User talk:Pants

Like I said, the glowsticking records were removed because some were false, and with only the others (or maybe just one other) remaining, they didn't seem significant. I made it clear that you were invited to write a more comprehensive combined entry, integrating all three records. I also made it clear why the Chen entry should go to Memories -- you have no idea yet whether he will be remembered in future sessions as being significant to the overall site culture. Without this foreknowledge, he's just another session's camp legend, and most of those don't have their own HoF entries (in fact, Saratoga is the only session with individuals who seem to have had such a lasting influence that they were still significant years later; Lancaster doesn't have /any/ people in its HoF, only some small-group or individual actions). If you would prefer not to pay heed to editing policy, or to reintegrate and to revamp removed content, and instead would prefer to yell, that's your prerogative. I made the policy clear, I gave suggestions for how you can improve a page which is beyond my CTY background, and I called you out on your reaction towards a sysop -- behavior which would have been inappropriate regardless of which user you directed it towards.

If you're calling out sysops for "dicking around," then you, and not I, are the one who is power-tripping -- and moreover, if you're going to accuse me of power-tripping hypocrisy, you should at least include some substantial claims beyond the nebulous "what actually happens there." I am not playing favorites with which sites' HoF's I edit and move to Memories; in fact, if anything, as an editor, I'm harsher on Lancaster because it's my home site. Nor am I applying pressure to you or your site's page without reason. I support moving less significant HoF entries into Memories to improve the page as a user, not as admin. As admin, I am enforcing a newly revamped and much clearer policy on the criteria for HoF pages. I'm not sure exactly what here involves "power-tripping." Am I not allowed to touch your HoF page because I don't attend your site? Am I not allowed to make and promote editing policy that I, having spent four years running this site, think will improve page quality and extend the site's utility and longevity? I've given you clear guidelines, as well as proposed some suggestions which you are free to interpret at your own leisure. I understand that you are defensive of the things you find personally important regarding your CTY experience. One of them, according to editing policy, is fit for the page -- but only if it's written so that it is clearly significant, in precisely the right amount (specifically, so that it doesn't contain false information). As for the other, I think it's reasonable to keep it in Memories until time (maybe a year or two or three) makes it clear that it is truly worth of the HoF.

Now, you have two options. You can help improve the site and improve this page by restoring the content that has been removed or moved, and improving the remaining content both here and in Memories:SAR. Or you can clutch your pride in two fists and stay on your own power trip. Please, choose the first option. I have no intention of alienating editors with good intentions; I just want to enforce the site policy. I would prefer you to stay and help the page, since it's not my site or my era. But if you must take the second option, know that you, unlike me, do not have the power to trip on. --Max W. 01:36, 20 August 2010 (PDT)

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Let's take things in order.

I should probably explain better why I said the glowsticking records were false; I understand your disagreement. The main reason was that each of them claimed that the record was set for all of CTY, rather than just for Saratoga. This is not the case, at least not for the first two; hence, the first two were deleted, leaving the third, which, all by its lonesome, did not seem significant to the HoF in Dutchman's eyes. Hence, he moved it to Memories. (Although glowstringing with five glowsticks sounds really... heavy. I'm surprised that lanyards didn't break in the process.) Basically, though, it just isn't true that these records happened for "the first time in CTY history." There were two problems with the glowstringing entries in general: accuracy and significance. If you rewrite the entries (like I said, combining them into a single entry would be a good idea), they can be made to fit the page. I don't see why you're so wed to the idea of just leaving the page and "leaving it to [us]." Your goal, if you really care about these events that took place, should be to make them seem as awesome as possible. If they seem false to other people, you should rewrite the entry.

Also, how am I "changing my words" now? I have been saying the same thing the whole time, especially concerning the glowsticking entries. The first thing I said about them was basically what I said above, and in my last post. Don't make unsubstantiated accusations; it only highlights your lack of backing for your claims.

I'm also not sure why using the LAN HoF page as an example is bad. All the HoF pages are held to the same criteria -- something that involves student rebellion against rules, or something that has a lasting effect, to the tune of maybe threeish years or more, unless it was ridiculously significant for two years. In particular, all events not having to do with defending tradition or overturning bad rules that only were relevant to a single year or session never belong in the HoF, because they are known to only one single year of students. Obviously, some of those individuals directly involved in the event will return and remember, but the point is that it is not relevant to the site globally for more than (maybe) a single year. This is why, in particular, Prank Wars was removed. Do you agree with that change?

Also, yes, I am aware of how different all the sites are, probably more so than you. That comes with running this site for so long.

AND ALSO, THERE IS SUCH A THING AS YELLING ON THE INTERNET. There's also such a thing as Internet snarkiness, which is more what I was referring too.

You also still haven't told me /how/ it is that I run this site badly; you just keep saying it, as though you, by some natural phenomenon, are fitter to pass judgment on my site than me, and are too far above me to even have a regular discussion about it. "You people simply administer a site badly, that's basically it." Is it really this simple? You'll have to explain to me precisely why this is so "basic," because I don't understand. Also, I'm not sure what exactly you're saying about my tone of voice. Again, please -- be more specific. This is pretty much how I always type.

The Passing of the Duck is a tradition older than Passionfruit (and, in fact, one of the Ducks is responsible for Passionfruit, or at least Lancaster's -- I forget if she was at Carlisle and helped create it or if she just moved it to Lancaster). It might even be older than the Saratoga site; I'm not sure when the site was introduced. This is fairly self-explanatory; if you're trying to provoke me, you need to try harder. There have been Ducks since before you were born. Since before your parents had sex to conceive you. And this site does a plenty good job of trying to make sure people understand this. This is because there are lots of people who care to recognize things like the Duck. All I'm asking was that you do a better write-up about things like the glowstringing record, because as they stood before, they seemed less significant, and more importantly, weren't true from the perspective of other sites, since it made a claim about CTY globally.

Also, you know as well as I do that a gathering of Emperors wouldn't be all that special. You know full well that what matters to one site is totally irrelevant to other sites; this is part of why you're arguing with me, I think. I don't have any personal care for anything Saratoga does, nor do you give a damn what Lancastrians or doing. Nor should you. But I'm not trying to set a higher standard for Saratoga just because I don't know about it or don't have a personal stake in the matter. Nor am I trying to remove what isn't significant from a Lancastrian perspective. Nor, in particular, am I /removing/ anything from the site (except the two glowstringing entries that, to me, were just untrue, because of how they were written). You recently wiped the Memories page. Why? To get back at the Man? At me? At the site? Don't be immature about it. And don't take that snarky tone, what with the telling me to "grow up." You are not the fitter judge, and to be honest, your taking that role doesn't do anything for anyone. If you want to be useful, if you want to argue your point /and/ improve the site /and/ keep all the records of your site (but maybe you don't want this, considering you actually wiped it away instead of moving it?), just talk about it /with/ me, instead of /telling/ me that I'm wrong and you're right, and telling me how you know I think. Because you're not correct.

If you actually do want to talk and help improve the SAR HoF and Mems pages, you should IM me on AIM or Gchat me or some such. I'm not a fan of the condescension you're giving me, but I am pretty sure that you actually care about your page (if I weren't, I would ban you for vandalizing the Memories page). Seriously, come talk to me, and we can sort this out. --Max W. 21:19, 20 August 2010 (PDT)

Oh, and I should also mention that I'm not sure why you keep using the plural "you." There are only two full admins on the site, and I'm the only one of them who ever deals with content or who is here. There are a number of sysops, but they generally work independently of me, although I trust their judgment. Don't attack me for Dutchman's edits (although I agree with a plurality of them -- the only one I disagree with would probably be the second tower run, and I have obviously voiced further opinions on what to do with the glowstringing entries), and don't attack Dutchman for the site policies I've established.

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Well, now you're not even listening to yourself. You still have not demonstrated any ill logic on my part, nor any hypocrisy. I had offered to talk to you on IM or in some other form of chat so that we could work out this issue in a real-time discussion. But you have no interest in this, apparently, nor with working with me to better the site, including the part of it you have a personal stake in. You would prefer to make accusations and call me names and feel self-righteous. You would prefer to say that you "wouldn't expect this of a CTY-er" when, instead of having a civil discussion about it, in which we read one another's words and debate them, you prefer blindness and contempt. You prefer to judge without critical observation. You prefer ridicule. You prefer names to meanings.

I don't need to call you names. I don't need to make myself feel higher than you.

Once more, I urge you to actually read what I wrote and actually talk to me in real-time about this page so that you and I can both be happy. Please? --Max W. 01:38, 21 August 2010 (PDT)

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I can do that if you'd prefer. You, however, are a raver in the Saratoga community. I am not. Presumably, you know more about this tradition of glowstringing records than I do, and you can hopefully say more about the records than was said before, and certainly much more than I can say.

I'm going to explain my point of view regarding the glowstringing entries a bit more. I believe that Saratoga is the site that ends the last dance with "I'll Make a Man out of You" instead of with Pie, at least during one of the two sessions? Suppose that, for whatever reason, Lancaster did the same thing one year, but with some other song with the same sort of spirit as the Mulan song. And suppose that I wrote up a HoF entry for it talking about how it was unheard of for Pie to be superceded by any song as the end song, and that it was the first time at CTY this had ever happened, and that some really cool onemore at Lancaster named Bubbo is brilliant for picking a powerful song that united everybody, and that nobody at CTY had ever thought of it before. This would probably annoy you -- actually, I hope it would annoy you a pretty good amount, because that would be a really, really annoying thing for somebody to write up, especially since you've had this tradition for years now.

Now, this is not a perfect example. The main similarity is that the Saratoga page made a /global/ claim that (1) only applies to Saratoga, which is fine in and of itself; the problem is that (2) it is /false/ on a global level. The differences sort of end there; this isn't something that would annoy me, and it's also not something that Lancastrians paid attention to, because it just wasn't a Thing that anybody ever decided to start paying attention to at Lancaster. But hopefully, you see why I find it a problem that a claim was made globally, in which context it is not true.

Essentially, I think that instead of having individual entries that basically read "somebody set a glowstringing record for CTY!" which is not totally true, it would much better to instead have a HoF entry that reads "SAR has a tradition of glowstringing with more and more glowsticks each year; [insert details here]." However, the entries were in the former category earlier; Dutchman, upon learning that some of the records claimed for all CTY were not actually accurate, just removed those two entries; in light of only one legitimate record (again, in the context of all CTY) remaining, the quintuple record seemed much less signficant, in SAR-context of a global context. Hence, he moved that to Memories (or rather, kept it there after his previous move). This seems a reasonable course of action to me. Reinstating these entries by writing them to the context of SAR rather than the global context is also reasonable.

This gets to the heart of why we have HoF's for different sites, anyway. Ages ago, there was just one HoF (it was only LAN, CAR, and SAR). But it didn't really make any sense, since people at different sites really don't care even a little bit about what happens at other sites unless it affects them -- and this is reasonable; site loyalty is not at all a bad thing. It also makes it easier to write things that are HoF worthy, because you don't need to have something be Passionfruit and go to every single site for it to be important. In a global CTY context, very few things in any of the HoF's are important (which makes sense -- they are in site-specific HoF's). This applies to the glowsticking as well. You need to write them so that they don't sound global. This is not to belittle the event, but rather to frame it in the context in which it actually resides and is significant.

Are we done with the name-calling now? Have I made a reasonable point clear? Again, I ask for a civil discussion on this, and I would really prefer you not to keep spewing on how bad and hypocritical the way I run my site is. I could power-trip, and I could just ban you. And I've considered it, because it's really really easy to do. But unlike most people who get into edit wars with me or anyone, you actually are interested in content fitting your site rather than just your own purposes. If you can quit with the unsupported accusations, and actually work with me even though my assertion of my policies bothers you, I'd still much prefer you to keep editing.

So again, please, tell me where I'm being hypocritical here. Tell me how, in this particular course of editing, I've favored LAN or condemned SAR; tell me why you insist that I run a site poorly here. Give me the evidence. I've justified Dutchman's removal of the two glowstringing entries, as well as the relocation of all of them to Memories, but I've also made it clear that the reason is not just "I don't think glowstringing records are important because they're not like the Duck, so away with them." Again, it's because they spoke towards CTY globally, in which context they actually aren't important (that's the context of things like 42, or Passionfruit, or H2G2), and moreover, untrue. Maybe you still don't like it, but hopefully you can still admit that it has perfectly good reasoning. And it doesn't seem you were making your accusations for any other reason but this one. You're free to defend them or to retract them; it's your choice, but there are no other good ones.

Also, is this the main issue? Do you agree with all the other moves? In particular, I've said that the second Tower record is perfectly reasonable to keep (although, actually, it would probably make sense to merge it with the first tower record, and have the entry span multiple years). Mostly, I guess, I'm addressing things like Prank Wars, where I agree with Dutchman -- it doesn't seem notable, or necessarily wonderful.

--Max W. 02:10, 21 August 2010 (PDT)

Oh, by the way, you will probably not have success if you keep trying to clear this page. In general, talk pages are not to be managed by anyone, because they're not site content, and as a general rule of wikis, all such information is meant to be kept (sort of like how all edits and content is ultimately stored somewhere). This includes user talk pages. Also it makes it seem like you're trying to get rid of my part of the story, and, well, I won't have that.

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I see. Then, my apologies. If I must win, by your call, unfortunately, it must mean that you lose.