JzG up to his old tricks on the Spam Blacklist Options

[Abd]

The phrase TL;DR was invented because of Abd

No, it was invented so that lazy editors who have no respect for the time put into writing by others, but still want to say something, no matter if it is totally useless. Six billion people didn't read it. Now, if a piece of writing is intended as polemic, and the reader thinks there might be something there, a comment of "tl;dr, please explain succinctly," would be just fine. But just tl;dr alone is usually an uncivil way of saying, "Your opinions and experience are worthless, please stop expressing them, I'm not interested and nobody else will be, because my interests are what's important, and anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot or POV pusher like you."

If I leave a warning on your Talk page, and it is tl;dr, you have a crackerjack defense. If I leave a long comment and you don't want to read it, don't read it. Deleting or ignoring it is just fine. Obviously, it wasn't for you, I imagined that you might want to discuss the matter, but it's your choice. If I write a long response to your comment on my Talk page, and you reply with tl;dr, I will toss you out and throw your boots after you. Guests have responsibilities, there are limits to hospitality. You are not required to respond or even pay attention, but you should at least not insult the host who has taken your appearance as an invitation to discuss, and has invested his time in it. Basic courtesy.

[Milton Roe]

So JzG is doing this all over again. Abd's assessment of JzG here could be applied to a dozen conflicts initiated by JzG in the past, word-for-word. Surely this berserker should be banned by now?

(I'm not an admin or "supervisor," just an editor with some clarity and persistence. I've said many times I don't need admin tools and if I had them I'd be tempted to use them, the only thing that would be useful in my "meta" work -- i.e., on process -- would be the ability to see deleted contributions.)

After trying unsuccessfully to resolve this through lesser means (I'm a firm believer in WP:DR, which actually works if used with care and caution), after JzG MfD'd the evidence page I'd presented in an RfAr he'd filed, and it was practically demanded I file an RfC, though I'd have continued efforts short of that, I did it. And there is, as some have noticed, an outcry to ban me. WP:DGAF. If I can't follow WP procedure and policy, as it was intended and written, because some admin has a following dedicated to protecting him from the consequences of his actions, please, block me or ban me, I will be grateful. But I don't think it's going to happen. See, this case appears to be right on track to go to ArbComm, it made the required stop at RfC, and the principles are so clear that response has been limited to the lame "He didn't do anything wrong," as if violating fundamental admin policy isn't wrong, or, "he did the wrong thing but it was for a good cause," (when, in fact, there has never been a determination that these actions were good, rather, some haven't been challenged yet, more than the first step in WP:DR, precisely to avoid disruption), and "Abd is a [fill in the incivility and irrelevancy]," which is a well-known argument practically guaranteed to fail outside of the riots at AN and AN/I. I could be blocked and banned immediately, and this train would still make it to ArbComm. All the work has been done.

There is no need for pile-on or supportive comments, and, indeed, please do not go to the RfC and add irrelevancies there. It is only about failure to recuse when involved. That's why it will succeed. Let his side bring up all the irrelevancies they want, they will only hasten the day of reckoning. (But if someone has new evidence to present on that specific issue, not already presented, sure, but please keep the focus, and, I'd suggest, any examples of failure to recuse should be recent, not before January of this year, when it should have become clear to him that there was a problem.) There is only one response that might protect JzG's admin bit, I've been begging for it for months: someone he trusts points out to him that admission of error is a sign of maturity, it endears the one admitting to the community, the first time it's done, it completely defuses the issue, because, remember, Wikipedia does not punish (it appears that he has broken that principle as well, but never mind), and, so, would he please write "My bad. Admins should not use tools where they are involved. I won't do that again." It would all go away. Unless he does it again.

Abd, in the nicest possible way, a suggestion: It's quite possible your writing is not "tl", but rather "tdtr" (to difficult to read). The reason being the cramming of several trains-of-thought into a single paragraph (see above), AND sometimes doing the same in single sentences.

I do this all the time myself, which is the reason I have to continually try to keep out of that trap.

Try splitting the above into double the number of natural paragraphs, and do the same for the couple of monster-sentences, and see what you have left. I think you'll get far fewer complaints about people falling asleep while reading your writing.

IOW, it's not that you don't have anything to say. It's that people take one broad overlook at the way you're saying it, and don't dare go into the swamp.

[Abd]

Try splitting the above into double the number of natural paragraphs, and do the same for the couple of monster-sentences, and see what you have left. I think you'll get far fewer complaints about people falling asleep while reading your writing.

IOW, it's not that you don't have anything to say. It's that people take one broad overlook at the way you're saying it, and don't dare go into the swamp.

Thanks, Milton. Sure, except I don't have time. I do work on improving formatting and separation of specific topics, it's a never-ending battle, in fact. However, I'm not writing for everyone, but only for those who are interested. It's not polemic, and I'm not trying to convince people of what they are not ready to understand. I gave a report and my thoughts, that's all, people are quite welcome to skip it, I'm not offended in the least.

[Fritz]

So JzG is doing this all over again. Abd's assessment of JzG here could be applied to a dozen conflicts initiated by JzG in the past, word-for-word. Surely this berserker should be banned by now?

(I'm not an admin or "supervisor," just an editor with some clarity and persistence. I've said many times I don't need admin tools and if I had them I'd be tempted to use them, the only thing that would be useful in my "meta" work -- i.e., on process -- would be the ability to see deleted contributions.)

After trying unsuccessfully to resolve this through lesser means (I'm a firm believer in WP:DR, which actually works if used with care and caution), after JzG MfD'd the evidence page I'd presented in an RfAr he'd filed, and it was practically demanded I file an RfC, though I'd have continued efforts short of that, I did it. And there is, as some have noticed, an outcry to ban me. WP:DGAF. If I can't follow WP procedure and policy, as it was intended and written, because some admin has a following dedicated to protecting him from the consequences of his actions, please, block me or ban me, I will be grateful. But I don't think it's going to happen. See, this case appears to be right on track to go to ArbComm, it made the required stop at RfC, and the principles are so clear that response has been limited to the lame "He didn't do anything wrong," as if violating fundamental admin policy isn't wrong, or, "he did the wrong thing but it was for a good cause," (when, in fact, there has never been a determination that these actions were good, rather, some haven't been challenged yet, more than the first step in WP:DR, precisely to avoid disruption), and "Abd is a [fill in the incivility and irrelevancy]," which is a well-known argument practically guaranteed to fail outside of the riots at AN and AN/I. I could be blocked and banned immediately, and this train would still make it to ArbComm. All the work has been done.

There is no need for pile-on or supportive comments, and, indeed, please do not go to the RfC and add irrelevancies there. It is only about failure to recuse when involved. That's why it will succeed. Let his side bring up all the irrelevancies they want, they will only hasten the day of reckoning. (But if someone has new evidence to present on that specific issue, not already presented, sure, but please keep the focus, and, I'd suggest, any examples of failure to recuse should be recent, not before January of this year, when it should have become clear to him that there was a problem.) There is only one response that might protect JzG's admin bit, I've been begging for it for months: someone he trusts points out to him that admission of error is a sign of maturity, it endears the one admitting to the community, the first time it's done, it completely defuses the issue, because, remember, Wikipedia does not punish (it appears that he has broken that principle as well, but never mind), and, so, would he please write "My bad. Admins should not use tools where they are involved. I won't do that again." It would all go away. Unless he does it again.

Abd, in the nicest possible way, a suggestion: It's quite possible your writing is not "tl", but rather "tdtr" (to difficult to read). The reason being the cramming of several trains-of-thought into a single paragraph (see above), AND sometimes doing the same in single sentences.

I do this all the time myself, which is the reason I have to continually try to keep out of that trap.

Try splitting the above into double the number of natural paragraphs, and do the same for the couple of monster-sentences, and see what you have left. I think you'll get far fewer complaints about people falling asleep while reading your writing.

IOW, it's not that you don't have anything to say. It's that people take one broad overlook at the way you're saying it, and don't dare go into the swamp.

You've said this many times in many places, but I must ask, Abd: if one ignores something you've written because it is too long, how can I continue discussion? It may save you time to write in this manner, but (whilst probably not your intent) your verbosity appears to be intended to disenfranchise people from debating with you. This is especially true when you follow up with "you don't have to read this if you don't want to".

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

[gadfly]

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

Various people are attributed as having said something very like the following. Whoever it was, it illustrates the problem well, I suspect:

"My apologies for the length of this message. I did not have the time to make it shorter."

[Fritz]

So JzG is doing this all over again. Abd's assessment of JzG here could be applied to a dozen conflicts initiated by JzG in the past, word-for-word. Surely this berserker should be banned by now?

(I'm not an admin or "supervisor," just an editor with some clarity and persistence. I've said many times I don't need admin tools and if I had them I'd be tempted to use them, the only thing that would be useful in my "meta" work -- i.e., on process -- would be the ability to see deleted contributions.)

After trying unsuccessfully to resolve this through lesser means (I'm a firm believer in WP:DR, which actually works if used with care and caution), after JzG MfD'd the evidence page I'd presented in an RfAr he'd filed, and it was practically demanded I file an RfC, though I'd have continued efforts short of that, I did it. And there is, as some have noticed, an outcry to ban me. WP:DGAF. If I can't follow WP procedure and policy, as it was intended and written, because some admin has a following dedicated to protecting him from the consequences of his actions, please, block me or ban me, I will be grateful. But I don't think it's going to happen. See, this case appears to be right on track to go to ArbComm, it made the required stop at RfC, and the principles are so clear that response has been limited to the lame "He didn't do anything wrong," as if violating fundamental admin policy isn't wrong, or, "he did the wrong thing but it was for a good cause," (when, in fact, there has never been a determination that these actions were good, rather, some haven't been challenged yet, more than the first step in WP:DR, precisely to avoid disruption), and "Abd is a [fill in the incivility and irrelevancy]," which is a well-known argument practically guaranteed to fail outside of the riots at AN and AN/I. I could be blocked and banned immediately, and this train would still make it to ArbComm. All the work has been done.

There is no need for pile-on or supportive comments, and, indeed, please do not go to the RfC and add irrelevancies there. It is only about failure to recuse when involved. That's why it will succeed. Let his side bring up all the irrelevancies they want, they will only hasten the day of reckoning. (But if someone has new evidence to present on that specific issue, not already presented, sure, but please keep the focus, and, I'd suggest, any examples of failure to recuse should be recent, not before January of this year, when it should have become clear to him that there was a problem.) There is only one response that might protect JzG's admin bit, I've been begging for it for months: someone he trusts points out to him that admission of error is a sign of maturity, it endears the one admitting to the community, the first time it's done, it completely defuses the issue, because, remember, Wikipedia does not punish (it appears that he has broken that principle as well, but never mind), and, so, would he please write "My bad. Admins should not use tools where they are involved. I won't do that again." It would all go away. Unless he does it again.

Abd, in the nicest possible way, a suggestion: It's quite possible your writing is not "tl", but rather "tdtr" (to difficult to read). The reason being the cramming of several trains-of-thought into a single paragraph (see above), AND sometimes doing the same in single sentences.

I do this all the time myself, which is the reason I have to continually try to keep out of that trap.

Try splitting the above into double the number of natural paragraphs, and do the same for the couple of monster-sentences, and see what you have left. I think you'll get far fewer complaints about people falling asleep while reading your writing.

IOW, it's not that you don't have anything to say. It's that people take one broad overlook at the way you're saying it, and don't dare go into the swamp.

You've said this many times in many places, but I must ask, Abd: if one ignores something you've written because it is too long, how can I continue discussion? It may save you time to write in this manner, but (whilst probably not your intent) your verbosity appears to be intended to disenfranchise people from debating with you. This is especially true when you follow up with "you don't have to read this if you don't want to".

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

I believe Mark Twain said something along those lines

[Abd]

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

Various people are attributed as having said something very like the following. Whoever it was, it illustrates the problem well, I suspect:

"My apologies for the length of this message. I did not have the time to make it shorter."

Mark Twain. Ah! I see that Fritz already wrote that....

Look, if what I write is too long, don't read it! This is not just me writing here, there are others, and nobody has any obligation to read every post. It takes me much longer to write what I write than it would take for a normal reader to read it. And if I don't have time to cut it down, which can take a lot of time, what's the harm? There will be no quiz tomorrow. A long post does not inhibit discussion, except maybe of that particular post, and it creates no presumption of being right if it is ignored. Wikipedia needs to learn this lesson, in fact, for editors with a lot to say, who are even cogent, are not infrequently blocked, banned, or their comments are removed on this phony tl;dr argument. Nothing wrong with tl;dr itself, so why is there something wrong with tl? If it's bad, delete it. If it clutters up a talk page, collapse it and see what happens. Just don't edit war over trivialities, or even over something important!

This post has been edited by Abd: Thu 16th April 2009, 4:07pm

[Milton Roe]

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

Various people are attributed as having said something very like the following. Whoever it was, it illustrates the problem well, I suspect:

"My apologies for the length of this message. I did not have the time to make it shorter."

Mark Twain. Ah! I see that Fritz already wrote that....

B. Pascal gets historical precidence!

[dtobias]

B. Pascal gets historical precidence!

I used to program in Pascal, but I prefer Perl now.

[Milton Roe]

B. Pascal gets historical precidence!

I used to program in Pascal, but I prefer Perl now.

For a while the people who programmed in Perl went on to program in Wolfowitz, a much harder language.

Say, what do you think of this new Ubamatu operating system? It's supposed to do everything for everybody and be free for 95% of them.