User talk:OBloodyHell11691

Heya, welcome to GuildWiki :) Could you sign your comments by either typing ~ or by pressing the Magical Sign Button on the toolbar? That way it's obvious you placed the comment, and you get a free timestamp! Isn't that awesome? ---  -- (contribs)  &emsp;(talk)  17:09, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

"What's your #$%#$ problem?" (DOH!!!)
Re: Your edit summary here - DeathByAnArrow didn't do anything except fix the capitalization of a quest name. I checked through the history, and you had not edited the number of foes in any of your previous edits. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 16:23, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that was a combination of odd timing and a DOH!. I got distracted by also updating the vanquishing page with the same info, hadn't yet saved it, and then saw that someone had updated it just a few moments before (not realizing I hadn't saved the update. I thought it had been reverted for some rude reason (tired, it was my third vanq in a row, and the Awakened near the Lair outpost in that area gave me absolute fits). Is it possible to alter that note after it's been saved? I would have fixed it to reflect the realization. "Mea Culpa". OBloodyHell 16:38, 11 January 2009 (UTC)OBloodyhell
 * No, unfortunately, edit summaries can't be modified. I've had plenty of situations myself where I'd like to change them, mostly typos that I notice right after I click Save.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 16:42, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ain't that always the way? Your proofreader needs a proofreader. :oP OBloodyHell 16:53, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

GW:1RV
GW:1RV basically don't revert a revert without discussing it first. You've done this a few times now, just wanted to let you know there's a policy for that Viruzzz 23:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

1) I quote:  Exception: A first revert without any explanation conflicts with GuildWiki:Assume good faith, is not protected by this policy, and may be fair game for re-reversion. "I don't agree" is sufficient "explanation"? That's interesting... "information". I'll remember that S:-/  So far that's been the jist of many of these "explanations". Dr. Ishmael is the only one actually bothering to specify more about his reasoning. 2) In most, if not each case, the "reversion" has been adjusted to deal with the complaint as well. The reversions were merely used to re-base back to what I had done, rather than having to re-enter it, which is pointlessly tedious and just stupid.
 * The main unwritten rules of guildwiki are as follows:
 * Don't talk about Fight Club.
 * Standardization trumps all.
 * Just because anyone agrees or disagress, doesn't mean its right.
 * It's better to go to the talk page of an unliked revision after you have been reverted then start a revert war.
 * Ooh, and 34 applies EVEN HERE.--Łô√ë [[Image:Gigathrash_sig_G.jpg|Colors! ]]îğá†ħŕášħ 04:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

You fail to address my point in the least -- I quote an "explanation", since you force me to dig one out: ''I don't think it's relevant. if so, it'd go in the notes section''. That's not explanation, that's naysaying. Clearly, *I* thought it was relevant, or I would not have wasted my time adding it in the first place. So who died and made him god of this entry? And again, I didn't just "revert", I ALTERED the revert after I made it to address his point. See also the below, which also makes the case for what I'd done in the first place. Ishmael left a fair comment, not a mindless "Nuhhh-uhhhh. I don't like it" naysay. So the "explanation" was not sufficient to justify a revert in the first place. --OBloodyHell 04:19, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That's not up to you to decide. However, I'd rather keep a contributing member than nitpick about enforcing some stupid policy. First rule of anything on GuildWiki is that Content Trumps All . Screw policy technicalities. Policy exists to help the wiki, not hinder it. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 05:41, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That's not explanation, that's naysaying. Good observation. That's what a "revert war" is, continued naysaying with technical means. The way to outmanouever the naysayer is to let his version stand, support your own version on the talkpage, and if the naysayer can't adress that there or at least come up with an argument of his own, you claim consensus by default, and a day later you revert to what is "clearly" wiki consensus. And that actually trumps 1:RV - anybody who tries to revert away from demonstrated (via the article's talkpage) consensus becomes the odd one out.
 * It feels like it shouldn't be that way - if you are right, and clearly you are when there's no valid counterargument, why shouldn't your edit be allowed to stand? The point is that being right in certain ways upsets the wiki, so the smart people need to figure out ways to be right that don't. Continued reverts are not a smart way to be right.
 * Of course, it could be that it turns out that the "naysayer" actually can explain when the issue is raised on the talkpage, and in that case your course of action caused the debate to start that should've been happening all along. It means you helped him, in a way; but if you are averse to helping people you don't even know, what are you doing editing a wiki? ;-)
 * And, and lest I forget, welcome back to the wiki! I'm happy to have you here! --◄mendel► 08:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The reason why information that some players may find relevant is sometimes removed is that if everyone adds his pet tip and no one ever removes them, pages can become an incomprehensible mess. See, for example:
 * Dunes of Despair
 * Thunderhead Keep
 * Raisu Palace
 * Imperial Sanctum
 * Jennur's Horde
 * Abaddon's Gate
 * Having too much information on a page, some of which is dubious or only marginally useful, makes it difficult to find the information that a player needs. In all of those cases, the page was greatly improved with the next edit, which greatly shortened the page.
 * Don't take it personally if your edit gets reverted. Quizzical 05:34, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) By your own rules, the reversion should be explained. "Null" explanations: "I don't see this as useful" are rude and assinine. If you can't come up with a better explanation, then you should leave it alone and take it to the talk page, as alluded to above

2) One can certainly simplify without removing useful details. Not all contributors are of equal skill in writing. I don't care if someone edits something, although I am a fairly good writer, because someone else may have a better way of saying it than I do. 3) I'll grant you that every niggling little detail about an area can be less useful. Noting anything unique about an area seems fully within the bounds of the purpose of the wiki. 4) Techniques for specific combat may fit better on the talk page, I grant -- and you might consider adding an additional page specifically for that sort of discussion, as opposed to discussions about general content. If someone is entering things which fit more on the talk page, rather than a simple "revert", one should consider moving the "offending" portion onto the talk page, with a note "detail fits better on the talk page... content moved". It's far less rude, explains why the matter is believed not to fit, and doesn't throw away the information provided completely. Even if you disagree, clearly someone thought it relevant enough to add it. Unless their description is clearly wrong (in which case a response is likely to follow), someone else may find merit in it. --It's all a matter of recognizing and appreciating that people are making an effort of their own to contribute something. Some of the reversions I've seen happen around here have been rude in the extreme and completely unjustified where they were supposed to be "explained politely" at best, and have definitely been inarguably inexcusable. Some of the main operators around here, from what I've seen, are busy throwing their weight around as "tin plated dictators with delusions of godhood" rather than being productive. --OBloodyHell 21:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * If someone is entering things which fit more on the talk page, rather than a simple "revert", one should consider moving the "offending" portion onto the talk page &mdash; I've been preaching that for ages, mostly in the context of "Trivia". -- ◄mendel► 22:01, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I hadn't really thought about that, but yeah, when you suggest it, it suggests two other tabs, one "Trivia" and one, for locations, missions, and/or monsters, "Combat Ideas" or something like that. Discussion ideally should be about the content itself. Fuzzy, yeah, but it fits. LOL. Nice link, BTW... --OBloodyHell 22:49, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Sysops aren't meant to be any more productive than normal users. They administrate users, not content. Besides that, I'm the only dictator around here, and I surpassed godlike status a long time ago. Don't forget that.
 * I believe that if an edit contains useful information, no matter how badly worded/longwinded/etc., it is much more productive to fix it than to simply revert it. Sometimes people do that because they can't be bothered to fix it themselves, but that doesn't help to resolve the issue and just creates negative emotions.
 * For mission articles, generally, combat advice shouldn't be added unless it is particularly effective and applies specifically to that mission. See the Dzagonur Bastion mission article, for instance - a detailed strategy is advised with fairly specific builds and such. It's OK because it is ideal for that particular mission and can't really be generalized. Compare that to, say, Gate of Desolation; here the only advice given is to take Holy damage, because that's all that really needs to be said, other than warning about monsters with reusable resurrection. It doesn't need detailed builds and stratagems. One other point is that stuff which applies to many different situations - for example, "Pain Inverter is good" or "Don't forget to display your X title" - need not be added as it is common sense.
 * In any case, if you have issues with a particular user's summaries (or lack of), you can take the issue up with them on their talkpage; and the content in question is discussed on the article's talkpage. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 00:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Arneh the Vigorous
99% of bosses are upgraded versions of a standard monster. We don't note this on boss pages because it's obvious based on the boss's species and profession exactly which normal monster they are upgraded from. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 00:18, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

It should, it's not obvious by any means. You presume information which is obvious to highly experienced users ("all awakened cavaliers are paragons, and only awakened paragons are cavaliers") but not necessarily to less experienced ones Further, it may be the case often (perhaps even especially so in The Desolation), but it's not always the case. It makes a lot more sense, if there's no difference at all in the spells/skills, only in the inherent "boss" qualities, to just say it's an "uber-xxx". Then it's clear exactly what the problems with it are, and there are no special considerations due to added spells or even something completely different -- ''. Arneh is a particularly obvious example, since cavaliers, along with accolytes, are one of the main problems in dealing with Awakened mobs. Making the statement that he's an "Awakened Cavalier" boss means you know all you need to know what the main problems with him are (the rez, in particular) without bothering to compare to see if he has any other skills added or swapped out. Noting that Arneh is a cavalier says that, unlike most Awakened groups, you want to take him out BEFORE the accolytes, since the accolytes are only touch-rez and less likely to cast that. Yes, you can notice that by looking at the skills, but the point is, you hae to look over the skills, think about what they do, then realize that it's exactly a flinkin' cavalier. Why not just SAY "Uber-Cavalier" instead of causing someone to figure it out, every time anyone looks at the page for the first time in a while? http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Island_Guardian http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Soulwhisper%2C_Elder_Guardian http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rockhide_Dragon http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wavecrest_Stonebreak<br \> These two pairs are an example, though visually similar, Soulwhisper and Wavecrest do NOT match the criteria I'm talking about. They aren't an "Island Guardian boss" or a "Rockhide Dragon boss", because the skills are completely different. If they are exactly the same, that's a piece of subtle information worth noting. Which is my entire point--OBloodyHell 04:20, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I was gonna write a scathing message repeatedly breaking NPA but Entropy told me to stop doing that. So, basically sans npa's:  The mentally retarded don't play GW.  Have a nice day.--Łô√ë [[Image:Gigathrash_sig_G.jpg|Colors! ]]<font color="Black">îğá†ħŕášħ  04:32, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * So what are you doing here, asshole? Why are you paying attention to a Wiki for a game you can't play? --OBloodyHell 04:34, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Calm the fuck down. You don't know me, I don't know you. Stop raging. --Łô√ë [[Image:Gigathrash_sig_G.jpg|Colors! ]]<font color="Black">îğá†ħŕášħ 04:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe Giga's point was that if people are too stupid to figure out that "all awakened cavaliers are paragons, and only awakened paragons are cavaliers", they may as well /uninstall. Of course it was ambiguously worded and started NPAs, so it could probably have been worded better.
 * In any case, I think it would be fine to note "Foo is a boss" for those small % of monsters which are completely different than their normal monsters. The ones which you link above are prime candidates. I think that for the other monsters, unless they are significantly dangerous for some reason ("uber"), it doesn't make sense to list it. For example, low-level Charr bosses in Prophecies - it's not much use to say, "Felinam the Whip is an upgraded Charr ranger boss", since he is still failsauce, even at that point in the game. Also, "boss" in itself ought to covey a sense of additional power compared to other monsters.
 * That being said, I also do not see why the style guide could not be changed to include this data. It certainly doesn't hurt anything; sure, maybe it is redundant/obvious on most bosses, but if nothing else it provides an easy access link to the "normal" version of the monster, so if you are totally unfamiliar with them you can maybe learn how to fight them for the first time. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 05:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Entropy's edit summary is really the main point here: she said, "never be afraid to question the merit of standard practice/tradition", the key word being "question". If you think something should be done differently from how it currently is, but you get reverted when you try to change it, then instead of starting revert wars you need to start a discussion about it.  Take it to the talkpages and see if you can convince people that your idea has merit.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 06:23, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Speaking of which, oughtn't this be moved to the relevant style/guide/boss/whatever talkpage? [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 06:29, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Entropy's edit summary is really the main point here The second summary you can make a case for. The first one was mere naysaying. And that's my point -- your own guide suggests that the edit summary should be more than "that's useless" which was her excuse for the revert. And for rejecting that -- *once* -- AND actually addressing the issue made on top of that by rewording -- which is fully within the consistency of the guidelines, I was yelled at. Capisce?<br \>

And as far as moving it elsewhere, feel free. By all means, please point the way to whatever location you consider more topical.<br \> My general point here is that a lot of the people writing these things don't have a noob vp (and can't, for obvious reasons), but most of the stuff here is the greatest use to a noob. There's a lot of subtle elements to the gameplay which aren't obvious on the surface, like the fact that all the monsters are, in many cases, just variations on the basic professions, and that the bosses are often upgraded versions of a specific monster with no new spells. For the enormous cost of about four words, something to the effect of "xxx is a boss version of monster yyy", you call attention to that to those without experience, and even make an astoundingly quick summary for the experienced user going into an area they've not done in a while. It also calls attention to the boss not having any particular unique spells or attributes other than just those associated with being a "boss" in that area, without you needing to actually compare pages. If they have any spells not associated with monster yyy then they aren't just a "boss monster yyy", they're more.


 * re: "calm down"... LOL. If I was raging at you, you'd know it. Throwing your own rude, pointlessly insulting snark back in your face is hardly raging.<br \>

All the above -- OBloodyHell 10:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Contrary to Gigathrash's assertion, it's not necessarily true that the mentally retarded don't play Guild Wars. I would concur that they don't come to this wiki for information on how to play Guild Wars, however.  :D  Quizzical 05:24, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * --<br\>1) I've played enough AB to guarantee you that the mentally retarded DO, indeed, play GW. Chances are, you have, too.<br\>2) I'm sure they come here. They don't always learn more than the most basic rudiments (like pre-made builds and vaguely how to push the buttons to run them), but they come here. That's almost certainly how they got the build they're playing, because they sure didn't come up with it. <br \><br \> So QED, Ipso Facto, and "Bob's your uncle"....;oP --OBloodyHell 16:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * To the contrary, they go to the official wiki. They can't find this one.  Quizzical 19:46, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * MMMMmmmmm, where are they getting the builds from? Sure, some may be getting them from friends, but at some point someone probably had to go to the PVX subwiki... :oP --OBloodyHell 20:07, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Which is unrelated to this wiki. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  21:03, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You link to it. And it says, I quote: "A GuildWiki fork containing only build articles." The impression is given that it's related to this wiki, even if it's a completely different set of people and all that. And all that is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand. :-9
 * Although they were "born" from our users, and we still link to them, that is largely a historic/sentimental gesture, as they have very litle to do with us. In the past, they linked to our pages for skill information, but they changed that to GWW awhile ago. Sometimes, when we need to make a link to a specific build, we make links to PvX; but this isn't very often. Generally speaking, while we appreciate them for holding back the retardedness which comes along with a builds section, we find PvX to be an unpleasant place. :\
 * To the topic at hand: I'm gonna propose soon a change to the style and formatting guides with the thought in mind "For the enormous cost of about four words, something to the effect of "xxx is a boss version of monster yyy", you call attention to that to those without experience, and even make an astoundingly quick summary for the experienced user going into an area they've not done in a while". You already said you didn't mind the conversation being moved but I just wanted to double-check. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 00:34, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * NP here. Feel free to copy/edit/alter/summarize any of my words on that as a part of any summary, with or without attribution. --OBloodyHell 07:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Personal attacks
Hi. Personal attacks like this one are not acceptable. If you continue to personally attack people- especially since I am not the first to notice- you will be blocked.

And we don't keep the information you listen on the Twin Serpent Lakes area because it's true for every area with a Statue of Melandru, and the information on what the bonus does is already listed here. Thanks,  Shadowcrest  21:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC) -- > (stuff like that doesnt need to be noted) 1) See above issues with regards to your own standards. DO THEY APPLY OR NOT???? From what I can see, so far, I've been RUDELY reverted with nothing but a NAYSAY --- TWICE NOW. ARE you BOTHERING to take issue with THAT person's actions and failure to follow  YOUR OWN STANDARDS???? <br \> 2) Well, let's see, since I've been playing the game for a while now, and ***I*** just noted it, DO YA THINK -- just maybe -- that it's not quite visible enough on these pages and that it might be noted in the areas which they appear?<br \> 3) Apparently, you presume that EVERYONE even KNOWs about kneeling before the shrines, which isn't an inherently obvious action, and the only reason I thought of doing it there was because of the behavior in other campaigns.<br \> In short:<br \> a) You fail to call attention to something which someone trying to learn about the game ought to be aware of, and which is FAR from visible. Unless someone specifically looks up shrines (which there isn't any particular reason to do on the surface) there is virtually NO WAY they will learn about kneeeling at shrines and statues. There simply isn't ANY reason to even think about doing it.<br \> b) You've given me crap --- MULTIPLE TIMES--- while ignoring people ALSO clearly and INARGUABLY violating your own guidelines -- in a much more significant way, since the ONLY people aware of "what I'm doing" happen to be reading comments NOT visible to anyone on the site in general. Screwing up someone else's efforts to contribute without justification or explanation? "Hey, NO PROBLEM whatsoever"???? >:-(<br \> As above: Tin plated dictators with delusions of godhood. Stop throwing your weight around at me and start enforcing your own rules for reverts!!! <br \>--OBloodyHell 21:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

-<br\> "And we don't keep the information you listen on the Twin Serpent Lakes area because it's true for every area with a Statue of Melandru, and the information on what the bonus does is already listed here." 1) So the pages for locations in nightfall and cantha don't list shrines? Oh, wait, THEY DO! So what is your excuse for not listing defacto shrines with bonuses in the prophecies sections???<br \> 2) If you're arguing with the format, I chose that because it IS that used on the Elona/Cantha pages. EXccuuuuuuuse me for trying to be consistent. Silly me.. <br \> 3) In short, I've been reverted for doing something matching other pages and in blatant violation of guildwiki standards for doing so, just because someone hasn't ever bothered to consider that they're doing things inconsistently? I'm duplicating this over on that page's discussion page. --OBloodyHell 21:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * NPA and 1RV are two separate policies. Violation of one does not give you the right to violate another. --JonTheMon 21:54, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Nothing personal, but lay off the caps. It makes your text less readable. Same goes for spamming punctuation. More on topic; imho it isn't a bad note, but should be placed in the Notes section. It's indeed far from obvious to a casual player.
 * Also, the point was not listing what the shrine does, not wether there is a shrine at all. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  21:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * (sigh) Viper, if there's nothing to link the user to the fact that they do anything where will they learn this in the first place? You say "point it to a specific location which discusses that particular behavior" -- that's one thing. That's not how it's been done, that's not how it's been handled. No one has called attention to this or bothed to make that change. The revert was just done with another naysaying response.<br \>


 * Jon, stop trying to change the subject:<br \>

1) I didn't claim it did as you suggest.<br \> 2) I am asking if anyone has bothered to say anything at all to the people doing the naysaying reverts. I seriously doubt it.<br \> 3) I have yet to have anyone acknowledge to me that this has been done incorrectly and that I have been given crap for responding to the revert within guildwiki guidelines. So I'm a bit ticked that I'm taking crap when acting within guidelines and others are clearly not.<br \> 4) Sorry, I don't tend to respond to rude people by being polite to them. It doesn't work to justify rude behavior. And no, someone being rude to you because you're being rude back is not covered by that.<br \> 5) "1" and "4" above should not be construed as ignoring the complaint in question, however. I do believe that you all need to discuss amongst yourselves the fact that you've probably not corrected people who are in blatant violation of your expressed standards for reverts, and I'd feel a heck of a lot less desire to snap at such rudeness if I actually believed that issue was taken seriously. I've seen no sign of such an attitude so far. The only person who seems to have taken the argument/complaint even vaguely seriously is Dr. Ishmael, and I believe I've made ample case for the complaint. <br \>--OBloodyHell 22:14, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Have a look at what Jon actually did to the article: he linked to the statue, so that following the link brings you to the information you seek. It is often the case that such compromises escape the people who revert and the people who wrote too much, and that's why we're a community, no? Shit happens, but if you dwell on it, you miss the opportunity to improve. -- ◄mendel► 22:18, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Mendel, my point still is -- what is to give anyone at all any idea that the statue has any benefit other than of it being of visual interest. If I see a link to melandru, all I expect to get told is the background on melandru, not to be given any notion of the shrine behavior when you kneel at it. And my complaint still stands. The explanation given, I quote: "stuff like that doesnt need to be noted" was rude and abrupt and in blatant violation of GWiki standards, as I note in the other section. No explanation of why: "that's covered in the link to melandru, FYI" -- if that had been the case I would have simply gone back and made suitable changes to deal with that, if I still believed it relevant. It was rude, and if someone hasn't commented on this to Gene195, then I'm asking: why not? That's not excusing or arguing in favor of my response, it's saying that so far, I haven't seen anything showing that anyone cares. And if they don't care about proper behavior in one area, by what mental tap dancing are they justifying giving me crap about it in another? --OBloodyHell 22:44, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The underlying issue is redundancy of information. For every single explorable area you could mention what each statue does, what is summons, and what benefit it gives, but that would be overly redundant on each page and clutter those pages. Now, if the issue is "people won't know to interact with the statue," then an option might be to reword it "There is an interactive statue of Melandru...." and if they want to know how to interact, they click the link. And see, if we discuss it we can get to the heart of the problem and come up with a solution. --JonTheMon 22:54, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The quests Family Ties and Wisdom of the Druids both entail kneeling at a shrine to begin the quest. Players who do the quests would learn of kneeling at shrines that way.  As for players who don't do quests, well, you miss some things if you don't do them.  That's their problem.
 * Shrines in other campaigns are sometimes noted for their bounties. Shrines in Prophecies do not offer such bounties.
 * As a general principle, if particular information is true in many different places, it is better to list it once centrally than independently in dozens of places. That prevents cluttering articles unnecessarily.  To list the shrines on an area article and link to the shrine pages would be far less clutter than explaining what a shrine does in every single area with a shrine.
 * The 1RV policy is not a broad ban on reversions. Most edits never get reverted, and for most of the edits that are reverted, the reversion is the end of it.  If you think an edit you made was wrongly reverted, take it to the talk page for that article.  If no one is willing to give an explanation why the revert should have been made within a couple of days, then you can add back the removed information.
 * Many of the times that an edit is reverted, it is because the edit was obvious vandalism. In such cases, there isn't really a need for detailed explanations.  Your edits (at least the ones I've seen) haven't fallen into that category, of course.
 * The problem with your edits in particular is that you're adding some very verbose sections to some heavily viewed and already lengthy articles, with your comments only tangentially relevant. Mission articles have quite enough to cover, and increasing their length substantially can be problematic.  I spent quite a lot of time trying to shorten some bloated articles to make them more readable.
 * It also doesn't help your cause if a comment is worded awkwardly and has various spelling or grammar errors. If a comment isn't of much use to begin with, and obviously needs to be changed considerably, the easiest change is to revert it.  That is perhaps unfortunate, but it is reality.  Quizzical 23:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Quizzical, Not everyone does all the side quests. And so far, I've noted at least two statues -- the Melandru one and the one of Grenth in the Foothills of Ascalon which do act just like the shrines do in terms of providing a boon to the player who kneels in return for a fee. Whether they have always done this I have no idea. But I suggest it's worth calling attention to, as the format is different enough (a statue instead of an out and out shrine) that in some fashion or another there ought to be something to call attention to it. It's like the player in the discussion page for the followup to completing the prophecies campaign (droknar's xxx, whatever the title is) who had no idea that the ending "reward" had changed to make it work like the other campaigns, and that he could now get a green item for it. And the boon offerred, 3 regen and 25+ max health, partywide, for only 50gp isn't utterly trivial. Does it need to be done with every statue? No. But it should be mentioned and ideally in such a way that someone casually reading about one of those pages will be encouraged to check the link looking for more information that just a description of melandru or grenth or whatever. The "statue of melandru" isn't a bad idea, since it's at least calling some separate attention to the fact that it's a statue that is of interest and not just melandru. I'd probably suggest a "boon-granting statue of melandru" would help with that quite a bit. It calls attention to the fact that it grants a boon, which will make newbies go "what? statues grant boons?" and follow the link to learn more.
 * I was playing the game for a long while before I was made aware of it, by a friend who had been playing the game since it was first released who had only found out about it themselves a couple months before. The whole kneeling thing is hardly obvious, and probably isn't intended to be. But there ought to be a reasonable set of avenues to make people aware of it. --OBloodyHell 08:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, about not knowing about /kneel even though it is the list of emotes (might want to link it to "shrine" there?) is a problem that the game designers need to address.
 * About what gets enforced and what doesn't, yeah, the times I've felt most insulted by on the wiki were reverts, not anything that falls under GW:NPA. I've got no solution, because tin-plated gods are clearly unable to police these kind of insults, and we do have a culture that often tends to think "revert is simpler than improve". Maybe it's because anyone can edit here? The path I've taken is from time to time call that to people's attention, but as you can probably guess it doesn't change much. Some people do try and not simply revert, they explain or improve on the original editor's intention, and I like to think there's more of them than there used to be. Hmm, maybe I should start "policing" that - if policing weren't so boring. Still, however dissatisfied you are, you aren't justified to insult people. -- ◄mendel► 23:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Mendel, I'm not talking about knowing about /kneel, but about the special results which happen if you do it before a statue of one of the gods when The Favor of The Gods is with you. The appearance of the avatar and the opportunity to gain various boons in return for a fee. Even if you know enough to do it at shrines, the statues are different enough that you might not think to do it before them.... And I have seen some that don't do anything. The ones in Serenity Temple, for example, do nothing (I think -- now that I've thought about it, I'm not sure what was the state of the Favor of the Gods). Gonna have to check that. --OBloodyHell 08:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, Shadowcrest has never interacted with you in any way before this incident (if I am wrong, please point me to it), and so you singling him out seems rather unfair to me. I also take offense to you labelling my administrators as "tin-plated dictators with delusions of godhood". They are doing their goddamn best, spending their precious free time to help maintain this site, and yet you see fit to attack them. You feel very strongly about being reverted, and are frustrated; well, imagine how it must feel for the sysops to get this kind of unwarranted abuse. They are just as human as you. They make mistakes. They are doing their best to remain be polite and civil.

Secondly, "why aren't you punishing HIM, too?" is not a valid argument and it is completely irrelevant to the discussion, because we are talking about you and your actions. Each case is dealt with separately, and if someone feels a need to bring up the issue with Gene, then they are free to do so. (This includes you.) I have already left a note for Jon; as for Gene, you must be willing to admit that at least he gave an edit summary to justify his actions. Moreover, it was not merely "naysaying" or just an expression of opinion; neither was it a breach of the style and formatting guidelines (as far as I am aware), as it does not specifically say that god shrines are to be listed. Moreover, as Quizzical pointed out above, and as I referenced in my response here, there is a difference between the functionality of the shrines which makes a big case for why Prophecies ones aren't that important/sought after. In light of that, I believe Gene can be forgiven of any wrongdoing, and I will not be involving him in this discussion or issing "equal justice". (It has been decided since some time ago that while bounties are notable enough to merit listing everywhere, god statues are not; this can be brought up for discussion again if you would so wish.)

Thirdly, I understand that you are not in a particularly good mood, and you feel you are being slighted. However, you must consider that all of the editors here do so in good faith, and their ideas and opinions about what are relevant are just as valuable and valid as yours. This wiki is a community effort, and it is through discussion and consensus that content matters are decided. None of the users intended to come across as rude or malicious, and so to imply that they were is fairly hurtful. You say that "I don't usually treat rude people with politeness"; not to get Christian on you, but I would urge you to turn the other cheek and take the high road... even if you do not think they deserve it, treat others as you wish to be treated, and things will go much more smoothly. It never helps to be rude or insulting when you are trying to convince people of your point of view.

On a last note... having said all that, I hope that you are not deterred by these initial rough experiences such that you are turned off from the wiki. We are really quite nice people if you give us a chance, and we appreciate your contributions, small or large as they may be. Everyone is welcome here, and we are glad to have a fresh new user who is enthusiastic to add and expand upon comment. (T/C) 04:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

-

Still not listening
1) At no point did I say I was ignoring your concern in this regard. In specific, I made it CLEAR that, although some defensive commentary was made, that I was not meaning that by any sense -- I quote: "5) "1" and "4" above should not be construed as ignoring the complaint in question, however." Despite having made a specific entry to that effect, every single one of you decided, however, that it was necessary to give me MORE crap over it.<br \> 2) I did not single out shadowcrest by any sense. Did you see me refer to him by name? I am, as I have been saying since this crap first started, ticked because you ALL seem to ignore a very specific and fairly clear provision of your own rules and standards. Need I repeat myself on this YET again? "Just see above".<br \> 3) "it is completely irrelevant to the discussion, because we are talking about you and your actions." No, it's not. I wouldn't BE snotty (and I repeat once more, since no one seems able to get it when it's said three times: point friggin' taken) if it weren't for the fact that I'm getting essentially blown off with regards to the OTHER issue, with excuses and "yeah but..."s. THAT's CRAP. <br \> ---<br \> Either enforce your own standards amongst yourselves or stop being a bunch of hypocrites complaining to others about some "other" standard you've decided is somehow "more important". I think at best they are of equal importance. Being rude to someone for no reason is indefensible -- that includes reverts without explanation. Being rude to someone already being rude is at least debatable.<br \> ---<br \> 4) "I also take offense to you labelling my administrators as "tin-plated dictators with delusions of godhood". They are doing their goddamn best, spending their precious free time to help maintain this site, and yet you see fit to attack them. You feel very strongly about being reverted, and are frustrated; "<br \> No, entropy, you still aren't getting it. It's not the reverts. It's the naysaying reverts in complete violation of your own stated rules for making reverts -- see above entries and handwave responses for what it is that has ticked me off. The tpdw/iog remark is tied entirely to this total lack of concern for what is blatantly rude behavior. "We'll do whatever we damnwell please" is the message. "Tin plated dictators w/ delusions of godhood" is a valid interpretation of that attitude.<br \> 5) I grasp that you don't want to take the time to police everyone constantly. But when you note something like that, you SHOULD be just as diligent about placing messages in the user's talk pages as you are if they make personal attacks. And I'm not seeing the slightest sign that ANYONE grasps this. And if someone complains to you about it, you darned sure ought to be taking the complaint seriously, rather than making excuses or blowing off that person. I also don't buy it that casual users revert things all that much. I'd lay odds that more than 95% of the reverts come from a narrow list of people who are more than casual contributors. So policing THEM and encouraging THEM to be polite and considerate of other contributors isn't all that tough. By all means, correct me if that perception is inaccurate.<br \> 6) "we do have a culture that often tends to think "revert is simpler than improve". This, by itself, isn't the issue, but it's generally rude, still. If you're going to revert something, though, you should at least be courteous enough to take the time to make the reason clear, or as clear as can be done in the space allowed for by the comment summary.<br \> 7) In most cases, I would argue you should avoid reverts without copying the offending part to the discussion page. Yeah, it's an additional step, but need not be much more than a simple cut-and-paste, and it leaves the work of the contributor "in view" which encourages discussion, improvement, or adaptation. While reverts don't utterly disappear stuff, they certainly don't leave them out where people are likely to reconsider them or adapt them. Make a standard part of the talk pages "==For Consideration==" and dump anything reverted there, assuming it's a paragraph or sentence and not some giant polemic or massive 10-section modification. And you probably ought to fill in details as to what made it revert-worthy, as well, if the comment wasn't clear. Every once in a while, you clear that out if nothing's been done with it after 3-4 months or whatever.<br \> '''Again: it's not the reverts. It's the manner it's done in, and the casual way my complaints about this are getting blown off that are the issue.''' --OBloodyHell 07:45, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * As a casual observer, I think things are getting blown WAY out of proportion with this issue. It's been my observation that in most cases where something is reverted, there is a short explanation given in the comments area.  Maybe people forget to put it in there - it happens.  It seems more like you're taking the "naysaying" very personally, and martyring yourself over something that really shouldn't be an argument at all (a discussion yes, but civilized and not accusatory).  This creates an unhealthy environment, both for the relationship between yourself and the sysops, and for the Wiki community overall.  You don't have to like the sysops and you are more than welcome to question any practices that you see as "breaking the rules," but doing so in a constructive fashion gives better results than above.  There's an old saying about attracting more flies with honey than with vinegar, after all.  These are just my observations, of course.  Jink  12:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * If you make a comment on an article's talk page, rather than in mainspace, it won't be reverted.
 * I once read an article about someone who tried catching flies both with honey and with vinegar and found that vinegar was more effective. Quizzical 18:07, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * We are much more vigilant about personal attacks because to us, they are far more important to the upkeep of the community than reverts of content of questionable importance (not referring to any one user's contributions in particular). The only time when reverts usually warrant this much attention is when they are highly controversial (unlikely claims/facts) or deal with trivia.
 * I do not have the ... patience to respond to you fully at this time, so all I will say for now is that your remarks have offended me, and I have done as much "policing" as I am going to do on your behalf. I have talked to all users whom I thought were unduly inconsiderate with their reverts and expressed the concerns raised here. That is all. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 21:36, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow, and all I had to do was pull out three teeth to get a (potentially false, noting the careful wording) acknowledgement.
 * ::If you make a comment on an article's talk page, rather than in mainspace, it won't be reverted. It will also be seen by a fraction as many people who might actually use the information. Noobs don't notice the "talk" pages. That's part of the reason why they're noobs. But that point is still completely lost on you, I can see. :-P
 * You got rules. If you only follow "some of them, when you feel like it", there's no point in them being rules. 'Nuff said.--OBloodyHell 11:41, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * It's a wiki, not a walkthrough. Favor links blessing which links God's statue. The fact that you didn't find it when playing the game without help nor when browsing the wiki doesn't mean it's our fault. This is mediawiki. It works like wikipedia. The talk pages are important. It's simpler telling wikinoobs to look at talkpages too than to move everything from talk to main.
 * On an unrelated note, if you are able to tone the aggro down a bit, I'd really like you to stay here a bit and participate in discussions. Could be fun. ;-P -- ◄mendel► 01:53, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * IMNSHO (as you've no doubt noticed :oP ), for the cost of, what, four words, you can indicate that idea to the random reader, though. I suggest that "unutterably high cost" is worth it. If you said "a blessing providing statue" you would call attention to the idea, which would cause a casual, unknowing reader to go, "Wait! What? Blessing?" and then they'd look at the blessing entry, because now they are thinking that there is something they are unaware of. And that should be a part of the information presented here -- An encyclopedia is not just to tell someone what they are looking for, but to lead them to things they don't know -- and don't know they don't know. <br \>Phillip Jose Farmer: "Dullard: Someone who looks a thing up in the encyclopaedia, turns directly to the entry, reads it, and then closes the book.". Hyperlinking makes that potential far, far more powerful. I argue: A good encyclopedia entry is one for which someone keeps clicking until four hours have passed by and they forgot what they were originally going to do, that they were looking things up for.<br \> Also: There are probably statues that don't offer a blessing. I don't believe the statue of Balthazar in Old Ascalon does. It had flames at the base, but kneeling at any of the three accessible compass points didn't offer anything. Also, are the statues in prophecies' blessings (which blessings are unique to prophecies -- example: one costs 50gp, the other 100gp -- is there any difference between them? It took the money each time, but the blessing did not change), subject to the Favor of the Gods? In other words, I suspect, perhaps wrongly I grant, that there is a difference between the behavior of the prophecies statues and those of Factions/Nightfall. --OBloodyHell 08:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A hypertext is a net. (Technically,the pages are called nodes). The net should have the information located where you expect to find it, and it should be simple to navigate. Speaking as an editor, it makes sense to put the information that you want to know where it "belongs". We have information about the statues in God's statue articles. The behaviour of the statues does not change between Prophecies and Factions: you kneel, the avatar appears. However, you are enquiring about the blessing, which is where the info you seek is. (What does the fact that you have apparently not read the three articles I linked tell you about yourself with respect to the PJF quote? ;-) You write: Hyperlinking makes that potential far, far more powerful. We are agreed on that; that is exactly what Jon did as response to your criticism, he linked the page to the information you seek (I mentioned that above). We do not realize the potential of a node of a hypertext by cramming as much information in it as we can; we do that by providing as many links to related information as we can in a net-like fashion, that is, the reader gets a thread he must follow to get to information twice removed instead of listing it all on that page. So you follow the link to statue to get a link to blessing.
 * To work with these are basic hypertext navigation skills. Is it a surprise that, like working with an encyclopedia, getting the most out of a hypertext is a skill that has to be learned on top of the reading skill? Ask yourself if your school curriculum helps people acquire that. It requires being able to be selective to navigate the overabundance of information, to get a feeling for the information structure so you can predict which links are likely to lead to information you want to know, and the ability to find good starting nodes into the net via key words that either get you a relevant articles or a list (selection ability is good for the latter again).
 * Whether a link is considered twice removed or not is a matter of, on a collaborative text, editorial consensus. As you should have gleaned from the responses to your suggestion, consensus in this matter is that a blessing is twice removed from a location page by way of the statue. My response to your argument that it should be once removed so wikinoobs can find it better is that "wikinoobs" are really people who need to learn to employ hypertexts more effectively, and we're not helping them by making our own hypertext be less effective.
 * If there are statues that don't have an avatar when it appears, it should probably be tagged "(inactive)" or some such. I should guess that the talk page of the Old Ascalon or Statue of Balthazar articles or our ask a question page would be a good place to post a note about the anomaly you have observed and ask other players for confirmation. -- ◄mendel► 11:05, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * mendel, look back at the history of the page in question. My problem wasn't with Jon, it was with the bozo who just reverted my original entry with a rude "we don't need that information here" comment. Jon made some effort to address my concerns. Inadequate in my opinion, but it at least got somewhat there. I have yet to hear an argument defining in any rational fashion what is the problem with the simple construct I've suggested, other than what I consider a rather silly notion that somehow massively increasing the chance that someone will learn something particularly useful is a bad idea. You say:
 * So you follow the link to statue to get a link to blessing.  To which my rather obvious response is, rather simply, "why the f*** would ANYONE follow the link to something as likely useless as "statue" and expect to get anything exceedingly useful such as "blessing"? This is not an inherently obvious idea. It's just not. There is no reason to assume that kneeling in front of a statue would give you a boon. About the only thing that would lead you to finding out about such is either curiosity about the term "Favor of the Gods" (i.e.,looking that up) or noticing, in play, that sometimees the statues are "cold and dead" and other times they are "active", and mentioning it in passing to someone who knows about shrines. So unless you want to know more about what different statues exist in the game (for artistic reasons, I suppose), there's flat out no reason for you to do so. I literally played the game for more than a year and a half before someone mentioned it, and that was just because he'd just found out about it a few weeks before -- and he'd been playing since the game was first released.. You are not talking about making the hypertext "more effective". A link can ALWAYS be ignored, so fewer links has some vague relevance to computer efficiencies and some relevance, potentially, to "ease of editing" (since you can kill or re-locate pages easier, but the wiki functionality makes that somewhat self-correcting), but it certainly has nothing to do with making a page "more effective". You say:
 * the reader gets a thread he must follow to get to information twice removed instead of listing it all on that page This is bad encyclopedic design, as it separates useful, powerful knowledge from the user by completely hiding it behind apparently useless knowledge. The note "there is a statue of Balthazar here" appears to be a minor note about a visual element -- "there is a waterfall here". Unless I have reason to be curious about the waterfall, there's no reason I would expect it to be of interest or relevance, so I'm not likely to bother looking at that page -- nor the statue one. It's not a question of throwing links in at random -- mentioning the idea of a blessing-granting statue when mentioning the statue is an appropriate place to note something of significance to highlight an otherwise subtle idea.
 * You ask: Is it a surprise that, like working with an encyclopedia, getting the most out of a hypertext is a skill that has to be learned on top of the reading skill?  LOL, so, learning to read bad writing is a good skill to have because the greater part of technical stuff is written by people who can't write, therefore it's not a good thing to write things better, because it deprives people of the opportunity to learn to focus even when the writing is bad? That's, at its heart, the argument you're making. If I write well it's because I don't want people to have to work to understand what I seek to convey. And if I'm creating a page for others to learn from, I want it to have as much of importance on that topic for them as I can provide.  And if it's an "appropriate" place to nudge them towards a side concept that isn't an easy one to bump into (and I believe the topic in question is not), then that nudge belongs there. The boon provided by shrine blessings can be quite helpful to early users, since it can buff their characters and make it less frustrating to play while they are learning other concepts at the edge of their knowledge (i.e., interrupting, skill interplay, energy management, casting and recharge time management, targeting choices, etc.). And the fact that ANet has added additional mechanisms (essence of celerity, etc.) for doing the same thing suggests that they are designing game elements with the presumption of such buffs in mind.
 * "A blessing granting statue" is a nice, subtle, and effective way to call attention to the notion of blessings. It's not significant enough to be clutter -- your eye will just pass over it if your mind isn't ready to pick up on it, but if you're looking over the page to glean some additional touches of play (and that is often why you look at a page a second or third time) then it has just enough new information to catch the eye. OTOH, it easily recedes into the background if you already know about them... your eyes will just scan past it. --OBloodyHell 12:49, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, so all books should be written in 24 point type and use plenty of pictures so reading noobs can understand it better. It's not the writing that is bad. If there is something that you want GW-noobs to know, put it in a "getting started" article, I'm sure we have those, and if we don't we need one. The section is titled "Objects of Interest", if you've been to lazy to ask yourself why these objects get listed there you aren't doing your research right. My eyes scan past it now - because the list of these objects contains just the names of these objects so I can recognize them easily, it needs not more info to clutter it. If you assume something listed under "objects of interest" is useless without actually checking it out that is your own fault. Get better at not assuming stuff (This goes for assuming stuff about people, too, probably) and don't assume we have to pander to your inability to comprehend. -- ◄mendel► 14:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, so all books should be written in 24 point type and use plenty of pictures so reading noobs can understand it better. It's not the writing that is bad. If there is something that you want GW-noobs to know, put it in a "getting started" article, I'm sure we have those, and if we don't we need one. The section is titled "Objects of Interest", if you've been to lazy to ask yourself why these objects get listed there you aren't doing your research right. My eyes scan past it now - because the list of these objects contains just the names of these objects so I can recognize them easily, it needs not more info to clutter it. If you assume something listed under "objects of interest" is useless without actually checking it out that is your own fault. Get better at not assuming stuff (This goes for assuming stuff about people, too, probably) and don't assume we have to pander to your inability to comprehend. -- ◄mendel► 14:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) If I read you right, your main complaint is that you've got a logical argument for putting the blessing there and you expect to be convinced that it's not logical before you stop pushing the issue. I've been trying to show to you that where you put information and how you place your links in a hypertext is an editorial judgement call, and that most editors judge the issue differently than you; and since itis a judgment call, your logical argument cannot be "refuted" because the alternative is equally a judgment call. (The underlying assumption in your argument that makes it a judgment call is probably that information for beginners should be everywhere on the wiki, even when more experienced users would get detracted by them.) Now the way to resolve this is not to keep butting your head against mine until something happens because it won't. Even if you managed to convince me (which seems unlikely at this point), the majority of editors still wouldn't be. So I suggest a similar strategy to putting reverted info on the article talkpage: find other places where the info you want placed can be placed so it gets noticed but doesn't disturb the organisation of the wiki content.

Collaborative editing is always more work as if you did it alone; but the advantage is that you benefit from the work of others. -- ◄mendel► 03:30, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to come in on this conversation. Just reading along after doing some homework and came across this. You probably don't know this Obloodyhell but Mendel there has mentioned trying to find some ways to make things easier for new users to find. You could start a page with a bunch of information just for new users, give it a title "INFORMATION FOR NEW USERS" and put it on the front page. You could fill it with whatever links you think that new users would find interesting. Someone reverted your edit because they felt it was babying people //and I am paraphrasing here//. What this does do is it gives YOU the chance to make your own page of things you think that new players should know. Why not start with information from [here] and [here]. While you are at it you can list tips you have found useful for finding different information on the wiki. Take a look at everything [HERE]. That page alone contains a ton of information, but most people that I have talked to in game don't know it is there. Anyway this suggestion may seem worthless to you. It may not be something you are interested in. I will offer you some advice though, and you are free to ignore it. This wiki, is one of the nicest communities out there. Some of the medical wikis that I belong to are not nice. The admins here are nicer than you think, they deserve some respect. So instead of insulting them, even if you didn't mean to, try to listen to them. Well I hope that I have offered something constructive here, and good luck. Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 06:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Abaddon won the '08 election
Erm, Abbadon is a god? An old god (read "Old Testament")? So I would rather say he (the religious right) has lost the election. Eye of the beholder and all that, I guess. -- ◄mendel► 11:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Foolish, foolish boy. The "religious right" isn't going to be the source of true evil, and its power has long, long been overstated by people trying to paint them as something of concern. The majority of those painted as "the religious right" are right-moderates whose primary concern is the rise of moral relativism and the decay of self-responsibility, both those concepts are easily demonstrably mentally defective. Granted, people claiming to be religious are often a source of evil, but if so, they almost always aren't actually religious (and real intolerance, found on both sides in equal quantities, just on different subjects, is a good thing to watch for. From the right, it's not even vaguely Xtian -- someone telling you you deserve to go to Hell for some offense is making judgements not theirs to make. Mind you: that's different from saying that, "from what they see, there appears to be reason for you to be concerned with your prospects". The former is passing judgement. The latter is expressing an opinion.), and as such you can usually recognize them when you look for them. <br \>But true evil masquerades as good, and uses that deception to lead people down the wrong path, until they look up and finally realize they are a long ways from Kansas. When you see people fawning all over someone, but they can't tell you what that person stands for, that's where evil can be found, more often than not. Undirected, unchecked support is always dangerous, since it need not be responsible. NEVER trust leaders that much. And never accept demonstrable lies and deceit from them. I won't vote for someone I know for a fact is lying to me, most especially when they say one thing to one audience and another, directly opposing thing to another audience. That's called pandering, and it marks the worst sort of politico in existence. ;-P --OBloodyHell 11:59, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Is that your way of saying Obama is the anti-christ? --Macros 12:05, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Abbadon masquerades as god. I'm just saying. -- ◄mendel► 12:40, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Btw, "Foolish, foolish boy" <-- tone that down, pls. Doesn't help your argument any. And if you are able to tell an audience what it wants to hear, you have demonstrated that you understand their concerns, at least. :-P Politics is a game of balancing different interests to the most productive outcome, and I think that the notion that the person best suited to balance your interests has to share them is naive at best. (Lawyers have a similar problem.) -- ◄mendel► 12:49, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Funny, reading both arguments. Let me just throw in a Dutch word "Polder Model". Last decade, dutch politicians are arguing if it would be better to have someone with a clear, straight, spoken out direction about *anything* or to have a good consensus maker (to lead the "polder model")...-- [[Image:merty_sign.gif]]-- ( talk ) 13:18, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 0) "AntiChrist?" Eh, I think he's going to do a lot more evil than good, much of it in the "name of good", and it will be a long, long time before it gets fixed in some cases (Energy policy is a particular example. Lead times on power plants are close to 10 years, we've been at the edge way too long as it is, and he's talking about cutting the USA's power generation capacity back. Expect to see rolling brownouts as regular experiences within the next decade or so). A good chunk of what he claims to have planned is blatantly wrong-headed in the extreme. Hence, "Abaddon won". :oP
 * 1) "foolish, foolish boy" -- it's a joke. If I say something that sounds pretentious (and both the repetition and the "foolish boy", a classic cliche, should make it sound such) assume I'm being facetious.
 * 2) Abaddon IS "a" god in the classic sense. Not The One True God sense, but he is nominally no different from Zeus, Apollo, Thor, or Freya. He's probably close to Loki, offhand (The Greeks didn't really have a god of Evil). Note the cap/not cap use of god vs. God.
 * 3) "And if you are able to tell an audience what it wants to hear, you have demonstrated that you understand their concerns, at least." It doesn't mean you give a rat's ass about those concerns. One of the biggest problems with our so-called "representatives" these days is that they are no longer one of "us", but are all members of a rich and separate class with no concept of anyone's actual concerns. This is one of the reasons why, no matter who gets elected, things just get more screwed up. They are growing just as distant from us as Marie was when she, told that the people had no bread to eat, replied, "Let them eat cake". Their kids don't go to public schools, they don't drive, they don't go to shopping centers (unless it's for a photo op), they live in multimillion dollar homes, they have private security guards and all have assets and incomes in the multi-million dollar range. Some politicians have always been wealthy, yes, but lots were not -- politics wasn't always for the very rich and connected. And the classic concept which used to be common among the rich, "noblesse oblige" is much rarer than it used to be -- and that includes the Left as well as the Right.<br \>
 * "Professional liberals are too arrogant to compromise. In my experience, they were also very unpleasant people on a personal level. Behind their slogans about saving the world and sharing the wealth with the common man lurked a nasty hunger for power. They'd double-cross their own mothers to get it or keep it." <br \>
 * -- Harry S Truman, pp. 55, American Heritage 7/8 1992, from a 1970 interview --
 * That's Truman's own words about his own experiences with liberals seeking political power... hardly a mouthpiece for the conservative movement. People fall for political lies way too often. Just because someone says "they're going to help you", doesn't mean they aren't out to help themselves one hell of a lot more.
 * 4) Merty, we probably need more time spent on concensus. That might actually slow government down a bit. I recently saw a stat that said, since 1992, the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) has added more than 450,000 pages. Do you have any idea how many pages of "law" that is -- and that's only at the Federal level. The founding document of the USA fits on a few typed pages. Somehow, we now need more than a half a million pages of laws -- just for the ones passed in a little over 15 years? If you don't see something wrong with that, I suspect there is no possibility of agreement between us, because I consider that to be pretty much insane. That is like 1000 very fat books -- over 100  linear feet of shelving. Somewhere in there is probably a detailed description of what, how, where, and when you can crap (give it time, it'll probably have such instructions for each of us by name).--OBloodyHell 13:39, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 4) Merty, we probably need more time spent on concensus. That might actually slow government down a bit. I recently saw a stat that said, since 1992, the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) has added more than 450,000 pages. Do you have any idea how many pages of "law" that is -- and that's only at the Federal level. The founding document of the USA fits on a few typed pages. Somehow, we now need more than a half a million pages of laws -- just for the ones passed in a little over 15 years? If you don't see something wrong with that, I suspect there is no possibility of agreement between us, because I consider that to be pretty much insane. That is like 1000 very fat books -- over 100  linear feet of shelving. Somewhere in there is probably a detailed description of what, how, where, and when you can crap (give it time, it'll probably have such instructions for each of us by name).--OBloodyHell 13:39, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think Jeremiah Wright gave the best explanation of Obama: "He's a politician.  He does what politicians do."  Those who expect a politician--any politician, regardless of his party or his political views--to usher in utopia are going to be sorely disappointed.  Conversely, in a system with as many checks and balances as the United States has, even if the devil incarnate were elected President, there would only be so much harm he could do.
 * Any semi-competent politician who can give two independent speeches could tell both NARAL Pro-Choice USA and the National Right to Life Committee what they want to hear. Demonstrating that you understand the views of both sides is not a very high bar to clear.  Most voters also want politicians who will vote as though they agree with them.
 * People who wish to do evil will come up with whatever excuse is most conveniently at hand. Sometimes that means dressing things up in the language of the dominant local religion to justify your actions.  But doing evil is hardly unique to religious people.  Atheistic communism killed more people in the 20th century alone than all of the religious wars and persecutions in recorded human history.  Quizzical 17:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That would depend entirely on what you consider religious wars and persecutions. Also what would you consider atheistic communism. Anyway got to agree with everything else you wrote. Conversations like this one scare me, it is only a matter of time till someone says "I hate Obama" or some such and then we will hear nothing but how every white or native person here is racist for the next two months. Always annoying when people don't realize you can disagree with someone, and it probably has nothing to do with race. [[Image:Spikeicon.png]]Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 19:07, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * What scares me is that somebody might actually believe this shit and shoot him, and that'd be 1963 all over. The parallels are scary. -- ◄mendel► 20:05, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Add up the number killed in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and a handful of other communist countries, and it comes to about 100 million (not counting things like war casualties). For comparison, the much maligned Spanish Inquisition killed about 2000 people.  Now, 2000 is certainly bad, but it doesn't even rate as a rounding error compared to 100 million.  Wars in ancient times simply didn't kill very many people compared to what we expect from wars today, and mostly weren't religious wars, anyway.
 * The crazy stuff that people are saying about Obama isn't any worse than what they (well, for the most part, different people on the other side of the political spectrum) said about Bush. The Secret Service is pretty good at what they do.  Quizzical 04:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Honestly you can't blame all of that on just communism. Look at how many died when European groups invaded the Americas. You are talking huge amounts there. I think that posting opinions here is o.k. because, well this isn't about anything Gwiki related. So my opinion is that it isn't communism, or for the most part religion that has killed so many. I think it comes down, again at least for the most part, to simple human greed. Greed is something I don't understand very well so I can't write about it at great lengths. When I read history, something I am slightly addicted to, I see tons of death that really can be attributed to nothing more than greed. I am not a communist or anything, nor am I protecting communism, but I don't think you can blame a form of government on what the people in that government do. I am not sure if that is phrased right, but the best way I can describe it is this: If you are run by a X type of government controlled by greedy people bad things are going to happen. Just my take on it though. [[Image:Spikeicon.png]]Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 06:58, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * My point wasn't that communism made Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. do horrendously evil things. My point was that atheists can be quite evil, too, just like religious people.  The killing off of natives when Europeans came to America was mostly accidental.  They brought diseases to which the natives had no resistance, and some tribes were completely wiped out before Europeans even reached their land.  Regardless, that wasn't a religious war.  You can argue that some of the things communists did were accidental, but Stalin ordering 700,000 people executed in the year 1937 alone was no accident--nor were the gulags, starving Ukraine, etc.  Quizzical 07:08, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Killing someone accidentally is still killing them. I try to not defend any form of government, because I don't think that governments are the main factor. Take the case of Native Americans, you can blame different European countries or you can blame simple greed. The search for gold caused so many deaths. I suppose that oil isn't called black gold for nothing. I agree with you about atheist doing just as much bad as religious groups though. I don't think anyone would argue against that. My comment about greed is directed at the forces pushing those events along Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 07:43, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not that atheists don't do evil, it's that atheists don't do evil in the name of Atheism. There have been no wars fought for Atheism, no Crusades against all religion. Religion gives people focus, so it is more commonly linked to different movements, whereas for the past thousand years or so, atheism has been somewhat disapproved of, so no one used it as a rally point for anything.  &not; Wizårdbõÿ777  ( talk ) 10:49, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sure Richard Dawkins said something like that Wizard... Atheists can be as evil as theists, however, if you are a theist, ask yourself this, If God didn't exist, would you still do this good? If "yes", then good on you, however you can't say atheists are evil. If "no", then is what you do good, really good? <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  11:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * So atheists instead do evil in the name of science, or equality, or the environment, or various other things. Is that really an improvement over doing evil in the name of religion?  I don't see it as one.
 * The Dawkins line you cite is a non-sequitur. From that line of reasoning one could argue that if God didn't exist, then something wouldn't be truly good, but not that it still isn't good if God does exist.  Quizzical 15:44, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * "There have been no wars fought for Atheism, no Crusades against all religion." Beg to differ... [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 20:51, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Quizzical: "atheists do evil in the name of science" - atheists commit morrale wrongs because they consider it, somehow - acceptable, the same as Christians, Buddhists, Scientologists etc. Dawkins line is probably rubbish.
 * Entropy: There have been wars fought, but I don't think they were in the name of atheism (whilst jihads, crusades etc are in the name of god/allah/the flying spaghetti monster). Secondly - weather an individual person/religion is morraly right has no impact on the proof of the existence on the thing that religion is stating is correct. Forthly: Intelectual arguments are fun. Fithly: I think we've gone off topic. <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  23:09, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, I have my reasons for thinking that Amercan polictcs is corrupt anyway, have a look at the money given as bonuses to high ranking bankers just after the bailouts, they arn't suffering <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  23:09, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You claim that it is possible to get off-topic? Lies, I say!
 * Well of course politics is corrupt. If the federal government has an annual budget of over $3 trillion, that creates huge incentives for an awful lot of people to get some corruption in there.  And really, if the best you can come up with is bank bonuses, you're not paying attention.  Without going back more than a few years, we've had McGreevey, Rowland, Jefferson, Cunningham, and now Blagojevich get in big trouble on various corruption charges.  Indeed, without going back more than two weeks, Obama has nominated a tax cheat to head Treasury (which oversees the IRS), someone who lied under oath to head Justice, someone whose husband has collected millions in contributions from foreigners to head State, and for good measure another tax cheat to head HHS.  Quizzical 23:44, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * $3 trillion, which is going to increase because they are going to have to print a lot more money to pay for that baliout... <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  23:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

<br \> (Reset indent) For killing in the name of religion, the crusades, the Jihad, and the colonisation of America and more cannot be dismissed, because classifying people as heathen and exempting them from applying moral standard to them was done in the name of religion. The Mission is an impressive film to drive this home. Go rent it.

OTOH the third Reich is a case in point for an atheistic religion (central tenet is the supremacy of the Arian race), and communism (eventual victory of the working classes) that with these beliefs justified much cruelty. Ask yourself if it were theist or atheist values that caused the Iraq war. -- ◄mendel► 03:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Killing someone accidentally is still killing them. To the victim, but motive certainly plays into how it should be perceived and dealt with after the fact. Don't take that as blowing off such concerns, but it does mitigate them, somewhat. If someone does something knowing that they'll cause substantial harm to another, that is far different from doing it while attempting to do something else and acting with reasonable caution (hitting someone with your car isn't good, but hitting someone with your car while drunk is considered worse, with good reason). By similar means -- if you should anticipate a problem, then your negligence by ignoring that concern reduces the element of "mitigation by good intent". Case in point: Some years back there was a news piece (probably John Stossel) which investigated a teacher whose class collected money to buy the freedom of African slaves (yes, it does still exist). What this teacher was doing seems good... until you grasp the Law of Unintended Consequences must always be a consideration. In fact, what they were doing was adding money to an existing market for slaves, which only caused more people to be brought into slavery. The teacher and her class was, literally causing the traders to bring more people into slavery just so they could get that money. Now, at this point, the teachers' error can be forgiven as an important life lesson. BUT. When subsequently asked how she would respond, the teacher said "they would probably continue the program because it made the kids feel good about themselves". >:-( I just wanted to reach into the TV and bitch-slap this imbecilic twit. NOW she has crossed a line, she has demonstrated that the harm done to others by her actions is far greater than the rewards she herself has to gain from them. <br \>

In the end, one has the eternal problem of how to attain your aims while causing the least harm to those opposed to and/or affected by your aims. I believe very much that "The Ends Justify The Means"... but you have to consider all the Ends, not just the ones that interest or concern you. Some aims do qualify as evil, such as those of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao. Others, such as those of the european settlers in NorthAm, don't, because those aims did not expressly include the killing (in some cases, at least) of the indigenous peoples. In fact, in many cases, there was a rationalization applied, that "the savages" needed the European influence to lead them to God (and the benefits and downsides of missionary work in the settlement of the Americas should not be understated). And as far as judging those motives, I believe it is dangerous to apply current mores on them. Things were very different then from anything most anyone commenting here can know, and most likely, even imagine. Life was much cheaper, then, and almost all mankind lived much closer to the edge of death. For many Europeans, the Black Death, which decimated Europe, was as close to them, or even much closer, as the Declaration of Independence is to us. So to them, disease, death, and suffering were just Things That Happened. This was the 1500s and 1600s -- they did not even have the beginnings of germ theory or disease vectors at that point.
 * I don't think that governments are the main factor. Oh, my, I believe that statement is very naive. Governments are very much the main factor, especially in the case of communism and socialism, which utterly place all power in the hands of the state, and no value on the individual of any kind. I would ask the obvious -- if this is not so, then why have all the greatest purges, comprising more than 100 million people, derived from self-defined communisms and socialisms (Germany, the USSR, China, Cambodia)? When you are considering government, realize that government, and government alone, is granted the power to coerce behavior directly -- and that is why it must be strongly limited. Governments are made up of humans, and humans are eternally flawed. Even the most decent can be led down a dark path by good intentions, and wind up doing great evil as a result. The less decent can and will misuse such power for their own ends. And governmental systems which inherently devalue human life and the individual will always have higher death tolls than those which don't. That says that governmental systems very much DO matter if you wish to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.
 * Another point which I think is often missed is the Broken Window Fallacy, as it applies to actions, particularly the actions of governments. The term "What Is Seen, and What Is Not Seen" applies. You see what is done, but you don't see what isn't done as a result of what has been done. If you tax money away from person A, you see that money used for a purpose by the government, and say "that is a good use of the money", but what you don't see is what person A would have done if they had had the money instead of the government, nor what would have happened with the people A interacted with and gave the money to, and so on, and so on. When the government creates a jobs program with taxes, what you don't see is that the person in question may have started a business and hired employees that will now not be hired, because they don't have enough money after being taxed. Since it's a fair bet that the government jobs program will be much less efficient than a new business at utilizing that money effectively, it's a point against using taxes to try and "create" jobs. My point here isn't to rail against jobs programs, but to encourage the reader to think a little deeper beyond the mere surface of things, to try and see how the Fallacy may apply to claims made by others. I think the Fallacy, and "What Is Not Seen", applies to much that is and will be claimed by the new administration. And thus that the results will often be negative, if not outright evil, compared to what ought to be done if some sense were applied.
 * have a look at the money given as bonuses to high ranking bankers just after the bailouts -- I have to say that I would take these complaints seriously if the same people were going after Frank Raines and Jamey Gorelick for doing pretty much exactly the same thing with the GSEs (Fannie Mae, etc.) that Ken Lay did with Enron, which was to falsify accounting reports to guarantee them both six-figure bonuses. Instead, Jamey Gorelick was on the shortlist for Obama's nominees for AG (Gorelick is also associated with the "wall of separation" which substantially assisted the 911 hijackers to remain unnoticed until too late). That doesn't argue against your assertion by any means -- I just want to make sure that you grasp it works all the way across the board. The media likes to ignore things done by (ahem!) members of one party and harp on things done by another. --OBloodyHell 17:04, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * TBH, TL;DR. Also, the spacing and large paragraphs don't lend much to flow. --JonTheMon 17:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * LOL, the wiki format itself doesn't really lend itself to discussions. I've always preferred comment-blogging formats for that.
 * A couple things: for each new paragraph you have to use the ::: to indent. You can't just indent the first paragraph. And while the wiki format doesn't lend itself to discussion, it can lend itself to text flow.  Like, adding a few more line breaks, maybe split up a few paragraphs, stuff like that. And I was testing whether you needed to close a   or not.  Hmm... apparently not. --JonTheMon 17:17, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The good, the bad, and the down right evil
There is a difference between doing something evil, and doing something bad. In fact there is a different between doing something wrong and doing something bad. I like this conversation but if something like this can continue someone needs to go ahead and define the terms good, evil, bad and good. You can do something good and it can still be with bad intention. I doubt this conversation would go that deep but still, if you don't define certain things. Now to find out if BJ Penn won or not Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 05:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~gmyers/ehe.relat.html Ooh, I quite like this brand of ethical philosophy <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  12:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * What you really want to research (and I'm sorry, I have no cites for this) is the developmental psychology angle, i.e. the question how one acquires ones morals. If I recall that correctly, there's a progression involved that culminates in the well-being of your group and later your whole society, and those are the frames of thought and, earlier in your life, the actual influences that shape your morals. With that in mind, we can propose a sort of meta-ethics, that is, we can find out how well a certain ethical system does in terms of survival (and related criteria) of a certain "ethical" group. So while that still doesn't propose an absolute ethical system, it still allows us to dismiss certain ethical systems as worse than others; the rules listed in the "moral objectivism" section can probably be validated this way. On a smaller scale, you see this on wikis: the ethics (policies etc.) for each wiki differ in detail, but large wikis with active communities share some common principles that ensure their wellbeing. I also believe that a successful ethics that promotes the wellbeing of a group must also promote the wellbeing of the individual, and that severe conflicts of society vs. individual occur only in suboptimal ethical systems.
 * A limitation of this approach is that objectively, only the performance of a society and individuals between birth and death can be considered; if we have immortal souls, the frame of reference must be enlarged beyond that (yes, Felix, I'm writing this for you) . It is unclear to me what (if anything) this final step changes, both in practice (how would we acquire values related to something that cannot directly influence us?) and in theory: is there much difference between considering the ethics of your own life from birth to death and your membership in the human race versus the transcendental case of going beyond death and including the souls of everyone who ever lived and will live? (Apologies to Tenetke for going right off the Semantics question you posed. ;-)
 * O'Bloody, if this is a topic of no interest to you, feel free to move it off your talkpage onto one of ours. -- ◄mendel► 14:49, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm very happy to have this discussion on my talk <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  15:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Semantics can be satisfied when it comes up. There have been some successful societies that put the well being of a few far above the well being of the many. An example would be certain ancient cultures that would work the lower class to death in order to provide for the upper class. I would never say that is right, though it probably seemed just fine to the upper class at the time because of the countries moral code. Take for example certain periods of ancient Egypt. Pharaohs likely viewed everything they did as completely moral. I suppose my point is that morality can only be taken as a frame of reference, it is never a certainty. I am curious who believes that things like right and wrong or based on perspective, but that there is a universal concept of Evil and Good.Sorry I will try to not post WOT, but I find this discussion very interesting. [[Image:Spikeicon.png]]Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 00:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Ancient Egypt's no longer here, so they weren't successful in the long run, no? Conquered by Rome, which had a more inclusive concept of whom society should benefit. -- ◄mendel► 00:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That is a good point, but they did make it for a bit. I guess my point was that a society can still be successful even if they treat the majority of their population like crap. I suppose you could argue that Rome also fell etc. I do not think that any civilization will last, in one incarnation, for eternity though. [[Image:Spikeicon.png]]Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 00:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Rome fell against "barbarian hordes" IIRC, which were a much more egalitarian society? but ultimately not successful either, because of their nomadic nature and propensity to kill other people &mdash; which kinda goes hand in hand, it's bad when kill a lot of people to have their surviving relatives know where you live. -- ◄mendel► 00:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)