User talk:Oren0

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[edit] Rock Band

Hey there Oren0. I protected the page per a request at RFPP. After going through the history of the article, it just seemed to me that there were disagreements going on, with several reverts and such. I understand you guys have a bit of a consensus going on, but perhaps a bit of discussion on the article talk page to figure out the issues could come in handy. Let me know what you think. Jmlk17 03:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry

Sorry, I should've looked more careuflly at my edit. Just thought somebody might've missed it. Thanks for assuming good faith though. Discgolfrules (talk) 01:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Political position article summaries

Regarding your re-additions:

to the lead sections of:

and your comment "Removal of summaries of political positions":

your unsourced personal opinions that:
  • "McCain is generally regarded as conservative politically."
  • "Obama is generally regarded as liberal politically."
  • Clinton is apparently neither?
and your false and unsourced claims that (your own personal) summarizations of the candidates' political positions
  • "hit on the policies that the candidates reference most and those that reliable sources reference most"
and
  • "gives readers the ability to get a quick summary" of
    • (your unsourced personal opinion) "of the 'major issues' without having to skim through" what are in
    • (your unsourced personal opinion) "relatively minor ones."
are violations of Wikipedia's fundamental absolute and non-negotiable WP:NPOV policy,
which trump WP:SUMMARY and WP:LEAD editing and style guidelines.
The articles in question all have a table of contents that gives readers the ability to get their own quick summary of the issues they consider "major issues" without reading the ones they consider "minor issues".

76.214.204.207 (talk) 22:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Oren0, I know that articles are supposed to have lead sections, but the political positions articles are the WP:COMMON and WP:IAR exceptions to that. The whole point of these articles is to give a full treatment to the positions involved, without trying to boil them down to oversimplifying or inaccurate one-sentence summaries. For example, you cannot coherently explain Hillary Clinton's position on Iraq in one brief sentence; as the article's section makes clear, it has evolved over time and includes some nuanced stances. The same is true of John McCain on the Bush tax cuts, and so forth. Let the full material speak for itself. Wasted Time R (talk) 22:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the WP:IAR position is the exact opposite. The lead is supposed to give a concise summary of the article; in this case a concise summary involves what their positions are on the key issues. As for the liberal/conservative things and the assertion that which points are major are unsourced, all of those things can be easily sourced if that's your problem. WP:NPOV doesn't require that all positions be treated equally, therefore it's perfectly legitimate to explain some in the leads but not others (see also WP:WEIGHT). Oren0 (talk) 23:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, at least narrow your assertions. Say that Hillary is for an Iraq troop pullout in 2008, because she sure wasn't for it in some other years. Say that she's for universal heathcare in 2008, because she was for an incremental plan earlier, until Edwards pushed her in his direction. And so forth. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I was under the impression that the articles were trying to convey the candidates' current positions (ie the positions they are running on) rather than their past ones. But fine, change that. I'm not of the position that my selected issue summaries were perfect, just that there should be summaries of the major issues. I think the assertion that choosing some positions violates WP:NPOV is ridiculous, it is no more a violation than choosing major points to include in any article's lead is. Is it an NPOV violation that Bush and Kerry are mentioned in the lead of United States presidential election, 2004 but Ralph Nader isn't? Is it an NPOV violation that Alaska and Hawaii are mentioned in the lead of US History but Kansas isn't? As editors, we have discretion to decide what parts of articles go in lead summaries and what don't. Disagree with my choices if you wish but I believe that disagreeing with our ability to add this info to leads at all is silly. I think that the idea that anything I added is unsourced is equally ridiculous, as all the info is right there in the article (see Wikipedia:LEAD#Citations) Oren0 (talk) 23:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
No, these articles are meant to capture the political figure's positions over time. In other words, if a politician has "changed" or "evolved" or "flip-flopped" (take your choice of term), this is where we bring it out. Look at Political positions of Mitt Romney for a good example of this. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Who decides that a candidate is "generally regarded as" "conservative" or "liberal" or neither? 76.214.204.207 (talk) 01:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Reliable sources. I thought people might object to this part but I figured I'd include it anyway. Plenty of reliable sources make these characterizations: Barack Obama: Radical liberal - WorldNetDaily Obama is a "traditional liberal": CBS... I could go on and on. Oren0 (talk) 02:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Uh, just for your information, an op-ed column in WorldNetDaily is a crappy source, pretty much unusable for anything. Wasted Time R (talk) 03:18, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I just picked results from the first Google page. We all know I could find numerous sources for this if need be. Oren0 (talk) 08:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Who decides what "the major issues" are? 76.214.204.207 (talk) 01:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The candidates and media. I could find dozens of sources stating that the major issues in this war are Iraq and the economy, and therefore those are the statements we'd use. Or even better, go straight from the horses' mouths. Look at the major issues on the front of the "issues" pages on the candidates' websites, McCain, for example. Oren0 (talk) 02:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Who decides how to oversimplify (and thereby mischaracterize) the candidates positions? 76.214.204.207 (talk) 01:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

We do, as editors. Look at the wall of text that is Barack Obama's economic position. We don't include all of it in the article's "economy" subsection; rather, we selectively take the positions that we believe to be representative of his position as a whole and only include those. Why is doing this in the lead any different? Oren0 (talk) 02:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Fine, I'm willing to leave out liberal/conservative. That's not what we're talking about anyway. Oren0 (talk) 06:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, just also leave out your personal opinions about what "the major issues" are, and don't presume to have the "editorial discretion" to be able to summarize and distill, from a neutral point of view, in just a sentence or two, what the candidates' positions are on issues:

  • as interconnected as "the war in Iraq" and "the economy"[1],
  • as broad as "the economy",
  • on which candidates flip-flop (e.g. McCain on the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, McCain on comprehensive immigration reform).

76.214.204.207 (talk) 14:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Am I thinking correctly?

Hello Oren0, you may want to look here: Talk:Campus_life_at_Washington_University_in_St._Louis#Student_Union_merge_proposal. If the article gets merged, than ok, but there should be some debate. Am I out of line in feeling like this is borderline vandalism? --Lmbstl (talk) 00:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Should we get this mediated? There has to be some process for this. These guys don't want to discuss anything.--Lmbstl (talk) 05:34, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I am not keen on the threatening and authoritative attitude. Maybe I am overstating the need for consensus, but they are not attempting to work toward achieving it. Merging (and even deleting) the article may be in order, but deciding this without debate (along with editing articles to support a position) doesn't seem to be the way things work around here. It seems that they want the article to simply go away and are trying to do so as quickly as possible. I have a problem with the methodology.
As far as the article itself-- it does need help. However, once issues have been identified, there should be some reasonable time to work them out.
Thanks for your views on the issue, --Lmbstl (talk) 14:50, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm starting a WikiProject for students' unions and thought you might be interested in seeing the proposal. GreenJoe 16:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WUSTL

I can see that things are spiraling out of control here, so I'll try to explain my actions a bit more thoroughly. I can see why it would look like I'm on a rampage from your point of view. So, this post is long, but I hope it helps smooth things over...

As far as the concern that I was canvassing, I came across User:Paddy_Simcox when I saw his AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Associated Students of Arizona State University and saw he was cleaning up the same type of articles I was working on, and asked if he would like to help. I don't think that qualifies as canvassing, which is usually "If you agree with me vote here on this AFD/RFC." I just asked for his help in merging this group of articles. Also, Paddy Simcox has AFDd a bunch of UK student unions, which I haven't touched (since I know US/UK student unions are different animals, and I know nothing about the British ones).

As far as the concern that User:Paddy_Simcox and I are suckpuppets, we are not. I can't really prove that unless you can find an admin to run IP checks, or whatever people do to check that out. Yeah, I see that he's only been around for a few weeks, and that prods are usually reserved for more skilled editors. That I cannot explain. Perhaps he lost his old password and made a new account. Maybe he's just a fast learner, I dunno.

As far as the list of AFDs, I am a very organized person, so I did keep track of the articles I was working on: User:RedShiftPA/Cleanup. I also keep a to do list (User:RedShiftPA/ToDo) and a list of thing I've already done (User:RedShiftPA#My wikipedia projects). That "cleanup" page doesn't mean I was issuing orders to anyone, just that I'm anal retentive.

I really don't have a vendetta or grudge against student government articles. Here's the (rather long and boring) story of why I started merging a bunch of these articles: As you can see from my contrib list, I almost exclusively edit articles in politics (especially PA politics). I was beefing up the College Republican article and adding a bunch of folks to the Category:College Republicans, when I stumbled across the article for something called "DUGBA" Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dugba, which was merged into the Associated Students of Michigan State University article [2]. It was an insanely well done article about their student government, but it was totally original research. I even tried to contact the VP to see if they wanted to save some of the history of the organization before it was merged (no luck with the email, by the way). So, then I worked with the original author User:Lovelac7 to merge it to the main MSU article Michigan State University#Associated Students of Michigan State University. You can see from his talk page that we worked very well on the merging process. From there I saw Category:Student governments in the United States and was surprised to see so many similar articles. And that is how I came to the WUSTL student union article.

But, in conclusion, I really think that student government/student unions are best served under the main article. Wikipedia can't be a hosting service for lists of former student government presidents and a server for constitutions. Anything that can pass WP:OR and WP:RS wouldn't be much more than a stub.

As far as my tactics go, I didn't foresee that merging these article would be very contentious. I now (very clearly) know that this is not the case. So, for assuming that, I apologize.Is there some common ground that we can find on merging these into the main article? I will post this on a few other talk pages of editor who are also in the discussion.--RedShiftPA (talk) 00:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AFDs

Hey, I decided to AFD most of the student government articles where my proposed merges were being contested. Thought you'd be interested. Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/Deletion#16 March (AfD, CfD, TfD)--RedShiftPA (talk) 18:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rock Band Correction

I did some research on the title of the rock band version of super-sprøde, and while the OXM disc lists it as "Sprode", Harmonix's website announces it as "Super Sprode" (Whether the ø is missing due to website compatibility concerns or otherwise is unknown.) Did they change it for download or is it still the same as the OXM disc. I have a PS3 and haven't been able to find out.

Forum Announcement —Preceding unsigned comment added by Keviniskool (talk • contribs) 04:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Twinkle

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm currently using IE7 to browse (I know, I know...get with the times and all that) so it's not an option at the moment. I'm still learning my Wikimarkup (as you can tell by the fact I didn't use a talkback ping), and whenever I want to quick revert some vandalisms I can't get to the right page that has the style. I'm likely going to put them all on my user page for quick reference. TRTX T / C 19:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Left-handedness

When I skimmed through that article last week, the first thing I noticed was "man, that lead needs a serious rewrite". Now that I have time to check back up on it, I see somebody else tok care of it in the meantime. Congrats :) --Stratadrake (talk) 17:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] HebWiki Activity?

Hi Oren!
I couldn't help but notice that u have a hebrew username, And i wanted to do if you are also active on the Hebrew Wikipedia? --Oren neu dag (talk) 02:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lots of sugar this morning?

Dude, settle down with the HotCat changes, pick a category and stick with it! :P --AeronPrometheus (talk) 18:14, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cooling to 2015.....

Is anyone predicting "cooling until 2015"? I guess you misread that one.. because there is no global cooling predicted in this[3]. (which i guess is what you refer to)...in fact their graph of the prediction indicates slight warming.... --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:19, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I didn't read the paper itself, though shame on me for listening to those crackpot skeptics over at Reuters: "And while the study published in the journal Nature last week did not dispute manmade global warming, it did predict a cooling from recent average temperatures through 2015, as a result of a natural and temporary shift in ocean currents." [4]. Oren0 (talk) 23:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think its a well kept secret that popular media is a rather bad source for science ;)
Btw. have you looked at the references that Ron is giving for his contribution? He is pulling things out of context to an extreme degree. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 07:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] So If I were to be a cantidate

And say that my position is that i'll make the deficit disappear, while giving you full government benefits and not tax you a penny, that would be acceptable, even though its impossible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.22.166.183 (talk) 05:00, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

That is 1000% not the issue. The issue is that the page in question is about the political positions of McCain. All that page strives to do is to explicate his opinion on issues, not to talk about editorial receptions to it. That stuff belongs elsewhere. Whether you or I like or dislike any of McCain's policies, find them plausible, etc. is irrelevant anyway. Oren0 (talk) 07:23, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Umm, its totally relevant to the country, unless you want to allow the collapse of our economy, I think its important that voters are informed about whether the positions of the cantidates are realistic and truthful or whether its smoke and mirrors. If McCain is president and is allowed to grow the debt we could be at the point where the debt passes our GDP by the end of his first term. At that point we'll have a default risk on our debts and as a result higher interest will need to be paid on our debt or money will need to be printed, neither are pleansant options —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.22.166.183 (talk) 11:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm not going to engage you in a political debate here. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. What is "relevant to the country" and what is relevant to a page that talks about the political positions of a candidate have nothing to do with one another. I'm really not sure how to make this more clear. Oren0 (talk) 19:35, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Richard Lindzen

The joke edits were contributed on the grounds that satire is the only adequate response to the inclusion of the pro-smoking material on the page. My point is made, so I won't be trying to re-edit, but wikipedia is suffering greatly from the political leanings of some of it's keenest contributors. The pro-smoking material is insisted upon by Mr Quiggin on the ground that he is interested in 'denialism'. He fails to explain how this makes the material relevant to the biog of a living person - and he already has his page on denialism to advance his POV. Best Wishes, Mark Smith —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.42.70 (talk) 22:02, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I didn't mean the user talk warning to be anything personal, I just use them so it's easy for others to spot repeat vandals. I understand the frustration you feel but I don't think adding jokes to mainspace pages helps anything. There are steps you can take if you believe an editor is being unreasonable. Thanks, Oren0 (talk) 22:17, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Fair point, and not taken personally! Best wishes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Masmit (talk • contribs) 22:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Userboxes

Hi Oren0, just wondering: how come I can only see half of your userboxes? Deamon138 (talk) 00:05, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Glad you found your way to my user page. That's what I get for only checking how it looks in Firefox. IE messes up the look. I'll play around and fix it. Thanks for letting me know, Oren0 (talk) 00:14, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Well that's fixed, at the expense of IE slightly cutting off my Barnstar. You just can't win with IE. Oren0 (talk) 00:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Hey no probs, and now I know all about you and can find your weaknesses...*insert evil laugh*. Anyway, I only noticed tbh because I've been editing in IE for the last couple of days. IE does seem to have a few weaknesses, roll on IE8 that's what I say. I hope you manage to fix your Barnstar as well. Deamon138 (talk) 01:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)