User talk:DaveTheRed

Hello, This is my talk page. If you have a message for me, this is the place to write it.

Hi there!

May I just say, welcome to Wikipedia! It's always good to have new blood here, whether on the expansive side of writing new articles, or on the organizing side of categorisation and VfD. If I may make a suggestion, if you happen to feel bored about whenever, you can always go the 'stub' category (or even 'substub') (Category:Stubs), select five or six articles entirely at random and add them to the appropriate categories (simply by adding '[[category:chemistry]]' or '<[[category:biographies]]' or something similar). That way people working on those categories will find them.

As you may have noticed, VfD tends to occasionally turn into a shouting match (in particular whenever a high school is mentioned, as there is no current consensus on the notability thereof and both sides tend to be rather outspoken :) ). Anyway what I wanted to say is don't let it get you down if people shout at you or call you names for nominating something they like. That happens sometimes, and it usually means that you were right (because if you weren't, they would have found a better argument against you than simply dissing you). Usually, it turns out that some people support you, and some people don't, and the Wiki wins. Enjoy your stay here! Radiant! 21:34, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome. I've been enjoying my time at wikipedia, both editing existing articles and at the VfD board. Thanks also for the heads up about VfD. I generally don't let arguments bother me. In fact, that's what drew me to the boards. I enjoy an opportunity to pick a position on a topic and debate it :-). See you around. DaveTheRed 21:54, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nomination of golf categories

You have nominated a number of golf articles which I created. I see that you have only just registered, and it may be that you have no knowledge of the range of articles which are included on Wikipedia. It also appears that you know little or nothing about professional golf. The person who has supported the nomination is a vandal who is known for his attempts to get legitimate articles removed as a "sport". I have written many scores of articles on golf and numerous other subjects, most of them text based, but I consider these lists to be absolutely fundamental to Wikipedia's coverage of professional golf. They list the most widely used objective criteria for assessing golfers' achievements. I would be grateful if you would familiarise yourself with Wikipedia's policies, review my explanations of the value of the articles, which are not in the least bit arbitary if one understands professional golf, and considered withdrawing the nominations. Wincoote 17:14, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

- Hi Dave, Please do not be put off Wikipedia by Windcoote, there are actually some quite pleasant helpful people here (like me!). Poor old Windcoote just has a tendency to snap and snarl if cornered. Nominate what you like for what you like, so long as you feel it meets the criteria of the section concerned. Remember the Wikipedia motto be bold!. Have fun here. Regards Giano 10:51, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I second Giano. I've just read through this nightmare/fiasco, call it what you will. I'm sorry you had to go through that debacle and in your first tender week no less! Please do not be put off by Wincoote, he has, as Giano says, a tendency to snarl a bit. Have fun and remember, Be Bold! Inter 13:41, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If Wincoote starts insulting you again please let me know. He has a tendency to keep long grudges against people who disagree with him for whatever reason (check his talk page archive if you don't believe me). I've given him final warning to stop attacking other Wikians. Radiant! 22:32, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Postal districts

Hi there! Since consensus seems to have been achieved, I've closed the discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Postal district. Could you please read the conclusions posted there and add a short msg to its talk page if you agree? Thanks. Radiant! 10:27, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Comment on VfD

In answer to your comment There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 reasons why. TAS 12:57, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay, name one of them. DaveTheRed

Notability of Porn stars

It's hard to say, it would probably have to be a case by case basis. Do they have a website? What's its alexa rating? How many videos have they made? That sort of stuff. Rick K 06:41, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Can you give me even a rough estimate? Is, say, five videos enough? How about a dozen? DaveTheRed 06:59, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not really. I don't know what the averge number of porn videos is. :) I suppose Google hits would be of more significance. Rick K 09:33, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Star Patel

Seriously, you don't see the irony?

The memorial wiki has attracted a lot of criticism by not opening its doors to Madrid train bombing victims, 2004 tsunami victims etc. I referenced this in a (hopefully) humorous way by proposing to move a dog's memorial there. A serious point + a humorous approach = irony.

Well, it's not funny anymore when I explain it, but I hope you get the idea now. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 09:32, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I wasn't aware of the controversy. That makes a little more sense now. :-) DaveTheRed 17:57, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

GRider

Regarding GRider's 'Socratic' VfD nominations and the ensuing reactions by voters, please read and comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/GRider2. Thanks. Radiant _* 10:29, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Saleel

I'd like to know why you voted to delete, rather than improve, Saleel. Can you tell me why exactly you don't think the Saleel network, which numbers in the thousands of members deserves even a mention? or is it that you dislike the layout, in which case I'd ask what do you believe could be done to improve it ? --Irishpunktom\^talk 11:24, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Vote Garnering

Hi there! From the VfD vote it seems there would not be consensus for a policy against vote garnering. That is unfortunate imho since it has potential of changing WP discussion into a mere shouting match (new policies require something like an 80% majority vote to enact). It would make sense to take this, and any future attempts at vote stacking, to 'policy consensus' and/or RFC. Ironically, if this were about anything other than schools, people would be a lot more likely to agree with the point. Radiant _* 21:58, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

I think that getting a policy consensus against vote garnering would be useful. However, it is going to be hard to define 'vote garnering' - one or two user messages like "please look into this vote" are probably okay, and several dozens probably aren't. Radiant_* 08:36, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
- No, I don't think putting an (arbitrary) limit of two people would work. Well, actually it would work but people wouldn't like it. GRider's is the only case I know of blatant and obvious vote garnering. I think the two criteria here are 1) a 'large' number of people is contacted, and 2) these people are generally on the same side of the issue. The tone of the message is not important; GRider's messages are (relatively) neutral. What is important is the fact that he only notifies people whom he believes will agree with him (and the majority, but not all, do). Radiant _* 08:36, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
- As an alternative, how about proposing that copy/pasting a vote under several nominations is grounds for discounting all of them? Radiant_* 09:28, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
  - Okay, good point - for instance it would invalidate nearly all of Megan's votes, which would be unfair. I would support your idea against vote garnering, though. Radiant _* 14:18, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

User

I think you've noticed that User:24.60.128.48 keeps adding erroneous information. Hm... what should be done about it? --Jtalledo (talk) 22:33, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Listing topics on vfd

Have you considered condensing all those planned towers vfd entries into a single vfd-entry? Sjakkalle 07:00, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have consolidated these to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Planned towers. Sjakkalle 07:20, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. I have posed a question about this on the vfd talkpage, Wikipedia_talk:Votes for deletion. Sjakkalle 06:22, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have posted an answer on the Wikipedia_talk page on how to make a group nomination. For the record, my answer was

The way I did it was by creating a VfD-page with a different title. This "big" VfD-page had a list of all the pages nominated for deletion, and a reason for deleting the whole lot of them. As for the "this page's entry" links on the individual VfD-tags, I redirect them to the to "big" VfD-page. Then I added the big VfD-page to the vfd-listing in the regular manner. That is how I did it anyway, and for what I know it might be the utterly wrong way, but it has worked.

Hope that helps! Sjakkalle 09:35, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your VFD vote on OurColony

I hope you'll reconsider. The Ourcolony page was created subsequent to my VFD nomination of OurColony.net as a way to circumvent the vote. · Katefan0^(scribble) 01:25, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

And I ask you to reconsider... again. If you check the Ourcolony history page you'll see it was created on Apr 8th. That's 2 days prior to Katefan0's VfD. - Jonamerica 07:12 (UTC) on Monday, April 11 2005

The issue of notability of ourcolony.net

If ourcolony.net was just another website, I'd agree with you that the low Alexa rating would indicate that it isn't notable. For example my personal website would be a bad entry for wikipedia, as nobody ever visits or would even care to read about it.

However ourcolony.net is both a website and an ARG. In terms of games, the ARG is a realatively new genre, which currently has a small following and a small number of similar games. For this reason I feel it is more important to judge the ourcolony article as reporting on a game, or other forms of entertainment, rather than a website.

If you take some time to browse through the board game category you'll see that there are over two hundred games listed, and I would venture to say that more than a few of these games are not only obscure, but fairly unpopular and unnoted by the mainstream.

We could also touch on the subject of books, art, independent movies and music, documentaries, etc. If the number of "hits" were an important measure for these subjects I'm sure we'd find out some staggering results based on library checkouts and bookstore sales. But popularity is a poor judgement of a book or movie's notability.

If ourcolony.net were just another site, another search engine or another blog, I'd say the Alexa rating is of utmost importance to the site, especially if the same information can be found on other, more popular sites. But ourcolony.net is more than just a site and its notability must be judged in a way more befitting its nature.

I feel it is important to document ourcolony.net as an ARG and an example of viral marketing, both very new mediums, so that as these mediums grow people can reseach this and other early examples and judge their success or failure.

-Jonamerica 20:28, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can see how you may have gotten that impression from my last paragraph. I'm not arguing that ourcolony should be kept to explain what an ARG is, but to record the history of this specific game. It is impossible to tell at this early stage what effect ARGs will have on future gaming, and it would be a shame to lose information because something is simply not popular. We're lucky that so much is remembered about the game pong, but there are possibly several early and highly influential computer games that have been entirely forgoten.

I guess what I'm asking is that a new, more lenient standard be adopted for this still young genre, and not to simply apply a standard for other catagories that don't take into consideration all them elements of these games.

-Jonamerica 22:39, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hey Dave, I wanted to give you an update on the notability of OurColony.net in hopes that you would reconsider your vote. Recently Haunted_Apiary was nominated for a Webby award. This is an award for websites that show excellence in web design, creativity, usability and functionality, and are presented by the International_Academy_of_Digital_Arts_and_Sciences.

In its heyday ilovebees.com had a peak of about 130 people per million (daily reach) and a max rank of about 11,000. So far, and the game will continue to be played till May 12th, OurColony.net has a daily reach of about 220 and a 1 wk rank average of 4,868. If at its peak Haunted_Apiary was notable enough to gain the attention of the IADAS, let alone be nominated for an award, than I'd submit that OurColony.net, with its higher daily reach and rank, is notable.

-Jonamerica 00:10, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Liberty Belle

Can I convince you to rescind your delete vote on Liberty Belle now that the article's been rewritten to be about the actual character? DS 20:43, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. You too.

Mass voting

Hi there! Some people on VfD are using templates for voting... I've talked with Netaholic, and it seems like a good idea to get a global policy barring votes that aren't plaintext (e.g. {{transclusions}}). However, this is a related topic to vote garnering, so we may want do put up several proposals on one page regarding this and several related ideas, and let people vote. If you have comments or suggestions, Please let me know. Yours, Radiant _* 15:25, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Yes - but what I meant is that often, a bunch of variant wordings and other variations are proposed, so that people can pick the best of them. Check WP:CSD's talkpage for examples. Both have to do with the voting process, and it's probably bad form to crowd WP with policy discussions. Radiant_* 08:41, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
- I'll see what I can do. I can think of a number of voting-related suggestions that might be useful for policy (e.g. votes with templates/personal attacks/spurious reasoning/by anons/... are invalid/should be stricken out). However, on second thought I have the feeling that most of them will be rejected as unfeasible. Making vote garnering count as vandalism may be useful. Any other suggestions for controversial voting behavior? R adiant _* 10:11, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

This account is going mostly offline

I'll still watch occasionally from the sidelines, but for the most part this account should be considered mostly innactive for reason's entirely outside my control. I've had a wonderful time working with everyone here. Dave the Red (talk) 02:37, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Disrupting Wikipedia vote

You voted once for the policy at Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Despite a 75% support that vote was rejected by the minority. A new vote has been called with a two week limit at Wikipedia talk:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Please take a moment to participate. Thanks. - Tεx τ urε 17:12, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

List_of_songs_about_masturbation is in it's 5th AfD

List_of_songs_about_masturbation is up for it's fifth AfD. You participated in an earlier one. If you wish to participate again, please go to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_songs_about_masturbation_(5th_nomination) -- Lentower 03:47, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]