Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Rangeley

message: Source of quote below.
--Quote from Alecmconroy:--
:You majorly misunderstand the outcome if you think the outcome was a strong consensus that the article infobox should include the words "part of the war on terror".  
:# An poll conducted a month earlier seemed to find the opposite conclusion.  Consensus can change, but usually not so quickly, which suggests we take a very close look at whether a true consensus emerged. 
:# It's claimed the was extensive notification of the survey, contacting users in category:Conservative Wikipedians.  I don't know if that's true or not, but if it were, that would certainly bias the poll results.
:# The June straw poll wording did not even make any direct mention of the infobox.  Infoboxes, like article titles, are the "Voice of Wikipedia" and therefore must be especially NPOV.  
:# You claim the results of the poll was 25-4-- that's an impressive sounding number, and it gave me pause when I first heard you cite it.  A closer inspection reveals that summarized the poll as "25-4" is quite misleading, because there were some 15 or so comments which object to the existence of the poll, and say the poll is irrelevant or inappropriate.  These opinions have apparently been ignored and not counted in the "25-4" number-- which is exceptionally misleading, and I would strongly advice you to cite the poll results as "25/4/14" or such in the future.
:The June poll does not reveal a consensus about the infobox issue.  The infobox issue is not even mentioned in the straw poll.  Only half of the voters agreed with the straw poll question, not 5-to-1 as your numbers suggested.  If you want to try generate a strong consensus about your specific issue, that's fine.  You could also step through the dispute resolution process with Savidan.  What you can't do, however, is just add it back repeatedly.  --Alecmconroy 06:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have never claimed that the poll was a consensus. Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion, Wikipedia is not a democracy. The June Poll was no more or less a consensus than the May poll. The discussion that occured during that time period, however, was what went into the consensus. ~Rangeley (talk) 22:26, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Here the thing, Rang.  If you were genuinely repentent about the vote-stacking, you wouldn't say "I don't know why you're ignoring the 25-4 result!"  If you truly were sorry and vowing to amend your ways, you would have said "Hey Alec!  Since your new here, please be aware-- that 25-4 vote was totally invalid.  I was vote-stacking on it, and I shouldn't have, but I didn't know-- so please ignore that result and just look that other polls".   You didn't.  You continued to try to profit from the vote-stacking, despite warnings about it.   Doing it again this week, meanwhile, was the last nail in the coffin. --Alecmconroy 22:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Any claims of consensus from the poll were declared invalid, not the poll itself. And as I have clarified with you countless times, I did not votestack this week. ~Rangeley (talk) 23:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Admitting vote-stacking is wrong but continuing to cite the 25-4 results of the votestacking are two inconsistent positions.  No word games can save ya from that one.  I've heard some goood ones in this debate to be sure.  "They disagree that it's part of the conflict, but not that it's part of the campaign."  "The admins declared the poll results invalid, but not the poll itslef"   and of course "the poll does not show concensus, the opinions on the poll do."    But, to my mind at least, these are just wordgames.  If you cite a vote-stacked poll to prove a point, you either don't believe it's vote-stacked, don't believe votestacking is against policy, or don't care what is against policy so long as  it advances your POV.  It's hard for my mind to comprehend any other options. --Alecmconroy 23:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I really dont appreciate your escalatingly worse attitude towards me, Alec. My statement was a reiteration of Xoloz - any claim of "consensus" from the poll would be deprecated in favor of other methods. I am not contradicting this - I dont beleive anyone should cite the poll as consensus. But they surely can cite the poll, as we must assume good faith about those who voted. To somehow get that someone in a group is incapable of coming to a fair decision is to assume bad faith. My point in citing it to you was to point out that other polls had been held at other points in time. It was not that this was the best poll ever, or the only poll that mattered. Because no poll really matters - consensus is acheived through discussion with reasonable people. What I did last week in inviting uninvolved people and people who participated in the past discussion was not votestacking, or meatpuppeting. When you invited people who had participated in past discussion, you were not votestacking, or meatpuppeting. ~Rangeley (talk) 23:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

text: It is good idea to wipe the slate clean. But it is important to start fresh and with a resolve not to distort the issues in order to make false points. Falsely referencing the June 2006 poll/discussion is an example of what not to do. That discussion was not about whether WOT should be in the infobox. It was mostly about whether the Iraq War was a part of the WOT, etc.. --Timeshifter 17:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a good observation Timeshifter, however it is not quite the whole truth. Frankly, discussion before June was messy, it really didnt get anywhere because the actual issue was so muddied and confused that any semblance of order was non-existent. Hence the very specific nature of the original wording of the poll question, it dealt specifically with whether we could agree it was part of the campaign, and did not, at first, attempt to deal with the infobox, or how to present this information. After a certain point, we all came to agree, as you more or less have with us, that it was a part of the campaign given the language of the authorization. At this point, we started to put together a way of presenting it, and as you will note in some sections of the "WP:WOT" page we actually did begin to address how to represent the information. But again, discussion continued after that area was "archived," and eventually we did reach an agreement using quotes. I dont think its being honest to say that they are unrelated, as if it was not actually part of the WOT, there would be no further talk required. But because it was proven, it put us in a position of saying "Alright, so how do we say this?" This is where we are now, more or less. I agree with Theron that things in the past should probably be left in the past. Rather then dig up difs in attempts to get people in trouble like is being done below, its probably better for all of us that we focus on moving ahead. ~Rangeley (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See my replies in the next section. --Timeshifter 06:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The facts about the June 2006 poll 

message: --end of section from the article-- --Timeshifter 15:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: I added a standard option for a military infobox. That being the code for "Casus belli". Then I added the wikipedia pages covering it. This way people can decide for themselves the rationales, larger campaigns, reasons, etc. for the war. Here is the diff: 
*http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iraq_War&diff=104370772&oldid=104357799
Currently it says
See: Rationale for the Iraq War, Governments' positions pre-2003 invasion of Iraq, War on Terrorism
More pages can be linked. This way it is a true navigational link to several relevant pages, without favoring any of them. Since it is a coalition that participated on one side of the conflict, it is important to link to a page that covers their rationales also. 
From the template how-to page:
"Many of the parameters can be omitted if desired; the choice of which parameters are appropriate for a particular conflict is left to the discretion of the article editors." --Timeshifter 18:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[Casus belli]]" and [[Template:Infobox Military Conflict]] 

message: So back on topic, since all the stuff above is about 3 seconds from being deleted since its off topic, god I love that rule. No more Iraq War content nonsense, since that isnt why the RfC was made right? Any sections made after this point not related to this RfC, which is conduct based against Rangeley will be removed, please argue the merits of your issue on the Iraq War talk page. Thank you. --NuclearZer0 21:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Seriously, this was started because Alecmconroy says that Rangeley's actions are "well beyond the realm of acceptable behavior", but it has turned into yet another board for the discussion of content issues. In the absence of constructive discussion about behaviour, it doesn't seem that this "RfC" should remain open any longer. TewfikTalk 08:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There has been a lot of discussion about behavior in this RFC and its talk page. The behavior can not be discussed in isolation from the content. --Timeshifter 10:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Conduct RfC?