`   ==Talk:Female genital mutilation; please stop== Hi Elvey. I noticed you on Johnuniq's page, which I watch, and was moved to check out the discussion at Talk:Female genital mutilation. Your part of it worried me. While I have no opinion of my own on the statistics, as FGM is not a field I've studied, I see two principles in play on that talkpage, that are true for all articles, and that you seem to pay scant attention to:   *1) Use reliable secondary sources. It's important (for all articles, but more especially for a sensitive subject such as FGM) to be based on reliable secondary sources. Synthesising sources in order to argue, in Wikipedia's voice, with a UNICEF report from 2013 isn't on, unless you have a reliable source (as opposed to having your own synthesis and conclusions from sources) that offers the same argument.  *2) Consensus. Nobody (except partly Vetrisimino0) agrees with you about how the stats should be represented in the article. There is consensus against your section tags, described here as ``overly aggressive``. I hope the issue of the tags has blown over, but a few days ago you kept restoring them, and defend them aggressively; the fact that the article is being prepped for WP:FAC seems to anger you further, and makes you accuse SlimVirgin of WP:OWN: a serious accusation, which shouldn't be made without good evidence, and which you have taken to SV's user talkpage as well.  Combative and unresponsive discussion sours the editing experience for other users. Everybody else is speaking respectfully to you, as far as I can see; you're the one that has been upping the temperature with posts like this, where you call Zad's comment ``blatantly untrue, not to mention insulting`` — based, as far as I can see on a mistaken notion that he was impugning some arithmetic you had done (he wasn't). That kind of response reminds me of the old adage about the internet being populated by sensitive and angry people, ``eggshells armed with hammers`` (Google tells me it was originally said of heavily armed but lightly protected battleships). Please don't jump so quickly to the conclusion that people are insulting you. Worse, your header here is a noxious bad-faith-assuming personal attack, something to be scrupulously avoided in section headers. And you put it as the header to a post by SlimVirgin, which you had moved there from your own talkpage. That is truly awful behaviour, seemingly designed to discourage others and chase them off. (Charming edit summary at your own page, btw.) If you can't stop yourself from getting angrier and angrier whenever you're contradicted (this post, aggressively attacking Johnuniq, is a charming recent example), I advise you to take a break from the article. That's advice. What I tell you, as an uninvolved admin, is that you must stop filling the talkpage with rehashing of arguments that have not carried conviction before, and you must stop attacking people. Your accusation against SlimVirgin that she is ``abusing her position as an administrator to gain advantage in a content dispute``, currently at the bottom of the page, is made up out of whole cloth as far as I can see. Has she mentioned or hinted at being an admin, or warned you in any way? If I've missed where SV is playing the admin card, tell me where. The word ``disrupt``, which she used and which looks to be the basis of your accusation, is by no means _ the prerogative of admins.  |  .  ::I appreciate that you are trying to improve the encyclopedia by dealing with the conflict at FGM by taking the discussion here.  I wish you'd participate in the discussion of the facts instead.  I feel that in coming here, you raise/reiterate some good points, but I don't think you should be raising the first few, at least, here: ::``*1) Use reliable secondary sources.`` (emphasis is in the original)  I totally agree, and I said that in the discussion, ``The sources are given and reliable and secondary.`` and ``Also apropos ``Anything about prevalence needs a strong secondary source,`` are you saying that the source we're using for reporting the UNICEF stats in the first place is better? It seems that a UNICEF annual report is a strong source when it comes to what other UNICEF reports say.``  So then why are you here on my talk page ``informing`` me of the need to Use reliable secondary sources?   That's a serious question.  If you're going to warn me like that, why should I keep reading? I'm fucking sick and tired of this:  If there's been a shred of evidence presented that I'm insisting on relatively unreliable sources, please point to it and I will eat my words.  You just said that if you're going to levy an accusation, you should provide evidence, but you haven't followed your own advice in this case, have you?    ::Re SYNTH: ````The retrospective periods involved (that is, time lags). For instance, in the case of a country where girls are cut before 1 year of age, most girls in the youngest cohort (15 to 19 years of age) are generally reporting on an event that took place 14 to 18 years previously. Any change that occurred after this period will therefore not be reflected in the data.`` is supposedly SYNTH, but as I noted on the talk page, it's A DIRECT QUOTE FROM A RELIABLE SOURCE.  The accusation of SYNTH was made.  Consider this sequence: I explained why there was no SYNTH, and the explanation received no response from the accuser. Later someone else accused me of SYNTH, but without any evidence or acknowledgement of my explanation.  Later you accuse me of SYNTH in the same way.  And that's supposed to accomplish what?  That's very poor communication.  Why don't you respond to my explanation as to why there was no SYNTH?  You say I'm ``getting angrier and angrier`` and yet that sequence seems rather designed to make one ``angrier and angrier``, wouldn't you agree?  ::``*1) Combative and unresponsive discussion sours the editing experience for other users.``  I totally agree, and likewise, have made pretty much that exact point re. the FGM talk page.   :: ``WP:OWN: a serious accusation, which shouldn't be made without good evidence`` I totally agree.  Have you an opinion on whether there are signs of OWN?  I didn't know it was being prepped for FAC and don't much care, and it didn't drive the OWN accusation... and why would you even make the accusation that it drove the OWN accusation?  It seems pointlessly accusatory.  ::You say, critically, that I ``defend [the tags] aggressively``.  Is there no room for defending legitimate use of tags?  Why is there no acceptable way for me to point out that I was using them for what they were designed for?    ::In any case, I will try to take a break and return with an enhanced effort to hear and speak better than it feels like others hear and speak to me.  Thank you for your effort.  If you're willing to engage in constructive dialog, great; theres more in your original post (``Everybody else is...``) to discuss.  If not, please just go ahead and block me for a week or two now.  Oh, and if you're not Bishonen, don't butt in. {{U|}} •c)   :::No, I will not get into a content discussion — ``participate in the discussion of the facts instead``, as you say. I'm surprised you should ask me to, after you have been complaining (quite unfairly) that SlimVirgin had mixed the roles of editor and admin; you are apparently aware of the distinction between the roles and the inadvisability of mixing them. I'm wearing my admin hat in regard to this article and no, I'm not going to participate in the discussion on Talk. It's your conduct that concerns me. I notice you have nothing to say w r t my specific complaints on that score above — the personal attacks and other disruption — excepting that you take issue with what I said about using reliable sources. I'm sorry my explanation there wasn't clear: I was trying to say, you must use reliable sources, as opposed to synthesising sources in order to argue, in Wikipedia's voice``… ``unless you have a reliable source (as opposed to having your own synthesis and conclusions from sources)`` for the argument you make. OK? You need a reliable source for the argumant you make. I didn't mean to say your sources were unreliable, but that you used them wrong: you synthesised them into an argument, your argument. See WP:SYNTH. Sorry it wasn't clear.   :::I'm afraid you'll have to discuss content issues with the other editors of the article, not with me. Please try to engage them respectfully.  |  .  ::::I'm afraid that I see that your answer to the questions I've asked, about your opening points regarding RS and SYNTH, means we won't get to the crux of the matter:  I see that you think that you did answer when you said I ``must use reliable sources, a