User talk:OrchWyn

Hello OrchWyn! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 23:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply] Getting started Wikipedia tutorial • The five pillars of Wikipedia How to: edit a page • upload and use images Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Attribution • Neutral point of view • Notability Conflict of interest • Autobiography Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Citing sources • Footnotes Image use policy • Copyrights • Fair use External links • Spam • Vandalism Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry What Wikipedia is not • Deletion policy The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The "perfect" article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General - Spam - Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Why on earth are you cluttering up articles with "USA" or "in the United States" for places like New York City and Portola, California? --Orange Mike 18:09, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because 95% of people in the world are not American and a global encyclopedia should treat all countries the same. OrchWyn 18:27, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes; but standard usage in this project is to link to the place intended, unless there is any ambiguity. If there is some ambiguity (which "Paris" is meant, for example), then additional links are used. But there is no need to add USA to Portola, California, when there is only one California! That just generates clutter. --Orange Mike 23:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely there is. The idea is to tell people where a place is. This is standard encyclopedic practice and standard Wikipedia practice. It is nonsense to claim that it is at variance with Wikipedia practice - however there is a well known problem with Americans - to a vastly greater extent than anyone else - not bothering to provide this basic piece of information because they are the most insular nation on earth and think everything is American unless specified otherwise. It is hard to see anyone but an American thinking that this is not necessary for places in his country. There are a lot of complaints in Wikipedia about the sort of U.S. centrism, that you are presenting as a positive good. U.S. centrism is one of the most frequent and well-justified criticisms of Wikipedia. You are effectively saying that U.S. states should be treated as being at the same level as independent countries. That sort of attitude gives offence to millions of non-Americans. It harms the international standing of your country and undermines the respect that people can feel for individual Americans. Many sensitive and globally aware Americans find it embarrassing. OrchWyn 19:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You seem determined to take offense for no comprehensible reason. I would have had a similar reaction if you were sticking United Kingdom after Edinburgh, Scotland or People's Republic of China after Beijing or Ethiopia after Addis Addaba, every time they appeared. (And need I remind you that in fact California has a population equal to many if not most members of the United Nations?) I myself have spent too much time as a world federalist, United Nations Association member, and Esperantist to be guilt-tripped into your ideas about what "sensitive and globally aware Americans" think; I'm painfully aware of what US-centric, insular, monolingual Americans are like, and what US-centric edits look like. That's got nothing to do with what you were doing, which I found more pointless and time-consuming than offensive. There are forums on Wikipedia to discuss issues like these, you know. --Orange Mike 19:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am not taking offence for no reason, but because of the myopic U.S. centrism that offends millions of non-Americans every day. It is standard practice to state where places are in this and very other encyclopedia. They allegation that I am adding USA after every mention of the name is utterly incorrect as you should know if you had been paying attention to my edits. I am adding it after the first mention of the name. You are being absurdly inconsistent, saying that U.S. centrism is bad, but then saying that California is too big for it to matter. There are states in China and India that are much bigger than California, but it is standard practice to say that anything in them is in India or China. It is past understanding that you can make claims about how things are done on Wikipedia that are so patently false. The only pointless and time consuming thing here are your out-of-touch-with-reality comments, which are slowing my efforts to improve wikipedia. OrchWyn 22:48, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

Can I ask why you have edited this category and changed it from having Category:East Riding of Yorkshire to Category:Geography of the East Riding of Yorkshire? The reason I am asking is because the new category you have placed it in does not exist?

Keith D 11:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't realise that. Nearly all counties have a geography category. The East Riding should have one too. OrchWyn 11:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, OrchWyn. I'd suggest waiting to see what Evilclown has to say before bringing out the lynch mob. But if you do have a pressing problem with someone, we have several avenues for that such as dispute resolution, requests for comment and, as a last resort, the arbitration committee, which can rule for administrators to be "desysopped" (have their administrators' tools taken away) in extreme cases. Hope that helps. Grandmasterka 03:06, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey there. Sorry, but I don't don't feel comfortable reverting another admin's decision without hearing what he has to say first. Also, I don't think there is "a false impression that the powers that be have already made their decision"—pretty much no decision is ever final on Wikipedia, and I'm sure those who commented on the discussion are aware of that :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 03:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So regardless of whether admins or right or wrong, you will always back them out of some form of class solidarity. That's no exactly going to encourage us serfs to stick with the project. As for not giving an impression, that just won't do. Of course it does. It is very clear in this case that previous abuses have facilitated more recent abuses, and you are letting that go unchecked. OrchWyn 13:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_January_3#Category:Antisemitism...thanks. Ra2007 (talk) 21:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]