RationalWiki:Serious Business

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Listen up, people.

I apologise for ignoring all rules, being bold, and climbing the Reichstag dressed as spiderman, but I thought that I should take action here. Tempers are raised, we've already hit the stage of Godwin's Law being invoked, and everyone's fairly cross.

As such, to quote ED, we should 'ban ****ing everyone'. Only 20 minutes, but I think some cool-out time would be good for all of us. Perhaps when we come back, things will be better.

Disclaimer - I know full well that some of you had nothing to do with any of this, and for that I'm sorry. I just felt that it had to be everyone in order to avoid any allegations of injustice. See you in 20 minutes! --מְתֻרְגְּמָן שְׁלֹום
 * I'm sorry, but I was taking a shower. What's going on?  -- 19:35, 24 February 2008 (EST)
 * Massive, karajou/Jazzman/Hoji drama. --LOL HAX, the test account
 * Prologue: At CP, Karajou made a remark about Liberals in the military, Hoji found it offensive and proceeded to vandalize CP with a heated retort.
 * The war: Helpjazz Godspeed'ed one of Hoji's sock with a block message that implied he was immature, Hoji responded in Jazz' RW userpage with another heated retort, Jazz made another comment about immaturity and then they were blocked, Hoji by Human and Helpjazz by SusanG, he was quickly unblocked. He then went to Suzy's talk page to protest his block, replied and apparently Helpjazz thought he was being blocked for his CP comment. I lost track of the events here.
 * Epilogue: Everybody got murdered by Interpreted.

NightFlareSpeak, mortal 20:12, 24 February 2008 (EST)

OK, I'm out. I listened to Jonathan Coulton's song 'Still Alive' while reading up on some lolcats. I am calm. Caaaaaaallllllllmmmmmm. Well ... --מְתֻרְגְּמָן שְׁלֹום


 * *shrug* I invoked Godwin's Law on myself so I am done. 19:56, 24 February 2008 (EST)
 * I think I'll wait for False Flag's commentary on R-Wikiwki. -- AKjeldsen Godspeed! 20:17, 24 February 2008 (EST)

Forum
I can't seem to log into the forum any more. Genghis Marauding 06:35, 25 February 2008 (EST)
 * Do you get an error message or anything? -- AKjeldsen Godspeed! 07:01, 25 February 2008 (EST)
 * No error message, just sent back to the forum list. However, it must be my PC as I found I can log on from my other machines and also with Firefox on the same machine. Maybe another reboot is needed. :( [[Image:jollyfish.gif|25px]]Genghis  Marauding 07:27, 25 February 2008 (EST)
 * That usually helps, and maybe clearing the cache and/or the forum cookie. Otherwise let me know if there's still problems. -- AKjeldsen Godspeed! 07:42, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Will someone unlock TK's talk page?
Please? TmtamesP 15:12, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * When you do, add this statement at the end of the current discussion: "It is entirely in the site's interest to fake a sock of TK, just for the effect of extending his block. Thus, unless TK actually admits it was a sock (which isn't against any rules anyway), we should not extend his block. Lurker 15:19, 28 February 2008 (EST)"
 * fake sock? No way.  "Ghost of TK" is so not a fake sock. TmtamesP 15:21, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * Who ever talked about extending anyone's block, except for you? -- AKjeldsen Godspeed! 15:23, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * I was talking about this, though when I read it again, it seems like he was talking about ending TK's block early? That kinda blows my mind, though, if that's what he meant. Lurker 15:26, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * My lobbying efforts must be paying off. TmtamesP 15:27, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * PalMD - if it isn't really TK, then he is impersonating another user, which isn't all too dandy either. -- Hoji die! 15:30, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * Why on Earth would we want him back? --Gulik 15:31, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * Just bein' nice. If it returns, well, all bets are off-- [[Image:Asclepius staff.png|8px]]-PalMD -- 15:35, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * Wait, do you really think its TK's sock? TmtamesP 15:36, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * Hell, I think you're TKs sock, but who cares?-- [[Image:Asclepius staff.png|8px]]-PalMD -- 15:36, 28 February 2008 (EST)
 * I've actually always thought the same about you... TmtamesP 15:37, 28 February 2008 (EST)

question on cleaning up links
So, I was doing my civic duty, of cleaning "empty" (i.e., redtext) links, and found that many of the links are caused by copys of posts from what I assume are Conservapedia users. "Usertalk:SliverTongue" as an example, links to Democrat, Democratic, Liberal, and other fun things.

In your (the great collective your) opinion, should these links be changed, or is that violating the idea that you are copying text from CP? Thanks for opinions, Kip.--WaitingforGodot 22:17, 10 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I think we actually have a template that can be used, but I have no idea what it's called any more ("red"?), that makes the "link" look red, but no longer really a link. Also, they can be "nowiki"d so show intent and kill the "wanted page".  It depends on the environment what action would be appropriate, I suppose.  ħ uman  22:33, 10 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Human is referring to  : )   03:27, 12 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Thank you RA! What will we ever do when we are one hundred times bigger?  ħ uman  03:46, 12 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I don't know about you, but when I'm one hundred times baggier I'll write like this.  04:17, 12 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Good for you...  ħ uman  04:38, 12 July 2008 (EDT)
 * WaitingforGodot - good to see you working on this stuff. It might even inspire me to get back to work. :-)  Could you post some links to the articles where you see this happening a lot? If we had some examples it would be easier to say, "Ah, in that particular case we should probably do xx".  Cheers. --Bobbing up 08:34, 12 July 2008 (EDT)

Serious v snark
on talk:Ann Coulter Jimaginaor brought up a valid point:

Never mind what he was referring to in this instance but aren't we in danger of reducing our impact by leavening every (almost) article with snark & humour? Look at what we had to do with Andrew Schlafly - create a non-snarky version for public consumption. Even our serious woo articles have inbuilt snark mostly. If we are to be taken seriously we should do something like we did with AS & produce straight articles as additions to the snarky ones. I know we have a lot of straight articles but they're not obvious to strangers who might be put off by the (somewhat idiosyncratic) humour which they find on first approach. 12:09, 27 August 2008 (EDT)
 * I think you're right. Perhaps put all the snarky ones in Fun: then, and create proper (boring) articles? But what about the half snark, half serious ones? Totnesmartin 12:17, 27 August 2008 (EDT)
 * I don't think it needs so radical an action - perhaps a \snark/humour\ warning on affected pages, with a link to a page with a more in-depth serious approach?  12:29, 27 August 2008 (EDT)
 * Is it a systemic problem or a problem for particular articles that draw more than their fair share of snark? I think a balance is often reached with articles that I have watched develop. I think the political lightening rod articles like Coulter, Bush, the Schlaflys, etc. will always be pretty far on the "snark" end of the scale. I think this is a product of the frustration people feel in response to these figures and mockery is an easy mechanism of passive aggression that feels better for having done it.
 * But our flagship articles, and the major goals of the site in regards to pseudoscience and the like, they seem to develop much more on the serious side of the scale? Do our articles like homeopathy, water memory, vaccine hysteria have too much "snark"? What exactly are we encompassing when we talk snark? Any jokes? Mockery? Parody? What about something like Esther Hicks which is mocking in tone, but serious in its attempt to address the topic? Is that too much? Sometimes calling bullshit bullshit requires a bit of mockery.
 * I think the use of "in jokes" should be curtailed and isolated to talk pages or fun articles. A lot of our article start off as mostly snark cause it is easy to "stub" an article that way. Like the current wiki4CAM article, there is not much to write yet, so all there is to really say is a few jokes and be on your way. Most of the time, to me at least, it seems that as articles develop more and more serious information gets put in. What are some examples of articles that people think prevent us from being taken seriously? The most helpful examples for me are ones that are outside the realm of what I called the political lightening rod articles. Those I think are just destined to be what they are. 15:22, 27 August 2008 (EDT)
 * I disagree with why we created AS (no jokes) - it wasn't for the "public", it was for a very small sub-group of people who likely share most of Andy's biases. Personally I have no problem with the level of humor pervading the site, and I think (I would hope) most readers can tell the difference.  ħ uman  16:06, 27 August 2008 (EDT)

Random pages
(Asking here because I don't where else to) Last night I was using Random Page to wander about the site - unfortunately it only took me to mainspace articles, no Fun:, RW:, of CP: pages come up. Is there a way of fixing this so people using it to explore see the masses of stuff that they're missing? Totnesmartin 04:03, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

Duplicate Articles & Redirects
I've come across a few duplicate articles around RW (e.g. Year 2000 problem & Y2K, or Eastern Orthodox & Eastern Orthodox Church). These can be merged with a certain amount of work (I'm gonna try & do the Eastern Orthodox one later), but could probably be avoided with more redirects.

What's the RW policy on this? Personally if I write a new article, I also do redirects for the single, plural & basic variants (e.g. Puritan, Puritans, Puritanism) but I see a lot of articles that don't have this, which I find inconvenient when searching & writing internal links. E.g. it means writing "[[pagan]]s", for example, rather than "[[pagans]]", & often involves previewing my edit several times while finding the link I want by trial & error.

I remember seeing a discussion about this sometime recently & other people weren't keen on having many redirects around. So what's the consensus?  w easeLOId ~ 08:56, 12 September 2008 (EDT)
 * Sounds like a sensible suggestion to me.--Bobbing up 12:54, 6 October 2008 (EDT)

InputBox installation?
Could Extension:InputBox be installed?--Ipatrol 20:11, 20 February 2009 (EST)
 * You should ask here -- Nx  talk 20:15, 20 February 2009 (EST)