User talk:Ahnoneemoos/Archives/2013/December

Latest comment: 10 years ago by 74.192.84.101 in topic redux


You are under discussion

  This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Binksternet (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Decorations

Sure thing. These were common awards none for heroism, I was just a regular "grunt" nothing special (smile).

Medals and Citations:

  • Presidential Unit Citation
  • Combat Action Ribbon
  • National Defense Service Medal
  • Vietnam Campaign Medal
  • Vietnam Service Medal with bronze star device
  • Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm Streamer

Badge:

  • Rifle Sharpshooter Badge

Patches:

  • Hell in a Helmet
  • 3rd Marine Division

Military awards as a civilian:

  • The USAJFKSWCS Medal of Excellence

File:USAJFKSWCS Medal of Excellence .jpg The USAJFKSWCS Medal of Excellence presented to me by Brigadier General Hector E. Pagan on Memorial Day of May 26, 2008.

  • The Joint Task Force Commander's Coin and Certificate for Excellence

File:Joint Task Force Commander's Coin for Excellence.jpg File:Certificate JTF Guantanamo.jpg The Joint Task Force Commander's Coin and Certificate for Excellence presented to me by Brigadier General Rafael O'Ferrall on October 5, 2009.

Tony the Marine (talk) 21:10, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Marine *and* a wikipedian? Wow, double-thank-you. <two thumbs up>    :-)    — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:22, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

tested out the site, at least the text-chat works

But I'm not sure the voice-stuff will. Do you want to open a new room, and paste the six-digit code on my page? Maybe if you are the 'moderator' rather than me, perhaps my hardware will behave. I'll be around for the next couple hours or so. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:52, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

tinychat was just a suggestion. We can use something else that you are already familiar with. In the meantime, I created [1]Ahnoneemoos (talk) 21:39, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
I'll head thataway in maybe half an hour. In the meantime, I have to finish defending your wikidragon's tail from Mercy11, who apparently believes I cannot possibly have met the same Ahnoneemoos. I will invite them to our off-wiki chat using not-as-clunky-tools... maybe they will like you better, if they get a chance to know you.  :-)   Don't go all outta-control diffuse-harrassing nobody over in tinychat, mkay?  ;-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:04, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Ssuuuuure, half-an-hour. I'm there now, if you still have time today. If not, ping my page tomorrow when you are free, or pick an EST timestamp. Danke. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:08, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of History of women in Puerto Rico

The article History of women in Puerto Rico you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold  . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needed to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass, otherwise it will fail. See Talk:History of women in Puerto Rico for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of SlimVirgin -- SlimVirgin (talk) 21:02, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedians interested in chess

Category:Wikipedians interested in chess, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:07, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Precious

assume good faith, be bold, ignore all rules
Thank you, first settler dragon Aubrey, for quality articles on people connected to Puerto Rico "the intricacies and details pertaining to the government of Puerto Rico", based on experience, for sticking to the rules "assume good faith, be bold, ignore all rules", for knowledge about reliable sources, for your exemplary infobox and your belief that Wikipedia had "the necessary tools to resolve conflict without an internal policing body", - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:27, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Really, that WikiDragon page is a waste of time as they do not exist.

Or maybe it was written by someone crazy with nothing else to do.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words.

Read the first letter of each sentence.

Ahnoneemoos (talk) 05:47, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

You do ;) - I wasn't referring to that linked page (teach me precision) but the little dragon on top of your user, where I show the gnomish mushroom (copied in memory from a friend who is not with us any more, as so many others). I dedicated an article to the last one I miss and added mentioning of an acrostic yesterday ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
All these deeds
are just a story of folk
for dragons do not exist
and neither do gnomes.
But I once heard a tale
of dragons, otters, and gnomes
where dragons swept the air
and once again conquered it all.
Ahnoneemoos (talk) 08:19, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
how about witches? (they watch ...) - I just learned about the Day of Rage (Bahrain). - Did you read my infobox? You have been warned ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:29, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
Down by the wiki / where the articles grow / back to my talkpage / I dare not go / for if I do / my admin will say / did you ever see a wiki-witch with a watchpage itch? / Doooowwwwnn by the wikiiiiiii.... <applause> <cheers> Thanks folks, I'm here all week. Try the veal[2]!  :-)   74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:41, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

hey dragon

I'm feeding you to the wikiKnight, mwuuaaahahahaha!  :-)   Well, okay, not doing that. But I'm trying to do that talkpage-chit-chat-gossip-thing, which you so dislike, and find out if there is some sort of peace treaty, which will allow *you* to keep following WP:AGF and WP:IAR, and other folks to be OK with that. And yes... I fully and truly *know* that a dragon need not ask permission to follow pillar five! But it is best for the elves/etc, if the dragons concentrate on content, without eating too many villagers by mistake, and that the knights concentrate on visigoths, and leave the dragons alone.

  So frankly, I'm telling you this, not because I think you should come jump into the midst of our talkpage-chit-chat-lovefest(!), but to nicely ask that you stay the fuck out of the nice talkpage-chit-chat.  :-)   For now anyhoo. (( define irony... "an automated abuse filter has identified the four-letter-word as potentially unconstructive... stupid boht! bureaucracy is killin... nevermind, I'll leave that battle for another day. Suffice it to say that the incorrect spelling is *not* my redacted redacted fault, the boht made me. )) (( Later update: fixed spelling! take that you boht. ))

  I will try and figure out what will make the wikiKnights and the wikiElves and the wikiGnomes and the wikiVillagers-of-various-sorts happy. Strike that. Satisfied to let you continue to follow the pillars. As is your right. But I'm gonna offer them the opportunity to get you a secretary, who answers your talkpage notes... which can be placed on one of the talkpages of your old accounts, or something like that. But you are not bound by my offers; wikiDragons do as they please, per pillar five. (I'll try NOT to offer anything TOTALLY stupid.) In the meanwhile, hope you are doing well. I am working on writing up the results of our chat session, into a clear proposal. *Brief* and clear. Agonizing! Leave a note on my talkpage if you should require anything, hope this helps, and thanks as always for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:30, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

HOW DARE YOU ASK ME TO STFO YOU PUNY HUMAN....... I SHALL PILLAGE YOUR VILLAGE, WOMEN AND CHILDREN!!!!11111one
#ps: did you know some tales tell a story allegorizing that I was once a WikiOtter? but alas, I am not, my battle scars have turned me into this hideous but majestic creature that I am today... —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 18:23, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Possible copyvio via AfC

Hi Ahnoneemoos, this is a courtesy notification to let you know I have discovered a possible copyvio on the AfC you accepted earlier on in the year.[3] I have listed it at WP:CP. Thanks, C679 15:34, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

 

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article National Foundation for Popular Culture is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/National Foundation for Popular Culture until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. DGG ( talk ) 06:30, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

redux

Aloha, bonjour, et al.  :-)   Slow going with the treaty-talks, as it is the season for off-wiki activity, I guess. P'raps they will resume with more vigour in 2014. In other news, am still formulating a non-TLDR wiki-plan to dramatically boost retention of new recruits. Per our discussion of WMF last time, I did a little looking around; Sue has officially stepped down as execDir of WMF, as of April 2013, but planned to stay on until November 1st or thereabouts... eight candidates out of ~250 submitted resumes were interviewed, but the WMF interviewers rejected all eight, so Sue is staying in the saddle. Also, methinks the vpDev is looking elsewhere (Mohler or something?) and may already be gone; word as of early December was that this changeover would happen now, under Sue, without waiting for the new execDir.

  Anyhoo, point being, now that you have had a chance to mull over the meta-path for new software like WP:FLOW, and training new recruits, you want to have another pow-wow? I'll have limited availability due to this-n-that, but if you can allocate another hour sometime this week, I'm game. If so, what topics are on the agenda?  ;-)   We never really got into noUsers vs adminsAsSecretService last time, since we got sidetracked (albeit quite fruitfully) into wikiPolitics and wikiHistory. If you don't have time, no prob, WP:REQUIRED applies, as always. Wishing you well WD-40. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:51, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Sure, gotta be after 8:00 PM EST though if it's on weekdays. Where did you find out about Moller and the candidates for ExecDir? Happy holidays to you too! —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 16:29, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

The real answer to your question is... I cannot tell you!  :-)   Because I cannot remember. I was hanging out on some user-talkpage on meta, and somebody mentioned something about blah blah Gardner blah blah Eloquence blah blah, and I followed some links, and read some archived wikipedia-mailing-list-postings from earlier this year, and eventually stumbled onto the links below. If you just want the official links, they are here, but if you want to know *where* to get the grapevine data (i.e. what user-talkpages on meta are worth hanging around for the inside scoop), let me know and I'll try a bit harder to data-mine my browser history.

history of the ExecDir search from Apr'13 to Dec'13, or, the tale of the latest 300K/yr WMF shopping spree

  Main page,[4] which has this subpage as of 9th December.[5] Summary: they announced Sue was leaving in May, but that she had committed to stay until a replacement was hired and trained. Advertising began during the summer; a mgmt-recruiter m/Oppenheim was contracted, an advert in The Economist was taken out (plus infomercial-interview in the NYT), and so on. The hire was planned for Sept w/ luck, or November if not; later this scheduled slipped (sans announcement) to the more realistic December-with-luck. By sometime in November, interviews with the 8-out-of-250-or-so candidates on the initial shortlist were completed. The transition-team doing the interviews (see table below) decided nobody was perfect enough, so they made no recommendation to the WMF board, asking for more time to keep interviewing, instead (again Sue was asked to, and agreed to, keep the spot until success).

  The key criteria being sought are managerial experience ("track record of building successful organizations"), plus "importantly" product-and-engineering background ... but they do not specify if they want any technical skill as a creator/maker/hacker/do-it-yourself-type, which means they are almost certainly counting sales&marketing of software/cars/airplanes/phones as a good enough "product" background for ExecDir. The top candidate-pools are engineering-corporations in general, and big websites in particular. The next candidate-pool is big educational-non-profits and big universities and big museums (because while the Smithsonian and Stanford may not have top-ten-in-the-world websites like Microsoft and Google and eBay, they *do* have seriously awesome websites aimed squarely at collaboratively produced educational content). Along the same lines, somebody famous enough as a leader in free/libre/openSource-software world could qualify, because there is a zeroth qualification: the new ExecDir must share the goals & values of wikipedia, and have the courage and conviction to live up to them every day (quote unquote).

  This is the 'old' description from May 2013. Top-down, command-and-control approaches are not appropriate. (Translation: WMF will remain powerless.) Be ready to shut down programs that don't work. (Translation: this sentence was written before VizEd bombed... so I'm not sure what it refers to.) WMF is not open to reconsidering its business model; it is a 501(c)3 non-profit, making the majority of our revenue from many small donations from readers... the ExecDir does not have to actively fundraise, all revenue generation is handled by Zack Exley, the CRO. (Translation: will continue pulling in 40M/yr for the staff of ~200 people, and will continue running PBS-style banner-adverts in mainspace... ExecDir's job is to spend that cashflow wisely, not to fundraise.) Does the WMF want to stay essentially the same, or is it interested in growing substantially, or otherwise changing in a significant way? We are very happy with the WMF, and the path it is on, and we don't expect it to fundamentally change. This is not a turnaround job. (Translation: the WMF will remain powerless, and the ExecDir cannot spend the 40M/yr bulking up the staff-levels.) Gardner's salary is 200K. But, that is not a hard ceiling. We do not want salary to be an impediment in our hiring the best possible person for the role. (Translation: the next ExecDir will be pulling in 400k to 800k by their second year in the position... in the ballpark of what Steve Ballmer makes... not sure how to square that with keeping staff-levels basically the same... perhaps they envision donation-levels trending upwards by themselves.) [6]

  Current plan. "...why we haven't found anyone yet. We think it's just a tricky hire. Everybody believes their organization is special, but Wikimedia really is. We're highly unusual, and it makes sense to us therefore that it'll take us time to find the right person..." The board of the WMF was consulted at the November meeting, and agreed to keep on looking another N months (purposely left vague this time... but the "arbitrary section break" when the rolling interviews are expected to end is March). Somebody was also supposed to update the public job-description anew, but nobody has yet *actually* done so, that I could find. Sue/Jimbo/etc are now personally wining and dining specific targets... presumably ones who didn't interview during phase one. [7]

The Dirty Dozen ... do you know any of these people? Or can you fill in the qmarks?

uid human cmteRole, otherRole editcountitis
Jan-Bart [8] Jan-Bart de Vreede searchChair, WMF-trustees-chair tbd
Mindspillage [9] Kat Walsh member, ?? tbd
Lyzzy [10] Alice Wiegand member, ?? tbd
Sue_Gardner [11] Sue Gardner Facilitator, ExecDir tbd
Eloquence [12] Erik Möller member, vp dev tbd
Geoffbrigham [13] Geoff Brigham member, lawyer tbd
Gyoung [14] Gayle Karen Young member, ?? tbd
Phoebe [15] Phoebe Ayers member, ?? tbd
lisag@ [16] Lisa Grossman paid SFCA recruiter, ?? tbd
Jimbo Wales [17] Jimmy Wales phase-two help, founder tbd
Stu(?) [18] (?) Stu(?) phase-two help, ?? tbd
SJ (?) [19] (?) SJ (?) phase-two help, ?? tbd

The only donor-supported site in the top 100... WMF enables a global community of volunteers to collect, develop, and make freely available the sum of humanity's knowledge (aka JimboVision™). ExecDir, reporting to WMF board-of-trustees, and acting in partnership with DahCommuhnity™, 1) provides WMF leadership, 2) sets WMF strategy, and 3) manages day-to-day WMF operations. Specific tasks: 1) modernize UI, 2) nurture/grow/diversify editorCount, 3) various secondary tasks e.g. expand reach of grantmaking program to all countries. There was also something about server-farms, but what aptitude in agriculture has to do with it, I can only guess.[20] This is the "old" job-description from May'13... the new Dec'13 job-description is "narrower" (aka more specific) but not different (changed).

Note that task#1 and task#2 are tightly intertwined, and further note that although task#2 explicitly includes diversification this is presumably meant in the market-investment-sense of the verb diversify, and explicily not meant in the politically correct sense of that verb, because there is an explicit caveat aka secondary goal of "enabl[ing] contributor-growth in underrepresented demographics & geographic areas". The primary goal is not to get absolute growth in editor-count, and "economic-style" diversity in editors, which is to say, lose one wikiDragon from Puerto Rico, either to a banhammer or getting run over by a bus (I hereby explicily hope neither ever happens!), we want to have nine other wikiDragons who can fill the gap, just like diversified investment in the stock market helps guarantee ROI... when one stock goes out of business, nine others fill the gap in the portfolio. We'd like to improve the percentage of female muslim Hakka contributors living in Quebec, along the way, but that is a secondary goal to increasing the number of Good Eggs (the primary goal).

Misc links, might be relevant.[21][22][23][24][25][26][27]

Since the WMF is failing to find a replacement, and since said replacement is *critical* to our future success, both individually and as members of DahCommuhnity, perhaps we should open an RfC which asks people to nominate specific BLPs that would be good ExecDir candidates. It could run ~30 days, during the month of January. To avoid spoiler effect we can specify a voting-system which is a variation on approval voting. There is a list of candidates; to qualify for membership in the list, the candidate must have a BLP page (aka must already be wikiNotable), and must have ten editors that approve of them as a potential winner (suggestions can be posted on a separate talkpage to gather the initial ten "yea"-bangvotes). Voters can mark any candidate they specifically approve as a GOOD choice for execDir ... aka WMF dictator-for-life plus Lord of VisualEditor and Duke of WP:FLOW in charge of wisely spending USD$40M/yr ... with the bangvote of "approve" plus up to a 128-character argument in favor of that candidate. Chars are counted as rendered... links to a detailed argument on one's user-talkpage count as three rendered-on-the-screen characters.

Unlike most kinds bangvoting, it is allowed and *encouraged* to approve as many candidates as you think are GOOD ones for the job; this way there is no risk of vote-splitting and dark horses and such. Optionally, the editor can specify "approve first choice" for one (1) specific candidate, as well as "approve second choice" for one (1) distinct candidate; this is encouraged, but not mandatory. Editors cannot have third choices, multiple first-choices, multiple second-choices, etc... the clerk will fix mistakes by deleting everything but the "approve" portion of the mangled hanging-chad-vote, and then notify the voter on their user-talkpage to please try again. It is also possible, subject to very strict interpretation of WP:BLPTALK, for an editor to bangvote that a given BLP would make a TERRIBLE choice as the next ExecDir. To keep editors from gaming the system, and bangvoting everybody except their approve-first-choice pick as "terrible" we restrict the "no way" bangvotes to *one* per editor. TLDR: every editor (no WP:SOCKPUPPET crap!) can have one first choice, one second choice, and one no-way choice, plus as many unqualified "approve" votes as they wish.

At the end of the month, all the votes will be tallied, and the final table will be presented to User_talk:Jimbo_Wales for calm and reasoned discussion.  :-)   There will actually be *two* tallies. The first is a simple tally: for each BLP, one per row, we present a count of their no-way votes, a count of their total-approves (including approve1st + approve2nd + approveGeneric), a count of their approve-first-choice votes, and a count of their approve-second-choice votes; the table is sorted by total-approves in descending order. The second tally will be similar... except that the approve-first-choice, approve-second-choice, and no-way-bangvotes will be multiplied by the voter's enWiki mainspace editcountitis. I assume this may change the ranking dramatically. <grin> Furthermore, I definitely assume that the WMF-approved Dirty Dozen in my table above, will have their own internal private shortlist... but at least this way, if some non-Notable former COO of a proprietary-software hypercorp gets the ExecDir slot, then the following year raises their salary to 500k/yr (ditto for all the other WMF employees of course!) with mainspace GoogleAdWords to foot the bill, we can know exactly who to blame.

Actually, once a week (Jan7 + Jan14 + Jan21 + Jan28) we can do the non-weighted tally. The top-ten BLPs of each weekly tally can be given a barnstar, via email if they have no on-wiki pseudonym, and permitted to make a 100-word candidate-statement that gets added to their entry in The Big List Of ExecDir Candidates (some will be Shermanesque statements methinks... which will impact later bangvotes... and of course, voters can change their own votes — and only their own votes of course — at any time so candidate-statements might cause migration of approve-first-choice and also no-way). In general, though, candidates in the list will have only their name, plus the first sentence of their BLP as of 12:01am UTC on 2013-12-25; the version-stamp prevents gaming the lede in mainspace.

Sound like fun? Hope this helps. I'm available for http://tinychat.com/tl7n85 (or can try IRC this time perhaps) for the next few hours, if you wish. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:01, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Wow, what a mess. I'm glad Jimmy is wining candidates though; he has the vision and capability. Let's schedule a date though. I'm busy until Jan 2. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 03:18, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
When is good for you? I'm pretty flexible, so you pick. Also, feel free to ping my talkpage if you have a few minutes, and if I happen to be handy we can grab time as available. I'll see if I can find some other cowhands that are interested in on-wiki in-public nominations of ExecDir candidates, rather than leaving it all to Jimbo and the other eleven. Talk to you later, my friend. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:33, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Let's do it by email. I didn't expect my job + family + other stuff to take so much time away during the holidays. That way I can reply whenever I'm free. I can't commit at this time to a specific schedule unfortunately. My email is my username @gmail.com —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 17:03, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Oh, it doesn't take time away from wikipedia... don't be WP:ADDICTED.  :-)   It is time well spent, and meant to be enjoyed to the hilt. In any case, you ought to have email now. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 20:45, 28 December 2013 (UTC)