To clarify what I mean by "intelligent but ignorant" since it sometimes seems to be taken as an insult: if I don't know what something is, or what it means, or how it works, I look it up. On Wikipedia or in a dictionary or on my bookshelf or in a Haynes Manual or whatever. That is what I mean by ignorant: "I don't know". But I am intelligent enough to attempt to find out. If this one has an intelligent but ignorant administrator nonplussed, my default would be that it doesn't serve the readership well. Congratulations, by the way, Tavix, on your Adminship, thoroughly well deserved. May we ever disagree vigorously and politely. (Sincerely, that could sound sarcastic but is not.) Si Trew (talk) 19:51, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That was completely uncalled for. We aren't even disagreeing here, so there's no need to say that. It was obvious that I "looked it up" because I provided sources. What I'm saying is that I don't think the redirect is the same as what the target is describing, but I'm not sure because this subject matter isn't anything I'm familiar with. --Tavix(talk) 20:00, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
What was completely uncalled for? I presume you mean that I say "I look it up", or to offer you my sincere congratulations which you have taken insincerely? Sheesh, I write in plain English. I did not suggest that you should look it up. I did not suggest that you are ignorant. I was trying to make it plain that when I say ignorant I mean someone who doesn't know something, not that they are stupid. I really don't understand that when I go out of my way to qualify what I say so that it will not be taken as an insult, let alone a personal insult, you will insist on taking it thus. I really do not understand it at all. Never mind, you're an admin now, so I guess your insulting me by presuming that words I said about myself (when I don't know something I look it up, not anyone else) was some kind of sleight on you, that is just fine? You come here with a rationale of not delete, keep or retarget, but "I have no idea". That is what was in your nomination. I was actually supporting you in that because if you, as an intelligent admin who has been around a bit, have no idea, then people less familiar than you are with WP's wily ways will maybe have less idea. I don't see how you can possibly see that as an insult, even when I put right at the start "since it sometimes seems to be taken as an insult". I really don't get you, sometimes. Si Trew (talk) 21:49, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'll make it easy for you: when you make a comment, do not make your comment about me. At all. Leave the comment focused solely on the redirect and there won't be any problems. Can you please do that? --Tavix(talk) 21:54, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Don't prevaricate about the bush. When something is indented, it is aimed at the editor who posted the original comment, and nobody else. It's implied by the indentation. For if not, presumably your comment above was not addressed to me but to the whole world? By implication, you should not also say "I have no idea", because that implies you are making some personal comment and not just addressing the redirect you should say "readers will have no idea", or some such. Si Trew (talk) 21:59, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm collapsing this because it's off topic and it's obvious we're going nowhere here. --Tavix(talk) 22:10, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, you're collapsing it because you are wrong. I'm reverting that. Let's have it out in the open. It would be better off at WT:RFD to discuss how we address each other. I frequently pick out particular editors when those editors have made those particular edits. For example, I picked out you yesterday for the EC of moving a redirect "to the correct day" but not adjusting the RfD note so it pointed to the correct day, so I had to squirrel around to find it. There is no point in my not saying that you made that cut and paste, and that WP:ES, because it is in the history. It may be useful to other readers to know that, it's part of the history. I cock up enough times and admit it. Sorry, intelligent but ignorant readers sometimes make mistakes and some of them admit it. There, nothing personal. Si Trew (talk) 22:20, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's because it's off-topic. This has NOTHING to do with hot oil manicures, so this conversation doesn't belong here. I'm not discussing this with you any further, but if you insist, you can find me at my talk page. --Tavix(talk) 22:22, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The collapsed section above has been done by administrator User:Tavix, despite my reverting collapsing discussion as unhelpful, despite my saying here at RfD and on that user's talk page. I don't know why that administrator thinks it is helpful to collapse a discussion in progress rather than let mere peons like me read the discussion without let or hindrance. Why do you do that, Tavix? No, sorry, I am not allowed to call out editors in particular, why do administrators with a particular point of view continue to add {{cob}} and {{cot}} when I have already started a discussion on this very subhect over at CSD, Tavix' talk page, and wherever you want to find it. I am being beat about the bush here, User:Tavix, I ask a plain question, I expect a plain answer, what is the use of collapsing discussions? No other XfD forum does it, why do you think it is relevant to do it at RfD? I see no consensus for it being thus. Si Trew (talk) 02:07, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Simply put, it is completely useless banter that in no way is helpful for an admin to determine consensus. When an admin is reading a discussion trying to determine consensus, it's a lot easier to decipher when all the nonsense is uncluttered. Don't worry, it's still there if anyone else wants to read a pointless interaction. If you prefer, we can move the discussion to the talk page like they do at WP:RFA. --Tavix(talk) 02:26, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I went ahead and moved it to the talk page. This is exactly what they do with off-topic discussion at WP:RFA, and that should help with your aversion to collapsing. --Tavix(talk) 03:10, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for moving it.
It's not a question of admins having to determine consensus. Every editor is entitled to be able to determine consensus. The job of admins is just one of being some kind of magical WP:WIKIGNOME, they don't have any kind of omniscience as far as I can tell. But for myself, I find that if a conversation is collapsed, it makes it much harder to find what was said by searching in the page. I think that outweighs the convenience of having visually (but not technically) shorter page. If I want to refer to a previous discussion, say that such-and-such made this point or that point – and there is no point pretending that we don't all tend to have stances of being WP:INCLUSIONIST or [[WP:DELETIONIST] and things moer subtle than that – it is much easier to do so when the text is easy to search and reference. Were it the case that collapsing things made it faster to load, etc, I would be more in favour of it. I guess there would be some trick to do that, only to load on demand the contents of a collapsed box, but as far as I know we don't currently have it, and where that would sit in the architecture I don't know. I guess the Wikimedia software would have to stick the collapsed content in some kind of temporary (or "permanent"?) URL that would be HTTP GETted (got or gotten, I know) when it was expanded. That would be good cos then the trivia could speed up load times on slow devices, but as far as I know that doesn't happen currently so all the content of the collapse box is fetched just not displayed. The end result is that Wikipedia search will tell me that somebody said something, and when I click through and search for it within the page, I can't find it without opening all of the collapsed boxes. It's taking what should be an automated task to being a manual task, which is against the grain of the last 300 years of history. Si Trew (talk) 09:10, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, here's an idea. Is there any way with server-side script to make it work so that if someone clicks on a link that is collapsed, it becomes visible? That should be fairly easy, I'd imagine. I don't know if that would be a Lua thing (server-side) or a browser ECMAscript thing (but in the page from the server, not something one has to install etc). Would there be any possibility to make it work that way in {{cot}} etc? I am not suggesting right now it should, but whether it could, you seem to be a dab hand at the Lua scripting etc, I never quite picked it up yet as there always seems to be something else to do. (The language itself is no problem but I've no idea about the framework and never time to learn it.) Si Trew (talk) 09:16, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take a parallel. Some people like to know that in a court case the verdict was "guilty" or "not guilty". Or more interestingly in civil cases, what the Judges thought the bounds of the law or Parliament were, say, about Brexit. Some people are quite happy to know that in R. versus European Union or whatever, the court found that English sausages were not British sausages and thus they were not liable for VAT (I just made that up, to make the point concisely). Some people want to go further and see the logical and legal reasoning for how that was found. Wikipedia lets them do that by links where the case is mentioned and perhaps its verdict stated in the running text, and can be clicked through to get the background etc, and then can be clicked through further to the relevant decisions as written in the court record. We don't really have a similar thing to that for our "judgments" at RfD, we simply collapse them and say "get stuffed, admin knows best, don't bother to try to search this, or get a surprise when you do". There has to be some better way to do it. It's not as if RfD is usually enormous even with the seven-ish day digest, there are plenty of longer pages and it's mostly just text (not pictures etc) so collapsing it merely makes the scroll bar longer and the search effort harder. Si Trew (talk) 09:24, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
