User talk:CarolSpears/2008-10-special needs

Please

Carol, I come here to your talk page to try to have some sort of sane and normal conversation about some of your actions lately. Please don't take this as some sort of warning or personal remark, I want to help you. Please forgive the length of this message.

I beg you to take some days off this project (heck, some hours at least) and think about what I'm writing here.

When several people tell you that you are acting a certain way, and nobody actually contradicts that, it may very well be that you are indeed acting that way. Or at least you are expressing yourself in a way that makes it look like you are acting that way. So if people think you are being insultuous or aggressive, maybe it's because you are expressing yourself in a way that is perceived as insultuous or aggressive, rather than you are the type of person that would go around insulting and hurting people on purpose.

On a written media as the one we are forced to use here, it becomes hard sometimes to express your true thoughts or feelings. I find "frustration" the hardest one to express without sounding bitchy or whiny, I don't know about you. But what I perceive lately on your actions is just that - frustration. Tell me if I'm wrong.

I am very sorry you are currently banned from the English Wikipedia. This happens to some people, and in some cases these people migrate to other projects and start being productive there. Some don't. However, for the ones that such "migration" works well, it can be used for, in the future, appeal to the ban (sort of a parole thing after good behavior). Now, you do great work here. You seem to be very interested in organizing Commons, you're working so hard on the categorization scheme, you're interested in our quality pictures and possess great graphic skills and knowledge. You are an asset to this project. But when it comes to user interaction, many times something goes wrong. Some people feel you use too much irony or sarcasm or downright personal remarking when you point out an action you disagree with. Or that you simply don't get satisfied with the answers you get from those people. While the latter could potentially be attributed to communication problems (again the problem of using a written media for interaction), the former is something that is workable. It involves some, possibly all of these actions:

• Heavily using the "Show preview" button and reading what you just wrote before hitting the "Save page" one. Read it thoroughly and ask yourself what would you think if you were receiving the message you just wrote. It works wonders, I lost count how many times I did it just to write this message.
• Suggesting an alternative to the action you disagree with, making it slightly different of what you would do yourself. This is working towards a consensus, a middle term. There are rarely only two ways of doing things. Bring more people to comment on the subject if you don't get anywhere with the person you are discussing with.
• Using less rhetoric and more simple English. Remember that we're not always native or good English speakers, so we're all prone to misunderstandings from this particular aspect. Go straight to the point. I see many times people wondering what you are really asking, because you write it in a hard way. For example, I have to read everything you write twice to make sure I understood it, and my English is not too bad, I think.
• Letting it go. Seriously. Anything that you think is silly and technically badly done today will have a toll on the future. What I mean is, if you are forced to work within a system that you don't like because you think is flawed but cannot convince others of the existence of such flaws, you just have to wait and let time prove you right. This happens both with technicalities and with people. It requires enormous amounts of patience and ability to tolerate stuff you dislike, but if you are right, time will tell.

I'm no expert in communication skills, and I admit I have failed miserably in the past to communicate with some people. This is not a set of rules out of some book, but just observations from my humble and limited experience around wikis and dealing with conflicts. But I can see the warning signs. I'd like to avoid you being banned from Commons, which might be closer than you think given the circumstances. This is not a threat, just a general feeling I have. Avoiding this is up to you, really. And your good behavior here could potentially open the doors again on en.wiki.

This section is termed "please". It's meant to be "please stop", "please think", "please slow down", "please hear other people". Many "pleases". I'm sorry if I sound patronizing. Patrícia ^msg 11:23, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I was coming here, after seeing your comments in a recent RfA, to make this same request... I see that Patricia has done so in great detail and more eloquently than I would. Please heed her advice. It's important that you do. ++Lar: t/c 19:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Carol, you can have as much expectations as you wish to, but if people fail your expectations, you can't blame them for your barrier to have been set so high. Lower your expectations and you won't be so disappointed.

I don't know what is the relevance for the matter, but my involvement with GNU projects started about three years ago.

"Is a poorly written description an adequate reason to delete a screenshot which really was of actions that an administrator took at a different wikipedia?" No. But that wasn't the real reason your image was deleted, and you've been explained that. Perhaps I can make it clearer? Patrícia ^msg 22:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Due to the lack of real reasons and the Universal logins between the wikis, I expect that the ban at English wikipedia is lifted shortly as well as the screenshot restored. Thank you for finally understanding all of this. Cheers there Dear!! -- carol (talk) 22:57, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Due to the fact you once told me this, I am concluding that your message above is ironic. Please do correct me if it is a wrong conclusion, but my "assume good faith" stock is depleted. It would be a pity if you are having such a negative attitude, because I am trying to help you, and I don't think there are so many people around here with the patience to do so. If you don't want help, just tell me and I'll go do other things.

I'm not going to put any userbox on my page about Giggy or any other user. Or upload screenshots about other users' actions. This is because I think that problems should be talked through directly with people, not slapped as protests on user pages or subpages.

I am still unsure how restoring that screenshot will help you getting unbanned at en.wp. I'm not 100% sure of how things are processed there, but you probably have to appeal to the ArbCom. In that case, you should e-mail them the screenshot. It is not necessary to upload it on Commons.

If you are banned on the English Wikipedia, you are not allowed to edit even using an IP. Perhaps it's their policy to revert any edit from banned users, even if they are good edits. Perhaps it's not, and the admin reverted, saw it was a mistake, put it back in. The point is, you cannot edit there. Period. No matter how idiotic you think that your situation on that project is, you are not welcome there for the time being. Breaking that does not help your case.

Commons:Undeletion requests exists to expose a case about an image and/or a page you want undeleted. Do a good case and present good reasons why it should be undeleted and it will be. As it was before, it did look like you were holding a grudge. Again, and I mentioned this on my first message: it might be that your way of expressing yourself is suboptimal.

I apologize once again if I am disturbing you. You can tell me to piss off if you don't want any more intervention of mine. Patrícia ^msg 09:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Due to the lack of real reasons and the Universal logins between the wikis, I expect that the ban at English wikipedia is lifted shortly as well as the screenshot restored. Thank you for finally understanding all of this. -- carol 17:17, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Patrícia might I remind you that the reason you are here at this talk page is because a candidate for administration here was aggressively not answering my questions. Please take some time to think about this and perhaps point some of your valuable people skills at that user to determine what caused a potential administrator to so aggressively not answer questions. -- carol (talk) 18:03, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I permit myself to come into this discussion, because I want also to stress out your merits. I estimate your activities on commons, great contributions to content and maintenance. For maintenance I should like to cooperate more with you, learning from you, but the way you express yourselves in discussions... makes me hesitate to do that. Havang(nl) (talk) 12:19, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Our communications have almost always had another user involved; I suggest that in this and other situations, a review of the users who are involved and claiming problems be reviewed along with interactions on other talk pages where there are no problems. -- carol (talk) 17:17, 6 October 2008 (UTC)