Wikiquote:Village pump archive 29

	Archives
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Volunteers still needed

Hi all,
Although we removed the centralnotice that was up, the Wikimedia Foundation is still looking for volunteers to serve as subject area experts or to sit on task forces that will study particular areas and make recommendations to the Foundation about its strategic plan. You may apply to serve on a task force or register your name as an expert in a specific area at http://volunteer.wikimedia.org.

The Foundation's strategy project is a year-long collaborative process which is hosted on the strategy wiki, at http://strategy.wikimedia.org. Your input is welcome (and greatly desired) there. When the task forces begin to meet, they will do their work transparently and on that wiki, and any member of the community may join fully in their work. This process is specifically designed to involve as many community members as possible.

Any questions can be addressed to me either on my talk page here or on the strategy wiki or by email to philippe at wikimedia.org.

I hope you'll consider joining us!

Philippe 01:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yo Philippe - I've just tried the volunteer link above and it aint working. Should I take it personally? :)

Markdask 08:11, 6 June 2010 (UTC) (New member)[reply]

Finishing a task left uncompleted last year

Last year, after indicating suspicions on the Village Pump, I announced that I was disregarding and commenting out the votes of a couple then recent usernames, which I and several others strongly suspected were merely sockpuppets of another user. I never completed this task at that time, and am in the period of October and November when it seems they were primarily used. Though sockpuppetry for voting was never actually proven to be the case, these usernames were used for the most part merely to vote on QOTD suggestions, or to protest in various ways that this was all that they wished to do, and provided little or no contributions beyond that. Despite the lack of proof, I continue to strongly believe these accounts were sockpuppets used improperly for voting purposes, often using the extremes of the ranking scales to strongly skew the general voting results. Hence, I intend to continue the effort I began last year, to remove or at least comment out rankings made with the names User:Waheedone and User:Fossil in the days and weeks ahead, as I encounter them, in all QOTD voting pages. ~ Kalki 20:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Advertising slogans as a table

I've put Advertising slogans into a table format. Seems workable (and useful) to me - any thoughts? BD2412 T 22:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Copyvio speedy delete

Note change atWikiquote talk:Speedy deletions. Thanks, Cirt (talk) 17:09, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote:Sourced and Unsourced sections

The guidelines set forth in Wikiquote:Sourced and Unsourced sections require a substantial overhaul, as I believe we have agreed as a community to extirpate unsourced quotes altogether. Please let me know if this is an incorrect understanding. Cheers! BD2412 T 19:23, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Updated. Cirt (talk) 19:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well done. I'd also like to propose the addition of some specific language on misattributed quotes:

A missatributed quote is one that has been incorrectly attributed to a certain author. Misattributions may arise for any number of reasons, including:

innocent errors in translation or restatement of an original quote
incorrect identification between two authors of similar types of quotes
slander of the purported author by attributing detestable comments to that author
overzealous defense of a belief by attributing statements in support of that belief to an authoritative figure

Wikiquote's policy on misattributions is to include them, but to clearly identify them as misattributions by placing them in a "Misattributed" section, and to identify to the greatest extent possible the actual author and how the quote became misattributed.

What do you think? BD2412 T 19:34, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Provided that the "misattribution" was not done by Wikiquote itself (in that case the offending quote should just be removed), and provided that this "misattribution" was identified as such in independent reliable secondary sources - and not through a self-determination by individual Wikiquotians. Cirt (talk) 19:36, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I will only comment here, rather than participate in drafting the guideline~~, because I am an identified incompetent. This is my presumably stupid, paranoid, and arrogant comment~~:

Whether or not to report a misattribution should depend on whether the error is widespread and repeated in sources that are otherwise considered reliable.
If Wikiquote is the first to identify such a misattribution and verifiably cite a prior source that reliably proves the error, then it should report the fact and take pride in doing so.

In general, Wikipedia-like "notability" criteria should not be used to remove individual quotes. It is but one of several criteria of quotability to be weighed with other factors. Most of the crud recently removed from a much-discussed controversial article merits removal on the basis of those combined factors, especially considering the emphasis appropriate for WQ:QLP. Many quotable quotes that are not individually noted in secondary sources are nonetheless worthy of inclusion. ~ Ningauble 20:45, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(Petulant sarcasm retracted, with apologies to the community: my bad.) ~ Ningauble 02:06, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe Cirt is concerned with the situation that occurred with Rush Limbaugh, where an anon put false quotes on the person's page which were apparently later picked up and published by what we would consider a "secondary source". We don't know whether the anon who put those quotes there was manufacturing something purely for spite, or whether they had their own incorrect source (they themselves may have first seen the comment attributed to Limbaugh on a blog or in a forum). However, when a quote becomes the topic of discussion in this manner, I think we do have a duty to report that it is a misattribution. BD2412 T 20:55, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am aware of the context[1] of the particular much-discussed quotes. I stand by the points above, although I might amend the first as "repeated in other sources that are otherwise considered reliable," lest someone presume Wikiquote is a reliable source of attribution.

There is a duty to act on errors when they are identified, but whether to simply remove them or to report them depends on where they are repeated. The cited book looks unreliable on its face: it pointedly discloses that only some unspecified portion of its statements are from a cited source, so it hardly merits any more rebuttal than the ambiguities of a crafty patent-medicine man. Nevertheless, such quotes may indeed merit inclusion as "disputed" if they appear in, and are cited from, sufficiently quoteworthy public discussion or denial. I do not think speculation that the book's author may have been repeating graffiti found here creates any more obligation for Wikiquote than speculation that he found it written on a subway wall would create for the transit authority. The author would be ill advised to claim either one as defense for repeating rumors, were such the case, and we would be ill advised to claim that such was the case.

On my second point above, Cirt's statement may have been broader than intended. I would interpret it literally to prohibit this contribution where I refuted a widespread misattribution by showing that the quote predated the life of the purported author, even though I found no published mention that it was erroneous. Perhaps I was being presumptuous. ~ Ningauble 23:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This example given by Ningauble (talk · contributions) would seem to be "original research", however it is simply matter-of-fact by the dates chronologically, so I suppose I could be fine with that sort of thing. ;) Cirt (talk) 00:53, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote is not Wikipedia. There is no problem with original research here; indeed, it is preferred, just as we prefer primary sources. Wikipedia has good reasons for its policies, but they are specific to WP's function, and are not relevant to WQ's very different function. 121a0012 02:41, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the update is fine, but I also believe there are still some open questions about what we should use instead - some suggestions had been made in VP on how to better divide the page that should be finalized and added to guidelines (not necessarily here, but it is a related topic). ~ UDScott 20:19, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lede
Sourced
Attributed (must also be sourced, but has less sourcing info, perhaps no date given in source, just the quote, and no info on when/where/what capacity/what publication it was said)
About
See also
References
External links

That is a good structure. :) Cirt (talk) 20:21, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would add Misattributed under Attributed. BD2412 T 17:59, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If properly sourced, agreed. Cirt (talk) 18:01, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right now, Benjamin Franklin (by way of example) has separate sections for "misattributed" and "unsourced" quotes. I think all them should simply be listed as misattributed. For example, there's an example of Bill Clinton attributing to Franklin something for which no source in Franklin's writing can be found. This should be deemed misattributed, not unsourced. I think we can safely operate under the presumption that a quote newly attributed to a noted figure who has been dead for two centuries, for which no earlier source can be found, is an error. BD2412 T 19:35, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with this comment by BD2412 (talk · contributions). Actually, there are some in the Unsourced sect of Benjamin Franklin that are sourced, just misattributed. Cirt (talk) 20:24, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that in order for us to list a quote as "misattributed" we've got to show two things. First, a verifiable source showing that someone has attributed the quote to the purported author (as with Clinton's asserting that this was a Franklin quote), and second, some evidence that the attribution is a mistake (either by reference to the correct author, or by reference to an unsuccessful search for evidence that the purported author made that statement. A quote can not really be called "misattributed" - and should not be included at all - if no one is attributing the quote to the author - as with the quote presently listed as unsourced on the Benjamin Franklin page which states "We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing". BD2412 T 21:58, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly! Agreed. :) Cirt (talk) 22:04, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

QOTD suggestion pages

As many of the date pages for QOTD suggestions have become quite long, and have begun to make the "monthly" display of them rather excessive, I intend to begin revising them so that only the previous years selections display on the "QOTD/[month]" pages, with links displayed to the individual ranking/voting/suggestion pages. I have thus far done this only with the date of October 1 as a demonstration of how the new display style would appear in Wikiquote:Quote of the day/October, but will await further commentary before proceeding onto other pages. (Some people might need to refresh the page to see the new style.) I might finish up reformatting the October and November pages within a week or so, if there are no other suggestions on the matter. ~ Kalki 19:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This new format additionally permits a display of the ranking system used near the start of the suggestions on each of the individual pages, something the previous format would have made excessive. ~ Kalki 20:10, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or just archive older pages by year to an archive, as a subpage of each page. Cirt (talk) 05:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I much prefer keeping the existing pages with these slight modifications and not creating new ones, and will probably get to work on doing October today. ~ Kalki 08:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All pages for October have now been revised to the new format, and display without the long list of suggestions within each on the Wikiquote:Quote of the day/October page. I will probably start updating the pages for November and the other months within the next few days. ~ Kalki 14:04, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Existential questions

Some of you will recall that last year at Meta the question of Wikiquote's continued existence was debated on meta:Wikimedia Forum/On disbanding Wikiquote over the issue of copyrights.
Please note that the existential question has been raised again, this time at the foundation's Strategic Planning project over the purpose and value of Wikiquote and all of Wikipedia's "sister projects", on strategy:Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 3 key questions#Supporting Reference Content. The project's Expanding Content Task Force has been specifically charged with answering the question.
Interested Wikiquotians may wish to offer input to the Strategic Planning project, whether or not they have applied for and been granted membership in the Task Force. ~ Ningauble 03:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I almost prefer the time when, despite much less participation and much less software safeguards against vandalism, the most I had to concern myself here was actual vandalization of a few wikis, and not the continual eroding and vandalization of the wiki-process itself.
As with last year's torturously tedious debate prompted by the rather hostile and presumptuous attitude and proposal of a single person, which at the end finally came to a close without a single vote to actually seek the "disbanding" of Wikiquote, despite the evidence of some desire on the part of a few people for such an end, I really don't take this too seriously at this point.
I was about to react with a few words of amused but extreme contempt at the original assertions of the person who prompted last year's debate, as I might to any other troll, when I saw that in some ways more moderate voices were responding to the presumptuous proposal, and with many far more intense and immediately imperative concerns, I decided to stay out of the whole discussion unless I perceived that there was any actual need for me to get involved.
I might actually have some time to get involved in these proposed discussions within the next month or so, but really am appalled at the blooming number of self-glorified discussion-forums that seem to be considered "essential" or "vitally important" by their participants and initiators to everyone else on all Wikimedia projects, because they are presumed to be by these relatively few participants. These areas of the Wikimedia activities seem disproportionally frequented by the most avid lovers of finding new ways of "policy creation" which allow them, or others of very like mind, to assume control over others, and even be placed in positions of authority and command over them. The whole concept of the wiki-processes, as I understand them involves an emphasis on preserving the freest possible collaboration among people, which permits the natural growth, development and mutation of good ideas, with an emergence of their proper influences, and a minimization of presumptive command-control authority-structures to impede that process, but unfortunately these seem to be growing all the time lately, both in numbers and in the presumptions of their authority. ~ Kalki 08:44, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You might find your arguments more convincing to other people if you cut out all the random 'emphasis'. I see that there's an intelligent, concerned person there, but others may not be so understanding. 121a0012 02:15, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Closure of Simple English Wikiquote

Thoughts would be appreciated here. Majorly talk 12:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

CLOSED. The global community at Meta has voted to close Simple English Wikiquote. (The developers have not implemented the closure yet – it is on their list of things to do.) ~ Ningauble 19:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment/Vote of confidence on Kalki

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hi,

An investigation by checkusers on several projects as well as two stewards has confirmed that administrator and bureaucrat Kalki (talk · contributions) has created and used in excess of 100 sockpuppets.

This was first noticed in July 2008 as a pattern of unusual account creations on other wikis, that rarely made any edits except to set up a user page, but which often had many edits on Wikiquote. The accounts were investigated by the Wikiquote checkusers at the time including Aphaia, Jeffq and Cato. Jusjih, who was a Wikimedia steward at the time but not yet a local checkuser, was informed and asked for his opinion.

Those three local checkusers determined that the accounts were not used to vote stack, but some of them were used to add images to pages in support of Kalki's position in a controversy at the time over images. A complete list of 2008 sockpuppets on English Wikiquote was circulated among English Wikiquote checkusers. A list of sockpuppet accounts that were created on Wikisource was posted to the checkuser mailing list whose IP addresses matched Kalki and his sockpuppets. Those accounts are given below.

By email, Kalki discussed the issue briefly with the Wikiquote checkusers and was finally warned to stop by Cato, in late July, 2008. In early August, additional checks showed Kalki had stopped using other accounts, but he never made an explicit agreement to stop.

Recently a similar pattern of behavior came to the attention of checkusers on Wikipedia, Wikisource, Commons and Wikiversity. These accounts are not used disruptively on these projects but are often created there; usually their only edits are to set up their user pages. The accounts often have more edits on Wikiquote. With help of stewards and other established users who hold checkuser permission on other wikis, Aphaia investigated the newly created socks as well as the unblocked 2008 sockpuppets and concluded Kalki re-started his sock-activities beginning February 2009, if not earlier.

Kalki has been asked by Aphaia and by User:Thatcher (Wikipedia checkuser) for an explanation and to stop it again. Kalki has not responded.

I'd like to invite the English Wikiquote community to decide whether this behavior is compatible with the roles of administrator and bureaucrat through a vote of confidence. The tentative policy says, "Any user may propose a vote of confidence, but at least three established users must support the need for one before it can be called." (from WQ:RFA). So I hereby propose a vote of confidence on Kalki and call for support from at least three established users. --Aphaia 07:38, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The following is a list of confirmed accounts from this year and last year.

October 2009

Kalki (talk · contributions)
Touchstone (talk · contributions)
Hope (talk · contributions)
Hope Diamond (talk · contributions)
Alvin (talk · contributions)
Bellwether (talk · contributions)
EL Wisty (talk · contributions)
Roy as Re (talk · contributions)
The Tempest (talk · contributions)
Chance (talk · contributions)
Re (talk · contributions)
A Stranger (talk · contributions)
Aten (talk · contributions)
Gardener (talk · contributions)
Kether (talk · contributions)
Aton (talk · contributions)
Ra (talk · contributions)
V·R (talk · contributions)
Ever Ever (talk · contributions)
Ever (talk · contributions)
Phœnix (talk · contributions)
Alice in Wonderland (talk · contributions)
MagicK (talk · contributions)
Magickian (talk · contributions)
Another Chance (talk · contributions)
MichaelSword (talk · contributions)
Michaelsword (talk · contributions)
Pragma (talk · contributions)
Magician (talk · contributions)
KAO (talk · contributions)
Achilles (talk · contributions)
PiXeL (talk · contributions)
True Grit (talk · contributions)
UT (talk · contributions)
IF (talk · contributions)
Incredible Fool (talk · contributions)
Yes (talk · contributions)
Bard of Bards (talk · contributions)
Whiterose (talk · contributions)
Blue Flower (talk · contributions)
Aye I (talk · contributions)
I I (talk · contributions)
Atreyu (talk · contributions)
Dattatreya (talk · contributions)
Life (talk · contributions)
IMI (talk · contributions)
Green Dolphin (talk · contributions)
Notung (talk · contributions)
UFO (talk · contributions)
Agent 007 (talk · contributions)

July 2008

The Seer (talk · contributions)
Rumour (talk · contributions)
Reality (talk · contributions)
Accountability (talk · contributions)
Ï (talk · contributions)
Ÿ (talk · contributions)
NeXuS (talk · contributions)
Παράκλητος (talk · contributions)
Tat Tvam Asi (talk · contributions)
The Void (talk · contributions)
White Rose (talk · contributions)
NEO (talk · contributions)
Monad (talk · contributions)
OXO (talk · contributions)
The Keystone (talk · contributions)
White Dove (talk · contributions)
Ubermensch (talk · contributions)
Ω (talk · contributions)
The Magician (talk · contributions)
OAO (talk · contributions)
THE PHANTOM (talk · contributions)
Peter Pan (talk · contributions)
Da'ath (talk · contributions)
Daath (talk · contributions)
AUM (talk · contributions)
IMU (talk · contributions)
Angel X (talk · contributions)
HIM (talk · contributions)
Idiot savant (talk · contributions)
The Champion (talk · contributions)
Champion (talk · contributions)
The fool (talk · contributions)
The Victor (talk · contributions)
White Mouse (talk · contributions)
IV (talk · contributions)
XI (talk · contributions)
XLII (talk · contributions)
XLIV (talk · contributions)
V (talk · contributions)
Kal-el (talk · contributions)
Sky Horse (talk · contributions)
Meta4 (talk · contributions)
Blue Dragon (talk · contributions)
Quixote (talk · contributions)
Π (talk · contributions)
Vortex (talk · contributions)
Sleipner (talk · contributions)
Avalonian (talk · contributions)
The Nomad (talk · contributions)
Baldur (talk · contributions)
Stormrider (talk · contributions)
Púka (talk · contributions)
Cathar (talk · contributions)
The One (talk · contributions)
Tao (talk · contributions)
Ken (talk · contributions)
Lucifer (talk · contributions)
KALKI (talk · contributions)
Spoon (talk · contributions)
The Tick (talk · contributions)
Blue Angel (talk · contributions)
The Spectre (talk · contributions)
The Phantom Stranger (talk · contributions)
Mr. E (talk · contributions)
Percival (talk · contributions)
A Fool (talk · contributions)
The Fisher King (talk · contributions)
Silver Surfer (talk · contributions)
Monte Cristo (talk · contributions)
Awareness (talk · contributions)
JUL (talk · contributions)
Zorro (talk · contributions)
EO (talk · contributions)
ELB (talk · contributions)
Iron Man (talk · contributions)
Moby (talk · contributions)
White Lion (talk · contributions)
Vajra (talk · contributions)
Weaver (talk · contributions)
Circle (talk · contributions)
Angel 007 (talk · contributions)
Archangel Michael (talk · contributions)
Dragon Warrior (talk · contributions)
Kung Fu Panda (talk · contributions)
Po (talk · contributions)
Uriel (talk · contributions)
Logos (talk · contributions)
Merlyn (talk · contributions)
कल्कि (talk · contributions)
Liberty (talk · contributions)
Unity (talk · contributions)
Justice (talk · contributions)
Hobo (talk · contributions)
Zeal (talk · contributions)
Bookkeeper (talk · contributions)
The Grinch (talk · contributions)
Apparition (talk · contributions)
Om (talk · contributions)
Maitreya (talk · contributions)
Forgiveness (talk · contributions)
The Blue Rose (talk · contributions)
Quinn the Eskimo (talk · contributions)
Blue Clown (talk · contributions)
Illusionist (talk · contributions)
Herakles (talk · contributions)
Artichoke (talk · contributions)
Keystone Kop (talk · contributions)
Ki (talk · contributions)
Qi (talk · contributions)
The Stranger (talk · contributions)
The Wanderer (talk · contributions)
Wyrd (talk · contributions)
The Gardener (talk · contributions)
White Turtle (talk · contributions)
Superman (talk · contributions)
Rocinante (talk · contributions)
Wizard of Oz (talk · contributions)
The Wizard (talk · contributions)
Blue Fox (talk · contributions)
White Tornado (talk · contributions)
Fair Witness (talk · contributions)
White Horse (talk · contributions)
Phantom of the Opera (talk · contributions)
Phantom of the Paradise (talk · contributions)
The Phantom of the Opera (talk · contributions)
Black Bolt (talk · contributions)
Osiris (usurped) (talk · contributions)
The Phantom (talk · contributions)
Vishnu (talk · contributions)
Waverider (talk · contributions)
Ananke (talk · contributions)
Iron (talk · contributions)
Ironist (talk · contributions)
Irony (talk · contributions)
Doctor Strange (talk · contributions)
Random Act of Kindness (talk · contributions)
The Spectre (talk · contributions)
The Tick (talk · contributions)
Senseless Act of Beauty (talk · contributions)
Cor Leonis (talk · contributions)
The Saint (talk · contributions)
Nowhere Man (talk · contributions)
Agni (talk · contributions)
Hancock (talk · contributions)
Sword of Truth (talk · contributions)
Osterman (talk · contributions)
Hellblazer (talk · contributions)
Harlequin (talk · contributions)

responses

As wiki policies permitted the creation of multiple accounts it is a practice I have long engaged in, from the very first days of my involvement with the wiki projects, sometimes merely to make my contributions to various pages a little more amusing and interesting, sometimes with intentions of making some of these names major contributors in different ways, upon different fields of knowledge.

As any thorough investigation would indicate, I have certainly never misused any of my accounts for vandalism, and often used them to counter vandalism without actually intervening as an administrator. I have never sought to have any of them assigned any level of status beyond that of simple "user", despite sometimes having some of these names being asked to consider status as an admin on this and other projects. Last year some of the admins on other wikis seem to have mistaken some of these username creations I was making at the time for those of a vandal, and some of these were blocked, perhaps because I used names that may have been suspiciously similar to some used by known vandals on some other wikis, but I never sought a full reason on some of these blocks on accounts that never engaged in anything but positive contributions to the wikis, or minor preparations for doing such.

I have also certainly never used any of my accounts for vote-stacking, or to deliberately get involved in any controversies as if any of these identities were separate persons commenting on the issues, though I know I have inadvertently got into some of these to minor degrees on the same pages, usually at widely separate times, and not intentionally. If any images were added at any times of the relatively rare periods of minor controversy at the practice of adding images, I believe it was likely inadvertent, as it is a practice I have engaged in regularly since images at the Wikimedia Commons has been available.

My desire to have much, and even eventually most, of my work here done under various pseudonyms, depending upon the subjects worked upon has clearly been mitigated by this act of publication, and for this reason, I am very disappointed that this has occurred, as it prevents me from doing much good in subtle and not immediately obvious ways, but "So it goes..."

As Aphaia stated I "never made an explicit agreement to stop" in my creation of pseudonyms — because this was being demanded of me as if such a demand was necessitated by any official policy, or as if I had actually done anything wrong with any of these accounts, and I certainly had NOT. I desisted from creating new names for a while, including a few I highly desired to acquire and use, sometimes because I use these names elsewhere than Wikimedia projects, but I continue to pursue activities with a great regard for the virtues of humility, courage, honesty and compassion, and the social ideals of Justice and Liberty, as most of my activity on my most active accounts clearly indicates, and there are many reasons, both trivial and profound, for which I have wished to operate under different names in working at various tasks.

This is just a brief response to this posting — I probably will have much more to say on the matter in the days and weeks ahead, and I will probably need to revise and scrap some of my plans for some major contributions on this and other projects, as I deal with this controversy. ~ Kalki 08:29, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that at least once or twice I have edited pages or even commented upon some issue, inadvertently using a different username than I had actually intended, because I often work from multiple web browsers at the same time, both here and elsewhere, for various reasons, and usually logged in under differing usernames, but such occurrences have been VERY rare. ~ Kalki 08:33, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just edited this and a few other pages using a name I had been keeping largely in reserve, and used only a few times before: Gardener, which I had wanted to keep largely unassociated with my primary name, but that hope is now dashed. One of the earlier commentaries I composed during the period of controversy last year was as Accountability, and there were other commentaries I made with some usernames which became openly associated with that account, including the very long standing name Rumour, under which I had actually attended the Wikimania conferences at Harvard, but I probably won't have time to check on all my own past remarks on the matter of pseudonyms today, and it might take me a week or more simply to assess and sufficiently review past remarks and prepare more current ones. I do remain busy with many things other than internet projects, but I do expect to be available on the computer for much of today, and will probably post a few more comments. Though I make no promises as to immediately or even eventually answering all questions which might arise, I do intend to be rigorously honest in all of my statements. ~ Kalki 10:11, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another account I had much wanted to use, as a separate and relatively obscure identity, occasionally spreading minor posts of encouragement and affirmations of the value of all Awareness, Life, and Love, on various pages was Yes. But truly that was one of the intentions in my creation of nearly all these accounts: to do a little good in this world, relatively secretly and quietly, by the sharing of what insights and wisdom have guided me and many others in life, and to avoid generating much attention to myself in doing so, but rather to generate a little greater attention to many of the ideas presented, by some of the names I chose to operate under. ~ Kalki 10:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A few other of my favorite "in reserve" identities which I had wanted to use extensively, were Awareness which is something I hold we are all manifestations of, to varying degrees (along with Ignorance and Confusion), and the names Harlequin, Random Act of Kindness, and Senseless Act of Beauty, which convey much of such things as I wished to be involved in doing. I am somewhat more irritated at having been revealed to be Moby than with other names, as I very early on got into some rather extensive disputes with a prominent neo-Nazi vandal in that guise, and as MOBY at Wikpedia. Reviewing many of these names and quotes I posted on them, brings back some memories and ideas that I had let rest for quite some time, and I will probably elaborate upon many of these in the next few days and weeks, but I must be leaving soon for about an hour, and will be making another trip soon after that for at least as long, so I won't be here all day, though I do expect to be available for most of it. ~ Hope 12:29, 3 November 2009 (UTC) (also known as Kalki)[reply]

Proposal for vote of confidence

Aphaia (talk · contributions) noted above: The tentative policy says, "Any user may propose a vote of confidence, but at least three established users must support the need for one before it can be called." (from WQ:RFA). So I will start that process here, below. Cirt (talk) 14:16, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support

Cirt (talk) 14:16, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Kalki: CONDITIONAL support : I acknowledge this is probably necessary now, now that the issue has been raised. I do request that no actual vote begin until I have time to adequately prepare my arguments in defense of my activities, and I expect this will take me at least a few days. I would like at least a week, and the 11th of November would be a date very acceptable to me. I am not currently at home, and am just checking in briefly before going on a few more excursions, between which I might have a few minutes to check in again. I remain very busy with many things, and would like time to consider how much I wish to reveal, or let remain undisclosed, as relate to this matter, and will consider all communications I have had in the past on it as material to draw upon in presenting my arguments, though I might also decline to do so. I usually try to be only as harsh as necessary, and as gentle as possible in my debates with others, but I expect I will eventually be asserting truths that some will find very harsh indeed, in making my arguments. I am disappointed that the issue has been raised in this manner, but accept I must proceed honestly and vigorously in addressing it over the next few days and weeks. ~ Kalki 15:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
BD2412. We, as a community, need to decide when and to what extent it is appropriate for a user to contribute under multiple accounts, without having previously informed the community of the use of those accounts. I understand that it appears that Kalki wishes to do some work here without receiving credit for it, which is selfless but pointless. Our goal is to build an authoritative collection of quotations, and we are served by transparency in establishing how we came to decide what belongs and how it is to be presented. BD2412 T 17:27, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Although I'm not a checkuser on this project, I'm aware of the facts in the matter due to the cross wiki aspect of the situation. I'm adding my vote to make it clear that more than 2 people think that this issue needs to be resolved through a vote. FloNight ♥♥♥ 22:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fully support the need for a vote of confidence to be undertaken. The deflection of reasonable questions is starting to look like prevarication and does not indicate a person putting the project as a primary concern. Nothing against people having personal interests, however, a vested interest appears to be becoming a conflict of interest in this situation. The potential for a conflict of interest has to be investigated and resolved. Billinghurst 19:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label. ~ James Branch Cabell

Very conditional and limited opposition: ~ Kalki 11:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I recently received a post on my talk page regarding "trivial and non-trivial action":

Kalki, personally I think it is okay to wait for you until you have a time to prepare to give responses properly for your call for confidence as long as you esteem another part of the policy: it says "In the case of a called proposal, the user may not use the restricted access for any non-trivial action at any time until the vote is closed.
If you continue to use your sysop/b'crat power and want to hold the process, I am afraid I cannot support the idea to give you some moments. It were just to postpone the process for letting you use the right.
Please consider your actions in regard of the policy and think more carefully if it is trivial and can be therefore delayed. If you continue to use the right and insist the process should be started much later, I cannot be for the schedule you requested.

In response to this I here clearly make my own Support for a vote entirely provisional on my continued use of admin powers until such a vote begins, and wish that not to occur until the 11th, as I remain very busy with many things, and do not feel that I have as yet had sufficient time to prepare for my defenses to the best of my abilities. I am not so adamant about using admin powers during the actual vote, if that is indeed part of the prescriptive rules I must follow, IF I am given a few days to make some preparations until then, but truly don't see that there is any actual need for this either. It has already taken me a few hours of my very limited time, in which I had wished to do some constructive work on a few pages here, to fully prepare what I wish to say in this message.

I believe that in many major and minor endeavors of life, we are all approaching points where we will have to decide whether we wish to fight so vigorously as we can against the many ways of injustice, error and tyranny, or to side with those who most regularly are willing to pit themselves against the ultimate principles of Justice, Truth and Liberty, which to many who have very petty, constrained, craven, cowardly minds which have long profited or benefitted by injustice, lies and associated delusions which have provided them convenient, comfortable, but ultimately unnecessary control over the will and actions of others, can often seem the more risky and terrifying of dooms.

I believe that I am actually being accused of, and make no pretense of not being guilty of, is engaging in behavior and practices that others find a bit eccentric, inexplicable and cannot fully understand or appreciate. In that regard I am willing to plead entirely GUILTY, as charged, along with 100% of Humanity. There is no person who has ever lived, and certainly none of any significant prominence who was not in some ways eccentric and peculiar, and inclined to do some things others could not fully understand or appreciate — no matter how drab, conformist, and well regulated they might seem to themselves or a few others.

Aphaia is attempting to assert that by defying, ignoring or in any way opposing her will, and perhaps that of a few others, I have clearly violated official policy, and ought to immediately be stripped of all my long held admin and bureaucratic priveleges. I assert that this is a delusion, but acknowledge that if enough other people are willing to join her in promoting such delusions I will be forced to defer to their will — but I will not consent to retreat from calling them anything but deluded in this regard.

Though sometimes choices available to people might seem very ambiguous and uncertain, especially when they are very complex, as they very often are, I hope that the choices here are going to become very clear to most.

I fully accept that my use of many names can seem very peculiar and even alarming to those who have, as yet, but very little idea as to all the things I have long been involved in doing, and attempting, all of my life. I am a profoundly committed advocate of both Justice and Liberty, and the ultimate Truths of Love and Love of Truth which alone can unite them in vitally harmonious ways. I am NOT someone who wishes to ever act as an advocate for any extremely narrow or restrictive partisan political or religious creeds or dogmas, or overly restrictive social processes, but I do desire to treat all people as fairly as possible, no matter what their opinions and views might be of me or anyone else. Though I generally try to be as gentle as possible and only as harsh as I truly believe to be necessary, this does NOT mean that I feel bound to always be extremely polite, engaging or gentle in my dealing with others, as some might seek to imply should always be the case, and will assert that if someone advocates needlessly harmful or dangerous activities — such as seeking to unjustly or needlessly constrain what other people can say in defense or protection of themselves or others — other people should be entirely free to express their contempt for that, and their determined will to oppose it in the strongest possible terms.

I believe that many of my general policies and practices can be summed up thus: Do only what you plainly and honestly believe there is need to do in regard to the constraining, condemning or harming of others, and in all possible ways permit and encourage all the diversity and freedom that you can with good conscience permit and encourage. I believe that this attitude is clearly evident in most of the edits under many of the usernames I have chosen, both here and elsewhere, and even where it is not, my intentions were to use all these and other names in beneficial and not malicious ways. I am fully aware that what will seem to be necessary or unavoidable to some will often seem excessive or extreme to others, but so long as fundamental concepts of principles are not involved most people generally can and do get along with each other.

Though long alert to the will of some to restrict me and others in ways that to my knowledge are NOT yet and never have been a part of official policy here, I was not expecting so suddenly harsh and frankly brutal a treatment and assertion of imperious authoritarian behavior as has actually begun to occur, no matter how politely couched it might sometimes be in gentle words and assertions. I always seek to look to the essence of things meant or implied by the acts and expressions of others, and not merely to such words and symbols as are commonly used as if they meant and could only mean one thing, no matter how contrary to the thing overtly claimed to be what the essence of an expression actually reveals.

I generally like to have clearly considerate levels of control and deliberation in the things I do, and am willing to be very patient and tolerant in conflicts with others towards anything but clear and outright malice, with a generally "laid-back" "wait and see" attitude towards most circumstances, and a freely chosen practice of rigorously disciplined exercises and procedures, where there is clear threat to such human well-being as the evident inclination of some to impose rigorous rules of discipline and personal will upon others, without any clear need.

Unlike me, some people seem to often be inclined to be what I am sometimes very inclined to call very impatient, power-hungry imperious "control-freaks" towards others, and not very tolerant of any assertions which might indicate that they themselves might possibly be working entirely in the best interests of human progress towards social harmony in many of their actions, but rather towards some form of absolutely officious and authoritarian manners of control over others. They often regularly seem to act upon the principle : "Be as harsh as possible, and only as gentle a necessary in dealing with those you oppose."

Aphaia objects that I have responded to her accusations and demands as if they are entirely trivial. I will here openly declare them in many ways extremely contemptible, but I do not mean to imply in any way that they are entirely trivial. I do believe their are some dangers and certainly more than a few impelled inconveniences in some of her attitudes and demands, and that the burdens of removing from me, or not permitting me to use my admin powers here while she proceeds to denigrate and devastate far more than she could possibly be aware of, are anything but trivial.

In response to them, I will attempt to take some measures in the next day or so to use my admin access to QOTD pages to prepare them for the coming week, and the chances that anyone other than Aphaia wants to see me stripped of my abilities immediately, as if they truly believed that there were any "clear and present danger" of me misusing them in some wild and uncontrolled manner, anywhere near the levels of the wild and uncontrolled manner in which she has already attempted to dramatically make accusations against me, of misusing my abilities as an admin, because I did not immediately and abjectly submit to or respond to such demands as she was determined to make upon me.

If there are others here who are actually inclined to join with her, and believe that people who are even openly suspected of mis-using their powers, should immediately suspend all use of them in all regards, I would then have to defer to such judgment, but I would also, to be JUST, feel that I would have to call for a review of how Aphaia has, in my very sincere view, misused her ability as a checkuser, to directly publicize many details about me and the issue in question that need not have been publicized. The issue could have been raised very clearly and far more safely for myself and others without the naming of most of these names, and indeed I was in the past clearly willing to have the issue raised, without getting involved in it at all as Kalki, but only as the more obscure Accountability, Rumour and other names already openly associated with them, and perhaps with Achilles and a few others which I would have at that point have also openly associated — with the potential damages possible in such debates about the use of user names restricted to them, and willing to abide with whatever was decided. Even at worse, with a decision to constrain people in ways they had not been constrained, which I would have vigorously fought against with a few of my openly associated names, and not necessarily as Kalki, the damage to me and to others would have been far more contained.

Aphaia has now precipitated a crisis I will openly assert I believe she truly has not yet actually begun to fathom the full gravity of, and has already done severe damage to some of my long-term efforts to do good in this world in many subtle and anonymous ways — which I never actually meant to have any very strong associations with the wikimedia projects at all, other than a few user names in common here, that I sometimes was simply reserving here against their possible misuse by others. Though I know this might seem melodramatically paranoid to people not aware of all the circumstances I am aware of, her actions in needlessly and openly publicizing a few of these user names has actually to some degree, ultimately endangered my own and other people's lives and already necessitated the extreme revision of many years of work. I will now publicly ask her to cease and desist from any intentions she might have of publicizing any more, as I will openly assert that at least one of these could endanger me and others even more severely, and at the very least would burden me and others with many more extreme hardships.

I don't intend to elaborate at this point entirely how or why I tend to believe some of these assertions to be true, as that would probably only worsen some very dangerous circumstances which I seek to avoid or diminish, but I will go so far as to say that I do sincerely believe it, and will state that if anything actually does eventually happen to me or others, in coming months or years, because of information she has unwittingly created avenues of public access to, that people be forgiving of her, and remember that I openly declare my own notions of true justice do not embrace those such as promote mere vengeance, and rather I seek to actively promote far fairer forms of relationships and progress among people than those summarized by "eye for an eye" — which as some have clearly indicated would leave the whole world as blind as it has ever been.

In regard to such people as have done or permitted unjustly damaging or unjustly constraining actions towards others I am inclined to join a very great man in declaring "Forgive them, for they know not what they do" but also, to those actively engaged in or inclined to even increase their acts of harmful destruction and unwarranted lusts for control over others, I am also inclined to say: "Deliberate and consider matters to the fullest extent possible, but always be prepared to use ALL just means at your disposal to STOP THEM, for they know not what they do."

Such are my assertions in regard to nearly all attempts to constrict, constrain or remove many forms of human freedom and proper liberties. In regard to Aphaia, I will assert that I believe her impatience might be more the result of anticipation and trepidation at the some of defenses I might have time to more extensively prepare than any genuine concern that I might misuse my powers as an administrator in the few days now remaining before the 11th, or afterward, during whatever period of voting occurs.

I believe that I have many times communicated to others here and elsewhere that I am engaged in far more than internet activities in my life, that I don't regularly check my emails, and sometimes go for many days or even weeks without checking them : currently, as I type this my email count among my PRIMARY accounts alone — those I most often check — is 912 UNREAD, not counting the 69 diverted into the likely "Junk" folder by my spam filter, and some of which I might actually sort through in the next week or so. I do not consider it likely that I shall in that brief period thoroughly examine all of them, nor consider it my own or anyone else's obligation to be in constant touch with the internet or with others unless they make a commitment to do so, which I certainly have NOT.

In her last email to me (the first in many months that I received — and I have not yet located any communications to me from anyone by the name of Thatcher), she stated on 23 October 2009:

Kalki, as you were noticed by another editor, we at checkusers found a group of accounts on several projects including ENWQ which are alleged sockpuppets, and found that your account Kalki used the same IP address and alone, we are therefore going to conclude they belong to you.
If I recall correctly, Kalki, you have given up a similar custom to accumulate accounts mostly for one-time purposes and promised us at ENWQ CUs at that time including Jeff and me.
I would like to hear from you if you created and used those accounts. If you did, I am afraid to say, but you broke your words to give it up: creating other accounts repeatedly just to hide your presence when you are actually doing something ....
If then, I am very reluctant though, since I respect you as a productive editor and have trusted as an admin with your wisdom, I feel I need to say you are now better to give back you two roles on the project: admin and crats, because now your confidence, the value of your words are confronted, and in my humble opinion a sysop must intent to keep his words.
Hope to hear you back soon, Cheers,

This declaration shows that at that point she was clearly under an extreme misapprehension that I had agreed to something I was very confident I had NOT, and had never indicated any disposition to agree to, but hardly seems the words of someone about to do what she subsequently did, nor to my view in any way justifies it, especially since she seems to have realized I never had made any such promise by the time she posted her call seeking to have me stripped of my administrator and bureaucrat status. But people who put too much of their trust in such deficient rules and perceptions as people often create for themselves and others often lose track of such facts, as the one that I had not actually broken any promise, or to my knowledge actually violated any policies.

Very coincidentally, I was actually making some active preparations to respond to her email when I noticed her sudden and dramatic call for a vote of confidence in regard to me. Knowing it had been some time since the message was sent, I actually decided to check to see if she had made any discrete public comments on my talk page, that I might respond to there, before I responded to her by email, and at that very point was very alarmed to discovered she had taken what I consider to be her rather extreme and unwarranted actions in posting this long list of some of my names at the village pump.

I will assert that I do intend to call for a strong and repudiation of these impulses to unnecessarily control and constrain others merely because someone might misuse their abilities in malicious ways, even though they have never given any inclination to do so, or even conceivably do so monstrously unfathomable a deed as to use them in absurdly "senseless" obviously "trivial" ways as many can perceive no clear reasons for at all, like choosing to use the names Senseless Act of Beauty and Random Act of Kindness, to help spread a little bit of encouragement and good will in the world.

I assert that last year others involved in the dispute which then existed, fully had the right as human beings to make such demands as they did, or any others they might wish to, no matter how absurd, but they had not the proper authority or power to demand I conform with their will — and I assert that I fully had the right to ignore and disregard all their pretensions to such authority, without an official policy regarding names, and strongly indicated that I was inclined to do so.

If they pressed the matter more, I would have raised the issue then under one of my usernames, and I certainly would have provided a few names, by which others could make some assessment of the nature of my activities, and if they found even one case of outright vandalism or clearly unethical use of any of these usernames, I would assert their right to point out any such name.

I had yesterday already had some time to prepare these words regarding what I considered to be Aphaia's extreme neglect of some of her duties and responsibilites as a checkuser, in making a public post of all of these names, in which, whether she is aware of it or not, she has stripped me of my ability to completely as possible "disappear" and remain untraceable as an individual, if I so chose, which was always one of the accepted rights among the wiki-users here. I yet indicated that, though I was appalled, I was willing to stifle my outrage:

People make mistakes, sometimes with unalterable consequences, and I hope with such words as I speak here to help such mistakes as these from becoming enduring patterns, but if such unwarranted disclosures about people, in her zeal to control or command them to comply with her will again occur with anyone, then I would have to ask her to resign or face such a vote of confidence as she has called upon me.
With this single act of rather irresponsible disclosure, she has forever removed from me the ability to disappear from the arena of public debates, without leaving clear indications of who I am, and who many people I have in many ways striven to protect are — and I now am on a path where it is likely I shall not be able to disappear from the arena of public debates and disputes save by death — and anyone who is familiar with the many the forms of extreme bigotry and presumption which I have opposed and actively plan to oppose will know that there are many extremists who would be more than willing to hasten that disappearance in whatever ways they can, and to even think of themselves as righteous servants of virtue in using whatever means available to silence me and to impede many of the ultimate ideals of Justice, Unity, Liberty such as I promote.

I was going to mention much of this to some degree, but I was clearly NOT going to call for Aphaia's resignation or dismisal as checkuser, and at this point, still do NOT intend to, despite the harm and irritation she has already done to me, because frankly we do need at least a few people with checkuser abilities here, even if they are often very zealous and perhaps even slightly overzealous, but I do wish to vigorously note that my services to this project in actual work, rather than rule-making, which I tend to abhor, far exceeds that of anyone else, and I do not believe removing my abilities as an admin would in any way be helpful to the project, though it might seem helpful to people who are seekers of control, rather than respecters of liberty, and who are often inclined to be jealous, envious, suspicious and resentful of anyone with abilities or freedoms they do not have.

If my current and future appeals to other's consciences fails, and much of the good that I have done and sought to do comes to be even more thoroughly devastated by the whims and decisions of others as to what official policies here should be, then so be it: I have sincerely spoken much of my conscience and given many of the most significant reasons for my own attitudes, actions and decisions, and may they continue to live with whatever may exist of theirs.

Both in my capacities and will to do both physical and mental work, others have at times been very impressed and called me a "work-horse" — and I will be a bit harsh here in declaring that though I work to the extent I am able in many ways, much of my work in coming days and weeks looks like it will be diverted by the demands of people I hold to be very mentally lazy and tyrannically presumptuous, and I am taking measures to become a "war-horse". People who know me well, no I am often willing to bear many jokes, insults and slights in regard to my person, and even in regard to much that I cherish in life, but I am no one to be casually trifled with when it comes to my determination to do all that I can to protect and defend what I perceive to be among the principle social imperatives of Justice, Truth and Liberty.

Before the Wikimedia Foundation itself existed — which was created to serve the projects, and not to serve the whims of control freaks to exercise needless forms authority over them, I was a user and contributor to this project and several others, from their very first days, and made an administrator in their very first months, long before the currently bloated bureaucracy of hyper-active meddlers and wannabe commanders-of-others regularly crying for or demanding others attention ever existed among the Wikimedia projects. As I previously stated, I am more than willing to give up my bureaucrat privileges as something that are no longer clearly required of me here, and am even somewhat inclined to simply resign from that, whether many others are inclined to demand it or not, as I do not greatly wish to continue to be a bureaucrat in so blind, bumbling and overly officious bureaucracy as I feel is clearly developing among the projects — but I clearly do wish to retain my abilities as an admin, because they remain clearly useful to me and to others as a regular vandal fighter and as the person who has been most responsible for the QOTD selections since the earliest months, and I do not see that this project will be served by the taking of these abilities away from me — as Aphaia and perhaps some others who are irritated by me and other people being free to be active in ways they cannot entirely control or understand, seem to believe might be the case.

As the length of this rather sudden creation indicates, I am not a person who treats some forms of behavior trivially, and do the best I can to respond to it in very thoroughly thoughtful ways. I am also well aware that not everyone has similar dispositions, and I cannot wish them to be so concerned about me or others as I am about most, but I do hope that people who do respond to these calls for action to take time to consider all that has been said, by me and by others, using this and many of my other names now here made available to you, and to side with the principles of Liberty, loving laughter, and joyous devotions to Life itself, rather than serving to ally yourselves with the morbidly mortifying ways of authoritarian and officious control over people, that are often misconceived of as "necessary" or inescapable.

I now make an appeal for no one else to support this call until the 11th, even if they actually wish to chose to declare themselves against me, so that it will be delayed until then, and I can take further time to prepare my arguments. I continue to desire to have more time to further determine how stern and relaxed, and how humorous or outraged my expressions should be in my defense of many forms of freedom (which is always limited by Necessity) and Liberty (which I hold to be extremely sacred, and something actually beyond all the limited definitions and notions of mortal minds). I actually expect to be very busy much of today in non-computer work, but still might have time to do a bit of work here in the hours before I actually leave, and after I return.

Since earliest childhood I have loved many of the most splendid quotes of humanity, and will here quote an author who has long greatly inspired me with his humor and wit, and capacity to see beyond much of the absurdity of the world, and those so deluded as to be inclined to believe that it can or ever should be controlled completely by mortal expressions of rules and laws: James Branch Cabell, whose most famous quote is probably a portion of the one I posted at the start of this essay, regarding the limited reliability of many casual and rigorous human assumptions. Another of my favorites of his is this:

I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational.

I will continue to make what preparations I can for an very vigorous defense of myself and many of my actions on the 11th, "Remembrance Day", and assert that I do NOT wish to have to feel bound to further defend myself before that, or to eventually have to make any call for a vote of confidence against Aphaia as a check-user, despite having some moments of extreme irritation, anger and outrage at some of her behavior in acting as she has. I continue to attempt to be more amused than bemused or angered at many circumstances, but to some degree I will confess my own patience, which most who know me well have long thought of as usually extraordinary, is wearing a bit thin. ~ Kalki 11:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

tl;dr. AGK 23:02, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's rather a lot to wade through. Why subject folk to so much dense prose when what is being asked is a short justification for your past actions and an agreement to discontinue them going forward? I'm not a regular user here by any means but I participated in the initial discussions last year (and in the discussions this year as well) about what to do. Kalki, maintenance of dozens or hundreds of undisclosed accounts like this is not an acceptable practice on most wikis. It is unseemly for an admin and bureaucrat to be doing this and you need to discontinue it. As you were asked to do last year. If you will not, I think your powers should be taken away and the accounts all blocked. That's an outsider's view to be sure, but there you are. Further, Aphaia is to be commended for trying to come to grips with this matter, not condemned. ++Lar: t/c 06:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know that it is a lot to wade through — but so are the massive amounts of rules and presumptions that are accumulating in varying ways amidst many of the various projects lately. I wish to make it very plain here: I do not condemn Aphaia — I admire MOST people I am in any way familiar with far more than I could ever hope to fully express, but I vigorously and honestly condemn some of her actions as presumptuous and needlessly damaging to me and to others. Indeed, once I have attended to far more urgent matters, some of which her actions have caused me to begin to drastically revise, as previous aliases I had used or intended to use elsewhere than the Wikimedia projects are in many ways no longer viable, and even in some ways dangerous, I actually intend to thank her for causing me such difficulties as I hope I shall be able to surmount in a positive way, even though it has come at a very dear cost to me, and perhaps to others. But I will wait until I actually surmount them, and am done with many of the necessary efforts, and not presently, where there remains much that I must yet do.
In these few words you might possibly begin to discern the differences and distinctions that exist in my own mind and that of the vast majority of people who are often eager to condemn, constrain and destroy what they cannot fully appreciate and understand. The nearly bottomless pit of bigotries, presumptions, and false and deficient assumptions that are common to many people, which make them oppose the truly vital principle of LIBERTY, are such things I have long known it would take much of my own time and energies to effectively oppose and resist, and I have been doing this, nearly relentlessly, in many ways, throughout my life.
There is much more that I might say in response to this, but I will refrain for now, as have had very little time to work here in the last few days, and I will probably try to use what time I have here today to getting some necessary work done, in preparation for the impending vote, when it seems I might be asked to suspend my use of some of my abilities for at least a short time. After the tests that are coming, I hope I will have time to more casually and carefully reflect on many things, but for now I have many things here and elsewhere that I must rapidly attend to. ~ Kalki 13:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, if it comes to a vote of confidence, my vote will be for Kalki to retain his Admin and Crat privileges. If someone is able to come forward with specific evidence that alternate accounts were used for vote stacking or vandalism, I'd change my position on that. However, if the only thing Kalki has done is to make valid contributions to articles under different accounts, I see no basis for any action to be taken. If the community wishes to make a policy going forward on alternate accounts, well, there's a process for that. BD2412 T 19:40, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

BD2412, in your comment you have touched on the actual problem that having multiple accounts causes. Whose job is it to monitor these many many accounts for vote stacking or some other type of problem? The many accounts taken up the time of other volunteers when they had to sort out what was going on with them. When Kalki was alerted about concerns last year, then it would have been appropriate to stop rather than make additional accounts. I'm not seeing the level of cooperation from Kalki that I want to see from someone that has made loads of work for other volunteers editors. No one has gone out of their way to bring problems to Kalki. This situation is entirely of Kalki's own making. FloNight ♥♥♥ 22:21, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks FloNight for summarizing that: as a cross-wiki issue and investigation on around 100 accounts, several people spent their hours. To determine if those alternate accounts were used for vote stacking or vandalism, for each investigation, I have spent weeks. I think I had spent my time on much better things than to examine those accounts - but if you BD2412 think Kalki's contribution is worth my laborious weeks which I could have used nevertheless for other things both on wiki and in real life, so it is your judgement, but not mine. Cheers, --Aphaia 03:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aphaia, who precisely asked you or demanded of you that you do such work, seeking for any trace of vandalism or misuse, when there was no evidence to be found? You blame me that you spent weeks obviously seeking SOMETHING THAT WASNT THERE. You might be extremely admired for diligence, if you had actual found anything substantial, but you seemed to have been on a very wild paranoid goose chase over something that didn't exist, and because my activity excited your own paranoid fantasies and imagination you blame me for all the trouble it has caused you. After what you declare to be many weeks of frustration, at not finding any trivial little thing that might be magnified by your attention to seem malicious intent, you very alarmingly chose to post an extensive list of all the names I have used which were available to you because of my trust in you and by the communities trust in you as a check-user, knowing it would do damage to my reputation with many people, and probably to the project itself, and without any apparent regard for what potentially dangerous personal information might be revealed by some of these names.
We are all accountable for our actions, including what information and presumptions, of those available to us, we choose to act upon. I am choosing to believe that there is far more good even in my most relentless attackers than they seem to be willing to accept might even possibly exist in me and the motives for my activities which they can't understand or appreciate.
We are all in a period of challenges and tests, and the period of testing is certainly not over, nor will it be in a week or a month or a year. Each and every one of us faces tests every moment of every day, and ever will, for all the days of our lives. Some might find these challenges very distressing, wearying, hopeless — I find our ability to actually learn from some of these very beautiful, and I will not surrender to the will of those who tell me to submit abjectly to anyone's false or deluded assumptions about me or others or the entire world. In many ways I am very flexible and fluid, in many ways very adamant, but I don't expect any other person to be precisely as fluid or precisely as adamant as I on any matter — that would indeed be profoundly ignorant and stupid — and it is precisely what many of the worst and most foolish rule makers and rule enforcers often assume.
Despite the fact that your actions have produced far more trouble and damages than you can yet appreciate, I now welcome the challenges that lay ahead of me, and I choose to continue to look for the good in others, and address that, and build upon it, rather than seeking out the worst, that you might ridicule and condemn the whole person because of some mote you might find in some other's eyes. Look to the beam in your own eyes, and may you go forth in life with ever greater awareness and appreciation of the Truth and Grace which is present in all lives, even those which can seem to us most troublesome. ~ Kalki 12:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment

My goodness. Didn't read, honestly. I frankly thought this would be a much simpler case to address. Wikiquote is not your personal vanity project, and it is not intended that users should be able to contribute using "cool" or "meaningful" user names. If that's what you want to do, you can say so in 25 words or less, and then let people decide whether that is appropriate behavior for an admin and bureaucrat. Thatcher • (on enwiki) 17:31, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts follow yours Thatcher, and the conduct and behaviour has repercussions across a wider space than just enWQ. More than that, a bureaucrat then feels that the exploration of the general issue is not worthy of some level of reflection or review, after (at first glance, and second level review) their seemingly erratic behaviour. For a person with an elevated position of authority to try to hinder that with emotive argument concerns me further. Billinghurst 07:16, 11 November 2009 (UTC) (enWS) and enWP[reply]

I've noticed Kalki inserted his comment in the discussion and referred to me, but it is way too long. Honestly I didn't read. I'm busy now with 1) fundraising drive translation coordination which has launched already and 2) preparing a nationwide wikimedia conference in Japan (http://www.wcj2009.info/index.php?title=Main_Page&uselang=en) whose proceeding deadline is this weekend. I think those two concerns in a higher priority than to appreciate your text.

Kalki, if you'd like to get my reply, please 1) summary your question(s) into much simpler and more concise lines. Like FloNight gives you on the below. And please 2) put your comment, questions or whatever on the place in a clear place, not inserting into an existing discussion, rest it would be missed. So I'll reply you, but in the current matter, my answer would be again "too long, didn't read". I have no time to appreciate your talent of prose. Thanks, --Aphaia 23:00, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Acceptance of Challenges

Legends can be now and forever
Teaching us to love for goodness sake.
Legends can be now and forever
Loved by the sun, loved by the sun.
~ Jon Anderson ~
in lyrics of
"Loved by the Sun",
written for the "Unicorn Theme" of
Legend (1986)

They say that I am defiant of their express will and demands:

I will confess it plainly: YES, I AM!

Many are the ways of Truth and Grace, and many are the ways to promote them, whether one fails or succeeds in one's wise or foolish efforts to do so. Some here seem to believe Truth and Grace is entirely on their side, and they might well prevail against me, and even might consider this to be thus proven; but I assert that I have a much broader and profound scope to my vision, and even this comes to be so, such is a supposition I do not and cannot accept.

Those who have prompted and support these measures against me, by which I would be stripped of even admin abilities to block vandals, lock and unlock pages, and edit the locked ones, such as I am not being accused of having ever abused, have made and seem to be prepared to making decisions I consider rash and unwarranted, based upon their own personal suspicions, suppositions and inclinations, and very limited knowledge, and NOT upon the ultimate FACTS of the matter, or the mandates of any established community rules. What I have actually done, now, and in the past, is simply and plainly engaged in what they have called "uncooperative" behavior — by which they mean I have displayed attitudes and dispositions not abjectly obedient enough for their particular personal tastes. To this accusation alone, am I inclined at this point to plead any guilt. To the supposition that I have in any way committed actionable treason to the principles and practices with which this wiki is established, I state that they are plainly displaying extreme contempt for me, and much which I have attempted to do, in both low and high profile ways, here and in the world generally, in which I might operate with any strong or slight connections to these wikis, for the sake of human Liberty and greater Awareness of Truth itself.

From my perspective it is they who violated the established practices and were creating and insisting that their personal preferences and will should be treated by me as AS IF it were official policy, and it was NOT.

I do not in any way seek to absolutely condemn or scorn these people, who, for the most part, I believe to be well motivated and rational in many of their aims, but I want to make very clear my absolute and profound contempt for their currently exhibited attitudes, dispositions, and actions aimed to enforce their personal will and punish opposition to it, in ways NOT clearly mandated by established policies. Any rules I am aware of they could cite against me are only asserted as guidelines and suggestions — which were developed by a few people, ENTIRELY without my own participation, and to my knowledge, not even these were ever actually determined by a community vote, and which I myself have certainly never sought to enforce or impose upon anyone else. I have long recognized and been willing to assert that people ALWAYS do what they actually MUST do, based upon their levels of awareness, ignorance and confusion about matters, and their developed and manifested levels of strengths, weaknesses, wisdom and delusions.

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Jesus Christ (c. 29 AD)

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret.
Terry Pratchett (2000 AD)

I am an artist of Life. I have in many ways been an artist in my life and with my life, and I seek to justify and celebrate my own existence and the existence of all others in every way I justly and fairly can, throughout all the years of my life. I am in love with many diverse forms of good humor and good will, as well as the capacities for stern and harsh combat against evil and misguided will. I have risked death and more than once come very close to it in my pursuit of both truth and beauty, and faced many tiresome and wearying burdens in my struggles in my efforts to serve Justice and Liberty. The threats I am facing now, though troublesome and relatively trivial, have truly excited and stimulated my impulses to action, far more than they cause me any deep dread or despair, despite having to make massive changes in many of my plans.

I sometimes display a certain flare for the dramatic, the humorous, the inspirational, against which the timid, cowardly and villainous have sometimes complained as they seek to be proponents of regimentation, control and dull drab monotony which they often seem to prefer as simpler and less challenging to their existing ideas and suppositions. In my life I will often seek to justify and reveal much of the beauty of all people and things — even of these adversaries and opponents in every way which I can, much to the displeasure of those who prefer such simplistic formula for action and being as they can believe themselves to understand. I am well aware that many people want to variously label others in deficient ways and to persist in hating them, or dismissing them as in some way worthless, because it makes their decisions about many things seem far simpler.

I am a Poetic Pragmatist, devoted to such Principles of an Ultimate Presence as many of the most "practical-minded" can but barely discern, including Justice, Unity, and Liberty and I know that they sometimes react with cynical ridicule, contempt, fury and outrage when such things are even spoken of, thinking all of reality can in some way be reduced and sufficiently summarized by human understandings, with either their scientific methods or their metaphysical myths, and that such principles and presences as some seek to guide them beyond such realms of thoughts and ideas as they are familiar and comfortable with are always mere illusions. I assert such people are ALWAYS deeply and OFTEN dangerously deluded.

Some might seek even seek to now to limit my abilities to defend myself and my ways of daily reverence and celebration of all that I can, against their close-minded ways, with all the tools at my disposal — with images and with words to awaken the consciences, the reason and the most profound emotions, senses, and sensibilities of others.

I am a lover of ALL Awareness, Life, Liberty and Love itself. To some of you, not yet fully hypnotized and entranced by the delusions of power and absolute forms of control over others which the most foolish often seek, I say as clearly as I can: Don't drop into despair and deep denunciations of destinies and desires with the dullards — so much as you can within your life, reach for the enduring Sun, reach for the enduring Stars, reach for the Eternal Sky. Each and every one of you is eternally connected with each other and all these things, whether you can believe it or not, or whether you can ever come to know the truth of much of what I say or not.

I have acted for the most part here in ways in which I have actually sought to minimize and mitigate the apparent levels of my contributions, and to simply maximize people's abilities to be inspired by ideas many have found inspirational. The cream of the jest here is that, despite my extensive work and what has begun to be revealed as my multi-faceted presence, I have relentlessly tried to avoid having very much attention focused upon myself, and have worked to present and promote greater awareness of many people's ideas, not any clear awareness or details about my own personally. Now people who seem obsessed with some suppositions which I find frankly deficient and flawed have done such things as now IMPEL me to openly state many of my own motivations in defense of myself.

Since I have now felt impelled to make a few disclosures about my personal life and the attitudes I am most inclined to embrace, and am preparing to make a few more later today and in coming days, I will probably henceforth be a bit more be more assertive in many of my own opinions and attitudes about many things than I previously had been — and perhaps more inclined to occasionally share with others a few thoughts upon what I appreciate or dislike about certain quotes, expressions, people and ideas.

I would say that throughout my life I have tried to find ways to relentlessly emphasize and promote much of the best about humanity, and oppose much of the worst. This is not always an easy or even safe thing to do. It is only rarely, with people who have plainly done extreme damage to the world and other people's lives by their forms of extreme presumption and bigotry, that I shift at all from trying to emphasize as much as I can of the good and the very best that people have had to say about Life, the Universe and Everything, and ignore or disregard much of the worst that they have had to say or do.

One of the earliest rules on the wikimedia projects was the cleverly absurdist assertion: "Ignore all rules." This is very close to about the best advice that can be given to those who want to learn things, rather than rest safe, content and satisfied with the status quo, but it in itself is being increasingly ignored by people who would like the status quo about many things to be determined by their ability to make demands and unjustly seek to intimidate others into compliance with their wills, rather than actually enforcing clearly mandated policies.

In my life I have studied much and had discourse with many people of many diverse political and religious faiths and opinions, and there is no one I have ever met in which I did not find some clear indications of some worth and wisdom, even when I was appalled at much I thought of in their ways which was plainly ignorant and confused. Many I have known have been very impressed with and have been very disappointed that they could not find a committed convert in me to their particular political or religious faith or creed, even though I found much in most to respect and cherish, as well as much I had to dispute or reject.

I very aware that some of my intense criticisms of certain attitudes and dispositions that I will make draw the intense criticisms and objections of others towards my own. I fully expect that I am going to be far too busy with many things to immediately or promptly attempt to answer all the questions and objections I can anticipate many people eventually making about my assertions both here, under some of my currently used names, and elsewhere under some of these names and some others besides — so I implore of everyone curious about many of the things I say to have a bit more patience — many of my long developing plans, precautions, projections and practices have to be drastically altered amidst the currently changing circumstances.

I am very glad I am not so much of a fool as to have attempted to live by any absolutely definite plans or rules, because I fully expect the circumstances in coming weeks, months and years are going to be mutating far more rapidly than they have been even in the recent periods of social, economic and political turmoil. I assert that this is NOT necessarily a bad or a good thing, but it is definitely a challenging thing — one that I am currently making many complex and rapid assessments about, as I focus upon what I believe must be my most immediate priorities and efforts.

I thank you all for what attention you may have seen fit to give my assertions here, as I defend myself against charges I find contemptible and others attitudes and dispositions towards me such as I find appalling. May everyone who reads this, whether you are inclined to become an ally and adversary of my own dispositions, come to benefit by them in some way. I know, that though I am usually quite quiet about many things, I am inclined to be very wordy in some ways when I do decide to express my ideas. I expect that this message will probably be the bulk of the comments I make on this page at this time, but I will probably be greatly expanding upon this message and some of my arguments with many further assertions about myself, my ideas and my activities, upon my talk page, and provide some more information about this dispute's history with posts from past messages, for much of the next day or two. Though I have already had a chance to write much more down today, I am not through arranging and refining it, and considering what to include or leave out. In writing these things I have not had time to do much else here today, and wish to finish up on some of my more routine work as soon as possible. I also am getting very tired, and will probably have to soon nap for at least an hour or two.

I had composed much of this message in a single day, was going to post it soon after 2009·11·11 00:00 but decided to take a nap and review it and developments when I awoke, as I was very tired. I awoke with some significant new ideas, which I presently am working on, and thus I will assert I have only just begun to present my arguments and assertions about MANY related things, and I am actually looking forward to many of the challenges in the days and weeks ahead, no matter what might be decided here.

As I begin to draw this particular message to a close, I seek to now invoke some of the greatest expressions of wisdom of which I am familiar, in defending myself and my own peculiar ways.

I would like now to cite the expressions of two people some might consider totally contrary in disposition, because of but cursory awareness of them, the traditions they represent, their particular works and ways, and the ever self-circling expressions of humanity itself. Here, so long as it clearly harms none, and violates no established guidelines and necessary policies for precision and accuracy, I would like to help to establish the broadly tolerant practice, epitomized by Aleister Crowley: "Do what thou will shall be the whole of the Law." As with any wiki, anything which enough other people consider to be in any way misguided or erroneous can be swiftly or gradually corrected. But I will also cite a quote of a much more broadly admired person, who expressed similar sentiments many centuries before, Saint Augustine of Hippo:

Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.

I would like to here state a few of my own refinements upon these expressions and ideas and declare that it is always good to seek to love others and Reality itself, though others and Reality, and even one's self, are always beyond mortal comprehension, and thus in some ways beyond all mortal love. I am also very well aware that we all always do what necessity and our levels of awareness, ignorance and confusion about necessities impels us to do, and thus can easily be forgiven for many errors or delusions by the wise. The Love of Truth and the Truths of Love are always in many ways complicated, and yet also paradoxically simple as well, and thus I will close with a far simpler and easier injunction than others might make, which I believe it would be very hard for any entirely sane person to ever speak against:

Love Truth and Do What You Will. ~ Kalki 11:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

responses

For the record, I dare say: too long; didn't read. You seem to forget English is no native language for some participants and some of us are busy with other concerns including volunteering fundraising drive whose outcome enables the site running. Please remind that showing your talent of prose is not always a friendly act. --Aphaia 12:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can fully sympathize with your limited understanding of what I know to you is a foreign language, but I will dare to say that "Too long, didn't read" seems to be becoming a very common ploy among several people who seem to be VERY hasty and eager to simply condemn me, based upon only such very few facts and presumptions as they have chosen to focus upon and magnify, rather than my long YEARS of activity here. Believe me, you can choose to ignore what you wish to, but not all will ignore all that I say, and many might actually come to see that there is far more light to be shed on many subjects than you have chosen to let be revealed, or even to acknowledge. ~ Kalki 12:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Brevity, inclusiveness, and relevance are also attributes. As a native English speaker, and a WMFian, it would seem to me that addressing the particular points that relate to the role of an administrator: the leadership aspects, demonstration of the expected values and behaviours, how the undertakings could be seen to add value to the project; would have been a more expected delivery of an argument, instead there seems to be a very poetic distraction. The proposal was solely about the reviewing of the undertaking of the role and within the community's expectations, not a reflection on your personal character, not religious believes or credo nor the motives. All administration roles are for the assistance of the project within the community's aims, neither prizes nor fancies to be displayed. It would seems that you are trying to cast aspersions at those who have brought this matter to the community and have produced elements of shoot the messenger. They are legitimate concerns, they have been legitimately raised, and the community can expect their concerns to be noted, and simple answers to be provided without the verbiage. If you don't have the time to address the community, in anything but your own timeframe, that would seem to portray either a level of disrespect or disregard. Billinghurst 13:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously being able to express myself with what you seem to perceive is merely "Poetic distraction" doesn't fit into your very narrow and limited views of "leadership aspects, demonstration of the expected values and behaviours, how the undertakings could be seen to add value to the project" and your willingness to use some rather blunt and unpoetic distractions, quite transparent to me. I AM addressing the issues, and addressing them as vigorously as I can. I am NOT attacking Aphaia, or anyone else by claiming that whatever deficiencies of judgment they exhibited should be automatically and severely punished. I am attacking the false, foul, damaging and deficient messages that have been delivered urging automatic and unquestioning compliance with a very few people's express will. I am using my wit and my mind to awaken a bit more of people's consciences and intellectual capacities than some seem to want to be awakened. You seem to be not only attacking my message with distortions and but even my right and my will to deliver them as I see fit, rather than you do, and to be saying something along the lines of "Simply shut up and address the issues your attackers and those hostile to the FREEDOMS you defend, think are the only important ones that need be addressed, and don't appeal to any ideas or causes higher or greater than we want you to, or can easily understand."
I will certainly NOT make any promise to simply be brief in defense of myself and my actions, but I will be very inclusive and seek to make plain the relevance of many things. Some people seem to be inclined to believe that I might a person easily swayed by insults or threats into submission to their will, and they will increasingly learn that they are pathetically mistaken. Though generally of amiable disposition, I will not simply quietly and calmly roll over and "play dead" like a submissive little dog when my abilities to do good are attacked or assaulted, nor leave myself and others further vulnerable to the herd-think mentalities that are beginning to be increasingly displayed here. I am citing PRINCIPLES and practices that were set forth as ideals expressed in the very first stages of the Wikipedia project, which existed long before many of the growing minions of people who seem to think that they should promote some form of meticulously regimented authoritarian oligarchy where they can DICTATE policy for others that was NOT created by the community at large. Even if you have read them before, PLEASE EXAMINE ANEW: Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, and the other links available there, including the links delineating much which Wikipedia was NOT. These have changed somewhat since I first read them, and I do not pretend to totally agree with all they state, but they remain among the most properly humble and amusing precepts that established these projects. Many of the assertions made for Wikipedia plainly defied "conventioal wisdom" but helped it to become so important a work as it is, and they apply well here also, but some do not, and whereas an Encyclopedia should stifle many forms of artistic expressions, in ways that among some administrators seem to have developed into a rather arrogant presumption of their right and abilities to issue commands to others, I have asserted from the very earliest days of this project, throughout all my many years of activity here, that the presentation of quotes is something I have always asserted should be far freer, and even less constrained by rules and assumptions than the development of an encyclopedia. I have also lived a life far less constrained by many popular assumptions than most, but I certainly don't demand that everyone do entirely as I do, in any regard, still less that they do entirely as I say. ~ 15:07, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, full disclosure, I did not read. Please note that it was I who began investigating you in 2009, after receiving a tip that you had used sockpuppets in 2008 and were allowed to get away with it. I take a very dim view of administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, or whatever, who get away with stretching and bending the rules for their own benefit. I began the investigation. I contacted checkusers on other projects. I did not push the matter on the stewards, but respected the procedures and policies of each individual project. I waited patiently for Aphaia to clear her schedule so she could address this problem. Whatever else your conduct is, it is peculiar, puzzling, and demands investigation. The fact that you are now blaming Aphaia for the investigation proves rather more effectively than anything else that your conduct is not compatible with holding admin and bureaucrat status. Thatcher • (on enwiki) 14:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I too "take a very dim view of administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, or whatever, who get away with stretching and bending the rules for their own benefit" — ABSOLUTELY. I also take a dim view of PRETENDING something is MANDATED which is NOT, for the benefit of a very few people and to what I perceive to be the detriment of many others. I have never enforced or sought to enforce any rules that sought to restrict the numbers of usernames users could use to make honestly contributive efforts, and never even pretended to anyone that I thought such a rules were even a very good idea, as Poetlister/Cato hypocritically did last year. There is much more I would like to say, but I probably won't have time to address the issue anymore right now, as I must be leaving soon, and though I might be able to check in a few times elsewhere, I expect to be very busy with other things for at least a few hours. ~ Kalki 15:07, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to repeat I am NOT attacking Aphaia, I am making observations about behavior and apparent motives, and I know we all must follow the dictates of Necessity, and thus I am very prone to be forgiving.

One of my favorite quotes, from Wikipedia:Ignore all rules :

If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.

Just a parting shot here, as I prepare to leave for a while, about some of the foundational principles of the weird and wonderful undertakings known as the Wikimedia projects, which I have always attempted to serve in many ways, and against any presumptuous rule-making, individuals or groups of them who seem to be overly eager to DEFINE all rules for everyone in ways that are not to the clear benefit of anyone. I remain one of the most vigorously active administrators on this project, and if stripped of admin tools to serve it, I will continue to serve it as a user and a voice of dissent against the growing numbers of people accustomed to issuing commands and demands that are NOT appropriate to the foundational principles and practices of these Wikis. ~ Kalki 15:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes or no questions

Please answer the questions below. FloNight ♥♥♥ 19:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do all the user accounts listed by Aphaia belong to you?
answer yes or no - YES — so far as I can determine at this point; though I have not yet had a chance to fully review all of them, and doing so will probably take me some time. I have been tagging those I have examined and am willing to clearly and explicitly identify as mine with a tag clearly stating this, and will probably continue to do this, to the extent I have the time.
Besides the ones listed, did you create or edit with any other accounts in 2009?
answer yes or no - YES, I am fairly sure that I have, and again assert I see nothing wrong with this, nor expressly forbidden by established policies, so long as I make constructive or protective edits against vandalism, and not malicious or clearly irresponsible ones.
Besides the ones listed, did you create or edit with any other accounts prior to 2009?
answer yes or no - Again, YES, I am quite confident I have.
Do any accounts besides your Kalki account have any special user permissions?
answer yes or no - NO — and I have declined suggestions that they be provided such, including suggestions such as the one made on this wiki for the Achilles account, and others elsewhere suggesting they would support my nomination.
Will you agree to stop creating new accounts?
answer yes or no - NO - not unless it is clearly MANDATED by a community vote explicitly limiting the number of user accounts which can be acquired. I do expect such a measure might seem desirable and reasonable to most people, but it is not by me. IF such a measure were actually passed, I would then limit my active accounts to such an agreed to number, and permit the others to be locked, as some already have been, due to a few false presumptions manifested last year. I also would NOT support a motion that all active accounts need to be publicly or even privately declared, as that somewhat defeats the long ACCEPTED uses of some of them.
Will you agree to stop editing with more than one account?
answer yes or no - Again, NO, unless this is CLEARLY mandated by express community determined policy, and not merely the edicts and presumptions of a few active officials who I honestly believe have in many ways already exceeded their proper prerogatives and authority in making some demands upon me, which I have thus far declined to comply with.

Why should Kalki agree to stop creating/editing with other accounts, if that is not prohibited conduct? Would it not suffice for him to agree to disclose all accounts, and/or to not to use them for improper purposes such as vote-stacking, vandalism, etc. (which he has already expressly denied doing, and which there is no indication he has ever done any of anyway)? BD2412 T 20:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see his answers to the questions so that I can understand how we need to go forward now. The simplest solution is for Kalki to edit from one account, the rest be blocked and tagged as Kalki's alternative accounts. But if he wants to continue editing with more than one account then the Community needs to be made aware of his desire, and then decide if the way to precede.

I've only begun to review the accounts but so far I've seen overlaps between the accounts that cause me some concern. If the account list is accurate, then there were times that people thought that they were talking to two people in the same discussion when both users were the same person. In other instance it is clear that people talking to one of the alternative accounts were disturbed by the heated comments made during discussions. Other times, an alternative account reverted and left a warning, and Kalki soon after blocked the account. Additionally, people welcomed an account. Someone discussed becoming an admin with one of the accounts. Based on this initial review, I think that using the alternative accounts in discussions is not for the best. I'm going to continue reviewing the accounts after Kalki answers. I've started a subpage in my user space to record the evidence I find. But before I go on with the review, I want to confirm the answers to the questions. FloNight ♥♥♥ 22:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly I didn't see that there was a requirement for these actions, nor a demand nor a formal proposal. I saw that they were questions of interest to the person as a matter of informing them. Semantically "Would you ..." may have sounded gentler, but so be it. I am interested in whether Kalki sees what are reasonable limitations on behaviour in general, and their behaviour particularly. Billinghurst 01:10, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Part of this response was originally posted at my talk page:

I have been very busy today, and did not have the time to even check in here but very briefly a couple of times earlier, and just recently got in for the day. Unfortunately, I am now expecting many real-life tasks and non-Wikiquote activities to be consuming much of my time over the next week or so, but will continue to make statements concerning current controversies to the extent I have the time, as well as doing what work I can here, if their remains some periods where I can simply relax from the mental stresses of complicated considerations and the formation of adequate compositions and expressions to actually do that. I have just now looked at your questions, and will respond to them adequately when I have the time, which I expect to have within the next day or so, though I will state that delivering a response to your particular questions is not actually going to be the highest priority on my agenda, as I am also at work on other ideas to defend myself against the current blizzard of assumptions, presumptions and accusations. I might well have some surprising Yes or No questions for others to respond to as well. ~ Kalki 22:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I WILL respond to your questions, but I myself will have to take time to thoroughly examine the list and the actual userpages, because I know I have occasionally mistakenly tried to log in with names I used elsewhere that actually were not available to me here. Most of them do seem to be mine, and I won't deny I have others as well and I might be openly declaring more of these in the next few days, now that much of my activity has been intensely criticized as if it was unethical and contemptible, when it has actually always been done with the best interest of others in mind, not merely something I do entirely for my own amusement. I would assert that you seem to be very eager to come up with some minor incident that you can make to seem some major breach of ethics. I'm quite sure you will come up with more you will disapprove of, and might try to imply is clearly unethical, and I might possibly be able to provide you with some, but I will state blankly that you seem to be operating under quite a few presumptions I myself find objectionable, and I will eventually clearly state what many of these are, as I deal with the many issues which are currently impelling me to nearly ceaseless activity in recent days. ~ Kalki 22:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could have answered question 4, 5, 6. Each of them could be answered without such a review. Why not? --Aphaia 23:09, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am an extremely honest person, and I do intend to provide very honest Yes or No responses to the questions — but I certainly do NOT intend to LIMIT myself to Yes or No responses, as some people seem to think would be very convenient them, as a way of fortifying many of their own contemptible assumptions and arguments. I have always been willing to declare myself a fool, but I am not so simplistic or simple-minded a fool as some people here seem to wish I was, and I will continue to oppose many of their contemptible presumptions with the utmost vigor of my being. ~ Kalki 23:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Additional question

I would like to add a question to the ones made by FloNight. In doing so, I wish to direct our attention to some remarks made above by Kalki:

"Though I know this might seem melodramatically paranoid to people not aware of all the circumstances I am aware of, her [Aphaia's] actions in needlessly and openly publicizing a few of these user names has actually to some degree, ultimately endangered my own and other people's lives and already necessitated the extreme revision of many years of work. I will now publicly ask her to cease and desist from any intentions she might have of publicizing any more, as I will openly assert that at least one of these could endanger me and others even more severely, and at the very least would burden me and others with many more extreme hardships.

I don't intend to elaborate at this point entirely how or why I tend to believe some of these assertions to be true, as that would probably only worsen some very dangerous circumstances which I seek to avoid or diminish, but I will go so far as to say that I do sincerely believe it..."

Kalki states that he does not wish to explain his reasons for believing lives to be in danger in this matter. Nevertheless, this claim cannot simply be taken for granted, as taking it literally would obviously affect our consensus in making a vote of confidence. I must therefore ask Kalki the following additional question:

7. What grounds have you for believing that lives are in danger because of these usernames becoming known as your surrogates?

The principle of Assume Good Faith means that in all matters, until plainly proven otherwise, the good intentions of an editor should never be called into question. I am willing, as always, to assume good faith for motives. And yet it is not motives that are in question here but, rather, someone's actions; and actions should always be open to skeptical analysis. A vote of confidence is based not only on charges, if proven, of wrongdoing; it is also based on the general confidence that an editor can be trusted with administrative powers. The fact that an editor has intimated that lives are in danger, without explaining why, is itself a factor which needs to be investigated before making a vote of confidence. Therefore, as much as it may pain Kalki to elaborate on this matter, I see no alternative to asking. - InvisibleSun 02:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wish to point out that I realize Aphaia had no reason to expect that her actions could in any way be so significantly disruptive or gravely dangerous to me, and I am NOT making the claim that I myself or anyone else is in immediate danger because of any of them, but at this point I will simply state, that some of the names already stated could provide some indications of who I or acquaintences of me are, in real life, and that I have also used certain clearly related identities elsewhere. One of the names NOT named would pretty clearly and directly identify me publicly to everyone.
I have long intended to declare in rather strong terms, under certain pseudonyms, such things as I knew would win me the extreme hostility of many people, including some of the most brutal and vicious fanatics that exist, with very strong denunciations of many of their methods and aims, and I had actually meant to begin to do so in initially relatively mild assertions, ALREADY, on the 11th, in fact, but had to rapidly alter my plans because some of my previously safe aliases elsewhere, which I had intended to use, would now too easily compromise my general identity in the world.
I am in a period of extensive reassessment of my options, and am taking into account many things. I have calmed down a bit, as I consider many of these, and am relaxing with a bit of relatively easy browsing here for a while, constantly reviewing potential and actual circumstances. It might sound merely paranoid to you that I even have such expectations, but I do actually expect that there will eventually be many people eager to see me dead, or at least brutally harmed in some ways, because of some of the assertions that I intend to make. I don't expect to remain someone unidentified to most forever, but I do intend to keep much of my life discretely private, so long as possible, not merely for my own safety, but for the safety of some of those associated with me. I won't provide any more details of my plans or expectations than this, at this point.
I do not insist that people believe I have strong reasons for believing this, but I will state that I honestly believe that within about a year, and perhaps even a few months, my life will definitely start to be in extreme danger because of people hostile to some of my ideas and statements. The less information they have to try to clearly identify me, the better. ~ Kalki 02:51, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hate to say it, but it is absurd to proceed under the belief that anonymity means anything with respect to editing on Wikimedia projects. I doubt that the system is secure against such information being hacked, simply because the purpose of the project is to gather information, not necessarily to do it in a way that protects the anonymity of users. It is my understanding that the Wikimedia Foundation has already determined that it will not fight court orders to turn over identifying information about its editors, which may then become a matter of public record. That said, I find it highly unlikely that much of anything that occurs in terms of edits to this site could invoke threats of physical harm. BD2412 T 03:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am just waking up from a much needed nap, and I will simply state that I am not actually so paranoid as to have any strong worries about any actual legal inquires, because I am NOT engaged in any actually illegal activities, nor do I intend to be, nor was I worried about anything that I had actually meant to declare on any Wikimedia site causing me any extreme troubles, but rather what I had intended, and still intend to declare elsewhere, through far more appropriate avenues of communication for extensively discussing and revealing my own ideas about many things, which I remain very reluctant to reveal here, for many reasons. I had not sought to openly reveal here even so much has now already begun to be indicated, and I am still considering how much of my own beliefs, ideas, and activities to reveal and how much to keep private, as I respond to the current little controversy over my use of more names than might normally be expected of a well-intentioned user. ~ Kalki 06:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In summary: I am simply stating that a few open and publicly available connections can now be made, between me and aliases I use elsewhere which could not have been definitely made before, nor would it have been likely they would have been made by the more elaborate efforts of hackers. My own public profile among even these projects has now been raised considerably in ways I prefer it had not been. I would much rather have continued to seem someone of no more interest to anyone here than any other rather personally subdued, well devoted and plodding editor and admin, such as I ever was. ~ Kalki 06:19, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Kalki is a fan of Aleister Crowley, he quotes him above, and has many times suggested Crowley quotes for quote of the day. Many of the sockpuppet user names are related in some way to Crowley and Magik. Perhaps this is what he is referring to when he claims that revealing these names puts his own and other's lives in danger. Note above that Kalki says, I have long intended to declare in rather strong terms, under certain pseudonyms, such things as I knew would win me the extreme hostility of many people, including some of the most brutal and vicious fanatics that exist, with very strong denunciations of many of their methods and aims. (Do Crowley followers really think they have hidden evil enemies? Maybe they think they do.) This raises a number of concerns.

Wikiquote is not to be used for personal vendettas, advocacy or righting the world's wrongs.
What is he really using these accounts for? Not just making innocent extra contributions, apparently.
Isn't it pretty irresponsible to use sensitive user names that could put you in danger on one of the most visible public web sites in the world?
What is really going on here?

These questions would not need to be asked if not for Kalki's own defense, of course. If he had said, "I agree to use only one account from now on (with random checkuser verification)" this probably would have been dropped. This increasingly bizarre defense plus FloNight's in-depth examination of his contributions mandates such questions. Thatcher • (on enwiki) 12:27, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I will simply state at this point that I an NOT actually a great "fan", of Crowley — and CERTAINLY no "follower" of him. I find him in many ways extremely contemptible and stupid, but that does not keep me from acknowledging that he did actually declare some striking and impressive expressions, worthy of quoting. I am far more a fan of Jesus Christ, Guatama Buddha, Laozi, Walt Whitman, and innumerable others. Crowley probably would not even make it into my top 1000, if you got right down to it. I am far more endangered in both trivial and major ways by such idiotic assumptions as many people are inclined to make based upon very little evidence, and MUCH presumption, and I don't actually fear the smarmy smug fools who might merely think me a nuisance to their presumed authority here. I am talking of people who are the truly intolerant, and do not hesitate to kill those they hate, or merely don't care about. I HAVE faced such people in the past, and I intend to again, but the less I actually have to face them with them knowing how hostile I am to their presumptions the better. Some fools dislike harsh language — I dislike harsh actions which actually cause permanent injuries to people and their ability to do good in this world, however camouflaged they might be by niceties. I know that I might seem rude in stating certain assumptions are foolish — but I know that we are all often prone to mistaken and apparently foolish assumptions from time to time, and do not hesitate to regularly call myself a fool, often many times a day. I will also assert that in reviewing the list provided, I found that I might have well made a mistake, and there might not actually be a name among them that actually endangers my projects and intentions and possibly my life in the months ahead, though there is one very similar to it. As to the names I AM worried about, it is not merely a matter of the names, which, save for one, would be but a loose association, and not definite, but it was rather some links that could be made because of information provided WITH the names, and which could now become more easily and clearly in some ways linked to far more extensive presence here or elsewhere, to names I had not tried all that hard to hide at all. ~ Kalki 12:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm actually trying to take a Wikibreak. I'll leave this matter to others from now on. If Wikiquote wants to beclown itself (again) by declaring that Kalki is its most important and untouchable functionary, then so be it. Thatcher • (on enwiki) 13:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I too must soon leave, but I probably will have a bit more time to check in for a while than I did yesterday. I want to make one thing as clear as possible though: no matter how irate I might occasionally get at people's assumptions attitudes and actions, I do NOT wish anyone any permanent distress — but neither am I willing to calmly let them do severe injury to my own or other people's abilities or lives, merely because they are operating with many assumptions that I can perceive to be plainly false or extremely deficient, no matter how viable and convincing some of them might seem to them. I truly hope everyone can come to laugh at much that has occurred with good humor — and I myself actually don't mind being considered something of a clown, so long as I am not automatically assumed to be some kind of deranged or malicious one. Suspect what you must, of me and others, I ENCOURAGE skepticism — but don't needlessly assume anyone guilty of such things as might seem sensible to you, with very insufficient evidence. ~ Kalki 13:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This all seems to be turning into one giant soap opera, and a virtual game of tiggy with riddles.

The focus needs to be on enWQ and its administration. There are very specific questions raised, and it would be excellent to see some brief, direct and informative responses to those questions. Getting this from a 'crat should not be this difficult.
If a person's life is at risk for being an administrator and bureaucrat, then please leave and make yourself safe. The role is not worth that amount of angst.
If the exposure of the user names puts you at risk, then they were unwise use of account names, and absolutely nobody should see that alignment of socks and a real another account as putting anyone in danger, or unable to be publicised. Goodness, isn't that the point of the whole discussion and why we rail against socks.
The angst that I see displayed from the community is that there have been some very simple questions asked, for the sake of people trying to better understand actions, and to put it in perspective. All I see is avoidance and manipulation of both the questions and the reasonability for there being asked.

Billinghurst 19:51, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think a giant soap opera seems to be a fairly apt description. What is being asked is simple, but what we are getting is complex, divisive, not direct or informative... but not necessarily germane. If lives are in danger, perhaps then it would be for the best if all the accounts were blocked and Kalki discontinued editing here entirely. The geni cannot be put back in the bottle, after all. ++Lar: t/c 01:38, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe much ado about nothing or ultimately needless and presumptuous ado about very little would be far more apt. People seem to be focused a great deal upon one of my more dramatic and genuine concerns which I let slip in my initial period of alarm, distress and outrage at some of the presumptions clearly at work against me, on the part of others. What damages the past revelations can do have already been done, and the newly proposed idea of simply blocking me, as if I had clearly violated some clearly established rules that would require such action, frankly seems a ploy to simply shut me up and censor my vigorous opinions from being further heard. I do NOT claim that the identification of most of the accounts are of any reason for great alarm to me, no matter how irritating or frustrating they might be, and IF the community actually insisted on clearly limiting the number of accounts after a period of significant debate on doing so, I would then abide by such rules as had become mandatory. As of now there have been only advisories and guidelines developed relatively recently, and which I never endorsed because I could not honestly and honorably do so, nor had ever sought to actively oppose because they were loose enough that I did not feel too tightly bound to any expectations of people actually heeding them if they did not choose to, though they have now become a source of some consternation to me. In all regards I am an advocate of maximal freedom from restraints that are not clearly necessary or to a sufficient degree are clearly more beneficial than detrimental to most of those concerned about them.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. ~ John Adams (1772)

All projects of government, formed upon a supposition of continual vigilance, sagacity, and virtue, firmness of the people, when possessed of the exercise of supreme power, are cheats and delusions ... The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. ~ John Adams (1815)

People have sometimes here made statements that show extremely distorted, skewed and outright false interpretations of what I have said. I certainly NOWHERE at any point declared such an ridiculous thing as that my "life is at risk for being an administrator and bureaucrat" as would make the suggestion that I "please leave and make yourself safe" make any sense other than as an extreme form of declaring a wish that I, and some of the issues I am intent on more clearly raising and focussing upon in response to those raised against me, simply would "go away."

I believe that too many have regarded the potential further restrictions of my freedoms, and theirs, as something beneficial to all in a very clearcut way. I am still preparing some declarations which I hope will clearly indicate that this is NOT necessarily true, and that I know I might well have the need to argue further, IF people move to have the existing freedoms removed, and some definite limits set on the number of accounts people can have.

I continue to insist : So long as Liberty is not endangered, let existing freedoms not only remain intact, but in many ways grow, with the growth of human awareness and new forms of human potentials for wit and wisdom. ~ Kalki 11:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If all the listed accounts all belong to you, then the evidence that I'm compiling shows that you have used multiple accounts in Community discussions going back to 2004. Sometimes your accounts talk to each other which misleads people into thinking that more than one person was involved in the discussion. Do you agree that using multiple accounts distorts community decision making because people think that additional people hold a view about a matter?

Please make labeling the accounts your top priority when you log into Wikiquote. And I ask you to not edit from any account that is not labeled. I've seen at least one other recent account (created in Oct. 2009) that could belong to you. Could you please label all accounts that you create so that we don't get into a bigger backlog of work related to this situation? My personal opinion is that you should be limited to one account because I see limited value coming from your multiple accounts and a large downside to you using them. But until Community consensus forms about the issue, please limit yourself to using labeled accounts in each discussion so as to not confuse people more. Can you agree to these modest requests? FloNight ♥♥♥ 12:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can and do agree to the request that all accounts I use between now and such time as further community determinations are clearly made upon the matter will be clearly labelled as my own. I am aware of what evidence you have gathered in which you seem to imply I have done something deliberately unethical in even making such statements, as an admin, as inform anyone reading the comments that matters which were mentioned while I had been using another account have been taken care of (I believe that sometimes I had very good reasons for not using my admin account at the time the comments were made with a simple user account). I agree that it could be misleading, but it is hardly harmful to anyone, and it would sometimes probably have been more confusing to people if I had not posted such a note. I am fairly confident that in the over 6 years of my editing here, with upwards of 44,000 edits overall, that there are probably only about a half dozen cases, if that, where such events occurred, where some might construe there were 2 individuals having a conversation, if they actually bothered to notice the rather trivial remarks at all. I know there might perhaps be about the same number of edits where I did some editing on the same talk page within a short amount of time, usually, if not always, initially by mistake, and slightly more than that where edits to the same talk page were done at vastly different times, but I don't think there are more than a extremely small number of those either. ~ Kalki 12:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, your agreement to use only labeled accounts is limited. You do not agree to always edit with accounts that are clearly link to you. At some future time you want to use unlinked accounts again? That is what I take from your comment. Before we begin the VoC, this point needs to be clarified. FloNight ♥♥♥ 13:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it were not explicitly forbidden by some form of mandated edict of extreme IDIOCY I certainly would wish to use unlinked accounts again. That was always one of the several clearly stated reasons in Wikipedia policies why such an account might be legitimately created in the first place. To prevent different issues from spilling over into each other. What you seem to be proposing is that LONG STANDING legitimate reasons for creating such accounts now begin to be totally disregarded and forbidden. I don't know how long you have been active on the Wikimedia projects, but before the growing numbers of people with apparent ambitions to establish oligarchies among the various officials on the wikis, such absolute control and knowledge of a person's editing activities were such things as were not considered desirable. There is clearly a need for fighting clear vandals with all tools available, but NOT a need for monitoring and knowing all one can about clearly responsible general editors.
As Accountability, I quoted Wikipedia polices on the matter as of October 2007 (which seem to have mutated even further since), in contending about the issue, and had stated on User talk:Accountability page:

In any wiki a person might reluctantly enter into particular disputes such as often arise when dealing with extreme forms of religious or political fanaticism under one username and thus not be so subject to being regularly disturbed and interrupted as he or she goes about making less contentious contributions to many other articles under another. This had long been recognized as a legitimate reason for multiple accounts, as in the Wikipedia policies regarding : Legitimate uses of multiple accounts:

Keeping heated issues in one small area

Some editors use different accounts in talk pages to avoid conflicts about a particular area of interest turning into conflicts based upon user identity and personal attacks elsewhere, or to avoid harassment outside of Wikipedia. A person participating in a discussion of an article about abortion, for example, might not want to allow other participants an opportunity to extend that discussion or engage them in unrelated or philosophically motivated debate outside the context of that article.

Frankly there is at least one name I would not now openly identify as mine, even though I might conceivably never use it again, simply because it would provide my birth name to people, and the current situation has shattered what degrees of trust I had in the common sense discretion of people involved in being CUs, and even their understanding and acceptance of some Foundational Wiki policies and practices. ~ Kalki 15:01, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am quite aware that my case in regards to the numbers of my names is an extreme one, hard for others to sympathize with, and quite outside of normal practices of people who are NOT vandals, but also certainly not yet a forbidden one; yet I also know I have never misused these names in any deliberate way, and have rarely sought in any way to inhibit or remove potentially useful options available to those who did respect the mandated and truly necessary rules. ~ Kalki 15:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since you edited many controversial topics with your main account Kalki account AND several other user names, I do not think that you were using the segregated account reasoning as it was intended. And it is always on the person creating an alternative account to use it in a way that is above reproach. It an account does get noticed then it would not be appropriate to make misleading comments in order to keep the link from being discovered. In more than one instance, misleading statements were made to keep the identify of the account unknown. FloNight ♥♥♥ 15:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is NOTHING that anyone can do in this world that is "above reproach" from someone's perspectives. Some people resent other people simply existing at all, especially if they exist with some forms of greater capacities or will of action than they. I did seek to retain my privacy, and not provide too many strong clues to any aspects of my personal identity. That some very rare examples of my actions to protect my privacy, or knowledge of my regular use of alternate accounts were "misleading" in some ways, I do acknowledge, that they were maliciously misleading, I deny, and that they were deliberately dishonest I also deny, though I know that there might be some instances where it might be very difficult or impossible to prevent very reasonable suspicions of that. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 23:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps if using multiple accounts was causing you to be deceptive, then you needed to stop using them. That seems like the obvious answer to me. There is absolutely no reason for someone to need to use these accounts in the manner that you did. It is possible to use a single alternative account for a specific purpose without raising concerns. But that is far away from what occurred here. FloNight ♥♥♥ 23:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikiquote:Votes of confidence/Kalki

Please see Wikiquote:Votes of confidence/Kalki. Cirt (talk) 21:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New RC patrolling concept

Hello, is there any needs to add the site in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21517? JackPotte 15:44, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary Hover: a JavaScript on double-click

Wikinews proposes a script to display the Wiktionary definition in a small board, when one double-click on a word. It's already been installed in the following Wiktionairies gadgets: in French and in Italian. The interface of the board depends on the user's language preferences.

To add it here, we should vote for an administrator, in:

MediaWiki:Gadget-dictionaryLookupHover.js, copies without the guillemets : "importScriptURI('http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-dictionaryLookupHover.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');"
MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition, adds "* dictionaryLookupHover|dictionaryLookupHover.js"
MediaWiki:Gadget-dictionaryLookupHover, describes the gadget. JackPotte 15:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Request for feedback on Ernest Seyd

Ningauble rightly points out that my recent change to the Ernest Seyd page is quite different from other Wikiquote material. I realize that and did expect that there would be some reaction to it.

The "quote" from Ernest Seyd was already here. I think it needs to be debunked and I'd like to give some background on it so that it's not just "he said v. he said". The story's not really told anywhere on the Web. Perhaps Wikipedia would be a better place for most of it—currently "Crime of 1873" just redirects to "Coinage Act of 1873". On the other hand, on WP it might be criticized as too much original research.

I'd like to know how others feel about this type of material. Personally, I think Wikiquote could use more of it. It wouldn't be appropriate to add long anecdotes to the Abraham Lincoln page, but for Ernest Seyd, I think it is appropriate.

I think it could be a significant advantage for Wikiquote to have background information where it is interesting. I like books such as The Quote Verifier and They Never Said It, but they can only cover a few quotes. And books like The Yale Book of Quotations can only include a few short notes here and there. For Wikiquote, there's no real length limitation for the site as a whole. It's a strength of the web, and Wikiquote should go with that strength. It's not going to be used by uncritical quote-dump web sites.

We've entered a golden age of quote research thanks to sites like Google Books, the Internet Archive, Project Gutenburg, the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, the Collected Work of Abraham Lincon, etc. (Did I mention Google Books?) Wikiquote should seize the day, and become the definitive source for quotations: comprehensive, authoritative, and interesting.

While we have to watch out for pages being too long or too cluttered, for the site as a whole, more is better. We should be bold and make Wikiquote more than any quote book can be.

KHirsch 19:35, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

KHirsch - IMHO, what you are essentially asserting is that this is a disputed quote.

The format of the explanatory content may be different than others might have used, but this is not a unique situation.

FWIW, I agree that context is important and in some cases essential, if a quote is to be properly understood. That's just my opinion; I am not in any sense an authority, nor would I even claim to be a significant contributor here at Wikiquote.

If I had been making this edit, I might have considered putting the full story of this hoax on a page at Wikipedia, along with a briefer version of the story here at Wikiquote, with a reference pointing to the Wikipedia page as a source for more information. CononOfSamos (talk) 02:23, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Restrict Kalki to one account during Vote of confidence

Please see Wikiquote:Administrators'_noticeboard#Kalki_refusing_to_restrict_to_one_account_during_Vote_of_confidence. Cirt (talk) 07:55, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I state there and elsewhere, Cirt's efforts to impel me to not use accounts (which are openly identified as my own, upon their user pages), for making legitimate edits to pages are actions which I view as merely efforts to reduce the profile and clarity of some of my own developing arguments in defense of my assertions that such alternate accounts should not be restricted, save in the ways they always have been, such as not being used to make fraudulent votes. In part of my developing arguments I wish to present what I had planned to do with a few of these accounts, and what I now intend to do with them now that they are openly declared to be mine, if not prevented by new rules further restricting editing activity here. I do believe they could yet play a role in making this site more interesting, appealing, and the ongoing debate can yet play an educational role for all involved. Even Wikipedia is not so absolutely restrictive on the use of usernames as some have strongly implied things should become here, and this is NOT Wikipedia where the primary task is to compose accurate expressions about people or things, but simply to quote ideas already expressed by others, with sources cited, and, where it seems necessary or appropriate, to provide a few informational notes to provide them proper context. As the origins of the actual text is provided by the sources, not by the contributing editors, identifying contributors in any way is far less important a thing. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 10:44, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is simply a central notice for users to be notified about the proposal at AN. There is no need for TLDR. Cirt (talk) 10:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I simply do not choose to let overly simplistic assessments which are highly skewed to displaying only one position about legitimacy of actions go without some response. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 10:55, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And simply noting "Please see [link]" (above), is not "highly skewed to displaying only one position". It is just a link to another page where the discussion is taking place. Cirt (talk) 10:57, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Simply linking "Kalki_refusing_to_restrict_to_one_account_during_Vote_of_confidence" which is a very simplistically summarization, strongly implies I am doing or have done something innately wrong in refusing to comply with your particular requests. I have complied, and shall continue to comply with the entirely reasonable request not to use any accounts NOT clearly identified as mine. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 11:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is just a link. The explanation is at the other page. Cirt (talk) 11:12, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Spam blacklist

Moved to MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#Spam_blacklist. Cirt (talk) 23:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Questions to help with Wikimedia Strategy.

Hi Wikiquotians.

I've come over from strategy.wikimedia.org. We're interested to know two things about how you work here on Wiktiquote.

First, do you have any competitions? On en:wp there are quite a few different competitions that seem to help motivate editors to do good work and more of it.

Here's an example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CUP

More can be found at:

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_awards_and_rewards#Contests

Does Wikiquote run anything like that?

Also on en:wp there are a number of WikiProjects which help editors to bond as smaller communities within the larger one.

Here's an example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history

More can be found at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WIKIPROJECT

Can you point to any sort of sub-communities within Wikiquote which help editors bond as a smaller group within the project as a whole?

Answers to these questions will be valuable to us as we work on Wikimedia Strategy. I will be grateful for any information you can provide. --bodnotbod 18:07, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, Wikiquote does not run any contests. This is a small community, without organized subgroups. There is a Copyright Cleanup Project, which is not so much a sub-community as a clearinghouse page for all interested editors. ~ Ningauble 19:13, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Ningauble (I would still appreciate input from others too). So would you say that, for the most part, people on English Wikiquote tend to know each other? I'm also interested to hear what people on Wikiquote think about their community; are you losing good editors? Are there any ongoing frustrations that long-term editors experience they wish would go away? How does the community handle new people that come to the project and who may make mistakes? --bodnotbod 15:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to Copyright Cleanup, I know of Wikiquote:Bartlett's 1919 Index. And the Quote of the day is a collaborative effort as well. I think that contests could be very doable for this project and could bring in more users that stayed active here. FloNight ♥♥♥ 17:06, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My impression, as a long-time (but low-volume) wikiquotian is that there are a very few high-volume editors who do most of the dirty work (vandalism, copyvio cleanup, etc.) and a large number of subject-specific editors (like me) who work on relatively few pages but deeply within those subjects. Many of these subjects are followed by only one or two editors. (We see this in both the popular-culture pages, which see the greatest amount of anon/newbie "churn", and in more literary/historical pages.) As for group projects and whatnot, the closest I think WQ has come to that is the "Quote of the Day" project, which I left a few years ago because I did not like the way the administrator who ran it was treating the contributions of other editors. (Saying things like "well, X clearly has the most votes, but I don't think it's uplifting/serious/important enough for this day so I'm going to use Y instead".) 121a0012 02:12, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Saying things like you just said, I believe is an extreme distortion of the attitudes I have exhibited to people's rankings and votes in selecting the QOTD in the last several years. It is extremely rare that I have not gone with the top ranked quotes, and usually that is because of some exceptional occurrence like a recent death. I know that I might have not always pleased everyone in all my selections, but it has been very rare that my fairness in making the final selections has been questioned, the most vocal and prolific protestations thus far being done by Zarbon, whose suggestions have nonetheless often been used, sometimes even when I myself have had an extreme distaste for them, but felt that I had to go with the top ranked quotes, despite low participation by others, which gave those few which he doesn't rank extremely low a definite advantage. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 02:29, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

protect

how do you protect a page ~ Anthony 5432 20:41, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Only administrators can do that.--Ole.Holm 10:25, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My Quote. Let it stand for time and open the minds of all who shall pass through

This is the quote from Damon Stone

Some have told me "the glass is half full". Others have told me "the glass is half empty". "In another dimension The glass is overflowing" < This is the part I would like to say is mine. I have no intention on saying the first 2 lines are anything to do with me. But I tend to think outside the box due to my Unfortunate or fortunate brain wiring

TO BE CLEAR

MY QUOTE unless somone can prove it has been said or quoted previous to this is

In another dimension the glass is overflowing

Im unfamiliar with this "wikiquote" Please feel free to edit and place my quote in it,s propper place and or point out where this has been said or done before.

I am the person in charge of Qualia Qualia Saintlike. AVATAR Famous inside Entropia only . The Name Qualia Qualia Saintlike is Just a nickname i decided was most aporpriate for the type of game i was going to make a nickname for. I do not intend to have it as a quote or other.

Let it be said I made this quote avalible to the world and all may use as long as they know who said it first. Admin e mail me or just set this quote into its propper home and let all passing be inspired

—This unsigned comment is by Qualia420 (talk • contribs) .

At this point, the only appropriate place for such a quote would be on your user pages, as articles should not contain anything more than brief, relatively innocuous comments by the editors, which provide factual information for quotes of already famous individuals or works. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 14:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Category question

Y Resolved

Thought I'd see what people thought about a category I was thinking of adding before I started. I've set up a Portal for the University of Oxford on Wikipedia (here) and one of the possible inter-project links is a link to Wikiquote. However, there's no obvious target at present; I suppose I could link to a search page, but that would include false positives such as books published by Oxford University Press. One possibility would be to group together academics and alumni of the University in a category (or each in their own category?), linked in some way to Category:People. It would connect people such as Robert Burton, Brian Klug, Fergus Millar and various others. Any thoughts on whether this is a good idea, the name (if not just Category:University of Oxford) and the parent structure? Bencherlite 13:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would that be just academics of the university (that would include Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien) or university graduates too? And if we have this, what other universities?--Ole.Holm 14:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(Doh! Forgot to check on here for the obvious names like Lewis and Tolkien... just did a "search" for "Oxford University"!) I was thinking of perhaps one for academics and one for alumni. An alternative, I suppose, would be to have a page entitled "University of Oxford" with links on that to the Wikiquote pages of academics/alumni - or would Wikiquote convention mean that a page entitled "University of Oxford" would be for quotes about the University? As for which other universities, I'd do the same for the University of Cambridge, for the same WP portal-based reason, but I don't know how far beyond that you'd want to go - presumably only if there are enough names for a university to make a category worthwhile. Bencherlite 15:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We generally categorize people by occupation, including field of study, and sometimes by schools of thought, but not by institutional affiliation (except for officeholders) or alma mater. I don't think this would really add value, and would lead to categorizing people into granfalloons that have little or no bearing on the ideas quoted. ~ Ningauble 17:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree with Ningauble - I just don't see the value for most users of doing this. And where would it end? Would we have categories for every school? ~ UDScott 17:20, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, this is why I asked here first rather than charge ahead on a Project with whose customs I'm unfamiliar, particularly when there wasn't an existing category structure into which this idea would fit. To repeat an earlier question, though, would University of Oxford, with links to the existing Wikiquote pages of academics and alumni, be permitted? Or should University of Oxford instead assemble quotations about the university? Or neither? Bencherlite 18:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A page on University of Oxford would have to be a theme page, and should contain quotes about the university itself - provided that these are "quotable" quotes! BD2412 T 22:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this; as the portal already has a "selected quotation" section, with 25 (at present) randomly-selected quotations about the university, it seems pointless for me to go over the same ground twice here by creating a theme page. But if anyone else is interested, 25 relevant quotations, with citations, are sitting waiting for you at w:Portal:University of Oxford/Selected quotation. Bencherlite 23:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Geography-stub

I've created {{Geography-stub}} I see there is a Category:Places. Should I have called it "Places-stub"? I much prefer my name, but will stop using it pending advice. Ningauble says

I don't have a strong preference, but I think I like "Place-stub" better because it could be used to sweep in odd little articles about buildings, schools, &tc. that show up occasionally. On the other hand, they are fairly rare, and could just as well be treated as generic themes. So, I dunno.

--Ole.Holm 20:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How to add a box at the top of an article for "Recommended to merge/move to ..."

As is probably common knowledge around here, the Christianity article is often debated as NPOV. There have been at least 3 instances on the talk page for that article to clear it up (by removing all the specifically anti-Christian quotes, which constitute the majority of the page), and they all received an answer in the form of, "Wikiquote's policy to achieve balance in articles is to add, not remove. So if you have any relevant, good pro-Christianity quotes to make this article how you would think it's more balanced, go ahead and add them" leaving them off with the unfacable project of adding hundreds of pro-Christian quotes, so nobody does it, and the problem remains. Now, I understand the whole idea of "add, don't remove," but there are so many anti-Christian quotes (a ton of the articles on that page aren't even about Christianity, or even mention it. Many are anti-God, anti-religion, anti-creation, etc. There are even Quran quotes and the like. All of the which are valid to be on WQ, but not on the Christianity article unless they deal with Christianity) that if a pro-Christianity quote were added for every anti-Christianity one, it would unnecessarily flood the page.

So what I want to do to resolve this issue is split that article into two new articles: "Pro-Christianity" and "Anti-Christianity"

What I'm wondering is, how would I go around putting a note box (like the current "neutrality is disputed" one) on the top of this page recommending that the page be merged/moved/split into two new (to be created) articles.

In its current state, it is just unacceptable, and to be honest, is kind of putting me off from WikiQuotes, which has a lot of potential to work. 209.173.122.191 05:06, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you add sound to your home page?

Eh, tenured wikiquotians!!!

Um, the reference desk is getting somewhat ignored, I'm wondering if everyone experienced here's on vacation or busy.... I'm a noob who's been taking a break for a while, but if I have to I'll take over for a bit at the reference desk. A bit of help would be appreciated :) . . . . !

Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 03:08, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We have a reference desk? BD2412 T 00:19, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prepare to be amazed: Wikiquote:Reference_desk! --Aphaia 07:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Black and white movies-30's&40's a la TCM

Actor and Actress unknown, to me . { Title unknown } : Her head turns to his , 10 inches from his ear , she says " Too much kindness is bad because it kills ambition." ( To good to pass up; have many more, where should they be Situated ? } Thank you .

Selection of images and possible use of Wikiprojects as a personal gallery

There have been accounts in several projects that replace images from Commons:User:Cme in articles where far better images are available. Some of them have already been blocked due to more disruptive behaviours, but user:Pediainsight is still active in English Wikipedia and Wikiquote ([2] [3] [4] [5]; he even puts his images in place of others that were declared featured pictures in Commons due to their quality [6] [7]). In Wikipedia other users have already warned him [8]. In Wikiquote I seem to be the only one that's taken part, and he ignores my requests here (as in other projects). Could some other userr act somehow? Thanks. --Javierme 21:27, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am aware that the selection of images can sometimes be contentious, and a matter of taste and various sensibilities. I have restored the image of waterfalls which you prefer to the Water page, as it seems more impressive and appropriate, but though some images fail to impress as fully appropriate on the chess page, I don't see that there is anything clearly inferior to the disputed selections there. I would recommend a slightly smaller image size and don't see that the Bobby Fischer image making a face which you both seem to accept as all that appropriate to a general Chess page, though it would be fully appropriate on his page. I am currently attending to many other things other than wikiquote issues, but just thought I would make a few very brief comments here. In the very few cases where there have thus far been contentions about images, they have usually been settled into generally acceptable selections after some discussion. It can take a little time for general preferences of those who wish to get involved in any such disputes to become clear though. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 22:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have just used an uncropped version of the Bobby Fischer image I mentioned above, which makes it somewhat more appropriate to the page, as it does show a chess board and not just a smiling person. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 22:52, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to feel we have too many photos on some pages. We should if possible have one, such as a picture of the person on a page devoted to him/her (and I have added a few myself) but some are overloaded.--Ole.Holm 10:19, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it'd be possible to have just one image per page, if there was a consensus on it. I don't think four images are too many in a page with 70 quotations in, but I'd follow that guideline if it was a general preference in this wiki (in which case, it would rather be explained in the MoS or in help pages). As a comparison, policy in es.wq is "Avoid inserting an excessive amount of images in the same article. Galleries are welcome in Commons, not in Wikiquote. Placing several images may fit an article with a long text, but not a brief one". Another guide in the same page is that it's generally recomended not to specify size of images, so that each user can see thumbnails in the size selected in their preferences, but size may be specified in the placement or size of file requires it. But I'd understand each wiki to have different rules in matters of aesthetics. For instance, it also seems that it.wq don't use quotations as captions below the images in order to avoid priviledging some quotations over others, which is completely different to the usual practice in English or Spanish Wikiquote. --Javierme 23:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think use of properly illustrative images is fine, particularly in theme articles. We should probably have a guideline relating to the total size of the article, however. BD2412 T 00:49, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't insist on alimit of one per page, but would argue that some have too many. Miguel de Cervantes has twelve, including one of modern windmills to illustrate the quote about windmills.--Ole.Holm 19:51, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that the buildings in File:Campo de Criptana Molinos de Viento 2.jpg are traditional windmills of La Mancha, like the ones that inspired Cervantes, so the image is good for the caption. Of course we can doubt if the quote is so notable as to be a caption in a WQ article. --Javierme 22:56, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote project organization at www.wikiquote.org

Hello. I am an admin on Bosnian Wikiquote [9] project and I have a question regarding the main Wikiquote page located on the www.wikiquote.org address. I noticed that there are 10 languages prominently placed in what looks like a “circle of friends” :) predominantly representing 10 wikiquote projects with most number of articles. Bosnian wikiquote project has well over 3400 articles and it is a mutually understandable language for nearly 25 milion people predominantly living in the Balkans. My question is, would it be possible to include Bosnian language into this prominent circle of wikiquote projects either as additional language or as a replacement for one of the languages with less articles. This would help us generate more traffic on our project and attract more users who read and understand Bosnian language to our sizable library of quotes.

I am not sure if this is a place to ask for this so any information about how to go about this request will be appreciated. Thanks --Dado 17:32, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That portal page does look a bit out of date because it does not reflect the current ten largest projects, nor does it list all of the currently active projects. I am not sure who maintains the page, as it is external to the wiki. If you raise the issue at meta:Wikimedia Forum, someone there should be able to update it using current statistics. ~ Ningauble 13:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The specific talk for that page is meta:Talk:Www.wikiquote.org template, and there any user can request an update. If selection was made merely on the current number of articles, Bosnian WQ would replace the French one, since bs-WQ is currently the tenth. But if the other criterium mentioned by Dado (the amount of people that understand the language) was taken into account, not only fr-WQ should remain, but also other languages could be considered before Bosnian. --Javierme 23:12, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information --Dado 19:44, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]