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This is an archive of past discussions with User:Valjean. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
One space on each side of the heading, between the colon equals sign and the heading.
== Heading ==
A blank line above and below the heading.
Changes to these do not affect the appearance of the final product, but the default spacings make editing easier(*) for editors with older eyes, so please use the default spacings.
(*) When quickly scanning the page while in the editing window, the blank line separations jump right out and help one easily and quickly find section headings.
Most articles with more than a couple dozen headers == over time == == get== ==effed == ==up== anyway; horizontally, I don't see your concern. I routinely seek out such "errors" (purely in the interest of consistency), and when they are many I opt for un-spacing so Ctrl+F1 can [much more] quickly spot new ones. Brogo13 (talk) 18:45, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Petrarchan47, I have replied there. This mattered as been addressed and settled several times. Two editors who pressed this issue, along with other attacks against me for my views on Quackwatch and alternative medicine, have been community banned for doing so, which is the harshest sanction here. Only the community can overturn it, so it's pretty much truly "indefinite". -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:39, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Yes, edit summaries aren't the best way to communicate. The change I noticed that's not good is changing numbers to words. In other situations, it's normally good to improve the text by doing so where it should be done, but I don't think it's a good idea to change the way the author/speaker wrote it. (One of the unfortunate consequences is that a search for the original quote will not show that the quote is actually on the page, when it's just been changed.) That's all. Otherwise, I appreciate your improvements, so carry one. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:20, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
I thought we were on the same page and collaborating. Have I read you wrong? I really have a hard time figuring out what you mean in your responses. They aren't straight and simple responses, but clever whatevers. Please respond normally.
I don't want to take this to admins, but I will if we can't sort this out here. We need to agree on what to do here. Please self-revert those numbers.
When researchers search for these quotes, they will no longer find them here. That's not right. The actual wording of quotes should not be changed. If it's not a quote, then such changes would be good copyediting, but this type of thing is disruptive. -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:40, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
"It's fifty-fifty." That complete sentence deserves its own period and, read out loud, is completely indistinguishable from the numerical (indeed dashed vice hyphenated) version. Of course it wouldn't sound like Steele—or Isikoff, or Corn, who both "have stated" what Steele would have said—but we can't fix everything. --Brogo13 (talk) 17:19, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
My concern is not how it "sounds", but how it appears to a page search and search engines. Even the smallest changes have huge effects. Steele did say this, and those who cited him wrote it as 50–50.
BTW, this issue is apparently already covered at MoS. Look at this discussion, which links to it:
"Note the source: Yulya Alferova, who describes herself as “advisor to the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.” Judging from her English-language Twitter feed, she is also a huge Trump fan.
"Finally, note the content of the tweet: In January 2014, around the time the Russians were launching their effort to meddle in the U.S. elections that were still more than two years away, Alferova already had accurate information that Trump would be running for president and had already pledged her support."
Also in 2014, the Russians began their hacking attack in preparation for the 2016 elections, and Dutch intelligence watched them do it, took the pictures, and made dossiers on each hacker. They watched this in real time. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:46, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
The dossier alleged on October 18, 2016, that Sechin "offered PAGE/TRUMP's associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" (worth about $11 billion) in exchange for Trump lifting the sanctions against Russia after his election.[1][2][3][4][5]
About a month after Trump won the election, according to The Guardian, Carter Page traveled to Moscow "shortly before the company announced it was selling a 19.5% stake" in Rosneft. He met with top Russian officials at Rosneft, but denied meeting Sechin. He also complained about the effects of the sanctions against Russia.[6]
On December 7, 2016, Putin announced that a 19.5% stake in Rosneft was sold to Glencore and a Qatar fund. Public records showed the ultimate owner included "a Cayman Islands company whose beneficial owners cannot be traced", with "the main question" being "Who is the real buyer of a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft?. ... the Rosneft privatization uses a structure of shell companies owning shell companies."[7][8][9]
Martin Longman, writing for Washington Monthly, found Steele's prediction of the privatisation of 19% of Rosneft "tantalizing" and "intriguing", and went on to write: "Either that number was floated somewhere in the press or that's a remarkable coincidence or the intelligence was good and the promise was kept."[10]
Luke Harding has described the setting of this offer of a 19% stake in Rosneft. It involved an "unusual bribe", a "carrot", a "stick", and "blackmail". Sechin and Divyekin were allegedly using a financial bribe in a classic carrot and stick scheme. The carrot was the financial bribe: "Any brokerage fee would be substantial, in the region of tens and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars."[11] It also involved a stick, the stick being blackmail of Trump: "Diveykin also delivered an ominous warning. He hinted—or even 'indicated more strongly'—that the Russian leadership had damaging material on Trump, too. Trump 'should bear this in mind' in his dealings with Moscow, Diveykin said. This was blackmail, clear and simple."[11]
Interesting idea. Not quite sure how to integrate this but it certainly has merit as we move to a point where the usual excuses will be trotted out again. Guy (help!) 13:34, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Not yet, but I will. I have read a number of interviews in which they mention it and where it is quoted. The fascinating thing about this whole dossier is that its allegations are all plausible and give explanations for events that are proven to have happened. The dossier tells what happened behind closed doors, and then events occurred which sprang from those hidden events. Also, none of the allegations have been proven to be false. There are some minor inaccuracies, such as spelling errors, but none are serious or affect the narrative or allegations. There are some allegations which will likely never be proven, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:15, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Eichenwald
ALLEGATION
That "there had been talk in the Kremlin of TRUMP being forced to withdraw from the presidential race altogether as a result of recent events, ostensibly on grounds of his state and unsuitability for high office."[1] (Dossier, p. 14)
VERIFICATION
The dossier alleges that "there had been talk in the Kremlin of TRUMP being forced to withdraw from the presidential race altogether as a result of recent events, ostensibly on grounds of his state and unsuitability for high office."[1] (Dossier, p. 14)
"Trump's behavior, however, has at times concerned the Russians, leading them to revise their hacking and disinformation strategy. For example, when Trump launched into an inexplicable attack on the parents of a Muslim-American soldier who died in combat, the Kremlin assumed the Republican nominee was showing himself psychologically unfit to be president and would be forced by his party to withdraw from the race."[2]
ALLEGATION
The dossier alleges that Michael Cohen traveled to Prague and met with Russian officials at Rossotrudnichestvo headquarters. While it has not been proven that Cohen did this, something similar did happen:
"Western intelligence has also obtained reports that a Trump associate met with a pro-Putin member of Russian parliament at a building in Eastern Europe maintained by Rossotrudnichestvo, an agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that is charged with administering language, education and support programs for civilians."[2]
His denials proven false, due to evidence found during the discovery process in the defamation suit(s) Gubarev had filed against others.[3][4][5]
BLP violations?
JFG, thanks for the ping when you deleted my comment. Let's talk about it here. If I supplied the RS which make the case, would that solve the problem? RS describe both of them as boasters who exaggerate their own importance. Millian claims to have been present for the "golden showers" incident. Page has lied and lied until forced to tell the truth under oath, and even then he's probably not telling the full truth. They had to draw it out of him a little bit at a time. Are you in doubt about what I said, or is this purely a BLP "unsourced controversial statement" issue? If it's only the latter, then I commend you for your deletion. Otherwise, the claims can be sourced, and I'll just do it here, for your benefit, as I see no need to restore the comment on the article talk page.
The dossier alleges that Source D (Millian) claimed to have been "present" for Trump's alleged "perverted conduct in Moscow".[6] Glenn Simpson doubts Millian's claim,[7] and so do I. I have never seen any evidence that Millian was even with Trump at the Miss Universe pageant in 2013, and Trump's bodyguard makes no mention of Millian when he describes escorting Trump to the Presidential Suite at the Ritz-Carlton and then leaving him alone there. Nothing at all. Of course, lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. It's not entirely impossible that one of the Agalarov's (who had offered the girls to Trump) had Millian escort the girls to Trump's room later in the night, but I highly doubt it.
The existing video shows two girls on the bed, one laying down and the other peeing while she's standing, and they are not peeing on Trump. He appears to be pointing and directing them what to do, while also poking at his cell phone, both gestures we have seen many times. The room matches the Presidential Suite exactly. If it's a fake, it's very well done. What's rather amusing about this is that no one on earth, not even Melania, can honestly deny that this isn't something he would do. It's entirely in character, and he lied several times about it. Why lie about it if you're innocent?
Sergei Millian (Siarhei Kukuts) is a Belarusian-born American citizen, with close ties to the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, has been identified as both sources D and E, unwitting (and thus a hostile witness) sources mentioned in the Trump–Russia dossier. He never intended his confidential discussions to be repeated to Steele, but that's what happened.[8][7][9][10] ABC News reported that a version of the dossier "provided to the FBI included Millian's name as a source".[11]
Here is just one of the sources which describe some of Millian's claims (outside the dossier) as boasting.[10]
Court testimony shows Page had been lying when he repeatedly denied meeting Russian officials during his 2016 visit to Moscow and Rosneft. While it is still unproven that he actually met with Sechin at that time (he has met him at other times), he did admit to meeting with Andrey Baranov, the head of investor relations at Rosneft. That makes sense because the allegations are about matters which would be in Baranov's area of responsibility. Page was "compelled to admit" that fact,[13] and we know that hostile witnesses only admit the truth in little bits, and often never reveal the full truth.
Some RS consider his admissions as confirmation about the general veracity of the dossier's allegation, even if a name is wrong. The main facts are that (1) such meetings actually did happen, and (2) he had repeatedly lied about it.
The same principle applies to the dossier's allegation that there existed a "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership." While the "conspiracy" was never proven, the actual "co-operation" was proven with boatloads of evidence.
So it was unproven that a "formal agreement" existed, but what is alleged to have actually happened really did happen, and that is really the most important thing. Trump supporters stop with the unproven and refuse to admit the proven. How convenient.
Page is alleged to have met at least two different people at Rosneft in two different meetings. Only one meeting has been dealt with (Baranov). The other meeting is ignored, and it's this one where he allegedly met Sechin. There are a lot of unproven things going on, and we may never get the full truth. He is an untrustworthy hostile witness whose statements to the IG cannot be taken at face value. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:58, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the extensive notes. I never knew about the fake pee tape, although I'm sure dozens of porn sites may have enacted this exact scenario for fun and clicks, once the Steele dossier made it a popular fantasy. I confirm that my removal of your paragraph in brackets was only meant as enforcement of BLP rules on talk pages. I have no opinion on the credibility of Page and Millian (although Millian does appear at first glance as a lot shadier than Page). As you noted, many updates to our articles will probably be necessary once RS start digesting the Horowitz report. Enjoy! — JFGtalk18:11, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
JFG, the video is short and obviously from someone taking a picture of the screen on which it is being played, so the quality is diminished. Too bad we don't have the original! Others have done this, but I too have compared the room, bed, and lighting with the actual room and its walls, and the match is perfect. If it's a fake, it was still made in the real room. That this happened has been a rumor in Moscow for several years, long before the dossier. Sometimes they joke about it on television. We just don't know if the rumor is true.
Millian has lots of connections in the Kremlin, within the Trump campaign, and within the Trump Organization, and been photographed with many, including Trump and Deripaska. He has an insider's POV from both aspects. He uses them and they use him, but that also makes him a throwaway person. His acquaintances feel no loyalty to him. He's a boaster and self-promoter, which lessens his credibility, maybe not for the actual events, but at least for his relationship to them.
Page is a slippery guy who uses what I call "mob speak", much like Trump. (If Trump didn't learn it from his father, he probably learned it from Roy Cohn and the mobsters he used to hang around with.) It's hard to pin them down. Page's statements are vague, unfocused, jump around a lot, and he mentions a whole lot of things within a few seconds. In the end, there are dozens of ways he can later use modifiers and "not sure", "I don't remember", "maybe that's right, now that you remind me of it" to get out of taking responsibility for anything he said. Only a court situation, under oath, with lawyers persistently pressuring him, gets him to divulge a little bit more at a time. His type wastes the time of the courts. Plausible deniability is a modus operandi with these types. It's their habitual way of speaking and acting, and that's a huge "consciousness of guilt" red flag. Honest people don't speak that way. People who have something to hide do it all the time.
Trump's lawyers have described how he does this all the time. He rarely gives actual orders, but all his associates know that when he expresses a wish, they are to understand it as marching orders, and if they succeed without getting caught, he'll reward them, but if they get caught, or they tell the truth and expose him, he'll throw them under the bus while he keeps his hands clean. I just don't like these types of people. They have no regard for truth. Give me an imperfect person who makes mistakes any day. They are fundamentally honest. Even those who strongly disagree with Obama's policies recognize him as a man of class, honor, and decency. He is still highly respected around the world. -- BullRangifer (talk) 19:43, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
Sources
^ abCite error: The named reference Weindling_1/11/2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
I'm aware of the sentence in the policy, but what matters is application in practice. Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive, and when there is a disagreement between policy and widespread practice it's the policy that should change.Can you point to one or two cases where a minority position has prevailed because it cited that sentence? If not, you should (1) take the question to the community for clarification, or (2) assume that the community does not interpret and apply the sentence the way you do and abandon that line of argument.My view on the issue is that anybody can raise a false NPOV flag, and they often do as you're well aware. Your interpretation of the policy would leave articles defenseless against that. Consensus is what decides how much merit an NPOV claim has, so it's nonsensical to claim that NPOV trumps consensus. The only policy that can trump consensus is BLP, and only because that's necessary to protect the project from costly lawsuits that could kill it. ―Mandruss☎19:54, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
Mandruss, I pretty much agree with everything you say above. All our policies are interpretable, and that's where consensus rules. My specific point is that the personal feelings and POV of editors should not trump RS.
NPOV applies mostly to editorial neutrality in how we present sources, including biased sources, not so much to content or source neutrality, since both may be biased, and editors must reign in their feelings and POV and prioritize RS. Editors must not show bias in their editing. They must let RS-coverage dictate how much weight to give a subject, and they must not get in the way. They must faithfully document the POV found in the sources.
Feelings and POV are subjective, and it's an NPOV policy violation to give such feelings priority over RS, or, as I wrote "RS-coverage, not subjective editorial POV, weighs more." That's my point. Does that make sense to you, or am I expressing myself too poorly? -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:09, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Here you said, NPOV is inviolable, and a local consensus must not override it. Above you said, the personal feelings and POV of editors should not trump RS. Those are very different statements and I don't see how the former can be interpreted as the latter. Thanks for clarifying and here's hoping you can be clearer the first time in future comments. ―Mandruss☎21:54, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Oh! That is a bit muddled, but are speaking about different things (NPOV policy and RS). Thanks for pointing it out. Sometimes different contexts explain different wordings and seemingly conflicting statements, and other times I simply screw up. -- BullRangifer (talk) 22:02, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Google Trends
Hey in response to this I thought I would reply on your talk page instead of the article talk. I have not used it very often but for example here it is comparing just the search term. When you click on the term at the top a drop down should appear and you can select search term or topic. PackMecEng (talk) 01:02, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Hopeless. Communication with normal people usually works, but this is really weird, fruitless and been a huge waste of time. Not normal.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This is not the first time you have moved my comments, and both times it seems to be completely unnecessary. Are you trying to get us into some intractable dispute over something that would require involvement from other parties, in an attempt to get me banned from interacting with you? I will always treat you and others respectfully, so I very much doubt that will happen, but I ask you not to move my comments again. My comments at 04:27 and 04:36 are clearly made before yours at 06:13, but for some reason you have decided to move mine down and place your comment above mine, and doing so again when I reverted that move. You also added an indent to my comment, which makes it look like I am replying to your comment, and that is simply not the case.
The only times I have had issues with another editor moving my comments (after I move them back) was with you, so I hope this is not behaviour you are undertaking with other editors. It has absolutely no bearing on the content of the article, so I can't see why you're doing this. There are other contributors with similar views on content as yourself, but they have not been engaging in this kind of conduct. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:05, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Onetwothreeip, go back and look at the diffs more carefully. You are the one who has moved my comment three times. Please stop it. Here are the diffs. Notice the original location of my comment:
Once again, I restore my comment to its original location. Notice the time stamp of the comment immediately above mine.
Note that it may appear I was moving yours, but I was actually moving mine, but because they switch places, the appearance can be tricky. The point is, I put my comment back in its original location.
My edit added an RfC heading without moving any comments. An RfC MUST start in its own separate section. When you made this edit, you moved my comments into that new section. If I wanted my comment to be in a new section, I would have made a new section. The "original location" of your comment that you are referring to was placed there by moving my other comments further down.
This is the last revision before you first moved my comment and added your own (when you created a new section). I made the 04:27 comment as a response to my initial comment at the start of the section, immediately after a comment by My very best wishes. Then I added an RfC template and another comment after that, at 04:36. These comments came one after another, without any of your comments being made in between them. If you want to add your own comment, you are free to do so, but put them after mine. You have no right (or reason, for that matter) to move my comments down so that you can add yours higher up. The appropriate place to add your comment is either at the end of the thread, or below another editor's comment. If you choose to place them below another editor's comment, they should be below all the other responses to that comment.
Again I ask you, why are you even doing this? There simply seems to be no benefit for you here, and no change in article content as a result. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:17, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Look, this is a confusing situation, and there is no bad faith attempt to disrupt things. As I see it, the problem started when you improperly started an RfC in the middle of an existing discussion. I have never seen that done before. That's not how it's done.
If you had started a separate RfC section, there would be no problem. I did not want to participate in your RfC, and added my comment in response to right after the comment at "My very best wishes (talk) 01:39, 14 December 2019". You kept moving my comment away from that spot, which makes it appear that I was responding to you. I was not, so my comment should not appear right after yours. Unfortunately, others then responded to my comment while it was in the wrong place.
The way to solve this is for you to restart your RfC in its own section so it's clear who is responding to what. The section heading of an RfC is required to include the letters RfC and a short, neutral, description. That makes it an official RfC which the bots can handle properly.
My comment does not belong in the RfC or after your comment. If you won't start the RfC properly in its own section, I will strike my comment and repeat it in the right place above the RfC. Your comment which starts with these words "It's clear this will only get the same participants that..." appears to belong to the RfC, and can be added underneath the new RfC section heading, or you can just leave it immediately above, but that too can create confusion.
Just don't force me or others to participate in your improperly formed RfC. Ideally, you should just delete that comment and make a clean start for the RfC. -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:09, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
I just went ahead and struck my comment and then restored it to its original location. Don't move it again. It is not part of your RfC and is not in response to your RfC comments, but it is a response to your opening comment at 21:44, 13 December 2019. -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:17, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Since you "also made my 06:31 comment as a reply to BullRangifer 06:13, not to my own comment.", feel free to keep them together by moving your comment (and mine that follows) up under mine. That will help a lot. -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:26, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Onetwothreeip, to properly start an RfC, just follow the instructions here:
I obviously didn't appreciate your attempts to alter the RfC, and this all could have been avoided if you had raised your concerns with me before you took your actions. I am more than willing to discuss these kinds of issues on my talk page, as you have done so on my talk page previousy. I am aware that RfCs are typically started at the beginning of a section, as I have done in the past myself, and I purposefully did not do so here.
If your comment at 06:13 was intended to be a reply to the comment by My very best wishes at 01:39, I have absolutely no problem with your comment being moved below the 01:39 comment as a reply, as long as it was indented to be a reply. It was originally posted as a reply to the first comment in the section, my comment at 21:44. I have no interest in keeping your comment below the RfC template rather than above it. Onetwothreeip (talk) 10:02, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
I didn't try to "alter" the RfC, only give it the heading it should have. An RfC is a formal procedure with rules. One should not deviate from them. That causes problems, as in this case.
My comment was located right below 01:39, and was one of several replies to your opening comment at 21:44. The location is now correct, and I have fixed the indents.
No, I did not intend to reply to you. How you can claim that to be a response to you when you only made your comment afterwards is completely ridiculous. I moved your comment above mine because you said you intended that to be a response to the comment My very best wishes. I moved it back there on the condition that it would be properly indented to show it was a response to that comment.
Giving a separate heading for the RfC is clearly altering my comment. I wouldn't encourage that sort of action, but given that I could easily revert that, it's not too much of a problem. The comment where I open the RfC was a response to my own initial comment that opened the section. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:54, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
I think I can clear this up pretty easily. These two edits moved my comments down. Whether this was accidental or not, this obviously should not have happened, unless you meant to respond to the above comment by My very best wishes. I've had to move my comment back up above that, in its original place. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:11, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Onetwothreeip, OMG! Seriously? You just moved a FIVE COMMENT THREAD down into your RfC, when they never were intended to be part of it.
This whole mess could have been avoided if you had started your RfC in the proper manner, a manner you were aware of ("I am aware that RfCs are typically started at the beginning of a section, as I have done in the past myself, and I purposefully did not do so here."). Don't deviate from standard practice. It creates clusterfucks like this.
Things were finally back where they should be, and yet you've again moved my comment (and responses to it) away from where it was originally located right after the comment time-stamped 01:39, 14 December 2019. Notice that location. You should have discussed this move here before you did it.
Your diff of supposedly "two edits" only shows one edit, which is my original addition of that comment at 06:13, December 14, 2019, right after the comment time stamped 01:39, 14 December 2019. As I just explained above, my comment was in response to your opening comment at 21:44, 13 December 2019. Leave it there. You later moved my comment and responded to it at 06:31, 14 December 2019. That's why your response to my comment (06:31, 14 December 2019), and then my response to your comment, all belong right after my 06:13, 14 December 2019 comment. Keep them together and all will be well.
Now you have placed your two comments (04:36, 14 December 2019 and 04:27, 14 December 2019) above a FIVE COMMENT THREAD, even though your two comments were originally placed below.
Don't look at the time they were written, as that will confuse you. Even though my comment (06:13, 14 December 2019) was written (timewise) after your two comments, it was not originally placed after them because my comment was never intended as part of your RfC or in response to your two comments. Now it appears as if it is part of your RfC, but it's not. It was intended as a response to your opening comment time-stamped 21:44, 13 December 2019. The comments above your RfC are not part of it.
This is simply getting absurd at this point. You moved my comment, it wasn't me moving your comment.
As you can see with this edit, I posted these comments immediately after the comment made by My very best wishes. If you want to reply to My very best wishes, of course you can do this, but otherwise you would simply have to make a comment below my comment, or not make a comment at all. If you want to comment below my comment but you want to make it clear you don't want it to be considered part of an RfC, of course you can amend your comment to reflect that.
Instead what you did, as seen through these successive edits, was you moved my comment without my permission, into a new section and placed your comment above mine'. I assumed good faith and reverted your moving of my comments. Then I moved my comments back up and responded to your comment. It is not my fault that other responses have been added to that particular comment chain, so the amount of comments in that chain is completely immaterial. Describing it in CAPITAL LETTERS is pretty pointless here.
When you claim that you should have discussed this move here before you did it, you should remember that it was you who moved my comment down in order to place yours above mine. I never agreed to my comments being moved down. Every time that I have made an edit in regards to this, it has been by cutting and pasting my comments back to where I originally placed them. I purposefully placed those comments immediately after the comment by My very best wishes, and it is not for you to interpret where I wanted to put those comments when I have explicitly stated where I intended for them to be. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:43, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
Well, I can see that you would rather relitigate this from the start, rather than going back to the last place we were in agreement. I'm really beginning to wonder if you might have Asperger syndrome, like my son. That's not an insult, just a recognition that it would explain your untraditional way of dealing with this and with your uncollaborative, solo, editing patterns. I can AGF about that. Otherwise, you're just being uncollaborative and disruptive, and there's no AGF for that. It would also explain why you don't react normally to all the complaints about your behavior. Normal people try to mesh in and edit collaboratively, but you push on like a bull in a china shop.
It looks like I'll have to find some other way to resolve this so that it doesn't appear that those comments were part of your RfC. Several of those comments were added while my comment was in its original location above your RfC, and now they all appear to be part of it. That's not right. Again, this would never have been an issue if you had just created the RfC in the required manner as a separate section. Don't deviate from normal procedures here. It creates these types of problems and lots of wasted time. -- BullRangifer (talk) 19:59, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
My sandbox. No cats allowed
This is the state of things (after I had written my 06:13, 14 December comment above the RfC) at this edit by IP123, but the response by IP123 at 06:31, 14 December was added after they had moved my comment down into the RfC, where it did not belong. Yet it was clearly a response to my comment:
It's clear this will only get the same participants that are always here, so the only real way to settle this is through an RfC and reach editors who are not personally invested in the content. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:27, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
{{rfc|pol|rfcid=B4CFEC8}}
Should events from the 1980s and 90s be included in this timeline article about the 2016 United States elections? There are also further questions over the relevancy of many of the entries in this article. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:36, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
Keep. Things don't happen in a vacuum. Sometimes they have a start date (the Russian hacking toward the 2016 election already began in 2014, according to Dutch intelligence), but they also have a prehistory, and that is legitimate content, especially since RS make these connections. From 1987 and onwards, the KGB, and later Russian FSB (and Russian oligarchs, businessmen, and mobsters), have watched and cultivated Trump. At first as a wealthy American with outspoken anti-American views, and then as one who already had presidential aspirations, and in 2013 they publicly expressed their support for his coming candidacy, long before he told Americans. They promised him their support. In the end, it's RS that dictate what we do here. This content is relevant if RS say it's relevant, and they do. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:13, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
What happened in 1987 was not Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:31, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
Should events from the 1980s and 90s be included in this timeline article about the 2016 United States elections? There are also further questions over the relevancy of many of the entries in this article. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:36, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
It's clear this will only get the same participants that are always here, so the only real way to settle this is through an RfC and reach editors who are not personally invested in the content. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:27, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
Keep. Things don't happen in a vacuum. Sometimes they have a start date (the Russian hacking toward the 2016 election already began in 2014, according to Dutch intelligence), but they also have a prehistory, and that is legitimate content, especially since RS make these connections. From 1987 and onwards, the KGB, and later Russian FSB (and Russian oligarchs, businessmen, and mobsters), have watched and cultivated Trump. At first as a wealthy American with outspoken anti-American views, and then as one who already had presidential aspirations, and in 2013 they publicly expressed their support for his coming candidacy, long before he told Americans. They promised him their support. In the end, it's RS that dictate what we do here. This content is relevant if RS say it's relevant, and they do. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:13, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
What happened in 1987 was not Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:31, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
No one claims it was. It is the prehistory. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:33, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
The 1980s are in the Mueller Report "prehistory", and the 1980s are in other RSs whether it be via the Internet, books, or books on the Internet (Google Books). X1\ (talk) 23:51, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
NOTE: Comments above are not part of the following RfC. It was added later. -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:56, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi Chris. Thanks. How time flies. After editing on a casual basis as an IP since 2003, I finally got serious and registered an account on December 18, 2015. It's been quite a ride, and an enriching one. One learns so much from this adventure. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:07, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I read that one. While much of it is sarcastic, it's also very telling. The Russians regularly joke about themselves electing the American president. They don't keep it a secret. Trump doesn't want to admit what happened, but they brag about it. He asked for their help and he got it. Of course, they had already expressed in 2013 that they would support his candidacy, and in 2014 the hacking already began. Fortunately Dutch intelligence had hacked the Russians and literally watched, in real time, as they hacked America. They even hacked the surveillance cameras and were able to get pictures of all the hackers, got their names, their computers IDs, everything. The Russians and Trump planned this for a long time. When he asked for their help, he already knew that they had stolen Hillary's emails and been hacking to help him. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:35, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
This is absurd. I didn't turn references into errors, I simply moved content into another article. Because they are list defined references, it shows up as an error because the references aren't invoked in the article itself. All that needs to be done is for the errors to be removed. This is really not worth causing so much fuss. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:18, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Yeah that error doesn't affect the actual article body, so the complaint is overblown. Somebody needs to remove the unused LDRs, assuming they are going to remain unused, since those big red errors in the refs section shouldn't be left for long. Failure to do so immediately hardly amounts to CIR. In related news, years ago I tried to get a Village Pump consensus to modify the software to tolerate that "error", or at least report it less intrusively, since that would be one less reason to avoid using LDR. Couldn't get any traction. ―Mandruss☎08:38, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
@Onetwothreeip: You stated above: "All that needs to be done is for the errors to be removed. This is really not worth causing so much fuss." I therefore wish to advise you that you can save yourself and other editors a lot of time, trouble and "fuss" if you remove the errors yourself. Corker1 (talk) 09:24, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
You've been making it a much bigger deal than it has to be, across several pages. Please direct further comments to my talk page, but I don't think you need to comment any further anyway. Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:15, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
IP-editor, I have a tangentially-related question. Since you don't have an account, it's hard to tell who we're talking to sometimes. You said you'd been editing here a year - was this your first edit on the page in question? Or roughly your first edit, anyway? --Aquillion (talk) 01:01, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi Aquillion. I can't answer that question for 123IP, but I can tell you that this was their IP before they registered the current account: 123.2.85.195 -- BullRangifer (talk 01:31, December 23, 2019 (UTC)
Yeah. Apologizes for bringing this up on your talk page, but talking to a dynamic IP is hard because there's no reason to think things left on the IP's talk page will ever reach them if it changes before the next time they log in. --Aquillion (talk) 01:52, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
@Aquillion: No, that comment was made by someone else. Look at where that IP is located; I don't live in Philadelphia.
I began editing Wikipedia in late winter or early spring of this year. I mostly edited articles about living people at first, for the reason I explained here. Several of my colleagues were discussing how intelligence researchers were being harmed in real life by Grayfell's edits to their Wikipedia articles. In particular, the student protesters who caused Gerhard Meisenberg to lose his job were citing the material that Grayfell had added to the Gerhard Meisenberg article.
You've recently restored some of the same material on that article, so this is quite important to mention. I suggest you read my statement here, "statement by IP editor", in which I described the history of the material you've restored. Six different users have previously removed this material as a violation of BLP policy, and Grayfell restored it in each case, restoring it a total of nine times. On two of these occasions, this material resulted in the article being tagged as an attack page, and the material was removed by admins as a policy requirement in response to the tag; in both cases Grayfell subsequently reverted the article back to the version that had been tagged as an attack page. When you restored the material with the justification that you don't see a consensus to remove it, had you been aware of this history? 2600:1004:B109:9916:C960:19A3:D329:3BFE (talk) 02:10, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Ah! Yes, I know not to use unreliable sources in articles, and then there's something about not linking to websites which mostly host copyrighted material, which usually results in the link being removed, not revdeleted. I have now fixed it. Thanks for the alert. -- BullRangifer (talk) 19:02, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
RE: Ukraine-Trump scandal RFC
Hi, you have posted a message on my talk page:
"Yes, that is the purpose, but those opinions should be backed by RS, not fringe opinions found in unreliable sources. Pushing such opinions on talk pages is forbidden advocacy of fringe opinions. -"
Again, I have not stated any opinion, let alone "pushed a fringe opinion" in my response to the RFC.
I have not only merely stated my opinion why the proposal should be supported, based on the Wiki guides, I have specifically pointed out in my support arguments, that personal opinions on the truthfulness of underlying actor should not be taken into account in making the decision on allowing the lede inclusion or not.
It seems that, just by the mere fact that I am in favor of the proposal, you are infering substantial motive to my support, nothwithstanding completely unsubstantiated. Milanbishop (talk) 12:12, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Notice of Dispute resolution noticeboard discussion
This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution.
Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you!. Curivity (talk) 00:37, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Warning
Per the closed WP:AE report at permalink, you are warned that you must not speculate about the competence of other users in discussions regarding a topic under discretionary sanctions. Johnuniq (talk) 08:21, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion...
"...dozens of high-level officials were finally coming to terms with what the CIA had first grasped in August, that Putin had assigned his intelligence services the task of helping to elect Trump. Suddenly Trump's behavior throughout the campaign could be perceived in a troubling new light. His hiring of Manafort, Page, and Flynn had been puzzling from the beginning, but perhaps there were hidden reasons for him to prefer advisors in good standing with the Kremlin. His praise of Putin; his penchant for reciting Moscow's talking points; his dismissive attitude about Kremlin brutality toward dissidents, and refusal to accept that Russia was responsible for the DNC hack. It all seemed more ominous given the apparent investment that Russia had made in his candidacy." The Apprentice, Greg Miller, Chapter 11.
Transcript: Inside The Washington Post's new book, 'The Apprentice'[1]
A comprehensive account of Russia's scheming in the 2016 election[2]
Review: The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy by Greg Miller — how Putin, and Jesus, backed a winner[3]
The Apprentice review: Trump, Putin and the subversion of US democracy[4]
National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say[5]
"...editors have reverted any changes to help explain the opposite viewpoints from conservative-leaning sourcing, stating these sourcings are not permissible because of the same bias."
Who has used "bias" as a reason for rejecting a source? Extreme bias can affect the reliability of a source, and then it gets rejected, but it is the unreliability that is the real reason, although the extreme bias is certainly related to that. So who has done it? Please proved a quote. -- BullRangifer (talk) 23:44, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
"From what I understand, if sourced criticisms are allowed on one organization's article, but not another, this would fall under editor bias."
Properly-sourced criticisms from RS must be allowed in all articles. Period. If left- and right-wing sources were equal, there would normally be such content in both articles, but those sources are not equal. Maybe that's the explanation for the difference. Compared to left-wing sources, there are percentage-wise far fewer right-wing sources which are RS, and far more right-wing sources that are unreliable, and therefore deprecated and blacklisted.
What happens at one article is irrelevant to what happens at another article, per WP:OTHERTHINGS. Do we look at such things? Yes, we don't completely ignore that if it is problematic. If left- and right-wing sources were equal, then such a difference could be explained by editorial bias, and that would be a violation of NPOV, but they are not equal. With few exceptions, they are on totally different playing fields and operate using different ethical and journalistic standards.
There are some basic factors with sources you need to understand. At this time in history (and it's not always this way), left-wing sources tend to be more accurate, even some of the more biased ones. Here are several explanatory factors which have to do with the tendencies (there are exceptions) of the left-wing audience and their sources, compared to right-wingers: higher educational levels, younger age, better critical thinking skills, rejection of conspiracy theories and fake news, dependence on fact-checkers, get information from a wider variety of sources, skepticism of Trump and his sycophants who generally spew lies and literal Russian disinformation all the time, progressives tend to change their minds easier than conservatives, etc.
Right-wingers tend to live in right-wing filter bubbles of misinformation fed by sources that serve an extreme and counterfactual agenda more than they search for truth, and this problem has grown exponentially because of Trump's alliance with Russian disinformation and rejection of good news sources, which he calls "fake news". He believes Putin over his own media and intelligence agencies. Think about that.
Left-wingers tend to use so many sources, and the sources have higher journalistic standards, that they don't usually get trapped in left-wing filter bubbles. Left-wing sources call each other out if they are inaccurate, and they self-correct, but right-wing sources don't do that as often.
"The president is possibly the single most unreliable source for any claim of fact ever to grace the pages of WP." -- MPants 04:57, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
"Trump's latest Hannity interview shows how Fox News's Russia coverage is disconnected from reality. They want you to believe Clinton colluded with Russia to defeat herself." -- Aaron Rupar [1]
To sum this up:
"At Wikipedia, one cannot defend Trump and RS at the same time. One must choose. It's an either-or situation."
Websurfer2 and Soibangla, as two of the most prolific adders of RS to our AP2 articles, I respect your hard work very much, so I'd like to pick your brains! As you have probably noticed, I have established a single, uniform, reference formatting style for the Steele dossier article, but my reference-formatting habits aren't informed by a whole lot of research or shared knowledge, and I'd like to learn from both of you. I hope that we can end up agreeing on a uniform formatting method to harmonize our work, so I have a few questions for you:
1. What tools do you use?
2. What citation format(s) do you like?
3. Do you attempt to make sure that a reference isn't already in use?
4. Do you use the same references across different articles?
5. Do you always name a reference?
6. What guidelines, websites, or charts do you use as guides for whether a source is generally reliable or not?
I have yet to find a tool that creates citations even approaching my standard, so I do it "manually" starting with a skeleton template: <ref>{{cite news |work= |date= |first= |last= |title= |accessdate= |url=}}</ref> I keep the skeleton in a .txt file that I leave open in a separate window while I'm editing (it contains lots of other things that I use in editing, and it's where I compose long comments). This method yields far higher quality with only slightly more effort. ―Mandruss☎23:35, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
An alternative date format is the ISO format: "Harding-20171115"
It usually creates a proper and unique ref name, but the tool doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes it won't accept a URL, so I have to take that skeleton template and fill it out. I also have to wikilink the source. I keep it on my userpage. -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:46, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
I mostly use 'Cite web' and 'Cite news' with a dash of 'Cite tweet'. I generally only use 'Cite news' for sources with print editions that require volume/issue in the citation. I try to use author links as much as possible, and list all of the authors and editors (not just those on the byline). Websurfer2 (talk) 22:48, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
This one, which I can tweak: <ref name=" ">{{cite web |last1= |first1= |last2= |first2= |date= |title= |website= |url= |accessdate= }}</ref> -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:48, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
3. Do you attempt to make sure that a reference isn't already in use?
4. Do you use the same references across different articles?
I am not sure what you mean. The same citation in multiple WP articles? Yes, as appropriate. The same ref name in multiple WP articles? Yes, but usually as the result of copy/paste or as the artifact of a page split.Websurfer2 (talk) 22:48, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I meant. Because I name references in exactly the same way, even if I'm not copy/pasting, the ref name will be the same for the same source, no matter where I add it or encounter it and name it. I don't always add a ref name to a source someone else has added in an article. It depends on whether I have the time or not. -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:52, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
5. Do you always name a reference?
No. I don't name a ref if I don't expect to reuse it. My preferred format is the last name of the first and maybe second author(s) with the date. For the Trump/Russia timelines, I generally use a mashup of the first few words in the title, the publication's short name or initials, and the date because I started running into name collisions when using just the author names and dates. Most WP articles don't have that issue. Websurfer2 (talk) 22:48, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
No. I don't name a ref if I don't expect to reuse it. Considering that a small minority of refs are multiply used, it makes little sense to name all of them. When one removes a named ref, they then have to check the entire article for other uses of the refname. Not only is that extra effort, but it requires a second edit if the first was a section edit. But wait, they're still not done: if they find one or more other uses, they have to remove them or copy the citation to one of them. Cost>benefit?I'd also point out that we could get along pretty well with no refnames at all, since duplicate citations are not a big deal except to those with knee-jerk aversions to any kind of data redundancy. How often do we need to know, "Where are all the uses of this source in this article?" And any set of reused refs has to share one access date, which rarely reflects reality. So we should be taking a step back and asking whether refnames are worth all the trouble anyway. ―Mandruss☎23:19, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
I usually name refs, and I do it in the same way, using the last names of all authors and the date. I rarely run into "name collisions" that way, but it's not impossible that the same author(s) wrote more than one article on the same date, but it's rare.
I started doing this because many articles use the same source multiple times with different names. By using a uniform format (I think it's the one used in scientific references), I can quickly discover if the source is already in use, because a redlink is created with a notification of the type of error. I then rename them and get rid of the long-form ref, except for one place. -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:57, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
6. What guidelines, websites, or charts do you use as guides for whether a source is generally reliable or not?
I start with WP. If the source doesn't have an article or isn't in the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources list, I search to see how much it is cited on WP. Then I turn to Google if I don't have an alternative source to use. Some sources I don't bother checking because they can be deemed to be generally reliable, like local Canadian/U.K./U.S. newspapers reporting on local events.
I generally avoid using opinion pieces, though some columnists and bloggers are great at providing links to the RS material they are discussing. Medium has many good examples. Surprisingly, so do quite a number of right-wing and a few left-wing fringe sites – they may twist what they are citing, but the linked articles themselves are mostly from mainstream reliable sources to add a whiff of legitimacy. So, good for finding RS articles, but definitely not citable themselves. I used Conservapedia and other similar right-wing sites to find links to RS articles on Alexandra Chalupa that weren't filtering-up in Google searches. The articles providing the links were rubbish, but the links themselves were golden.
The sources I usually struggle with tend to be the entertainment press. They are hard to avoid when working on entertainment-related biographies, especially BLPs. You have to dig to separate the gossip from the facts. Websurfer2 (talk) 22:48, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Interesting. I learned something there. I use lots of Google Alerts to discover what's going on, and I then use the sources that I know are generally considered RS. Since Trump's arrival, the really bad sources totally dominate the searches. The Russians, which Trump's help, use spamdexing to flood the internet with fake news and dubious content. It's really irritating.
I check both left- and right-wing sources that aren't too far from center for facts and opinions. Those on both sides that are extreme become counterfactual and should not be used for either. I do use opinions, as we are supposed to document them. If they're controversial, I attribute them.
Greetings BullRangifer. We haven't talked in a while, and I wish you a nice happy new decade. I was perusing the recent discussions at Talk:Steele dossier, and came upon this remark you made:
They had reason to believe that Putin and Trump would be unhappy about that, and they had reason to fear prosecution in the United States. Putin is known to kill such sources, and we know that when Trump complained about Jamal Khashoggi, MBS took care of him.
(emphasis mine) That's three BLP violations in just one sentence. We may excuse you for repeating the widely-reported claim that Putin kills journalists for sport, but you are also saying that both Trump and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) were in cahoots to liquidate Jamal Khashoggi. That's an unfounded criminal aspersion on both Trump and MBS. You do mention that this was "[your] speculation based on what we do know", but that does not excuse the BLPVIO aspect. I would recommend striking this sentence, and watching your tongue (or fingers) going forward. — JFGtalk10:17, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
Okay, I'll source it and tweak the wording later today. At the time, journalists were making a pretty direct connection of a friend trying to make Trump happy. I was just paraphrasing. I wasn't implying that Trump ordered a hit, but that Trump's authoritarian friends do engage in such actions, and that's not a controversial assertion. Trump is known to make comments which endanger the lives of journalists, and Khashoggi had criticized him. Trump then complained about him. The non-violent reaction against Khashoggi was prompt, while his murder came later. Words have consequences. We must protect journalists and not those who belittle and threaten them. Journalists at Trump rallies are always in a precarious position. They sometimes fear for their lives, and that's right here in America, not in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, etc, where Trump's friends jail or kill journalists.
It looks like I have a bit of time now. There is no implication that they were "in cahoots" or that Trump ordered a hit on Khashoggi. If you're implying that, it would be your BLP violation. I don't recall that even the journalists who drew a connection inferred such a thing.
Trump fires off attacks on journalists all the time. He has encouraged violence against them and refused to condemn threats against them. (There might be some occasions where he did, grudgingly, say something negative about it, but often he hasn't.) He even offered to pay the legal fees for such violence. Words have consequences, sometimes unintended consequences.
Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder Shook Everyone—Except Trump "But when he criticized Trump shortly after the 2016 US presidential election, the Saudi government banned Khashoggi from writing and speaking publicly." He then lived in the USA and criticized MBS. Of course we must conclude there is no connection at all. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and MBS is not known for oppression and execution of critics. Not.
Looks like you did not understand my point: I'm not trying to defend Trump, Putin or bin Salman. I was gently advising you to watch your tongue when you write about some people on talk pages. That's simply Wikipedia policy. You've been warned about your writings repeatedly, and you said you would be careful. I suppose you just can't help doing it. If you think your exact words "we know that when Trump complained about Jamal Khashoggi, MBS took care of him" do not insinuate criminal intent on living persons, then I guess I can't help you further. It would take you only 2 minutes to redact the phrase and say "oops, sorry", but you prefer to sepnd hours trying to justify your comments. You're lucky I'm not a vindictive editor; some others may have dragged you to AE for less than this. Have a great Sunday! — JFGtalk11:33, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
I will be happy to revise what I wrote there. I don't want any misunderstandings.
BTW, some of the sources above and following allege that Kushner gave MBS a "hit list", an "enemy's list" of classified information about his critics which he could have used to persecute them, and that Kushner may have had a role in Khashoggi's death. Here are a few sources:[2][3][4][5][6] -- BullRangifer (talk) 18:15, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
That's nice, but I'm still disappointed. Instead of simply redacting the offending sentence, you elected to write another paragraph placing criminal aspersions on yet another living person, Jared Kushner.[7] Besides, you misrepresented my (private) remarks to you, and thus you have (publicly) bad-mouthed me by alleging that I suggested you "[implied] that Trump ordered a hit on Khashoggi", or that I understood your turn of phrase this way. For clarity, I did neither. I just reminded you to watch your tongue when discussing allegations about living persons or musing about their motives, and yet you did it again with Kushner. If you can't understand what is wrong, you should take a voluntary break from editing political and biographical articles. — JFGtalk10:56, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Editing restrictions ... for Tulsi Gabbard article?
Suggestions for editing restrictions beyond 1RR for Tulsi Gabbard article?
Hi BullRangifer. I thought you might have some suggestions on editing restrictions for Tulsi Gabbard (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I tend to avoid such political articles, so am not familiar with how they are managed. I see you regularly working on them, so thought you might have some suggestions. Thank you in advance. --Ronz (talk) 01:34, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
The insular right wing of the media ecosystem creates positive feedbacks for bias-confirming statements as a central feature of its normal operation. The rest of the media ecosystem comprises sites diverse enough in their political orientation, organizational culture, business model, and reputational needs to create impedance in the network. This system resists and corrects falsehood as its normal operation, even though, like all systems, it also occasionally fails, sometimes spectacularly.
I'm watching a special episode of This Old House. Yay to all the rebuilders, and yay to all those who can't. Yay to all. Drmies (talk) 01:25, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Yes, most of the cleanup is finished, and new houses are starting to sprout up. There are still lots of trees that need to be removed, but there is already a lot more visibility in the area. It used to be you couldn't see very far because of the forest. You could drive down a street and only see the houses next to the road, when in fact there were huge neighborhoods hidden behind it all. Now is the time for property developers and contractors to buy up and build for the next decade or more. There will be lots of work. -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:29, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Update template
Fruitless discussion
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The whole point of the update template is so that I don't have to come up with the specific wording. Removing the template without addressing why the template was added in the first place is not productive. Regardless of any wording I come up with it is likely to be reverted by someone like you. So why don't you come up with the wording since you are assuming ownership of those 4 articles by summarily removing my update template? Removing the update template accomplishes nothing and contrarily allows people to be complacent and not update the article. So I don't think your rationale for removing the update template is a valid one. But I have no interest in getting into an edit war over an update template.Terrorist96 (talk) 15:04, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
My edit summary suggested the more effective alternative, and that is to use the talk page. If there is some specific bit of information in that source which should be included, then explain it on the talk page. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:43, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Yes, adding the update itself is more effective than placing an update tag. But that still does not justify removing the update tag without addressing the reason for it. With your logic, update tags should not exist.Terrorist96 (talk) 16:50, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Not with a link, and not without a specific explanation. The tag is then just generic and not much use. The talk page is much better. Such tags are not a substitute for talk page suggestions and discussion.
We have no way of knowing why you would even include that link. It might be a great source, but for exactly what bit of information? Use talk pages. -- BullRangifer (talk) 19:33, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
You seem to love talk pages yet can't bring yourself to start the discussion. Instead you revert the tag. Next time consider starting the discussion on the talk page if that is what you want, and don't remove the tag until the article has actually been updated or the talk page discussion shows there's no consensus for an update.Terrorist96 (talk) 19:47, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
That's your duty. It's called "burden of proof." You are the only one on Earth who knows what was in your mind or why you added that tag. Go ahead and start the discussion. -- BullRangifer (talk) 19:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Oh and the "reason" field for update tags is optional. I didn't even have to include the NYT link if I didn't want to. And even if I hadn't, it's still not a justification to remove the tag without discussion. But you seem to think discussion is a prerequisite for a tag to be added. It's not.Terrorist96 (talk) 19:55, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
What I did is pretty common practice. Instead of trying to litigate this disagreement, start a discussion on the subject you wanted to include. Focus on that. Help us understand it. Show that you're more interested in improving the article than in litigating this. -- BullRangifer (talk) 21:04, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
and the reason you couldn't have done that before removing the tag? You're the one itching to discuss but don't want to actually do it. Very peculiar. Another editor already thanked me for my edit on the page about the report on crossfire and used the source to add to the article which was helpful. Unlike your reversal. Had I not put the tag with the link that editor may not have made the edit they made. Which... is the whole purpose behind the tag. It served its purpose but you just couldn't wait until the tag had fulfilled its purpose and removed it prematurely.Terrorist96 (talk) 21:30, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
As I explained, only you know what you considered relevant to use, and the burden of proof is on you to start that discussion, just like any other BRD situation.
Hello I would like to add more articles about the scandal that you had posted on. Thanks can you please help create additional articles?I don't want the users especially User:WikipediaUser or the public to see many red names on the navbox. thanks... Personisgaming (talk) 03:47, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Personisgaming, you need to be more specific. I don't know what you mean by "articles about scandals," or "that you had posted on." Please provide a URL diff for what I posted. What navbox are you talking about? Also, User:WikipediaUser has not been active since 2005, so I don't know why you mention them.
Okay, this is about Epstein Sex trafficking Scandal. Do you want to create an article on that subject? The other redlinks are also potential articles. Have your written any articles here?
As the Wikipedia name for John Doe Meaning a blank person-- I did not know that there was a real name of that. I have not created the articles yet. The neutrality should be discussed first Personisgaming (talk) 02:59, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Neutrality means that YOU must be neutral, not your sources or article content. Faithfully document the content from your sources, including the biases. Don't censor it or neuter it. Tell it like it is. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:49, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Okay, here's how to get started. You can work on it in a text program like Word, or you can also work on it here:
First, determine your subject. Hopefully, you know about it because you have read about it in multiple reliable sources. That creates "notability", which is the bare minimum requirement for an article.
Then collect all the sources you will use and put them on that page.
Find the relevant content in each source.
Then group similar content together in what could become paragraphs
Create a logical outline with the headings dictated by the content.
Create your draft article, with the heading and necessary sections, including See also, References, External links, and (disabled) Categories.
Feel free to contact me along the way, and I'll give you advice. Whatever you do, work quietly "behind the scenes" and don't violate BLP by making unsourced negative allegations. Use only reliable sources. Also, don't violate WP:SYNTH or WP:OR.
Don't try to "go public" with your article too early. No matter when you do it, expect that someone will try to get it deleted, so don't give them any excuses by publishing an article with flaws or too few RS. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:47, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trigenics until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. The Anome (talk) 13:49, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.
Technical news
Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [8]
Arbitration
Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.
Hello, I'm 63.155.63.122. I noticed that you made an edit concerning content related to a living (or recently deceased) personon Viktor Shokin, but you didn't support your changes with a citation to a reliable source, so I removed it. Wikipedia has a very strict policy concerning how we write about living people, so please help us keep such articles accurate and clear. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page.
That's not how I read it, but I'll let the other editors deal with it. It appears that Zlochevsky's allies accuse Shokin of trying to solicit bribes from Zlochevsky. Without the words you added, it would look like Shokin actually did that. Instead, it is just their (dubious?) allegation: "But the oligarch’s allies say Mr. Shokin was using the threat of prosecution to try to solicit bribes from Mr. Zlochevsky and his team," (NYTimes) I have no problem with those words. -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:47, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Stalking- Final Warning
I have suspected that you have been stalking me in recent weeks. Now, it has become 100% clear to me that you are. Every time I edit a page or make a comment somewhere, you show up shortly thereafter (and I can easily provide diffs of this). Consider this your final warning. I have tried to avoid you for months so there would not be any conflict, but you've made that impossible. I do not care how many admin friends you have, follow me around just one more time and I will bring you to a noticeboard once again.--Rusf10 (talk) 01:07, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
It must have happened at the same time, because the red notification of your comment here appeared after I saved my "thank" edit. Why the intense hostility? That's a battlefield attitude, and it's unnecessary. -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:40, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Nineteen Eighty-Four comparisons
Hi BullRangifer,
I was going to post this in response to your comment about Nineteen Eighty-Four, but that probably would have crossed into WP:NOTFORUM territory, so I'll share it here instead. I think this poem, "September 1, 1939" is a far more apt comparison for this day and age. It's probably the third or fourth most important poem of the 20th Century (up there with "Easter, 1916", "In Memory of Y.B. Yeats" and "The Second Coming"). In fact, with a few tweaks, you could probably call it "January 20, 2017" without noticing much difference. These are probably the most relevant parts:
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
[Change "Luther" to "Washington" and "Linz" to "Queens".]
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
And then there's this part from later in the poem:
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
Every time I see one of Trump's rallies, I immediately think of the lines "The windiest militant trash / Important Persons shout" and "Not universal love / But to be loved alone".
I was flipping through channels earlier this afternoon, waiting for something to come on and caught the opening of Don Lemon's show. He said something to the effect of "you won't believe what Trump's done", referring to his anger over the Russia briefing and I thought to myself "no, I do believe it and that's the problem". How is it that I, a guy on the opposite side of the world, can see that when millions of Americans (apparently) cannot? It might seem weird for an Australian to be wondering into American politics, but I see Trumpism infecting our system as well. We recently had the AFP—the equivalent of the FBI—raid the offices of our national broadcaster, looking for files related to a two year-old story in a pretty obvious attempt to learn the identity of a whistleblower claiming our soldiers were involved in atrocities in Afghanistan. Even the Russians were impressed at how blatant that was. Mclarenfan17 (talk) 11:28, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
A big part of the answer is described in this essay. It has to do with filter bubbles and sources:
Americans are generally quite naive about politics, compared to Europeans and just about everybody else. You know our politics better than the average man on the street here. Americans take their freedoms and democratic rights for granted, and they have forgotten that it can be lost. Right now we are fighting for the very life of our free society and the blessings of our republican democracy. Trump is doing exactly what Putin wants, and that will end the American dream and usher in an autocratic kleptocracy without a free press or right to criticize politicians and our government. He's already tending to use the immigration officers as his brown shirts. It's pretty scary. He's already gutting the government so it's non-functional, thus grabbing all the power, and he's doing it to our intelligence agencies, thus leaving us defenseless to Putin's incursions.
Too many have been watching Fox News, and that has set them up for GOP indoctrination, which was the intent of Roger Ailes when he created Fox News. He never intended it to be a real "news" channel.
In the essay, I have sections about "Where Trump gets his 'news'" and "The Trump-Fox "feedback loop". Unlike most essays here, you'll discover that I like to use extensive referencing in mine, and you'll see that very little in that essay is just my opinion. It's well-sourced, and large parts are directly from our articles here. In spite of that, an editor unsuccessfully tried to get it deleted. That's an interesting read.
At this point, I guess I'm just waiting for your Turkish coup moment. In 2016, there was an attempted coup in Turkey. It was thwarted when all the people poured out into the streets to stop it. But curiously, all of the mosques that sounded the call to prayer to rally the people did so at the same time, leading to a suggestion that they had advance knowledge of the coup because it was orchestrated by the government as a false flag operation and justify a series of purges of the military, judiciary and universities. All of this came three months after the courts overturned the convictions of a group of people who supposedly belonged to a secret organisation that aimed to undermine the government. A coup is exactly what the government said they would do because nobody does the deep state like the Turks. So I have to wonder if and when Trump is going to try something similar—maybe not a coup, but finding a pretext to move against the Democrats. He's already latching onto reports that the Russians are looking to help Sanders. Mclarenfan17 (talk) 01:08, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
He's getting control of the judicial system and intelligence agencies, and he already controls the GOP, so it's just a matter of time before people and journalists are jailed and convicted on false pretexts. We'll have Turkish and Russian conditions here, and that will be the end of "America". This used to be considered paranoid ramblings, but when the man says he'll do it, we really should believe him. -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:38, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
@X1\: this is taken from the article on the attempted coup:
The organisation and spontaneous synchronisation by large numbers of mosques was perceived to be unachievable unless there had been prior preparation, with journalists also pointing to how the call to prayer could have been strategically used by Erdoğan to invoke religious sentiment in a political situation as a veiled attack on state secularism.
I have to wonder what his endgame is. He's already alluded to a third term in some of his rallies—it was months, if not years ago, but he telegraphs his moves well in advance. But there doesn't seem to be any objective. Whatever agenda he had seemed to stall around the election of Emmanuel Macron. Until then, there was a resurgence in right-wing populism: Trump, Brexit and a few elections in Europe. Marine Le Pen looked like she waa going to be next, but she was thoroughly rejected at the ballot box. Then Merkel won re-election in Germany and that wave of right-wing populism stalled. Trump seems to have been spinning his wheels ever since. He obviously needs the adoration of millions to satiate his ego, so is it just as simple as wanting to go down as America's "best" president with the "best" vision of what the country should be? Mclarenfan17 (talk) 02:38, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
He's just a populist with a huge ego and wants to keep control. This is a situation he can milk for personal profit and a large audience. He's not a normal politician with well-defined policies and goals. He doesn't understand these things well enough to do that. He's very ignorant of even common knowledge. He scorns experts and has no outside reference points. It's extremely dangerous to give that type of person any power.
He gets his ideas from Hannity, Limbaugh, and Fox & Friends, and those ideas become his foreign and domestic policies, so he's got extremely fringe people directing him, and yet he thinks he's in charge. Well, he has the power, and he knows how to misuse it. If he isn't voted out in 2020, America is finished. We and our children will only remember what freedom was like. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:17, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
You are correct. I thought it had been deprecated. It's still a tabloid and generally poor source, but I guess it can be used for uncontroversial stuff. Otherwise be careful. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:50, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Article size limits and citation templates
Mandruss wrote that the "technical limit" is about "post-expand include size":
Apparently some still are confused about what the technical limit is about. It is not about file size, which is what you reduced by 58 bytes. Your edit removed no citation templates, so it had no effect on post-expand include size, which is what the technical limit is about. A <ref name=.../> tag is not a citation template, as you can see by the absence of {{cite web/news...}}. ―Mandruss☎05:19, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Since the details of the discussion were distracting at Talk:Donald Trump, I'd like to pursue this here. Since I'm not technical, if there is any merit to my ideas, I need to be able to pursue this further at the Village pump in an intelligent manner by not starting off as a total ignoramus who assumes the wrong things and asks the wrong questions. That's a recipe for failure.
My idea is to examine the idea of not using reference citation templates anymore and just using the same content, in the same format, but as pure text, without any template. That should solve a large part of the problem with the technical limits for article size, which is a problem with the Donald Trump article, among other large articles that are extensively sourced.
I'm copying a few comments here to seed the discussion, thus pinging the editors who seem to know much more about this than I do. (Adding Davidwr) Here's the discussion so far:
Since several discussions above are about "size", and citation templates seem to be a big factor, shouldn't we propose dropping them, but keeping the same format? Here's an example:
Template: <ref name="Harding_11/15/2017">{{cite web |last=Harding |first=Luke |title=How Trump walked into Putin's web |website=[[The Guardian]] |date=November 15, 2017 |url=http://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke |access-date=December 24, 2017}}</ref>
Good idea, go ahead and do some template reduction. It all helps. I think we have managed to stave off the people who want to archive every single reference, haven't we? Because that can add a hundred thousand bytes to an article this size. -- MelanieN (talk) 21:31, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
I'll oppose that. It would make it harder to maintain consistency in presentation. I believe it would result in loss of all citation metadata, since the citation fields are no longer individually identified. Perhaps User:Trappist the monk would comment on that point. ―Mandruss☎21:45, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm with Mandruss in opposing this and I can't imagine that it would reduce the article size enough to justify losing the benefits of templated citations, or the effort. FWIW, I wouldn't even know how to properly format a freeform reference. - MrX 🖋 21:56, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes, rewriting all of the citations as plain-text will result in: loss of citation consistency (with a concomitant increase in citation maintenance overhead); loss of metadata. As to whether or not the citations should be rewritten, that is, of course, the prerogative of editors here to take that decision.
You'll oppose what? Reducing templated references to just text? I thought that's what you were suggesting. -- MelanieN (talk) 21:59, 25 February 2020 (UTC) Sorry, my mistake. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:45, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
By the way, the difference in size between these two citation formats, in the case above, is 31 bytes.[9] Assuming that's about an average, we would save 813*31=25,203 bytes. That would save a little more than 6% off the current article size. - MrX 🖋 22:35, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
I think the rationale is mostly related to the limit on post-expand include size – the contribution to that total drops to zero if you eliminate the template – not file size, which has no hard limit (or at least none that we would ever come close to exceeding). ―Mandruss☎22:52, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Editor MrX's test is flawed. Yes, there is a 31-byte source difference but substantially more post-rendering. This is the output of the {{cite web}} example above:
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000000FA-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFHarding2017" class="citation web cs1">Harding, Luke (November 15, 2017). [http://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke "How Trump walked into Putin's web"]. ''[[The Guardian]]''<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">December 24,</span> 2017</span>.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=unknown&rft.jtitle=The+Guardian&rft.atitle=How+Trump+walked+into+Putin%27s+web&rft.date=2017-11-15&rft.aulast=Harding&rft.aufirst=Luke&rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fnews%2F2017%2Fnov%2F15%2Fhow-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AUser+talk%3AValjean%2FArchive+25" class="Z3988"></span>
(206 characters for the plain-text version).
Rewriting the citations as plain text will allow this article to draw back from the brink as it is approaching it post-expand include size limit (2,053,099/2,097,152 bytes)
I understand the distinction now, and did see the difference in the rendered page source. So maybe we should just change the local MW setting to allow larger page sizes: Manual:$wgMaxArticleSize. - MrX 🖋 23:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
That's "local" to en-wiki; i.e. site-wide. Same reply as above.[10] And it's post-expand include size, not page size. The variable name $wgMaxArticleSize is misleading, if the comments at that link are correct. ―Mandruss☎23:47, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
My suggestion would only work if it was (1) adopted site wide, and (2) automated. Since it is templates (and we use lots of citation templates) that causes problems, not just size in raw bytes, I thought the idea might be worth consideration. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:41, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
@BullRangifer: Now you've lost me. Even if it were a good idea, why would it be necessary to do it site-wide to stay within the technical limit at this article? In any case, (1) it should be obvious that the chances of dropping cite templates site-wide are exactly zero point zero, and (2) this is not the venue for proposals for site-wide changes. ―Mandruss☎00:52, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
I largely agree. I was just musing out loud. Does the idea make any sense? I'm not tech savy, so I was wondering. If it sounds viable, I'll go to the Village Pump. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:13, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Mandruss, why is it not viable site-wide? Is it because my idea has zero merit, or because it totally misses the point?
The idea of "loss of all citation metadata" is mentioned above by you, MrX, and Trappist the monk. Please explain this to me. If that is important, then my idea is dead on arrival. Also, if that is important, is it important enough to ignore the technical limits created by the wide use of citation templates? Is that avenue of thought completely closed? -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:13, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't use sites like Vox for contentious claims about living people. The Page stuff, if it's genuinely significant, would have been covered by someone like WaPo. And if it wasn't (spoiler: I am pretty sure it was), it's likely WP:UNDUE. Especially in the current climate, with Trumpists trying to wave away all evidence of Russian interference in 2016 or 2020 and promote the deep state conspiracy theory in its place. Guy (help!) 16:34, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Before seeing this, I looked at that content and realized that the start of the sentence ("Source(s) allege that....) is ambiguous, so I have revised it to read "Dossier source(s) allege that....". That should fix it. Those two refs are only a few of those which mention the dossier allegations, but it does establish that the allegations have been mentioned in RS. The complaints of overciting (sometimes 5-7 cites for one allegation) caused me, several years ago, to go through the article and remove many cites, but I still like to keep at least two for BLP matters, and the dossier itself is another source. The primary source can be cited for statements of fact (the dossier does make the statements in quotation marks), but not interpretation. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
New Page Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles. We could use a few extra hands on deck if you think you can help.
Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; Wikipedia needs experienced users to perform this task and there are precious few with the appropriate skills. Even a couple reviews a day can make a huge difference.
Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.
Technical news
Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.
It feels like yesterday that you were specifically warned against speculating about the competence of other users. I'm looking at this diff where you say "Any editor who favors misinformation from unreliable sources and denies RS should not edit in the relevant areas, and some would say they lack the skills to edit here at all, at least on controversial topics." Please retract that and stop harping on the competence thing. ~Awilley (talk)22:54, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
It's interesting to me to see both sides (the US Gov't and the Concord attorneys) take on why they are dropping it. I guess we may have a few pages to update. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:50, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
Yes, they showed up in my Google Alerts. I've read about this and find it very interesting. The Russians are smart and are using our own court system's discovery process to force the release of top-secret information held by Americans which would aid the Russians in identifying any moles or Russian sources of information relied on by U.S. intelligence and Christopher Steele. (Steele revealed his sources to certain trusted people who recognized the names of some super important and reliable sources.)
We know of one of their sources who literally had so much access to Putin that he photographed documents on Putin's desk. He and his family had to quickly be secreted out of Russia by U.S. intelligence after Trump was revealed to be sharing top-secret intelligence with Putin. Suddenly this really good U.S. asset was endangered, and his whole family is now back in America. That's a shame. Even foreign allied intelligence stopped sharing intelligence with Trump and were more careful when sharing with American intelligence agencies because Trump compromised the system. Wittingly or unwittingly, he functions as a Russian asset.
This is all pretty scary and both Putin and Trump love it. Anything like this that cripples investigating and understanding the Russian interference helps both of them, and this is a major stick in the spokes. It helps Putin eliminate moles, catch Western spies, plug up weaknesses which U.S intelligence has exploited for years, and it helps Trump get rid of any Americans who have just been doing their patriotic and apolitical jobs of keeping America safe (what Trump considers a "deep state" to be fought and eliminated), thus weakening American intelligence, again a nice helping hand to Putin. All that's left is for Trump to appoint Alexander Bortnikov to head the CIA. Experienced and effective department heads in most U.S. government agencies have already been eliminated by Trump and replaced with powerless and unqualified acting heads who are loyal only to Trump, not to America. This too helps Russia.
All of this puts America at a distinct disadvantage against Russia and is part of Putin's "Make Russia Great Again" agenda (by weakening the U.S.), known in America as "Make America Great Again". Trump's slogan sounds nice, but it's very damaging to America. Dropping the case now shows that a conviction isn't worth the price of allowing such information to get into Russian hands. In this court case, it's better to just let the guilty get away with it. Russia would never extradite them anyway. A continuation, with convictions, would be a very damaging Pyrrhic victory for America. I wonder if Trump will get involved and demand the case move forward because that way he can get more names of Americans to punish. Putin is probably trying to get him to do that.
The last two paragraphs are significant (starting with this: "But Mr. Durham has not interviewed the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, his onetime deputy Andrew G. McCabe or Mr. Brennan."). Durham and Trump often seem to deliberately look the other way and avoid information sources which can undermine their attempts to further Trump's agenda "to foster a narrative that it was illegitimate for government investigators to scrutinize links between his campaign, Russia and WikiLeaks and that he was the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy to sabotage him for political reasons — a push that led to the Durham inquiry." That's why Durham's inquiry, unlike the work by Horowitz, has been described as a cover-up.
"All four had angered the White House, in part because they supported the intelligence community’s findings that Russia has been meddling in U.S. politics to benefit Trump."
Great stuff V. That Classics Illustrated pic sent me whooooshing back in time. I remember reading all of those that I could find as a young un :) Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk18:35, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
I was remiss in not adding my condolences for your loss in the fire. My apologies. You said you aren't looking to rebuild your library. Still if I had the means I would get you at least one edition from The Folio Society. The quality of their books make my hands tingle whenever I hold one. Best regards. MarnetteD|Talk21:38, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
My new library will be very limited, with some choice favorites. I just checked that website, and they don't even have any books by Hugo. Too bad. The one I received is this one, which is pretty nice. -- Valjean (talk) 02:29, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Username change from BullRangifer to Valjean.
"So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use." -- Victor Hugo, preface
On 14:30, March 23, 2020, Turkmen moved User:BullRangifer to User:Valjean.
I have desired a username change for some time, and after some waiting it has finally happened. Jean Valjean is the hero of Les Misérables, my favorite book, which I have read in several languages. His just character is worthy of much admiration and emulation. I'm also a fan of the 1980 musical. I also considered a username associated with Atticus Finch, another hero of mine, but Atticus Finch and Jean Valjean were already taken. Valjean was available, so I chose that one.
I know that this is offensive to some very religious people, but if I had to choose a book to give someone, and I had to choose between the Bible and Les Misérables, I'd give them Les Misérables. The principles of honesty, integrity, humility, generosity, kindness, selflessness, simplicity, heroism, and social justice found in the Bible are portrayed in a much clearer manner in Les Misérables. Jean Valjean was completely transformed from a hardened criminal into a virtuous man by the kindness and grace of Bishop Myriel. After his fateful meeting with Myriel, Valjean modeled his own life after the character of Myriel. We all need heroes, and they should be chosen wisely.
I used to own the book, CDs, and DVDs of the movie and musical in several languages. I even found an ancient 12-volume leather-bound set of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in Copenhagen, a great city for old books and cultural events, where we also saw the musical in the round Østre Gasværk Teater, with its revolving stage. A great experience. My wife and I especially loved the 2019, six-part Masterpiece Theatre adaptation from PBS: "Dominic West stars as fugitive Jean Valjean, with David Oyelowo as his pursuer Inspector Javert and Lily Collins as the luckless single mother Fantine. Love, death, and the struggle for social justice in early 19th-century France feature in this beautifully faithful retelling of one of the world's most beloved stories."[11]
I especially loved the DVDs for the 10th Anniversary "Dream Cast" concert at the Royal Albert Hall and the 25th Anniversary concert in The O2 Arena, but lost them, along with everything else, in the 2018 Camp Fire. After the fire, my dear daughter, who knew how much that book meant to me, gifted me a nice copy of the book. A home without any books is a sad place, so that book started my now-limited and budding collection of favorite books. All my medical textbooks, in at least five languages, are gone. I have no plans for resuming any large-scale collecting of books. I used to lug over forty, very heavy, banana boxes of books around the world whenever we moved. No more of that! -- Valjean (talk) 17:40, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.
Examining the nature of law and grace, the novel elaborates upon the history of France, the architecture and urban design of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love. Les Misérables has been popularized through numerous adaptations for film, television and the stage, including a musical.
Jean Valjean is the protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables. Hugo depicts the character's 19-year-long struggle to lead a normal life after serving a prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his sister's children during a time of economic depression and various attempts to escape from prison. Valjean is also known in the novel as Monsieur Madeleine, Ultime Fauchelevent, Monsieur Leblanc, and Urbain Fabre.
Valjean and police Inspector Javert, who repeatedly encounters Valjean and attempts to return him to prison, have become archetypes in literary culture.
@Valjean: you don't need the SD0001 one. I can't remove it, because it's a JavaScript page, and only you (and possibly an interface administrator) can edit it for security reasons. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}04:25, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
June 28, 2019: "The president himself should condemn it, admit that it happened, which I think 16 intelligence agencies have already agreed to say," Carter said at a panel on human rights hosted by the Carter Center in Leesburg, Virginia.
"There's no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election, and I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated, would show that Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016."
"He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf," Carter said.
Moderator and historian Jon Meacham then asked the former president if he thinks that Mr. Trump is an "illegitimate president."
"Based on what I just said, which I can't retract," Mr. Carter responded to laughs from the audience. "I would say yes."[12][13]
You're probably right. Some names are hard to get. Now don't go and throw yourself into the Seine. We need you here. -- Valjean (talk) 17:38, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
Anon IP
Don't worry about the IP posting "threats". It appears to be an unfortunately quite unwell person. Congrats on name change, at least this one I am sure how to pronounce! Koncorde (talk) 18:07, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Misinformation about the virus
Hello there 👋 you’ve removed the following from “Misinformation related to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic” page, citing a lack of RW? What does that mean? Thanks
The Chinese government officials initially claimed that the virus doesn't transmit from human to human. The WHO has cited this information in the following Twitter post from January 14th, 2020: ″Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China″ Berehinia (talk) 05:04, 4 April 2020 (UTC) Berehinia (talk) 05:11, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Just wanted to ask you to what this acronym stands for
Sorry to bother you on your talk page but I got a question thats been bugging me. What does RS stand for? At first I thought you meant RT (Russia Today), but of course their his biggest supporters in the media, so it couldn't be that obviously based what your saying it implies. I tried googling RS + Wikileaks as well but I didn't see anything that seemed relevant. I'm sure its something really basic though, that I should have instantly got, and I'm gonna feel really dumb for not realizing thats what you meant. --Kwwhit5531 (talk) 20:06, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Ravensfire, I was asking because me, Valjean and Thucydides were having discussion here: Talk:WikiLeaks and Valjean used that acronym in one of his responses to Thucydides. So I wanted make sure I understand what he meant correctly. --Kwwhit5531 (talk) 21:03, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
My edit was reverted but I don't think it should have been. I did not alter the content of the article and I made a post on the talk page beforehand (although not long before). The introduction was difficult to read as it was and said the same thing over and over citing different sources. I will make add more on the talk page beforehand and wait another day to see if there are any responses on the talk page before I fix the section again. Jlf3756 (talk) 03:29, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
The lead is supposed to repeat content from the body of the article, so duplication is required. It's best to change small amounts in the body before making any changes to the lead, and, in fact, changing a lead is fraught with risk. Even experienced editors can burn their fingers when doing so. Your changes were deletions of mostly critical content, and that is not allowed. Articles are supposed to include any criticism found in reliable sources, so don't do that. -- Valjean (talk) 04:06, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
TCM can be criticized on several different points/levels, and they should be preserved, but if one level is being repeated unnecessarily (IOW not just duplicated in the lead, as it should be), then consolidation of that point is okay. In that case, save the different references and group them. Later we can see if that result needs trimming or removal of weaker sources. -- Valjean (talk) 20:39, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
I did not remove any references that were not included elsewhere but if that was done, how would you save references and group them? I dont see anything about this on Wikipedia:Citing sources or related pages. Would you just move them to sources under citations? How should they be grouped?Jlf3756 (talk) 20:54, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
If one particular criticism is repeated in different places, that can often be consolidated into one place if the context allows it. (Sometimes repetition in different places is justified. It all depends on the context.) If the same reference is used, and the content consolidated, just use the same reference. If different references are used for the same criticism and that content is then consolidated, then group the different references together after the content. -- Valjean (talk) 21:02, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
PA at CH article
I don't want to take you to a administrator. But I have now asked you to strike your PAs about me twice, and both times you struck your previous attack just to add another one. So final request: please strike your most recent attack on me without further comment about me, and let's focus on content. I'm here in good faith, I'm following BRD, and I'm open to discussion. I only want to improve the article. Shinealittlelight (talk) 14:45, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Okay, I have struck more, but since that was not a PA or speculation about Wikipedia competency, but about the appearance of the article after your changes, I'm not sure if it's enough to satisfy you. -- Valjean (talk) 14:50, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
No, I'm not satisfied. In line with policy, please do not talk about me: what I understand, what I know, what I'm competent at, how I appear, whether I should be editing, or anything else about me. If and when you fix this problem, I will reply to your content points and we can get back on track. Shinealittlelight (talk) 15:02, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
I struck all of that. What more do you want? What wordings are left to strike? Or do you want me to delete it completely? I can do that for you. -- Valjean (talk) 15:07, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Shinealittlelight, would you like me to delete those comments for you? I'd be happy to do that. I had no idea anyone could interpret my comment as you did, and I'm sorry for causing you distress. I'll be more careful in the future. -- Valjean (talk) 15:26, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I regard all non-complimentary commentary about me as a PA, and I try to live by that. It's how Swarm instructed me on my talk page some time ago, and I agree with it and expect that treatment from others. Shinealittlelight (talk) 15:48, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
I just became aware of your name change when pinging you at Talk:Mary Kay Letourneau. And now I see the page notice above as I type this. I am sorry that you and your family were harassed. I didn't know. I also don't know if changing your username has to do with that. Feel free to remove this section from your talk page if it being here is a problem. I can also remove mention of your previous username at Talk:Mary Kay Letourneau; I only noted it there so that others would recognize you. It's odd seeing you with a different username because you used that one for so many years and it's completely different from your current one, but you obviously have to do what is best for you (and your family) if the username change is related to that. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 08:10, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
No problem. This username is not related to those security issues. They have existed for many years, starting around the same time as I started here at Wikipedia as an IP editor (2003), but not related to Wikipedia. -- Valjean (talk) 15:51, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi Valjean! The thread you created at the Wikipedia:Teahouse, Tables, has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still find the archived discussion here. If you have any additional questions that weren't answered then, please feel free to create a new thread.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Politrukki (talk) 15:19, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. If you see any aspects that are weak or not covered, please mention them. Feel free to help improve it. -- Valjean (talk) 16:03, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Your email
I don't see any valid need for you to berate me about my edits via email. You're complaining about "properly-sourced opinion from the Steele Dossier article"--you can do that on the talk page. You misunderstand a number of things, it seems: for instance, that someone has an opinion about a thing, and that it was printed, doesn't mean it has to be included in an article on the thing. That someone's opinion aligns with Comey's report or whatever, that's neither here nor there. Finally, "You are setting a precedent that advocates of fringe and conspiracy theories will love" is utter nonsense. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 15:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
So you are Valjean now? I nominated the page for speedy deletion because I spotted your comment "In case you might need this, I saved it"here. I didn't notice that there was a redirect from User:BullRangifer/Donald Trumps's... to User:Valjean/Donald Trump's... (which has also been deleted).
I can't say I understand your comment "I wish I could say I was surprised" to me. If you knew you were not allowed to overrule the result of a deletion discussion and creating a page would be against deletion policy and user page guideline, why did you create a copy in the first place? Why didn't you tag with {{Db-u1}} when you noticed your error?
By the way, did you know that you must attribute Wikipedia contributors when you copy-paste material from one page to another? If I recall correctly, Casprings copied some material from Russian interference article without attribution. You repeated the same mistake. To avoid or fix similar mistakes in the future, please read § Proper attribution and § Repairing insufficient attribution.
The comment vented my irritation about you, unprovoked, bringing your well-known Trump/Russia protectionist stance in all things here at Wikipedia to my userspace. The action was in character and seemed to be some sort of unsurprising targeted retribution aimed at me and/or User:Casprings, but I didn't want any controversy, so I just let you do it. I take a lot of shit from various editors without fighting back. I did not "notice my error", so had no reason to do anything. If I had noticed, I would have done something. I probably should have protested at the time, as G4 allows such copies in userspace. See below.
I saved that content because it likely represented the hard work of several editors, and even if it could not be used in that format, it contained a number of good references which might be useful elsewhere, and when I got around to it, I might be able to use some of it. The attribution was in the page source for the content, and if I had ever used it, I would have attributed it to the source, but since that was deleted, it would have been futile. (Obviously, I wouldn't have used it in that rejected format.) I did not "recreate" the content "after" it had been deleted and place it in article space. That is forbidden. G4 is for that type of misuse.
G4 seems to allow the saving of copies in userspace, so I thought I was okay. (It wasn't an attack page or BLP violating page.) G4 does not apply to:
"pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content that has been moved to user space or converted to a draft for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy)."WP:G4
I left a comment on your talk page a long time ago (June 2017), per this comment above: "So you are Valjean now? I nominated the page for speedy deletion because I spotted your comment "In case you might need this, I saved it"here." That inspired the deletion of a page in my userspace. You are mentioned several times above. -- Valjean (talk) 14:47, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 May 2020
From the editor: Meltdown May? Or will it be meltdown June?
I don't want to misunderstand any of you, but to avoid doing so in further discussions, do you believe/deny that:
there was Russian interference in the election?
that its primary goal was to destabilize America and sow division?
that its secondary goal was to harm Clinton's electability?
that its third goal was to help Trump win?
that is was Russia, and not Ukraine, that interfered in our election?
that the Mueller investigation did not "produce enough evidence" to prove the existence of a formal written or oral "conspiracy"/"coordination" between the Trump campaign and Russians?
that the Mueller investigation did prove the existence of active co-operation/collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians?
that there were numerous secretive meetings and contacts between the Trump family, Trump campaign members, and Russians/Russian agents?
that they (including Trump himself) lied again and again about these contacts?
that several have been convicted for doing so?
that these meetings and lies were sufficient to justify strong suspicions of conspiracy/collusion?
that it would have been very negligent of intelligence agencies to not start investigations of the (a) interference, (b) roles of Trump campaign and Russians, and (3) whether Trump is a witting or unwitting Russian asset (not "agent")?
I supported Trump in the Canadian sense of disgust at Clinton's thinly-veiled plans to nuke Russia, but haven't cared for any American president's lying, greed or racism. Jimmy Carter's, maybe, because his was subtle. Maybe too subtle (was he even trying?) Helped clean up a nuclear disaster near a river I know once, so for that alone, he's still the only decent one since TV debates became a thing. Somewhere on Wikipedia, '15 or '16, I tried and failed to persuade American voters they didn't need to choose between two evils when Carter is still technically an official living president, merely not sitting. Same deal with Obama. You want him back, why settle for Joe Biden, the complete opposite counterbalancing VP? Makes no sense.
That said, I can confirm 1 through 6. There is absolutely nothing perfect or proper about a legit intelligence agency treating Russian election meddling with newslike urgency when agents of America's largest trading partner and country that speaks fluent English and Americanism are hiding in plain sight, planting seeds as you read this. Russia isn't in your hemisphere, much less in your charm spell radius. If any Asian deep state has the power to boost a viable signal over an ocean, it's Jerusalem. Wake up, Bullfolk!
Thank you for this opportunity to endorse Jimmy Carter, Kamala Harris and The Rock. Rome had a triumvirate, and it turned out alright, eh? And no, that wasn't an allusion to "the Fall"; Rome is currently and objectively better than Washington. InedibleHulk(talk) 01:40, November 9, 2019 (UTC)
Actual text of sanctions
Text of sanctions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
On Article Talk pages within the topic area, you may not make personal comments accusing editors or groups of editors of doing things like assuming bad faith, making personal attacks, casting aspersions, being biased, or being uncivil. In other words you should basically just focus on article content instead of other users.
If another editor notifies you that you are in violation of this sanction you can remedy the problem by removing the comment, editing it with the appropriate strike and underline markup, or hatting the comment. If the comment was genuinely not intended as a personal comment you can explain how it was a miscommunication and apologize/refactor as necessary. Personal comments in edit summaries can also be resolved via apology. Be aware however that if you are subsequently reported to an administrator it will be the administrator who will judge whether the comment was personal or not and whether reparation attempts were adequate.
Users reporting violations of this sanction must follow the instructions here.
This is a civility-type sanction and is very good. I like it. It's good to be reminded of this type of thing, because, human nature being what it is, in the heat of the moment and when one is being attacked, it's easy to react/respond by sliding toward this type of offensive behavior, even when one has good intentions and does it to defend Wikipedia against attempts to undermine its policies. -- BullRangifer (talk) 22:17, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Warning
Per the closed WP:AE report at permalink, you are warned that you must not speculate about the competence of other users in discussions regarding a topic under discretionary sanctions. Johnuniq (talk) 08:21, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Christopher Steele stuff
This might be of interest to you. Bear in mind that it was uploaded by John Solomon, so its authenticity is questionable. It's currently bouncing around the conservative echo chamber as evidence that the FBI was warned that Steele wasn't credible. (Ex: [14]) That seems very far-fetched to me. However if this document is real it might serve another purpose, to shed a little more light on the dossier allegations and how Steele arrived at them. R2 (bleep) 18:49, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
This will have to be quick.... I saw that on Twitter, but the thread immediately devolved into conspiracy mongering, so I stopped reading. I know about that allegation, but it's not new, just a twist on what we already knew, AFAIK. We have always known that Steele quickly developed a strong dislike for Trump (what normal person wouldn't?); that the dossier was raw intelligence, IOW unedited and largely unverified; that it was possible that some of it was even accidentally picked up disinformation from Russian intelligence, unlike most of it where "Steele spied against Russia to get info Russia did not want released; Don Jr took a mtg to get info Russians wanted to give.", IOW they could have also given Don Jr. misinformation, etc. This is no secret, and both Steele and BuzzFeed made this plain from the very beginning. Is there anything really new here? -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:42, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Look at it from a different angle. It's much more interesting in how it fills out our understanding of the dossier allegations than in how it does (or rather, doesn't) support the Spygate theorists. For instance Steele explained why the pee tape allegations were credible. R2 (bleep) 21:01, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Indeed. There are several interesting things about the pee tape allegation that make me tend to believe it might be true:
Trump has no alibi.
Even Schiller, his bodyguard, wouldn't give that to him.
He was offered the prostitutes.
It would be totally in character for him to consort with prostitutes.
It's also in character for him to have them defile that bed. He hates Obama that much as a president and as a black man. His racism is a well-documented family thing.
Comey is a trained professional at sniffing out BS and lying. Comey was a disbeliever until he talked to Trump. That changed him into a "maybe peeliever," and he's the expert.
Trump lied more than once in different ways about this.
He did it when lying wasn't even necessary or provoked, IOW clear consciousness of guilt.
There is no reason not to believe it. This is Occam's razor stuff. Belief is the more logical option.
Now I'm on my phone with a lousy connection and just waiting... One thing interesting about this is that Steele did not intend for the dossier, as we have it, to be published. He wasn't happy about that.
We also know that the dossier was shared with journalists and is just a small part of his finds. Look at the page numbering and you'll see there's a whole lot missing. That was probably too sensitive to share with journalists, but the FBI no doubt has it and has been researching it and maybe following leads.
This is most likely some of that "missing" stuff. Interesting! It's what's NOT in the dossier that should scare Trump. -- BullRangifer (talk) 21:13, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Trump Exemption Policy
The "Trump Exemption Policy" (see here) describes how content regarding Trump is held to a much higher bar by his supporters here than for any other public person. These editors do not treat other people this way. This is super POV pushing, whitewashing, editorial behavior.
Such kid-glove treatment (reserved only for him) is not based on policy, especially WP:PUBLICFIGURE, which lowers the bar for all public persons, and Trump is THE most public person. He makes sure of that.
There should be no special exemptions for Trump, and no double standards for how we treat him. Let's just apply our policies to him in exactly the way we do for every other public person. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:27, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
Trump-Russia "co-operation" proven
Terminology is important. There are two aspects to the allegation of a "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership". Don't stop at "conspiracy", just because it wasn't proven. Keep reading, as the next word "co-operation" is even more important, because that describes what actually is proven to have happened.
Mueller did not prove "conspiracy"/"coordination", but the Mueller Report documents boatloads of proven co-operation/collusion. There are mountains of evidence for that. See Mueller's exposition on two of the terms: Mueller Report#Conspiracy or coordination.
"In connection with that analysis, we addressed the factual question whether members of the Trump Campaign 'coordinat[ed]' – a term that appears in the appointment order – with Russian election interference activities. Like collusion, 'coordination' does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement – tacit or express – between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." Mueller Report, vol. I, p. 2
Note those words: "That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests."
Why did Mueller point that out? Because the "two parties [did indeed take] actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests." That's textbook co-operation/collusion.
The New York Times reported instances in which the Barr letter omitted information and quoted sentence fragments out of context in ways that significantly altered the findings in the report, including:[1]
Omission of words and a full sentence that twice suggested there was knowing and complicit behavior between the Trump campaign and Russians that stopped short of direct coordination, which may constitute conspiracy.
The main fact is that co-operation/collusion actually did happen. Trump invited, welcomed, and facilitated that Russian help, and he never reported it to the FBI. Instead, he lied about it.
It's an absurd position to hold because they would never do this in real life for anything else. Here's an equivalent situation:
Two men are arrested for robbing, beating, and shooting another man, and, after hiding the loot, they burned his house to the ground. He barely survives, is forced into retirement because of the injuries that will plague him the rest of his life, and is left destitute, as his belongings have not been recovered. He now lives in a homeless shelter. His life is completely altered, with a bleak future.
At the trial, the two men are accused of planning the attack, as one man brought the gun and the other man brought the bullets. They are charged with conspiracy to commit a crime and also charged with battery, robbery, and arson.
The defense counters that there is no proof the men planned the attack as no formal written or oral agreement to commit the crime has been found.
The final verdict acquits the men of the charge of conspiracy, but convicts them of the other crimes, with lots of evidence.
The friends and family of the two criminals now rejoice and loudly proclaim their two friends are innocent as no conspiracy was proven. They don't talk about the crimes committed or the now destitute and injured man.
THAT is the current position of Trump supporters, and to make it worse, Trump is not punished for the actions that actually happened, just because "conspiracy" was not proven, largely because of his successful obstruction of the investigation, which Mueller documents. He hasn't even been convicted of obstruction of justice, which is a crime.
There are two factors to look at. What is most important, (1) proving a conspiracy to do wrong, or punishing (2) the wrongdoing that occurred? If one cannot prove the conspiracy, should one then ignore the proven wrongdoing and not punish it? That is the GOP/Trump/Putin position: ignore the wrongdoing because the conspiracy hasn't been proven.
An unwitting source close to Trump (see Sergei Millian) cited in the Steele Dossier described to a confidant an extensive and "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership." That confidant relayed that information to Steele. The "conspiracy" (is likely true, but) has not been proven, but there are boatloads of evidence that the "co-operation" happened and is ongoing. The dossier was not wrong about either factor and was correct that Trump and his campaign colluded (invited, accepted, facilitated, responded favorably, refused to condemn) with the Russian interference. Is that treason? When one realizes that this was a military attack on the United States, "treason" is not too strong a word to use. -- Valjean
Valjean, there was no need for a two-year-long invasive special counsel investigation to establish that the "two parties [did indeed take] actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests." Everyone already knew about Trump's "Russia, are you listening ..." ostensible "joke," and about the frequent references to WikiLeaks made by Trump and his surrogates on the campaign trail, on social media, and even during the presidential debates. None of that was criminal (in fact it is protected political speech under the First Amendment), and it was all done in public; likewise, mainstream media outlets gave widespread coverage to many of the WikiLeaks document dumps and journalists corresponded with the "Guccifer 2.0" persona (now known to be a front for Russian intelligence) in pursuit of a story. I would be very careful about accusing individuals engaged in such behavior of treason, a capital offense, as doing so makes it appear that you are calling for living persons protected by WP:BLP to be executed, which is not appropriate content on Wikipedia (even on a talk page). And I mean that in the friendliest way possible.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 16:44, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
It would be up to courts to make the final judgment, and I'm just expressing a personal opinion, not calling for any action. Capital punishment is not the only option for a person guilty of treason, but offering support to an enemy during wartime (this is a military attack by Russia), whether it's a declared war or not, is certainly dubious and unpatriotic behavior. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill. -- Valjean (talk) 16:51, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Also the First Amendment bit and the "if it's public it's not a crime" thing are both false. In fact they sound a bit like Trump's "I can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it." SPECIFICOtalk16:57, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I think the crime would be if, at the same time as Trump et al. were saying those things, Cohen was actually in Prague paying the DNC hackers (as alleged in the Steele dossier). That is why the Special Counsel investigation was necessary, but it was not able to establish the existence of such a far-reaching conspiracy. SPECIFICO is correct that Trump has intentionally "normalized" a lot of bizarre and unethical behavior by doing it in public, but I would have to disagree with any implication that Trump's pro-Russia or pro-WikiLeaks campaign rhetoric is itself criminal.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
You said that it cannot be criminal because it was public. That's not true. As to the rest, payment, etc. and I can't agree with the view that the Mueller report - and we have only seen the public document - was a "waste" of its $20-odd million dollar expense, a minimal federal expenditure. That is a narrative only favored by subscribers to Don Jr.'s twitter feed, I think. SPECIFICOtalk17:23, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
The Russia investigation cost about $32 million and pulled in well over $20 million in fines, forfeitures, and settlements, so it was pretty cheap and well worth it. Unfortunately, it was a weak and ineffective investigation, as it did not pursue many well-known leads, allowed Trump's obstruction to succeed, did not punish destruction of evidence, permitted refusals to allow testimony from key witnesses, did not punish the very improper involvement of normally not allowed politician contacts (Nunes, among others), etc, and did not force things to happen as they should. It's as if Trump managed to blackmail the investigators and hamstring them. We may never know, but it's clear they were acting on "reduced capacity" of what the law allowed. -- Valjean (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
You've been unsubscribed from the Feedback Request Service
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Donald Trump is a lunatic: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales
"If President Trump tweets something that is nonsense, we don't accept him as a source in Wikipedia for random things he says on Twitter. We have a group of admins who are very strict and firm on what can be entered.... The president's power does not extend to shutting down or threatening social media platforms. That's illegal. It's not something he can do. We do have the First Amendment in the US.... The worst-case scenario is that they don't have the courage to tell him to go away, that they begin to adapt their policies to his whims because he's a lunatic." - Jimmy Wales, ET Now, May 28, 2020 (Text is from interview.)
Yet another RSN RfC for Fox News
Hi Valjean. I was surprised not to see comments from you in the latest RfC, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RfC:_Fox_News. I don't know where to look for information on the matter, and continue to be concerned that Wikipedia's policies simply don't address the problems that using sources like Fox News can create.
@Acroterion:Here is one instance. They have made the claim more than once, and also are deliberately not logging in to their account. A CU needs to be performed to find out their other accounts and actual admin status on whatever country's wiki they have that status. They could also be lying. That's just another reason to block them, but their actual account needs to be found and blocked indefinitely. They have been disruptive for some time now. -- Valjean (talk) 15:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree on both counts. I suspect they are some kid who's messing with us and creating more trouble than they are worth. -- Valjean (talk) 16:11, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Hi, could you please check Social democracy? I will probably not be able to edit much until Monday and there is the risk of the user who proposed big, unclear changes to the article will continue edit warring, despite being reverted by two users and not listening to my pleas to take it to talk page and linking the relevant guidelines. I assumed good faith and opened a discussion on the talk page, but I got no reply and just more edit warring and reverting. Please, see also this and let me know if you find other similar patterns. Unfortunately, Social democracy has been plagued by sockpuppeters and with edit warring, so that is why I am suspicious. I would really appreciate if you could tell me whether this is founded or not (I had so many discussions with the same sockpuppeter/blocked user that to me the pattern sounds and looks like obvious). Either way, both the users involved did not liste to my pleas and rather than taking to the talk page as I did, they simply kept reverting and edit warring.--Davide King (talk) 05:29, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for dropping by. I used to be a big fan of Matt (and Assange). Then he started siding with the narratives pushed by Assange and Greenwald, which demand that one ignore quite a bit of evidence, something I can't do. Those counternarratives originated as Russian disinformation, and are being pushed with renewed vigor right now. Matt is always interesting, and it's evident he has a journalistic background, unlike Assange. I often wonder if Matt's spending so many years in Russia and communist countries caused him to be so skeptical of America, and thus easier for him to defend Russian POV over American. I grew up a super conservative Republican and know that spending much of my adult life in Europe certainly changed my perceptions of America. Now I can see things from multiple POV. I'll check out these articles to see if there is something new. I see that one is written by Schrage and the other about him. This looks interesting. Whatever the case, if mainstream RS start covering this, it will end up here at Wikipedia. Thanks again. Feel free to visit more often. -- Valjean (talk) 15:59, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
I'll send you an email summarizing my thoughts in the next days. No promises about timing, I don't have much set aside for Wikipedia, and will be driving throughout Hungary and Slovakia all week. At least the virus isn't raging as badly there - sometimes in places life feels normal again. I hope we find common ground, but I think more and more that our RS could have really duped us about what really happened in 2016. Yeah the Taibbi piece summarizing things is behind the paywall, but the Schrage piece isn't. I see that Schrage also appeared on Fox News / Bartiromo Sunday, but I haven't been able to find a stream of it. Mr Ernie (talk) 20:56, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
Dossier described as "deeply flawed" and "debunked"
@Mr Ernie:, you wrote:
Valjean, where do I find where the NYT calls the Dossier "deeply flawed," or where the Senate Committee Report calls the Dossier "debunked?" These are the recent RS characterizations which have been ignored by this article's editors. Now BLP violations against Rosenstein are ok? I haven't seen any evidence that he covered anything up? Mr Ernie (talk) 22:48, 4 September 2020 (UTC) (reply)
There is plenty of content which already says as much. That just happens to be a new version of existing content in the article, but you seem to really be fixated on using exactly that wording (deeply flawed), so I'd like to see where it could go in the article. As I said, it doesn't say anything not already mentioned as many of the flaws are already mentioned. Let's hammer something usable into shape for inclusion. I'd love to work with you on that.
Please help me with the sourcing. Where was it that the "deeply flawed" wording comes from? Was it this NYTimes article?
Also the "debunked" wording. Many sources have said, and we already mention "debunked" in the article, along with many other epithets like hoax, fake, discredited, fictitious, and fake news. Where does the Senate report say that it's "debunked"? We could certainly include it and attribute it properly as the opinion of the author(s). -- Valjean (talk) 23:39, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
Okay, I found the NY Times wording:
The Steele dossier was deeply flawed. For example, it included a claim that Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Michael D. Cohen had met with a Russian intelligence officer in Prague to discuss collusion with the campaign. The report by the special counsel who took over the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, found that Mr. Cohen never traveled to Prague.[15]
We cover that already with everything RS have said. Mueller did not investigate that charge, but merely glossed it over with a repeat of Cohen's own words. So the NY Time's wording isn't accurate as it wasn't a "finding".
ec...Your edit summary gave a legitimate reason for deleting that content. It's that simple. Without more sources, it fails PUBLICFIGURE. Unlike other controversial content in the article, that content was only backed up with that one ref. Although it's not always visible, other controversial allegations are always backed up with multiple RS, some of which have been deleted to cut down on the size of the article. They can be resurrected if anyone who doesn't know the history of that article tries to challenge some content. It just looks messy with 5-10 refs after a sentence.
If more sources are found for that content, it might be restored, but I'm not sure there are any. He has stated more than once that he believes the whole pee tape story is true, and that Putin has kompromat on Trump, but right now that's not enough to justify keeping that content. I've just gotten home and I'll leave this comment (tweaked a bit) on the talk page. I'm tickled pink that I could make you happy. We do have our differences, but I still find you a very interesting person. -- Valjean (talk) 20:21, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
No, it was much more than that, Valjean. Your responses to others on the TP were part of it. Admittedly, you and I have certainly disagreed on a lot of different things, but I think you probably know a few things about me that hit home, much of which is relative to humanity, including how editors respond to one another - knowing there's a real person on the other end - and that is what matters most. AtsmeTalk📧23:25, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
You are very real to me, and I wish we could meet up on Bonnaire and do some diving together. I'd love to get to know you better, because I could learn a lot from you and your interesting life, and I suspect you'd be surprised at how complicated and interesting my life has been. I'm well aware that you edit in good faith and that our differences are more from different life experiences, different sources, etc. C'est la vie. Det er, hvad det er. -- Valjean (talk) 01:51, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
The Mueller Report mentions the "file-transfer evidence" in the form of dates, evidence found by "U.S. intelligence was intercepting Russian and Assange communications". Keep in mind that Assange=WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks computers are his computers, at the time located in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Quoting the Mueller Report:
"An analysis of the metadata collected from the WikiLeaks site revealed that the stolen Podesta emails show a creation date of September 19, 2016.171 Based on information about Assange's computer and its possible operating system, this date may be when the GRU staged the stolen Podesta emails for transfer to WikiLeaks (as the GRU had previously done in July 2016 for the DNC emails).172" p. 47
"d. WikiLeaks Statements Dissembling About the Source of Stolen Materials
"As reports attributing the DNC and DCCC hacks to the Russian government emerged, WikiLeaks and Assange made several public statements apparently designed to obscure the source of the materials that WikiLeaks was releasing. The file-transfer evidence described above and other information uncovered during the investigation discredit WikiLeaks's claims about the source of material that it posted." p. 48
That, with the later comment on p. 48, indicates to me that investigators had access to Assange's computer and other evidence from the WikiLeaks site. The wording is purposefully vague, and some wording is blacked out as "Investigative Technique", but what's readable is pretty clear.
Here's wording that can be used in the WikiLeaks article:
Using an "analysis of the metadata collected from the WikiLeaks site" and "information about Assange's computer and its possible operating system", the Special Counsel investigation found evidence that the Russians, using the pseudonym Guccifer 2.0, transferred stolen emails to WikiLeaks, which then leaked the stolen documents. Assange and WikiLeaks have denied any connection to or co-operation with Russia in relation to the leaks. The Mueller Report stated that those denials about the source of the stolen materials were "dissembling", and that the "file-transfer evidence described above and other information uncovered during the investigation discredit WikiLeaks's claims about the source of material that it posted."
That's about the "dissembling"/lies told by Assange/WikiLeaks (many RS).
Reversion
Hello,
You reverted my edit. It sounds that you implied that two parts of my edit, comment on Barr and The Guardian commentary are controversial. Is there a section on the page's talk page that have explicitly and specifically mentioned either or both parts of the page? To clarify, Barr's comment on how he has conducted is redundant and separate to the article, that is why it was removed - does not pertain to the Steele Dossier. The Guardian's comment should not be in lead; should be elsewhere in the article. Aviartm (talk) 03:10, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
It was the bold removal, without discussion, that is controversial. We also don't remove sources unless they are not needed at all. Sensitive BLP content usually requires multiple sources, at least 2-3. The Guardian comment is already in the body of the article and is used in the lead to cover the "Legacy" of the dossier. All subjects worthy of a section in the body should be mentioned in the lead. I write more about this in my essay: How to create and manage a good lead section.
The part about Barr abusing his power was about his political move to unmask a dossier primary sub-source and is relevant to the article, as well as national security. Many reliable sources commented on his politically-motivated move and how dangerous and irresponsible it was. Russian intelligence loves it when Trump's people expose the inner workings of our intelligence agencies. That is normally considered traitorous behavior because it undoes decades of hard work and leaves us vulnerable. That's what this whole "investigating the investigators" business does and why it's unprecedented and wrong. Barr's misuse of the DOJ is egregious. It is supposed to be apolitical and serve the country, not the president. 1,600 former Justice Department lawyers accuse Barr of using DOJ to help Trump in election. Ratcliffe is also abusing his position for political purposes by literally releasing Russian disinformation that was already rejected by bipartisan Senate panel. Former top officials were aghast at the move by John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence. When the DNI carries water for the enemy, something's seriously wrong. Trump’s ex-national security adviser says president is ‘aiding and abetting’ Putin. That's the definition of treason, especially when it aides the enemy's military (GRU is military intelligence) attack on our country. We are at war and Trump helps the enemy. He did this in 2016 and he continues to deny and not condemn the continued Russian attacks on our elections because it helps him win. Hillary called him Putins puppet, and Biden called him Putin's puppy. Those are pretty accurate descriptions. The leaders of all our intelligence agencies have publicly called Trump a Russian asset and openly speculated about how he acts like a man being blackmailed, and who acts in the interests of himself and Russia and against American interests. They consider him a threat to national security. Trump has fired them, thus strengthening such suspicions.
You did make a number of other edits that I have restored. Substantive edits should be discussed on the talk page as this is a very controversial article. Normally BOLD editing is fine when one first comes to an article and sees the need to improve the article. After that, if any other editors show signs that the edit is unapproved or controversial, BOLD no longer applies. Then caution is recommended and we follow WP:BRD very strictly. This article also covered by DS sanctions. -- Valjean (talk) 14:27, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Barr is only mentioned twice within the entire article; the quote about him and action and appointing Durham. A quotation with one citation about an action of an individual who is only mentioned twice is an immense stretch of BLP. We do not need journalists' commentary (quote) when we have more than enough of context describing his action within the article. Aviartm (talk) 20:35, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
As you surely noticed when you performed your last revert on Carter Page, that page is subject to editing restriction s- You must not make more than one revert per 24 hours to this article and are subject to discretionary sanctions while editing this page. You have made 2 such edits - please undo your last one, or risk sanctions. Trying to reconnect (talk) 14:19, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Trying to reconnect, am I missing something here? I see that Atsme made a revert and I reverted her. That's the one revert I'm allowed. She apparently didn't notice my previous edit summary which explained why that source should not be used. My previous edits were not reverts but normal editing. -- Valjean (talk) 14:34, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
In what way was it a revert? BTW, this conversation should be happening at the article's talk page so other's can have some input. I'll respect consensus. I'll copy this whole thread there so you can reply there.
I want to give sincere thanks to the recent "thank you" expressions that you have given me. I was aware of the science journal editorial but when I read the medical journal editorial I felt that we needed to really make a response to it. Actually, knowing that you edit on both Trump and medical articles, I thought of going to you first for feedback before I made any edits. I note that you did not edit at the article, are you on some sort of restrictions? Gandydancer (talk) 19:54, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
Just busy and not always wanting to get too involved. I share your concerns. These are very remarkable moves by professional organizations. I'm surprised that all our top intelligence officials (the ones fired by Trump, and some of those appointed by him) have not gotten together and issued a joint statement accusing Trump of treason. They have individually said nearly as much. They call him a "Russian asset" and a man who acts like he's being blackmailed. The living Presidents should do the same. I have long said that Obama may be our last legitimately elected president. If Trump wins in 2020, our democracy is finished and we'll become like Russia. Voting will then be a sham. -- Valjean (talk) 20:06, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
I have to be careful as I live under a set of rules (created for me by an admin) not applied to others, and have been for a couple years now. To make matters worse, just a couple days ago I was reprimanded by someone I respect for publicly commenting using a paraphrase of a RS I had just quoted. So now I (not others) am not allowed to support or side with RS. I'm confused and this has a real chilling effect on me. It scares the fuck out of me. -- Valjean (talk) 05:19, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia's purpose is to document "the sum of all human knowledge" using RS
Because Wikipedia is created through inclusionism, a significant objection to unnecessary deletion of content is that deletion "goes against the entire basic premise" of Wikipedia:
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." — Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.[1]
Wikipedia's purpose is to document "the sum of all human knowledge" using RS. What does that look like when one factors in reliable and unreliable sources, and the due weight they deserve? Let me illustrate.
When we look up at the night sky, there aren't any large dark areas. Stars are everywhere, some brighter and some fainter. Consider that whole sky to be the "sum of human knowledge", and a comparison of an image of the stars (bits of knowledge) in the night sky, overlaid with an image of Wikipedia's contents, should be a close match.
The "brightness" of the "stars" can be seen as the degree of notability and coverage in sources. Some are so bright they are notable for their own articles, and others only as content in articles, but every one of them should be documented by Wikipedia.
Some of that brightness is the glimmer of gold from RS, and some is the glimmer of fool's gold from unreliable sources, and here is where the difference between an image of the night sky and an image of Wikipedia's content comes into play. We "adjust" the brightness to match only what comes from RS. Otherwise, the two images should basically match, with no large holes in Wikipedia's coverage of the "sum of human knowledge". Readers should be able to find some type of mention for any serious question they may ask, even if there isn't a whole article covering the subject.
Giuliani goes off on Fox Business host after she compares him to Christopher Steele
What is the purpose of this, and how does it help us to build an encyclopedia? It seems like it would be better suited for a blog or a social media post or something. ~Awilley (talk)02:30, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
It is a spin-off of my work on the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory topic and is relevant for that. I work out my thoughts and the state of the evidence from RS on my talk page or my sandboxes. Later it can be tweaked with more sources and used. Are you just as concerned about such things from fringe editors who push false narratives from unreliable sources? I wish I could see you focusing more on that instead of you going after mainstream editors so much of the time. The appearance of you favoring and supporting fringe editors is not good, but that's how it appears to some editors. But regardless, just for you, I'll delete most of the above from this page. -- Valjean (talk) 06:31, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm not sure what you're talking about regarding me "favoring and supporting fringe editors". It would be helpful if you provided me with specifics, like the names of the editors I've favored/supported and a link or reference to where I favored or supported them. I try as much as possible to enforce the same rules for everyone, but if I messed up somewhere I want to know. In any case I don't accept the "fringe editors" vs. "mainstream editors" dichotomy. There are just editors, and occasionally some of them push fringe narratives. You've done it yourself, if I remember correctly, in your spreading around of the (most likely) fake "pee tape" video. But that doesn't mean you should be labeled a "fringe editor". ~Awilley (talk)17:44, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
In all fairness, I should clarify that at Wikipedia, when I describe some editors as "fringe" on a private talk page, it means they get their ideas and talking points from unreliable sources. You know that such a class of editors exists here. Their comments on article talk pages automatically violate FORUM and ADVOCACY, as their discussions (on AP2 and pseudoscience) often cannot move us closer to content more aligned with RS, which is the policy basis for all article content.
"Mainstream" editors do the opposite, and even when they might show human weakness by talking too much or otherwise pushing some limits, they are still on the side of RS policy and intent on improving the encyclopedia and defending it from editors who pull in the wrong direction. They should not be punished strongly for their human frailties.
You have sometimes attacked, harassed, and punished the wrong editors, thus encouraging fringe editors. That's been my impression of your interactions in such situations. As you likely know, it isn't always facts, but impressions, that are most important and damaging. Even though I would have a hard time (a timesink) digging up old diffs to build a case, those are the impressions you have left on my experience here, and it has caused me to feel persecuted and stalked. You even created special punishments for me after I was persistently hounded by a fringe editor, leaving them and their fringe allies free reign to keep pulling us away from dependence on RS. All the other admins said I did not deserve a sanction, but you still managed to take that fringe editor's bait and punish me. Yes, I still managed to learn something good from the experience, so your efforts were not in vain , but it should be possible to use less harsh methods and be fair, rather than unfair, to teach that lesson.
I have no interest in making your life difficult over this, so fear not. I just wish you'd take me off your radar, as it has targeted me when other admins saw no problem. I think you should leave it to others to take action against me, and without you poisoning the well against me. I just thought you should know that your actions have powerful, and potentially deadly, consequences. It's very discouraging.
BTW, I still regard you as a generally good administrator, so chin up; keep up the good work. I'd like to be on more friendly terms with you, but I'm afraid of you. That's why I avoid you. That's sad. -- Valjean (talk) 20:18, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Really after all that you go and post a twitter link to make a statement about a BLP?[16] Also could you clarify the potentially deadly, consequences you mention above? That is rather concerning! PackMecEng (talk) 05:26, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Just because harassment, stalking, and unkindness happens online and at Wikipedia doesn't mean it doesn't have real world consequences. We should be more kind to each other and give a bit of slack. That's all.
Twitter is not a RS, that twitter account is not Carlson, and the one is does belong to is from daily beast who according to RSP Some editors advise caution when using this source for controversial statements of fact related to living persons.PackMecEng (talk) 15:16, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Did I propose using that Twitter link for content? No. I didn't even propose using The Daily Beast, although it's often a good source, and its opinions should be attributed LIKE EVERY OTHER RS. (RS/P says: "The Daily Beast is considered generally reliable for news. Most editors consider The Daily Beast a biased or opinionated source. Some editors advise caution when using this source for controversial statements of fact related to living persons.") We are both "some editors" and are allowed to disagree about using The Daily Beast in some cases, and as you should know, I bow to consensus.
You need to relax a bit as your aggressive pursuit of me is well over the line into harassment territory. Just back off. We have always allowed a certain amount of personal opinion and banter on article talk pages, and we shouldn't get too anal about this. -- Valjean (talk) 15:41, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't know man, I always thought the who can piss closest to the electric fence was a dumb game when it came to sourcing stuff about BLP. PackMecEng (talk) 15:52, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
[blanked], no, it's not an "unproven conspiracy theory". Consider the facts:
Ukrainians had been wanting to get rid of Shokin since shortly after his appointment, the first vote in the Ukrainian Parliament was in June 2015
International pressure on Ukraine to clean up corruption ion the prosecutor's office dates back to at least 2013 and pressure to remove Shokin, specifically, started in 2015, as noted in business papers like the Financial Times.
Shokin was not investigating Burisma. The investigation was on hold, like many others, and this was widely perceived as a problem.
US pressure to remove Shokin was bipartisan (e.g. including Ron Johnson). It was also backed by the EU, the World Bank and the IMF.
Poroshenko did not sack Shokin. Shokin was removed by the Ukrainian Parliament after an overwhelming vote in March 2016.
Before that vote investigation into an extortion attempt against a Russian sand and gravel firm found Shokin associates in possession of large amounts of money, jewels and other valuables, and documents and passports belonging to Shokin. There's decent evidence that he used the threat of investigations as an extortion tool.
At the time of Shokin's sackings, most sources did not even mention Joe Biden's involvement, it was not considered individually significant in the context of EU, IMF, World Bank and bipartisan US pressure.
All this was explored in great detail during the impeachment hearings, with multiple witnesses backing the course of events outlined above.
The FBI has warned since at least last year that Russian intelligence are using Rudy Giuliani as a conduit for disinformation.
The GRU was reported to have hacked Burisma in January.
Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon were trailing this story far enough in advance that the timing of release is without question a political calculation.
Fox News passed on it because it stinks.
The New York Post reporter who wrote it, refused to put his name on it, because it stinks.
The story of the laptop stinks. Hunter Biden lives in California. The one-man computer shop at which the purported laptop was left is not on any obvious route from the airport to Joe Biden's residence in Wilmington. Apple Stores are a thing. IT advisers are a thing, especially for people under well-known high profile scrutiny. Encryption is a thing. Why did the store not take contact details? Why did the store not follow SOP for an uncollected device and wipe and sell it? Why was the surveillance video wiped? Why was the store owner unable to keep his story straight? Why would any concerned citizen go to Giuliani first and not direct to the FBI or Police? None of it stacks up
In any case, see all the numbered points above. Even if the laptop were genuine, which every reputable source currently concurs it is not, the claim that Joe Biden had Shokin fired to protect Hunter is still false however you look at it.
No doubt this is why, feverish commentary in the conservative media bubble aside, nobody takes any part of it at face value. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:31, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
"Apparently, Glenn Greenwald was colluding with Tucker Carlson to help Trump by smearing Joe Biden — and editors at The Intercept told him to fuck off."[18]
Please watch comments that can be reasonably viewed as personal attacks.
Valjean, this comment suggesting that anyone who would defend Tucker Carlson is not a reasonable person [[19]] is certainly something that suggests you don't have an IMPARTIAL POV with regards to the Tucker Carlson Tonight topic and can be reasonably seen as a personal attack on any editor who objects to article content on the grounds of IMPARTIAL, DUE etc. Such comments move away from discussing the article and make implications about editors or people who aren't involved with the article itself. I would ask that you remove that part of the comment. Springee (talk) 17:45, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
You need to AGF and not personally attack me. I have replied at the article talk page, since you chose to also comment there. -- Valjean (talk) 18:03, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
I didn't mean to attack you personally and will strike any comment you feel is too personal. I appreciate that you have already done as much. Springee (talk) 20:54, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes???? What does that have to do with your edit? Did you revert me, change something, or do something different? Please explain. -- Valjean (talk) 23:02, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
Okay, now I've had a chance to closely examine what you did and have chosen to keep some of your good edits, as well as finding a few more minor things to tweak. Next time, just use a more descriptive edit summary. -- Valjean (talk) 01:15, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Bishonen, no, that happened overnight, so I didn't see it until you pointed it out. That doesn't look good. I won't excuse it, but it's not unprovoked, because what preceded it isn't good either. The IP has been stalking and making gross personal attacks and failures to AGF. That needs to stop. I haven't examined Bofuses' contribution history very far back, only what's recent, and I just saw the stalking and aggressive behavior, so I warned the IP. Is there something more to this picture I should know?
My first contact with Bofuses was a bit weird. They made an edit (with lots of different, mostly formatting, changes) to the Steele dossier article which I couldn't understand. They didn't leave a proper edit summary, just a diff, so I reverted with a request for explanation. I still don't really understand that edit, but later, when I had access to my PC (using a cellphone has its limits), I was able to figure out what they did and I restored some of the good parts of their edit. After that, I started checking a few of their other edits elsewhere and tried to AGF. I saw that they made some edits which I don't understand, so I haven't done anything about those, and haven't even discussed them.
I have only discussed (with the IP) Bofuses' additions of a blank line after headings where it was missing. Since that is the automatic default here (which floats the heading between two blank lines), it's something I also do occasionally (it's very helpful to me when I edit, especially large articles), and I have defended that type of edit, but I'm not OCD or anal about it. Sticking with Wikipedia's defaults is not disruptive. The other formatting changes made by Bofuses are above my pay grade at present (too lazy to investigate yet). I'd appreciate an explanation about their significance from you or Bofuses, especially the relation to our MoS guidelines.
Whatever the case, the stalking by the IP must stop, and Bofuses should resist the temptation to respond in a negative manner. -- Valjean (talk) 15:41, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
can we stay more truthful please: there have been no personal attacks. There is no requirement to stick to a default of adding extra line Breaks, and it confuses when trying to see changes made. If you’re so keen on the mythical requirement to retain the default formatting, feel free to question why the pointless removal of spaces on hidden comments, why the changes from nbsp (which is the suggested format in (eg) MOS:ELLIPSES) to {{nbsp}}. These clutter up watchlists and are unnecessary. But, I tell You what, ignore all that and just pick on the IP for cleaning up crappy edits and make up accusations of personal attacks. If you want to look at Bofuses editing the page on my home town or following me to a page I’d edited before, perhaps some perspective may be gained. Jeez this place is ridiculous. - 109.249.185.63 (talk) 22:55, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm well aware that Bofuses makes a lot of different types of changes in a single edit, but I am only defending one of those changes, which is the addition of one blank line below the heading. There is already one above the heading, but the default is a heading floating between blank lines. The other types of changes they make are currently of no concern to me. They might be good and they might not be good. I don't know, hence my lack of response to them.
Your comments to Bofuses and me have been very harsh, failed to AGF, and included personal attacks.
Failure to AGF: None of my interactions with you have to do with you editing as an IP. I would do the same to any other editor, regardless of their username registration status.
This edit contained a PA against Bofuses ("bad editor") and another failure to AGF of me ("Bullying me because I’m an IP").
Yet another set of PAs and failure to AGF. That you deleted it was wise, but it still revealed your thinking.
"It’s also untruthful to claim “blank lines are the automatic default here“: show me a guideline or policy that says they need to be there." I don't know if there is any MoS guideline about that. It's how the software works and thus just a statement of fact that's easy to demonstrate: When we use the "new section" tab, it creates a new section where there is a single blank line above and another single blank line below the heading. What's wrong is to add more blank lines than that. That does create extra blank space on the finished page, but I don't recall that Bofuses has done that.
Here you refused to accept my explanation (you even deleted it completely!) and you doubled down on your accusations. You also drag in a totally unrelated situation as part of your PA. Don't do that. Stay on-topic. You also continued with the nasty accusations ("patronising approach and behavior," "bullying"). That is totally unwarranted. We try to keep a civil tone here.
Above, your again start with the failure to AGF by accusing me not being honest ("stay more truthful please").
1. Those are not personal attacks. They are accurate reflections of the behavior I have encountered. If I had been a long-term registered editor, I would have been treated very differently, but the world and his brother knows how IPs are treated here if they have valid concerns with the actions of a bad editor.
2. “allow the default blank lines at headings to exist”. No - this is misrepresenting the situation. I am not going around removing breaks that have been there from the start (the breaks may not have existed if an editor has done the heading manually). Bofusues is adding spaces that have never been there to begin with. Unless you can show a guideline that says they must be there, tell him to stop doing that. He is not being the steward of the article, he’s making changes that are unwarranted, and as his edits encompass the whole article, it’s incredibly difficult to see what else has been changed that may be valid. - 109.249.185.63 (talk) 07:16, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
(I see one of my comments seems to have replaced yours ([20]): I can assure you that was not something of my doing, and apologies for not picking it up before you did). What you missed with your point is that although the software does this, it is also something that isn’t set in stone, and something that people ignore while doing manually. In other words, I have previously written:
==Section==
Text here, without a break
the point you make of the Software adding by default only applies to talk pages. There is no way to add section breaks in articles (or if there is I don’t know about it), and The majority of articles do not include such breaks (go into a series of random articles and have a look). Having looked into the struck sentence, There is a method of adding (by using the Advanced tag on the edit bar at the top of the edit box, then selecting Heading from the drop down menu), and NO EXTRA LINE BREAK IS ADDED. In other words, it is NOT a standard default for WP articles - 109.249.185.63 (talk) 10:26, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
Your comment had nothing to do with improving the article, but was just your own opinion. This is not a blog or discussion forum. We have rules here, and you violated these: WP:TPG and WP:NOTFORUM. -- Valjean (talk) 03:49, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
User:...., Wikipedia (that's us) is not supposed to choose sides, but it is unabashedly, because of our RS policy, on the side of RS when there is no doubt about a matter. Wikipedia (editors) is unabashedly on the side of the fact that the sky is blue and that Trump is a liar on an unprecedented scale. That's not opinion or a "view", it's a well-established fact backed by the vast preponderance of RS and huge amounts of measurable data. Few facts are more firmly established by data and data analysis. You can bank on this, because experience has taught us that, quoting David Zurawik, we should "just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backwards"[1] because he's a "habitual liar".[2]
You see, facts are not like opinions. They aren't mushy. They can withstand the onslaught of fact checkers and scientific analysis. They survive. Our duty is to make sure we don't present facts as opinions (and the converse). This is about the fact that Trump is a liar on an unprecedented scale and manner, and opinions that doubt that fact have little due weight and should only get passing mention. NPOV does require we document disagreement with that fact, but due weight tells us to do so in a very limited manner.
^Stelter, Brian; Bernstein, Carl; Sullivan, Margaret; Zurawik, David (August 26, 2018). "How to cover a habitual liar". CNN. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
Discussion about First Lady and Second Gentleman-designate titles in infoboxes of Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff
Please join a discussion here regarding whether the terms "First Lady of the United States Designate" and "Second Gentleman of the United States Designate" should be in the infoboxes of Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff, spouses of the president-elect and vice president-elect, respectively. We need to come to a consensus. Thank you for your participation. cookie monster(2020)75521:32, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
Clearing down review backlogs of deprecated sources: can you help?
Some sources are considered so grossly unreliable that we can't even trust them for basic statements of fact. These are the ones on WP:RSP with a red or grey box.
Wikipedia articles must, per the Verifiability policy, be based on reliable sources. The deprecated sources are prima facie unreliable by broad general consensus, and their continued presence lowers the quality, reliability and trustworthiness of Wikipedia. They need review, and possible removal.
In the overwhelming number of cases I encounter in my own work in this area, they mostly should be removed. But obviously, all of these have to be checked by hand - "deprecated" is not "forbidden", after all.
Even WP:ABOUTSELF usage should be minimised where reasonable - e.g., sufficient RS coverage.
(Tagging the deprecated sources as bad doesn't seem to achieve much. The bad sources need checking and likely removal.)
As I write this:
The Daily Mail is down to 150 uses - a lot of these are on WP:BLPs, where the Mail, and the claim it's citing, should pretty much always just be removed. Some of what remains are WP:ABOUTSELF, but we already know we literally can't trust dailymail.co.uk as a record of what was in the Daily Mail, amazing as that statement might seem.
The Mail on Sunday's home URL has 11 uses - some are ABOUTSELF, some really aren't.
The Daily Star has 1,489 uses, and far too many of those are BLPs.
If you're feeling bored, this sort of thing improves our quality and makes it look less like deprecated sources are acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Because by policy (WP:V), widely-accepted guidelines (WP:RS) and strong consensus (the deprecation RFCs), they really aren't - David Gerard (talk) 16:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
There's no shame in seeing "IndelibleHulk". There are others here who have taken it the same way, so it can't be that wrong. Merely inaccurate, a slight illusion, some words are just naturally too similar. You ever look at a picture of an old man alluding, then at one of him as a younger man not colluding? Then back at the one of him polluting, then back at him not colliding, really fast? Pretty soon you'll do anything anyone says. Some might say I "stole" that deepthought from Jack Handey, but don't you listen! Bunch of vengeful harpies, "some" are. I "used" it. Built upon it, like Principal Skinner built upon Groundskeeper Willie so many Scotchtoberfests ago. You ever see that one? Good times.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right, inference; that's the kind of dirty trick that wreaks havoc and discord from the inside out, interference is the other thing. Also, "domestic terror" is not to be confused with "domestic terrorism". If I were a desperate gambling heel (and I'm not anymore), I'd wager Dark Donnie is fixing to play the "capitalize on existing anxiety and depression" card, maybe turn one group of anti-terror neighbours against the other. But don't you listen! A vengeful harpy, that once-blond polluter, the power is yours! As a people, I mean, to not buy into his game. Not suggesting cooperation can save the whole planet, that'd be nuts. But if enough people in the right major American cities could stop squabbling over their implicit differences and see the common scared mortal in all living things, the U.S. Express could indeed be a bit nicer again!
Long story short, always look closely, everyone misses something, and in strange aeons, even indelibity may be devoured. Remember the new true normal meaning of Thanksgiving always: If your turkey seems to have been scrawled upon by a "non-toxic" Sharpie, throw it out like it was spoiled, no arguments, no regrets. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:03, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure of your point here. Is it about "inedible" turkeys, or about the election "interference" issue? I got lost somewhere in your eloquent, humorous, and flowery wordsmithing and word-juggling style. I suspect there are many cultural references that went right over my head. Keep it simple for me. My language confusion, and living half of my adult life in Europe, has messed with my once-superlative English and American cultural knowledge skills. When young, before moving to Europe, I would have done fairly well on Jeopardy!, but no longer. Now simple is best. -- Valjean (talk) 15:54, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Simple we'll stay, then! I just tend to drop Hulk Rants like this around on editor's Talks a few days after crossing paths. Nobody knows why, me included, I'm just a vessel. Thanks for saying you don't get it rather than assuming it's a personal attack or complete nonsense, and attempting to fight it. It comes in peace, always. Not sure if Captain Planet was the best reference for your demographic, but figured everyone had seen that episode of The Simpsons (whose title escapes even me, at the moment). Anyway, "there is no Scotchtoberfest", but there is a slight risk around every corner that a child or intoxicated adult at a family gathering may mark whichever traditional foodstuff with any manner of art supply, and "non-toxic" doesn't mean it's alright to eat. As InedibleHulk, it is my occasional duty to remind people of this (long story, I'll spare you). Cheers! InedibleHulk (talk) 23:19, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
We should do what RS do. If something changes, we can always change it here. We should generally mirror what's happening in RS, including when they get it wrong. We cannot know they are getting it wrong until after the fact. To do otherwise, because we think they are wrong, would be substituting OR, wishful thinking, crystal ball thinking for dependence on RS, a phenomenon we see all the time with editors who depend on unreliable sources. -- Valjean (talk) 23:52, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
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I'm confused as to what exactly you're asking for. Could you explain exactly what map you would like me to make for you? -MisterElection2001 (talk) 21:10, November 26, 2020 (UTC)
MisterElection2001, I assume this is about my request at Commons. I approached you because you seemed to know something about election maps at Commons. Please forgive me if I'm wrong. My message was about a needed 2020 presidential election map. Would you please make a map for me? It needs to be similar in appearance (the style and size, not the exact same coloring) to this one from 2016:
but based on the 2020 image in the infobox here 2020_United_States_presidential_election. That is a dynamic image with information for each state when you hover over the state. I don't need that. I need a standard static .svg image. Can you do that for me? I don't know how. -- Valjean (talk) 21:54, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
I think this is what you're looking for: I think you're confused about the maps in the infoboxes of presidential election pages. The above map is (I think) the static map you're looking for. The map is also used for the imagemap, the one you see on the page that takes you to different articles when you click on each state. Here's a tip for you: click on the blue "i" icon at the bottom right of an imagemap to see the standard SVG map.MisterElection2001 (talk) 23:09, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
I fully agree with your assessment. I'm not experienced writing those kinds of reports, but I've received some advice recently on another case. I'm a little scared by the process of initiating since it could generate anger towards me as I've seen with other cases that I've merely commented on, such as Bus stop. IHateAccounts (talk) 00:05, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
Let's just keep on observing the situation. If there are more personal attacks, assumptions of bad faith, and disruptive editing, we may have to bump this up to the next level. -- Valjean (talk) 17:37, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
They're on the "but affidavits" and "but 'the media'" kick yet again [22][23]
Regarding your deleted post on my Talk Page, I know how it feels to say something regrettable and long in the heat of a brainfart, I deleted something of a similar size and I'd wager worse from the other Val's talk page today, too. But I left mine in the history, not totally erased. If you insist yours is best left in the void, I trust you, no pressure. Anyway, I've kicked the American politics demon, flung that monkey off my back. Or at least I'm taking Day One one hour at a time! So since we mainly only talked shop in that department, I guess whether things got awkward between us and whether either of us exists in the other's eyes going forward is a moot point, or at best, something time will tell. You ever think about Time? It's a pretty broad subject, lots of smart people swear by it, I'm going to go check it out, see you around somewhere maybe, have fun! InedibleHulk (talk) 00:06, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
I really wish we could share a beer sometime. You seem like a really fun and smart person. Today is not a good day. I see you're trying to get topic banned while I'm trying to resist checking out, and then there's someone else doing what they can to push me into doing it, rather than letting unpleasantness and the ravings of temporary insanity stay buried. Why do people yell "jump"? Strange world we live in. I'm trying distraction. It works fairly well. Can you recommend any good movies or series on Netflix or other channels? Wikipedia and TV are all I have. I just watched Normal People for the second time. An agonizingly good story. Why the fuck can't people who love each other just commit? I don't get it. I have the book, so I may read it one of these days. Maybe it has more clues. You need to activate your email. Feel free to contact me if you wish. -- Valjean (talk) 00:25, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
