I see a lot of questions and some frustration GD but no real anger that I can see. --Snowded TALK 16:34, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon me. GoodDay (talk) 16:45, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS: On thinking about situations such as these, maybe a userblock and semi prot of page maybe an option (?) I use semiprots alot these days. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Erm, semi-protection where? I'm not understanding how that's related to the 3RR block. --Elonka 20:08, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On Banias, the page in question. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:11, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, semi-protection will keep anonymous and new editors off the page, but not the established ones. Anon vandalism wasn't the problem at Banias, it was an edit war between (mostly) established editors.[3] BTW, congrats on the ArbCom win, though it's also a loss to much of Wikipedia that we're losing some of your article-writing skills! I wish you luck (and sympathies!) at juggling the new responsibilities. :) --Elonka 01:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

But if the established editor is blocked for 3RR, then semi-protecting will block them from contnuing to revert by IP address alone....and don't worry, I will still be writing articles; one of my platforms was that arbs should be out there 'mucking in' with the community at large...;) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The block was because of 3RR violations while Ashley kennedy3 was logged in, not a concern that Ashley would continue to revert as an IP. --Elonka 04:55, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I know, I figured you blocked the ip so he couldn't then keep going while logged out, yeah? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did not block the IP, I blocked Ashley kennedy3 (talk · contribs). Semi-protection of the Banias article would not have helped in this case, since there was no IP disruption on that article, and (to my knowledge) there was no history of Ashley using IPs to edit while blocked. So why semi-protect an article that doesn't need it? --Elonka 05:16, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I meant with autoblock disabled rather than enabled and then semi prot. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:23, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, looking through your admin logs, I realize you haven't done any edit-warring blocks, so let me try to explain: There are several hundred blocks that take place every day on Wikipedia.[4] If we were to accompany every single edit-warring block, with semi-protection on the related article, this would put too much of a hardship on too many other editors, and too many restrictions on too many articles. Per WP:SEMI, semi-protection is to be used for existing disruption, as you correctly used it at Walrus and Potato (I might not have chosen to use indefinite semi there, but that's a separate discussion). Getting back to Ashley kennedy3 (talk · contribs) though, this user works on many articles in the Israel/Palestine topic area. Semi-protecting all of them just to prevent editing by one blocked editor who might be trying to get around a block, would not have been an effective solution. The autoblock collateral damage was unfortunate, but not unusual. Scan this list, and you'll see that autoblocks occur every few minutes.[5] The particular autoblock in Ashley's case was worse than most, because it hit IPs that were more trafficked than usual, probably because of the IWF/VK problem a few days ago (let me know if you'd like more info on that). But in the vast majority of cases, autoblocks occur and are cleared routinely, many times per day, just as blocks for edit-warring also occur many times per day. If you'd like to get more experience with 3RR, scan WP:AN3, and also add this page to your watchlist: User:3RRBot/bot reported disruption and 3RR violations. It's still a bit buggy, but is an excellent early-warning system for places where edit-wars are popping up. --Elonka 05:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I have stuck to dealing with what I encounter on the 400+ pages on my watchlist, many of which are very large articles or good/featured. I have become generous with semi'ing after finding surreptitious removal of material going unnoticed on big articles (a right pain) and generally low rates of good edits by IPs vs vandalism ones. Potato is quite a sizeable article, hence not too easy to keep track of, and many food articles aren't watched very closely. I wonder how the ratios of these change on different articles - for some reason vandals love to go to town on lion and blue whale (go figure); I am not familiar with political articles and whether IPs are adding much useful content proportionally to IP vandalism. The auto 3RR is interesting. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:09, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly.  :) You've done an enormous amount of excellent work on the project, but it's been focused primarily in the Taxonomy articles, as well as that small section of Wikipedia related to high quality articles. Last I checked, the good and featured articles comprised about 0.3% of the project. Now that you've been elected to ArbCom, you'll get more of a chance to see what's outside the walls of the Forbidden City. ;) Myself, I currently have about 4,500 articles on my watchlist, even though I'm constantly trying to prune it down. Most of my efforts are on smaller articles, new articles, and articles that are in the painful throes of ethnic/nationalist/religious or science/pseudoscience disputes. As for why articles such as Potato, Polar bear, Lion, Blue whale and such are frequent targets of vandalism, I think it's a simple answer, which is that those articles are the most likely to be read by small children. In schools these days, many children have their own laptops, and as they're sitting bored in class, Wikipedia is likely to be on their computer screen, and is therefore a tempting target for the students to "doodle". Wikipedia editors that are on vandal patrol quickly learn to identify which IPs are coming from schools, and we tag their talkpages with {{SharedIPEDU}} templates, block them in rapidly escalating cycles (up to as long a year), and sometimes contact the schools themselves when the vandalism gets out of hand. I just wrote to a school's abuse department the other day, and you can see the results at Talk:Oak-Land Jr. High School#School vandalism cleanup. As for the more grown-up articles, yes, we actually do get a lot of excellent edits from anonymous editors. I usually try to encourage them to create an account, but some of them just like staying as an IP for some reason. BTW, if you'd like to learn more about the ethnic/national disputes, you may wish to read the report that we generated from the ArbCom-appointed Working Group on cultural and ethnic edit wars, where we made recommendations for how ArbCom can better deal with these chronic conflicts in the future. Another good page that resulted from the Working Group is at Wikipedia:New admin school/Dealing with disputes. I keep meaning to write a page on "Advice on working in Arbitration Enforcement", but it keeps getting backburnered. If you'd like to read my "in-process" pages though, see User:Elonka/Notes and User:Elonka/DR draft. --Elonka 20:39, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know about the CSD discussion. According to the editor that started the discussion there, it wasn't about me... Oh well, let's hope the drama slowly disappears again, it's not very productive! Fram (talk) 10:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I want to Ask a question, but without sensitivity :)

I found this reference Avicenna ws Arabian doctor and philosopher, was born at Afshena in the district of Bukhara. can i use it or no :--Bayrak (talk) 17:23, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To my knowledge, NNDB is not a reliable source. However, you can bring it up at the talkpage of the article, and ask what other editors think. --Elonka 00:57, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Elonka,
I saw your last comment on Ashley Kennedy's talk page.
I would ask you to take care of not writing things that could appeared as threats.
Ashley Kennedy is an excellent contributor to wp while NoCal100 is just here with an agenda.
Given your own affiliation, I would suggest that you stop wikistaling AK and rahter take care of NoCal100.
For the benefit of the project, which remains writing a free encyclopaedia. Ceedjee (talk) 07:09, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking of going on a cruise for New Year's, Eastern Caribbean, Carnival cruise line. If there are any Wikipedians that would like to join me, let me know.  :) --Elonka 18:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A user is deleting my WP:Original research tags on Discrimination against atheists. Can you please help us settle this out? --Enzuru 03:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We both broke 3RR, however he posted a warning on my talk page and then this revert happens. Please check the IP. --Enzuru 03:03, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now the user has called me a theist during our debate over WP:Original research and asked me to interpret a Qur'anic verse for him. This seems rather out of line to me. --Enzuru 03:06, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Oh, we didn't break 3RR) while the attacks on me has stopped, me and another user are still trying to prove to Azure that he is breaking WP:original research. I know you're busy, but if you can help in anyway we'd appreciate it. --Enzuru 08:58, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd appreciate it if you viewed Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Review_of_declined_CHU_request --Dweller (talk) 11:48, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's characteristic. After your intervention stopped the editwar, and everyone else had refrained from further editing the page, and began to sit down to determine the proper NPOV terminology for over a day now at Israeli settlement, the usual suspect went ahead, without engaging in that ongoing discussion, and reverted. That kind of needless provocation explains why Ashley and so many others are pissed off, especially since the vote so far is running 5/0 in favour of the page he has now reverted. Regards Nishidani (talk) 17:11, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, free feel to do so. I know I don't archive nearly frequently enough (hence the note on top that the next archiving was due at the end of August). JoshuaZ (talk) 17:29, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't made up my mind yet on the other two. When I do I'll comment. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:51, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay.  :) --Elonka 19:53, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate you taking the time to actually listen to me and giving me the benefit of the doubt. Niteshift36 (talk) 05:42, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please see here there is an Academic source support my edit and its quoted in the article --Bayrak (talk) 16:33, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've been thinking over what you wrote on my talk page, especially the points about what trolling isn't, and about strategies for making talk page disputes less personal. Good advice on both counts.

I feel I need to make clear, though, how serious I think this problem of speciously accusing editors of making "strawman" arguments has become. This is not some pet peeve arising from my history with Jayjg; it's a serious and ongoing problem plaguing I/P pages, and it is distinct from the ideological divides that obviously make dispute resolution a challenge.

A strawman argument is a very specific sort of fallacy, involving deliberate and substantive distortion of an opponent's position. It's not appropriate to make that accusation because one feels cornered, because the terms of the discussion underway are not of one's choosing, because one finds a proposed distillation or extrapolation of one's position to be debatable, etc. Strawman arguments can always be explicitly and efficiently rebutted; for this reason they tend to thrive in situations where the opportunity for rebuttal is either limited or non-existent (campaign commercials, newspaper op-eds, 90-second interviews on cable television, etc.) In real life I am a literary critic, and I have to say, in all seriousness, that in my various forays into the history of human discourse I've never encountered anywhere else this rhetorical pattern of claiming to have been strawmanned while refusing to say how.

Say for example you take the position that the U.S. should begin an orderly withdrawal from Iraq, but in the meantime maintain and even increase troop deployments in Baghdad. Among the criticisms you might encounter:

1. Elonka wants to cut and run.
2. Elonka seems to think our foreign policy should be dictated by our enemies.
3. Elonka believes the U.S. presence is the cause of unrest, and that Iraq will magically stabilize with us out of the picture.
4. Elonka's plan is naïve. Baghdad has just begun to stabilize; a sudden power vacuum there could threaten stability not only in the capital but in the country at large.

The first two criticisms are weak talking-points, the third is debatable and possibly inaccurate, but only the fourth is a strawman. It is a strawman because your position directly addressed the issue of a potential vacuum in Baghdad, which critic #4 pretends not to have noticed.

The first two might not merit much of a response (beyond pointing out that macho posturing is one thing, foreign policy another), but the third certainly does. According to the unwritten rules of debate, you'd need to clarify whether you indeed think the country can stabilize without us (and how and why), or whether on the contrary you think further unrest is likely but preferable to ongoing occupation for reasons x, y, z – whatever the case may be. This is how debate proceeds, how ideas are refined, how points of disagreement are zeroed in on and highlighted, and possible consensus reached. Debate by definition means (1) allowing your positions to be reformulated in new terms, tentatively distilled and tested, extrapolated from, etc., while (2) participating actively and critically in that process of reformulation, extrapolation, and distillation. Simply blowing the whistle on #3 and saying "Strawman!" (while refusing to specify why) short-circuits the whole process and makes progress impossible. Meanwhile, an actual strawman argument like #4, nuisance that it may be, can be dispensed with quickly by simply pointing out its tactical omission: "My critic here employs a strawman argument; as he knows or should know, my position calls for reinforcements in Baghdad for the duration of the proposed withdrawal, precisely to prevent the sort of power vacuum he darkly alludes to."

I think my talk-page contributions are self-evidently fair comment, and they are always in good faith. They are more serious and detailed than any of the above four examples, but if they go astray in characterizing another's position, they do so in the manner of #3 above – which is to say that any inaccuracy is unintended, and an opportunity for further discussion and refinement rather than a whistle blown in my face. And this is not – emphatically not – a pedantic argument about the technical meaning of the term "strawman," because the problem I'm getting at makes progress in disputes genuinely impossible.

Trying to debate anything with Jayjg often feels like playing pick-up basketball with an opponent who doubles as ref, blows the whistle whenever you have the ball, refuses to say how you've "fouled," and awards himself endless free throws. The problem is not that we both want to win (i.e. disagree about content); the problem is that the accepted protocols of pick-up basketball and talk-page debate are being systematically scuttled, and the game never actually takes place.

But my history with Jayjg is not germane here. He is ubiquitous and influential on I/P pages, editing on hundreds of articles I go nowhere near, and the pattern is everywhere visible, and disruptive insofar as it makes normal debate impossible. It adds a dimension of intractability to I/P discussion pages that is distinct from the usual ideological divides fueling content disputes. My ideological disagreements with Tundrabuggy, for example, are deeper than with Jay, but I can ask Tundrabuggy to clarify his position and he will; we will continue to disagree, but we can narrow down our points of disagreement, and discussion proceeds instead of grinding to a halt. And there are editors from the "other side" with whom I deeply disagree, such as Michael Safyan, who nevertheless has my profound respect because of his adherence to the protocols of serious debate. I/P pages will always be fraught, but they needn't be intractable, and it's important to realize that it isn't always content per se making them intractable in the first place.

My own comportment is far from perfect, and I accept most of the blocks I've incurred for incivility, and I'm certainly not asking you to crack down on Jay or anyone else. I'm just suggesting that you can maintain your admirable impartiality regarding content on I/P pages, while at the same time showing a firmer hand regarding the protocols of reasoned debate. User:HG for example is remarkably effective at this, and is as respected by the two sides for his detachment as you are.

Thanks for your patience Elonka and sorry if this was a bit TLDR; take care.--G-Dett (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, my name is Bahador Nosrat, and I am a graduate student at San Diego State University.

For the past week, I have been writing a grant to Google ([6]) for their Geo Challenge ([7]), and a fair portion of the grant involves something called metagenomics ([[8]]). I went to Wikipedia to get a brief overview of key concepts and figures in the field, as I often do when I want to brief myself on a topic I am not fully familiar with. A large portion of the citations are either directly or indirectly related to Forest Rohwer ([[9]]) or individuals associated with his lab. Yet when I clicked on the link on his name, it says the following:

This page has been deleted. The deletion log for the page is provided below for reference.

   * 22:58, 27 October 2008 Elonka (Talk | contribs) deleted "Forest Rohwer" ‎ (A7 (bio): Doesn't indicate importance or significance of a real person)

Article 7 of the Criteria for Speedy Deletion ([[10]]) reads as follows:

"An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. Other article types, including school articles, are not eligible for deletion by this criterion. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at articles for deletion instead."

Yet the minimum criteria for "notibility" ([[11]]) as defined by Wikipedia requires a person to have "been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject," along with additional criteria for a biography requiring the person to be the recipient of a notable award or honor (e.g., [12]), and to have "made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field."

A Google search using Forest Rohwer as the query yields: Results 1 - 10 of about 61,800 for Forest Rohwer. (0.12 seconds)

A Google Scholar search yields: Results 1 - 10 of about 2,980 for Forest Rohwer. (0.02 seconds)

On the other hand, a Google search using Elonka Dunin as the query yields: Results 1 - 10 of about 6,040 for Elonka Dunin. (0.07 seconds)

A Google Scholar search yields: Results 1 - 10 of 10 for Elonka Dunin. (0.03 seconds)

According to Google and Google Scholar, Elonka Dunin is approximately 10x and 298x less "important or significant" than Forest Rohwer, respectively. The first question that pops into mind is if Forest Rohwer fails to meet the minimum criteria for "important or significance" as defined by Wikipedia, then how could Elonka Dunin ([[13]]) possibly meet the criteria?

As an avid Wikipedia user, I find this very bothersome. Now I do not know what was in the entry for Forest Rohwer before it was deleted, but I will assume based on the content of the metagenomics entry that it was not irrelevant or inappropriate.

Thanks for your time, and I hope you have a good weekend.

Friday, 19 December 2008, 14:14 PST

-- Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation. - Edward R. Murrow

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.244.224.172 (talk • contribs) 14:14, December 19, 2008 (UTC)

The content of the Forest Rohwer page, when Elonka deleted it, was simply:

Forest Rohwer is a biologist at San Diego State University.

and a link to his homepage. Note that Elonka wasn't saying "He's not important"; rather, she was agreeing that the article did not demonstrate that. For my part, please feel free to re-create the article if you wish. (not Elonka, but happened to be passing by). Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 22:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine that Elonka will comment for herself at some point, but you seem to misunderstand the basic idea that an article is deleted/not deleted based on the content of the article, not necessarily the subject himself. If the article itself did not contain the many citations you note from other articles, it is not the responsibility of the nominator, participants in the discussion or Administrator closing the AfD to do extensive research or even a Google search before a decision is made (though some attempt at a search is invariably done). For all we know, the content of the article was "Forest Rohwer is a guy from Detroit." Further, Elonka did not merely decide to delete the article on her own; per procedure, there was a discussion in which consensus/policy resulted in deletion. An administrator, Elonka herself may not even have participated in the discussion, only performed the technical argument closing and deletion tasks. Finally, your Rohwer vs. Dunin comparison obviously has nothing to do with why the article was deleted and is actually somewhat of an uncivil personal attack against Elonka. Thanks for your inquiry, but I encourage you to recreate a well-referenced version of the article rather than make accusations and insinuations about things you know little. — TAnthony^Talk 22:47, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

LOL, good guess at the article's content on my part ;)— TAnthony^Talk 22:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like this has already been covered, but yes, the article was deleted not because of any aspersion at Forest Rohwer, but simply because the article as it was, did not meet our standards for inclusion. For more details:

• On October 27, at 21:01, Farful (talk · contribs) created a one-line stub which said merely that Rohwer is a biologist at San Diego State.
• Within seconds, one of our volunteers, Ukexpat (talk · contribs), tagged the article for speedy-deletion, as is done routinely with thousands of other "non-articles" that are created each day on Wikipedia. A notice was also placed on Farful's talkpage, notifying him of the deletion request.
• Two hours later, no further information had been added to the article, and Farful had not replied or done anything else.
• At 22:58, the article stub was deleted routinely, by me, along with several other similarly tagged articles that day.[14] I was acting in the same way that hundreds of other volunteer administrators act each day on Wikipedia, doing routine maintenance and cleanup. Be aware that each day on Wikipedia, there are attempts to create thousands of articles, and the majority of these attempts are deleted within hours. We do still have a net positive gain of about 2,000 articles that "stick" each day, and currently have over 2.6 million articles on the English version of Wikipedia (and several million more in other versions of the project). When new articles are created, we have teams of volunteers that give them a quick glance to see if they're a "real" article, or something that should probably be quickly deleted. If the latter, a tag is placed on the article, which places it in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, and administrators routinely scan this category and accomplish the deletions.

For more information, you may wish to read Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?

Bottom line: If someone wishes to re-create the Forest Rohwer article, and include more sources to verify that the article subject meets the standards of WP:BIO, I have no objection. To be safe, it might be best to create an account, and then create a draft version of the article in a subpage of your userspace. Then once it's properly fleshed out, then move it into article space.

I hope that helps explain? If you have any other questions, please let us know. --Elonka 23:13, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He is removing sources again [15], how many more free passes will he be given? I am thinking of leaving Wikipedia because of this disruptive editor. --Sina111 (talk) 23:48, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your intervention at Banias would be welcome. There seems to be a very clear consensus against the inclusion of some non-related material (see both the Talk page and last comments by CasualObserver on the related AN/I case [16], yet one editor is persistent in edit warring against this consensus. NoCal100 (talk) 18:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like we cross-posted. Ashley kennedy3 (talk · contribs) has just been banned from the Banias article for 30 days. --Elonka 18:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me for saying so: but what a load of rubbish. "Consensus" on Banias (-Ashley) excist because the rest of us are sick to the bone of tag-teaming pro-Israeli teams showing up at certain articles...so we stay away. Yes, I admit: I "chicken out" of articles when NoCal100 et.al. shows up. And I am not alone. That is how "consensus" is achieved. Elonka: I had a higher opinion about you than this. Regards, Huldra (talk) 18:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Something I learned long ago on Wikipedia, is that "decisions are made by those who show up". If you are not speaking your mind at an article talkpage, then it's not fair to complain that the consensus is bad. However, I am sympathetic to the perception of tag-teaming. Since there's a great deal of administrator attention on the Banias article right now, I recommend trying again to participate in good faith at the talkpage. If there is tag-teaming, the administrators will keep an eye out for it. --Elonka 18:52, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are quite right, Elonka, "decisions are made by those who show up" ...but after contributing to Palestine/Israel-issues for 3-4 years now, I have learned long ago where I waist my time by showing up, and where I don´t. Keep in mind that -at least by my accessment- the "pro-Israel" "lobby" outnumber the "pro-Palestinian" one about 10 to 1. I have waisted my time soooo many times...and I have seen all those who "show up" only because they know they are right... being burned-out and leaving WP sooner rather than later.

Minority opinion needs protection in RL, so I have learned. And so it should be on WP. But it isn´t. Because the average admin can only count numbers (of editors), but cannot evaluate the validity of an argument. And that is the sadness...and disgust...of it all. Huldra (talk) 19:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what you're saying, but in order for the minority opinion to be included, it has to be brought up at the article talkpages. In the time that you took posting to my talkpage, you could have posted multiple one-line comments at various article talkpages, "I think that <fill in comment>". It doesn't mean that you have to stay and argue the point into the ground, but even just popping in and offering a single sentence comment can be useful. --Elonka 19:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don´t know how to tell anyone that they are talking rubbish without violating WP:CIVIL...but perhaps you get my idea. The minority opinion IS brought up at the article talkpages ...by Ashley (..and from what I can see, also CasualObserver'48) oh yeah, it would add to the precious numbers of editors if I participated there. Thanks, but no thanks. Not wild, wild horses (as the song goes..) could drag me to a talk-page where NoCal has teamed up with Tundrabuggy. And I could add NOTHING of facts to the argument ...compared to Ashley. He knows this stuff much better that me. (pre-1948 is my main interest..) So why on earth do you go for numbers of editors, and not the content, the quality of the argument? That is the question you need to answer. But will not. And that is why my opinion of you have changed rather dramatically. (PS: a hint to you: my first "hard-core" discussions about Palestine/Israel issues on WP was back in 2005; about the "territories occupied by Israel"-article... and the one thing I noticed was that certain editors went totally ballistic when you mentioned the word "water" or worse: aquafier...Those words were apparently more "dangerous" than words like "torture" or "illegal expulsions"! Now, doesn´t that make you wonder?) Huldra (talk) 19:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not about numbers or voting, it's about getting different opinions into the mix. That's why we have parts of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution called Requesting third opinions and Requesting comments. Usually the more editors that get involved in a discussion, the easier it is to try and determine what the consensus is. --Elonka 19:58, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your intervention here. I would like to take the article bakc to what I think is the consensus version, as evidenced by CasualObserver's most recent comments and Tundrabuggy's - but I don't want this to be perceived as edit warring. What do you suggest? NoCal100 (talk) 20:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Elonka, looks like a dispute may arise on article Gallus Anonymus, me versus Piotrus/Molobo/whoever else called in. Could you give a perspective on the matter? Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 20:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, due to prior disputes, per WP:UNINVOLVED it is probably not a good idea if I intervene as an administrator in cases where Piotrus is concerned, unless Piotrus would be willing to accept me as a neutral party. --Elonka 20:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]