User talk:S Marshall/Archive36

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• Ooooooooh. I've just wikistalked you in a slightly creepy fashion. Please tell me you're going to fix Norse religion? I don't have your academic qualifications on that, but I do have an interest and some sources!—S Marshall T/C 16:49, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Don't worry, I do that to all sorts of people; I'm an inveterate gnome. However, I really wish there were someone else I could fob that task off onto. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:01, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

• I'm afraid you can't "fob it off" on me! I'm willing but I'd make a hash of it out of sheer ignorance. I have an interest and a bookshelf, and that's all really. But I am interested and I'd like to help, if I can be, you know, helpful. Can I ask you two questions?

Firstly, is it fair to say that right now, we've got an article that's called "Norse religion" but whose actual subject is myth, magic and the supernatural in pre-Christian Scandinavia?

Secondly, do you feel that the Norse really "worshipped" their gods at all? As opposed to placating them, I mean.

All the best—S Marshall T/C 21:28, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

(I should be in bed. I found myself trying to calm down by ... looking at the projected track of Hurricane Harvey and recalling the places there that I once knew. Ay-yi-yi.) "Religion" is a slippery thing to define, and discussing it tends to bring out unexamined assumptions from one's own belief system. In any case, most of our data comes through a very long lens: we can't assume we have a balanced set of data, and the mismatches between archaeology and placenames on the one hand and Snorri's tidy picture on the other should urge caution. Also, in any society people differ. There are religious maniacs and unbelievers (I really can't speak to the state of the article at present, the other rewriter is still making changes, but I think the so-called Godless Men are another thing that needs to be added. Of course, they are usually seen as a product of the stresses as the religion lost to Christianity—and it was a brutal process in Scandinavia.) and literalists and philosophers and people who simply don't care about such matters, as well as ambitious people who use that as a way to get ahead, which is what happened with the institution of the goðorð. Honestly, and based on the need for neutrality and for clarity for all readers, not just those sharing one religious background, I believe the article should simply present what is known—which includes the lack of a term corresponding to Latin religio—and what is hypothesised and not get into whether that suits specific definitions of "religion". I strongly suspect the same issue has arisen with most indigenous/tribal religions (whatever the safest term is these days). It's true—and there's a quote I'll be digging up if we aren't already using it, I believe it's from Lindow—that "Norse mythology" is often used as a proxy term for "Norse religion". That's basically because we are tremendously blessed in how much Old Norse literature we have preserved, and how much mythology it contains (after all, the allusions in skaldic poetry ensured that a mass of stuff was recorded at least in brief summary) but we haven't historically had much archaeological evidence. ... Umm I'll stop my train of thought there :-) Anyway, on your second question: you may know that that the word "worship" is fraught. I am absolutely sure, and could give you tons of evidence, that the Norse did not merely placate their gods. But there's a gulf between those two extremes. If when you say "worship" what you have in mind is falling on their knees in awe, or davening, or following complex rituals, I can't think of a single piece of evidence for those kinds of worship, which is why I used "venerate" a couple of times, it seems a less freighted term. Think of it this way: Would someone from a different religious tradition think to regard eating in the yogic manner, meditating on Prakrit (excuse spelling) and separating the sweet and the sour with a drink, as a religious ritual? In any case, "Hávamál" is the closest thing to a religious text that we have from Norse religion, it's obviously a composite text, and it's singularly lacking in Commandments of the Mosaic kind and can be used to shock people, but have you seen Verses 144–45, especially the latter? Anyway, I will now go to bed. Thud. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:23, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

• I edit late at night too. I hope you don't wake up with the imprint of a keyboard on your face!

I started to write a reply and it turned into an analysis of the sources I have. I was looking at how they structure their high-level overviews of the subject.

In 2014 I went to the British Museum to see their Vikings exhibition. I got chatting to a very knowledgeable bloke who I think was a curator, or possibly some other kind of academic Lord High Lah-di-dah, and on his advice I finished up buying from the British Museum library ISBN 978-07141-23370 which I've already cited on the talk page and ISBN 978-07141-28313. (My wife also bought a copy of Judith Jesch's Women in the Viking Age but promptly lost it again when we moved up to Cambridgeshire. Is it worth re-purchasing?)

When I look through those two books, I see a different structure and order to the information than we have in our article.

ISBN 978-07141-28313 seems do to it bass ackwards. It starts off talking about conversion to Christianity, with a subsection on the Gosforth Cross. Then it talks about burial practices with a subsection on the Barra Burial, accompanied by a full-page illustration of a whalebone plaque which it suggests might be an ironing board^[1] or possibly something to do with the worship of Freyja, and then it talks about Christianity vs paganism (sic).

ISBN 978-07141-23370 has an orderly disquisition by Neil Price who seems to be widely-cited in recent literature and it's much more helpful. It begins by saying the Norse had no word for religion, no divine law, "no element of worship, obedience or even unreserved approval", and describes it as "a loosely-held and largely unformulated set of beliefs, customs and traditional knowledge".

Then it rattles through cosmogony, just naming and defining the parts ---- Ginnungagap, Asgard, Midgard, Utgard, Jotunheim, Hel, Yggdrasil, Bifrost, Askr and Embla. Then it gives us a whistlestop tour of the supernatural zoo, Aesir, Vanir, Norns, Disir, trolls, ogres, spirits, elves, dwarfs, etc.

Then it talks about the human relationship with the supernatural. "There is little evidence that the ordinary people of the Viking world regularly communed with these deities" ---- Price is implying that there were no prayers and people didn't go to "church", although he acknowledges the existence of holy spaces (some buildings, mostly outdoors). The text talks in terms of appeasing the supernatural and venerating ancestors.

Then he talks about holy buildings called horgrs (umlaut over the o but I'm currently too lazy to make that) and another kind of holy building called a ve (accent over the e). Then links them to a place called Gotavi in Sweden and the practice of blot (accent omitted).

Next it talks about water-offerings (bogs and rivers and tide-zones ---- which makes me wonder, is this what the Vikings did when they bent swords double and chucked them in rivers? a sword-sacrifice? ---- and then sacred groves, which it links to a text by Adam of Bremen.

Then we're on to Thor's hammers and such like. "People signalled their supernatural allegiances... with a variety of personal amulets". Mentions people wearing little silver chairs, female figures "traditionally interpreted as valkyries".

Next there's a colossal section entitled "Magic and sorcery", which I won't summarise because you've challenged whether it was strictly religious, but the text does go into a lot of detail about seithr, galdr and gandr. Lots about volva.

Next there's burial practices and dealing with the dead, lots of text but I find it curiously uninformative. I don't see anything that connects Norse burial customs with their religion. There seems to have been an awful lot of variety between burials.

It finishes up with a section on the conversion to Christianity. There's an arresting picture of a mould which has indentations for both crosses and Thor's hammers, as if one tradesman is selling both.

The total is thirty-odd pages. To me, a non-expert, it looks like a good blueprint for a high-level overview of the subject.

I tried to sanity-check this against ISBN 978-02978-67876, which is Neil Oliver's curiously rambling and undisciplined "Vikings: A History" and decided that's not a book to be lightly set aside. It should be hurled with great force. Although it's full of interesting detail and the structure is utterly useless to an encyclopaedist.

Next I went to ISBN 978-06708-43978, which is the English translation of Else Roesdahl's "The Vikings". Bit old for comfort, as sources go (1990 translation of 1987 original so it was written when I was doing my 'O'-levels).

That talks about the Aesir and the Vanir. Intriguing discussion of the disir which Roesdahl describes as Freyja's followers, "female beings who represented fertility". Then outside the Aesir and the Vanir she places the Norns, Valkyries, giants, Loki, Fenrir and Jormundgandr.

Roesdahl implies an absence of priests. "... the cult (sic) seems to have been decentralised and led by local chieftains or wealthy farmers", which I guess means jarls and carls. If there really were no priests (is that really right?) then I think this needs to be said more prominently ---- start the article with "No word for religion, no office of priest".

Then she talks about blot, burial customs, and then goes directly onto conversion to Christianity. No mention of seithr.

I have other sources I need to dig out but what I've taken from this evening's reading is, there's little consistency about how the sources are structured ---- but as a relative newbie to the subject, I found Neil Price's structure in the British museum book the most helpful one.—S Marshall T/C 00:21, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

One of the reasons there's little consistency is that there are many conflicting viewpoints. It's possible to dismiss almost anything, archaeological or literary, as influence from some other religion, particularly Christianity, and it's also possible to force the evidence into a Nature Religion or other mode (I won't give examples, I'm already close enough to outing myself or violating BLP). On priests, there's a statement by Cæsar saying the Teutons had no priests, unlike the Celts; but apart from the issue of whether the comparison was meaningful, and the broader issue of how much he actually knew, neither he nor Tacitus was really writing about Scandinavia. However, this is a much debated issue, related to the also hotly debated issue of temples, for which I refer you to our Heathen hof article. I'm also mentioning that because Bloodofox has told me he would have structured that very differently. I can't speak to how I would have structured the Norse religion article, because I'm really trying to work with the other editor and they have imposed a structure, so I'm working on one section at a time. If I had rewritten it, or if I wind up examining the thing as a whole, I would probably use a quirky structure that would make Bloodofox wince (he's rewritten several articles and got them to GA; I know that there are conventions for article structure at GA and especially FA), but the only thought occurring to me at this stage is that it might be preferable to lay out what we do know and think likely before getting into the competing scholarly theories or even the stuff about its decline. Because in some books, and I think the article is getting so baggy it's approaching that, it's almost as if the author is more interested in how paganism ended than in what it (may have been) like. As I wrote above, I think we best serve the reader by being as neutral as possible with regards to not letting assumptions of some religious norm creep in. (Many of the books I have read have an explicit religious point of view, if only the old "But isn't everybody C of E?" or the widespread assumption that it's a rule of the universe that everybody gets converted to monotheism eventually, because it's an evolutionary progression.) And I keep thinking of things that do need to be said, though I do recognise that my style in Wikipedia article-writing is very terse. But I honestly haven't looked at how it's structured right now except to note what I need to work on next: I started at the core. Anyway, sorry for the incoherent and non-specific response. I hope the article will eventually be informative and balanced. But now I must walk a dog and then see what I can get done on it today. (My schedule is peculiar and I can't do this kind of stuff at work, although I did track down a reference.) Yngvadottir (talk) 16:18, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• Okay, now I think that I'm not going to be able to be much help because all I really seem to be doing is distracting you from working on the article. For the record I'll say that from my perspective as a naive reader, Norse religion isn't ideally structured. It would benefit from more context about Norse culture and behaviour. For example it has a section on "Cultic practice" that has plenty to say about sacrifice and witchcraft and doesn't mention marriage (was marriage disconnected from the supernatural among the Norse? it could be an entirely secular/cultural thing I suppose). I would suggest following Price's structure more closely.—S Marshall T/C 17:49, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

No, you aren't distracting me; I'm sorry I can't give better answers though! The rewrite has a lot of deficiencies, including both gaps and over-elaboration of material better covered in dedicated articles, but as I say, I haven't even really looked at the overall structure because the other writer has imposed one and in deference to them I'm trying to work section by section for now. We have some saga accounts of weddings (and divorces), and of course there's Þrymskviða :-) I don't think magic should be in there at all under cult practice, except insofar as coverage of the priesthood issue should mention the vǫlur (ON plural of vǫlva), so yes, I can see a sentence or two there. Signing off soon. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:34, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Does this lady know what she's talking about?—S Marshall T/C 19:37, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I thought of mentioning her :-) However, take the material about the wedding crown with a ton of salt. In my independent personal opinion the wedding ceremony was the feast at which the bride and groom sat together and shared a toast. After all, the feast was an integral part of communal blót. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:18, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I hope the section I put in was reasonably useful? My thoughts on where to go next with the rewrite are still on hold, between the flu, the demands of my chaotic life, and the reverts. But I hope I was able to make it a bit better and it would be nice if I got to make it still better ... there's still stuff we aren't mentioning even before we get to all the competing theories of a century and a half of academics. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:05, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you. I do feel like I know more about the rites of passage side of it, at least. I'm a bit concerned the talk page is getting fraught.—S Marshall T/C 16:39, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
  • I should probably have put my bibliographic response to you here; I'm not sure it's on-topic there. Trying to screw up the courage to revisit the article itself. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:03, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Are you possibly interested in becoming an admin? It seems these days there is a constant complaining about not having enough admins. I haven't really done a background check on you, but I know you've been editing for a while now. — JudeccaXIII (talk) 00:18, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

• Well, that's out of the blue. How flattering. Why choose me to ask, of all people?—S Marshall T/C 01:20, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

You've been editing since 2008, I think that's enough years of experience. You have your autopatroll right so I assume you're experienced at AfD etc. I haven't done a extensive edit check yet, but I'm confident nothing negative will show. Are you interested? — JudeccaXIII (talk) 03:20, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Let me take a look at some recent RFAs. I'll see if behaviour there has improved since the last time I ran.—S Marshall T/C 12:36, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Hi, I got tipped off about this from an anonymous source :-/ .... the immediate problem I see is that people will look at your AfD stats and think you don't know what you're doing. I think that's harsh in your case, you just pick heavy debates like Gary Renard where you're in no way guaranteed to agree with anyone else, but unfortunately, a 56% matching consensus (or 68% ignoring "no consensus") is difficult to get around at RfA. You could spend six months !voting on every single AfD that comes in to counterbalance that, but is that something you really want to do? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:14, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

By itself, that's surmountable. I can give a clear and robust answer to that. I'm very active at deletion review and have participated in more than half the debates that took place since June 2009 ---- I have many thousand edits to DRV subpages. When it comes to deletion, I can show that my attention has always been focused on the marginal discussions and the corner cases; and that's how I would mainly use my hypothetical admin tools ---- to view deleted pages and to implement decisions at DRV.

However, I couldn't honestly say that I have an urgent need for the tools or that me having them would lead to a substantial reduction in any of our backlogs. I'm neither a vandal-fighter nor a new pages patroller.

And after my last experience at RFA I'd want to be pretty bloody certain that I wasn't going to get all the grief, hostility and judgmental bullshit that Robert McClenon is currently getting in return for volunteering to do hard and thankless work. I'm still mulling this over but I must say that I'm not highly enthusiastic about it at the moment.—S Marshall T/C 17:34, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I could hardly blame you for that. It's unfortunate for Robert as well, as he could have filed a poll at ORCP or asked one of the admins on WP:Request an RfA nomination, most of which probably have advised him to give it a miss, instead of basically walking into an elephant trap. Similarly, in your case, I think you'd be a perfect fit for closing AfDs - I'm certain you could take a contentious debate and give it a reasonable assessment of a "delete" consensus, which obviously needs the tools. The tricky bit is proving it to everyone who turns up at RfA. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/GoldenRing was a good example of this - when I looked at the evidence carefully on its merits, I found it was an easy support, but so many other people opposed on "not enough edits" or simple metrics. I suspect you'd get the same problem. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:55, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

• I'd also get opposed for cause; I've been here too long. I've spoken too much truth to power and disagreed with too many popular editors. And looking at the levels of ignorance editors are currently displaying at RFA, that's simply not something I'm prepared to submit to. I'm afraid it's going to be a no ---- I'm not submitting to the RFA process again unless it changes radically. Thanks for asking me, it was flattering, but I'm afraid you need to try someone else.—S Marshall T/C 19:09, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

• No problem - although I will say I've been dragged up to ANI and threatened with sanctions a few times for just speaking my mind when I am certain I am right, so personally standing up to people and arguing things on their own merits are big plus points in my book. Anyway, see you around at XfD. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:58, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall No worries and no pressure, RfA as you put it, isn't the most thrilling process as I've seen failed RfA candidates express such similar views to yours. Glad to know your input and thank you as well Ritchie333 for your assistance. — JudeccaXIII (talk) 20:14, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oh, phooey. I was staying out of this, but I would still like the chance to support you. I consider you vastly more qualified than I was, and I also think you'd do a better job with the tools, and that your qualifications are obvious from all that DRV work and other thoughtful and diplomatic wrasslin you do. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:20, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

• You still ought to be an admin. Frowny face.—S Marshall T/C 21:02, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

What he said. Stupidest desysop ever, in my opinion. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:20, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

You'd be great at it and I'd support you but I dread seeing you in that broken RFA process. North8000 (talk) 20:59, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you, mate.—S Marshall T/C 21:02, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Well, I would support you too. Even though, I can't really see why most anyone would want it, regardless of RFA process. Perhaps in addition to RfA, we should have a 'you've been drafted' procedure for say a set term of six months (which you can accept or decline). Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:18, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm a bit late to the party but now that I'm here, I can't think of anyone who is better suited for the mop than you, SM. I agree that RfA needs to change - our best editors simply don't want to endure it and who can blame them? I've seen several new editors pass and then get tangled-up in issues they might have experienced beforehand and known how to handle had they spent more time editing prior to adminship. Sad. You would definitely have my support. ^{Atsme📞📧} 14:09, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

ref=harv is a default setting which means use author[n]/last[n] and the year if given.

I fixed the link between the citations in Mental capacity in England and Wales with this edit. To go through each one in turn:

1. Department for Constitutional Affairs — there is no author so you need to set a working link in the long citation using the template {{sfnRef}} and assigning it to ref=. So in this case | ref = {{sfnRef|Department for Constitutional Affairs|2007}}. I added single double quotes to the short citation simply to make it italic as per usual for titles.
2. changed {{sfn|Williams|Boyle|Jepson|Swift|Williamson|Heslop|2012|p=152}} to {{sfn|Williams|Boyle|Jepson|Swift|2012|p=152}} Just have to know that by default "ref=harv" only includes the first four last names (or read the friendly manual's gotya).
3. Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v James — another (like 1) where the long citation ref= parameter needed changing to accommodate no author.
4. Joint Statement — simple letter case issue "Joint statement"
5. Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech AHA — (like 1) where the long citation ref= parameter needed changing to accommodate no author

I cheat because I have importScript('User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js'); in my common.js file this show up any disconnects between the short and long citations with what if anything they are using to for the link. see User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.

-- PBS (talk) 09:22, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you.—S Marshall T/C 12:02, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello, S Marshall. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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 in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi, in case anyone was curious I've recently enjoyed the delights of a major hardware failure in my laptop. As a result, I went without my data for a while (it took me a few weeks to get around to purchasing a new machine and restoring my data from backup). During that time I've been experiencing the internet without being logged into my Wikipedia account, and I didn't miss it ---- so I'm logging out again. I did pop back to vote in the Arbcom elections (or more accurately to vote against some of the more ridiculous candidates).—S Marshall T/C 22:45, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I excavated on Structure 14 at the Ness of Brodgar in 2016 and 2017 and your photo for 14 in the Ness of Brodgar article is of Structure 8, not 14!

Please be aware that your signature uses deprecated <font> tags, which are causing Obsolete HTML tags lint errors.

You are encouraged to change

—[[User:S Marshall|<font face="Verdana" color="Maroon">'''S Marshall'''</font>]] <small>[[User talk:S Marshall|T]]/[[Special:Contributions/S Marshall|C]]</small> : —S Marshall T/C

to

—[[User:S Marshall|<b style="font-family: Verdana; color: Maroon;">S Marshall</b>]] <small>[[User talk:S Marshall|T]]/[[Special:Contributions/S Marshall|C]]</small> : —S Marshall T/C

I would recommend nonbreaking spaces, changing it to:

—[[User:S Marshall|<b style="font-family: Verdana; color: Maroon;">S&nbsp;Marshall</b>]]&nbsp;<small>[[User talk:S Marshall|T]]/[[Special:Contributions/S Marshall|C]]</small> : —S Marshall T/C

—Anomalocaris (talk) 06:27, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

So nice to see a glimpse of you! I hope that your absence, but occasional check-ins means you are enjoying life. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:20, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe has given you a kitten! Kittens promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Your kitten must be fed three times a day and will be your faithful companion forever! Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a kitten, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

Spread the goodness of kittens by adding {{subst:Kitten}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or kittynap their kitten with {{subst:Kittynap}}

Hello, S Marshall. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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 in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I happened across your username in an old discussion I was reviewing and was disappointed to realize you're not around much anymore. You should come back. Wikipedia is worse off without your participation. 28bytes (talk) 02:29, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• Why, thank you for those kind words. I've basically stopped editing. I'm not clear on whether this is forever, or just a (more than a year-long) break.—S Marshall T/C 23:09, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Good to see you around! Hobit (talk) 00:51, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
    • Thanks Hobit. :)—S Marshall T/C 22:35, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I respectfully think that this closure hatnote was a mistake. It's functionally a closure and you did comment in the discussion. I am troubled by the disregard of community consensus at Deletion Review to overturn the deletion. Could Arbcom weigh in and say something different? Sure. But sometimes there are constitutional crises and they are not always bad things. IronGargoyle (talk) 16:00, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

• I'm very sorry to have disappointed you in this case. I've opened a discussion on WT:DRV.—S Marshall T/C 14:29, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Are you planning to write up Marshall's challenge as an essay at all? If not, may I do so? I feel that (slightly generalised) it would be a useful thing to refer to in other contexts as well. Thryduulf (talk) 00:34, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

• I didn't feel it was complex enough to be worth an essay, but I certainly wouldn't object to you doing it. :)—S Marshall T/C 14:15, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I wanna play when the game starts - ping when it does, please. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 17:30, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi S Marshall, before creating more walls of text in this discussion, I wanted to ask you about your close in the related RfC. I am confused about how much the style guidelines and these RfCs were about galleries of notable people. The subject of the initial RfC was specifically about notable people in galleries. I asked Sandstein about it on their talk page, but they do not remember if their close was referring to notable people or all people. I understand that the same rationale used to exclude notables can be used to exclude anyone, but I feel like a starting point would be to understand the intention of the actual RfCs. Thank you for any interpretation you can give which could help the discussion. Kolya Butternut (talk) 14:31, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi Kolya Butternut. The RFC that I closed three years ago referred to large groups of people -- such as French people or Jews or Lesbians. All such groups would be notable but individual people belonging to them might not be. All the best —S Marshall T/C 22:11, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there might be some misunderstanding here. I'll try to clarify my question: was the RfC you closed (and the RfC close it built off of) deciding that

articles about large groups of people should not be illustrated by a photomontage (or gallery) of images of notable group members,

or did they decide that

articles about large groups of people should not be illustrated by a photomontage (or gallery) of images of any group members?

Thanks! Kolya Butternut (talk) 22:59, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

The latter. All the best—S Marshall T/C 05:51, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Just wanted to notice you here for the deprod of the article. I have added 3 refs that don't seem trivial from the translation and it would benefit an AfD. Will try to come back to this one after I finish working on the mess that was Big Buck Hunter (hopefully looks much better now). Regards, Jovanmilic97 (talk) 22:40, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

• As you have sourced it and vouched for it, it would be quite discourteous of me to send it to AfD. I fully accept your assurance that the refs are non-trivial, and I shall leave it at that. All the best—S Marshall T/C 22:44, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

You tagged Alex Alfieri for speedy deletion under X2. I don't think this shows the poort text quality cited as justifying X2 deletions. I have therefore declined the speedy, but nominated the article at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alex Alfieri for community discussion. This note is to inform you in case you wish to express a view in the discussion. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 00:14, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Your assertion that I view the RFC process as adversarial is correct (perhaps its an Israel-Palestine thing, I don't know, I have in 10 years never been actively involved in one until now). I will view future RFCs in that manner although I will not in future include summaries for the closer. That it has gone as far as an RFC makes it adversarial, if it were not there would not have been any need for an RFC in the first place but having had the misfortune to run into an editor who IS (was) actually adversarial, RFC or no RFC, it was inevitable. I am not seeking to alter your POV merely to suggest that you are mistaken in this instance. Thanks for listening.Selfstudier (talk) 10:08, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi S Marshall,

I'm new here, so I apologize for any confusion. The article Petar Kichashki was nominated for speedy deletion by you due to being a page created by the content translation tool prior to 27 July 2016. I take it that this is because of the subpar grammar and syntax in the article caused by the CTT. I've since tried to clean it up, so would it be okay to remove the notice from the page?

Thanks, ShinyDialga777 (talk) 14:55, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

• Hi @ShinyDialga777:, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stick around.

  The problem with the content creator tool is that it produces machine translated text. Prior to 27 July 2016, this tool encouraged editors to use it to translate articles into languages they did not speak. Unfortunately, machine translations can misrepresent or even invert the meaning of the source text. Therefore the consensus is that these articles need checking by a human editor with dual fluency, i.e. someone who speaks both the source and target language. Where the article is a biography of a living person, and where no human editor is willing to take responsibility for the accuracy of the translation, I'm afraid we can't really keep it around on Wikipedia. But if you are a fluent Bulgarian speaker and you are content to say that our article means the same as the original, then please do feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag! All the best, and welcome again—S Marshall T/C 15:23, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Can you also undelete Talk:Islamic Education Institute of Texas? Thanks, Nfitz (talk) 16:51, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

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Hi S Marshall,

I have closed a few RfD discussions, and the closest one I closed was this discussion for How a bill becomes a law. I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on my closing, whether you thought it was reasonable and/or accurate, and any thoughts you might have.

Here's a bit of my thought process on how I arrived at my decision.

It was a close discussion, yes, and perhaps one better left to an administrator; however, I did not simply count "!votes" as my understanding is that's not how consensus works. If counting "!votes," including the nominator's, four were favouring delete and four were favouring retargeting. Note that editor Black Falcon also favoured retargeting to How a Bill Becomes a Law, an episode of the NBC TV series Parks and Recreation, which is also a possible redirect target, as their second choice to deletion. Still, because there was consensus that this was a likely search term for the process by which legislation becomes a law and because Black Falcon also noted we could add a hatnote to Bill (law)#Enactment and after, effectively he or she was in favour of the same thing. Similarly, I also considered the relative strength of Thryduulf's argument in terms of how people search and how the search engine associates Wikipedia's articles with relevancy.

Granted, it maybe wasn't a strong consensus in favour of retargeting, but nonetheless, there was still a consensus, it seemed to me.

Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 14:17, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Hi, Dmehus, and thanks for contacting me. May I suggest that you look at the flow of this debate? These things are sequences, and with a close call, it's worth considering how the debate moved over time. You may feel it's worth considering whether later editors were persuaded by the arguments before them, and if so why, and if not why not.—S Marshall T/C 14:35, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  S Marshall, Thanks for your reply. Regarding the deletion review for that non-notable scratched Olympian from the 1920s, I was kind of surprised you started a deletion review, but I agree with it nonetheless. I found it a bit odd the closer noted that the "deletes" had the stronger policy backing but that there was no consensus to deleting. Anyway, what prompted this was I just wanted to have a second opinion, in a sort of informal peer review of my close. Maybe going forward, I'll leave those close ones to the administrators, but I still think I got it right. I've added to and clarified my response on my talkpage, if you're interested. If you're interested, see my response above that discussion to BrownHairedGirl's request for me to re-open my close of Portal:Painting as "keep" and how I handled the objections from one of the "keep" supporters. Doug Mehus T·C 14:48, 20 November 2019 (UTC)