MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist/Archives/2009/06

Approved requests

lenr-canr.org

This site is globally blacklisted. This request is occasioned by a single page: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetr.pdf is hosted under plausible claim of permission from author and publisher (that issue has been thoroughly discussed at Talk:Martin Fleischmann and elsewhere). The purpose of linking to it is to provide a convenience link for readers of Cold fusion and for editors working on the article. The paper is very important in the history of Cold fusion, being a more thorough second report, published in 1990, than the original 1989 publication, which was famously sketchy. I am unaware of any other site hosting the paper for free access and under a plausible claim of permission.

I see no reason not to whitelist the entire site here on en.wikipedia, there was no linkspam here in the first place, but, short of such a whitelisting, please whitelist the single link (and this request may then be closed without further fuss from me, excepting other whitelist requests as the need arises). Thanks. --Abd (talk) 15:01, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Whitelisting the entire site is most definitely  Declined (see WP:LINKVIO). Can you please give us a non-TLDR explanation of on what information the "plausible claim of permission from author and publisher" is based? If it's limited to "some WP editors think so", then I am afraid that will be declined too. Some offwiki proof would be necessary I think. Stifle (talk) 17:13, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Tl:dr? Moi?

Oh, okay, if you insist: see the extensive discussion of the lenr-canr link at Talk:Martin Fleischmann, where copyvio was extensively considered. It's not just a few editors, it's consensus. You might also see the extensive discussion of blacklisting at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Abd and JzG/Workshop. Thanks again. --Abd (talk) 21:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Stifle, what is the basis of your claim that WP:LINKVIO applies? This is the evidence that it doesn't, beside all the opinions that have been expressed: They explicitly claim permission from authors and publishers. They host only a fraction of the papers they would prefer to host. In the original delisting request here, closed only because of the meta blacklisting, evidence was presented that lenr-canr.org had permission for what they host, including an email from Rothwell, the site manager. They are highly visible and stable. Another site which hosts some important papers that they do not host (and which was just delisted here), newenergytimes.com, does so under claim of fair use, and I've interpreted this as disallowing links to that site (for those papers) because suspicion of copyvio is reasonable; they may be able to get away with a claim of fair use, but lenr-canr.org is claiming explicit permission, and they have been doing so for years, and they are widely publicized (in reliable source, in fact) as a library of documents on the topic of low energy nuclear reactions. Enough? --Abd (talk) 02:45, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

One more point. I asked for a specific page whitelisting, or, in the alternative, the whole site. To what did your decline refer? --Abd (talk) 02:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I dispute the "plausible claim of permission from author and publisher", as it comes from lenr-canr.org and not either the author or publisher - the holders of the copyright. Of course the site itself would claim it isn't infringing copyright. Verbal chat 08:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

As I noted, this issue has been very extensively discussed and the conclusion has been that a claim of permission from a notable web site is adequate. It doesn't make sense that we have to run an off-wiki confirmation process for every convenience link; this idea would make adding convenience links so cumbersome that few would be added. It's simply not true that a violating site will claim permission as some sort of obvious move, and the case of NET was mentioned precisely for that reason. NET doesn't claim permission, probably because they can't get it. They claim fair use. Lenr-canr doesn't host those same papers and, in fact, when NET cites a paper as prominent, it typically links to lenr-canr.org instead of hosting it itself; it only hosts papers, we may readily conclude, when permission can't be obtained, either by them or in general. I'm willing to track down permission for a single paper, if needed, but I want an understanding that this isn't going to be demanded for each and every link. --Abd (talk) 11:26, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The decline relates to "I see no reason not to whitelist the entire site here on en.wikipedia" only. Stifle (talk) 09:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I am not convinced enough of the issue to approve this request, but also not convinced enough on the other side to decline it. I am deferring to another admin. Stifle (talk) 09:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Stifle. That avoids WP:BIGMESS, a guideline that's not even written. --Abd (talk) 11:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetr.pdf is a copy of "Martin Fleischmann, Stanley Pons, Mark W. Anderson, Lian Jun Li and Marvin Hawkins, Calorimetry of the palladium-deuterium-heavy water system, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, 1990, 287, 293-348, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0022-0728(90)80009-U. I am whitelisting this, consider  Added. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:22, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Beetstra, this time was a little bit easier. --Abd (talk) 01:48, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

lenr-canr.org (2)

• http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/KUERinterview.htm

(totally unrelated to request above) A transcript of a radio interview, for Michael McKubre. It can be used to source his postdoctoral research fellowship under mentoring of Martin Fleischmann. Also has some info of his funding, which is a relevant matter due to the funding problems in his field of expertise (cold fusion). --Enric Naval (talk) 19:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It would seem better to cite the original recording, no? Stifle (talk) 17:14, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I will link both the audio recording and its transcript. The text transcript is much better for people who is not proficient in English language, and it can be verified more easily. (I'll also listen to the recording to cite the time when the declarations are done) --Enric Naval (talk) 17:42, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

This seems a much more reasonable request than that above, and barring a better source I would support this individual whitelisiting. Verbal chat 08:52, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Since Stifle has deferred to other admins in the "lenr-canr.org" section above, can some other admin take a look and do the whitelisting or deny it? --Enric Naval (talk) 17:52, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I am inclined to whitelist this one as well. Could we have a link to the radio interview as well (if there is an online version of that available), just for future reference. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:10, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

http://audio.kuer.org:8000/file/rw112702.mp3 P.D.: Argh, it's broken, and the archive.org copy is also broken >.< --Enric Naval (talk) 14:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I have already  Added this, could an admin add a permanent link to this entry when the radio interview link is presented, just to have the log complete? Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:13, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Now that is funny, how do we check if the audio recording is the same as the original? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:33, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, since the charge of alteration was made against lenr-canr.org in the past, I need to take this question seriously. Unless there is a reason to think that a site is altering documents, i.e., taking original text and changing it in some significant way, we routinely accept copies as accurate, just as we accept edits citing obscure and unobtainable books on the word of an editor that the source contains what the editor claims it contains, and until and unless that editor is impeached for misrepresenting sources, we assume good faith and even allow, normally, for some level of error. Lenr-canr.org has built a reputation as a library of documents on cold fusion. If they were found to be altering documents, it would be devastating to that reputation. The previous charges of alteration were not alteration, they involved a case (unusual, actually, for lenr-canr.org) where Rothwell had prepended an editorial comment on the document, a U.S. government report, the 1989 DoE review of cold fusion. There was no alteration, there was framing, a totally different matter. I've cited text to an organization that prepended comment when there was no other source for the text; in the particular case, lenr-canr.org had provided a link to their source, and that other source didn't have editorial comment, but only the name of the web site (which was apparently hosting the document because of their skeptical POV). Editorial consensus was to use the less editorialized copy, which was a proper decision, and it wasn't controversial. But the "alters documents" charge was then repeated over and over, was still being raised this year. What could be done if someone really wants to check is to ask McKubre. Is it worth it? I doubt it. By the way, Dirk, thanks for this one also. --Abd (talk) 01:16, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. It is not that I am afraid of editorialised interviews, wrong interpretations etc., it would be good to be able to check. Linking to mp3's is not the best practice (bandwidth, availability of codecs etc., unsuitable for deaf people), though here it is the proper source and it certainly should be mentioned in the reference. Adding the transcipt would make the availability wider (also suitable for deaf people, etc.) and I would encourage that. It is just too bad the original seems to be gone, and written transcriptions might be less informative than the original (loss of intonations e.g.). I think it is fine this way. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:07, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. An inferior source is better than no source, as long as the problems with the source do not rise to the point that the harm outweighs the good. for example, had there been no other copy of that editorially framed document on lenr-canr.org, we could have linked to it, in preference to no link. That's explicit in the guideline, which establishes preference for clean documents, no framing. And preference for linking to neutral sites. Etc. --Abd (talk) 18:31, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Just a point about the changed document problem: Jed didn't change the original text, but he did modify the original pdf to add his own editorial at the top, and he linked to his modified pdf instead of linking to the unedited original pdf that was also available in his website (thus the complaints that he was linking to promote his POV instead of linking to provide neutral access to documents for the sake of neutrally improving the article) I have never seen any complaint or indication that Jed had actually falsified any document in his website, so it's unlikely that the transcript has been falsified.

Given this, I think it's reasonable to assume that this transcript would contain at most innocent errors in transcription. (and, as Dirk points out, we lose information like entonation, pauses in speech, and such). Given past experience, the only concern would be that the page contained some framing, with introductions that interpreted the linked sources like in his DOE review page http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm, but that's not the case for this specific link, and should be checked in a case-by-case basis because not all pages in his website have introductions.

(Note: the link that we use for DOE 1989 also has an editorial, but the link goes to a neutral title and copyright page, the editorial is in a different page and you have to choose to click in a link labelled "NCAS Introduction" instead of clicking in a link labelled "CONTENTS". And, yeah, it's not an ideal situation.). --Enric Naval (talk) 09:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

lenr-canr.org (3)

The links below would be useful as convenience links for documents already cited at Cold fusion. See prior discussions on this page for reasons to consider that these links do not violate WP:EL or WP:COPYVIO. (permanent link) Please whitelist these links, which are perhaps half of the links that would be presently useful, or please whitelist the entire site, so that editors don't have to come back here for each link; ordinary editorial process at Cold fusion is easily adequate to handle appropriateness of use.

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf permission from publisher explicit
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BockrisJaccountabi.pdf permission from publisher explicit
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BushBFheliumprod.pdf Elsevier, no logo, may not be direct copy
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf preprint, permission from author presumed
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GozziDxrayheatex.pdf copy from actual Elsevier
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HublerGKanomalousea.pdf slides, not published paper
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf explicit author permission, Japanese publication, unknown situation with original publisher
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBpathologic.pdf slides, not published paper
• notes added on apparent permission situation. My opinion is that we may presume permission for all except the Elsevier paper I struck. The other Elsevier paper appears not to be an original publication but probably an edited preprint, which Elsevier permits (see below comment by Enric Naval). I now suspect that the Elsevier paper with the logo was a possible error on the site owner's part, that he may not have actual permission from Elsevier for that paper and possibly some others; the author would have sent the paper to him, and may have represented that permission to use existed, some authors may not understand Elsevier policy. --Abd (talk) 04:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

• http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html original lenr-canr.org bibliographical index, this should be an external link from the article, along with the Dieter Britz biblography. They used to be, before the cold fusion wars eliminated them. Added based on comment from IP editor at Talk:Cold fusion. This is a neutral bibliography, including all known peer-reviewed papers on the topic, and meets WP:EL handsomely. --Abd (talk) 18:21, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

There is also an original document at lenr-canr.org, a bibliographical study, which is highly useful for discussion of the topic, though usage in the article would be more controversial and possibly not appropriate. (Almost all of what is in the document is verifiable, because it is a list of published papers plus graphical analysis.) Because I expect extensive discussion and review of this document on Talk:Cold fusion, I also request that it be whitelisted for the convenience of editors.

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf lenr-canr.org is publisher

Thanks. --Abd (talk) 02:39, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Summary from subsections below: except for the withdrawn request, all were  Added by Beetstra. --Abd (talk) 17:00, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't mention that lenr-canr.org is blacklisted at meta, there is reference to that in prior discussion. The reason for the meta blacklisting is unclear, but suggested procedure for delisting there involves a showing that the site may be needed for some purpose, and we can effectively neutralize the meta blacklisting by whitelisting the entire site here, or any specific links as requested and reasonably useful. While there was "promotion" alleged with the original blacklisting in January, that was not on the basis of evidence, there was no linkspam alleged.

I have today become aware of a mainstream review in the field that mentions this site, E. Sheldon, An overview of almost 20 years' research on cold fusion, Contemporary Physics, Volume 49, Issue 5 September 2008, pages 375 - 378.[1]. This is a book review of Edmund Storms, The science of low energy nuclear reaction, World Scientific, 2007. From that review:

... a major Web site on this topic is to be found at www.LENR-CANR.org ...

Ed Storms, who in the past has authored several review papers and articles, is to be commended for gathering the salient timely information between the covers of this quite up-to-date book, which provides a comprehensive overview together with its copious references. He has also been instrumental in helping to set up, with assistance from Dieter Britz and its current administrator, Jed Rothwell, the extensive resources of the Web Library on the LENR-CANR site. Thereby, he has provided a gateway to an in-depth study of the status of cold fusion and transmutation investigations and theories.

There are other mentions of the site in the review, and in many other reliable sources. Dieter Britz is an electrochemist who is a skeptic on cold fusion (as E. Sheldon remains), the bibliography on lenr-canr.org appears to be as complete as possible, it isn't cherry-picked positive reports.

So whitelisting the entire site may indeed be the most appropriate action. Generally, the site would not be used as reliable source, but as an external link for further research, or for convenience copies, because a good chunk of the literature has been hosted there with permission, but there are a few original documents by notable authors that are published by lenr-canr.org, which editors at Cold fusion or related articles might decide were usable. --Abd (talk) 17:05, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Oppose I disagree with this whitelisting for the reasons given in previous discussions here (I think Abd has linked the discussions) and on various talk pages, and the fact that this website has been abused in the past, is not a RS, and the copyright status of these "convenience" links is unclear despite Abd's claims. Providing the DOI is as convenient as we need, give the reliable and published version, and avoids these issues. This short summary of oppose reasons is not exhaustive. I'm not convinced that Sheldon's review can be considered mainstream, I'd have to look into that further. Verbal chat 08:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Sheldon's review, which Abd obtained from me, is being misrepresented by Abd. It is an essay by an emeritus professor of physics from the University of Massachusetts who had prior experience in electrochemistry. Sheldon remains sceptical in his conclusions. His review charts the activities of cold fusion researchers, cites the websites, and discusses the unfeasability of some of the explanations through physics: he calls this type of physics "unclear physics" rather than "nuclear physics". Sheldon's review is mainstream but it does not say what Abd claims it is saying. Edmund Storms is by the way one of the few fringe scientists blacklisted by the Cornell arxiv. Mathsci (talk) 12:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, I ask you to strike this. I quoted from the review. I could claim that you have, yourself, misrepresented the review ("unclear" refers to "of unclear explanation" and is not perjorative, it's a fact, as well as being a cute pun. There isn't yet a clear and accepted explanation for the experimental results, though there is a paper published this month in Naturwissenschaften that attempts it.) The entire field has been blacklisted from some publications, including Nature, for almost twenty years. What that means? You figure it out, but it has nothing to do with our blacklist, which doesn't work that way. --Abd (talk) 14:18, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

As soon as I made the source available to Abd, he indicated that he intended to use it in a way that did not reflect the content. I had no idea he would use it here - wikilawyering par excellence. Quoting selectively from a source - usually called "cherry-picking" - is exactly what he has done. On the other hand I gave a better description of the essay-review (by the way I can privately make my download of the article available to anybody that wants to check it). It looks here as if Abd is once again trying to bully other editors/admins; he had the same hostile response when I mentioned the paper by Celani et al. (see below) on the Abd & JzG ArbCom case. Mathsci (talk) 14:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

What I quoted from the review covers, I believe, everything that the reviewer covers about lenr-canr.org, and doesn't misrepresent the review in the least, as far as I know, and nothing Mathsci has asserted actually impeaches what I wrote except by vague claim. If there was cherry-picking, please cite other text from the review that shows the contrary. Please remember the purpose here is not to support or oppose Cold fusion but to decide if a site is usable, and the review indicates notability for the site in the field, and essentially recommends it for further research. And there are many other reliable sources which do the same; this is merely a recent one which goes into how the site was founded (i.e, by Storms). --Abd (talk) 15:44, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I am quite aware that this is not the talk page of cold fusion, which is dominated by your own contributions. I think you will find that your way of telling other editors how a particular article is to be read is not very helpful. I wrote that my reading of the article - an essay-review by a retired professor who has nothing to loose (eg tenure) and includes autobiographical details to set the scene - is quite different from yours. Eric Sheldon is explaining to other physicists his own take on the current state of research in cold fusion, including how things can be accessed on the web. In real life and for my WP namespace contributions to uncontroversial mainstream science articles, I have a good deal of experience reading science articles. Although the article mentions them, it is not giving validity to lenr-canr.org or NET; that would require showing that NET was listed amongst the electronic resources of major university libraries, which does not seem to be the case at present. The main issue to me, as I've written below and 3 weeks ago in the ArbCom workshop, is that despite your off-wiki correspondence with Rothwell and Krivit, at present we have no guarantee that Elsevier has dropped its copyright rules for certain articles on lenr-canr.org. Mathsci (talk) 16:17, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Could Abd please keep the discussion here, rather than user talk pages [2]? Mathsci (talk) 16:39, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

(For reference, the allegued misrepresentation that Mathsci is talking about is here and the relevant edits are this and this one that deals with lenr-canr.org).

About misrepresenting the mention of lenr-canr.org, my personal opinion is that Sheldon is reviewing a book on a fringe field, so the source only shows that the site is notable inside the field. As Mathsci points out, it doesn't seem to be considered a notable scientific website out of the small field of cold fusion. And, of course, this has nothing to do with the copyvio problems :P --Enric Naval (talk) 16:54, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Enric, without agreeing that the field is still fringe, but certainly that's a reasonable position, though increasingly less so with recent events. The field of cold fusion isn't small, there have been over 2000 journal articles published relating to it, according to the bibliographical study proposed as one of the links above. Sheldon is noting that for this field the site is useful. Isn't that the point here? I didn't notice a direct comment on the alleged misrepresentation, I'll look at the user talk page Matchsci points to above and attempt to keep discussion there for the moment, if others do likewise! --Abd (talk) 17:08, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

See clarification above - I meant on this talk page. Mathsci (talk) 17:25, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Of course the field is fringe and small, even if it still keeps going and gets coverage from national newspapers. I already gathered the requested RS on how it's compared to polywater here and on how only a small diminishing group of researchers keeps going at it here, and I got tired of pointing you to it because you refuse to acknowledge what the sources say.

(and about the 2000 journal papers, notice that "the most credible cold fusion advocates concede that the vast majority of those papers are of poor quality; one supporter called the collection 'mixed toxic waste.'" [3]) --Enric Naval (talk) 18:04, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Verbal. Prior discussions here have gone in two directions. The first discussion was probably ready to conclude that there was no copyvio problem, but was closed as moot because of the meta blacklisting, which was basically a result of clandestine forum-shopping. The other conclusion has been to whitelist convenience links. Verbal has, for a whitelisted link, attempted to remove it, at Martin Fleischmann, so he's flogging the same horse. The site need not be an RS for convenience links; the paper, published elsewhere, is the source, not the site. There has been no linkspam abuse. There have been links to this site that were arguably inappropriate, but that doesn't constitute abuse. The copyright status of the pages listed is clear to this extent: lenr-canr claims permission from copyright owners (authors and publishers). To verify it beyond this would require contacting publishers; given that, from the context, we know that lenr-canr only hosts a fraction of the papers in their bibliography while they would love (and I'd love!) to host more, from their prominence -- they are highly visible -- it is highly unlikely that they are knowingly hosting any violations, we are completely safe linking to them, legally, and the more extreme wording of the external link policy that seemed to require "proof" has been removed. It was utterly impractical, for starters. --Abd (talk) 15:21, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

• I'm not ignoring this (in case someone complains that I've handled all the other requests); I am just too undecided to accept or decline. I would lean towards declining on WP:LINKVIO grounds (anyone can claim they have permission to host anything, and this site has been known to host material in violation of copyright), but whoever takes the final decision should consider all the factors. Stifle (talk) 10:19, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Stifle. There is was no credible allegation that this site has hosted anything in violation of copyright, that was simply something repeated frequently by an administrator who was later admonished by ArbComm, and then it has been repeated by others without checking, you aren't the first, but this has been discussed to death. On the other hand, if you know of a violation, please share the evidence. Further, sites which do occasionally have violating pages, think YouTube, are not blacklisted. WP:LINKVIO currently states: if you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. This satisfies the legal requirement for linking to copyvio (it must not be knowing). And while it's true that anyone can claim permission, if they don't have permission, they are inviting prosecution, it would turn a remediable error into a crime. Are you seriously proposing, Stifle, that we require proof? What kind of proof? How much red tape would you require? Who would certify it? I've done international adoption, I know red tape very well. --Abd (talk) 10:53, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Stifle, and Abd may have discussed it to death but I'm not sure the rest of us did. Verbal chat 11:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

• I'll have to go with the copyvio problems. I still see no explanation of how papers copyrighted by Elsevier are reproduced in Jed's site, despite User:JzG (who works with scientific publications in an university) asserting that Elsevier never gives permission to reproduce anything for free in a website. There is also no explanation of how the author can give permission to put a copy of their paper when they have submitted that same paper to a publication that doesn't allow reproduction without their own permission. As it has been pointed out, Jed (the owner of the website) appears to be "playing fast and loose with copyright".

No objection for individual links if the permission can be shown to exist, either through a post in a public website, a post in a mailing list with public archives like vortex-l, or a private submission of proof to the WP:OTRS system.

I oppose the whitelisting of the bibliographical study, as totally useless for the article or for discussion, as an unpublished paper of unknown reliability coming from a source known to be heavily biased. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The avenues suggested above have come up before and have been rejected as cumbersome and unnecessary. JzG's assertion that Elsevier never gives permission is simply based on JzG's experience, and he cannot know what contractual arrangements might exist between Elsevier and individual authors or what exceptions Elsevier management might allow. Many Elsevier publications would be hosted on lenr-canr.org that aren't, however, highly desirable papers. We do have email from Jed Rothwell, copied into prior discussion. If you read back over the prior discussions, you will see that many editors have considered the issue, the first to do so in detail was DGG, an administrator who is a librarian. What Enric is doing is attempting to place a roadblock against making sources accessible to readers, based on no policy at all, but rather, the same apparent cause as was the case with the admin who is named here as raising the issue; that admin fabricated one reason after another to justify blacklisting. When a link was whitelisted -- at Enric Naval's request, by the way -- and it was put in the article, JzG edit warred to keep it out, raising one objection after another. And they were all rejected, by consensus, at Martin Fleischmann. Now, it's true. It's possible that we could say that the Martin Fleischmann decision was for that specific link, where the copyright holder was not Elsevier, but Tsinghua University. However, if lenr-canr.org would lie about permission from Elsevier, why not about Tsinghua University? Why, indeed, would we trust any statement of permission, anywhere? There is an answer: because some editors believe that Jed Rothwell is a "kook," (JzG's word), nothing from him can be trusted. And that is how our POV can come to affect all our judgments. I'm suggesting caution, for sure, but there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that inappropriate links would end up in Cold fusion for more than a few hours, because that article is highly watched by editors who will reject anything shaky. After newenergytimes.com was delisted, I put a link into Cold fusion as a convenience link to the crucial Mosier-Boss paper. It was immediately reverted as copyvio. Because I hadn't researched the situation with permissions there, I was ready to rise up in umbrage, based on assumptions. But then I checked. Lenr-canr.org has a generic permissions page that makes the claim about permissions. I looked for one at NET. What I found is that NET, for a certain set of documents, claims fair use, not permission, yet hosts the complete papers. They may be able to get away with that legally, or not, or only for a time, but this took that paper outside of what WP:LINKVIO prescribes as a boundary. So if Enric, or anyone else, wants to object to a specific paper based on Elsevier publication, then I'd investigate that one, even if I personally thought it unnecessary. Otherwise, I'm not going to investigate permissions for each and every paper, demanding that Jed Rothwell or publishers spend time providing me or OTRS with proof that isn't needed for them. Bad idea. (If I were the publisher, I might ignore the letter, I'd gain nothing by answering it.) --Abd (talk) 17:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I dispute the claims of consensus, all I saw were looong posts by Abd and some discussion. I may be wrong as it's hard to read all those lengthy posts and short replies. And as Abd often notes, consensus changes. To give Abd what he is asking for, I, specifically, object to all of the proposed links. Needless to say I endorse Enric's view. Verbal chat 17:46, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The proof is in the edits. Take a look at the history of Martin Fleischmann, and compare that with the discussion of the lenr-canr.org link on the Talk page of that article. A number of editors participated in the Talk page discussion of the lenr-canr.org link, over time, some of them having been attracted by an AN/I report over JzG edit warring to keep the link out. These was not a formal RfC; it was, rather, an organized discussion, guided to come to a conclusion. I closed the sections, yes, but without objection and only expressing consensus, and, in the end, there was one objection from one editor, which was satisfied and the link stood as qualified by a disclaimer that that editor accepted as satisfactory and I accepted as unnecessary but harmless, as did at least one other editor. Verbal then showed up later and presented a new argument, something like "We don't do disclaimers." So I took the disclaimer out, tentatively, asking to be reverted if someone objected. Instead Verbal removed the link entirely, apparently paying no attention to the prior result. I didn't notice this for some time. When I did, and in full view of the community, I'm watched quite closely, that's obvious, I put the link back and the other editor who wanted the disclaimer put the disclaimer back and there it sits. Many editors have commented on this copyright issue. What is clear from the history is that copyvio is a red herring, a plausible argument that can gain some traction, but the real purpose isn't protection of the project from copyright violation (there is no hazard of that here) or from loss of reputation from linking to a copyvio site (if there does happen to be a violation on lenr-canr.org, it still isn't a site with heavy copyvio and thus doesn't violate EL policy), it is that some editors are strongly of the belief that cold fusion is pseudoscience or fraud and that any site devoted to resources for the study of it is, per se, objectionable. Verbal is active in pursuit of an anti-cold fusion agenda, and so is Enric Naval, but Enric, at least, has been helpful. He is the one who proposed the whitelisted link that was previously edit warred over. --Abd (talk) 18:15, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

As to the bibliographical study, this is self-published by an expert in the field (notable enough for an article, but I haven't gone there yet) so it's even possible that under some conditions it could be used in an article, but that's not why I'm proposing it. It's a list of reliable sources, and, as such a list, it is all verifiable, and if it is incomplete, completed, or incorrect, corrected. I'd simply copy the list here, except for one problem. Copyright. We need to look at this information in order to better assess due weight; otherwise we have conflict of sources, with many otherwise reliable sources making assertions that are blatantly false, looking at the actual publication evidence. Suppose, as an example, some newspaper reports say, "No claims have been made that X exists." Yet there are primary sources claiming that X exists, peer-reviewed, independently published. How do we determine due weight for mention of X in the article? Do we use the reliable secondary source, or can we consider the primary sources? My position is that we would want to look at those primary sources, and exercise caution about leaning on a secondary source which is easily impeachable with reliable primary sources. Is there just one paper? In this case, there are 153 listed. Note that this would be enough to establish that X exists. Indeed, the secondary sources carry weight on that, even if they are wrong. What we would report is both the secondary source conclusions, which, in this case, vary, some saying X exists and some saying that it doesn't, and the primary evidence, where it is clear and verifiable by a reader of ordinary skill. We don't come to a conclusion ourselves. --Abd (talk) 17:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

• Most of the links listed are papers, but two (JosephsonBpathologic.pdf and HublerGKanomalousea.pdf) are simply slides from presentations, and therefore are unlikely to be of any value as references. - Bilby (talk) 15:35, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

All of the links are proposed as convenience links for references that are already present in the article. Bilby, if this editor thinks they are of no value, could demonstrate this by removing them from the article. Being whitelisted here does not establish that the links will be used, but that the references have been used in the article, probably for a long time, does establish that some editors, at least, believe them useful, or at least accept them, and we should not allow the blacklist to be used to support content positions. Blacklist administrators should not have to make content judgments, absent active linkspamming (in which case we would be balancing protection against linkspam against content necessity), or other clear harm, and this is where our blacklist policy is moving with the recent decision by ArbComm. If there is any question about that, please ask! --Abd (talk) 18:22, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I think Josephson is fine, it sources the opinion of a Nobel laurate who supports cold fusion. Anyways, it's moot because using archive.org it can be sourced directly from the official website of the meeting summary slides. I'll add these links when the protection expires. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:39, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

That's fine then. Josephson doesn't need whitelisting, and HublerGKanomalousea is debatable, I suppose. - Bilby (talk) 22:16, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

It seems that HublerGKanomalousea isn't being used in the article. (The slides that are proposed here, that is, not the article itself - the article isn't being proposed for whitelisting). I can't imagine that it would be used, so I'm not sure waht the value of whitelisting that one would be. - Bilby (talk) 22:16, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Stop this nonsence - the Arbitration Committee has spoken:

“ Blacklisting is not to be used to enforce content decisions. ” — Purpose of the spam blacklist

This case has never been about anything else than attempts to enforce POV by blacklists. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 19:59, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Er, no. It isn't about enforcing POV. See comments above, and see WP:AGF. Verbal chat 20:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

If the value of the links isn't an issue, then that's fine. It just seemed to me that the rules for proposing whitelisting a link said you need to show three things, the third of which was "Explain why it would be useful to the encyclopedia article proper". If I missread that, then apologies, but if that's the case then there's a problem with the process. - Bilby (talk) 22:16, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

That explanation is necessary when there is linkspamming, where balance is required. There was no linkspamming here. This blacklisting was the action that led to the reprimand of JzG at the case cited above, because of his involvement, and the original accusations of copyvio came from him. The blacklisting would be gone if it had remained here; but JzG forum-shopped to meta, and is well-respected there. He didn't tell us that he was requesting blacklisting there, even though the matter was being debated here. As to usefulness, that is asserted: these links are being requested as convenience copies. The references are already there. Convenience copies, where a topic is controversial and hotly debated, are very useful. We satisfy WP:V with the references, technically, but we get far higher levels of actual verification if we have convenience copies. --Abd (talk) 11:27, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up. In that case, an explanation as to why links are needed is probably warranted. It was originally listed for linkspamming, although copyvio was raised, and it was denied de-blacklisting from the meta list because of spamming, not copyvio. I note that JzG was reprimanded for failure to recluse, not because the decision was necessarily incorrect. At any rate, I'm only commenting on two of the links. - Bilby (talk) 12:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, linkspamming was alleged, but the only evidence that has been presented wasn't pointing to links, it was pointing to a signature by Jed Rothwell, librarian, lenr-canr.org. As you will notice, the blacklist doesn't stop this! It is just a title, and does not violate any policy. (If it were a link, it would.) Indeed, it's commendable, because it discloses COI. In most places, however, this was called "promotion," not linkspam, but that was said in a context where editors would easily assume it meant "linkspam." Yes, the reprimand was for failure to recuse, i.e., for acting when involved. However, that should raise a red flag about trusting the reasons given. If you review the evidence presented in the case, there is plenty of reason to suspect strong bias and selective or even distorted presentation of evidence.

I urge reading the complete decision by Mike.lifeguard in deciding not to delist "at this time." Here is his summary:

The reason for my decision is primarily that the link is being pushed inappropriately on multiple wikis. Editorial reasons are secondary, and arguments concerning them are immaterial to the primary reason. That said, I think the spamming and editorial reasons dovetail nicely here, making blacklisting an attractive outcome for all. Those who rail against this decision simply fail to realize this.

Whitelisting specific URLs for specific uses as required and permitted by local wikis' policies should be sought. The domain will remain blacklisted on Meta until such time as the issues identified here have been resolved and the use of links to the domain are required by an established editor for the betterment of our projects.

He does not explain what "pushed" means. However, I assume it would mean the same as Beetstra meant in his arguments before ArbComm, that links were used that were inappropriate, i.e., that shouldn't be in the articles. But what was the reason for deciding that they were inappropriate? The specific links removed by JzG as part of his blacklisting process had been accepted by consensus. Mike's comment that "spamming and editorial reasons dovetail nicely here" is an acknowledgment that he was supporting an editorial position, one which is not actually that of most working with the articles, when decisions are made carefully. There is currently one link at Martin Fleischmann, though Verbal has been edit warring to try to remove it, and one link at Cold fusion, which was accepted recently without objection, plus another link at Michael McKubre, requested by Enric Naval. The copyvio issue, if valid, would apply to all of these.

Mike, in his full explanation of his decision, shows that he does not consider convenience links important. That's a generic content position, and one not supported by our actual practice. Convenience links, which allow any reader to quickly read a source, cause far higher levels of actual verification. Once, when I suspected a problem with a reference that had been standing for over a year, I actually went to the trouble of going to a medical library, and got a copy of the source. It had been drastically misrepresented. That would have been discovered, probably within days, if there had been a convenience link. But usually those links don't exist for published papers. Lenr-canr.org has gone to very substantial trouble to get permission to host what they host. Their bibliography is generally complete, and you can see from it that most papers are not hosted. You can also see that there are papers that are critical of cold fusion that are hosted. Some very important papers, where Rothwell could not obtain permission, aren't hosted, such as the recent Mosier-Boss finding of energetic neutrons from a cold fusion cell. That paper is hosted at newenergytimes.org, under a claim of fair use, though they host the entire paper. (I.e., newenergytimes.com, which we delisted, does host probable copyvio, though it's possibly legally harmless, and apparently their lawyers must think so. They have money and they would be an attractive target for a copyvio lawsuit. Linking to that article was prevented by ordinary editorial process, which works.) Lenr-canr.org, though it is also nonprofit, doesn't make that fair use claim. They claim explicit permission from authors and publishers. We should accept that claim, routinely. It is a legally hazardous claim to make if it isn't true, being a separate offense under U.S. law, which would apply.

Inappropriate use of a site does not justify not whitelisting specific links where they are appropriate. All of the links proposed are as convenience links for pages already referenced, so we can presume that they are useful. Whitelisting does not support the use itself, except in a minor way. I.e., if copyvio is known or reasonably considered likely, copyright law would suggest we not link, though, in fact, there is no decision, ever, against a site like Wikipedia for linking to copyvio unless it was clearly willful and designed to defeat copyright protection; thus, I have argued, whitelisting is an implicit rejection of the copyvio claim, by the deciding admin. That doesn't mean that there is proof of no copyvio, but only that one admin has reviewed the link and did not find sufficient evidence of copyvio to exclude it. There were attempts to insert a requirement for "proof" in our guidelines, raised by Verbal in his recent discussion at Talk:Martin Fleischmann. That wasn't sustained, and the reason is clear: it would create a tremendous burden for doing something that should be easy: making it possible to easily verify a source. --Abd (talk) 14:27, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Most of that is compeletly irrelevant. All that I'm saying, which is supported by what you quoted above, is that the site was blacklisted for linkspam. And based on what you said, "explanation is necessary when there is linkspamming, where balance is required". From on what I read of the articles, I can see that most will be useful. Two links will not. HublerGKanomalousea.pdf, as the link you are requesting is to a different document than the one referenced in the article, and, being only the slides from the presentation, would be unlikely to be of any value anyway; and JosephsonBpathologic.pdf, which seems to have been incorrectly used as a reference in the article, is also merely slides, and, as Enric Naval pointed out, can be better linked to the archive of the official site. - Bilby (talk) 14:45, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

That analysis ("linkspam") is unsupported by the evidence and the deciding admin's closing statement. The existence of allegedly inappropriate links isn't linkspam, even if they were promotional (they weren't added by the site owner, unless rarely and long ago, this site is close to the top return from Google searches involving cold fusion, it is utterly unsurprising that editors will link to it, and nobody has been warned or blocked for linkspam over this, the linkspam allegations are actually preposterous). The decision on actual use of the links will be made, as it should be, at the article, not here. Thus a closing admin here need not worry about actual content decisions, only if the links could be considered useful. I would argue for the slides, with a note explaining that it's not the actual lecture text. It's better than nothing. Absolutely, if there is a better link, we should use it, not lenr-canr.org. That's easy. But it wastes a lot of time to debate these content issues here and, in the end, the site will be, I predict, totally whitelisted here, and then delisted at meta, and then, as it should be, and as it is normally done, each link will be considered on its merits by editors at the article, and we will be able to bury this dead horse and get on with the business of writing and editing articles, unfettered by unnecessary and inappropriate blacklisting. It is quite clear that this is what the community wants, overall. --Abd (talk) 16:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to continue discussing this here, as this sin't pprogressing, and I don't wish to continue to add to what the closing admin needs to wade through. But in the interests of accuracy, you stated: "that analysis ("linkspam") is unsupported by the evidence and the deciding admin's closing statement". I note that the closing admin wrote: "Contrary to the claims, I do see evidence here of the domain being pushed inappropriately by the domain owner." So no, that claim is supported by the closing admin's statement. That aside, you cannot reference the paper and link the reference the slides - it does't work that way. The HublerGKanomalousea.pdf paper will not be of any value in the article. The others may well be, though. - Bilby (talk) 09:33, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

"Linkspam" isn't merely the addition of "inappropriate" links, or the "domain being pushed" (as with non-link text), it's addition of links, appropriate or not, in quantities sufficient to overwhelm ordinary editorial review. I'll add a link to the definition. --Abd (talk) 15:15, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose With all the questionable material we already host, you want to add more potential copyright problems? Give a DOI, stay in the established channels, and eat your vegetables. - 2/0 (cont.) 04:29, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we host a lot of questionable material. This isn't. 2over0 should review WP:ELYES. There is no evidence that this site hosts one piece of copyright violation, and, rather obviously, there are a number of editors who would like to make it seem so, you'd think that at least one of them would have written a publisher to verify the claim of permission. My guess is that it's been done, but because the goal of these editors (not 2over0, whose comment I take at face value as concern over copyvio) is to keep content out, they didn't tell us that (a) the publisher ignored the warning, or (b) -- worse, and I make this claim with respect to no specific editor -- the publisher wrote that permission had been granted. We have email from Rothwell claiming permission from authors and publishers.[4] We have the known position of the site "father," Storms, and the manager, Rothwell, in the cold fusion community, these are not marginal figures. The site gets high traffic. The copyright claim is preposterous, has been shot down many times, and is still being asserted. I conclude the same as Petri Krohn above. Which is why determined efforts to keep this content out will be met with Arbitration Enforcement if necessary. I urge any admin closing this with a decision to review the arguments and evidence carefully. --Abd (talk) 11:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I see that Elsevier and other companies sued some publishers because they "routinely duplicated and distributed copyrighted materials without obtaining permission from the publishers directly or through Copyright Clearance Center". See also settlement. This other article has a longer explaination and says that Copyright Clearance Center is "[the] licensing agent for all five publishers".

Now, lenr-canr.org has several papers where Elsevier has an "All rights reserved" copyright notice, obtained from this google search:

1. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhangWSeffectsofe.pdf
2. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSthermalbeh.pdf
3. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEcommentonp.pdf
4. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhangWSsteadyconc.pdf
5. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakStheeffecto.pdf
6. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhangWSvoltammogr.pdf
7. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhangWSeffectsofsb.pdf
8. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhangWSeffectsofh.pdf
9. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhangWSresistance.pdf
10. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CisbaniEneutrondet.pdf
11. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSonthebehavb.pdf
12. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GozziDxrayheatex.pdf
13. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhangWSeffectsofs.pdf thirteen

Those are not preprints or drafts, those are published articles with the Elsevier symbol in the upper left of the page. Jed (the website owner) has never stated that he has gotten permission from Elsevier anywhere, just that he got direct permission from the authors. However, as seen by that lawsuit, that's not enough for copyright compliance, he has to get permission from the publisher or from the Copyright Clearance Center. As I said above, Jed seems to be playing "fast and loose" with copyright. It's possible that he is being tolerated because he isn't making commercial distribution in a channel where is damaging Elsevier economically, or because he is too small to get noticed, or because the publishers don't want to be accused of greedingly trying to squash a free service. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:57, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I raised exactly this point on the ArbCom Abd & JzG workshop page [5]. The paper I mentioned by Celani et al. was available as a preprint at CERN, the copy at lenr.com bore the Elsevier copyright notice and if I tried to download it on the official cite without my university proxy, it had to be paid for. Abd dismissed these comments at the workshop as if this problem had already been extensively discussed. Mathsci (talk) 12:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

You may have been right in your presentation, Mathsci, but it was also true that the argument had been raised before and rejected. Enric, here, has presented more evidence and Hans Adler has also provided supporting analysis, and my tentative conclusion, pending research that will probably take time, is that lenr-canr.org may indeed be hosting, in error, some papers that are copyvio. What they are doing isn't illegal, provided that they take the violations down on request or it could be shown to be willful violation. I'll be able to present a fuller report, I believe, after off-wiki discussions are complete. A quick summary, however, would be that I speculate that in some cases, Rothwell may have assumed that the author had obtained publisher permission, perhaps the author represented this in submitting the paper to be hosted; and either the author misunderstood the policy, which is complicated for Elsevier, or submitted the wrong version (actual copy of published article instead of preprint edited to reflect peer-review and other corrections), or the author actually did obtain permission.) I have, above, reviewed each link with respect to actual apparent status. Some of the links are clearly legitimate, one I struck as quite possibly copyvio, because it shows the logo, others are less clear.

What greatly complicates this is that the needs of a library site like this are quite different than our needs. If they make a mistake and host violating material, from their point of view, it's harmless, because the owner will simply ask them to take it down, and, provided they do so promptly, there isn't any real legal hazard as long as they weren't willfully negligent. I.e., if the author claims, to them, publisher permission, they have a ready defense of error. New Energy Times hosts material that we can clearly see as probable copyvio, using a Fair Use claim. Given that they aren't some clandestine, anonymous web site, that they have assets at risk, I conclude that their lawyers have advised that they can make this claim and, as a nonprofit, simply take down material on request. It is quite possible, as well, that the publisher is winking at the hosting. I do know that lenr-canr.org has, in the past, taken down material on request from a publisher, and other material from the same publisher was left. Legally, we can link to this material unless we do so knowing that it's copyvio, and the only case where copyright violation has been found for linking to copyvio has been one where the violation was clearly an attempt to avoid copyright. (I.e., okay, we won't host this, because we know that this would be copyvio, but we will get around this by linking to some other site that might be anonymous, and if that's taken down, to yet another, etc.) But our current policy is stronger than the legal requirement, and it puts us in the position of making legal decisions just to edit articles. This is going to require closer attention or better, cleaner procedure, or we end up arguing this over and over and over. --Abd (talk) 16:12, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad that you are now agreeing that there are problems with the site lenr-canr.org concerning WP:COPYVIO. Mathsci (talk) 09:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No, Enric, have you read his email? I believe it is cited above. He claims permission from authors and publishers and states explicitly that he doesn't host papers unless he can get both. Now, I've stated before, apecify one page that you'd like me to investigate specifically, and I will. But if it turns out that there is permission, I'd expect you to quiet your opposition. He's not too small to avoid notice, that's clear. Newnenergytimes is relying on fair use, possibly by the arguments you give. But lenr-canr.org has made explicit claim of permission, which is quite different. Really, this has been examined by experts and given a pass. --Abd (talk) 17:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I stroke that part out. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:02, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Why not start with the first, as I specifically object to all of them. I'd specifically like evidence from the copyright holders that permission is granted for l-c.org to host these without any restrictions, and not just some website owners word. Verbal chat 17:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The "first" refers, I assume to the first Elsevier link listed by Enric Naval above. I'll check that one out and report back. I'm not convinced that I should go to the owner (why should the owner bother to respond to me?) but will ask Rothwell first. Note that if Rothwell claims specific permission, and if that wasn't given, Rothwell would be committing a separate offense under copyright law in the U.S., where he lives and works, and, whereas he might satisfy the law merely by taking down the page on demand, that avoidance of liability would not extend to a false claim of permission. We may rely, I claim, on specific claims of permission by site owners, we do not have to tack on an impossibly burdensome requirement of generally asking for proof from owners. --Abd (talk) 15:15, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you should read WP:LINKVIO more carefully... There are also more hidden problems, Hubler's paper was published at Surface and Coatings Technology, which belongs to Elsevier[6] Also, Elsevier's papers are not the only ones with dubious copyright: I see, for example, that Iwamura's paper has permission from the author, but the journal's permission page says that you need separate permission from the publisher. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, and others, the Arbitration Enforcement is indeed possible if the only reason this site was blacklisted was to enforce a content decision. However, the ArbComm has not said that the sites in that decision were actually blacklisted to enforce content ... and I am also not sure at all that that was the reason it was blacklisted. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:12, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

This is correct, Beetstra, which is why we are here. ArbComm does not make content decisions. However, it is quite clear, I believe ArbComm would confirm, and will confirm if necessary, that the copyvio charges were raised due to an anti-fringe content concern, and that the strong resistance to whitelisting is based (for most involved editors) on the same agenda. What we have seen in the many discussions of this is that some neutral editors will initially agree with the concern, but when the evidence is reviewed, they end up approving the link. Copyvio is a content issue, and is only under unusual situations to be dealt with by blacklisting; two examples: a site that is mostly copyvio, where most links being added are copyvio, and it is not possible to deal with the problem by ordinary editorial measures, bots, or blocking the editors adding the link. The site might be blacklisted and then content arguments required for whitelisting. Another example would be a site that is being linkspammed -- there is no credible evidence for linkspamming for this site, only debate and argument that some links were inappropriate, and, indeed, some were! But then a specific link is needed somewhere, and so the need should be established. However, my position is that this should be easy, because that will be an examined link. The showing of need should be merely that assertion of need is reasonable. Whitelisting does not guarantee that a link gets actually used. I went to user RfC with the primary issue being blacklisting by an involved administrator, and tried to keep the issue to a pure matter of administrative involvement, but I was not supported in keeping it narrow, and ArbComm ended up ruling on the use of the blacklist. Absolutely, they haven't decided on the particular content matter (beyond a decision that found that JzG had used admin tools while involved. I did not push, and they did not decide, if his content positions were appropriate or,instead, POV-pushing).

If a decision to deny is made here based on copyvio, that position is sufficiently reasonable at this point that, unless the administrator is involved in the subject matter or has other involvement that should suggest recusal, there will be no danger to that admin, but the matter will, I predict, be reviewed. From precedent with the blacklisting of newenergytimes.com, however, the blacklisting supporters will not appeal; there, they made a flap over alleged involvement of the delisting admin, but that went nowhere. Any admin deciding to whitelist these links, or the site as a whole, should be prepared for criticism. A decision to deny these whitelistings will also be questioned, through standard dispute resolution, promptly this time, but no neutral admin should fear accusations of bad faith from my side. I simply request that the admin review the evidence and not decide based merely on preponderance of !votes, and present the reasons for the decision.

I have aimed for minimum disruption. I could have simply requested whitelisting the entire site, with no alternative suggested (and that is still a possible decision here). I could have requested whitelisting of these links one at a time, that would have been easier for me. Pick the strongest. Instead, I just went through the references and found convenience links in alphabetical order from the existing references, about half of them. There are other convenience links in the article, but no attention has been paid to them. Attention is paid to the lenr-canr.org links because of the attitude toward the site, connected with a POV about the topic, that's quite obvious, and that is why this would go, if necessary, to AE. A decision to delist the whole site would immediately defuse all this debate, here, and we could move on to meta. Without a delisting or substantial whitelisting here, approaching meta is premature. --Abd (talk) 13:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, per the ArbCom decisions referenced above (8, Imbalances in methods, quality and volume of communications) can you trim your excessive comment as it is impeding discussion and understanding, thanks. Verbal chat 13:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

No. My comment here is on-point, precisely. However, if it flies over your head, you are welcome to ignore it, but don't ignore warnings from others, and you just got one on your talk page.[7]. That was step two in DR, totally unsolicited. --Abd (talk) 15:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, Abd, the question to ArbComm if the link was blacklisted for a content decision would be a question to ArbComm to make a content decision, so I am not so sure if they would comment on that (as you have strongly defended that the question in the ArbComm if lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com were abused was a content decision). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The question ArbComm would be asked would depend on how this situation develops. At this point there are editorial behavior issues to be looked at, one of them involving Verbal and his role in this. They would not be asked to make a content decision, and it has not been interpreted that they made a content decision. They made a decision about a number of things, and policy over blacklist usage was part of that. They obviously cannot compel any decision here, but they might look at the reasons behind a decision, and arguments presented for a decision, both those that are stated and those that are sufficiently clear from behavior to form the basis of a conclusion. Beetstra, I hope you are never taken before ArbComm over something you've done, it's a royal pain. Nothing you have done, to make it clear, would be worthy of that, you have generally been helpful, and it's a bit of a mystery to me what you are arguing about here. You obviously don't buy the copyvio argument. Here is what I suggest. You know enough to make quick work of this. Consider it. As long as this issue remains unresolved, there is going to be continued disruption, because there are deeper factional disputes involved. ArbComm has advised me to proceed more quickly, and I am. --Abd (talk) 15:11, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose i see no rationalization for the inclusion of the links, at most they would be convenience links to papers that can be accessed through other channels - purchase/library/university/mail to author etc. With the potential for copyright violation, and no need for the links - its hard to come to another decision. (and yes - i have read the various arguments). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:57, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment. I have no experience with this black-/whitelisting business and this site is in a grey area, so I am not going to !vote. But I participated in an earlier discussion at Talk:Martin Fleischmann – my only involvement in the cold fusion topic so far – and I hope I can help to focus this discussion on the real issues:

• Lenr-canr.org hosts scientific and non-scientific publications and references to such. The site makes an effort to stay legal. [8] In case of any copyright violations it is obvious for the publishers who to turn to (and, presumably, ruin).
• The results above of Enric Naval's Google search indicate that in some cases the site either misunderstands what it is allowed (not) to do, or intentionally operates in the grey area between what a publisher allows and where it intervenes. Elsevier is quite liberal about distribution of articles outside its own channels. [9][10][11] Basically the only reasonable thing that is not allowed is distributing the article in the journal layout commercially or widely, e.g. on a web server. Lenr-canr.org is doing this in some cases, and to me even after reading Jed Rothwell's email it doesn't seem plausible that they have adequate permission to do so.
• Two of the links in this request concern Elsevier articles. One is very likely legal (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BushBFheliumprod.pdf), the other very likely not (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GozziDxrayheatex.pdf).
• Nobody wants to use lenr-canr.org as a source, so the question whether it is a reliable source does not arise. The question is whether documents hosted on lenr-canr.org can serve as freely accessible convenience links instead of / in addition to the authoritative pay version at the publisher's server.
• In the past it was asserted that lenr-canr.org has a track record of manipulating the documents it hosts. This was based on a single instance (since fixed, I believe) where a hosted document was prepended with an editorial comment. One of the links under discussion, http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GozziDxrayheatex.pdf, is another example. The full version is available here and makes it explicit that this is the corrected version of the article.

These being the real issues, and with the example of YouTube in mind, I believe that there are three options; I am not familiar with the rules for black-/whitelisting, so I won't opine about their relative virtue.

1. Take the site off the MediaWiki blacklist. (Obviously not something to be decided here.) Spread awareness that free copies of articles in the publisher's layout are generally not legal.
2. Put the site on the whitelist. Spread awareness that free copies of articles in the publisher's layout are generally not legal.
3. Whitelist only those articles that appear to be legally hosted by lenr-canr.org on a case-by-case basis, when needed.

--Hans Adler (talk) 22:58, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much my thoughts. Where I take them:

1. Whitelisting here is the first step to deal with meta. If I can't get whitelisting here, it's hopeless to think that meta will change and delist, nor should they. So the only issue is how many links would be needed. We have three so far.
2. Site-wide whitelisting is ideal, because there is no special reason to think that this site frequently hosts copyvio. If the Elsevier allegations turn out to be accurate -- I will investigate -- I certainly wouldn't use a link to such a page, nor would I permit another to use it. However, there are over 500 papers hosted there. Some that might seem to be problematic are preprints, which Elsevier allows, and they also allow authors to edit their preprints to match the published text. But if the text has the Elsevier logo, that is going to require investigation, starting with a more specific question to Rothwell. He's stated he has permission from publishers, and Elsevier is not obligated to enforce their own rules, i.e., they might grant permission for some reason. One thing is quite likely: if there are violations, they are errors, not "playing fast and loose."
3. Whitelisting links as needed, and excepting specific papers for specific reasons, i.e., "Elsevier logo," is certainly okay. But it adds work and more discussion. I'll do what I can to keep it down if this is the way we go. Precedent, though, is that a few bad links doesn't justify blacklisting a site, consider YouTube.

• What's clear is that whitelisting the whole site will stop the discussion here, beyond a possible short bounce, as there was with the newenergytimes.com delisting. (There were complaints that the delisting admin had an ArbComm sanction prohibiting him from reversing JzG's actions, which the complainers claimed that this was, though, in fact, it wasn't him being reversed, it was the administrator after him who had refused delisting on the first request. Note that the newenergytimes.com example shows that even if a site hosts copyvio, and with an article watched as intensely as Cold fusion, removing it from the blacklist doesn't create violating links, because I'd missed that NET hosts entire papers on a claim of fair use, which almost certainly means there is copyvio. (NET also hosts a much larger amount of original material that they own.) So when I put a link in the article, it was reverted immediately, and properly so. So if lenr-canr.org is whitelisted, in toto, I would personally refrain from actually using a link as described here (original publisher marks), unless I have better evidence of permission. At this point, an explicit claim of direct permission from Elsevier would be adequate. (It's possible that an author told him that the publisher has given permission, but was in error on the exactly policy. That could be fixed: the Elsevier copy could be replaced with an author working copy edited to match the changes made in peer review and editing, which they explicitly allow, as I read the document. --Abd (talk) 02:46, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear: So you are no longer asking for http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GozziDxrayheatex.pdf to be whitelisted? (This one has the Elsevier logo and is not even a complete file, so it probably breaks copyright both for being distributed in this way and for being distributed in modified form.) --Hans Adler (talk) 15:22, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I am asking, in fact, for the entire site to be whitelisted, because even a few copyvios on a site don't justify blacklisting in the absence of actual linkspam; however, I had not noticed the incomplete file issue. I think I've read that sometimes Rothwell gets permission to host part of a paper, and that might be one of these, in which case the link would still be useful, and would not be violating, but it should be noted that it's a partial copy. If a closing admin decides not to do a whole-site whitelisting, but just whitelists individual links, thus postponing the final decision to a future discussion, that's fine, and omitting the Elsevier links would be reasonable, pending outcome of a specific investigation of that. I wouldn't want to delay a close here, but would instead extend the discussion if new evidence comes up justifying that (or ask the closing admin about it). --Abd (talk) 18:36, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Just as a remark, Abd, you seem to imply that if you get enough documents here whitelisted, that that will almost automatically mean that it will be removed from the meta blacklist. That is not an argument for de-blacklisting! There are sites where there are several whitelisted documents here, but which will as the situation is now not be removed from the mediawiki blacklist - the problem is for some sites bigger and different then here (spamming campaigns, spam incentives, etc.), but it does not mean that there is no good info on such sites. It may help the case, but it is not a necessity, there are also removals which are not preceded by whitelisting. Whitelisting was IMHO merely mentioned as a solution for those documents which were necessery, not to replace a de-blacklisting. De-blacklisting is generally done on other merits, general: when (from several local wikis) established, knowledgeable editors in the field request removal. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:54, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Beetstra, you should know me well enough by now that I wouldn't believe such a stupid thing as you imagine I might be implying. Do remember that

• I already requested removal once.
• I have experience with requesting removal at meta, and it varies somewhat from your description of the ideal.
• I'm describing a process that is minimally disruptive, probably, while ensuring that those closest to a topic have first crack at a decision, with wider discussion then being founded on evidence. One never knows for sure. I.e., simple process can become disruptive when tenaciously opposed. If site whitelisting is done here, the matter is over, I predict, for en.wikipedia.
• It is up to us what we want blacklisted here, not meta. My primary concern is this project. If this project supports continued blacklisting, I'm not about to go to meta to try to do an end run around consensus here.

If we do whitelist here, as de.wikipedia whitelisted Lyrikline.org did to deal with a persistent blacklist decision at meta, in spite of plenty of requests from "established, knowledgeable editors," then further process at meta may be explored (as it will, eventually, for lyrikline.org. That meta blacklisting is actually preposterous, you know and I know that there are better ways to deal with a lyrikline linkspam problem; there was linkspam, of the "actually good links" kind, with very few debatable exceptions, but it ceased and would not have resumed even without the global blacklisting, or if the blacklisting were lifted. De.wikipedia, where linkspam would be most likely (it's a well-known German site), whitelisted in toto and has seen no linkspam result. We (Beetstra, actually, as I recall) effectively whitelisted the whole site by whitelisting the english language interface. Note to other editors: "linkspam" includes "good" links, the term can be misleading. To decide that there is linkspam, it is not necessary to decide that the links are bad, and if you look at normal blacklisting reports, you will see that there is frequently no content argument at all. --Abd (talk) 19:05, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I know, the remark was aimed at you, as I found your remarks and way of describing giving that impression, and others who are less knowledgeable on the meta way of blacklisting/de-blacklisting may not know how things are (generally) evaluated there.

I disagree with the lyrikline remark, a) blacklisting was fully necessery, not preposterous, lyriker and the IP have a clear and obvious conflict of interest, and you have seen with uofa.edu how far they will go (and there are many examples possible), and b) there was no indication, except for the editor themselves saying 'oh, I will stop' (hmm, they was warned before, and did continue), and c) except for en.wikipedia and de.wikipedia, most of the additions were not fully appropriate (please, Abd, if there is a Farsi page available on their server, and the editor blindly links to the English one on the fa.wikipedia, as he did on 20-30 other wikis just, because he had it in the copy-paste-buffer, then that is probably on 28 wikis certainly not the best link, there are several wikis out there where English links are deprecated, and those were not 'very few debatable exceptions', there were 'a lot of debatable exceptions').

But a) we are totally off topic, b) defining wrong reasons for blacklisting is absolutely NOT a reason to de-list, proper reasons should be that it is of major use, and then the original blacklist reasons can (well: should) be evaluated on their merits (do we have sufficient reason to think that 'large scale' inappropriate additions stopped; are risks of linking to a significant number of copyvios on the site weighing against linking to appropriate documents (or is individual whitelisting a better solution), is linking really (really) necessery or are there other solutions,&c., &c.), and c) we have not seen a serious de-listing request backed up by local wikiprojects/portals (neither for lenr-canr.org, nor for lyrikline.org) based on such proper merits, and evaluating the (perceived) risks of de-listing. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:02, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Beetstra, you did this before ArbComm, too, with voluminous detail, it was embarrassing. Nobody is attacking the blacklist administrators, yet you seem to find it necessary to constantly defend the process. Lyrikline.org was properly blacklisted, there was linkspam. But there were also no clearly inappropriate links added, though we've debated that, to be sure. The lyrikline linkspammer stopped before the blacklisting, apologized profusely, and basically stopped editing almost entirely, everywhere. There is no risk of serious linkspam; de whitelisted and hasn't seen linkspam, and we whitelisted and haven't seen linkspam. Yet there is ongoing restriction of editors, all editors. For most editors, requesting whitelisting is like visiting the moon. It can be done, but it's a bit of trouble. In this case, though, there wasn't any linkspam. Sorry, some possibly inappropriate links aren't linkspam unless added in volume. Just as good links can be linkspam if added in volume. --Abd (talk) 05:46, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, we have seen many spammers 'apologise', yet they go on. Some discuss and go on, I have seen it too often. Get over it, some people are here just to promote, or to push their POV, and blacklisting is sometimes the only way of stopping that. And that is what we stop, not linkspam only. And I did not start mentioning blacklisting reasons, that was you, sure we discuss that. And 'no clearly inappropriate links added' is a judgement, and if I see here so many editors finding some or all of these links inappropriate, well, apparently they are inappropriate? And linkspam is by far NOT the only reason, it is to stop abuse. And again, if I see how many people here disagree with appropriateness of these links, and I see how and who used these links, then I am NOT sure if blacklisting was indeed so wrong as you keep on pushing. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:14, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Probable copyvio, history of spam by the website owner both on the talk page (by my count, 82 of the 85 instances of "lenr-canr.org" on Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 20 were placed by the website owner) as well as placement of links to his own website on the article space [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35], including linking his own editorial content onto the article page[36][37][38][39][40]. At one point, he violated 3RR to add his own editorial commentary, adding his 'news' page here and reverting four times in 24 hours to keep a link to it. [[41]][42][43][44] The website owner has since been blocked indefinitely as, in spite of abandoning his logged in account, he "continues to engage in disruptive behavior and advocacy via various IP's". I have serious concern that his previous disruptive and self-promoting behavior would return if his website were whitelisted.--Noren (talk) 01:08, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

That's a huge pile of irrelevant evidence, from back in 2005 and 2006. The editor, after 2006, abandoned editing the article, what he did back then is moot. Apparently he became aware of the COI rules and so he then confined himself to editing the Talk page, as is recommended. The ban was issued by an admin who was admonished for action while involved, and that matter hasn't been cleaned up yet. JedRothwell was blocked even though there was no current activity, it seems to have been done to make a point. Rothwell is abrasive and might not be suited to edit Wikipedia, but that is an entirely separate matter. He wasn't blocked for adding links to his site, he wasn't adding links to his site at all. For an expert in the field and host of a web site on the very subject of the article to occasionally suggest links to pages there isn't any kind of violation at all. There is one argument raised in the discussion here which is of importance, which is the copyvio issue, which will need to be addressed (and which, in my opinion, is still no reason to blacklist, just not to whitelist specific links). The rest of the above is moot, it's a shame that Noren wasted time putting it together. Whitelisting the site would have no effect on Rothwell's "return," that's preposterous. --Abd (talk) 04:10, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, when was the last edit from an IP of someone who is probably Jed Rothwell? I see at least edits until December 2008 (see diff: after being here for over 4 years, still not signing as generally accepted (he could at least do "Jed Rothwell, lenr-canr.org, ~~~~" to end his posts, or even, just "Jed Rothwell, ~~~~"; the latter at least implies that you are here to comment, not also trying to mention your own site) .. and we are to expect that he will then stop and follow other guidelines and even policies here? See also: diff, "Start with the papers I listed"; "It is easy to find things at LENR-CANR.org. Use the Google search box on the front page, which limits searches to LENR-CANR.org. Or use our extensive indexing system ..." (emphasis added by bolding, note that the boldingcapitalisation of the site name is not my emphasis!) .. that last post is from late November 2008!), not 'from 2005 and 2006' only. OK, it is not direct promotion (and the blacklist would not stop this, abusefilter would be better, but we did not have that in that time), but he certainly likes to use his own site, not giving us a full list of peer-reviewed articles (I do not believe that he has EVERYTHING that has ever been published on low energy nuclear reactions and chemically assisted nuclear reactions, giving convenience links to his site for those he has copies, no .. his site only!!! Although the original pushing is of 2005, 2006, the promotion of ideas extends well into 2008 (and I am sure he is still looking at these articles, I may have missed his current IP!). You are right, not in mainspace, but I see no guarantee that after pushing for 4-5 years, he will now not start again after we decide to either whitelist the whole site or even de-blacklist on meta. And now also have a look at the contributions of User:Pcarbonn, and his linking to documents on this site. In other words, I don't believe that the disruption has ended. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:02, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict with below) The list from Noren shows article edits from 2005-2006. The diffs you cite are Talk page posts. COI editors are permitted -- nay, encouraged -- to edit talk pages! Editors with a COI are encouraged to identify it, which the signature does. Beetstra has posted a dense barrage of irrelevant and misleading claims above, answering them all would expand a long discussion to no purpose. Nothing is referenced there which justifies blacklisting, there was no behavior happening at the time of blacklisting that justified it, blacklisting did not stop any linkspam, so there is no reason to assume that what wasn't happening would "start again." "Promotion of ideas?" That's what we expect COI editors to do! When they are experts, we even need it, and we factor for possible bias. And supporting blacklisting over this is exactly what ArbComm has rejected. None of the above recent diff'd material was linkspam. Indeed, I've seen no linkspam evidence from 2005 or 2006 either. (Simply using a site as a reference in a single article on the related topic, with spread-out edits like that, isn't linkspam.) And it would be moot, so, please, don't supply more pages of diffs and incomprehensible "spam" reports that make nothing clear.

One important error: "not giving us a full list of peer-reviewed articles." Both lenr-canr.org and the cooperating Dieter Britz archive (Britz, an electrochemist, is a cold fusion skeptic) list every related peer-reviewed paper that they have been able to find. They may have missed some, but these bibliographies are as complete as they have been able to make them. The last whitelist request above is to a review paper by Rothwell that, among other things, compares the archives and analyzes publication frequency over the years. This would be total garbage if the lists weren't reasonably complete. Nobody has impeached these bibliographies yet, or Rothwell's review. Readers are welcome to try: if you can find a paper not included, let me know. I'm sure they will fix it. I found a Chinese review from 2007 that they had missed. Negative papers would be highly valued, they have become very rare, while substantial positive publication is continuing and increasing. --Abd (talk) 13:58, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. Such bibliographies are useful, though mentioning specific references which are useful for specific parts are also useful. The links to bibliographies can be whitelisted for convenience links on the talkpages.

We disagree still on how we expect COI editors to help. I do not expect them to say 'I tell the truth, use my site and all is clear', I expect them to help with content (reliably sourced), data, explanations. Not 'use this link to my site'. I did not give these diffs as evidence that blacklisting was necessery, that is not the question here, just that I am NOT convinced that the editors have stopped in promoting their own site, or that editors have stopped in using documentation on this site in an inappropriate way, in stead of helping us with content (and I mean text here, not links as content or linking to content). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:16, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Progress. Thanks. If a COI editor can avoid rewriting what exists elsewhere, why shouldn't they provide a link? From my point of view, this is better than regurgitating everything. But this is moot here, the issue here should only be the question of whitelisting the site or specific pages. As can be seen, there are editors who are using this as a coatrack, causing what should have been a simple request and response to become a nightmare of a complicated discussion. --Abd (talk) 15:49, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you would have left this first with the links you requested, and did look at which ones could not be disputed and which could, then it would not have become this nightmare. Now there is found that some are likely (or quite possibly) copyright violations, and others are likely not really useful, or incomplete, ánd you mention the whole site being whitelisted (diff - "So whitelisting the entire site may indeed be the most appropriate action"), the whole topic becomes a mess. We are, I am afraid, never getting somewhere here in this thread. You know that I am quite willing to whitelist links which are fine on this site (see the discussions lenr-canr.org (1) and (2) on this page), but I have completely lost track. Sorry. (hint: next time, give the document in separate sections, or subsections, state if they are an original, or a copy and what they are a copy of, and what you want to use it for; that makes it easier to a) check if they are the same, b) if copyright is a problem, c) if there are really no alternatives. Hope this helps). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:16, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose per User:Beetstra, User:Noren, User:KimDabelsteinPetersen and User:Enric Naval, with similar conditions to Enric Naval's: "No objection for individual links if the permission can be shown to exist, either through a post in a public website, a post in a mailing list with public archives like vortex-l, or a private submission of proof to the WP:OTRS system", and per [45]. If we may not presume permission for one, we can't presume permission for any. On the precedence of youtube, we might whitelist and evaluate each accordingly, but evidently that's not the only issue, if the site has been spammed onto Wikipedia by its owner. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:42, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Moonriddengirl. Site has not been linkspammed. Owner was not adding links; links were added by other editors, legitimately, on the face, accepted by consensus, removed unilaterally by original blacklisting admin, subsequently admonished for the blacklisting. Possible copyvio is the only legitimate issue here, the rest is confusion. Copyvio has been rejected before, in detailed discussion, but new evidence has been raised here that bears on some specific links. On the YouTube precedent, we'd whitelist the whole site and allow ordinary process to review individual links, given that there was no linkspam. --Abd (talk) 14:07, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

• Strongest Oppose possible Site was just subject to attempted linkspamming by User:70.88.48.118. Hipocrite (talk) 19:11, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, this shows why blacklisting is not necessary. See Special:Contributions/70.88.48.118. It looks like the IP editor tried to add a link to Cold fusion. One link. On hitting the blacklist, the editor became upset and posted a pile of complaints to Talk pages of related articles and made a report to AN/I. The edit finally made one content edit to Free energy, which was utterly inappropriate, and which I reverted. The edits, except for the Free energy edit and the AN/I report, were all reverted within about 16 minutes. Blacklisting is reserved for linkspam, and, obviously, what happened today wasn't prevented by the blacklist! The editor probably would have made one edit, it would either have been accepted or not, and probably not. The complaints didn't give a formed URL; however, I'm guessing that the editor wanted to add a link to the bibliography index, which used to be there, and which, my opinion, should still be there, so I added it to the list of pages above to be considered for whitelisting as an External Link for Cold fusion. --Abd (talk) 22:54, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

For the benefits of readers, I'll summarize - because someone spammed a plaintext version of the link on being rejected from spamming the hypertext version of the link, we should allow for the hypertext version of the link to be added. Is that a give-or-take accurate summary of your comment without all the obfuscating language and convoluted explanations about why spamming is good? Also, what contact have you had with the IP editor? Do you know who it is? Hipocrite (talk) 00:10, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Bad summary. The IP editor did not add a plaintext link, but a description that allowed me to maybe figure out what was wanted, and it was probably legitimate at the original place, but I can't tell for sure. If I didn't think it legitimate, I wouldn't have asked for whitelisting. My guess is that after the site is delisted or whitelisted, what he wants would be there already, with consensus, as it used to be. But my crystal ball is out of order. Spamming isn't good and I certainly didn't say that, but this editor didn't approach linkspam levels, not even close. We'd probably have seen one link at most if not for the editor's reaction to the blacklist. No, I had no contact with this editor beyond the request to stop that I placed on the Talk page. IP geolocates to New Jersey. I can say who he isn't. He is not Jed Rothwell (Atlanta area), but I didn't need to geolocate to tell that! Style and behavior, and absolutely no reason for Rothwell to do this. He's quite straight on, very frank and direct (maybe too frank for Wikipedia), never socked. See his email below. That's classic Rothwell, particularly at the end. --Abd (talk) 05:36, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, a geolocation does not exclude who someone is. Bad faith warning: if Jed Rothwell takes his car, drives from Atlanta to, where was it, hops into a cybercafe, and starts spamming, then we will NEVER find out it was him. If however he uses an IP in his location then it is more likely, but even then there is no proof! And even when using the same IPs may be mistaken, see Mistro12, some people work on other locations. But I agree on the part that this does not look like linkspam per sé, more complaining that the first edit did not work! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:27, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Sure. But when it looks like a dog, walks like a gorilla, and brays like a donkey, it is probably not a duck. New Jersey. From Atlanta, should be able to drive that in a day, maybe, doing nothing else. --Abd (talk) 11:15, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, this certainly does not look like a duck, but you say "I can say who he isn't.", which suggested a bit too strong. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)Looks to me like the link was plaintext spammed here and here and here and here and here and here and here and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Infinite_Energy_(magazine)&diff=prev&oldid=293546943 here] and here, right? Simple "yes" or "no" would be fine. Hipocrite (talk) 11:29, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a new question there, I answered the previous question above. There is no specific link added except for the wikitext of the overall site, but the editor seems to have intended to link to the bibliography index, from the following text. The editor was trying to call attention to the blacklisting, and the evidence shows only an intention to add one link, to Cold fusion. The rest was reaction to the blacklisting, an example of how blacklisting sites when it isn't necessary can create more disruption than it avoids. The one link would have been accepted or not. If removed, it would have been removed with an explanation, unless Hipocrite had removed it, sometimes he doesn't explain. That would have been the end of it. If accepted, or accepted as modified, that would have also been the end of it. (No copyvio problem would exist with the overall site link, I will argue that in detail later, with a specific link discussion as Beetstra has requested.)

Instead, we got a recent changes patroller having to deal with a bunch of unnecessary stuff, my involvement in requesting the editor to stop (no warning had been issued, just unexplained reverts), response at Talk:Cold fusion, response by others to that response, and more discussion here (brought by Hipocrite), all for no improvement to content. One bad link: one revert with a brief edit summary, since the original intended addition would probably have been properly considered a good faith edit. And if it was a good link, article improvement. As I've stated, this incident proves the case for delisting or site-whitelisting, or, at least, some specific whitelistings, including one to the bibliography (which is original content by the site), as an external link.

Now, as to all the diffs. This was completely unnecessary. Hipocrite's original notice didn't diff anything. I then supplied the Contributions link, which, when examined, shows all these edits plus one. --Abd (talk) 13:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, I see the owner of the site has requested we not link to it. I think we should honor those requests as a rule. Hipocrite (talk) 11:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course Hipocrite would think that. However, the owner hasn't made that request. He knows how to make a request. He's stated what he prefers, and gives the reason. It's that he prefers we have a bad article. This is the kind of comment that could be used to maintain his ban, unless one looks at his reasons. He was banned for stating that he doesn't edit the article, which was interpreted to mean that he isn't interested in helping here. He's caustic and even people in the field have warned that he probably shouldn't be directly editing Wikipedia. I'd say he shouldn't be editing unless he agrees to certain boundaries, and I have no idea if he would agree to those, I'll deal with that if I decide to request a lifting of the standing block. Which I will do with minimum disruption. (Hint: it will be a request to a single admin. It won't be AN/I, for sure.)

Further, we are not deciding here to add any particular link, merely whether to permit link addition. That's why this decision should be very simple, and Hipocrite would be free to edit according to his opinion regardless of the outcome here. The blacklist should not be making content decisions, either way. --Abd (talk) 13:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

New evidence and explanation from Hans Adler re copyvio.

• [46]. This really should ice the copyvio claim, and we can prevent further disruption by whitelisting the whole site, that is what I advise and request; whitelisting individual links is more cumbersome but would satisfy the immediate request while effectively requiring further requests and thus more opportunity for beating dead horses. From my point of view, though, any decision works and will bring us closer to a final resolution of this mess. --Abd (talk) 15:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

• I don't see what's new about this, or why it ices any copyvio claim. I find the recent comment added by 2/0 to your talk page here useful too. Hans' post doesn't answer the questions, it just points to a discussion that apparently stalled. Verbal chat 15:27, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Adler describes why he concludes -- and warns -- that the matter has been resolved. If you don't see that, well, blindness, by itself, is no offense. The discussion didn't "stall," it was done, and the status quo, at that time, accepted. I've responded to 2over0 and I hope that this editor is satisfied, it's what I expect. I recommend reading the Adler post carefully. It's brief and to the point, summarizing and confirming what I've been writing here. Sure, anyone can still raise a copyvio claim, but evidence would be required, Verbal has adduced no new evidence that hasn't already been considered, and more than once. --Abd (talk) 16:08, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Where is the new evidence? I'd already responded to Hans before you posted this link here. I see no conclusion in the linked discussion. If you could highlight that I'd be grateful. (Do it here rather than my talk page please, thanks, and thanks for shortening your replies) Verbal chat 16:26, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I always shorten my replies when no new issues are raised and the matter has become crystal clear. The new evidence is the email correspondence Adler refers to, and his description of why the allegations were set aside. It's because the allegations of copyvio were not substantiated, other than by repeating speculative personal opinion, which you have echoed. You have not presented any new evidence. Given a standing consensus, substantiated by the active support of many editors -- not just me! -- the burden of proof is now on you, or else your repeated raising of this issue is disruptive. --Abd (talk) 16:42, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think Hans would describe a short summary of a complicated, excessively verbose, discussion as "new evidence" (I'll ask him) - I certainly wouldn't. If you're referring to the private email, that really has nothing to do with this in general, or these links in particular. Hans gives no details and it isn't "evidence" in any way. This isn't about Jzg or the link referred to in that post. Verbal chat 16:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Verbal that this is no new evidence. I have a lot of respect and sympathy for Guy. I contacted him privately because I felt it was transparent his position was not supported by what he had made public. I hoped he might help me to understand things, and I warned him that what looked like his obstinacy might damage his reputation. I did get some additional information from Guy, but I don't remember the details well and I don't think they were particularly important, especially not for the question at hand. I am not sure they changed how I saw the situation in any way. The reason I mentioned my email exchange with Guy to Verbal was to make it clear that from my side this is not at all about a fight with Guy, and that I made a real effort to see the issues with the convenience link from the Fleischmann article.

Now that Verbal has alerted me to this thread, I have a number of comments if they haven't been made yet. It will take some time to check this, though. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:19, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Hans, thanks for showing up here and commenting. It was new to me that you had email communication with the administrator in question over this, and your statement of why the allegations were dismissed was accurate, in my opinion, but I hadn't seen that stated by anyone else but me, before. As you may know, the administrator was admonished over his use of tools in this and related matters, but that, by itself, establishes nothing. So this process, here, is necessary. The administrator's prior actions are now moot except that the existence of the blacklisting should not create a presumption that it's legitimate (whereas ordinarily, that presumption would be reasonable). We still should make the best decision for the project, regardless of what happened in the past. --Abd (talk) 02:13, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

• Support whitelisting. No evidence of copyvio. See email from Jed Rothwell [47]. See comment by Jayvdb about this email here. Blacklisting, or withholding of whitelisting, is not to be used to decide on content. Editors at the article (of which I'm an editor) can decide on content. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 22:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

This is interesting - in what way is content "withheld"? As far as i can tell from the request, and from the discussion, we are talking about convenience links. Something that is entirely optional, and which is only convenient, rather than necessary. Cite the papers, give the DOI - what exactly is withheld? Or are you really advocating for a complete whitelisting of the site - which isn't what this request is about, and which should be taken up elsewhere... --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:01, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Summary: We are safer and it is much simpler if we whitelist the whole site. (Based on comment by Jayvdb at Talk:Martin Fleischmann.) I would no longer say "no evidence of copyvio." There is some credible evidence that there may be some copyvio on the site, due probably to authors misrepresenting that they have permission from the publisher; the possible existence of some violating pages is not a reason to generally exclude links to the site. On the other hand, there may be actual permission, and verifying this could be tedious, authors may request permission from the publisher, and the publisher may, for some purposes, grant it. Coppertwig is correct that this is a content issue, not a blacklist issue, the blacklist is intended for linkspam.

I'm sure that Beetstra will point out, though, that when we whitelist specific links, we are making a kind of decision that they probably don't involve copyvio. So my position is that we should whitelist the whole site to avoid a repetition of this kind of debate over every single blinkin' link, and to follow the ArbComm guidance on the blacklist purpose, or, alternatively, to whitelist the links that seem, to the closing admin, reasonably unlikely to be copyvio. Note that we have, already, three whitelisted links, and the same general copyvio arguments could have been applied to all of them, but weren't, even though the issue was raised.

An exact copy of an Elsevier paper, though, apparently downloaded from an Elsevier site, showing the logo, is more likely to represent a violation of the Elsevier author agreement, which is complicated. Note that Elsevier does permit authors to put up preprints that have been edited to match the peer-reviewed and published form, so it's subtle. Lenr-canr.org relies on author representations, apparently, as to publisher permissions; their papers are generally provided by authors, it appears that lenr-canr.org may not always verify representations of permission from publishers for a paper provided by an author. In their business, since they are legally safe with what they do, as long as they take a paper down upon complaint from the copyright owner, and do not willfully violate copyright, it may not make sense for them to put great effort into that detail.

I can tell you that Rothwell doesn't give a fig if we link to his site, he claims to prefer that we don't, and, having heard his arguments, while I don't agree with them, they do make sense. To me, the question is what we do for our readers, and whether he likes it or not is entirely secondary. This initiative is not coming from him, he actually opposes it, tells me I'm wasting my time. --Abd (talk) 23:28, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

What?! Are you really saying: There is some copyright issues there - so it is safer to whitelist the whole site, so we do not accidentally whitelist a copyrighted link - but can say we whitelisted everything?? I'm baffled. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Sounds strange, doesn't it? But that's what Jayvdb said, and it's correct. If we are wide open and don't control what's coming in, and miss some link to copyvio, we have no legal exposure, we just take it out upon complaint. If, however, we specifically permit a link and we should have realized it was copyvio, we are at some risk. Not much, but some. Operators of unmoderated mailing lists have no liability for copyright violation or libel based on an action of a member. If they moderate the list and accidentally approve an unlawful post, they are liable. Blacklisting/whitelisting is actually a pretty bad idea, from an efficiency perspective, unless the blacklisting is really necessary. Look at all the fuss this has created! And I've been watching the blacklist/whitelist pages for some time, this happens, not just with Cold fusion and a persistent editor like me. The guidelines say that blacklisting is to be reserved for extreme situations, where linkspam can't be controlled by lesser methods, and Beetstra runs a bot that is much less disruptive. ArbComm has confirmed this. It's really what we should do.

In reality, though, we have no legal exposure from links unless we very deliberately link to copyvio. It's not like direct copyright violation. And even with direct violation, with a nonprofit, consequences are mostly limited to taking the material out on request, unless an offense is egregious, if I'm correct. But contributory infringement through linking to infringing content is only applied for willful linking with intent to evade copyright. A publisher would go after the host, not us, and only after us if, perhaps, the host was in some inaccessible haven, in which case they might ask us to prevent linking. That's irrelevant here. --Abd (talk) 05:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, and agree with KimDabelsteinPetersen. You listed a couple of links here, and we had a couple of discussions before, some pass and some don't. That means to me that it is necessary still to discuss all of them. And no, we should not link to copyvio, full stop, even in good faith. If it is generally deemed that the blacklisting is needed as there were indeed problems with the site in the past, and there is no guarantee that it really stopped, then I would disagree with full whitelisting, let for now individual whitelisting be the solution. And I don't think it is a big problem to have a good look at the individual links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Every time. With it taking more than a week for a link. I don't think so, but it's not my decision, it is the community's. --Abd (talk) 11:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

'With taking more than a week for a link', I did not know that we, volunteers, were in such a hurry to add convenience links .. or even proper references, or to edit a page, or to comment on talkpages, .... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:30, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Depends on who "we" are. I'm not in a hurry, Beetstra is not in a hurry, but the average user simply won't do it. And if they do, the chances are very good that they get burned. First request for a lyrikline.org link here is how I saw the problem. User requested it, legitimate registered user, legitimate use, or certainly reasonable, it was denied because the general attitude, I'd say, of blacklist admins is that external links aren't necessary. Technically that is correct. They are not necessary for sourcing, typically. However, they are necessary if we consider having the best article "necessary." There isn't an article for a poet that has poetry hosted at lyrikline.org where the external link wouldn't be an improvement, with very rare exceptions, perhaps, for poets with lots of external links to similar material already. I haven't found one of those yet, but it might exist. Likewise, on de.wikipedia, the linkspammer had added a link to the article on the language of a poet as an example of the language. A few months ago, I went to de and restored what the user had added. And I notified the editor (an admin who had previously reverted, I think) about this. The edit was accepted. Basically, this was a pure technical linkspam violation with no negative content impact. The kind that should probably be delisted on site. Far from it. Every attempt at delisting was met with the original linkspam evidence from long ago, as if that were conclusive (until Beetstra cut the Gordian knot by effectively whitelisting the whole site here, though not in a complete way, there is still a minor problem). The tail is wagging the dog, and that's why this was emphasized before ArbComm, and that's why ArbComm was exercised to issue a finding on policy. I can't just take stuff to ArbComm in a vacuum, there has to be a prepared example. And, while this request is sincerely and simply made for links to Cold fusion, the outcome of this might end up going up the DR ladder. I say this only to encourage the closing admin here to be cautious and decide carefully, not to pressure any particular outcome. Any outcome is fine with me, and if the outcome settles the issue, that's the end of it. If not, more process may ensue and I can't predict what process unless I know the outcome. I will keep it to minimum fuss, but I can't predict what others will do. I've stated that there is no risk to any neutral administrator who decides in good faith, as far as I'm concerned, though I might request reconsideration on specific points if appropriate. I respect the administrative right of decision and the attendant responsibility, and encourage it. A decision based on preponderance of votes here can certainly be made, but it might not settle the issue. And I apologize to the closing admin for the length of all this. I'd much rather have seen a neutral admin decide quickly without all this fuss, even if it was a categorical denial. If this has to happen again, I may, with consent here, solicit a neutral admin at WP:AN right from the beginning, because it's obvious that the blacklist regulars aren't willing to tackle this immediately, and whitelist requests should be easy and quick. This debate shows why. I would much rather negotiate with a single administrator than with a whole community, it is far more efficient. And then escalation, if necessary, brings in more neutral editors, instead of just those who have an axe to grind and who are following my contributions or other indicators that something is happening related to Cold fusion. Take a look at how many here are involved with Cold fusion. Beetstra, you are one who is not, and your comments and actions are considered by me to be generally helpful, if sometimes off topic. You have a different kind of involvement, one which, in my opinion, is also a problem, but even with the ideal solution, as I see it, you would still be able to comment as you have. The "problem" isn't about you, it's systemic. --Abd (talk) 13:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and don't worry, I will look at requests when I have time, but now this discussion is so completely warped, that I don't know which links to look at first. Maybe you should make subsections for every single one of them below, and summarise the discussion on each of them. This is unworkable. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Beetstra, I'll do that when I have time, since you have requested it. Good idea. I had thought I might just request one link at a time, initially, but I also wanted whoever closed to have an idea of the overall volume. I requested, as I said, about half of the possible convenience links for existing article references. I did add notes to each link with a brief summary of the copyright situation, but a section discussion would be deeper, and if the closing admin decides on each one, saying why, we then have a better basis to move forward. I do not object to you making the decision, you are knowledgeable on this and I expect you will decide with reasonable balance, which doesn't mean that I will necessarily agree or completely drop a particular link on that basis; I'll decide based on the specific case. Note that I've already withdrawn one request because I do suspect that this one is copyvio, technically, though it's still possible it is not. Rothwell doesn't want to rock the boat on it, and I don't blame him. I'll explain why this is reasonable in a future comment. With current guidelines, though, it's not very helpful for us.

Frankly, with the prior discussion on this and the ArbComm ruling, I thought it likely that this would be decided quickly. This is proof that I can be wrong. --Abd (talk) 13:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Most of the single whitelistings could be quick, though (and you may have seen this from the previous whitelistings), I'd like for each to see a) if they are a copy, of what they are a copy, and to have that clearly stated (e.g. for one of the others I give the full bibliographic information of the original, and link that information in the whitelist log, it is then checkable against the original), or b) if it is a unique document, why it is deemed to be, and where, a useful source. Here you left all that work (again) to the whitelisters, and when one of them turned out to be bad, that reflected on the others, derailing the request.

Life does not stop after blacklisting of this site, it is not that now Cold fusion can't be improved using the original peer reviewed sources (see Mastcell's comment below), it hampers easy review of those, and it blocks the copyvio and the documents which are not reliable sources. Jed Rothwell below suggests that now lenr-canr.org is blacklisted, the article and Wikipedia's representation of Cold fusion can not be right. I don't see why, really. I do however see that using editorialised documents, (probably or quite possibly) copyrighted documents, original research, etc. (documents which are available on the site), can (and I repeat, CAN, see can, inflicted form: be able to, as in, it does not have to happen, but might happen) be used to give a wrong representation of the subject (and, IMHO, that is, unfortunately, what happened in the past, those documents were used, and I am afraid, that that is still a possible reason why this site (and newenergytimes.com) actually got blacklisted!). I would hence suggest we are a bit careful now. Close this thread, relist the requested whitelistings, giving full bibliographic information for each of them (where available), and a quick explanation of each of them, it is then easy to check, and especially the 'convenience' links can be whitelisted without too much process (even those which are not yet used!), other documents may need a bit of discussion. Seen that there is quite some opposition for whole site whitelisting at the moment, hmm .. I would put that in the fridge (or maybe even freezer), until editing of the subject has stabilised a bit (I see edit warring and page protections going on and off). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll try to be brief! Please close this request without prejudice, whitelisting whatever links you think appropriate based on evidence given at the beginning, or familiar to you from the discussion, and leaving the rest, and closing the discussion.

Now, on individual points, no editorialized documents have been convenience-copy referenced to this site for a long time, that was an old mistake that was later dredged up to try to impeach the site (which was within its rights, there was no deception involved, merely an editorial preface, clearly distinct, that would, for us, deprecate that page, but not prohibit linking to it if there were no better option.) No claim is made that the article must have these links, though I'd make some case for one: the bibliography, together with the non-blacklisted Dieter Britz bibliography, which are highly useful and recognized widely as such. It's not urgent, though, and I could link to Britz, who then links to lenr-canr.org. That would be an external link for further research, and such links, in a controversial topic, can be non-neutral, just as we might link to notable relevant political sites; we would link to opposing sites as well, if of sufficient notability. Dieter Britz is a skeptic, Rothwell a proponent, but, in fact, they are both motivated to be as complete as possible, that serves their individual agendas. The bibliography isn't used for promotion. Beetstra, here is what I suggest for efficiency: accept whatever pages you think you can accept based on what information is given at the top of this request or other info as developed in the discussion (I placed some info relevant to copyright in smalltext, later). You have previously accepted some links with, actually, less evidence. As you know, whitelisting a link does not guarantee that the link will actually be used, and delisting newenergytimes.com did not at all create a presumption about freedom from copyvio, as events showed. It merely meant that the site wasn't, per se, to be excluded, requiring what easily becomes, with controversial sites, a contentious whitelisting request with editors with known POVs piling in to reject (or support, perhaps) the request, which is entirely beside the point. They may still object (or support) individual links when actually placed in the article, and I assume some will, thus the discussion here is really a waste of time. Reject anything you aren't reasonably clear on, and do so without prejudice, and I'll resubmit what I think is worth looking at again, probably not the most controversial (i.e., apparent direct copies of Elsevier publications). This should stop this nonsense and avoid the problem of inflicting this mess on some poor unsuspecting administrator recruited at AN. I have every confidence that you will be fair about this, and not reject pages that seem reasonable to you, and if you should decide to reject everything, that merely makes a little more work for me and for future generations. No big deal. Okay?

As to article protection and the edit warring, that resulted from one editor with no article experience dropping in and beginning to use reversion as an editorial technique, strongly pursuing an apparent agenda. One of the problems of this is, of course, that it attracts matching behavior from other editors, who may then support one side or the other, but, in fact, the two edit wars that broke out were between this editor and myself (first time) and then, second time, this editor was warring against multiple editors, some of whom made no reverts at all, or one or two at the most, depending on how we interpret "revert," and by no stretch was I personally edit warring. And then the editor gamed article protection to make and freeze the most controversial edits (not reverts! New and outrageous violation of long-established consensus!) as protection was impending from his request. See permanent link for evidence, if it matters, it should actually be irrelevant here, I raise this because you mentioned it. This whitelist request will have no effect on problems at the article, I wouldn't even think of asserting a link to lenr-canr.org there while the article is under such threat from an edit warrior, until and unless I'm certain it's consensus, as you know happened with Martin Fleischmann. --Abd (talk) 20:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: The copyright question is above my pay grade, though as I note below I find many of the justifications evinced by the site owner questionable based on my personal experience. The more relevant issue is this: why? In every scientific article I've worked on, we cite journal articles by referencing the actual publication. I'm not clear why this needs to be an exception. Why do we need to link to a private site with an acknowledged agenda, instead of just citing the original scientific publications and the journals in which they were published? I would also suggest that the ability of one party to overpower discussion through sheer weight of verbiage should not obscure the actual weight of opinion and consensus here. MastCell ^Talk 17:29, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Mail from Rothwell

I requested further information from Rothwell, and this is what I received and was given explicit permission to pass on.

In the LENR-CANR front page, we wrote that papers are copied with "permission from the authors and publishers." I am aware that questions about this have been raised at Wikipedia. As far as I know, we have proper permission from the authors and publishers for all papers. However, I am not a copyright lawyer, so I could be wrong, and I will not attempt to address this issue. I will say only that I have consulted with the head librarians at two major universities (who were very helpful in many ways with a wide range of issues) and with a leading expert in intellectual property. They assured me there is nothing wrong with LENR-CANR’s use of the papers. Perhaps the skeptics at Wikipedia know better than these people, but I doubt it, and I am not going to worry about it.

In all cases we have permission from the authors. The publishers of proceedings and special editions of journals on several occasions sent me a stack of papers with blanket permission to upload them, but I always asked individual authors for permission anyway, because some authors are opposed to LENR-CANR and do not want me to upload their work.

I have about 1,000 papers that I would like to upload, but I cannot get permission from anyone. Neither the author nor the publishers respond. Foreign publishers seldom respond, so I have to depend on the authors themselves.

It is possible that some authors believe they have permission from publishers, but strictly speaking they do not. Frankly, I doubt this matters. In most cases I copied papers off of the author’s own web pages. For example, I copied all of the papers from the Navy from the China Lake and SPAWAR own web sites, with permission of course. If the publishers don’t mind SPAWAR researchers uploading their papers to their own site, or Japanese university researchers uploading their own papers to their own sites, it seems unlikely they would mind my copying those papers.

You will find several small one-page papers at LENR-CANR that list only the abstract and URL of the full paper. Those are cases in which I could not get permission and the author wasn’t sure or did not get permission.

On two or three occasions publishers asked me to delete papers or to upload an "as submitted" manuscript version, which they provided in one case. I always complied. The publishers have my name, address and phone number, which is on the front of the web page, so if they have any problems they will call me.

I am aware that Wikipedia has "blacklisted" LENR-CANR, making it impossible to upload links from Wikipedia to LENR-CANR. This is fine with me. I consider Wikipeida disreputable, and I prefer not to have any links from it or to it, or any connection with it. I would not want Wikipedia readers to imagine that I sanction or approve of the Wikipedia article. From my point of view, having links from Wikipedia to LENR-CANR is kind of kind of like having links from a pornography site. There was, in fact, a porno and pop culture site in Japan that had links to LENR-CANR.org. I asked them politely to remove the links, which they did.

I'm not necessarily thrilled with everything he says, but he's correct that he's not under any legal hazard of copyright violation sanctions if he does what he says he does, and that's the opinion that's been given over and over by knowledgeable editors here. My opinion is that in a few cases, there may indeed be a situation where some mistake has been made, but no situation where we can clearly conclude there is copyright violation, because we don't know what a publisher may have permitted for a particular author, sometimes publishers will give permission that they generally deny. I think we should get out of the business of making legal judgments, personally, other than what we need to protect Wikipedia, but that might involve clarifying the guidelines. As to his opinion of Wikipedia, I've reviewed how he was treated, and I'd probably feel the same way were I treated that way. Come to think of it, I am treated that way -- but I also know the other side, he doesn't. --Abd (talk) 05:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a copyright lawyer, and I don't have an opinion on the general copyright issue, but I'm concerned that the above email evinces a significant misunderstanding of how copyright works. I work in a related field - medicine. When I publish a paper, I have to sign over the copyright to the journal. I do not hold the copyright to my published work. The policy may vary from journal to journal, but everywhere I've published, I've signed over the copyright. That means I can't "give permission" to republish one of my papers - people have to go to the journal. I makes no difference whether I "give permission" to someone to republish my work.

The above email states: "In most cases I copied papers off of the author’s own web pages... If the publishers don’t mind SPAWAR researchers uploading their papers to their own site, or Japanese university researchers uploading their own papers to their own sites, it seems unlikely they would mind my copying those papers." But that's just wrong. Many journals give authors permission to post their publications on their own website, but expressly forbid wider distribution. To take some prominent examples, look at Annals of Internal Medicine or the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Based on my experience, it is actually highly likely that copyright holders would object to LENR-CANR copying material from authors' websites. Maybe copyright policy is different in physics journals, and maybe everything at LENR-CANR is copyright-compliant - I have no idea. But many of the justifications in the above email, while superficially appealing, strike me as highly questionable. MastCell ^Talk 17:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The email wasn't presented as an argument to whitelist. It was presented as sharing evidence that was made available to me. Believe it or not, I don't care much about the conclusion here, though I do have an opinion as to what is best, and that hasn't changed but a little since this started, because we don't need to answer these questions here, if we whitelist the whole site, which, then, establishes no presumption as to individual links. To answer the substance, though, we cite the original source. We add, if we can, a convenience link where the source is not readily accessible, which can occur for many reasons. We avoid convenience links that are clearly copyvio. This is all standard and normal and accepted. Exactly where to draw the line has become the issue here. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 18:36, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree with MC above, same goes for physics, maths, and computer science. Some don't even allow preprints on the arxiv. If someone copied my papers from my website and republished them on a dodgy website they'd probably be hearing from my institutions legal team. Verbal chat 17:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

It wouldn't happen, Verbal, I don't think you've been paying attention. The practical start for a paper to be hosted on lenr-canr.org is that the author supplies it for that purpose. Rothwell has copies of most of what is in the bibliography (3000 documents?) but he doesn't put them up without, as a minimum, specific author permission, and he relies on authors to negotiate permission with the publisher, and there are very good reasons for this. For starters, if he sends a mail to Elsevier, he gets a canned response back from someone there who just repeats the policy. They don't check with the author, they don't check with the author's contact, they just send it. There isn't any money for the publishers in checking with the author or with some higher-up! And if he makes a mistake, he won't hear from "the legal team," not in any serious way, he will simply get a take-down notice, and only if he ignored that would he be in hot water. He apparently has gotten several of these; he simply complies and that's the end of it. This discussion has raised some issues that this isn't the best place to address. Be careful about "dodgy website." Why would you say that? He's legal, (i.e., at no legal risk), he's notable (worthy of an article, I just haven't gotten around to it yet, I suppose he might be able to ask for that to be taken down too, not sure that he would.)

(He does have explicit publisher permission in many or perhaps most cases, but not all. He infers it, in some cases, from the notability and visibility of his site; he especially infers it if a publisher asks him to take a page down and doesn't ask for this for other pages from the same publisher and same author. It's efficient, and it works; he could put in a lot more effort and the result would be a less useful site. Not exactly a high motivation. I actually think we could learn something from him. We are working hard to enforce a policy that isn't legally necessary, and that, itself, damages the project -- the project is damaged every time an editor tries to add a link that they think a good or important one, and they get the blacklist message. What I say is that the reason better be strong, to justify the continual and invisible damage, we don't normally see it and it looks like the problem went away. It didn't.) --Abd (talk) 19:27, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but these justifications don't ring true. Every time I've requested permission to reproduce or republish material from a journal, I've received a prompt response. It has not always been the response I'd like - some journals charge exorbitant fees - but then that is their business model. I don't understand this nonsense about getting a "canned response" - if you want to republish a paper from Elsevier, you contact their Permissions department, and they respond to you. They don't need to check with the author, though they might do so as a courtesy. The authors have signed over the copyright.

If this website isn't willing to adhere to the basic standards necessary to publish in even the lowliest journal - that is, securing permission from the copyright holder in advance in accordance with the copyright holder's policies - then it's not the sort of source we should be citing on Wikipedia. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but "inferring" the right to reproduce copyrighted material, and establishing an opt-out system where you wait for a specific complaint about a specific paper before removing it... all of that seems somehow wrong to me. I'm hearing a combination of questionable and downright nonsensical justifications, but then the copyright issue is almost secondary since it's still not clear why we need to link a partisan site rather than just link to the original publication in the original scientific journal, as we do on essentially every other article. MastCell ^Talk 23:09, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

What you report, MastCell, doesn't contradict what Rothwell is saying. He's saying that he gains nothing by requesting permission directly from the publisher if he's been assured by the author that permission exists. The requests go to a department that routinely handles these things, and that follows routine policy. And they deny the permission, because this isn't ordinary reproduction for some limited purpose, it is placing of the content on-line where it can be freely accessed. If they would permit it at all, they would charge a fee that he can't afford, this is a nonprofit, and it comes out of his pocket. The exact situation depends on the publisher; with Elsevier, authors can actually put up copies of their preprints, and they can edit those preprints so that they match the as-published version. Authors have signed over the copyright, but retain certain rights under their contract with Elsevier. The authors provide him with the copy to upload; sometimes he converts it to PDF. What Rothwell is now claiming is shifted a little from what he earlier claimed: he claimed earlier that he had permission from authors and publishers, and apparently he often does have explicit permission from publishers, but now, having been asked (by me) more specifically, sometimes he relies on the author. Now, if the author has claimed to him that the publisher permits the publication, what's he supposed to do? He can ask the publisher, but he may easily get an answer that is a low-level response that is "canned." He gains nothing by asking, because, if the author was wrong, Rothwell is still legally safe. He's a nonprofit, and so, as long as his copyvio is not clearly willful, he's safe; and, as he has stated, he has received occasional take-down notices and he simply complies and that's the end of it. And the same publisher leaves other material alone. From his end, it's far less trouble. It does mean, though, that we cannot assume that every paper has been explicitly permitted by the publisher. Rather, we can safely assume that lenr-canr.org isn't massively violating copyright, because, if he was, the whole situation would be different, it would be easily shown to be willful violation and he'd indeed be in serious legal hot water.

Now, as to need. The issue isn't need, it's best practice. We source references to the original publication, not to lenr-canr.org. The sole issue is convenience for the reader, but also for the development and actual verification of the article. A source which is readily available, for free, is far more likely to be compared to the article than one behind a pay wall. Where we can do so, providing a convenience link makes it far easier to detect misrepresentation of sources or to expand the article with other information from the source. To summarize this, we do link to the original publication, or we should, and we also provide a convenience link to a copy if possible. With Elsevier papers, this may be a preprint and may not exactly match the paper as published, in which case the link should state this. If proper care has been exercised, the preprint may, for our purposes, be the same as the final article, because it may have been edited to match (for Elsevier). And all this, and the various rules that various publishers have, I say, we should step back from even checking, because it isn't legally necessary for us and is far too cumbersome and too easily manipulated to exclude some sources while overlooking similar problems with others that favor one's POV. We should avoid blatant copyvio, and, for our purposes here, this would mean a paper, for example, that is clearly a direct copy of the Elsevier publication logo and format, and that rules out at least one of the papers I originally proposed. Okay? For a paper like that, we'd want to see evidence of publisher permission, and we now know that lenr-canr.org has not always verified that, sometimes the site is depending on author statement. Never does lenr-canr put up a paper without author permission, if the author is available, and, if not available, then with publisher permission. He doesn't put up papers where he can't get some kind of permission.

And all this is really something we should not be trying to decide here. Whitelisting a site, or a paper, does not cause the paper to be used. It only stops software prevention of use. There are copyvio links being added all the time to Wikipedia, and my guess is that most of them aren't detected, because they aren't obviously different from non-vio links. The blacklist was not designed for this purpose, it was designed to prevent linkspam; it's a blunt instrument. --Abd (talk) 04:55, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

As a second voice from the physics community, MastCell's understanding of publishing does apply generally to the field of physics. Physical Review, the journals of the APS, recently updated their copyright policy to be extraordinarily liberal by allowing blanket permission for authors to create derivative works (though please check with them before relying on this, as it is based on my recollection of a document I read a year or so ago that is not directly relevant to this discussion). They also allow articles to be "bought off", and thereafter make them available for anyone to read without a subscription. This is a far cry from allowing their copyrighted content to be hosted somewhere outside of their control. This section, particularly Abd's post immediately above, only solidifies my opinion that we should not be linking to this site's papers in any circumstance, as they apparently do not show due diligence in obtaining and verifying permissions. This is pretty much a shame, as the site seems to be prominent enough in the proponent community (which, note, is not the same as highly visible in general) that they should be discussed for the External links section. - 2/0 (cont.) 15:31, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Strongest Oppose possible (I think. That means you prevent links, right?) I just became aware of this preposterous discussion. If there is anything I can do to ensure that Wikipedia has no links to or mention of LENR-CANR.org, let me do it. I do not know what "linkspamming" means but if that will ensure you have no links to LENR-CANR, show me how and I will do it. No respectable scientist would want anything to do with this article.

You people are out of your minds, and Abd is wasting his time and talent. It is best to leave the cold fusion article in the hands of the fanatical anti-science crowd. They will make it even worse than it is, so that any sensible reader will see it is wrong. Better to be obviously wrong than deceptively right in places.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 17:40, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Directly from Jed Rothwell, I received the following with permission to post:

Not serious. It is a minor preference, like chicken or beef on an airplane. (You can hardly tell them apart.) I don't give a fart what happens at Wikipedia, or what the article says. However, if I could write a message to someone at Wikipedia telling them "please don't allow links" (an opt-out option) I would do it, just as I did with the Japanese porno site. I trust you are not wasting your time on these efforts for my benefit. If you are, please stop and go weed your garden instead, or take a nap.

The IP is Atlanta, which matches Rothwell. Now, whether or not we honor the request is another thing. It's clear that his motive is to harm the article by withholding links, and I have to agree that it would harm the article. He's serious, I know that much about him. This isn't some ploy to convince us to whitelist by reverse psychology. He actually thinks this way, I've been corresponding with him for maybe four months now. I didn't request whitelisting to please Rothwell, and I'm not planning on dropping the request because he doesn't want links. The community will decide what it decides, but what happens if, in spite of no links, the article improves? What's he going to do? I don't know and I don't care, except for the improving the article part, that's why I'm here. I'd say we ignore this, he knows how to make a request that will be enforced, and it won't say "it is a minor preference." But others may certainly disagree. To my mind, this is all part of the damage caused by long-term anti-fringe POV-pushing, with an admin participating, at Cold fusion. It does a lot of damage, we are getting a peek at that here. The nap sounds nice, though. --Abd (talk) 19:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Come now, Abd. I was just kidding. I am sure there is no policy at Wikipedia that allows websites to "opt-out" of having links. I don't do reverse psychology.

All kidding aside: You people at Wikipedia should do whatever you please. Your shenanigans cause little harm. The only problem is that many people come to Wikipedia for information on cold fusion and you give them nonsense instead. The Scientific American, Nature and several other sites also serve up fake information on this topic. However, anyone seriously interested in the subject will keep looking or go to a university library and they will soon find real information, such as peer-reviewed journal papers. I do not think that the skeptics at Wikipedia have much effect on the public perception of cold fusion. Their only accomplishment is to make the article a laughingstock.

As for mainstream scientific opinion, I suggest you look at the response to Frank Gordon's presentations at U. Missouri and the The 2009 Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum today. The audiences at these conferences, the correspondence from readers at LENR-CANR, and all other public reactions I have seen in the last 5 months has been uniformly positive. People are excited and well informed. The skeptics are not fooling anyone anymore. They are an isolated fringe group of fanatics, trying to defend a flat-earth society viewpoint. They imagine the situation to be reversed, but they are out of touch with reality.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 19:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

This is, again, actually from Jed Rothwell, he confirmed the "joking" in private email. This is also typical Rothwell, quite confident, quite able to offend some Wikipedia editors with his frank expression of opinion and sense of humor. It's not really relevant here, but Rothwell is a world-class expert on the topic of cold fusion, there are few who know the entire field as well. He's not a scientist, he's a writer, but he's been covering the field for a very long time, longer than Krivit of New Energy Times, who is probably his major "competitor" as to overall knowledge. Most scientists tend to know their own narrow area. Rolthwell has probably read more on the topic than any other human being. He is often the editor for ICCF conferences, for the publications by Tsinghua University and World Scientific (though I'm not sure about WS, but I think he has indicated this); he also reads Japanese, so he is familiar with the substantial Japanese literature on the topic, which may be obscure to others -- and he knows the Japanese researchers personally, he translated and published Mizuno (very notable in the field) in English. Like many experts, he has a short half-life at Wikipedia, and I think we should look at that (in general, not just about Rothwell). He shouldn't be editing articles on the topic, because of COI, but he actually stopped doing that in 2006. He's banned, but that ban was declared by an involved admin, who had insulted and behaved otherwise uncivilly toward Rothwell, as well as, before the ban, blocking him and blacklisting his web site without consensus (and even if there had been consensus, it should not have been him to make take the actions, such consensus should be determined and implemented by a neutral administrator -- not only was this latter position confirmed by the majority at an RfC, but ArbComm totally confirmed it), and the block was much later confirmed by MastCell through a block of JedRothwell, a pure formality, since that account was abandoned in 2006, and I haven't yet approached MastCell to reverse it, but I probably will, and I anticipate that he will give it fair consideration. Contrary to what some have tried to foment, I have no other expectation of MastCell. --Abd (talk) 20:47, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd wrote: "It's not really relevant here, but Rothwell is a world-class expert on the topic of cold fusion, there are few who know the entire field as well. . ." That's flattering, but silly. I have met HUNDREDS of researchers who know far more about cold fusion than I do. I do not understand anything about the theory papers for example, or advanced electrochemistry. I have read a lot of papers. Probably only Storms, Britz and Beaudette have read more, but they understand them far better than I do.

"He's not a scientist, he's a writer ..." A technical writer of computer and equipment manuals and the like. Calling that a "writer" debases the term, I think. I have also done programming and occasional translations, and I have written and edited magazine articles and books about various subjects in English and Japanese since college. I have copy-edited the work of many cold fusion researchers, and books about the subject by Beaudette, Storms, and Arthur C. Clarke (Millennium Ed. Profiles of the Future) as noted in the introductions to those books.

"He is often the editor for ICCF conferences, for the publications by Tsinghua University and World Scientific (though I'm not sure about WS, but I think he has indicated this)" Yes, I did the first-round copy editing, as indicated in the introductions.

The editor of the Scientific American published many nonsensical assertions about cold fusion. He did this because, as he explained in a letter to me, he has not read any papers about the subject. "Reading papers is not my job" is how he put it. If that is your standard -- guessing, handwaving and making wild assertions about a subject you know nothing about -- then I or anyone can become a world-class expert in comparison, merely by reading a dozen papers. All you have to do is glance at the literature to see that the assertions made by the editor and the skeptics here are preposterous fabrications. In other words, if I am an expert it is only because the bar has been set so low that anyone can be an expert.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 14:23, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Not to beat this to death, here is one example of what the Sci. Am. editor wrote: "Excess power was only a few percent more than the power applied, suggesting that measurement errors could account for the purported net energy." He was talking about experiments in which input power was sometimes zero for long periods, and output over 100 W. - Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 13:56, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't really understand. Jed Rothwell appears to want to promote specific ideas about cold fusion. He has a website and other enterprises in which he does exactly that. Good for him. He seems to have lost any desire he might have had to use Wikipedia to promote his views, which is good since that's not the mission of this particular website. If he wants to consign Wikipedia to the ranks of hack publications like Nature and Scientific American, then that's his right. The part I don't understand is why Abd is trying to drag him back here. If he wants to be unblocked, then I'd happily turn that decision over to the community and abide by whatever decision they make - I'm not going to expend a lot of energy arguing about the block, though I agree with Abd that some sort of article/topic ban is probably the minimum required for an unblock to fly. But he doesn't seem to particularly want to be unblocked, or to participate here. He has his own things going on - he's quite correctly concluded that other venues are more appropriate than Wikipedia for what he wants to accomplish - so why are we trying to force him back here where his goals conflict with this site's policies? MastCell ^Talk 23:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

That's right, MastCell. Nobody is trying to "force him back here." I haven't asked you to reconsider his block, and I'd be grateful if you don't anticipate your decision in advance of a request presented with arguments, though if you want to recuse immediately and not object to a decision by any other admin, saying "please don't ask me," I suppose that's fine as well. However, having said that, he's an expert in the field, probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world as far as having an overview, and we need people like that to advise us. Not to control us, but to advise. What I've seen from his comments, and almost especially the most outrageously uncivil ones, is a clear knowledge of the field. The problem is that he thinks he's dealing with idiots, and sometimes that might be figuratively the case. He's highly opinionated, and this is common with experts. Experts who take a neutral stance are actually pretty rare. And there are, of course, experts on various sides of issues, we should be consulting them all. In no way am I suggesting that we substitute expert opinion for reliable source, but interpreting reliable source can sometimes be difficult. Having an expert explain it, or, even better, having various experts with various points of view explain it, makes it much more likely that we interpret the reliable sources correctly. I've seen quite a bit of stuff appear in articles and sometimes last for a long time -- especially with no convenience link! -- that was a drastic misrepresentation of the sources, caused by the ignorance of the editor reading the source, not understanding the meaning of technical terms in context, etc. Consider our own guidelines: a great deal of mischief is done by editors thinking that "reliable" in Reliable Source means that the information is actually "reliable." We use the word technically, not with the general meaning, it means a source that meets our "reliable source" guidelines. It can be dead wrong, the ideas expressed can be nutso fringe that somehow convinced a reputable publisher to publish them, but if it was published by a publisher meeting the criteria, it's RS and we can't properly just toss it in the trash unless we have consensus on that. --Abd (talk) 05:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Three points.

• If Abd has nothing extra to add of substance, please could he shorten his responses?
• Abd has no authority to declare that Jed Rothwell is "an expert in the field, probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world as far as having an overview, and we need people like that to advise us". This is a quite distorted and unjustified point of view, certainly from the point of view of mainstream science/academia.
• Pllease could Abd try not to personalize his discussions with MastCell (or any other editors): it looks like a wikilawyering tactic to invalidate MastCell's arguments.

Mathsci (talk) 10:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I have more to add of substance than Mathsci, that's for sure. I fail to see personalization in my reply to MastCell; if he thinks I insulted him, he's very welcome to ping me, and I'm sure to respond civilly. (and without a barrage of text, I know he doesn't like it, and I have no dispute with him that requires detailed examination at this time). As to "expert," that is, indeed, my opinion. There are academic experts with full qualifications and with highly specialized knowledge that can't be matched by me or someone like Rothwell, and he respects them, as shown below, but there are also general experts who have an overview of the field that is not easily matched by the specialists. As a writer and editor, he has a view of the field, overall, that is probably rare for the scientists working in it. He's intelligent -- that's obvious from his posts here -- and he's been quite busy reading and rereading the material for more than fifteen years, I'm not sure when he started. He's intimately familiar with it, and that he can't follow the math in, say, Takahashi's paper in the American Chemical Society Sourcebook on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions doesn't change this. He'll be generally familiar with the theory, who has mentioned it or used it to explain results (such as Mosier-Boss in Naturwissenschaften early this year). He's worked closely with the major researchers in the field. Yes, I'll stand on it, he is a "expert." Mathsci is the one who seems determined to personalize all this, arguing over irrelevancies, creating disruption by making provocative assertions likely to attract more irrelevant response. I'm planning on making one more post to this section, and am stopping it at that; this discussion has become moot by Beetstra's creation of specific subsections, and we should respect that, so if someone else responds here, fine. They get the last word. --Abd (talk) 15:36, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, do you have a Ph.D. or are you just trolling as a wannabe scientist? This seems to be the case. Mathsci (talk) 00:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Individual link discussions

I am splitting the above requests, and explain what info we need for each to see here. If I missed ones from the above request, please add them in an own subsection here. Please everybody, keep things short and to the point here, we are discussing individual links in this section. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
  • permission from publisher explicit
  • Please link here full bibliographic info of the original and link to permission if possible, can be whitelisted as a convenience link then. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
    • "Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed", by Charles G. Beaudette, ISBN 0-9678548-1-4, Oak Grove Press, 2000
    • I already tried to whitelist a similar link to this book. Dirk originally declined but then he left the decision to other admins, and at the end I withdrew because I no longer used the book on that article. The book is still in use in Cold fusion, where it can be a convenience link. Also, this is a direct link to the pdf, which is much better than the link I proposed.
    • Some extra notes: the publisher has only published one book [48] (so it's probably self-published) and the author only has this book [49]. If you look at the pages available in Amazon[50], the copyright pages says "Copyright © 2002 Charles G. Beaudette", so the author has the copyright (also, the contact address for the publisher is a PO box in the same city that the author gives as a personal contact at http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCresponseto.pdf. (eerily similar to "The rebirth of Cold Fusion"[51] where a publisher with a similar name, "Pacific Oaks Press", also has only one book[52] and the author also keeps full copyright[53], just saying :P ). Also, the book is distributed by Infinite Energy Press, their website has a link to lenr-canr.org, and Jed has a long time relationship with that company: he has translated one book for that company[54], he has reviewed several books for their Infinite Energy Magazine[55]. The uploading of the book was announced in vortex-l [56], the mailing list for cold fusioneers. Beaudette has sent at least one unpublished article to Jed's website http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCresponseto.pdf. To sum it up, all evidence points to the author having full copyright and giving permision, and the distributor being perfectly aware of the uploading. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
  •  Added --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

BockrisJaccountabi.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BockrisJaccountabi.pdf
  • permission from publisher explicit
  • Please link here full bibliographic info of the original and link to permission if possible, can be whitelisted as a convenience link then. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• • This is also at http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/sciencefabrication/Bockris-Accountability.pdf. My concern about linking to NET (not blacklisted) is that they do host some material under a fair use claim, and it's possible that they simply copied the lenr-canr.org hosted paper, i.e., that the publisher has granted permission to lenr-canr.org and not necessarily to NET. I'd prefer (slightly) to link to lenr-canr.org because I can be certain that Bockris gave permission, or the publisher gave permission, and in this case, we have a direct claim of publisher permission, whereas with NET that is not necessarily the case, though, again, on the face, NET is claiming permission (i.e, the permission claim is there at the top of the page). The article is cited also at John Brokris, as "Bockris, J., Accountability and academic freedom: The battle concerning research on cold fusion at Texas A&M University. Accountability Res., 2000. 8: p. 103." So a convenience link would be appropriate there, too.

Journal homepage: [57]

Page showing contents and Brockris paper for vol 8: [58]. Many papers in this volume, which covered cold fusion.

article page: [59]

DOI:10.1080/08989620008573968 --Abd (talk) 15:34, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• •  Added --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

BushBFheliumprod.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BushBFheliumprod.pdf
  • Elsevier, no logo, may not be direct copy
  • Copyright status unknown, needs further discussion/explanation of use, what is this a preprint of (as that is the proper reference, and this may be a good reference/convenience link in combination with that, I suggest whitelisting if copyright status is fine, and when the full bibliographic information of the 'original' is properly linked here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• J. Electroanal. Chem., 304 (1991) 271-278 Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne [from top of paper]. May not be a preprint, the "preliminary note" is as-published.
• ScienceDirect page: [60]
• doi:10.1016/0022-0728(91)85510-V
• This is, historically, a very important paper, thus for readers to be able to read it easily is important. Sometimes a free first page preview is available, but not for this paper, so I can't tell if the on-line paper is an exact match for the published version hosted by Elsevier. So, at this point, we can be sure that the author permitted and requested the paper to be hosted in the lenr-canr.org version, but I can't be sure that there is explicit publisher permission. This is marginal. I withdrew a request for a page where the appearance was of a direct copy of the publisher on-line version. Elsevier allows preprints, including preprints edited to match, in text, the published version. There may be no way to tell. I.e., this isn't clearly copyvio, but it isn't clearly not copyvio. I'd put it in the article myself, absent the blacklisting problem, because there is no legal risk to Wikipedia from this link, but others might disagree. My general position: marginal decisions should be made at the article, but unless the whole site is whitelisted or delisted at meta, whitelisting would represent an administrative decision that the article isn't clearly copyvio.
• (It's been asserted by some that we have a legal risk from linking to copyvio. That's only true if the copyvio is clear and blatant, and/or the linking site knew that it was an infringing page. That condition is clearly absent here.)

• •  Added --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:07, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Fleischmanbackground.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf
  • preprint, permission from author presumed
  • Preprint, copyright status unknown then, needs further discussion/explanation of use, what is this a preprint off (as that is the proper reference, and this may be a good reference/convenience link in combination with that, I suggest whitelisting if copyright status is fine, and when the full bibliographic information of the 'original' is properly linked here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Fleischmann, Martin (2003), "Background to cold fusion: the genesis of a concept", Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Cambridge, MA: World Scientific Publishing, ISBN 978-9812565648
  • Highly likely that publisher permission exists; Rothwell has edited most of the conference papers. Previous whitelisted conference paper, same author, different publisher Tsingua University Press. This is a more widely known version than the whitelisted one, it has been republished (2008) in the American Chemical Society Low energy reactions sourcebook, edited by Jan Marwan and Stephen B. Krivit, available from Oxford University Press, making this paper into Reliable Source. It might then be cited to the later publication, but the convenience link would still be useful. That is one expensive book ($175 from publisher.) --Abd (talk) 16:08, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
  •  Added --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:12, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

GozziDxrayheatex.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GozziDxrayheatex.pdf
  • copy from actual Elsevier
• Withdrawn, hence  Declined --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, they told me to keep the copyright notice on the paper. Apparently the authors are allowed to upload copies but they must include the copyright notice. Different publishers have different rules. J. Fusion Energy and Accountability Res., for example, told me to upload the "as received" manuscript version only, which they kindly provided. (~10 papers in all.) It is actually a lot easier to use the manuscript version. I wish all authors & publishers would send me that version.

Different publishers have different rules. Some allow authors to distribute some number of copies, or upload them, others do not. Also, it depends upon the author. A publisher will bend the rules for a Nobel laureate or an FRS. Naturwiss. does not give the author any right to reprint, so I have no copies of their papers. A couple of authors asked me to upload the abstracts only, which is okay with Naturwiss.

Academic copyrights are a can of worms. They are more complicated than you might think. As mentioned above, I consulted with experts at university libraries and intellectual property Big Gun law firms (who were kind enough to consult pro bono). They all agreed that LENR-CANR is okay. I trust their judgment more than the judgment of the self-proclaimed instant experts here, who I suspect have ulterior motives. Wikipedia has links to millions of documents on the Internet. It seems a little odd that these people are so concerned about the ones on LENR-CANR only, and not all the others. My guess is that they are using this as a pretext to censor LENR-CANR, but perhaps I am merely old and cynical and I should not question the pure-hearted motives of these selfless Upholders of Copyright Laws and Defenders of the Faith in Physics.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 15:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Again, classic Rothwell. He's right, especially if we set aside the implications about Wikipedia editors. I'm grateful for his providing more detail and I DGAF whether it helps or hinders the cause of whitelisting/delisting. Believe it or not, I accept the rules of this place and support them even if I might not like a particular outcome, I'm not actually attached to outcome, only to doing what I think will benefit the project, and not giving up just because a few editors gather in one place and imagine that they represent the community. Sometimes they do. Sometimes not. --Abd (talk) 15:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

More for the benefit of Rothwell than anything else, what we are doing here is establishing the propriety of linking to a series of lenr-canr.org pages. It is possible that for technical reasons we can't link to a specific page, such as this one. This in no way implies that you are doing anything illegal, and the problem may be merely an appearance. For our purposes, the logo issue could be fixed, and the author still satisfied, by replacing it with a copyright notice without that logo. The ultimate issue for whitelisting would be whether or not the copy was as you prefer to receive it, a preprint, perhaps edited to match the final published version, or the actual published version, which is generally prohibited by them. Don't worry about an odd exception to the substantial whitelisting taking place here. I don't think it will be necessary to go through this silly whitelisting debate much longer. Please understand that Wikipedia is a community, and that it's necessarily to respect the points of view of all editors, including some who might have a strong and even mistaken point of view they are pushing. Yes. Some editors, a small number at most, have used copyright as a "pretext to censor LENR-CANR," though, to be more fair to them, I'd say that their opinion is that the whole field is bogus, pseudoscience, and that we will be deceiving readers if we give this the semblance of legitimacy by linking to your site. That is not the majority opinion here, Jed, and it's probably better that, to the extent this is a problem, it's dealt with by the Wikipedia community, and that you leave it alone. Your comments informing us more fully about your situation with regard to permissions are much appreciated; the rest makes a bit more trouble for those of us trying to balance and improve the article, but not a lot. It's already difficult, some editors have very strong opinions and are even willing to edit war, repeatedly, to push them. --Abd (talk) 16:44, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

HublerGKanomalousea.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HublerGKanomalousea.pdf
  • slides, not published paper
  • Slides, not peer reviewed, maybe original research/synthesis, etc. Needs further discussion/explanation of use. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
    • In so far as it may be relevant, only the paper is currently used in the article, rather than the slides. - Bilby (talk) 00:27, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
    • The paper should be cited for information taken from the paper. The slides were provided by the author for "to accompany a lecture on the topics described in the paper." The slides might be cited for themselves, but, then, they are not peer-reviewed, but may be useful to readers, particularly if the reference makes it clear that this is supplemental material provided by the author, not part of the actual publication; if this is used in the article, it would be attributed to the author personally. Usage of material like this is subject to editorial review at the article; my opinion is that the material is certainly relevant. The review paper itself is one of a number of recent reviews that have covered the cold fusion field, it's quite important for that, as it is a peer-reviewed review of the field, so it's a secondary source with an independent publisher, i.e., a Wikipedia preferred reliable source. No apparent copyright issue. Rothwell would host the actual paper if he could get permission, I'm sure. --Abd (talk) 16:17, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
  •  Added --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:33, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf
  • explicit author permission, Japanese publication, unknown situation with original publisher
  • Unknown copyright situation. Please link here full bibliographic info of the original and link to permission if possible, needs further discussion. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Iwamura, Yasuhiro; Sakano, Mitsuru; Itoh, Takehiko (2002), "Elemental Analysis of Pd Complexes: Effects of D₂ Gas Permeation", Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 41 (7A): 4642–4650, doi:10.1143/JJAP.41.4642
    • What we can understand here is that Rothwell was provided with this important 2002 paper by Iwamura, whom he knows personally, with permission implied or stated. Rothwell has claimed that he finds it rare that foreign publications will respond with anything other than a canned response ("No." or maybe "Pile of money, please.") Iwamura is very well-known, an important researcher in the field, and if Rothwell were to question Iwamura's representation of permission, it could be damaging, I wouldn't presume to second-guess his understanding of Japanese culture and legal situation. Because of the explicit author permission statement, lenr-canr.org is well-covered legally; if the publisher decides that the author's permission was inadequate, they would notify lenr-canr.org, and then lenr-canr.org would be obligated to take the copy down. As this copy has been hosted for years (I believe, but I haven't verified that), it's highly unlikely that the publisher objects or would object to this copy. --Abd (talk) 16:30, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
  •  Added --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:35, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

JosephsonBpathologic.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBpathologic.pdf
  • slides, not published paper
  • Slides, not peer reviewed, maybe original research/synthesis, etc. Needs further discussion/explanation of use. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
    • These were used as a reference in the article, but incorrectly, so they aren't at the moment. Whether or not they may be valuable again is a different issue, of course. - Bilby (talk) 00:28, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Slides used in speech by Nobel Prize winner Brian Josephson. The slides are not the full speech text, it's unclear that this exists. However, the content of the slides is a document in itself, obviously supplied by Josephson, no copyright issue. Article currently protected, cannot fix any problems there now (the reference was removed without discussion by Bilby), I haven't checked on the history of the reference, never decided if the removal was proper or not. There is an independent conference paper, ( http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HoraHlowenergyna.pdf ) that refers to an edited version of the speech, as [1] Brian Josephson, Pathological Disbelief, Lecture given at the Nobel Laureate Meeting, Lindau, June 30th, 2004 (Edited version, revised Aug. 20th, 2004). The slide document would be used, if it is used, as the opinion of a notable physicist, and would be attributed. Actual usage, as usual, would be subject to editorial consensus at article. Josephson is one of three Nobel prize-winners who have expressed positive opinions on Cold fusion and this fact may be relevant, and these slides show his opinion. The resignation of Julian Schwinger from the American Physical Society is covered in our article on him; that fact is unfortunately not sourced in the article, but I do have RS on my desk for it, so I'll fix that. And there was the holdout on the 1989 DoE review panel, who threatened to resign if mollifying language were not included in the final report, Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr.. --Abd (talk) 15:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
  •  Added --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Library

• http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html
  • Bibliography, very useful! Much inclined to whitelist. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

This version may be easier to use: http://lenr-canr.org/DetailOnly.htm

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 15:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• • Not doing difficult, whitelisted both.  Added. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:12, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf
  • lenr-canr.org is publisher
  • Copyright no problem, not peer-reviewed, maybe original research/synthesis, etc. Needs further discussion/explanation of use. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

It goes against my interests to to say this, and I do not understand the rules at Wikipedia . . . But why are you debating whether to whitelist this file? What further "discussion/explanation" is "needed"? I am the author. The paper is not copyright. Obviously you are free to link to it no matter what I say. You may feel it is not appropriate for your article but that is not a valid reason to blacklist it. It is clear that you are using blacklisting to enforce editorial opinions (yours? someone else's?), which is against your own rules.

That applies to all of the non-copyright PowerPoint slides listed above. (They were all added to LENR-CANR in lieu of copyrighted papers by the same authors, by the way.) Why are you debating whether to whitelist or blacklist academic PowerPoint slides when the Internet has hundreds of millions of such slides? Do you plan to check all of the other PowerPoint slides linked by Wikipedia? Have you seen large numbers of academic PowerPoint slides that appear to be copyright violations?

Again this is contrary to my interests, and I surely do not understand the weird customs and rules at Wikipedia, but as far as I can discern your rules give you no reason to blacklist any part of LENR-CANR.org. Rules never stop skeptics from doing what they like and running roughshod over the opposition, but -- forgive me for saying this -- it does give the impression that the monkeys are running the zoo.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.73.234 (talk) 21:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Again, classic Rothwell. Knowledge of cold fusion: high. Understanding of Wikipedia: low. But he does have long experience with us, a rather negative one, unfortunately. It's moot here, though he's right, there was no good reason to blacklist all of the site, but that's the status quo, and changing it with minimal disruption involves going through this exercise. At any time some uninvolved and reputable editor suggests we go to meta to delist and will support that, or if we whitelist in toto here, we can dispense with these individual discussions. Until then, this is how I decided to proceed: with a whitelisting demonstration that there is usable material on the site, which preps for going to meta. Seems to be working.

There is no reason not to whitelist this paper by Rothwell. No copyvio issue. Yes, it's original research, self-published. Use would be primarily for Talk. However, it is not impossible that editorial consensus at Cold fusion would become to point to this as a reference, because it's verifiable. The most important part of it is a review of Britz's classifications of papers into positive, negative, and neutral on cold fusion. If used as a reference, it would have to be attributed to Rothwell. Any complete history of cold fusion, which we should have as an article, would mention Rothwell, he's quite notable in the field. Lenr-canr.org should have an article, it's actually more notable than New Energy Times, long-term, but the media splash recently about Krivit led to my creating that article first. One step at a time. --Abd (talk) 11:28, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• •  Added --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

this can be archived

all links have been whitelisted except one that was withdrawn, and discussion has stopped for days. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:35, 8 June 2009 (UTC)