User talk:Enterprise2001/Page Name Debate

Page NameEdit

Please rename your new subpage. Use of the word "lynch" is a vast overstatement and could be construed as a personal attack. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 16:16, 14 April 2008 (EDT)

Sorry, been away from UESP for almost a week. Thanks, but I am well aware of the definition of lynch. Two things:

1. At the time, it certainly felt like a lynch mob. That entire conversation was seriously biting the newcomer. It almost drove me completely off this wiki and out of the Oblivion community altogether.
2. Now, in retrospect, it's a joke—lighten up. I gave it a strong title so it's clear that is not how new editors should be treated. (Unless this is how you think new editors should be greeted?) The after-the-fact comments should make it clear it's not attacking anyone.

Let dead flame wars alone, --Enterprise2001 22:12, 20 April 2008 (EDT)

I would like to second the request that you rename the subpage. It's only what what would appear to be appropriate based on your own advice, namely, "Let dead flame wars alone." It does not help anyone in the community to highlight a dead discussion, let alone to reignite the discussion by using a controversial and prejudicial title to draw extra attention to the discussion. Sorry, but it is not clear that the title is a "joke." The tone of the discussion is not light-hearted, so I doubt most readers are going to assume that such a discussion has a joke in its title. On the internet jokes are generally misunderstood and backfire, except in the rare case where there is absolutely no ambiguity about the statement being a joke; this is not one of those rare cases. Overall it just seems prudent to not try to treat the discussion like a joke, and instead find a neutral title that will not invite additional, unnecessary misinterpretations.

Unfortunately in your response you also felt it necessary, yet again, to debate the details of the original discussion. To me that only says that, first, you do not consider the discussion to be over and settled and, second, that (despite your frequent complaints that "I KNOW ALREADY") you really don't understand why the discussion was necessary. So apologies in advance for the fact that we keep repeating ourselves and stating the obvious -- but if you keep acting as if you don't know these obvious points, I don't know what to do other than to repeat the information yet again, in the hope that perhaps rephrasing the information will make a difference.

No, I do not think it is appropriate to bite the newcomer. But I do think it is always appropriate, and in fact generally necessary, to make it clear that negative, personal comments are never acceptable. And your comment "no one else had the guts" (exacerbated by the generally sarcastic and angry tone of your post) qualified as unacceptably negative. (Not to mention that the entire comment was based on false facts: you were not the first person in five months to tackle the article, as evidenced by the series of 40+ edits, completely revamping the article, that were made just before you started editing). Similarly, falsely accusing other editors of being vandals is not tolerated, no matter who makes the comment, and invariably causes a strong reponse on the user's talk page.

Also, I fail to see how Gaebrial and Rpeh taking the time to answer your original questions about the article content qualifies as "biting the newcomer." You chose to ask questions; in response, they provided the information that you requested. Prior to that, edits had been made to the article in order to try to help you improve the article; again, I don't see how other editors chipping in and helping out is "biting the newcomer," especially when those editors provided edit summaries explaining why they made changes. The discussion was all just a standard discussion about how to improve the article, until your comments turned the discussion in a distinctly negative direction; that is the point at which it was necessary for an admin to ask you to alter your behaviour.

I realize that you are here because you would like to help the site. Your work rewriting various articles has definitely improved the articles, and the improvements are appreciated. I can also understand that these lengthy discussions have been trying, and they have not been how any of us would have liked to introduce ourselves to each other. Without a doubt, everyone who has contributed to the discussions bears some responsibility for how those discussions progressed (including myself with my contributions).

But that also means that you have had some responsibility for shaping these discussions. In particular, when I read through your various posts I can't help but be left with the impression that you don't fundamentally have much respect for the other editors on this site. Just because there is a ton of work that still needs to be done on UESP, it doesn't mean that the contributions everyone has made up until now have been insignificant. OK, I can imagine that was probably not the intent behind your comments, but nevertheless it's an underlying message that seems to pop up over and over again. If that's really not the message you're trying to convey, perhaps it would help to review your posts a bit more carefully before submitting them. Also it would perhaps help if your responses started with the assumption that all the editors have really just been trying their best to help you. We're all human, so our best may not be perfect, but nevertheless I think I can safely speak for everyone and say that we are still trying. --Nephele^Talk 00:25, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

What we have here is a lack of communication... <sigh> Breaking my responses up to try to figure it out:

Paragraph 1: Ok, I'll change the name. Any suggestions? It's late and I was in the middle of working on Oblivion:Houses. So I'm not in the right frame of mind for renaming it.

Paragraph 2: Totally lost... You mean my response to Rpeh's request to change the archive page's name?

Paragraph 3: I didn't intend "no one else had the guts" to be negative, and it was certainly not personal. I admit I probably didn't check every edit after the clean-up tag was entered, but the ones I did look at were hardly "completely revamping the article," but only minor things—certainly not the level of editing that was required. (IMO) As for my use of the v-word (vandalism), I didn't know then just how strongly you people viewed it. I was just restated that if felt like my desk had been ransacked (annoyance), but used the nasty v-word (heresy). I was not accusing anyone of the v-word.

Paragraph 4: I bit lost again... If you are talking about the first two responses in the original conversation, they didn't feel like biting to me, except "Just an aside, whilst it's great to see the work you've done on this page you shouldn't start to treat it as your own - it's still a page on the wiki and can be edited by anybody at any time. –Rpeh" that. I never considered it my own and I was well aware of what a wiki was, so I found that comment insulting. Combining that with my bad day (Which I already apologized for.) is where it all went wrong. Oh... the "guts" statement... That was me saying that since I was a new editor taking on a difficult edit that no one else was doing, I wanted some flexibility and leeway. Hardly negative or insulting...

Paragraph 5 & 6: It's nice to know that I am improving things, however it is most unfortunate it takes a topic such as this to illicit a response from the UESP community... (More on this later...)

"Trying" is hardly the word for it-more like "draining." I had to leave for almost a week to recover.

As for the impression that I don't respect the other editors on this site, it took a little introspection to find the root, and its not a respect issue per se. It's more of "What the #^*#@ is wrong with you people?" You seem... apathetic, lazy, too busy with Real Life? Something, I don't really know... My questions and request for feedback get little to no response. The lack of interest in getting a new featured article is particularly disturbing to me. If I were an admin here, I'd sure want to have a new featured article by now... I guess all of you are doing something here that I don't see, (When I check the recent changes page it doesn't appear too hot and heavy and a great deal of it is undoing stupid and silly things [vandalism?].) but until I understand what's going on I'm going to be somewhat... frustrated. In general, I feel ignored until I do something wrong and then the whole community comes out to- err... strongly inform me of my wrongdoings. All in all, not a very pleasant feeling-waiting for my next screw up so you all can sick your teeth into me. No doubt this feeling is coloring my talk here. (Ok, glad that's over... posting my introspections on a public forum isn't exactly the most comfortable thing I've ever done.)

Trying to figure this community out, but fully expected to be drummed out instead, --Enterprise2001 02:17, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

I don't feel like rehashing the previous discussion, although if you want to go that way, eh, we can. Just don't seem like it is worth it. Instead I'd like to address some of the things you reflected on today. Call it giving you an inside view, my perspective, not canon...

"Trying" is hardly the word for it-more like "draining." I had to leave for almost a week to recover.--

Well, that goes both ways. Not to say that you are the only or main reason, but Edit wars and flames are draining. People here are volunteers, which you are well aware of, some are considering leaving or are taking extended breaks. Many regulars have taken a break in the last week, to the point where a lot of things got left undone. Check Nephele's contribs from the last two days, and you see what I mean.

Nothing gets done?--

I'd say check HMSVictory's revamp of Tamriel articles, and, not to toot my own horn, the 400 edits I did on Bloodmoon the last few days. GameLord is finishing up the Quests for Morrowind, the Morrowind Redesign Project is nearing completion, Rpeh and KMS uploaded a ton of images, and so on. So maybe you should look closer, before you make such statements.

Lethargic?--

Yes, certain things move slow. Agreed on the Featured Article. I have made suggestions that have not gotten any response. Frustrating? Sure, but it is the nature of the beast and connected with the drain above.

So try to be courteous, constructive, assume Good Faith, and you'll see no one is out to get you. Be bold, yes, abrasive, no. Initiative is good. --Cheers, Benould^•T•C 03:05, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

Thanks, Benould, for adding your perspective. To add my feedback.

I personally hate the fact that a huge fraction of my time is taken up "undoing stupid and silly things." I would love to have the freedom to just pick a handful of articles and spend all my time improving them, while ignoring everything else that is happening on the site. In fact, both of those feelings were so strong that I just took a two week break from trying to do any of the admin-related or maintenance drudgery, or from trying to answer any of the dozens of questions that get asked every day (including yours). It's the first time in the year and a half since I became an admin that I felt it necessary to just step away from everything. And during those two weeks, I let myself work on my own projects: significantly expanding every Shivering Isles dungeon article, every Shivering Isles ingredient page, and adding to a large number of the Oblivion ingredients pages. Hopefully you don't seriously consider it "apathetic" or "lazy" for a single person to destub 85+ articles, add some 1 MB of text, and upload 70+ maps (not to mention less significant tweaks to some 100 other articles) -- all in my free time between a job, family, and house, during the last month. And as my "reward" for taking time out to finish those projects, I've now had to spend the last few days catching up on a ton of admin work.

As Benould said, we are all volunteers here. So, yes, we do all have real lives that are a higher priority than working on the site, including full-time jobs and/or being full-time students. We work on the site when we have free time, and we do what we can in that time. In exchange for that work we get absolutely no compensation. Once in a blue moon, we're lucky enough to get thanked for the work. Far more often, the only acknowledgment we get is people accusing us of mishandling situations, accusing us of condoning piracy, vandalizing other sites on our behalf, threatening to start wars, or even dragging us into real edit wars. So sorry if we don't immediately drop everything else and jump on every possible opportunity to get dragged into yet another prolonged, draining and/or trying discussion. Sometimes we actually like to spend our free time doing activities that we find fun. --Nephele^Talk 15:44, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

Benould: As far as I am concerned, the previous discussion is moot. It was pretty much just a bad day spilling onto UESP using the the minor formatting and whitespace thing as a gateway. Perhaps it would be best to delete it all together to put it behind us?

Benould (cont): Please stop reading more than what I write. I did not say that "nothing gets done." I asked what was going on and said from my perspective I didn't see anything happening, but I guessed there was something going on. The remark about needed to look closer was an unnecessary dig as no one can possible be on top of everything happening on this wiki...

Nephele: Is there some way to cut down on the "undoing stupid and silly things?" Like, say, they usually come from anonymous IP addresses? If anon edits are generally counter-productive, maybe anonymous edits should be disabled?

Nephele (cont): My questions are rarely of the draining or prolonged variety. They are usually along the lines of: "Is this right?" "How am I doing?" "What exactly needs done here?" I would think that'd you'd jump at questions like those from anybody in the hopes that they will help out. :-)

Benould & Nephele: I apologize that I didn't totally investigate to find both of your contributions. I mainly stick to the Oblivion space since it's the only one I know anything about. As you both pointed out, I volunteer my time and was too busy trying to fix up Oblivion:Houses to completely investigate all the contributions over the previous 72 hours... But, as I said before, no one can possible be on top of everything happening on this wiki. If one person could handle it all, then Daveh would still be the only staff member, wouldn't he?

Good Night, --Enterprise2001 02:13, 23 April 2008 (EDT)

PS: Delete the previous conversation or rename it? No one suggested a new name...

How about "Whitespace controversy"? Or even, following the general convention for such things "Archive 1", "Archive 200804" or some such name. Really any name that doesn't suggest I was trying to put you to death by mob action would be fine by me. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 20:11, 27 April 2008 (EDT)

(outdent) Helping out... Deleting talk is frowned upon, and against the Geneva Convention :0. How about archiving it under a sub-page of yours, Tired Ol' Arguments, preserving the humor you wanted, showing that you're truly done with it and offending no-one? --Benould^•T•C 05:40, 23 April 2008 (EDT)