User talk:Radiant!/Goodbye

Hi Radiant!, I'm sorry to see you leave. I'd really like it if you could expand on your parting comments (via email if you like). Talrias (t | e | c) 23:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Same here, I think you were incredibly important to the community (and by extension, the encyclopedia). —Locke Cole • t • c 23:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Radiant, you have my sympathies. I also find recent behaviors to be atrocious, and after Jimbo's answer to those of us arguing that Joeyramoney was a well-intentioned newbie unfairly caught up in this mess, I was so inflamed that I contemplated a bit of editorial seppuku to remove the block myself. My more cowardly side caught up with me, and I ended up merely purging my watchlist of everything to do with damned process and conflict (more than 150 pages in total). There is still an encyclopedia under all this shit, and I am going to try and get back to it for at least a while, and ignore the lunatics running the asylum. Maybe you could try doing the same? Regardless, I hope you take pleasure in whatever you are doing now. Dragons flight 00:24, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But also the saddest. You have represented some of the finest qualities in Wikipedia to me. Bold in editing and creating space for new ideas, thoughtful in your examinations of problems, willing to listen and absorb opinions different from your own. You've occasionally been snappy, but mostly when faced with determined and obstinate rejection of discourse. I can only hope that your wiki-addiction is as incurable as my own, and that we will see you back soon, for we will all be much the poorer for your absence.
brenneman^(t)(c) 23:51, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to see you go; I hope you're only taking a temporary break. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-02-08 00:08Z

I'm also sorry to see you leave, Radiant. Although I was not personally witness to many of the stupid events that you have enumerated, I empathise with your contention that far too many actions are being taken against the will of the community and even out of malice or revenge, and I hope that your statement will have some impact. I hope you will at least consider contributing in the capacity of an ordinary or anonymous editor in areas far removed from the political circle of Wikipedia, or perhaps on another Mediawiki project. Take care. Deco 01:00, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations on your sparkling history of contribution to the Wiki, and on your spectacular exit. Well done. Coffee 04:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I need you around to help work on that! How come our best people are always the ones to leave? :-( Stay well, and please at least keep contact by email! :-) Kim Bruning 00:08, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, if you have the willpower to stay away from this place for a while, then I'm envious. But you will be missed. --Doc ^ask? 00:14, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was very sorry to see the message from Jimbo criticizing your decision to assume good faith about the template, and the blocking wars and desysopping are also very unpleasant to see. But please consider that it was a template about pedophilia, and naturally it provokes anger and revulsion. It's only human that people will respond strongly and be less able to see the other fellow's POV and more likely to over-react. It's a tragedy if this issue does us permanent damage instead of being able to put things back together by talking it through, and move on. Kappa 01:27, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How come our best people are always the ones to leave? :-( Because the best people have the least need and least desire to put up with intimidation, inane power struggles and bureaucratic infighting from lesser people with ego problems. If Radiant and WP's other best editors and admins won't be treated with respect here, they'll go someplace else where they will be, and everyone else can sit around and fight about userboxes all day without anyone left who will dare to question their actions. --Aaron 02:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Radiant, I understand your feelings and have been struggling with similar thoughts myself. However, I also see reasons to remain hopeful. Despite the fact that Jimbo and several of the more 'senior' admins (plus scattered regular users/admins) presented a stark and somewhat intimidating position on these issues a large portion of the community was willing to stick their necks out and say, 'there is more to this situation than that'. Ultimately, it will always be the community which builds and therefor shapes Wikipedia. The administration can attempt to nudge the overall course of the community or act with great expediency on specific issues, but they cannot negate the hearts and minds of hundreds with any edict. Most people understood that there were other issues to be considered and no need for over-reaction... and that gives me hope. Too there have been some positive signs from above today. The dust is settling and many people (myself included) are re-evaluating their recent comments and looking for better ways forward. All that being said, even if the majority did not 'get it' and arbitrary 'punishments' were to become a matter of course I'd urge you to stay anyway... because the goal of this project is worthwhile no matter what the environment in which it is built. I do hope you come back, because you've done alot of good here and hope is only strengthened when people work together to with-stand the slings and arrows. --CBD _☎ ^✉ 02:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously is this worth leaving over? Why don't you organise something against this if you are that upset? Leaving just means that they win. When people like you give up the whole community looses. -Ravedave 02:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A while ago you left something on my talk page, which was an aw'fly nice thing to do... I've decided to give it back...(1) You need it more than I do, my friend.

You have my warmest wishes. Here's hoping you come back soon, but in any case I thank you very very much for all you've done for all of us. Be well. ++Lar: t/c 03:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1 - well, most of it anyway, I kept a little tiny bit. :)

Radiant, you've done with your poll what I could only hope to dream of, we're a stone's throw away from preventing things like this sad episode in the future thanks to your poll giving a clear direction towards real rules that we can all follow and be protected by instead of this popularity contest free for all. All those things you've said above are disgraceful, but it's disgraceful more than anything that you don't see this and understand how valuable you are to Wikipedia. I hope once things cool off in a few days you come back to us. Karmafist 03:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to see you feel the need to leave. I have to wonder if I walked into the worst possible time at Wikipedia (last Sept-Oct, when I started editing in project space, to now), or if it's something bigger. You've always been a bright spot (literally) of trying to find a solution, third path, reasonable compromise, action instead of endless whinging. If you come back, the project will be better for it; I hope if you stay away, you will be better for it. -- nae'blis _(talk) 03:50, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for the tone of my remarks yesterday. I had a talk with several members of the ArbCom, who persuaded me that if I look at the timeline of events, your action in unblocking was not what I thought it was. My tone yesterday was something that I regret.

We may, may have a disagreement on some substantive issues here, I am not really sure. I think clearly the act of placing that userbox would warrant a 24 hour block for trolling, obviously not an infinite block. Unblocking, with an eye towards discussing with others what to do, leaving open the possibility of a 24 hour reblock, was perfectly fine.

--Jimbo Wales 04:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please make this a temporary WikiBreak. I want to be able to seek your advice as an admin. Superm401 - Talk 05:08, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

5 items to work on.

I'm also sure that i need your help in the future. Mion 06:10, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This a truly sad day, and your departure is a great loss to Wikipedia. I got pretty stressed out by what has happened as well lately and retreated to the pristine Norwegian Wikipedia, chemically free of ArbCom and RFC. Paradise isn't it? Is the Dutch version any good? Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Although still a newbie (maybe forever) I would like to personally thank you for your work on Wikipedia. I hope to see you here again. Take a wiki-break and come back. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:11, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is not worth leaving over. Or, at least, I hope to see you working on a fork. As DF said above, the content is still here, and still worth it. And PROD is a great idea, and it's great that it seems to have been accepted. I wish you the best of luck and good fortune in your future endevours. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:14, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Take a break for a few days, but please come back! there are areas of the encyclopedia that will fall apart without you around! Martin 10:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

that you will be back. —Nightstallion (?) 11:32, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The text Radiant! wrote is illegible to me; on my browser it looks like a blank black box. I edited the version on the user page to remove the formatting, but someone restored the blank version.

I'd prefer the wording to be plain text. Radiant's message is in the words, not his odd choice of colors. --Tony Sidaway 18:32, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the "odd choice of colors" is indeed part, a huge part, of the message, else why would he have bothered to create stuff in that color scheme? Others report it works in a number of browsers, perhaps not yours though... what browser do you use? Is the text visible if you drag the highlight cursor through the area where it is? Perhaps there is a technical compromise that might work? What if the text were replaced with an image (that had the text as alt text?) User pages are supposed to be primarily under the control of that particular user in general. Radiant sent a message with his words and color choices, one which has caused some of us to reflect. (the irony of someone named Radiant choosing black, the ABSENCE of radiance, is intense, at least to me) Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 18:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note: following text was placed in Tony's talk page after the removal, he deleted it per: "silly troll" twiceWhen you removed radiant's black background you may have acted on bad faith, I was unable to find any browser that did not render that page correctly. I tested that page in as many browsers as I could (I even tried it in links and lynx) and none showed problems. I fixed something minor and maybe it aint gonna be an (alluded) problem anymore. But your change to his page was (allegedly) politically motivated, ie the black page is much more striking and has been used in protest b4. Why did you remove the line breaks too? A halfparagraph removed it's gravity. That is not good of you. Shame on you for (allegedly) lying. After all, you have no (allegedly) right to edit a page where he is speaking directly against the arbcom (tonysidway included). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.211.176.100 (talk • contribs) 13:44, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The user associated with a specific talk page can, by long established tradition, refactor it as he sees fit, including deleting comments for any reason, or no reason at all, (i.e. Radiant can choose black backgrounds on his page, Tony can remove comments he does not care for on HIS page) except in certain very limited circumstances such as when the user has been sanctioned or blocked. Your comment could possibly have been worded a bit more nicely, in my view. Rather than assuming that Tony did this maliciously, why not assume he did it out of concern for those that could not read the text? I think it should stay black too but I don't feel the need to call Tony a liar over it. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 18:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, I have made an attempt to reword the text and make nicer. I asked Tony for a screen shot but he denied to do so. I still find it hard to believe that the text did not show. The text is formatted by CSS: style="background-color:black; color: white; those are some of the core elements of CSS. If the black color rendered then he surely has a CSS-enabled browser (he would not see the black at all). If the white colored text did not render then whatever rendering engine he is using has some gross problems. If Tony was using a browsers that did not render CSS then the text would have still been visible, albeit Tony would have a hard time navigating through Wikipedia. To view the page without any style (on Firefox) click View -> Page Style -> No Style.

For all it's worth I found out that Tony is using Ubuntu and is browsing with either Firefox or Ephifany. I'll try rendering the page with ephifany in a minute. If either renders as he claims it does I will surely apologise.

Ok, I 100% sure he is using Firefox: Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060124 Firefox/1.5.0.1. Judge for youself.

The troll is right. I use Firefox. I also use Cologneblue skin. The page is still black on black. When I edited to remove the style information (which the troll reverted with false accusations) this made the text legible in all skins. --Tony Sidaway 20:04, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your comments are thoughtful. I feel much the same. And yet...

The events of the last few weeks have proved that it isn't Jimbo, peace be upon him and his descendants, that runs this place. It's you. Tattvamasi. And all of us. Jimbo (pbuh) may have shown up, shouted a bit, blocked a newbie, deleted a template, arbitrarily desysopped some people and left the ArbCom to pick up the pieces. But in the same week you reformed our deletion process. Which is more important? I know my answer. - Haukur 19:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]