[WikiEN-l] Votes for deletion and due process

Thu Aug 21 06:14:09 UTC 2003

Rick wrote:
>Although mav seems highly upset that I complained,
>even getting angry that I actually had the temerity to 
>bring the matter to the mailing list.

If you are going to spread misinformation then please don't make it so obvious 
(since I already mentioned this in my first reply); I got angry not because 
you posted this to the mailing list, but because you posted the /same/ 
question in four different places in quick succession and I was following 
each and responding to each. That got old real fast. 

And we could have solved this all on a single talk page; I said "must" when I 
shouldn't have after reading a statement on a policy page that said "please". 
To me "please" on a policy page means that if you don't do it you won't get 
banned, but you really should do it nonetheless. This is probably an artifact 
of my very Conservative Christian/"Children should be seen and not heard" 
upbringing where people in authority often say "please" in order to sound 
nice but you are still expected to comply as if it were a request (unless the 
please is highly qualified - weird, I know). 

For example, I wouldn't dare say no to my step dad if he asked me to "please" 
get him a glass of water (or search for the TV remote *he* lost.. er, opps - 
I'm not bitter ;), or say no to my youth leader who asked us to "please" 
quiet down or "please" don't make faces at each other and laugh while we 
should be praying to God to save our pathetic souls (obviously I'm still 
recovering from the whole experience). 

Besides, I wasn't even the person who added that statement to the policy page 
in the first place! And the person who added it did so by moving the text 
from the non-policy VfD page; thus he inadvertently changed its relative 
importance by placing it on a policy page. I simply wasn't aware of that - I 
just read the statement as it was on the policy page and assumed it was an 
established policy (it was, in fact, on that page for at least several 
weeks). 

If you had just pointed that out then I would have fixed the error. But 
instead of assuming good faith on my part or even giving me a chance to 
respond, you deemed it necessary to post four critical messages in four 
different places. 

Can you see why I might get defensive? So, can we put this to a rest now? The 
page says "please" and we all know what that means now.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) 