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User talk:Iazyges/Archives/2025/January  | This is an archive of past discussions with User:Iazyges. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2025 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor, we hope the WikiCup will give you a chance to improve your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page.
For the 2025 WikiCup, we've implemented several changes to the scoring system. The highest-ranking contestants will now receive tournament points at the end of each round, and final rankings are decided by the number of tournament points each contestant has. If you're busy and can't sign up in January, don't worry: Signups are now open throughout the year. To make things fairer for latecomers, the lowest-scoring contestants will no longer be eliminated at the end of each round.
The first round will end on 26 February. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2024).
 Guideline and policy news
 Technical news
- The Nuke feature also now provides links to the userpage of the user whose pages were deleted, and to the pages which were not selected for deletion, after page deletions are queued. This enables easier follow-up admin-actions.
 Arbitration
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The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 66, November – December 2024
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --17:33, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
I read on a user talk page that Nixon is your favorite President. Do you have an essay you could link me to that details why you hold such an iconoclastic position? Just curious. Unschool 23:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
- @Unschool: I imagine this comes from the Operation Sandwedge FAC? I don't have any one essay that details it, but I can write a summary, coming with the disclosure that I would, if forced to pick a label at gunpoint, identify myself as something like a Conservative Democrat, rather than a Republican. In part, I think a reason I don't brush past Nixon's achievements is my general belief that people may need to do evil for the purpose of good – after all, our Founding Fathers committed outright domestic terrorism in the name of Freedom. Nixon, more than any other person of the 20th century, comes across to me as a man willing to do evil to accomplish good. Certainly, he sought to bend and break the rules for the sake of power, as Watergate demonstrated, but I scarcely see evidence that he sought power as an end; it seemed much more that he was willing to do anything for the goals he sought. And Nixon had some very wide-ranging goals for the American people.
- Nixon catches a lot of flak for his racist comments, and I won't deny that he said and thought many racist things, but Nixon existed in an era coming off the end of White Primaries in the South, and even after him, Carter, who many would otherwise (and rightly) call a humanitarian, called the bussing of schools a "Black Invasion" among other things as a presidential candidate. I can't claim to be happy with the terms he said, but they were pretty close to the baseline of the times, unfortunately. In contrast, his actual actions were far from the baseline. His drive to desegregate universities, and especially his approach towards Native rights, otherwise a very obscure and ignored issue for many politicians, stands out. Especially given that, as a general cynic & skeptic of the government, it's rather easy to see many Democratic politician's actions as self-motivated: it's easy to push for rights for the people that vote for you by massive margins (a common criticism of LBJ, for example); in contrast, Nixon was expended political capital to push for rights for people he knew wouldn't vote for him. And they didn't. I haven't seen any poll showing Nixon got any significant share of the Non-White vote. That did not seem to dissuade him from further advancements, including pushing for the Equal Rights Amendment.
- Nixon had worked for or allowed a flurry of positive legislation, including attempting to enact public healthcare, creating the EPA, supporting Amtrak (over the objection of many in his party), and signing Title IX (when a veto from him likely would’ve killed it).
- Nixon's approach on war & diplomacy also stands out; in part because of his Madman theory. Again, Nixon made a lot of hard calls involving Cambodia and the bombing of Vietnam, but I think withdrawing from Vietnam, and ending the draft, were both very good, and aligning China to single out the Soviets was masterful & effective.
- Lastly, Nixon’s approach to oil dependency, working to free America of it by increasing mass transit & nuclear power. Although the exact “1,000 nuclear power plants by 2000” plan is hard to attribute directly to Nixon, it was certainly in line with his policy. And it would’ve allowed us to basically end our reliance on it, and in turn allow us to avoid being so involved in the Middle East, where a number of moral issues and questionable decisions could’ve been avoided.
- Overall, If it were a "best person" competition, I'm not sure Nixon would place so well, but, in my opinion, these make Nixon one of our greatest presidents, as well as my favorite. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 08:18, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
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Your Military History Newsletter
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Xinjiang People's Anti-Imperialist Association has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AssanEcho (talk) 02:37, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
2025 opened with trumpet fanfares that first sounded OTD in 1725 (as the Main page had). Today I had a composer (trumpeter, conductor) on the main page who worked closely with another who just became GA, - small world! To celebrate: mostly flowers pics from vacation ;) - Thank you for improving article quality in January! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:15, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
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