User:Lsorin

Hello to everybody reaching this page.

I had to write down this things, below because I know that my account will be blocked immediately, when I will start editing again the article Coandă-1910. Why? Because is wrongly written and contains the biased view of a xenophobic group of "star" editors of Wikipedia, supported by one single so called aviation historian, which made some very unprofessional assessments on Coandă-1910.

Basically the problem is about the introduction of the article. Henri Coandă's airplane from 1910 was the first jet-propelled aircraft in the world. This statement is supported by the majority of the sources present today in specialized media. In the past, the fact above was contested by Gibbs-Smith and more recently his former NAMS office colleague, the freelancer writer Frank H. Winter with some unprofessional, glittered with lies and important missing information, articles and assessments on the Coandă-1910. Many of this problems were already presented in the talk page of Coandă-1910 and I will try to get them all together on this page ( before my account gets blocked again ).

About the sources

The problems with the current form of this article are not of technical nature. And regarding that I don't think there was not a single technical expert on Coanda-1910 of jet engines in general involved in any of the Coanda-1910 related discussion. This is why the sources must be correctly used as per WP:IRS. The problem I present here is regarding the usage of two doubtful sources to impose a particular point of view which in this particular case, brings a very serious consequence of denigrating the memory of a reputed scientist calling him bluntly a liar. The doubtfulness of those two sources was already demonstrated in the discussions: first the very controversial([1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6],[7],[8]) aviation historian Gibbs-Smith with his full of technical mistakes and missing relevant sources, assessment on Coanda-1910 based mostly on evidence of absence.

• Gibbs-Smith writes regarding Coanda-1910 and the sequent airplane build in 1911 that it had not retractable landing gear, tank in the wings or any form of wing-slots. This is showed that Gibbs-Smith missed a lot of material against his very strong statements making the whole assessment doubtful. This assessments were never review or used in any academic material after the publication. The exception was Winter article from 1980, which did not give any final position on the Coanda-1910, and used Gibbs-Smith as such.

Why Wikipedia does not work

Until the "problems" with all Coanda 1910 related articles personally I though that Wikipedia works and I was a simple enthusiast of this project, like the majority of you (I suppose). Now I realized why people like Larry Sanger co-founder of Wikipedia left the project: despite its merits, Wikipedia lacks credibility due to, among other things, a lack of respect for expertise. This is exactly what is demonstrated by the current content of this article: a lack of respect for expertise and history demonstrated by the "owners" of this article: User:Andy Dingley and User:Binksternet. Initially I did not even know about existence of the very extensive set of rules ( some of them very dubious ) present in Wikipedia for the help of the "Gods" of this project, the admins. The very interesting fact about this rules is that they are used by admins whenever they what to support their actions, but as well they are very happy, together with some editors, to ignore them if they are not supporting their bias! As example of such attitudes please check the history of actions related Coanda-1910.

Rules ignored by admins and editors

• Neutral Point Of View - This is one of the main rules to be followed by the Five Pillars editors of Wikipedia and still this is exactly the rule broken in several ways by the current version of the article: Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. - please now read the introduction of the current version of the article. Coanda-1910 which is presented by the mainstream as the first jet-propelled aircraft in the world is not even preset in the introduction! What one can find is the non-proportionately and biased version supported by dubious sources, like Gibbs-Smith and Winter which are not even considered by the academic and technical mainstream. According to such rule like Due and undue weight the rebuttals shall be presented in the introduction of the article with the correct prominence, not the whole introduction to be written according to Winter or Gibbs-Smith. This view is presented by Jimbo Wales are well in one of his early comments. While pseudoscience may in some cases be significant to an article, it should not obfuscate the description of the mainstream views of the scientific community: This is another rule broken in the current introduction as it does not even present the mainstream that Coanda-1910 was the first jet-propelled aircraft. Good and unbiased research, based upon the best and most reputable authoritative sources available, helps prevent NPOV disagreements.

From Jimbo Wales, paraphrased from this post from September 2003 on the WikiEN-l mailing list:

o If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;

o If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;

o If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.

The mainstream is supported by the most authoritative and reputable sources existing for such historical subjects: several academies, museums, encyclopedias and foremost historians. Still this is completely ignored in the current introduction of the article.

• Exceptional claims require exceptional sources from the WP:VERIFY Exceptional claims require high-quality sources. Red flags that should prompt extra caution include:

o surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources;

o reports of a statement by someone that seems out of character, or against an interest they had previously defended;

o claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or that would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons. This is especially true when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them.

I refer here to Gibbs-Smith and Frank H. Winter assessments which are dubious as high-quality sources as it was already demonstrated ( e.g. Gibbs-Smith said twice that the second version of Coanda's plane was not having the tank in the wing against a lot of sources supporting Coanda's claims, Frank H. Winter missing a lot of relevant sources and and using non-technical terms like "true jet" in all his references to Coanda-1910 ) As well on regarding the same sources in the WP:IRS can somebody demonstrate that Winter's and Gibbs stuff comply with this rule? Isolated studies are usually considered tentative and may change in the light of further academic research. The reliability of a single study depends on the field. Studies relating to complex and abstruse fields, such as medicine, are less definitive. Avoid undue weight when using single studies in such fields. Meta-analyses, textbooks, and scholarly review articles are preferred when available, so as to provide proper context. All the academic, textbooks and scholarly works of other aviation historians with access to much more data than Gibbs-Smith and Winter is just ignored or minimized in importance by the editors.

• Polling is not a substitute for discussion

The correct introduction form supported by the mainstream: first jet-propelled aircraft was voted out in a pool which is used permanently to support the bias of the owners of the article.

• Controversial articles Please be clear that the Wikipedia neutrality policy certainly does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views in a controversy. This is ignored again in the leading text of the article, as Gibbs-Smith and Winter represent the dubious minority side of the controversy, but still, that is what a first time reader of the article will understand.
• WP:IRS - should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals. Especially in case of Winter's article they promote only one point of view not peer reviewed by the wider academic community. As an another example the presence of Winter's article at in the External links section of the article alone, against the WP:ELPOV, which must avoiding the undue weight.

Rules followed and imposed

Edit Warning: This "rule" was used by the admins to block my account for the last two times. I did extensively asked which is the exact description used for the blocking, as was never told clearly the reason, so that I can avoid it. As well as asked how can I get out of the Edit Warning, and the answer was discussion, as it is presented in the 'nutshell: Don't use edits to fight with other editors – disagreements should be resolved through discussion. But what is happening if the discussion is avoided by the other editors in several rounds ( check my talk to see how many times I did ask simple questions like what is the mainstream? ) In my last blocking, I did not even had the time to react for a normal discussion. I was just blocked for two weeks and explained that I was in edit warning.

A bit of history of the article editing

Until August 2010 the article was more or less stable. After the xenophobic attack of the User:Romaniantruths with the clear scope of defamation of Henri Coanda, User:Binksternet and his wikipedia buddy User:Andy Dingley, became the sole owners of Coanda-1910, controlling fully any attempt to remove their bias. Together they have attacked and accused several editors personally for any kind of improvements on the article. Andy especially did not contribute with any new information on the article after the attack, his only role being to control the present bias. Basically now they are the winners of the edit war and do not participate in any kind of discussions.

Mainstream according to the sources

In a nutshell

• Five day exhibition at the European Parliament celebrating the centenary of the first jet aircraft
• [9]
• academic
• several encyclopedia and history books
• primary sources like the leaflets, magazines,books news from around 1910,1911, witnesses, Coanda's patents
• articles and TV interviews
• his endorsing as honorable member of the Royal Aeronautical Society or Romanian academy
• special medal give by the city of Paris of his work on jet propulsion starting from 1910
• several museums in Romania, France, England, Germany, USA presenting unique artifacts related the first jet aircraft)

Sources according to WP:IRS (please change it in case that something is misplaced)

• Secondary Souces
  • Academic

- [http://books.google.com/books?ei=Ud_yTM_DF8yWOobw1KoK&ct=result&id=CYpTAAAAMAAJ&dq=coanda-1910+proceedings&q=coanda-1910#search_anchor History of rocketry and astronautics:

proceedings of the twenty-fourth Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics, Dresden, Germany, 1990]

- [http://books.google.com/books?ei=Ud_yTM_DF8yWOobw1KoK&ct=result&id=9odTAAAAMAAJ&dq=coanda-1910+proceedings&q=coanda-1910#search_anchor History of rocketry and astronautics:

proceedings of the Seventeenth History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics, Budapest, Hungary, 1991]

-Romanian Academy

-Royal Aeronautical Society

• • Scholarship
    • Monographs
      • Books

Dan Antoniu, 2010 Henri Coanda and his technical work during 1906-1918.

Stine, G. Harry, 1983 The Hopeful Future.

V.Firoiu, 2002 Din nou acasa

Gibbs-Smith, C. 1970 Aviation: an historical survey from its origins to the end of World War II.

(According to the rule generally it has been at least preliminarily vetted by one or more other scholars Gibbs-Smith can be considered as it was endorsed by Antoniu but caution as it is considered to contain speculations on evidence of absence and using incorrect sources.)

• • News organizations
    • Magazines

Sandachi, George-Paul, 2010 , several "Cer Senin" magazines

Walter J. Boyne, 2006 -The Converging Paths of Whittle and von Ohain, A Concise History of Jet Propulsion

G. Harry Stine , 1989 - The Rises and Falls of Henri-Marie Coanda

Gérard Harmann , 2007 - Clément-Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche

Frank H. Winter , 1980 Ducted fan or the world's first jet plane? The Coanda claim re-examined

As per WP:IRS if the secondary sources are conflicting or they give biased positions ( as an example Antoniu vs Gibbs-Smith ) the primary sources can be used.

• Primary Sources
  • 1) articles written by Coanda himself in 50s and 60s is several magazines
  • 2) articles,leaflets, books from very close to the event ( newspapers like "Le Temps", "Le Figaro", books Bases et methodes d'etudes aerotechniques - Leon Ventou-Duclaux )
  • 3) persons Victor Hoart "L'Histoire de l'aviation recontée à mon fils."
  • 4) several museums around the world in Romania, England, France, USA, Germany.
  • 5) patents

• Tertiary sources

Several major encyclopedias: Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation, World Encyclopedia, American Encyclopedia etc Special events: coins, stamps, exhibitions Institutions bearing his name with special emphasis on the first jet-propelled aircraft.