User talk:SocJan

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[edit] Laurence Scott

If you want to try and keep this article, please follow the proper procedures. It has been through AFD already, so deleting the tag is not appropriate. Betaeleven 00:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

What ARE "the proper procedures" at this point? Once you policemen win a speedy delete argument, IS there ANY procedure that ANYONE can follow to create a Laurence H. Scott page, assuming evidence has been found that would satisfy you of his Wikipedia worthiness? If so, please let me know what it is.

It appears to me (and, from their talk pages, to others whose work you have deleted) that by killing an entry via Speedy Delete you make it very difficult for anyone ever to attempt to create a new (and we would hope better) one in the future.

Are we missing something? Please point me to "proper procedures" for creating an entry when a previous entry of the same name has been Speedy Deleted.--SocJan 01:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Please read my comments at the bottom of this page. Some pages are speedily deleted because they are manifest nonsense, copyright violations, etc.; recreating such an article in its former form should be impossible.

Perfectly reasonable. No argument, there. Total agreement from me.--SocJan 02:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This one was repeatedly speedily deleted for a procedural reason: Nicol kept recreating essentially the same article that had already been deleted as the result of an AfD discussion. Doing so is grounds for a speedy delete. Deor 01:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Precisely my point: Speedy Delete ought not be a way to deal with an edit war. Deal with the editor; don't punish everyone who might want to defend the page. My question to policeman Betaeleven was whether NICOL's behavior was grounds for Betaeleven's telling ME that MY deleting of the tag was inappropriate. As I explain below, I deleted the tag after reading it carefully and believing it was inviting me to delete it. Someone later incorrectly assumed that I was working with Nicol. I was not. I was completely unaware of the struggle that had been going on. Although I happen to know Nicol (indeed, I had called Laurence to his attention) IMAGINE, please, that I was someone who just happens across the Scott entry and sees the tag. (This is not far from the truth.) In good faith, I try to add to the page, only to have my additions disappear and to get chided on my talk page for somehow having behaved inappropriately. I still don't see how I could have known that I was doing anything wrong in removing the tag and working on the entry.

Perhaps someone should re-word the "tagged for speedy delete" box (I quote it below and explain why I thought I was following its instructions). And perhaps policemen ought to be careful not to make unwarranted assumptions and start shooting at bystanders.--SocJan 02:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Because of my interest in Guy Davenport, I have known about and admired the work of Laurence Scott for some time but just recently made contact with people who know much more about him. I noticed that someone was kind enough to initiate a Laurence Scott entry, so I have begun to contribute to that entry with facts and references. I had no idea that people could sweep all our work away without saying a word about why.

Betaeleven: I have indeed checked the delection log, and have followed links to pages on criteria for deletion, which I have read. But I remain confused. The following language seemed to invite me to delete the "tagged for speedy deletion" notice:

If this page does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, or you intend to fix it, please remove this notice, but do not remove this notice from pages that you have created yourself.

Well, I DO intend to fix it, and I DID NOT create it, so I responded to the invitation "please remove this notice".

What did I do wrong?

I readily confess my novice status with regard to Wikipedia standards and procedures on such matters as deletion of a recent entry while people are still trying to improve it. Tell me where I can learn more. I am sure everyone else knows what "be[ing] through AFD" means; I plead ignorance.

Shouldn't those rushing to delete this page give SOME reason why they want it deleted? I've read the Wikipedia rules and they seem to suggest that a decent time should be allowed for new pages to reach a point at which they might intelligently be judged . . . SocJan 04:51, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

What did you do wrong? Well, nothing you could do could negate the rationale for the speedy delete—that the article had been deleted via AfD and was repeatedly being recreated in defiance of that—so there was no justification for your removing the tag.

Where, in the criteria for speedy deletion, do I find that defiance by one editor of an entry is justification for preventing other editors from commiting to bring the page up to standards? Perhaps the language in the "tagged for speedy deletion" box (see above) should be altered to warn innocent visitors that they should read some log before removing the box. A link to the speedy delete discussion would be helpful. Had I seen something like that (was it there and I missed it?), I would not have responded to "please remove this notice" as I did. -- SocJan 03:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If you and Nicol are going to operate as a tag team, you really should come up with a good WWE-style name for yourselves. Deor 15:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I apologize if you found the remark above offensive, but Nicol has claimed on a couple of occasions that edits he has made to Guy Davenport were actually edits he was making on your behalf, or edits he has privately solicited your agreement on. The Wikipedia editing process is intended to be more or less transparent to all visitors, and if you wish to make edits or comments, it would be best if you made them under your own name. Deor 00:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

You are still lecturing me while making unwarranted assumptions. Every contribution I have made to the Davenport entry has been (at least originally) made under my own name. The process HAS been transparent -- but only to patient readers willing carefully to compare many edits. When anyone (not just Nicol) restores something he himself has cut, especially if other edits occur in the meantime, the original source of the material is often not clear until one reviews many previous versions.

What Nicol did that could be said to be "on [my] behalf" has been to RESTORE material of mine, previously uploaded under my name, that he had deleted. He was simply trying to say to you that sometimes these restorations might have appeared to be new material from Nicol himself because of the length of time between his deletion and his undeletion. The question of "credit" for a particular fact or organizational change never bothered me. If my work appeared to be coming from Nicol, whereas in fact it was actually a contribution of mine that Nicol had deleted and was now, sometime later, restoring, then so what? If it made the entry better, I was happy. Instead of getting into edit wars, as he and you did, I chose to get other Davenport experts to join in an email debate -- based on demonstrable fact, backed by sources -- until all of us could agree on Nicol's version or my version or some version that had gotten better as we debated how something might be misread or how something could be sharpened.

Are you seriously suggesting that THAT is bad? That people who debate a fact via email must air all their discussions here on Wikipedia talk pages?!! Given the level of incivility that I see here, including your treatment of me here, I would certainly never agree to that. When some of us reach email consensus on, say, a verifiable fact (such as Davenport's age upon entering Duke -- which was far more elusive than you might believe), anyone else is free to challenge that fact at any time if he or she thinks we got it wrong. Who cares how many emails it took knowledgeable parties, all of whom respect each other despite our warts and quirks, to answer the question so long as each posted fact is properly supported by respectable published references? Are you actually demanding to read everyone else's emails on every detail????

Nor is it proper for you to assume that anyone else speaks for me. Nicol wrote to you after you used as evidence (in your argument that he has appeared to you to act as if he "owns" the page) deletions he had recently made of some of my contributions to the page. His choice of language in attempting to rebut that charge would not have been mine, and you misunderstood. I was silent during that exchange. My silence gave consent neither to his language nor to your inferences. But you attacked me when I aired quite another matter here.

From here on out, please leave me completely out of your wars with Nicol. I have joined no coalition of the willing, not with you, not with him. My only interest is in making Wikipedia pages better. What you guys are doing isn't that.--SocJan 06:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The remark above [now crossed out; thanks, I guess.--SocJan 23:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)] is uncalled for and its implication false.

I first visited the Scott page yesterday. When I saw it, I believed that I could strengthen it. Seeing the tag, I felt a sense of urgency. So I began work on the entry, despite having other things to do.

Nicol and I are NOT a tag team. I had nothing to do with his repeated "defiance" of AfD (which I still don't understand; bad me. Obviously Wikipedia is not for everyone, after all, only for people willing to master heaps and gobs of bureaucratic rules and acronyms? I thought we were just supposed to do our best to locate and properly support our facts).

I still fail to grasp how the rules covering "speedy deletion" justified removing the Scott page so quickly (wasn't it quite new?). I ask again: how in hell can anything be added to Wikipedia if some of you instantly smash anything that doesn't burst forth filled with abundant evidence of "significance"? Give new pages a chance, for crying out loud! I've read the published criteria for speedy deletion and I can't see how even Nicol's first short posting was a candidate for speedy deletion. It was obviously not frivolous; it was obviously not posted by Scott himself. He was obviously more than just another academic.

I removed the tag because, as I have explained above, the tag's wording seemed to invite me (someone who did not create the page) to remove it if I believed I had met -- or intended to meet in the near future-- what appeared to be the reason(s) for speedy deletion. You still don't explain just how my reading of the tag was wrong; you focus instead on what Nicol had done previously. My point is that in punishing Nicol you also "punished" me -- and everybody who might be interested in Laurence Scott.

Please imagine for an instant how I felt yesterday, having devoted significant effort to beefing up the Scott page, when suddenly all my work was gone -- because some policeman DELETED not only Nicol's work but mine, too!! The page had gone to a place where apparently only a few of you can see it, and any of you who bothered to do so might NOT see the new material I added, material I thought arguably met the test of significance that Nicol's original apparently did not meet. VERY frustrating!

I believe that Nicol's interest in Scott is identical to mine: having learned more about him in the course of adding to the Guy Davenport entry, Nicol believes (and I agree) that Scott deserves his own entry. He published significant modern poetry. That's not chopped liver.

I guess I have learned to save to my own hard drive anything that I am trying to add to a Wikipedia piece. I had thought that one of the wonderful features of Wikipedia was that it kept forever all previous versions of a page -- but not if special people with lightning-fast red pencils can delete pages at will. I'm learning, and I'm not finding myself enjoying the process. Again: why accuse me of some sort of collusion? It doesn't happen to be true. Help me understand how this page needs justification and I will do my best to play by the rules of the playground you apparently police.SocJan 09:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi SocJan. I guess I should start by saying that I understand that you and Nicol are not in cahoots. Also, although I've edited other pages on Wikipedia, this Davenport stuff is the first time I've had to learn about any of this bureaucratic/acronymic stuff. Anyway, I saw your plea for the Scott article on the deletion page. I voted in favor of deletion and wanted to explain why. What I know about Scott is only what you and Nicol have told me. He's connected to Davenport and Pound; he translated an important book; he co-published another. That makes him "notable" in some sense, certainly, but does it make him "notable" in the Wikipedia sense as defined at WP:BIO? While I can see that this is something reasonable people might disagree over, I simply don't think he qualifies from what I've seen so far. The one sentence from WP:BIO I would pick to explain this is "incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability." (I haven't seen the Crane book, but does it really contain non-incidental material focused on Scott as a figure in his own right, as opposed to a focus on the works he published?)

CRANE, 96, (about CANTO CX): "This was the only book printed under the "As Sextant Press" imprint, which Scott and GD created for the purpose. GD edited the poem, Scott made the frontispiece portrait drawing, and together they printed the book. According to GD, Pound had given this and several other late cantos to Donald Hall with the injunction to 'touch them up and print 'em'. Scott was permitted to make a copy of the Canto CX ms. in Hall's possession for this printing [. . . ] The New Directions DRAFTS & FRAGMENTS OF CANTOS CX-CXVII (New York, 1968) has an entirely re-edited version considerably variant from the Sextant text [that is] also used in [all] succeeding editions."

As I read this, without Scott's initiative it is unlikely that this Davenport-edited version of Canto CX would exist.

CRANE, 95-6, describes the broadside "Ezra's Bowmen of Shu", created by Scott and Davenport a few months before CANTO CX.

Davenport's account of his work with Scott is mentioned in recently published Davenport letters to Jonathan Williams (see Guy Davenport page). It seems clear that Scott had the press, an interest in Pound, and (later) an interest in publishing Davenport's poetry ("Cydonia Florentia"); Davenport brought to their joint ventures the scholarship and his personal knowledge of Pound. Working with Scott in 1965 appears to have re-inforced Davenport's earlier interest in typography, design, and printing, pursued at Duke with Clare Leighton but already an interest in his childhood. Scott is the first of several distinguished small press publishers with whom Davenport collaborated, but the only one he joined in the pressroom. SocJan 09:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't call Scott "just another academic", and it's shame that some have made rude remarks like "if Scott deserves a page, then anyone deserves a page", which is rubbish. I'm sorry I couldn't come down on your side on this one — at least from what I've seen so far. I hope you won't get so fed up about this that you decide to stop contributing to Wikipedia.--SethTisue 16:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Amen to that. I'll support anything in the academic world potentially supportable, but I can only do this if I stay reasonable about it. I wouldn't try on the basis of publishing impt. literary works or fine printing without several dozen items of importance published. Unless someone writes and publishes an article about him, there really isn't much of a chance the way people currently feel about relatively minor academics without conventional signs of prestige, and I doubt that anything will change about that. Unfortunately the campaign against true spam is so urgent that it does make publishing stubs a risky thing. It's urgent because if someone goes to WP and sees any of the thousand or so true junk a day, it really turns off serious users. It affects our credibility so drastically that I fully support the process even as I try to rescue worthy articles from under the wheels. If you dont have a copy of what you wrote, let me know. DGG 00:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, DGG and SethTisue, for your patience and for not dismissing my cries of dismay with terse scolding. Let's see if I understand. Because spam is a desperate Wikipedia problem, those of us who come across a weak new entry that we think we might be able to strengthen should understand that we better not try -- unless we are willing to drop everything else and race against some (undefined) clock.

For months I had been trying to learn more about Scott. When I saw the Wikipedia page, I thought I could strengthen it. If I had known that the page was due to die in an hour or two (while I was at work on it) and go to some place where I couldn't even visit it without begging permission of My Betters, I would not have attempted to improve it. I suppose the additional information I was trying to add might not have been enough to convince you of Scott's importance, anyway. But other readers after me might know of additional credible sources of information. They won't be able to add their contributions, of course, if there is no Wikipedia article.

'Seems a Catch 22 to me, or at least quite contrary to my conception of the Wiki idea: In effect, you are saying, unless the first person to create an entry already knows enough about an elusive character to meet your tests of significance, no entry can be allowed. If no entry is allowed, how can anyone else bring new facts to strengthen it? Moreover, do I understand correctly that once you kill an entry of this sort, anyone who attempts to write about that person in the future will be blocked from doing so because its subject has already been judged unimportant? (If so, it appears that anyone can send a person to Wikipedia Hell by purposely writing a bad initial article on him. I need to get someone to write an entry about me right away!)

I thought it was a central insight of Wikipedia that knowledge is distributed, that together we can know more than any one of us can know. Aren't these speedy deletions dooming sparcely-documented but important people to the exact obscurity that Wikipedia was supposed to shine light into (among other Wikipedia goals)? I happen to think that the Guy Davenport entry is a fine example of what Wikipedia can do. That entry (assuming that someone hasn't trashed it again in the last 30 minutes) may be the world's best source of accurate information about a remarkable person who very carefully lived an intensely private life, and whose work can best be understood as a whole, the writing and criticism and drawing and painting all being manifestations of the same unified and remarkable vision.

Scott was, among other things, a small press publisher of significant poets in well-designed limited editions. How many such publications, if I can list them, will it take for one of you to defend an entry for him just on the basis of his work as publisher? Frankly, I am discouraged by the rush to delete an entry that I think could have been useful to people like me who come across some of Scott's work and want to know more about him and his other work. Perhaps someday I will do that thing that someone above thinks terrible (because it is outside Wikipedia and thus not "transparent") -- which is to locate others who know about Scott and work with them away from Wikipedia until we have an initial entry that won't be strangled in its cradle.

Could that even succeed? Please tell me how, if we believe we have a good entry, we can get you actually to read it and not summarily reject it on the grounds that "Laurence Scott has already had his Judgment Day and is consigned for all eternity to Wikipedia Insignificance Limbo". -- SocJan 07:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

First of all, let me say that I have no desire to be a Wikipedia policeman—I'd much rather work at improving articles than at fighting vandalism, commenting on AfDs, etc. But many editors have to do their part in dealing with such matters, or WP would quickly degenerate into a mess of juvenile nonsense and miscellaneous gibberish. (Have you ever clicked on the "Recent changes" link at the left of any page and looked at what many, many WP edits consist of?) It wasn't I who nominated Laurence Scott for deletion—I probably whouldn't have known about the article if someone other than Nicol had created it—but once it was nominated, I, like any other WP user, was entitled to give my honest recommendation, based on the requirements for a valid WP article.

To answer the questions in your last paragraph: Yes, of course you can create a new article on Scott if you can produce one that satisfies the requirements, such as WP:BIO. I recommend that you read the page WP:GD carefully, particularly the section titled "If you disagree with the consensus." You may run into one problem: Because Nicol reacted to the AfD decision by repeatedly recreating the page instead of following the correct procedure, it's possible that (if the deletion stands after review) the article may be protected against recreation. If this happens, you'll have to get an administrator to unprotect it before you can create a new article with the title "Laurence Scott." The procedure for doing so is explained at WP:RFP.

Before you create a new article, however, be very sure that it meets the requirements for inclusion, or it will be déjà vu all over again. One way you can do this is to create the article in your User space and invite experienced Wikipedians (among whom I don't count myself) to review it and give you their opinion. Deor 00:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This is quite clear -- and helpful.

But please ponder: IS IT appropriate to resolve an edit war by putting a topic in the protected against recreation category?

If the topic is not obviously a candidate for such treatment, future Wikipedia contributors or users are going to be baffled. As someone recently said in another context, should we have to follow a potentially long trail to a talk page like this one to understand why we are blocked from seeing or creating an entry that we thought Wikipedia would want to include? Nothing about Scott justifies "protection against recreation"; the only thing that MIGHT justify such a measure is (apparently) the procedural battle(s) involving Nicol--of which a newcomer cannot be expected to know.

Would you please take steps to insure that "Laurence H. Scott" is NOT "protected against recreation"? Just last night I found someone else who knew Scott and has pointed me toward significant pieces that he published. Unless you or someone else will protect against protection against recreation (I can't believe I typed that!), a person with no previous knowledge of this struggle who believes Scott worthy of an entry will be even worse off than I was prior to your explanation above. He won't have a clue why there is an apparently eternal block of his topic, nor, without immersing himself in Wikipedia bureaucracy without a guide, will be know how to appeal this puzzling situation!

In the meantime, thank you again for the swift, thoughtful, helpful, and reasonable note above.--SocJan 02:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

SocJan, your answer is right here from Deor. First of all, I didn't delete any article. I don't have the power to do that. I merely submit certain articles for deletion; only an admin can delete it. Nicol ruined every chance given to him to have a decent article created about Laurence Scott. He never once took the time to read any of the requirements for nobility, yet he managed to re-create the same bad article each time.

You have to understand my perspective. I saw the original article. It was crap. I submitted it for speedy delete. It got denied. I submitted it for AFD. It was deleted. James whined and complained, but never fixed it. He re-created the same crappy article three more times. How would you expect me to respond? I followed the proper steps only to have it bypassed by someone who wouldn't take the time to make his beloved article better?

I'm sorry that you got caught up in this. You were trying to do the right thing, but Nicol took it as a personal attack against him and Laurence Scott and was too bullheaded and stubborn to do accept anything else (a trait I see he displays on the Davenport article, too).

Yes, as you pointed out, other users have complained to me on my talk page about my submission of their articles for deletion, but they were either spam (very common), blatant attacks, vandalism, or of non-notable people. Take a look at the Special:newpages or the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion pages sometime and see the crap that gets submitted to see what I'm talking about. A lot of people ge

I'm not saying that Laurence Scott isn't notable himself, however the article that James kept on re-creating didn't prove otherwise. If you create an article that meets the nobility requirements about Laurence Scott, then more power to you. I won't stop you, because I don't think it will be necessary. Judging from this experience, I doubt you'd submit anything that isn't worthy of it's own article. I don't envy the future revert wars you'll have with Nicol, though.

Good luck. Betaeleven 02:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Nicol put enormous energy into the Davenport page early on. His work and Sparrowseed's was so good that I was inspired to start contributing. Nicol is strongly opinionated, temperamental, hasty -- and often right. Until you came along, I got along with him just fine. We did it via email, as I have described here somewhere.

I have no quarrel with policemen who truly "preserve and protect". I do have trouble with officious policemen.

I don't think the Laurence Scott entry Nicol posted was "crap". It certainly needed work. Pointing to the Wikipedia rules of significance that it should pass was certainly a worthwhile intervention.

What's still baffling to me is the SPEED with which you all pounced on it. It was NOT spam; it was NOT copyright violating. I would have thought we'd have a month, say, to get it up to snuff.

You have now made your position very clear: no stubs that don't meet minimum standards upon first posting. I don't think that that is a good rule, but It's always nice to know what the local police will allow. I now know that if I'm quietly pondering life on a street corner, ready to talk but waiting for people interested in my topic, I can expect to be hauled in and fined for "loitering".

My judgment? You're overdoing it. Concentrate on the real criminals, please.

As for a Laurence H. Scott entry, I may get around to it. But you've certainly taken a lot of the fun out of Wikipedia for me. Was it worth it?

I do thank you for explaining yourself. Further affiant sayeth not.-- SocJan 03:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

You sure do like to make a lot of assumptions about me, don't you? Although, you don't want any further explanation, I feel like I should, anyway, because you don't seem to understand what I'm saying, or perhaps you do, and you still don't agree.

I apologize that I caused an rift between you and Nicol. I don't see how I'm the cause, but if that's what you believe by your implication, fine.

If you want to label me as an officious policeman, so be it. That's the entire purpose of having the Special:newpages available and the speedy delete tags (did you read all the categories and purposes of those? I bet you didn't). Once again, I invite you to take a look at those pages for a few hours and see why it's necessary. Many articles like the original Scott article get deleted immediately. However, I want to make it clear once again, I do not have the ability to delete an article. Take it up with the admins who agreed with the deletion nomination and actually did the deleting. Many users and many admins "patrol" these pages throughout the day to make sure quality articles are on Wikipedia. Just because one person thinks their article deserves to be here, doesn't mean that it does. In this case, every single instance of the Laurence Scott article deserved to be deleted. How can you dispute this?

I don't believe that you saw the original version of his article. Perhaps you did, but I believe if you had, you would have seen the AFD notice that was on there for five days with a link to the discussion regarding it's deletion, and even that was a modified version (I believe he added some wiki-links, a single reference, and some other facts). How is that pouncing on my part? It didn't get deleted right away. I went through the proper channels to have it reviewed. If it didn't get deleted, I would have acknowledged my mistake, and I would have moved on. But, the fact that it did get reviewed, and deleted, and then re-created three more times, of course, I'm going to "pounce" on the article to nominate it for deletion. And, each time I did that, the speedy delete tag was up for almost a day (or more) before it got deleted.

Did either you or Nicol put a {{hangon}} tag on there like you could have? Or did either one of you contest the deletion like you could of? No, you didn't do this until the fourth incarnation (almost two weeks later). So, don't try to tell me this sob story that it disappeared immediately each time. I believe most people upon realizing their article didn't meet standards, would take the time to find out what was wrong with the article and fix it, rather than re-creating almost the exact same thing.

If Nicol had been half-way intelligent about it, he would have got it "up to snuff" before he tried creating the same article like Deor has suggested to you once you decide to make it. That's the way Wikipedia works. Don't take it out on me for the way the rules are set. First time he created it and it got deleted, okay, no big deal. He didn't know any better. After that, you might want to try and learn the rules before getting all pissy about having an article deleted only to continue to ignore the rules and submit the same mistake(s) again.

If you think that this makes me a bad guy and if it makes you feel better to blame me for all of her current distaste for Wikipedia, I'm okay with that. We're each trying to make this site better, but in obviously different ways. Just don't accuse me of things or make assumptions without knowing what the hell you're talking about. You obviously haven't tried to understand my point of view in this at all. Betaeleven 01:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: It's not hard to create an article (or even a three sentence stub) that establishes notability right off the bat. However, you can't expect to create either and then say, "I promise I'll fix it up in a month." Show notability first, then add and refine later. Why is that asking so much? Betaeleven 02:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

"Show notability first, then add and refine later" seems like a wise policy to me. SocJan, as frustrated as you are about this Laurence Scott situation, think how much worse it would be if you and others had put a greal deal of work into the article over a period of weeks or months, only to have the article end up deleted when fellow Wikipedians decided Scott didn't qualify for Wikipedia after all. It seems like a good system to me for notability to be the first hurdle.--SethTisue 03:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)