User talk:Vassyana

Word of the day
Treeware. noun. /'triwɛər/.
An antediluvian method of publishing information on a portable medium created from processed arboreal macerate, often with decorative covers glossed by petrochemical solids.

"Reginald went to the athenaeum to peruse treeware with the assistance of an informatics professional."

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Alice Bailey

Vassyana, a new editor of the Alice Bailey article has initiated an RfC [1]. Would you be willing to look at the discussion and comment? Malcolm Schosha (talk) 18:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Osho

Hi Vassyana, User:Jossi mentioned the other day that you and he had done some work on getting Laozi to GA. I also saw your earlier GA review of Prem Rawat, an article that I've been spending time on recently. I (self-)nominated Osho for GA yesterday and wondered if you might be interested in doing the review, or have a read-through and provide improvement suggestions? Cheers, Jayen466 21:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

You are too kind

Thank you so much, your thoughts are most appreciated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

On FAs (reply)

I've been worrying away at it for some time. I don't have any particularly helpful ideas yet, unfortunately.

What I have come to conclude is that our current method - "rewarding" individual editors with some form of status for "taking an article" to FA - is part of the problem; with the best will in the world, having a particular individual or like-minded group of individuals working intensively on an article for a fortnight doesn't aid in ensuring the use of a multitude of perspectives and sources. We're all amateurs, but we aim for results superior to individual professionals through the aggregation of perspectives; the way that FAs are managed seems to work at cross-purposes with that basic mechanism. I also fear that MoS-obsession (I stopped observing FACs a few years ago after one particularly vicious and borderline-incomprehensible squabble over the exact form of citation templates, or sub-headings, or something of that sort) tends to obscure actual questions of content.

If there's a solution, it probably would incorporate artificially elongating the process. Relata refero (talk) 18:26, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm off to do a GA review now, in the hope that it will give me some ideas. Relata refero (talk) 18:28, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

RfArb

I have not named you as a party, as you have not been involved recently, but given your early intervention with the GA review, you may want to state your comments at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Prem Rawat. If you think that you rather be named as a party, please let me know. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems as though ArbCom will accept the case. I will present evidence and take limited participation in the discussion when the case is opened, after I have some time to collect my thoughts and some diffs. Cheers! Vassyana (talk) 18:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

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Blocking consensus, analysis

Here's a big image made by User:Kevin Murray:

• Sample of old new and hybrid CCC Consensus flowcharts.

The normal consensus process is on Chart 1. Some people, however, use a modified process, at Chart 2. (Chart 3 and Chart 4 may not be relevant today.)

Basically, Chart 2 introduces just 2 really new concepts. The first is that large changes should be discussed first; the second is that it introduces a minor bias towards the status quo: "changes should not happen too quickly". If you say it in english, that sounds fairly harmless, right? People think it is a good trade off between efficiency and "safety".

But a closer look reveals that that is not the case! If you actually plot the flowchart, you find that when you modify process thusly, you can get stuck in an infinite loop. Consensus might never be reached. (Flowchart 2 has an infinite loop at "is the result accepted"->"should process continue"->"discuss at talk, 3O, VP, RFC"--->"is the result accepted" )

In reality such loops are not really infinite, as we are dealing with human beings here. At some point in time, one or more parties get worn down and burn out, and just walk away. :-/

Another interesting thing is that in chart 2, several meatball:ExpandScope methods are used ... in the middle of that same loop.

Sure. I think that one or two steps of ExpandScope once in a while might be a part of your normal everyday meatball:HealthyConflict.

But repeated scope expansion in a tight infinite loop? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. And guess what? Interestingly, that seems to be the pattern you see in all sorts of high profile wikidrama. :-)

So by simple systems analysis using flowcharts, we can already predict that certain simple, reasonable looking changes to the consensus process might actually be responsible for a large number of the unhealthy conflict interactions between established users.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 18:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Nifty! Some food for thought there. It does some to indicate where some of the logjam comes into play. As a thought, the "standard process" can be used as an excuse to play mum and pop (venue shopping), which can certainly add to a decline of good faith and to a growth of acrimony. This does not fully account for intransigence and obstruction. However, it certainly seems to point towards some tools which accommodate such ends. Definitely something for the mind to chew. Cheers! Vassyana (talk) 19:03, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Indian Religions

Even after agreeing to consensus, User:IAF is back to his usual mode violating the consensus and the WP:3RR here. --Anish (talk) 16:48, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Coppertwig and "dab" seem to be handling the situation just fine. I will keep an eye on the article to head off any future edit wars, but the editing conflict seems over for now and others are handling the situation. Vassyana (talk) 18:15, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks... as far as the article is concerned, Dab handled it well. But no one is doing anything about the abusive language of IAF "Jackass, stupid edits et all". Check this out. --Anish (talk) 14:35, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Informal mediation on Bosnian War article

Hello, I see that you have protected the Bosnian War article. I have suggested some form of dispute resolution[2] to User:Nirvana77, which he seems to agree with[3]. I'm not sure whether informal mediation would work here or if we should go directly to ArbCom. What is your suggestion? RegardsOsli73 (talk) 09:34, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

A good first step would be to request a third opinion to get an outside view on the matter. You should also ask for some outside opinions and expert assistance from the military history WikiProject. It's an active project with a solid reputation for common sense and high quality. A neutral outside opinion and some participation from members of a well-reputed relevent project can help bring a balance of perspective and put the article on track. Cheers! Vassyana (talk) 01:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

RfC

I've started drafting a user conduct RfC that you might be interested in here. There's a lot of evidence to locate, sift through and present, so I think it will take awhile to get it put together. If you'd like to participate, please feel free to do so. Cla68 (talk) 06:44, 28 March 2008 (UTC)