vanish. They waste everyone's time and make for a quick flare of drama and not much else.
A better solution (for Wikipedia... because editors are good! ) would be to find some other articles that interest you, perhaps a less conentious article. Learn the ropes, and edit for a while, and learn how the systems work. Then with that experience appeal the ban and help improve the Astrology article. Its a big place and being banned from a topic really shouldn't be that big a deal.
Hey, what the hell do I know, so do what you want with the advice. Delete it, I certainly won't take offence. Guyonthesubway ( talk) 01:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Like it. I didn't know. What conditions does it take to grow it?
My favourite plants are aloe vera and citronella. Aloe vera is really good on burns, cuts and gunshot wounds. Citronella is pretty aromatic, but excellent as a non-chemical deterrent to mosquitoes and other bitey parasites.
Both grow with minimal supervision in a pot or in the ground. I'm also partial to lipia, the coloquial name for a ground runner that takes the place of grass in arid far north-west Australia, where precipitation is irregular and the ground can harden into a conrete-like pindan for many months of the year, and then turn to waist-deep slush when seasonal cyclones hit. Lipia does take lots of nurturing to start it, though.
Had you considered putting up a page about your namesake? Botanists may have hijacked the discussion on the scientific properties, but we need someone to disambiguate the term, so anyone looking for it under a colloquial name can find it.
Burn the witch was an eye-opener for me when I was at school in England. It taught me that rationality isn't subject to the kind of gibberish the totalitarians were using to subvert open and disciplined discussion about the ends of human endeavours (and they were using it to kill people, send them to gulags and all sorts of other nonsense). The Monty Python skit said to me that the absolute right of one's own conscience being the only church anyone should recognise is more sacrosanct than any religious pretension (well, that's actually Tom Paine, but I think John and Terry meant it that way). I'm with you in principle, but not on the specifics of the astrology article.
Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 23:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)