User talk:Abd/Archive 7

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Hey

moved from User talk:Abd/IP

wow, you seem cool. I am inspired and happy to talk to you. obviously I am not a new user, I just don't wish to be tracked around the site while I am in discussions with you and others who are like you. alright, here is the rundown on my situation. I am quite unhappy with the conduct of certain admins (administrators), probably about 15 of them, to the extent that I would never take on the position of admin myself.

I guess I am asking to talk to you on IM (instant messaging). I can see how I am NOT the only individual who is disenchanted. I will NOT be driven off the site. if that means I have to use subterfuge or some other device, so be it. I am not delusional enough to think I can bring about real changes on Wikipedia or any other wikis, but I will not tolerate the abuse I have been encountering. suffice it to say, I think that I can make some progress in this endeavor. I have been on the site for over three years. only when I started editing a MERE two articles that dealt with current events, did I run afoul of some ogre-like people on here.

said people have followed me around on Wikipedia. oh, also another thing I want to bring up. I am entirely sick of this somewhat new syndrome on Wikipedia (people who are on here just to create havoc, trouble, or to feel self-important). it is ridiculous and absurd how miniscule their efforts are in reality, but they do manage to stir up ill feelings. they have colluded with other somewhat nefarious admins. THIS IS NOT the first time they have done this. but... they didn't pick a good person to attempt to kick around. talk to you later! Upgrade1 (talk) 11:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, try to take the long view. If everyone who finds the conduct of some administrators offensive abstains from becoming an administrator, and because admins retire or are otherwise lost to us, it will get gradually worse and worse. IM is possible, but so is email. IM is inconvenient, though if it's necessary, it can be arranged. My Skype name is abd.lomax. If you email me, I'll keep your email information private.

Understand that if we want to build a project making available "the sum of all human knowledge," we have to deal with all kinds of people. Administrators do a huge job, and some of them get a bit burned out and cynical. To my mind, the problem is not "bad administrators" but a system that is missing some necessary pieces to be more efficient (which also means more fair), i.e., the system we have was developed when we were smaller, it's amazingly good, considering. But not good enough, it needs some tweaks, it is burning out people, driving away dissidents, or sometimes just ordinary innocent users. Whenever an organization is established, it develops a power structure, an oligarchy. And this oligarchy always resists change. To move around this takes patience and understanding. If you don't have those, develop them, they will help you in many ways. --Abd (talk) 12:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

+Rollback?

Noticed you've gotten into recent page patrolling. Wondered if you'd like the rollback tool? It's a little faster, and a necessary flag if, for instance, you wanted to use Huggle. Just e-mail me or post to my page and I'll happily set the flag if you're interested. Best wishes Fritzpoll (talk) 13:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

 Done - remember, use rollback only for blatant vandalism Fritzpoll (talk) 13:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

What? You mean I can't roll back Main Page to my favorite version? What the hell is it good for, then?

Seriously, thanks. Yes, I know that. I'll just have to use Twinkle for that purpose, even if it will bog down the system a tad. --Abd (talk) 13:51, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

You should see the fuss admins get when they delete the main page...can't even do that any more, because there are too many revisions Fritzpoll (talk) 16:19, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Okay, so I'd only go back a few hundred revisions. At a time. I remember TBSDY, an admin who, in a fit of poor judgment, vandalized the main page to show a friend how quickly the page would recover. I forget how long it took, but I'd be surprised if it was over a minute. He voluntarily dropped his admin bit over that. He later went through RfA again and was promoted again, but when he was blocked over something totally silly, he retired. Itchy block fingers can do a lot of harm. Apparently, he's returned, if it isn't some imitator, with a user name of something like TBSDY Returns. (TBSDY being an acronym for the user name, was it Ta Bu Shi Da Yu?) (Vandalizing the main page is serious, because many people may read that page in the seconds or minute it took to fix, but allegedly canvassing for an MfD? He did not, in fact, violate WP:CANVASS, it was a rather poor interpretation of it that he had, and ... warning before block? I forget if he was actually warned.... but, of course, I digress. I'll have to pick some other article to roll back. Barack Obama? I'm in luck! It's not protected!--Abd (talk) 16:45, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't try it!! This is what happened when someone tried to test out that assumption! This new page was written to commemorate that incident: Wikipedia:Don't delete the main page. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 16:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't be silly, Coppertwig. I wasn't talking delete, just rollback to [1]. Come on, a little AGF here! --Abd (talk) 16:45, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't talking to you, Abd! (Though this is your talk page!) I was just giving some advice to Fritzpoll – and anyone else who might happen to be listening, just in case they might have itchy fingers as well as access to admin buttons. Does WP:AGF mean we should never give preemptive advice, but always wait until the person actually makes a mistake before warning them about something? . ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 17:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, Geez, maybe I should have read Wikipedia:Don't delete the main page. Coppertwig, I was, indeed, continuing to make a joke, having fun, playing with silly ideas. I know you assume AGF. The comment was pretending to be someone intending to roll back the main page to the beginning of recorded history, and wikilawyering it as not deletion, and then pretending, as well, to be offended that you supposedly would not AGF. Nothing wrong with your comment. At all. Quite possibly quite prudent. Though there was nothing here about it being harmless to roll back the Main Page. Actually, rollback privileges don't allow a rollback like that, only to rolling back a series of edits from a single editor. Same with Twinkle. To roll back beyond that, a different method is used, and it actually doesn't eat up processor time; it is only deletion that does a number on the server. Rollback is easier on the server, but only a little, because of the way the changes are loaded and presented. Deleting the Main Page -- or any page with tons of revisions -- requires that all those revisions be marked, I suspect, as deleted, i.e., nobody can look at them without admin privileges. And then undeletion would be a burden as well. It has massive implications, whereas blanking it or restoring an old version is simply one more revision, an ordinary edit, as far as the server is concerned. If I'm correct.--Abd (talk) 17:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I was being tongue-in-cheek, Coppertwig. :) Fritzpoll (talk) 17:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Fooled me! --17:47, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Imagine what this place would be like if, whenever an editor drops a comment like, "You stupid idiot! Don't you know better than to insert crap like that into the article? Get a life!", the "attacked" editor actually does AGF and writes back, "Damn! I'm an idiot again! That makes twelve times today! I need to get a new prescription." Or, as my five-year old has learned to say when her seven-year old sister calls her a "stupid poopy-head." "Oh, pshaw!" --Abd (talk) 17:51, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

What's the matter: did I not make the smiley next to my signature big enough? Try this one: ☺ If that doesn't work, try looking at the image at the Don't Delete the Main Page page. I think it's hilarious. What – you actually read the text on that page? And took it seriously? Coppertwig (talk) 18:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

In other words: Abd, I know you know I assume AGF. And I think you know I know you know I assume AGF ... ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 18:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:FAR for Barack Obama

Barack Obama has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

I have nominated Barack Obama for Featured Article Review. You are welcome to participate in the discussion. Curious bystander (talk) 00:26, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Top ten

This is one of the top ten talk pages that I have contributed to. That means we could be considered...wikifriends. Jehochman ^Talk 19:39, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Why would one think otherwise? Look, we've cooperated, we've sought to find consensus when we differed, and succeeded. But there is this little detail.[2] As you know, I've asked for comment on that, and, so far, nobody who has actually carefully read the diff you cited has agreed with your assessment of it. That warning triggered a riot, essentially, and, based on a misunderstanding that would ordinarily have blown away immediately, resulted in my being blocked. What I'm asking of you is simple: apologize (or, alternatively, if you can, justify the warning as accurate). You didn't block me, but your action set it up. As long as that warning stands unchallenged, the block is an almost trivial detail. (I.e., disruptive user, personally attacking, harassing, and driving away productive editor(s) is blocked for one incident and it doesn't matter if that incident was precisely what was claimed.) But if the warning was inaccurate, overblown (as Carcharoth already indicated), then I can turn my attention to the block.

My goal isn't revenge. Yellowbeard's claim that "come the revolution," I'd "kick you out of here," or whatever he said, was simply based on his black-and-white interpretation of this wiki as being about factions and enemies. Rather, my goal is simply to clarify the record, which is important for what I consider important for me to do here, which is about establishing better consensus process, definitely not striving for some faction to "win." That block log can be annotated. I'm not going to ask for that, though, until it's clear there would be a consensus for it. That's why there is this preliminary process in my user space. It's slow, but I'm not in a hurry. Carcharoth has suggested we work it out. Well? The RfC is pretty simple, a series of questions at this point to be answered Yes or No -- or to be altered if anyone wants to change what the questions are. The core is at User talk:Abd/RfC/8.11.08 block. That's where comments would be, and have been, placed. The RfC is not an attack on you, I don't think you will find that there. Nor is it nor will it be an attack on Iridescent, in spite of what she's imagined about it. It's simply a patient examination of the question: did I do something blockworthy? Was a block necessary?

It's only begun. So far, the only questions asked have been about the warning. It's about time to move on. If you were to say that the warning was a mistake, that would seal this part of it, and, in fact, your necessary involvement. (I wasn't thrilled about your reverts of my edits to my Talk page during the block, but, as far as I'm concerned, that is indeed water under the bridge, moot, not of importance as far as I can see.)

Please note that "the warning was a mistake" does not mean that I made no errors. Because I had no intention of "driving off Fritzpoll," yet he did, in fact, feel harassed, clearly I did not act optimally. I've later discovered that there were other reasons that this was difficult for him at that time, we've been communicating off-wiki and you might notice that he suggested and granted me rollback recently. This isn't exactly the behavior of someone who continues to think of me as a harasser! In any case, I do make mistakes and try to learn from them. --Abd (talk) 20:26, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

When two editors have different points of view, they can come to different conclusions. Neither one is necessarily wrong, or needs to apologize to the other. My conclusion was based on the info I had at the time, and was reasonable. So was yours. We disagreed, but eventually got beyond it. Apologies are best when freely given. You are free to ask, but it is not good to ask too many times. I don't feel that I was wrong, but at this time I also don't feel that you were wrong. It was a regrettably misunderstanding. Hopefully we can get beyond it. Jehochman ^Talk 20:36, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this is enough. Could you agree with the following? "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have issued that warning as it was." But I'd like it to be more specific: "I do not now believe that Abd was personally attacking Fritzpoll, nor that he was assuming bad faith, nor that he was attempting to drive Fritzpoll away from the project." This would clear me of the claim, by you, that I did those things, but it still allows you an assumption of good faith, an assumption I've never abandoned with you in any case. In other words, I do assume that it appeared like that to you, so your warning was "proper" in that sense. Okay? --Abd (talk) 00:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I could agree with that. We are substantially saying the same things. Happy editing. Jehochman ^Talk 04:22, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, Jehochman. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 12:14, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Minor point

Hiya, just making a minor point about the ANI discussion. I'm trying to make a distinction between my personal opinion, and what I feel that the consensus of the discussion is. If you feel that the consensus is something different from what I said, you are welcome to review the thread and say, "My own opinion of what the consensus here is (whatever)". Though if someone's idea of "consensus" always matches their own personal opinion, I agree that that may raise a flag or two.  ;) --Elonka 19:55, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the opportunity to explore the point. Actually, I think you may have missed it. Let's back up a little. Here is what you wrote, about Jehochman's block of CreazySuit, Jehochman (talk · contribs) imposed an indefinite block on an editor, citing ANI consensus, but there was no such consensus.

Jehochman's block did not cite an "ANI consensus." Here is the block log: 12:46, 27 September 2008 Jehochman (Talk | contribs) blocked "CreazySuit (Talk | contribs)" (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite ‎ (Disruptive editing: Per discussion at AN/I)

In his explanation on CreazySuit Talk, he wrote: Editing privileges of this account have been revoked for an indefinite period of time in response to disruptive editing. If you wish to edit again, please convince the Wikipedia community that you will follow its policies and guidelines, including also neutral point of view, consensus, verifiability, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and Wikipedia is not a battleground. The evidence to support this block has been presented here. To other administrators: please do not undo this block without discussion with me, or a consensus at WP:AN. Jehochman Talk 12:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

He did not claim in either of these that there was a consensus to block. He acted on his administrative discretion to block a user, and he referred to AN/I for the evidence. At AN/I, after there had been some discussion, he wrote:

I see a rough consensus that ArbCom is not needed, and that the community should deal with this. I started this thread because I wanted uninvolved editors to provide input before I took action. My finding is that CreazySuit (talk · contribs) has been editing disruptively and tendentiously, and shows no sign whatsoever of backing down. Therefore, I am going to block them until such time as they undertake, convincingly, to follow policy. I have not edited the article ever, and have never encountered this editor before. It is longstanding policy that a disruptive editor does not get to choose the administrator who responds to their disruption. Jehochman Talk 12:45, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

He did not claim or refer to any consensus to block. Nor need he have waited for such. He was an administrator asking for comment before blocking, he asked for the comment, he got some comment, he made his conclusion, and he blocked. The way I read his request for consultation before unblocking, he was aware that there was conflict between administrators over the issues, and he saw the status quo as disruptive, so he acted to break it. It seems, so far, that he acted effectively, and he did not insist on "indefinite" as meaning "of long duration," and the block was in place less than eight hours. It meant, "until the user agrees to something that may resolve the problem." I'm not sure I'm thrilled about using "indef" that way, but I also can understand it.

I've commented on this because it revolves around how Wikipedia makes decisions; my "theory" of how it works is that decisions over the use of tools are always made by an individual administrator, never by vote, per se, and ascribing it to consensus is still determining a result from votes. "Consensus" is something that an administrator may consider, but the general obligation is to examine evidence and arguments and decide from them, being personally responsible for that decision. This is quite important, and seems to have been missed by enough of the community that I think it worth making the point. (It might seem that ArbComm enforcement would be an exception, but it isn't, though I won't go into that here.)

In other words, an admin shouldn't ever say, "I'm blocking you because that was decided by the community." Rather, "I have blocked you because of [evidence] and [reasoning]." (Except for efficiency, a reference to a community discussion may be made -- but the admin is really saying "I agree with this outcome, and I'm taking responsibility for it." --Abd (talk) 21:31, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Again, I recommend that you try to see the distinction between your personal opinion, and the community consensus. --Elonka 21:57, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Elonka, clearly there is a difference between my personal opinion and the community consensus. However, what does this have to do with what I wrote? Are you referring to some specific personal opinion? I'll acknowledge that there was no consensus to block. Do you disagree? (I didn't specifically acknowledge that before, because I consider it irrelevant, since Jehochman did not claim that there was one.) I see that a miswording of my original comment may have misled you. I'll fix it. I'd written that Jehochman "did not claim a consensus at AN/I, he merely referred to it." "It," here, referred to AN/I, i.e., the discussion, not "a consensus." Sorry if that confused you.--Abd (talk) 22:35, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I've edited that comment to reflect the intended meaning.[3] --Abd (talk) 22:44, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Elonka, Abd is making some interesting distinctions here. I think the points Abd is raising are interesting and worthy of consideration. Clearly Abd already understands the distinction between Abd's personal opinion and community consensus. I get the impression you haven't understood the points Abd was making. I'd be interested to know which statements of Abd's you agree with and which, if any, you disagree with, Elonka.

Abd, if you have time, I'd be interested in any comments you have in response to Moonriddengirl's advice to me about closing discussions: last message of this thread, and also see here which continues the same discussion. I still owe you a response to your message on my talk page but have been busy with other things and expect to get to it later.

I'm particularly interested in discussions about closing discussions because of my responsibilities as a bureaucrat at Simple English Wikiquote. When I was nominated I had to do some hard thinking. See candidate's statement. There are particular problems about being a bureaucrat on a very small project. For one thing, for now, I'm the only bureaucrat. When there are no bureaucrats at all, it's OK: the stewards will take care of things if they know there's no bureaucrat. But apparently if there is a bureaucrat the stewards may refuse to act, even if the bureaucrat has been inactive for a long time etc. Another complication is that sometimes there are very few votes on RfA discussions (possibly only one or two). I thought through how I would handle various situations and after I convinced myself I could find a reasonable course of action in any situation I might be faced with, I accepted the nomination. Anyway, I very much appreciate your comments on closing discussions, Abd, as I'm incorporating them into the way I see myself as taking responsibility as a bureaucrat. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 23:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

On closing admin responsibility

I read Coppertwig's cited discussions. There is some ambiguity I see on what Moonriddengirl wrote. However, her basic position seems to be that, indeed, the admin makes the decision. She seemed to be reluctant to make a decision "against consensus," and that's understandable. However, I see the admin responsibility as being to do just that, if the admin has researched the matter, checked the evidence, and it's clear (to the admin). I've seen an AfD close as delete when there was widespread participation, including many admins, the !vote was about 50-50, maybe a little more for Keep, because the closing admin was clearly convinced that Delete was the correct decision. And it was his right to do that. (By the way, while it doesn't really matter, I was on the Keep side, and the issues were largely procedural, that's why so many admins weighed in.) If the community doesn't accept that, there is DRV; all admin decisions can be undone, and if a decision is truly against consensus, that's what will happen.

But if it's clear to the admin, in spite of a majority in the other direction, then, presumably, the admin will have a shot at convincing the community in the new discussion that ensues. And this second discussion is likely to attract more participation, and the consensus shown is more likely to be broad; and there will be a new closing admin, who, again, makes the decision independently.

Consider the history of WP:PRX. It was MfD'd, and the !votes were heavily Delete. The discussion was closed by User:Kim Bruning on a general policy basis: we don't delete proposals, we mark them Rejected. There was quite an outcry, ironic because the reason given by most Delete voters were that "we don't vote," and supposedly WP:PRX was about voting, which it was not. It went to DRV. Bruning closed the DRV (which was improper, I'm surprised he did it); when it was realized that Bruning wasn't an administrator (he'd been one, and he could pick up the bit at any time), his close was reverted, and the DRV decided, as I recall, to reopen the MfD. Which closed a few days later with the same result. Because Bruning's reasoning had been cogent.

Having decisions made by individuals is highly efficient. It breaks down, sometimes, but it is probably one of the reasons Wikipedia has functioned as well as it has. My organizational theory would suggest confining decisions to as small a group as possible, not by excluding editors, but simply by making the decisions at as low a level as possible, and the single-admin decision model starts out with one person. Don't like it? The minimally disruptive way to question it is to go to that one person and discuss it. If a decision has supposedly been made "by the community," with whom do you discuss it?

So two people try to work it out. If they can't, there is the whole DR process, where one brings in a third person, etc., RfC, Mediation, and Arbitration. AN/I is a terrible place to try to resolve disputes, and if I were to fault Jehochman, it would be for taking that matter to AN/I. Way, way too much noise. AN/I isn't a place to seek advice, that's not what it was designed for. AN is for that, and it tends to be a bit calmer. AN/I is 911 for Wikipedia. AN/I should be prohibited from making decisions, period. It's where you call for the police: the police do not decide guilt or innocence; rather, they enforce order. That is part of the reason "we don't punish." Punishment requires a determination of guilt, and that is a job for judges and juries. Not the police.

In any case, somehow I got this impression about how Wikipedia makes decisions, early on. I don't recall reading it anywhere specific. And there is obviously some disagreement about it, as represented by the recent problem I had where an admin ascribed a decision to consensus, and therefore he couldn't change it. Yet that position contained some contradictions. He wanted to resubmit the decision to the community that made it; but the original discussion had been on AN/I and he took it to AN. Those are different editors, often. If you want the same community to make a decision, you notify them (which is sometimes done with AfDs, it's not canvassing to notify previous participants). If we were going to make decisions by vote, that's one way they could be appealed. But I still think that we'd want an executive, that is, a person charged with maintaining the decision, who would have the authority to suspend it. Otherwise we end up with cumbersome process, where it becomes too difficult to change decisions.

I see that you (Coppertwig) commented on the practice we have of collecting !votes before the evidence has been presented. This points to one way we could improve the process; organize decision process into two or three stages. First, some proposed action, and an agreement that the action should be taken (comparable to seconding the motion; we have this with user RfCs, it's basic deliberative process, saves a lot of trouble). Once seconded, discussion would begin, where evidence and arguments would be presented. It would be best if this functioned like a committee, which is going to prepare a committee report. That is, a document is prepared which is an NPOV presentation of the evidence and arguments. We're editors, we should know how to do that!

In fact, if this is done carefully, I think we'd discover consensus even more often than we presently do; but, in any case, where disagreement remains, it would be clear what the basis for it is, and there would not be reams of duplicated arguments in that report, no "per nom," or "per Deletionist." Then, when it was clear that all arguments and evidence likely to appear have been incorporated in the report of the committee, it's formally presented and then !voting begins. As part of the process, the exact question to be voted on would be formed (and there might be a series of "committee" votes in doing this); but then the result would be presented for wider !voting. Without going into the gory details and contingencies, Voting, generally, would be just that.

But still, I would have it be only advisory upon the closing admin. (And WP:PRX, if we were to have something like that in place, would simply amplify that advice in the direction of being more broadly representative, and efficiently, that's all. It would not create any binding implications for the closing admin.)

I think that, often, with good process, there wouldn't be any voting. Rather, a closing admin would simply state what the consensus was, based on reviewing the process and the document, and would state a decision as "without objection." And if any one objects, then there is a vote. It would really be pretty close to what we have, when what we have is working. --Abd (talk) 00:23, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Abd. Read and enjoyed. Just curious: where did I comment, as you said I did, on the practice we have of collecting !votes before the evidence has been presented?

In your proposed system, what about people who close according to their self-interest? ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

It was here, but it was Moonriddengirl One of the challenges of closing AfDs is that the process falls down as a discussion. In an actual jury trial, all evidence is collected and discussed, and then the jury retires to consider it. Everyone has a chance to voice his or her opinion, and the "vote" is taken only after everyone has done so. etc.

As to COI closes, what I'm suggesting is really just a tweak to the system we have, a shift in process. COI closes would be grounds for desysopping, if not simply an occasional error, just as they are now. (I'd suggest that closing be a privileged position, though not necessarily administrative. A closer is a judge, admins are police, and I think we might be gunking things up by mixing up the two, in some ways. If action is required using tools, though, the admin must make a decision to do it or not, so that's efficient.... Separating them would be more bureaucratic, keeping them together invites some kinds of abuse.)

(ec) Moonriddengirl's position on AfDs is also explained here: [4]. "Our job as administrators, obviously, is to determine the consensus that was reached by participants in an AfD, not to contribute our own opinion." ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:23, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Obviously, I disagree with that view. A false dichotomy has been set up. Participants in an AfD do not ordinarily "reach consensus." (We create a lot of trouble by using the word consensus when what we mean isn't consensus the way it is ordinarily understood, we'll judge "consensus," when sometimes it is as low as a majority. So it's often glossed as "rough consensus," which, being undefined ....) And a closing admin renders a judgment, a conclusion, not an opinion, though an opinion is often stated with it. Now, this is the question: is the judgment simply what the "consensus" was? Or is it a judgment on the question (i.e, Delete/Keep ... or No Consensus; Merge is a form of Keep, really)? Moonriddengirl apparently considers it the former. Then she implements what she thinks the community wants her to do. I have a more individualist view of what admins do. They exercise their independent judgment, informed by guidelines and policy and the community. Essentially, they are advised by the precedents and the community. Not havin this independent judgment leaves us without protection against the blindness of participation bias. In some process, those voting may or may not take the time to actually investigate the evidence; many or most of them may simply be commenting based on superficial appearances, and even very good editors do this sometimes. *Somebody* should take responsibility for the decision, which means taking responsibility for looking at the evidence and considering the arguments. And this should be done even if almost all the votes are in one direction. (For efficiency, we can consider a "side" of a question to be unworthy of consideration if there is no significant advocacy of it.) Now, if it should be done, then what is an admin to do if the admin puts in what is often significant time to do the due diligence, and concludes differently from the AfD?

Moonriddengirl gives one option: Vote in the process, don't close it. However, if the admin was neutral, did not start out with some prejudice, and comes to a clear conclusion, it could be much more efficient, and more likely, on average, to produce a good decision with minimum investment of overall administrator time, to simply close according to the results of the investigation. Whenever a close is contrary to apparent consensus, it should be carefully explained. Now, consider this:

Suppose Moonriddengirl has closed an AfD as Delete, based on an apparent consensus with which she personally disagreed. An editor comes to her with new arguments and evidence and asks her to reverse the close. I know what she will say, given the position expressed. She will say, I can't do that, go to DRV. And thus more time is wasted. Even though she might very well agree with the editor who comes to her.

Now, some parallels with standard deliberative process. When a decision is made, it may be brought up for reconsideration upon a motion from someone who voted with the prevailing side. If admins only close AfDs if they agree with the close, then they can change their mind: they fairly represent the community which presumably expressed that consensus (if it was a consensus and not a reversal of apparent consensus). For an admin to close a discussion and take action that the admin disagrees with sets up a rigidity in the process that is not necessary. If an admin disagrees with an apparent consensus, the admin can, then, not take on that closure, and could, indeed simply vote in the process. I've suggested closing contrary to majority vote only when the matter is clear to an admin who has done the footwork. --Abd (talk) 01:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for jumping into this conversation, but having been effectively already "jumped in" (very odd, to find myself engaged in a debate without knowing it! :)), I figured I'd just toss in a note that my deference to consensus is inspired by Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators and particularly two of the four points on "deciding whether to delete": (1) "Whether consensus has been achieved by determining a "rough consensus" and (2) "Use common sense and respect the judgment and feelings of Wikipedia participants." I am of the opinion that closing AfDs is one of the more "janitorial" processes of the admin. In my opinion, the only time that an admin should close against rough consensus is when there is a clearly overriding factor of policy. In may cases, as I've stated, I think that contentious AfDs come down to the fine point of interpreting guidelines. As Wikipedia:Administrators indicates, "There is very little extra decision-making ability that goes along with adminship, and it does not add any extra voice in consensus decisions. In that sense, whether a person is an administrator is not, in and of itself, important." In my opinion, an AfD is an ordinary consensus decision and not one of those "certain topic areas" wherein Arbcom has granted "a small amount of additional authority to 'Uninvolved administrators'." I feel that taking responsibility for an admin in these cases is in interpreting the debate so as to reach a reading of rough consensus. Okay. New grist from Moonriddengirl. Again, sorry if I'm intruding. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:13, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I did not read this whole conversation, so I have no idea the context. I only noted the bits involving me. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:15, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

No, Moonriddengirl, you are most welcome here. It might be useful, if you have time, to read the whole thing.... Wikipedia guidelines for adminstrators, apparently, are a bit schizophrenic, the community may never have squarely faced the issue and come to a consensus. I.e., there may be no consensus on consensus.... You acknowledge that an administrator may close "against rough consensus." Okay, who makes the decision that it's okay? Who makes the decision that the "rough consensus" is an informed one? Does it matter? I.e., is it good administrative practice to observe "rough consensus," close that way, without investigation of the underlying evidence and arguments?

My concern arose, not with XfDs, but with a ban decision, where a ban was based on an AN/I discussion which led to a rough poll. There was a rough consensus in the poll to topic ban an editor. However, as often happens with AN/I discussions, the discussion had been rather unfocused, evidence had been requested and not actually provided, with many !voters writing, as an example, "Assuming that what [the reporter] has written is true, then a topic ban is appropriate." In fact, though, the evidence provided was utterly insufficient to support a ban. The reporter had used, consciously or unconsciously, a rhetorical trick: a pattern would be asserted, with an "example" given to support it. But the example was the *only* instance of the problem behavior. As examples, the editor reverted a legitimate change because it shortened the article, perhaps making it ineligible for DYK. The editor openly admitted this, and there was no other example found, and the editor didn't edit war over it (one or two reverts only, as I recall). This was stated, in the report, as a pattern. Again it was asserted that the editor incorporated copyvios in articles. Later on, an intensive search was made for this, and practically nothing was found. Apparently -- I never did find the original incident -- there had been some discussion of a single possible copyvio, some time back. No pattern, no repeated behavior.

So: rough consensus for ban, but not based on evidence, rather on unsupported assertion by an editor who did, in fact, have a history of harassment. Does that discussion, by itself, create a ban?

Pretty clearly not. When the reporter complained that the editor was still editing as supposedly banned, the admin to whom he complained noticed that she had not been informed of the "result." There had been no close, no admin had taken responsibility for deciding the ban and enforcing it. So this admin informed her, but specifically denied any responsibility for the decision, when she complained. "Don't blame me, I'm just the messenger."

When I pointed out that there had been no close, he said he wasn't going to go to the archive and close, but he took responsibility for it. Fine. There was now, following the theories of admin responsibility I've outlined above, a go-to person for questioning the decision. Him. But he said that he could not change it. Essentially, he took responsibility for the close, but denied responsibility at the same time, i.e., it wasn't his decision, it was the community's decision, and all he had done was to note the rough consensus.

What I'm saying, Moonriddengirl, is that when an administrator closes based on "consensus," the admin is, properly, taking responsibility for the decision. The admin was advised by the community, but is obligated to disregard bad advice, and if the decision was an error, it is the administrator's error. The community does not actually make decisions, it has very little process for doing so. (Even ArbComm and WMF board elections are not community decisions; rather polls are taken and then decisions are actually made, not by the community, but by Jimbo (ArbComm elections) or the WMF board (board elections); the WMF board voluntarily respects the votes. It could decide that something went awry in the process and appoint someone different than was indicated by the vote and rules.

I'm suggesting that an admin should never close with a decision that the administrator doesn't agree with. It gunks up the process that might ensue. If a result was truly a consensus, it should not be a problem to find an admin who agrees with it. If you close an AfD as delete, but you thought it was a bad decision and you only closed that way because of the "rough consensus," what are you going to do if an editor comes to you and asks you to reverse your close? You will be caught in a dilemma. You can't fairly represent the "community's position," because you don't agree with it, you could only parrot it. What most admins in this position apparently do is to simply refer the editor to DRV. And that's inefficient.

It would be better if an admin closes who agrees, and especially if the admin has become familiar with the evidence and arguments, and isn't simply rubber-stamping a rough consensus. Then the admin will either defend the close, considering that what the new editor has presented are not new arguments or evidence sufficient to change the close, or will accept the new arguments and reverse the close. DRV may be avoided, either way. If not, we are back to the other option, DRV, with no harm having been done.

"I'm sorry, I can't change the decision, it was the community's decision, not mine," is nothing but frustrating to an editor who sees a decision as wrong. It translates a specific concern with a specific decision into a general frustration with the community. Engaging with the community is difficult, often impossible. Engaging with a specific person who has taken responsibility for a decision and who has the power to reverse it is less likely to be frustrating. Even when one does not agree.

See, I thought this was how we made decisions, I was actually a bit shocked to discover that many admins see "rough consensus" as how we make decisions. We consider rough consensus, but, almost by definition, rough consensus can't make decisions, someone has to make a personal judgment (of whether or not rough consensus exists, if not on the primary issue).

Organizations do, commonly, make decisions by vote; there is then a bureaucracy which implements them, according to fixed rules. We explicitly don't use this kind of system. Except that it keeps creeping in, perhaps because it is what many seem to expect, the individualist model of administrative responsibility, particularly with over 1600 administrators, being pretty unusual in an organization of this size. (The "organization" isn't Wikipedia, as such, as legally defined, it is the "community" which operates Wikipedia under the general consent of the owner, WMF.) --Abd (talk) 13:19, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I may read over the conversation later. I've got a passel of copyright problems waiting for me at WP:CP. Big list today. It will probably consume most of my wikitime. But looking at the meta question: "You acknowledge that an administrator may close "against rough consensus." Okay, who makes the decision that it's okay? Who makes the decision that the "rough consensus" is an informed one? Does it matter? I.e., is it good administrative practice to observe "rough consensus," close that way, without investigation of the underlying evidence and arguments?" Rough consensus requires sound basis in policy. Administrators have been theoretically vetted for familiarity with policies and, as I indicated to Coppertwig, should be able to determine when an argument is outside of policy and when it is simply a different but reasonable interpretation thereof. Going by memory, I think I used an example of widespread sourcing and how many sources that would be. (Bear in mind, please, that I am talking about AfD specifically here, which is why I cite the admin closure guidelines as my guiding document.) I have certainly made closures in AfD where contributors have come to me afterward to argue that numbers were against my closure.

So, that said, my notes here are theoretically and do not apply to any particular situation.

With respect to bans and other community decisions, other standards may prevail and some of what I say with respect to my opinion of the AfD process is not going to apply. Admins sometimes do have greater authority in other consensus cases. A ban, for instance, can effectively be imposed by a single administrator, who places an indefinite block that no admin is willing to undo. In that case, truly, silence implies consent. (Of course, even carping can imply consent as long as those who are carping don't take action.) But the consensus process has built in an allowance for varying weight. WP:CON does address cases such as you posit where "Minority opinions typically reflect genuine concerns, and their (strict) logic may outweigh the "logic" (point of view) of the majority." The deletion guidelines also note that "Consensus is not determined by counting heads, but by looking at strength of argument, and underlying policy (if any). Arguments that contradict policy, are based on opinion rather than fact, or are logically fallacious, are frequently discounted." I could equate the situation you posit to an AfD discussion where somebody argues, "Keep this book. John Steinbeck is a notable author" when the book up for AfD was written by Juan Stinebeck. The keep argument might be true, but given the particulars does not apply. :) It would be discounted, as would responders who say, "OMG! We're not deleting an article on a book by John Steinbeck!" It isn't that consensus is overridden, it's that consensus requires an informed reading...much as a judge overseeing a trial understands what is legally admissible and what is not, even if he is not himself permitted to enter evidence into trial. To bring my argument for handling one's own inclinations into the situation you posit, I think it would be more analogous, say, if somebody !voted to ban based on extensive copyright violations where only one copyvio had occurred, but you believe that the single copyvio was egregious enough to warrant an immediate ban. In that case, I might participate in the discussion and try to persuade others to my view rather than closing. We are all in agreement that copyvios are not allowed and that violators may need to be prevented from participating. The point of interpretation is on when we cross that line. In all cases where an administrator closes against majority, I think he (or she) needs to be prepared to fully explain why.

Remaining with your posited situation, without reading the particulars, I agree that in my perspective an admin is not responsible for the decision if he closes a ban discussion, although I do believe that the administrator is responsible for defending his reading of consensus...which arguments he has included or excluded, based on what policies and governing principles. I also believe that if policy-based objections are raised to that consensus, he may need to reconsider or initiate further action, if the objections are not overriding. When error involves judging policy, I agree that it is the administrator's error. In such a case, the admin should overturn. When error involves finer points of interpretation, I do not; after all, the community wrote (most of) the policies and guidelines in the first place. With respect to AfDs and DRV, I don't agree that admins should only close debates they agree with. I think it is quite possible to begin neutral and end neutral, but still interpret the debate correctly. I am always prepared to defend my interpretation of the debate, and, when it comes to DRV challenges of AfD closures, that's all that matters: "if the closer interpreted the debate incorrectly." (The introduction of significant new information is a separate issue and has nothing to do with the closure of the AfD.)

With respect to your fears of frustrating editors who see decisions as wrong, I think it rather empowers them. They are not appealing to an authority figure; they are part of a community that gives them the ability to make effective change. If they don't like the reading of "widespread coverage in reliable sources", they can join the conversation at WT:N (there is one ongoing). This does not mean that an administrator has a Pilate-like ability to wash his hands. He still needs to be able to say, "This policy/guideline/whatever is the root of this decision." This should be true whether he interprets that policy/guideline/whatever in that same way or not. If the majority is deciding within an informed and reasonable reading of that policy/guideline/whatever, then he should not rule against numbers (imo).

(I do, however, agree with you that engaging with the community can be difficult. Insanely so. For a single example, I have watched WT:CSD go around and around the issue of including products under WP:CSD#A7 without ever reaching consensus. I myself agree that some products should be included there under some circumstances, but until consensus is reached, I will still routinely decline to speedily delete albums under that criterion.)

Getting back to what you said above (where I came in, more or less), I do agree that "indeed, the admin makes the decision." Admins must weigh arguments and evidence, must determine how policy applies, and consider many other factors that make judging consensus a more complex thing than counting votes. They must be prepared to explain why they read consensus as they did and must be prepared to reconsider if somebody points out to them a flaw in their judgment. They need to be prepared to stand by their decisions. However, I think those decisions are bound by the consensus process or by other policies, where clear special circumstances apply. Even in the matter of indef-blocking, where an admin may act alone, we are dealing with consensus—simply a general one that has been encoded in the process without the need for individual debate. If that makes sense. :)

(And I have now spent way longer here than intended in this "brief response" and must go knock out some of those cp problems!) (And please forgive my wikilinking. It's a habit that is hard to break. I find myself doing it even in e-mails. :)) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:27, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

TPILB

Hi Abd,

I removed the cn-tag on Intentionally blank page, but dove in a bit to find out why it was placed. I've read your edit summary regarding the statement being false... and don't find myself agreeing, so it could be I'm not understanding your line of reasoning. Working with the text as used in the article, that is, "This page is intentionally left blank" it would appear that there is a paradox, because it refers to the present. Would the phrase be "This page was intentionally left blank", the past tense you refer to in your edit summary and which I don't find anywhere in the phrase used originally, then it obviously refers to the previous state of the article from my point of view.

Reading this, it does feel like picking a nit, a bit - but still, curious to see how you arrived at the conclusion of it being false.

All the best, Kander (talk) 19:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The question revolves, perhaps, around timing. The most common phrasing is "This page intentionally left blank." There is no verb; however "left blank" refers to the condition of the page before the notice was placed on it. "This page is blank" may seem like a paradox; certainly there is more of a paradox there than without the verb "is." It's the same with "TPILB." But there is another semantic issue. "Blank" refers to the content of the book or document. What if a page has a page number only? Is it a "blank page"? I'd say so. Pages contain or carry the content, they are not the content, and the page numbers are only a pointer to where content is -- or, in this case, is not -- located. Page numbers are metacontent, perhaps. And so is "This page is intentionally left blank." Take the notice off the page, have you removed content from the book? I'd say not. "Blank" refers to content, not to metacontent such as page numbers or left-blank notices. Look closely at a piece of paper. Use a microscope if you have to. It has pattern to it. Is that "content?" Paper varies in brightness, is that "content"?

Have I nailed it in deeply enough? --Abd (talk) 05:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Your wish is my command

Well, mostly: User:Abd/Bayesian regret. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 18:19, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Done. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Edit-War

Hi Abd,

Sorry for engaging in that edit-war, but if you look at the talkpage of Banu Qurayza and Banu Nadir, you might see that me, Str1944, BlessSins etc. have already justified the reverts several times. I don't know how the English Wikipedia handels sockpuppets engaging in editwars in spite of all that talk and the sources given in the talk page; I do know that in the German Wikipedia - my main "working-area" - users like that are blocked indefinitely ASAP. Of course, you can try talking to him. You'll probably understand what's going on then. If I don't revert, others will. Please read those talkpages. Greetings, Devotus (talk) 17:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Because he continued reverting after I intervened, he'll probably be blocked. I gave him an extra warning, to give him an opportunity to revert himself; maybe he'll do that. I'm filing a 3RR report and noticed your message here. I'm not -- yet -- taking sides on the content issue; I noticed the long-term edit warring and that's why I intervened. Since it seemed that you were supporting consensus, I reverted to your version temporarily. That's not a conclusion, and I don't know if it will stick. Do not edit war to preserve the "right version." Rather, follow WP:DR, and tools like page protection can be employed. If your version enjoys consensus, in the long run, it will prevail without anyone violating WP:3RR. I understand why you were doing what you were doing, but don't. I've seen good editors blocked for doing that. Rather, follow the process. In doubt? Ask. I'll help if I can, and so will others. This went on way too long. WP:3RR is a bright line, i.e., except for Biographies of Living Persons, or blatant vandalism, which is not the case here, nobody should cross it. Period. --Abd (talk) 17:43, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I didn't mention it, but I also applied for page protection for the article, which was granted for 48 hours. I've again suggested to Pioneer26 that he promise not to edit war, but, for the moment, he can't, at least not on this article. I have not reviewed all the discussion that took place, but we should do our best to incorporate what is reasonable from this editor's position. (I'm not saying you haven't done that!) Very, very good thing that you stopped reverting when I intervened. I went to 2RR, which I don't like to do, I would not have gone further. Little harm would have been done if the article had been protected into his version, all we'd have had to do is show consensus in Talk and it could have been fixed.... --Abd (talk) 18:30, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The editor in question, Pioneer26, has been indef blocked, a result I didn't expect, though, I must say, he was singularly unresponsive and stubborn. With some trepidation, I've offered to support his unblock if he agrees to not use edit warring to maintain his preferred version. I noticed your prior concern that this user might be a sock of User:Accredited. I'm not aware of actual sock abuse, if he uses one account to edit Banu Nadir and another for Banu Qurayza, that's not sock abuse. But if you know of some abuse, where he used multiple accounts, for example, to avoid 3RR violation, let me know and I'll look into it. --Abd (talk) 00:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I see. I'm not too familiar with the rules in the English Wikipedia, since my main working area is the German one. I thought that was abuse. It doesn't seem to matter now anyway. Thanks for the intervention. Greetings, --Devotus (talk) 16:56, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not necessarily abuse, but it could be. It would depend on account behavior. I've seen complaints arise when a user spiked one account, created a new one, then participated in some of the same discussions as the old account. He didn't double-vote. He wasn't concealing the connection, but, in one case, he didn't disclose it either. (When he was asked, he made the connection explicit.) SSP was filed anyway, which confirmed the totally obvious, and then .... nothing was done except that some users kept in their minds that this guy was a user of puppets, and this probably contributed to a lack of community support when he was indef blocked. Essentially, he didn't violate any policies, with regard to socks, but he was impolitic, he unnecessarily (perhaps) helped those who wanted him out of here. It's advised to disclose socks directly; but sometimes there are reasons not to do this. WP:SOCK pretty well covers it. If one of the accounts is blocked, and you have grounds to think that the other one is a sock, and it continues to edit, then WP:SSP can be filed, and if the evidence is sufficient, the second account can be blocked as well. However, admins are generally reluctant to block an account which isn't being disruptive, sock evidence would have to be very strong in the absence of disruption. --Abd (talk) 19:34, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Brasseye

Hi - I'm not sure that this is actually vandalism, David Blunkett is blind. That's not to say it's needs inclusion just that it might be a good faith addition. _{if you are wondering how I noticed it's because we are sorta interacting on AN/I and I was just checking out the contributions of other users.} --Cameron Scott (talk) 22:52, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

That's okay. I always consider that the edit might be true, and I thought of that. I'd argue that in context it was demeaning, and not encyclopedic. I removed it. Twinkle automatically uses that vandalism edit summary, but it looks to me like I didn't warn the user. I'll agree that it could be considered a good faith edit. There isn't anything to fix, though, as far as I can see. If I'd warned the editor -- looks like I didn't; that might have been deliberate -- I'd apologize. I revert myself about once a day; if I never made any mistakes, I'd be taking far too long with each edit.

(I often look deeper into the recent changes history and find quite a few vandalism edits that have been missed. So it's important, I think, to catch as many as possible, they get buried quickly. I see a fair number of IP edits that are fixing vandalism they discovered that wasn't caught by RC patrol. I think we need a system, at present there isn't a practical way, for example, to go over all the changes made *yesterday* that have not been reviewed -- because there is no way to distinguish what's been looked at from what hasn't.) --Abd (talk) 23:27, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

oh sure I would have removed it as well, it was more of an "For your information" than me asking you to take any action. --Cameron Scott (talk) 23:30, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

Yes, I would like to know how to have a copy of Gyn Talk (Visual Fiction) put into my user space by an administrator who provides that service. Thank you very much. Joseph Levi (talk) 12:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. Look at the category. You're welcome.... --Abd (talk) 03:37, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

GW

Warning noted.[5] I've taken the article off my watch list. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:50, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Boris, that warning wasn't specifically about you, though it was triggered by your comment about Logicus. I don't consider your edit removing the Terminology section as edit warring; I saw it as a BOLD move to cut what you saw as a Gordian knot. On reflection, though, I pointed out that this removal of sourced material was improper, but you did not edit war to maintain your removal, and there is nothing reprehensible about making a bold move that is outside normal practice (i.e., could be considered improper), as a trial. Your comments about Logicus were of concern to me, I'm not sure what your intention was, but I have no trouble maintaining an assumption of good faith regarding them. I might have made a similar comment myself, the speculation about an RfC or a block is quite reasonable, if we look at the history of this article, where a newcomer can show up, make a couple of edits, and be immediately before AN/I as disruptive. Personally, I feel the more editors who are watching that article, the better, but it's also true that we need new faces.

As to my comments about a "cabal," it should be clear that I'm not claiming that a literal cabal exists, only that a constellation of editors has created an appearance of one, and this appearance is damaging Wikipedia. Editors involved in the little edit war today have previously edit warred on the article. What I worry about is that when a skeptic edit wars on that article, a seriously foolish thing to do, he's blocked, quickly, but when certain editors (whose names pop up again and again in the compilations of revert wars that I've made from the GW articles) edit war, nothing happens to them. It's easy to understand. The skeptics tend to act alone or with little cooperation from other editors, so when they edit war, they quickly run up against 3RR. But even when they don't hit 3RR, they've been sanctioned for edit warring. Our process is sanctioning one side in a protracted dispute.

So, anyway, good luck. I certainly did not consider you unwelcome to edit that article, so if you change your mind, I won't chide you. If, however, you've decided that you are too attached -- I don't know your history and I hadn't thought so --, somewhat like Durova doesn't edit articles on certain topics because they are too close to her interests or passions, fine. Enjoy your freedom. I'll see you around. --Abd (talk) 03:28, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you again

Hello, Abd. Thank you for the referral to Citizendium. Also, thank you for the link to Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. Did you read this article that is critical of Wikipedia? Here is the link to that article: http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Critical_views_of_Wikipedia I have a question. Why is it that for Wikipedia art has to be published first through a public institution by means of an exhibition and then published a second time through a written review in a journal? If a biologist has his or her research first published in a journal, does that biologist’s article need to have a review written about it and then published in a second publication in order to meet notability requirements for Wikipedia? If this is not the case for the biologist, then there is a double standard at Wikipedia against artists. Such a double standard can hardly be called neutral. Thank you very much. Joseph Levi (talk) 12:21, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, you aren't looking at this with a full understanding of the issues. Let's start with the criticism. Wikipedia is a wiki, yes, but with a stated purpose: to build an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia isn't necessarily what most wikis create. Specifically, on most wikis, you can simply write off the top of your head, from your personal knowledge, conjecture, what others have told you, etc. And this process can come up with, in fact, material that is better, deeper, and sometimes more accurate than what appears in peer-reviewed publications or the other materials that are considered reliable source for an encyclopedia. There is a continual conflict over this on Wikipedia, between "inclusionists" who, in terms of this wiki thing, would tend toward a free inclusion of whatever edits in good faith contribute, and "deletionists" who tend to have very strict standards for notability and verifiability. This is entirely separate from neutral point of view. You can say anything with a neutral point of view, if you attribute it or frame it properly. "According to so-and-so, the moon is made of green cheese, I heard him say that." You are either making a statement that is absolutely true, or it's deceptive. Whether or not the moon is made of green cheese doesn't matter, for the report is reporting what is known with certainty by the reporter. But that statement wouldn't be allowed in an encyclopedia, even if the topic were notable.

Wikipedia publicity can be a bit misleading, because promotional words are used that are easily misinterpreted. "The encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the sum of all human knowledge."

The words have to be understood specially. "Sum" has two meanings: (1) everything together, (2) summary, precis, the essentials.

Inclusionists would have it mean "sum," generally, deletionists, "essentials." It is quite clear, however, that the intended meaning, to the founder and many others, and in actual practice, it means "essentials," and this is what traditional encyclopedias were.

"Peer-reviewed publication" by a scientist is not the same as, say, an exhibition of an artist. I briefly looked at the article in question and it seems that the artist is something like a teaching assistant at an institution, and that institution put on a show of his work. (This may be wrong in details, but look at the principle.) The peer reviewed publication represents a review of the work by professionals and experts in the field (the review board of the publication), indicating an independent judgment that the work is important. The exhibition may indicate that someone's work is worth looking at, maybe. Maybe not. It might be a favor for a friend or employee, after all, what harm does it cause? It might serve some political purpose. However, if the exhibition is reviewed, say in a newspaper, more than just a report that it happened, but its importance is discussed, this starts to become usable as a source or to establish notability. Read the guidelines, this has all been explained fairly well.

So notability is one issue. There are no fixed or rigid standards, specific notability decisions are made by, essentially, whoever happens to show up to close a deletion discussion, being advised, presumably, by the comments made by editors in the discussion. In marginal cases, it's really impossible to predict what a closing administrator will decide, but it's all reversible. I.e., if something is deleted, the deletion can be appealed, and even the appeal can be appealed -- but it better be good, because the appeal process beyond Deletion Review would probably be the Arbitration Committee, which is a cumbersome process and an ordinary deletion decision would probably be considered improper to review, unless there was some specific and clear abuse in the process (which would ordinarily be worked out by discussion, not by formal arbitration, the AC gets involved, usually, only when simpler processes fail).

In the case of your article, you should understand that even inclusionist editors considered that the article didn't meet Wikipedia standards, and I think that was unanimous, last I looked. (Do I remember a "weak keep" in there?). DGG, whom you more or less attacked as biased, is an inclusionist, generally, though not strictly. He's really a librarian and, I'll note, librarians who would like to keep every book nevertheless must decide to dispose of some. Or (as is the case with Wikipedia) store them in the basement, not as part of the open collection). There are radical inclusionists who have voted Keep on everything. And they have often ended up blocked, because such a vote doesn't really add anything to a discussion, it just adds words, and it's clear that total inclusion is contrary to present policy; so a constant keep vote is like no vote at all, except it takes up time and space. I'm a radical inclusionist, I'd use editorial process to blank or file non-notable material, just as what happens now when an article is "merged." To merge an article, one adds a redirect to it so that looking for the topic directs the reader to another article. When that happens, at the top there is a little line that says "Redirected from [link]" and following that link takes one to the original article, which has generally been blanked except for the redirect tag. But in History, everything that was ever there can be read by anyone. This *is* a wiki, but ... it has this "deletion" thing which doesn't really delete the material, but buries it so that you have to have administrative privileges to read it. (The basement, and you have to have a key to the basement.) That's legally necessary for some material (such a libel or copyright violation), but my kind of inclusionist considers it unnecessary for non-notable material. It's possible that Wikipedia will move toward using only ordinary editorial process to Merge instead of Deleting, but it's also clear that an encyclopedia requires a hierarchy of notability; Wikipedia has a very primitive hierarchy: Notable (and visible) and Not notable (deleted). A more sophisticated, but still simple, hierarchy would have three levels. Notable and easy to see, Not notable but sourced and verifiable, on looser standards than presently used, and requires some explicit action to see (like looking at History), and Deleted, reserved for true trash.

I hope this helps to make it more clear. I don't officially represent Wikipeida and what I've written is simply my opinion based on my experience here. --Abd (talk) 14:09, 15 October 2008

Protection of your user page

I've protected your user page for a week in light of the vandalism there. Let me know if you want me to lift or extend it. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 17:55, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Given the history of that page -- I really hadn't realized how much vandalism of it there had been -- permanent semiprotection (effectively) is a good idea. I've had to ask for that with my Talk page, then I created User talk:Abd/IP to allow IP and newly-registered editors a place to comment that I'll see, at least eventually. That page gets a fair amount of what would be vandalism on my Talk, but it doesn't matter. I can move what is reasonable, at least to some extent, to my Talk page and respond, respond there for something marginal, or just delete without comment, which also shows the editor that I've seen it. If someone else deletes it, I'll still, eventually, see it. Thanks, SI. --Abd (talk) 12:58, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I only just saw this message now (because I was coming over to send substantively the same message as I sent you last time). I'll permanentize it right smartly. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 01:01, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Brewhaha

Actually, the template he was placing on the page wasn't a "this page is protected" template, but a "I need an admin to make an edit to this protected page" template. The main problem seems to be that the user has trouble making himself understood, and becomes frustrated and finds fault in others for it. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 18:26, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Which, of course, alienates those who might otherwise be able to help in some way, etc., etc. --Abd (talk) 01:15, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Twinkle

Are you having fun with Twinkle so far? Simultaneous movement (talk) 07:18, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. More fun than a barrel of monkeys... nah, it is a barrel of monkeys. Recent Changes Patrol. I get to see a lot of different articles, kind of like Random article, but do something useful that's easy, fast, it can be stuffed into a minute or a few minutes. Or, of course, I can spend hours. I also see, useful information, how many IP edits are useful, which is lots of them. And there are some other salutary side effects .... Like learning how to get page protection or blocks quickly, in a situation where blocking is clearly appropriate (blocking for vandalism after four escalating warnings in a month isn't terribly controversial!) Lots of stuff I won't get with focus on process. Now, when I'm working on process, it's kind of like, "Can we finish this now so I can get back to RCP?" Gives me some perspective. --Abd (talk) 14:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

So really, for those who want to see you divert your attention from Wikipedia namespace policy/process debates, the best thing would be to nominate you as an admin. I wonder why no one thought of that before? Strange. I'm sure when the RfA goes up, there will be lots of people saying "I thought he was an admin already." Simultaneous movement (talk) 14:44, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

In my previous RfA, I noted that as far as anything I personally want to do, i.e., my so-called "agenda," admin tools would be next to useless. The only thing marginally useful would be an ability to see deleted articles, something I think any registered editor should be able to do (or it should be a privilege easily granted, like rollback.) I said then and I say now, I don't seek to be an admin. Most things I'd want to do, I can easily do, or, if I had the tools and used them, I'd be in hot water. I.e., I might have been tempted to block User:Yellowbeard or some of the User:Fredrick day socks. But any admin who blocks a user like that, given the history, could be up for an RfC or RfAr. Unless their name is User:Raul654. And even then ... it might happen. Contrary to the expectations of some, my goal is generally to avoid disruption, and instituting process against an entrenched user is highly likely to be disruptive. Both Fd and Yb got blocked because they simply pushed too hard and too far. Yb might have been surprised, but Fd is sitting happy, I'm sure. For a while. So, poco a poco, we go far. Others sometimes think they have forever to get away with whatever they like, I know I've only got maybe twenty years, if that. Let's see ... what can be done in twenty years? --Abd (talk) 15:00, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

See Zen of Wikipedia. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 15:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Yellowbeard is cool; he is the kind of person we need to have around after IRV is implemented to be the enforcer who prevents people from trying to game the system to their unfair advantage. After all, IRV, like any election process, is liable to abuse. Maybe an appointment to the Federal Election Commission is in order? Time to write to Barack Obama about that one...

Fredrick day is not bad; he's just a little misguided at times. He's a bit like a next-door neighbor who gets mad at you for something and decides to retaliate by calling in an anonymous complaint to the municipality about your privacy fenced-in back lawn being an inch higher than regulations. Such informants are crucial to effective enforcement of rules in our society. There's also no way to keep him off Wikipedia, and in fact he can even maintain admin accounts if he wishes, due to the fungible nature of his IP addresses. About the only thing that can be enforced against him is topic bans, but he doesn't seem to cause trouble related to any particular articles, and when he does, the connection typically isn't made to him until it's too late (e.g. after the AfD is already over). Fortunately, there are not large numbers of Wikipedians with such expansive amounts of free time who are willing to adopt such tactics. Simultaneous movement (talk) 15:38, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Everybody is cool, within their natural sphere. Yellowbeard was largely harmless, once he was identified as the SPA he was. Fredrick day, though, was alienating droves of editors. Some of them, perhaps, needed to be restrained, and clearly Fd did some good work. My opinion has been that Fd was a bad hand account, the real puppet master is much older and is, as he has claimed, influential. I have some grounds for specific suspicion, but ... to simply make the charge would be disruptive, obviously; as they say, if you are going to shoot the King, don't miss. The evidence is statistical, but, if I get it right, it will be overwhelming. And if I don't, you'll never see it. It takes some fairly sophisticated work, and I'm not an expert statistician, but, before I present anything, it will be reviewed by those who are. (and would probably first go to a checkuser). I'm not even convinced that anything should be done, so it tends to go on the back burner until Fd vandalizes my pages again or otherwise calls my attention to it. Each time he does that, I get closer. I'm not sure why he does it. Likes to live dangerously? To prove that he can do whatever he pleases? That's the criminal mind, and it eventually gets them in trouble, for the opposition can make lots of mistakes and only has to get it right once, whereas the criminal must get it right every time. The longer he gets away with it, the more convinced he gets he's bullet-proof, until.... A truly devious and smart criminal wouldn't take such chances, it takes a certain kind of insanity. (Actually, "criminal" and "insane" are pretty close, for we are social creatures, deep down, so when we cheat others, we are cheating ourselves, in the long run. It's a kind of addiction. Short-term gain, long-term loss.) --Abd (talk) 15:57, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Why?

Why is IRV getting all the attention, rather than DP? Consider, the Facebook liquid democracy group has 5 members, while the IRV Facebook groups have hundreds of members. Oh, and they are also putting measures on the ballot, getting them passed, etc. and they have an advocacy organization with a lot of money and a lot of high-profile leaders, e.g. Bill Redpath, John B. Anderson, etc. What's up with that? DP is obviously the better system. Arrow's theorem doesn't apply, and it doesn't have the problems of bundling (public choice), gerrymandering, nor the issues that occur under single transferable vote, in which, if you have a huge legislature (e.g. hundreds of members), it's pretty hard to make an informed independent decision on which 500 candidates to vote for. It's a very simple system - you just pick a proxy and you're done. Simultaneous movement (talk) 02:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

What better time than now...

...to begin making minor edits to every new page I've ever created that doesn't have any contributions from other users? I'd particularly hate to see all the Portal:Libertarianism subpages lost, as that would make it go completely back to being empty. Simultaneous movement (talk) 03:56, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Global warming terminology section

Having seen the discussion on the subpage, I apologize for my slightly snippy edit summary which might have appeared to be directed at you personally. ... Kenosis (talk) 15:45, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I did not, in fact, take it personally. I simply thought that you had not been following the subpage discussion and replaced the "consensus" version (no implication is made that this is final) with what you preferred, which would ordinarily be reasonable. I've asked you to revert yourself and then to participate on the subpage, if you disagree with what's there. My goal is to end the recurring edit warring over this section, first, then, more ambitiously, on the rest of the page. My asking you to revert yourself is asking you to signal that you respect consensus and consensus process; it does not prejudice your right to future action. A version which enjoys wider consensus will always be easier to maintain. A version which essentially shuts out skeptics will guarantee that skeptics will continue to find the article and attempt to push it to a version they consider more fair, to edit war over this, etc., etc. Blocking them is damaging to the project; it's better to fairly seek consensus with them, and reserve blocking for truly disruptive editors, rather than the so-called "civil POV-pushers," whom we should encourage (and restrain in a manner that is not only civil but welcoming.) I did not create the subpage, it was created by Skyemoor partly as a justification for his 2RR removal of the entire section, but it was quite a good idea. It should be, in effect, a standing RfC on the Terminology section, so that debate over the Terminology section is confined and so that it accumulates rather than just washing over the article and the regular Talk page like a storm tide, to be repeated over and over. --Abd (talk) 16:03, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Sure, definitely agreed about the edit warring part, and most everything else you say here. I still think the currently preferred version on the Terminology subpage is a whitewash that implicitly validates the position of many GW denialists. SBHB is on the GW talk page at present. Maybe let's see what he does; or feel free to revert my last edit if you feel strongly about what's developed on that working-group page. I'll drop a note there as soon as I have a chance. ... Kenosis (talk) 16:09, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Kenosis, the comment about "whitewash" betrays a POV, that something is or should be black or blackened. I'll go ahead and revert, I suppose, but I'm doing so to support consensus, and I would be better for you to do it, then to advocate your position on the working page. I have a strong opinion that the working version enjoys wider consensus than what you restored, and that's obvious from the working page. The only dissent has been KDP (who was rather vague about it) and yourself. I'm a "believer" in global warming, i.e., I generally trust what I see as the scientific consensus; but I'm an even greater believer in the power of true consensus, which is more likely to be NPOV than anything which enjoys lesser support. This does not mean whitewashing. It means being accurate as to the shade of grey that a thing is, preferable as measured, either by reliable source, or by our consensus. "Rough consensus" works, to a degree, but if we stop there, we set up conditions for endless -- and unnecessary -- edit warring, when we exclude notable positions. The "position" here is as to spin. Spin is optional. Skeptics object to spin that denigrates their position. Sometimes, then, the removal of such spin is seen as favoring their position, which isn't accurate. It only favors them in the sense that it removes a spin against them. Spin implies movement: if we achieve a stable version, such that the skeptics confine their "POV-pushing" to elsewhere, but the "believers" also see it as accurate or at least acceptable, then we've probably removed the spin. It can be hard to see spin in favor of one's own POV, it can seem like the plain truth. That's why we need skeptics to participate in the article, and to welcome them as well as educating them so that they too will work for NPOV. It's subversive, Kenosis. I happen to believe that NPOV favors The Truth (TM). If we all strive for NPOV, we will, collectively, discover The Truth. Another way I like to say this is:

If we can, at the same time, see something from more than one point of view, we get Depth perception. --Abd (talk) 17:08, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

RE "betrays a POV" : Hah! I guess that depends on what you mean by a POV. My POV, as you call it, is that anthropogenic global warming, vis-a-vis historical cycles that were not anthropogenc, is a fact of pressing importance in today's world. By the standard of WP:NPOV, that's not a POV, but is giving due weight to the reliable sources regarding a statement of fact that even today is still resisted by numerous persons, each for their own reasons. ... Kenosis (talk) 17:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a POV, it involves complex judgments, not simply "facts." "pressing importance," for example, requires assumptions about not only facts and theories and conclusions, but also goals that may not be shared. WP:UNDUE involves, again, complex judgments, and our real standard for it is consensus. Absolutely, calling AGW a "theory" can give undue weight to skepticism, but it is, in fact a hypothesis backed up by theory and enjoying general consensus, which is why it can often be presented as if it were a fact in an encyclopedia; yet, when push comes to shove, it is crucial to distinguish between (1) facts -- which are reports of direct experience, strictly, and to be strict should be attributed, (2) hypotheses and theories which organize facts and lead to predictions, and (3) definitions, which are socially determined. In any case, it is your opinion that your view is NPOV. That's a POV. This is Semantics, and understanding these distinctions can be very important if our goal is maximizing consensus, which it should be.

Understand that, as to my own POV on the topic of global warming, I agree with you. But I also think that if we are to effectively deal with the problem, we will need to generate a wide social consensus, in the real world, and this requires respecting all notable POVs, or else we will remain divided. Consensus is powerful. Division only benefits politicians and parasites who exploit it for their own purposes. To address the problem, we need much more than mere majority; the majority imposing its views on a minority creates extra motivation for the minority, thus they remain more or less balanced; this situation remains until the minority is maximally motivated or is convinced. They will never be convinced by rejection, don't you resent it when you are made to shut up because someone with power makes it happen? They might be overpowered if, even when maximally motivated, they can't take any action, but this still results in a society that is weaker than it would otherwise be.

With the article, this was my purpose in taking on the Terminology section. If we can't agree on what global warming is, how can we agree on an article about it? The first question, in reality, would be whether or not global warming is taking place, not what is causing it. By linking cause with effect, we complicate the debate, and complicating debate is a formula for continuing it. --Abd (talk) 18:22, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

OK. You've made your POV clear. True that the words "of pressing importance" are a POV involving additional judgment(s). Anthropogenic climate change, today, is a fact, not a POV. Time for me to move on. Take care. ... Kenosis (talk) 18:47, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it's a fact, i.e., that The Truth is that human activity is warming the planet. However, that's my own conclusion, my POV, from reviewing the evidence I've seen, as well as from whom I choose to trust. Others come to different conclusions. "Science" is not about conclusions, though, it's about process, and science doesn't make conclusions, except provisionally. Scientists, some of them, come to conclusions, but good research reports are scrupulously careful about separating observations and experimental results from hypotheses and conclusions. A peer-reviewed review of the literature may well state a scientific consensus, for example, but it will do so as a compendium of opinion, of conclusions, and it will do so accurately and measurably. It is one thing to state, as an example made up, that "100% of the authors of all peer-reviewed research papers on the subject in independent publications concluded that human activity is causing the present global warming," which could be summarized as "the scientific consensus is that the present global warming is anthropogenic." It is another to state "The present global warming is anthropogenic." The former (given the paper I made up, which might exist, possibly with some other number than 100%) is neutral presentation of a fact supported by reliable source, verifiable by anyone, including skeptics, the latter is a conclusion and possibly POV if there is any notable dissent. Given that the former statement may be acceptable to a skeptic, and the latter not, we are more likely to find wide consensus on the former, less likely on the latter, and insisting on the latter is likely to lead to precisely what we've seen for a long time with the GW articles, with edit warring being used to insist upon "the NPOV version." WP:NPOV does not fully confront this problem, it implies that there is a single view which is NPOV. I haven't researched the history of this, but semantically that's incorrect. Regardless, we have mechanisms for making the judgments, and they don't include edit warring and they do include discovery and negotiation of consensus, which is what WP:DR is about. --Abd (talk) 19:36, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Apparently you've completely missed the point. AGW is not a political concept - its a scientific one. It neither needs nor requires a social consensus in any way or form. Responses to or lack thereof on AGW in the real world is the other hand a political and social issue. And while it would be nice if the general public where in sync with the scientific opinion - this isn't what a science article is about, nor what it should be about. Please try to separate the two sphere's (ie. social/political and scientific) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:03, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Apparently you don't understand what I write. If I'm brief, will it help? Probably not! AGW is a clearly defined concept, definable without reference to politics at all, hence I agree it is not a political concept and wonder that you'd think otherwise. There are then two issues, logically, questions for research and conclusion. Is there presently a warming trend? And, if there is, is it caused (primarily or significantly) by human activity? Both of those are scientific questions, not political ones, but they have strong political implications and people who are conclusion-driven will have high incentive to push for particular answers. And that's quite a generic statement: people who have concluded that GW is a very serious threat to our society may be motivated to nail down the underpinnings of the conclusion, just as those who consider that measures to avert global warming will harm society (or their own personal interests) may be motivated to weaken the underpinnings. Our task as encyclopedists is to avoid spinning in accordance with any of these POVs but to create neutral text that will enjoy consensus, especially from the reasonable among the various camps. I happen to trust that readers will usually make the "true" conclusions from neutral text, text that follows from our policies of WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE, as interpreted by editorial consensus, we do not need to lead them by the nose. If we allow in the text that global warming, in theory, might not be anthropogenic (while at the same time noting that overwhelming scientific consensus, at present, is that it is), they are not going to go "Aha! See! It's just a theory!"

That the present GW is anthropogenic is, in fact, a hypothesis which is considered by scientific consensus to best explain the observations, over known alternatives, and it is backed by theory that explains how it could be causing the warming. And, this is crucial: reasonable skeptics will acknowledge this. If they are going to disagree, they will disagree specifically, and they have many reasonable choices. The mostly likely basis for agreement, though, is that there is, in fact, a broad scientific consensus, but it's wrong. And that happens, sometimes, I've seen it in recent times. We make it easier to (later) overcome a wrong scientific consensus, should that be the case, by becoming quite clear about the nature of the consensus, and especially about exceptions to it. So a skeptic might want us to be very careful to note whatever scientific dissent exists, and that is proper. Sometimes there is an apparent consensus which has been amplified by selective publication, political considerations, a host of factors that can make the normal scientific process break down, usually in the name of "public interest." How much that is happening at this time, I have no opinion. But, on important issues, it tends to happen both with correct theory and with incorrect: conflicting research gets suppressed, doesn't get funded, authors lose the respect of their peers, etc., if they buck the majority. We can sidestep all these issues by being careful about sources, by including, in an appropriate way, fringe opinion that is notable, by attributing conclusions either to specific sources or to "general consensus" if that consensus isn't disputed, etc. (Note that disputing the consensus conclusion as wrong isn't the same as disputing that the consensus exists. Advocates of fringe POV usually know that it's fringe! or, at least, minority.)

This is about our process here. And it is why it is so important that we welcome editors with fringe POV, because they will help us to improve our neutrality and maintain it. We must make them part of the team, not reject them out of hand. If we truly follow civility guidelines and proper dispute resolution, instead of relying on bald reversion and blocking, this is what we will get, I consider it quite reliable. I've seen, among the editors who have worked, long-term, to maintain this article, a certain cynicism, a weary expectation that they will have to roll that boulder up the mountain again and again. That's born of being content with being in the majority, and not seeking ever-broader consensus; if the latter is done, and continues, the article will become easier and easier to maintain. And not at the expense of quality. But it will take work. --Abd (talk) 20:40, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

As usual you drown out everything with such lenghty texts, with so many different threads and strange diversions from the topic, that people hardly bother. I almost didn't. I'll just point out two things, and give a few comments:

1. Current climatic warming is fact. (hard data)
2. Please read up on the difference between theory and hypothesis. (AGW is theory - not hypothesis).

And then note that once more you confuse political response with science, they are disseparate. (completely). And finally you've apparently misunderstood WP:NPOV severely. NPOV is about balance between weighted arguments - not the middle way. And a final comment: We are writing an encyclopedic article here - not something that is supposed to convince people either way - and it is most certainly not out task to consider how we lull people better into accepting things. Because that is blatant POV. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:51, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Kim, this is my Talk page. There is no diversion from the topic there, only coverage of aspects that you apparently don't understand and therefore have little patience for. You are welcome not to "bother," you aren't obligated to read anything here, or anywhere, for that matter, with little exception.

When commenting on arrogance [6], don't you think your comment here (about understanding or non-understanding) in light of this, is kinda ironic? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:30, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not disputing warming. It appears that some do. If that opinion is notable, the article should cover it. In fact, the main topic of the article should be, first of all, a general discussion of global warming in all times (what causes it or could cause it), and then a discussion of the evidence that it's happening (or not). If it is a "fact," surely neutral presentation of reliable source will show that. This hasn't been my focus so far, because I simply started working on the definition -- and that's been hard enough, what with a strange insistence that causation should be part of the definition, which isn't helpful. If it turns out that global warming is caused by aliens with their hand on the thermostat, would this mean that it wasn't "global warming." Or if it turns out that some as-yet-understood effect of solar activity, with its hysteresis, has been the main cause of global warming, again, would it not be "global warming." That's quite what would be the case if anthropogenesis is part of the definition, as distinct from an explanation of today's relevance for the topic.

That's correct. We are writing an article that isn't supposed to convince people. I'd agree about lulling people, so ... why would you think you are correcting me by saying that? It's accurate that there is a scientific consensus that there is presently global warming, that anthropogenesis is a hypothesized cause of global warming, accepted, again, by scientific consensus, and that there are known mechanisms ("theories") why this might be predictable and thus possibly controllable, all that, again broadly accepted. So why would stating this be a "whitewash"? --Abd (talk) 21:09, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Comment only to the last section.. As for why: Your statement: "The mostly likely basis for agreement, though, is that there is, in fact, a broad scientific consensus, but it's wrong. And that happens, sometimes, I've seen it in recent times. We make it easier to (later) overcome a wrong scientific consensus, should that be the case, by becoming quite clear about the nature of the consensus, and especially about exceptions to it." is quite specifically ignoring the weight of sources, and argues for deliberate watering down - so that "a later consensus" will be easier met. Thats a blatant violation of WP:NPOV. As an encyclopedia, we describe what is known/thought today by the experts we do not water things down, so that we can catch ourselves if this happens to be overthrown tomorrow. If there are notable alternatives (not fringe ones, we describe these according to the weight of their inclusion in the literature. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:38, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Please note that WP:FRINGE specifically comments on this.. (last section, starting with "Wikipedia is also not a crystal ball"). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:03, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

First of all, to interpret what I'm writing as suggesting a violation of WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE is offensive. When I've written "as appropriate" it means that all the relevant policies are followed. Secondly, there is no single NPOV text. How do we know that selective presentation of sources hasn't created some spin? It is not some later consensus that we aim for, but a present one. I suggest a careful and complete reading of WP:NPOV. There is a lot in there that seems to have been neglected. "We describe them according to the weight of their inclusion in the literature." How is this done? Do we take the number of pages reflecting one POV and the number of pages reflecting the other, divide up our text according to POV represented, and make sure that the ratios are the same? The fact is that if we have actually achieved NPOV text by a process which included fringe editors, we won't have to do this, because none of the text will favor some POV, in absolute terms such that one could assign itg to one POV or another. The problem is that NPOV text can be selected that favors a POV, that's what spin doctors are good at, and WP:NPOV discusses this. Everyone, except perhaps for isolated die-hard holdouts, on both sides, will have accepted a consensus text as NPOV, as acceptable, not only in terms of raw NPOV, but also in terms of spin. Nobody is suggesting that you or anyone else accept biased text because it will pacify someone else. That it appears you think so is, frankly, part of the problem, Kim. It leads you (1) to see NPOV text as being biased, and (2) to use bald or rationalized edit warring as a means of maintaining the article, and I've seen this from you more than once. Stop it. I probably won't continue trying to explain this to you, it seems to be going nowhere. If you think we have a dispute, follow WP:DR, please. --Abd (talk) 23:15, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

It may surprise to you, but there are actually reliable sources that have as their only goal to assess the literature on large and complex scientific topics such as this. They are called assessment reports, and we have several for global warming: IPCC, US CCSP, NAS etc. And we have numerous notable and reliable scientific organizations that verify for us, whether these assessment reports are neutral and accurate descriptions of the current scientific state of the moving target (see Scientific opinion on climate change), not to mention expert panels put down by governments to verify the accuracy and merit of their conclusions (such as this [7]). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:43, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

No, not a surprise at all. I knew that. Why would you think I didn't? --Abd (talk) 00:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Because then your question in the above about weight in literature was completely pointless and a waste of time. And pardon me for not assuming that. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:49, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I didn't notice that I asked a question about weight in literature that wasn't a rhetorical one. If we report from reliable source and attribute, that's NPOV. Anyway, go waste someone else's time, I don't see you as being collaborative. We have specific edits to deal with, and you are continuing to use bald reverts, so ... see you around. --Abd (talk) 00:53, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I hate to break your egg - but you are now up to two reverts (vs. my single one), but i guess that you aren't using "bald reverts" (apparently since its you). And on top using a misleading revert text[8]. Both Kenosis, Skyemore and I have objected (with criticism). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Nope. I did not restore identical content to a previous revision, until the most recent. You did. (Objection was made to unsourced content, source was supplied by me. That's not a revert. There is, in fact, no source for parallel language in the version you restored.) One more point. You cite Kenosis. Kenosis specifically accepted, above, replacement of Version 3 with the working version. When he originally reverted it back, he had not read the history of the working version. So my restoration of the working version, with source in response to criticism of it being unsourced, wasn't a "revert" in the meaning of WP:3RR. My next reversion, of your reversion, was.

We could debate whether or not discussion was adequate or addressed the issues. Not here. Go away, continued posting here by you will be considered harassment. --Abd (talk) 01:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

It's seldom advisable to say that for a number of reasons (more at WP:UP#OWN and elsewhere). If you really think Kim is harassing you, it's best to post a notice at an appropriate noticeboard such as WP:ANI, WP:WQA or whatever is appropriate so that outside parties can judge and take appropriate action. That said, it's probably in Kim's best interest not to engage you further. This would be a good time for a Rodney King moment. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Advice noted and taken as in good faith. I agree, except that, no, it's not best to go to a noticeboard first. It's best to ask the user to desist. Only if the request is disregarded would further steps be warranted. There is no offense to decorum unless there has been warning and disregard. KDP has done nothing -- at least not here -- that would warrant a report to a noticeboard. (I've seen users blocked for harassment where the editor never requested that the alleged harassing behavior stop, and it wasn't clear that the behavior was intended to harass. Not good.) --Abd (talk) 02:20, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Abd. I read the above discussion with interest. I think you have some very good points. Would it be OK if I display two quotes by you on my userpage? Specifically: "...the comment about "whitewash" betrays a POV, that something is or should be black or blackened. ... Skeptics object to spin that denigrates their position. Sometimes, then, the removal of such spin is seen as favoring their position, which isn't accurate." [9] and "If a decision has supposedly been made "by the community," with whom do you discuss it?"[10]. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Coppertwig! Good to see you here, y'ol dang logical positivist! ;-) I didn't mean to start a whole long thread on Abd's userpage, but only to politely apologize to Abd for my somewhat snippy edit summary. I have no objection, though, to your quoting something from an exchange in which I've been unexpectedly involved. Abd, how 'bout you? Incidentally, this conversation reminds me of Truth#Constructivist_theory and Truth#Consensus_theory (the latter actually a subset of the former, though often taken as separate). To me it's an extremely interesting interplay among the four or five theories of truth, and also how they play out on the wiki. Which is in part why I've no problem with agreeing to disagree with Abd. Y'all take care now, OK? ... Kenosis (talk) 02:08, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the friendly greeting, Kenosis! I didn't know I was a logical positivist! That may be. What kind of positivist, (if any), are you? To be honest, I don't remember where I've run into you before, but ... hi!! ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 22:09, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad somebody got something out of it! The classic answer to the question about the community is that you take it back to the community, but this is (1) relatively disruptive, it's much easier and more efficient to communicate with one person and, in fact, one person had to actually make the decision even if it was only that a consensus existed. My claim is that this is spurious; a claim of consensus supports a decision but doesn't actually make it, but, of course, if a real consensus exists the difference is moot. (2) It's usually not the same group that displayed the original consensus, that group may never exist again, composition shifts. For example, in the matter that led to my block, Fritzpoll eventually took responsibility for "closing" the discussion that topic banned Wilhelmina Will. But his position was that he could not reverse it himself, since it had supposedly been made by consensus. Did he take it back to the noticeboard where the decision had been made? No. The decision was made (actually, it wasn't made, but that's another point) at AN/I. He took it to AN. He could have gone to AN/I, but, truly, we can't go back to the same group that participated in the original consensus, it's shifted. But we can go to the closing admin (or other closer) and ask for explanations, reversal of a decision, consideration of new evidence, all that. And if we have good reason for a change, and if the closer takes responsibility, we may be able to reverse poor decisions with little fuss, and that's efficient, fair, and all the rest. And when it fails, then we can go to a noticeboard or use WP:DR process. For example, with Fritzpoll, after he declined to reverse, my next step would have been what he later said should have been done: not a report on a noticeboard, but the finding of a third opinion. This is how WP process is supposed to work, but, increasingly, I find it neglected and not even understood. Ah, well, back to vandalism patrol. It's so much easier, and seeing that the majority of IP edits are good edits or at least reasonable is nice. And then AHA! Got you! Begone, vandalism -- and sometimes, Begone, vandal! (I don't need admin tools, all I need to do is ask in the right place at the right time.) --Abd (talk) 01:57, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

In case it wasn't clear, yes, you can quote me. If I later change my mind, I then get to argue with myself. --Abd (talk) 02:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

LOL!!! ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 22:09, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

My English

You said I have goog way to speak English fluently, Yes I can speak it fluently I just can't use the Englsih structures properly. What you mean by I can do it. Do I have to study alot of books, magazine, web search to make my English better? People said once when I understand a dialogue, the better helps me to use English.--Freewayguy 03:10, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

• my mom/dad thinks if I don't think I can do it, I'm not trying enough, you agree?--Freewayguy 03:11, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, not exactly. You won't get better written English by trying harder. You will get it by lots of exposure to written English. Studying, fine, if you have a subject you want to study. Otherwise, read a lot. Read anything that is well-written, formal English. Watching TV won't do it, or not very much. Watching TV will help you to understand and speak English, but not to read it.

Dialog sometimes is written to reflect common usage, which is sometimes poor.

The secret to good spelling is to have seen the words, written, a lot. When you have done this enough, if you look at a misspelled word, it won't look right, you'll have a feeling about it. You can then try various spellings until it looks right! Knowing the "rules" -- which for English have so many exceptions -- can help find the right spelling, but, because of all the exceptions, that's not how good spellers do it.

So, if by "not trying enough," they mean, "not reading enough," they are right. But that doesn't have to be "trying." It can be fun. Read about things that interest you. Read astronomy books, magazines, articles, on-line web sites, there is lots of material that should be interesting to you. Read science fiction, if you like it. Just read, read, read! It will help you in many ways. Read newspapers, that will not only help you learn the language well, but also you'll learn a lot about what's going on in the world.

One more thing about "trying harder." There is one kind of "trying harder" that you can do, which will help. When you write, read it over carefully, before saving it. Make sure it looks right to you. You will make fewer mistakes. For example, in what you wrote above, read it over. My edit program (Firefox) has a number of words underlined in red. Can you spell them correctly? (The third one might be a little tricky. Can you find it in a dictionary? Hint: it's two words.)

goog Englsih alot

Then there are usages. This is harder.

You said I have goog way to speak English fluently

• You said that I have a good way ... [and this should have a period after it, not a comma. You capitalized Yes, so you probably knew this, just didn't do it, this is an example where trying harder could make a difference.

Yes I can speak it fluently I just can't ...

• Yes, I can speak it fluently, I just can't ... [the commas are necessary for good writing. In clear speech, there would be short pauses there.]

What you mean by I can do it.

• What do you mean by "You can do it"? [or]
• What do you mean by saying that I can do it?

Do I have to study alot of books, magazine, web search to ...

• Do I have to study a lot of books and magazines, or do web searches, to .... [or search the web to ...]

People said once when I understand a dialogue, the better helps me to use English.

• People have said to me that when I understand dialogue, it helps me to better use English. [What's "the better?" In the sentence structure, it's the subject of the sentence, but clearly you intended to mean that understanding dialogue helps you to better understand the language. "A dialogue" could also have been used, but surely they meant more than one, they meant dialogue in general. It's true, but for writing skills, dialogue isn't so helpful as reading.]

my mom/dad thinks if I don't think I can do it, I'm not trying enough, you agree?

• My mom and dad think that if I don't think I can do it, I'm not trying enough, do you agree? [or "hard enough." Perhaps your parents think you are quite trying enough. Do you understand the joke? "Trying" also means "difficult to deal with.")

(On a deeper level, your "thinking" might be a problem, i.e., that you think you cannot do it could stop you from doing it, but if that's the case, the solution isn't to try harder. (What happens when you try harder to do something impossible?) It's to stop thinking that way! You can do it. You probably will do it, if you read enough. It takes time, it happens slowly. But it might happen much quicker than you think, if you simply read a lot. That's not hard. It's actually easy. Old saying: don't try harder, try smarter.)

One more thing: you tend to drop the connecting words that keep everything in order. "I don't think that I can do it." In speech, that's often done. It can be done sometimes in writing, but I'd highly recommend that you go, first, for completeness. Knowing what conjunctions, etc., can be dropped, and still remain clear style, is much more difficult. You will learn some of this from study, but study isn't nearly as helpful if you don't have a lot of background with reading. I taught myself Arabic; I tried many times to study the grammar, and it was impossible to retain it. So I memorized a lot of text (Qur'an). Then I could understand the grammar books!

Good luck. --Abd (talk) 13:34, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Re low-carb diet & Prostate cancer

Re your post on the low carb page, in lab tests on mice, prostate tumors grow slower with a no-carbohydrate diet.

• No-Carb Diet May Curb Prostate Cancer
• Freedland SJ, Mavropoulos J, Wang A, Darshan M, Demark-Wahnefried W, Aronson WJ, Cohen P, Hwang D, Peterson B, Fields T, Pizzo SV, Isaacs WB. "Carbohydrate restriction, prostate cancer growth, and the insulin-like growth factor axis". Prostate. 2008 Jan 1;68(1):11-9. doi:10.1002/pros.20683. PMID 17999389. post by Phenylalanine 11:11, 25 October 2008.

Yes, thanks. I have, shall we say, a personal interest in this, since I have Stage I prostate cancer. The theory behind this is fairly solid; I'm on a VLC diet, which was my preference anyway for blood lipid balance. --Abd (talk) 12:55, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, check this out: http://www1.wfubmc.edu/LIFT Regards, Phenylalanine (talk) 13:08, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I may have quite a small tumor, of twelve samples, 10% of one sample was malignant, the rest was normal. It's considered reasonable treatment at this point to do nothing. "Watchful waiting." The only symptom I had was a mildly elevated PSA. PSA continues to rise slowly. As I'm 64, it's a pretty good shot that if nothing is done, I'll die of something else than cancer. On the other hand, I'm on a ketogenic diet and my blood lipids, though with high total cholesterol (~350), show good HDL ratios, low triglycerides, and I have low CRP (probably a better measure of the condition of the arteries than cholesterol, plus a cardiac CAT scan showed a calcium score of 25th percentile for my age -- that's good --, and last year I had a stress test with no problems.) (So I'm not likely to keel over from a heart attack, in spite of all the sat fat I eat.) I was told, before we had much information on PSA velocity, that the cancer wouldn't break out of the capsule for an estimated ten years, on average. And then they could "rescue" me with heavy-duty treatment. Not fun. But neither is total removal of the prostate. I'm going to be consulting a surgeon who does something unusual: partial resection of the prostate, trans-penile. Might work. Might not. However, one advantage of doing nothing, is that by the time it becomes truly dangerous, there will likely be much better treatments, the above points to a possibility, one of many. So the main thing the diagnosis did for me was to, shall we say, focus my attention a bit. A low-carb diet is no longer an option for me, as it was before, it's now a necessity. Whether or not this will actually slow down the tumor may depend on the luck of the draw. That's one of the problems with cancer, no two developed cancers are exactly alike. --Abd (talk) 20:03, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Ping

You have mail Fritzpoll (talk) 11:04, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

you have another 1/3 of an e-mail Fritzpoll (talk) 17:51, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Domain host still down. Grrrr..... --Abd (talk) 19:36, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Global warming

The cn tag isn't used to dispute common knowledge or widely published reports which are explicitly named in dozens of sources, from publications to news reports. It's used to tag content that could be suspect, false, POV, or just erroneous. If you need further guidance on how this tag is used contrary to the way you are using it, I would be happy to help. Your removal of the specific source that cites this information as "not specific" in the edit summary is a joke and cannot be taken seriously by any rational person. Viriditas (talk) 22:49, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

To source something from a Wikipedia article is "serious"? Now, there was a problem with my use. The section is perhaps summary style from the main article with more detail. Sections in summary style (which includes article leads) should not need sources at all. But if you are going to have a source, it shouldn't be an entire source. Or how about, as a source, the Library of Congress. I.e., page numbers or the like? The tag was not being used to "dispute" anything. It was asking for a source where there was none. And the supposed fact being sourced is not common knowledge, and is not supported by the IPCC report. Rather, it seems that it exists more in the popular press, or in peripheral publications. But my purpose in using the cn tag was not to dispute, just to find out what sources existed and were the basis for the text.

No. Not a joke, Viriditas. Maybe in error in some way, but not a joke. Rude, that comment was. --Abd (talk) 00:58, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I read what is at Template:Fact which is what the cn tag redirects to. I used it correctly. If I thought the information was clearly wrong, I'd have just taken it out. But the problem is that there is conflicting material in sources.... Otherwise I would have just added a ref myself -- but, later, I realized the problem that this section should be summarizing what is in the other article, and that sources would be there. That's a reason to remove the tag, unless the info is not sourced in the other article. Your description of the use of a cn tag isn't correct. This template is used in articles to identify sentences or short passages which need an inline citation Pretty simple, really. --Abd (talk) 01:20, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I apologize for being rude, but your blanket revert was ruder than my comment, and I responded in kind. Viriditas (talk) 08:15, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I apologize for any unintended rudeness. From my memory, I can't fathom what was rude about it. "Blanket revert" would presumably refer to a removal of a lot of text. Okay, this is the first diff. It consisted solely of placing a cn tag on a fact with no source shown in-line. If if in error, the action wasn't rude. And certainly it wasn't rude to you, Viriditas. The edit summary was this: (→Environmental: cn tag unsourced statement about malaria and dengue fever). The statement was unsourced.

You removed the tag with (→Environmental: This is not how the cn tag is used) I considered that incorrect, but not rude, per se. It was a proper use of a cn tag, which is a relatively harmless action, and only disruptive if repetitively inserted after sources have been provided. KimDabelsteinPetersen, in fact, supplied a source, and properly removed the cn tag, having made a good faith effort to provide a source. Actually, two were provided. There is still some controversy in Talk over whether or not the text properly reflects what is in the source, but to protest this with a cn tag would be a less proper use. There is also the issue that this text should be a summary of what is in the main article covering the section, in which case no sources are needed, because the facts would be sourced in that article.

You provided a source, on the face. But this was it: <ref>See also: 2007-2008 [[Human Development Report]]</ref>. That is not a source, but a footnote, a See Also. This refers to an article on Wikipedia, and such cannot be used as sources -- an exception being that the sources for statements in a summary section can be in the article summarized, but this isn't done with a footnote, it's done with a See also template, whatever it's called, at the top of the section. There was a specific fact which was cn tagged. There was no specific reference to a source for that fact. This is why I reverted, not a blanket reversion, but a very simple one for a very specific reason. I wasn't quite sure what you were doing with that footnote, and I don't think any other editor saw it as belonging there. But with a little more information in it, certainly it could be proper.

So I reverted your removal of the tag with (Undid revision 247889961 by Viriditas (talk)please discuss this in Talk. The source provided isn't specific.) Again, correct or not, I don't see this as rude, but as, in fact, standard procedure. I notice that you have a 1RR limitation, self-imposed. So do I, and I very rarely go beyond that. What, exactly, would you have had me do differently? I discussed the issue in Talk.

Now, KDP did stray into incivility in his placement of the two references, with the comment, (→Environmental: 2 references for the nasty unneccessary cn.) KDP is one of the long-term maintainers of the article, and, from what I've seen, this was good behavior on his part, relatively. I.e., he actually did provide the sources, the only -- minor -- problem being the gratuitous insertion of "nasty unneccessary [sic]" to the edit summary. (The article has faced long pressure from "POV pushers" -- a term I dislike, but it would reflect how KDP sees it, and there is some truth to that view --, and some of the maintainers are a bit burned out and may see efforts to improve the article as some kind of attack or "whitewash.") If the sources weren't necessary, I do wonder why they were provided, this was under discussion in Talk. But a cn tag, placed in good faith, isn't "nasty." It may be frustrating, one may think the fact "obvious," but in this area, little is truly obvious, much is under contention, legitimately and otherwise. The cn tag was placed to note a missing source, not to challenge the text. This is exactly what we are supposed to do. If I thought the text grossly inappropriate, I'd have removed it. I do find fault with the text, but the problem is much more difficult, and, ultimately, the issue is with the other article, and with, possibly, how it is summarized in Global warming. Simple removal would not be an improvement over the status quo, or not a large enough one to be worth the potential disruption, but better will be making the statement more true to sources or to the main article summarized.

So, where was my rudeness? --Abd (talk) 14:06, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The citation, "2007-2008 Human Development Report" is specific, and it's an entirely valid source which is still in the article. It's one of two that KDP restored, in fact, it's the one you removed. Try to read the article before reverting. There is no justification for removing a source merely because you don't like the format. If you can't fix it to your preferred format, then don't edit. Blanket reverts are rude and disruptive. End message. Viriditas (talk) 15:25, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm puzzled. I removed a source, once. Format wasn't the issue, it was sourcing a statement to an entire, large work, but not even to the work, rather to the Wikipedia article. You are, supposedly, an experienced Wikipedian. Yes, KDP restored it, but added more information, and I mentioned that above, and I haven't reviewed that in detail yet. It may or many not be usable there. Once again: we cannot source text to a Wikipedia article, except for summaries, as I detailed above. But a footnote might be okay. (If a footnote, not a source, then removal of the cn tag would have been totally improper.) Try reading a user comment before replying (I covered much of this above.) Applying the term "blanket revert" to what I did is ... novel. I use the term "bald revert" to refer to a pure revert without discussion, and repeated bald reverts are my definition of edit warring. Nobody edit warred here. This is the first time I've seen a cn tag called disruptive. You made one single revert, presumably in good faith. I made one single revert, likewise. It accomplished its purpose, which was sourcing so that text can be verified (or at least it got us closer to that). ---Abd (talk) 15:34, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Removing a citation tag and adding a source is not a revert. A revert is a change that restores a previous version, either in whole (blanket) or in part. My edit did neither. And for your information, this particular item has been sourced in the article for years under various different forms. Here is a version from 2006:[11] Viriditas (talk) 15:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, you are correct, you did not revert, you provided a footnote, not actually a source. That is, you removed a cn tag without providing a reliable source for verification. A Wikipedia article is not a source for our purposes. But that can be taken, as I did take it, as a good faith effort to satisfy the purpose of a cn tag. But you also challenged the tag itself as improper, something you have not established. I did revert, once, and it was because of this. One revert is not improper, particularly when discussed, as it was. Yes, the "fact" has been around for a long time. But it wasn't sourced. Are you now claiming that the text was sourced because a source would be somewhere in History? And there have been, in the past, many publications that had dire predictions about the increase in tropical diseases, but without balance. The IPCC Report (2007) is quite balanced. And it doesn't support the text, I think. Let's see where it goes. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for budding in. But you are wrong here. The reference wasn't the wikipedia page - but the report. that the name was wikilinked was a convenience, and the reference was sufficient for me to find, and verify, the text within a minute of seeing it. There is no requirement in WP:V that a book/magazine/journal/<whatever WP:RS> has to be linked (all it has to be is sufficient information for the reader to be able to find the original source). In this case the citation was: "Human Development Report 2007/2008", which is sparse - but sufficient. What i added was simply a direct link, and a citation template. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:46, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Great job!

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		Abd, you've gotten far too few barnstars considering everything you've been doing around here. Don't think for a minute that other people don't notice your dedication. Keep up the good work! --Explodicle (T/C) 21:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Tireless? Then WTF do I feel so tired? Fortunately, Wikipedia allows me to serve, without depending on me, so I can stuff in some activity when I've some loose minutes. Others do depend on me. It's nice, though, to be recognized. That might be my first barnstar; it's a bit ironic; I used to work much harder here, but it was on structural stuff, which is just about as likely to piss people off as to impress them, no matter whether it's good work or poor.

One trick I learned: when people demand that you do something -- or refrain from doing something, even when it's clear that they are ignorant and simply trying to get rid of you, listen. Try it. You might like it. --Abd (talk) 14:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Check this out

I swear, this is a first. I was doing vandalism patrol, and someone actually vandalized a closed sock puppet report you authored a long time ago.[12]

Do what you want, but I figured you should know.Yachtsman1 (talk) 02:23, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Geolocates to New York, Fredrick day is in or about London. However, the vandal was reading this report, it's been mentioned in a number of places. The whole Fredrick day thing has been discussed a bit on Wikipedia Review, and I made a post there recently, so someone may have been following up on that, who was inclined to vandalize. (There is pretty clearly at least one Fd sympathizer active on WR.) Doesn't mean much, but thanks for the heads-up. --Abd (talk) 14:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

ADHD

Hello Abd

I see you have had an interest in ADHD in the past. We need some help on some issues. Scuro and I are basically at war over weather or not ADHD is controversial. He keeps trying to eliminate all references to the controversy. He is now trying to get me banned or repremanded.

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/jmh649

Many Thanks --Doc James (talk) 21:40, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've taken a preliminary glance at the RfC and at the Mediation case preceding it. I'm aware of the history of Scuro and could not be considered neutral with respect to him. There has been toxic interaction between him and a psychiatrist who was pretty frustrated with Scuro's intransigence. The mediation case doesn't look like an attempt to mediate a dispute, it looks like an attempt to win, to wear down opposition, not to find consensus. However, having said that, it seems you have shot yourself in the foot with some of your comments. Don't worry, you are in good company. It's highly tempting, faces with what seems like idiocy, to cry "idiot!" (That's a general comment, not a specific reference to the present case.) Scuro represents an important "constituency," so to speak, a POV. So the problem is how to use that for the benefit of the project and contain it so that it doesn't do damage. It's not easy; he's been active for a long time and steadily wears away at these articles. He's a [[|WP:SPA|single-purpose account]], or at least was the last time I checked. Most other contributors to the articles come and go.

Never edit war. Pushing 3RR, not to mention crossing it, is not what experienced editors do. Instead, get help, and patiently persist. Let the other person be stubborn, if they must; it gets difficult when other editors arrive and review what is going on.

Wikipedia is, unfortunately, sometimes like the myth of Sisyphus. There are proposals afoot that might change this, or might not, there are entrenched constituencies that like things the way that they are.

Now, as to this RfC, I just started looking at some of the evidence presented. The first thing I looked at was awful. Scuro writes, in his claims regarding your alleged edit warring,

• jmh649 comments about how edit warring is "fun".[13]

That's totally outrageous. The comment was jocular, and an attempt to begin to negotiate a consensus. Taking the "fun" comment out of context and presenting it as incriminating evidence is highly deceptive. It may be time to create another RfC. The way I see it, the mediation case doesn't look to me, at least on quick examination, to be a good-faith effort to find consensus.

I looked at the edit warring over the tag. That's not the way to do it, Dr. James. First of all, an edit quality tag is relatively harmless if left in. It's almost never an emergency requiring removal so much that it justifies edit warring. Think it should go? Take it out once, and discuss it. Not just in the edit summary. And not somewhere else, like the mediation case, discuss it in article Talk. If you are determined to take it out again, give it some time. The 3RR rule is a bright line. You hit 3RR November 3, you were warned -- though certainly Scuro wasn't the best person to warn you, and he was edit warring himself. If you had reverted again, a block would have been practically automatic, once it was brought to an adminstrator's attention, given that you were warned. But edit warring is contrary to policy even short of 3RR.

The simplest way to resolve disputes like this is to appeal for *informal* mediation, i.e., try to find someone the user in question might respect and seek their opinion. Short of that, consult and enlist other editors to support your edits, do not "fight" alone, it's too easy to get caught up in it. I've seen quite a few users blocked for insisting, through edit warring, on proper text. Right goal, perhaps, but wrong method. Wikipedia is a community and depends on collaborative editing. I understand your frustration and impatience. I hope, by the way, that you merely lost your patience, not your patients. You are not a good copy editor. The POV tag you were edit warring over is on a sentence that is blatantly grammatically defective. Why did nobody notice and correct it? Bad sign. "The controversies has involved ..." plural subject, singular verb. I saw that several times in your writing.... (When the community is functioning, your small errors would be caught and fixed by others. If I were opposed to your apparent POV, and I saw that sentence, at the same time as I tagged it (which is a relatively respectful way of challenging a statement that one considers misleading), I'd fix the grammar. Something is wrong that this didn't happen quickly, it wasn't fixed until the 7th.)

One problem I see, which is one I've seen for a long time with the ADHD articles, is that WP:RS standards are used as if they were weapons in a battle. When a statement isn't controversial, it's a bit rude to tag it, to demand reliable source for what is not, actually, in doubt. It's called wikilawyering. I'll try to pay some attention to what is going on, perhaps comment in the RfC. But I may also try to find someone to intervene.

One more issue. You are, apparently, a clinician. This makes you, to some degree at least, an expert. Experts can have a lot of trouble with Wikipedia. At the same time as the right hand tries to encourage experts to contribute, the left hand insults and disrespects them, accuses them of conflict of interest, and often drives them off. Wikipedia process can be arcane and next to impenetrable, sometimes, so ask for help and don't make assumptions about what Wikipedia is. Often some of us come across this place and see what seems to be the basic idea. But the reality can be different. Take it easy, don't allow yourself to get upset, I recommend reading WP:DGAF. There is wisdom in that. Time is on the side of truth. Don't lose either your patience or your patients.

I'm concerned about one thing I just noticed. You seem to have a habit of deleting comments on your Talk page, without commenting in response. This can be perceived as extremely rude. Now, I see that you did respond on the commenting user's Talk page; however, when this is done, each comment then appears out of context. To some extent, you are making yourself look like an uncooperative editor, for anyone who reviews your Talk page. In fact, as with the matter of edit summaries and a comment made by Vannin, you are cooperative, but my first impression was the reverse. I had to do more looking around to notice that. --Abd (talk) 03:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Abd many thanks for your comments. I have tried to find more editors a couple of times with unfortunately little success. I posted on the WP:med page in Sept http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Collaboration_of_the_Week#ADHD trying to get people to join in.

They two editors have insulted my school and insulted my friends which I take as a personal insult and have returned in kind. I would be happy if you could find someone versed in medicine to mediate for us. The issue is with sources and research methods.

Doc James (talk) 06:36, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's my take. Yes, without verifying the matter of insults to your friends, I can believe it based on prior behavior. However, Wikipedia is not a battleground. Scuro steps over the line at times, but, now, so have you. If you are going to deal with possible harm being done by Scuro, you'll need to do a number of things. First of all, reform your own behavior. Get some experience, more extensive than you have, editing other articles. Get to know the community, and let the community get to know you. As to the articles in question, move your activity more to the Talk pages than to the article itself. Identify other editors who can help you. I have ADHD, not a marginal diagnosis, take regular methylphenidate and bupropion, have experienced great benefit from them, and I have a certain skepticism about the routine identification and treatment of ADHD, which seems to rely far too heavily, far too often, on drugs, I'd call it a one-third solution. I'll help, from time to time. I have other fish to fry, big fish. Put together a group of such editors with both experience with Wikipedia and knowledge of ADHD, you'll be far more effective, if you care about the article. If it's your friends you care about, well, you'll be distracted by every looney that comes along, and the internet is full of them.

Your recent course of action will get you blocked. Scuro was certainly the wrong person to warn you, but, quite the same, you were the wrong person to warn Scuro. Yesterday, I suggested to Scuro that he withdraw the RfC. While I might also be the wrong person (he's thought at various times that I was out to get him, and he took what was, in my opinion, sober criticism of his editing as personal attack -- sound familiar?), I also pinged an admin, you can see his response to me below. Scuro might trust this person. And identifying other editors who might be trusted by a problem editor is part of my general strategy for dealing with disruption of the project. It's far better, and seems to be more effective, than trying to get them blocked or banned. And certainly than fighting with them tit-for-tat, which can get one or the other or both blocked, and which comes first is quite erratic.

I believe that you can be a very valuable contributor to the project, based on the little I've seen. I'm taking your claim to be a medical practitioner at face value. The horrible spelling doesn't contradict that. It's easier to correct bad spelling than it is to find good writing. Good writers sometimes are disabled like this: that's why they need good editors. So I hate to see you taken down by Scuro and your own over-reaction to him. Back up and back off. The same advice is being given to him. If he pursues the RfC with intensity, he could end up essentially assassinating himself, particularly if you've reformed and have shown that.

And, really, I'd give -- am giving -- the same advice to him, more or less. Collaborate, don't fight. Each of you have something to contribute. I'd do a lot more if I had time, I've got to go pick up a daughter at school, just got a call that she's not well today.... --Abd (talk) 17:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

To continue my comment: Both you and Scuro appear to make the same mistake; I'm much more familiar with him. It's an easy mistake to make if one takes Wikipedia guidelines as if they were rules. Even the policies aren't exactly rules, and actual practice can easily set them aside. Wikipedia really runs based on editorial consensus. In the short term, an article can become warped because extra attention might be given to it by someone with a POV or agenda. But in the long term, articles are only stable if a consensus develops, which is then defended by *many* editors who watch the article. When this is done in a healthy way, that consensus is an open one and new editors are invited to join it and shift it if that is needed. When it isn't healthy, a set of editors become a tag team and own the article. Regardless, the real editorial standard is editorial consensus, and consensus is not defined as "majority." (And the actual structure that enforces "consensus" is quirky and unreliable, something I'd like to address in the long run.) To my mind, the goal is complete consensus, and my experience with consensus organizations leads me to believe that approaching this is possible. The Wikipedia editorial community is so large and so diverse and, sometimes, so stubborn that total consensus is probably impossible. But if we have almost consensus, it becomes very easy for an article to become stable, with many editors who are fundamentally in agreement on the article text, having hammered it out and dealing with POV obstacles, which isn't easy or trivial, watching it and standing against isolated dissent, while remaining welcoming. Tricky, sometimes. Many Wikipedia editors, including quite a few administrators, imagine that there is some POV that is NPOV, and, of course, the POV that they defend is what they think is NPOV. But the only way to know what is truly NPOV is that practically every editor signs onto it and the only ones who don't are truly those who want the article to be a piece of propaganda. Most disagreements, in practice, don't involve one of those true "POV-pushers," but, rather, those who disagree where the sweet spot of neutrality is. Each POV faction tends to be more capable of detecting POV imbalance in the others, rather than in their own position, but this is where the work is: finding text that is truly not controversial, but that also is complete, interesting, and verifiable. "Not controversial" means that, if it involves controversy, that controversy is reported as such, opinions, as distinct from generally accepted facts, are attributed. Fringe opinion is not allowed to outbalance, say, scientific or expert general consensus. But if it is notable (which means, in practice, that there is sufficient independent, sufficiently reliable source for it) then it is not utterly excluded. Rather, for example, it's confined to a Controversies article, reported in summary style in the overall article, when the overall subject would become imbalanced by extensive coverage of a fringe view in it.

Editorial consensus is the standard, not the guidelines as such. More accurately, the guidelines are interpreted through editorial consensus. Those who try to enforce the guidelines without respecting the consensus are called "wikilawyers," and that is not a complimentary term. It often throws newcomers off, for they may think that they are enforcing, with their insistent edits, the rules, and the others are breaking them. It's an easy misunderstanding to fall into.

All of this is my own informed opinion. Quite a few might disagree with it. But you can judge for yourself, if you look around, and if you read some WP:Arbitration committee cases. --Abd (talk) 19:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Lets work on things from here and hopefully with more editors involved things can be dealt with.

The issue with my spelling is that I learned speed writing 15 years ago a sort of lost my ability to spell which I never had much of to start with anyway. Never had an issue with it clinically.

--Doc James (talk) 20:39, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks like that plus, possibly, something else. Clinically, sure. Usually it's been fairly easy to figure out what you meant. The words are often homonyms, like patient and patient; the difference, of course, is in the plural patients and patience. But, Doc, you are editing an encyclopedia! Here is what I'd say you *must* do: carefully read what you write before you hit that Save Page button. Always use Preview. (You'll take fewer edits per session; one of the things you do that might irritate those who don't like your work -- and the rest of us as well -- is to use many edits to accomplish what could be done with one. -- this is a variation on the situation with missing edit summaries. It will help you and others, and, reading over an uncivil comment, or simply one which might be read that way, you'll have a chance to think, uh, is this really necessary? Will it make the situation better? Or am I just indulging my emotions? Or my impulses, which might be the same thing in disguise. I've certainly stuck my foot in my mouth a few times here. Got me blocked in August. The block wasn't really proper, that's another story, but the comments on which the block was based weren't necessary, and some thought would have led me to conclude that they weren't necessary, and that they were hazardous to my wikihealth. (I speculated on an obvious sock puppet suspicion, and it was misunderstood as an attack. The supposed target of the attack later concluded that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, the original warning administrator wrote that he wouldn't have said what he said, on reflection, it was, again, a misunderstanding, both of these admins are now very cooperative and helpful to me, and I haven't dealt with the blocking admin yet, nor another admin who was involved. If I attacked these people for what could easily be called their errors, what do you think would have happened? It's pretty easy to understand. I'd be history. Instead, I'm much better off than I was, politically. Everybody makes mistakes. The real issue here is what comes next. Wikipedia, in theory, does not punish, it only protects. In practice, yes, sometimes editors are punished, because administrators are human. But that isn't a stable condition, if anyone who understands the place becomes aware of it, the "punishment" will likely be lifted. (All Wikipedia can do as a sanction is to warn, to set special conditions for an editor, or to block, temporarily, indefinitely, or permanently. Past behavior is really only considered when there is reason to believe it will be repeated. Hence, whatever you did or said with Scuro that wasn't, shall we say, optimal, will be irrelevant, if any errors or violations of guidelines are recognized and there is some kind of turning from them. Hence the people who get seriously blocked for incivility, for example, will usually be those who claim it was justified. I.e., they'll do it again!

In other words, even if, somehow, the alleged incivility wasn't incivility, but legitimate criticism of editorial or administrative performance, or it was somehow justified, it is highly impolitic to argue this on behalf of oneself. I described this as attracting sharks. Because uncivil people usually justify it and defend themselves, by defending oneself, one resembles an uncivil person, and usually the truth is that there was some element of incivility present, for even legitimate criticism can be presented in a civil and inoffensive way, or in one which needlessly offends, hence self-defense is quite likely to sway neutral opinion away from you. Not to mention aggressive criticism or contempt, no matter how justified it might seem. See Meatball:DefendEachOther--Abd (talk) 21:45, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Just passing by. For the spelling problems, install Firefox [14] and get the english dictionary complement. It will spellcheck all your comments. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:02, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Enric, he's not going to be helped by mere spellcheck, since usually he writes a word that will be in the dictionary, it's just the wrong word, like patience instead of patience, as in "I lost my patients," when he meant that he lost his temper, not his medical practice. He probably writes the word patient a lot! But thanks for visiting my Talk page. Any time. --Abd (talk) 22:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Vaoverland

I am giving thought to your comments. We are in sync on several aspects. I am very much for collaboration and respect, and both these editors have fallen far short of what I would hope to see. I don't know either of these editors, nor had past contact. I do not wish this to escalate or continue. Be assured, I have not suggested or encouraged Scuro in initiating a Rfc against Doc James nor vice versa. I agree with you inasmuch as I strongly suspect that a close look by the arb comm may result in some criticism of each of them. What I would like to see is an end to all the wasted energy and damage to Wikipedia that has gone into this squabbling. I would also like to see Doc James mature with Wikipedia and grow out of what I perceive as an WP editing style that would translate to an abrasive and arrogant "bedside manner" in his work setting. Perhaps (and I hope this is so), what I am seeing is his reaction to this particular conflict and not his normal pattern. In a medical setting, a professional would back away if possible, and let someone less emotionally motivated handle things. He could still take that step. I already urged Scuro to do so. Sadly, neither has, at least up to this point. Vaoverland (talk) 06:11, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad to see what you've written here. I suspect that we can resolve this; if both of them continue on their course, they will both likely be blocked, my opinion. If one of them stops and the other continues ... well, one being blocked is better than two. It seems to me that Scuro may have some level of confidence in you; while I made a suggestion to him that he back off, he's not very likely, because of our history, to pay much attention to that, he's more likely, I'd guess, to imagine that I'm taking advantage of the opportunity to get him. However, if we proceed carefully and cooperatively, which is what I expect will happen, I think this can all be resolved, I've seen Scuro back off before when he was advised by someone he trusted, and even end up cooperating with the editor he was fighting with. I also hope that Doc will listen. If you read what's above, you'll see my communication with him. Gotta go. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm beginning to get a fuller picture of what happened. Doc James had a poor style of editing, not surprising, we often see this with experts in a field (or semi-experts, as any clinician would be) who are inexperienced as editors with Wikipedia behavioral guidelines and culture. You could see that, it stood out like a sore thumb. Scuro, however, is not a newcomer, and he's been in disputes with editors many times. The things that Doc James complains about are, at least to some degree, real. Doc James considered, at the start, that the ADHD articles were in poor shape, and he was correct, probably. They used to be in poor shape, and I saw attempts to fix them, and they were made difficult by Scuro. I've looked back at the article, and in many respects, they were better before he began working on them. (These judgments were made maybe six months ago, so they don't cover recent behavior, and it would be theoretically possible that Scuro has reformed his behavior, and my goal here is not to attack him, but to make more understandable Doc James' responses.) We had problems appear between Scuro and User:Clockback, who is Peter Hitchens, as well as with another clinician, a psychiatrist, User:Ss06470, to whom Scuro was quite uncivil.) I think that Doc James will be responsive, once he's had adequate opportunity to understand Wikipedia culture, and Scuro can be restrained; sincere advice from neutral parties has been effective with him in the past. He very easily takes offense when his editorial behavior is criticized, the themes of this dispute with Doc James are very familiar. I think it was a mistake on your part to certify the RfC, it was too soon to abandon efforts to mediate: and when I looked at the mediation itself, it seemed to me that it was Scuro who had abandoned it, not Doc James.

In any case, what may have been missing was an editor becoming involved who understood well where Doc James was coming from, without thereby falling into the trap of defending James' improper behavior. I've written that I understand his responses, but not that they should be condoned or tolerated. What I don't want to see, however, is an imbalanced result, say from the RfC. To my mind, this dispute is simply another example in a series of incidents, and we'd have to notice that one editor gets into these disputes rather readily, with a common theme being that he's being attacked.

I have more to write about the situation. It's becoming very understandable. I'll email you. --Abd (talk) 23:46, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

ADHD

Hey Abd

Many thanks for your comments and advice. Will take it to heart. You have given some glimmer of hope to this project which to tell you the truth I have considered giving up on a few time.

Will try to work on the spelling but I do not really use homonyms. Part of speed writing was that you spell everything the way it sounds. Which was just fine with me as I always had done it that way. :-) Who need three theirs/there/they're when one does just fine. Or three twos/toos/tos? Many languages only have one way to spell for each pronunciation.

The speed writing I am referring to is similar to Thomas Natural Shorthand. Yes I used to write notes like this. Learned it in high school. Not really useful at work as my lawyers do not like it. And by the way I do use firefox and it spell check.

Cheers --Doc James (talk) 18:57, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes. However, I'm sure you'll recognize, you can't write an encyclopedia that way; to be credible, your English must be standard. This is an English encyclopedia, not a Thomas Natural Shorthand encyclopedia! Politically, your habits with writing are quite damaging to your cause. While you might think that the content should matter (i.e, what you mean, which is generally decipherable from your writing), the fact is that the editorial community is human and will draw conclusions from your spelling errors. They *are* spelling errors, but of a kind that won't be caught by spell-check, at least an unsophisticated one that doesn't consider context. You *do* use homonyms; you pick one spelling of a particular phonemic pattern, such as patients for patience.

In theory, the project should be begging you and people like you to participate. But that is not the reality, for political reasons. The community expects you to meet its norms; Wikipedia is famous for being rough on experts. It will be fine if you will back off and not push, but suggest and allow and help. That pimply-faced teenager who reverts you with a caustic comment, laugh it off. Take your time, don't react. Simply discuss the text, explain if you have time, or let others fix it. See something that needs to be fixed and some editor is standing in the way? Well, ask for help. Ask someone like me, explain it to me, or, probably better, point to the existing discussion. I won't always be able to help, so identify a whole collection of editors who can serve in this way. Suddenly that stubborn editor is reverted by someone other than you. If you have to do it yourself, the time isn't ripe for that change. Done abusively, this is what's described in WP:TAGTEAM. But it's also how the place works (someone just automatically supporting you with reverts so you don't have to do it, that's a violation of WP:MEAT, and is not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that you identify experienced Wikipedians who have the ability to understand what you are trying to do, and who will be able to help negotiate it -- or tell you that you are full of shit. So to speak.

Wikipedia is not really a new kind of community, but it can seem so. Happens to be that communities like the Wikipedia editor community are part of my major general interest, how large communities of people can communicate and cooperate effectively and efficiently. Wikipedia has not yet developed the efficient part, and it will ultimately kill the project if this isn't addressed; and there are heavily conservative forces at work to prevent any change. (It might seem surprising that such a new project would have such an oligarchical problem, but it isn't really surprising to one who knows the history of similar organizations. It's generic.) The good news: the Wikipedia database, including all revisions, is under a license that allows its use elsewhere. If Wikipedia goes under because of failure to address the necessary issues, the work won't be lost. That, as well as a lot of other aspects, is part of the excellence of what's been done here. Have fun, remember that, but be careful about the "fun" of conflict, that kind is dangerous. You can certainly, with care, improve articles, but fixing major problems is much more difficult because of editors who WP:OWN the articles, you ran into one of these. Ironic, eh? Pot. Kettle. Black.

However, these editors are necessary. That's harder to see, sometimes. Indeed, realizing things like this has been part of my education: society is not ready to accept some of my ideas, and the resistance is necessary. I.e., people have filters that inhibit the acceptance of new ideas. Fortunately. Consider what happens when new ideas take over too quickly. Cambodia stands out, but there are many other examples. The same filters that protect against bad ideas, however, also inhibit good ones. So how to get around this? That's my life work, in fact, and it can't be explained in a few words. At least not yet! But I can say one thing: it takes patients. Er, patience. Same thing, I suppose. --Abd (talk) 19:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

ADHD Mediation

Hi Abd, Thank-you for your work mentoring JMH. I think it will make a huge difference, and the atmosphere is already starting to change. You were wondering about what went wrong with mediation, likely as part of figuring out where to go next. One of the big problems with the mediation was that, unfortunately, Xavexgoem was unavailable for a number of days during which there was on-going editing on the pages themselves, and discussion going off on all angles and I think it gave JMH, as a newbie, the impression that the wiki culture did not care about excess sarcasm or insults, and that he had a free hand to do whatever, so things deteriorated. By the time Xavexgoem got back there really was little point going any further as the atmosphere was poisoned and Xavexgoem suggested that mediation be stopped, Scuro waited for a response from JMH, but that response did not show much recognition of the issues and Scuro agreed to stop mediation. I think it is different now and it may be possible to redo informal mediation, particularly if there is more focus on one point at a time.--Vannin (talk) 04:30, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

If you read Xavexgoem's comment in the Wikipedia:Requests for comment/jmh649, he saw no progress toward consensus from either party. It was not solely a reaction to Doc James. He refers in the RfC to "two owners," which is pretty accurate, though I'd not use "owner," myself, to refer to a newcomer; still, James had formed an opinion that the article was massively defective, rightly or otherwise, and was taking responsibility for fixing it, which is similar to ownership. What was missing from the early interventions here was an understanding of Scuro's long-term role with the articles on ADHD. He's aggressively and non-collaboratively shut out other editors with what he thinks are fringe views, for example, User:Clockback or User:Ss06470. The former is Peter Hitchens, a prominent newspaper columnist who has written critically (in published opinion pieces) of the ADHD diagnosis and its treatment, and who questions the existence of ADHD as a "disease," and the other is Dr. Simon Sobo, a psychiatrist in private practice, a published author on the topic, as I recall. Clockback barged in with a lot of edits and little understanding of Wikipedia guidelines and process; this is where I first intervened, to restrain Clockback, mostly, but also to interrupt Scuro's unwelcoming incivility and try to help Clockback accomplish what was legitimate about his purposes. I ended up being disliked by both parties, and most particularly by User:Miamomimi who was a supporter of Clockback. Scuro, though, apparently, really held onto this. Later, I intervened again in disputes between Scuro and Sobo; I was only able, though, to give a small amount of time, a condition which continues. Both Scuro and Miamomimi were solicited by User:Yellowbeard to comment in an RfA of mine, WP:Requests for adminship/Abd 2, Yellowbeard being a Single purpose account on a different topic whose political agenda was interrupted by my awareness and responses; eventually, he was blocked. I mention that here because it could give some perspective on the positions of Scuro [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], and Miamomimi.

It might also be useful to look at the experience of Dr. Simon Sobo, visible in this series of edits to his Talk. This was a situation where I intervened, in some ways similarly to the situation with Doc James, who also shows up in this at the end. Dr. Sobo came to the point of a final warning from an admin, who later gives him an explanation.

The basic issue for Scuro, he returns to it again and again with me, as he has with others, is that I commented on his behavior (including some mention of apparent motive, though not as much as he seems to think). He thinks that illegitimate based on his interpretation of guidelines, mistaking general guidance for a universal rule. It may or may not be relevant that he frequently comments on the behavior of other editors. In the sequence of edits above, to my RfA, he makes a remarkable discovery: when, preparing evidence to present, he reread my comments and his responses, he found less personal attack than he had remembered, and he was "ashamed" of his own responses, acknowledging that it might even have been worse than my behavior. This was a remarkable realization and commendable admission, and, unfortunately, he didn't sustain it.) My intervention had, in fact, been directed at muting the effect and damage from his incivility, unwelcoming behavior, and frustrating intransigence toward other editors, which was quite likely to result in more incivility in response, edit warring, and the blocking of other editors if not Scuro. I was at least somewhat successful, nobody was blocked. But Dr. Sobo was effectively driven away. He seems to periodically back off and become more cooperative, and having other editors involved, especially those with experience whom he might also trust, will probably be quite helpful. So, again, Vannin, thanks. --Abd (talk) 18:17, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I have actually tracked the history of the article and was aware of the Clockback/Sobo stuff. I understand Scuro's style and can work with it. I do see the ownership on JMH's part. He really has made 30+ edits each day over repeated days, with, I might add, the bulk of edits being left alone, so in some ways has some right to feel some ownership. My own issues with JMH were quite separate from Scuro and I had tried to make many of the same suggestions to him that you have yourself, (such as drafting his own article, limiting the number of edits, listening to discussion) but he was not ready to listen at the time (and also probably classed everyone as non-professional. There has been an elitist element behind some of his, what Vaoverland has referred to as "bedside manner", but I do not discuss my own professional status on wiki, preferring to let my edits stand on their own merit, so he likely assumed that I had no status and was therefore not worth listening to). The difference is that he is now ready to listen to the mentors that have come in, so there is a wonderful window of opportunity here.--Vannin (talk) 19:49, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, you do remember, don't you, that Doc James requested your help, personally? Looking back, I see James trying to be cooperative, but not necessarily succeeding. The "elitism" is common among experts, no surprise. They are accustomed to knowing more than others. Sure, it's a problem, but we don't know how deep a problem it is until we confront it incisively. James may be an expert (on the clinician level, perhaps regarding ADHD), but not an expert on Wikipedia process, it is very easy to misunderstand what Wikipedia is about and how it works and experts commonly get it wrong. The problem with experts on Wikipedia is well-known: officially, so to speak, Wikipedia wants to attract experts but then, often, abuses them. We cannot directly control the abuse, but there are indirect means. I've not been involved with Wikiproject Medicine but such foci of activity can surely help, by connecting experienced users with experts in a field. Dr. Sobo was clearly an expert, I haven't reviewed Doc James article edits sufficiently to have an opinion on that with respect to him, I've simply assumed the best, if I'm wrong, it will come out in the wash. Clockback was an expert of a different kind: a public figure who writes on the topic in a major publication. His views, then, are notable in themselves. For COI reasons, he can't properly stick those views in the articles, but we can support him in that way.

And we need to get something clear about the ADHD articles. Controversy almost entirely belongs in the Controversy article. Then, with summary style, an overview of the controversies is brought back into the ADHD article, without citations. That text is very important; like a lead, it should represent a deep consensus among editors, and everything in it should be solidly verifiable, with detail and sources later in the article (with the lead) or in the subarticle (with a summary of such). I think that a lot of edit warring and conflict has resulted from not respecting this organization. The Controversies article gets cut up with demands for peer-reviewed reliable sources, when controversy is inherently about *opinion*, not scientific fact per se, and the ADHD article suffers from edit warring when editors try to put in what is obviously notable controversy. --Abd (talk) 20:32, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The two sides

Hey Abd here are two articles which discuss both sides of the ADHD controversy.

http://www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=36

http://www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=35

By the way many thanks for the award and the fish :-) Doc James (talk) 06:00, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

No problem, I considered both an obligation. The fish was free. No expense was spared for the award. Glad you enjoyed both. --Abd (talk) 19:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you a lot

A little but not too late, thank you a lot for answering my question, maybe this is irrelevant and you will have to delete it but I needed to thank you.--White Hawk (talk) 06:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. That claim that marijuana destroys neurons was current when I was young (early twenties, when I did smoke marijuana intensely -- i.e., every day, perhaps twice a day, for a month -- to see what would happen.) Lots of us believed it, actually, but didn't care. However, it seems to have been pure propaganda. As to the effects on me of that smoking, why, judge for yourself. I'm weird, many people would think, but I rather doubt that it has anything to do with that smoking. I was weird before, I did get weirder, for a while, but not in connection with smoking marijuana. I don't smoke anything, haven't since then, stopped all of it in fairly short order. Quite simply, beyond simply breaking some expectations, breaking out of some social norms, it had nothing further to offer, it and other drugs. Only recently did I discover that, really, I could benefit from certain drugs, specifically methylphenidate and bupropion, because of my ADHD and I consider self-medication, without supervision, to be dangerous, though that's relative. (If I couldn't afford to go to a doctor for a prescription, I might choose to self-medicate, as a lesser evil.) Most drug users and abusers are, in fact, self-medicating. We should make it easier for them to get good medical support, rather than punishing them for what they instinctively are doing to help themselves. (But we should not tolerate harm to others, that's different. Unfortunately, by making drugs illegal, we drive addicts and others toward criminality, causing great damage to others. With legal drugs, the damage of addiction is much more confined to addicts, and perhaps their families, as long as we keep impaired users from, say, driving. Same as with alcohol, actually. (Marijuana is, by experts, considered substantially less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, overall, and the continuance of marijuana prohibition has been a political issue rather than a medical one.)

(It's complicated, addiction is complicated; what I've said about drug addiction is generally true for all addiction and most compulsive behaviors, they serve a purpose for the addict, often not very well. Bill Clinton risked his entire career for what? A few moments of transient pleasure? Does that really make sense? A greedy person wouldn't do that. An addict would. What was his purpose? I don't know, but it is often avoidance of something, a discomfort with being with oneself, quite distinct from the natural and functional instinct to connect with other people, or, alternatively, he didn't have deep friends he could connect with on a level that he needed. Monica seemed to fill that need, but, of course, not well at all, she was a transient distraction, and a long-term nuisance or worse. That sequence of events quite possibly awarded us George W. Bush.)

Good luck. --Abd (talk) 20:18, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just wanted to wish those Wikipedians who have been nice enough to give me a barnstar or smile at me, supportive enough to agree with me, etc., a Happy Thanksgiving! Sincerely, --Happy Thanksgiving! Sincerely, A Nobody^{My talk} 02:47, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi

Hi! Please note that I have filed a request for appeal here. Comments welcome! Best regards PHG (talk) 16:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Closing discussions

Because we'd been discussing how to close discussions, I thought you might be interested in this (rather long :-) rationale I posted at Simple English Wikiquote about closing an RfB. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 17:35, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

ADHD

Hello Abd Scuro is wondering if the therapeutics initiative can be used as a ref. I have tried to start a discussion at the med page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Ref_sources --Doc James (talk) 19:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/PHG

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/PHG/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/PHG/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Daniel (talk) 23:06, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Am I being dense? How is Abd involved in it? Nobody in the case mentions him once. – iridescent 23:46, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Iridescent asks two questions on my Talk page! If I answer both, accurately, would this be uncivil? Never mind, I'll only answer one. Abd is involved because PHG listed him as an involved party. He gets to do that, I think. He notified me above of the filing of the request. I could have objected, I presume. I didn't. In fact, I consent. I may add some evidence. While PHG certainly made mistakes, so do a lot of Wikipedia editors. Fortunately, we don't demand perfection, far from it. I think he was railroaded in the original case, and contributed to that by reacting angrily, if I may project some emotion onto his edits. My involvement, my prior interventions with respect to PHG -- including the presentation of evidence and arguments at prior Arbitration requests --, came because I think he is one of our more stunning contributors, his articles are spectacular, far above the normal article quality. And the error rate in them, or, at least, lack of sourcing, seems to be well below the normal. Had we collectively dealt with the civility problems directly, instead of getting trapped in content issues, we'd not have run such a danger of driving a writer like this away. Given what he faced, I'm astonished that he didn't take up another hobby.

This was a classic dispute between a writer and editors. Writers want to write what they know and love. Editors restrain them, and even rewrite their precious prose. It pisses off the writers. And some editors demand that a good writer be a good editor, or else the writer is being a jerk by making the editor's job harder. But these are really two different jobs, and few are truly good at both. We need both writers and editors, and we need to keep the peace between them.

On the other hand, in the real world, good writers are hard to find compared to decent editors. The best editors, well, they are rare, too. They know how to take a thoroughly cantankerous writer and turn his or her "mess" into gold, without anyone getting sent to the hospital. Writer's work can't be fact-checked? Don't publish it, or, in the Wikipedia case, revert it if it's doubtful or source-tag it if it seems reasonable enough. Where a writer crosses the boundary is by, essentially, lying, making up stories with no real basis except perhaps the writer's imagination. PHG was not found, by ArbComm, to be guilty of that, and, in fact, ArbComm found that they could continue to assume his good faith. They would not have found that had he "falsified sources," as has been claimed about him by some who cited the ArbComm case as proof.

I did not become involved until the original case had closed. What I saw, what attracted me, was that I noticed that the case was being misrepresented as having made a stronger finding against PHG than was accurate. When I looked at his alleged misrepresentation of sources, I saw typical writer excess: taking a source to mean more than a careful fact checker would allow. I saw no examples of what looked like deliberate misrepresentation. Instead of trying to prevent PHG from using obscure sources, we should have requested his assistance in verifying them. For example, he could provide a scan of a necessary page or pages, for review by another expert or at least someone who knows the language involved (up to and including medieval Latin). If what he writes was seriously doubtful, then it's legitimate to remove it or at least flag it, and, again, it's our job as a mutually supportive community to prevent edit warring. Writers are often very opinionated, "POV-pushing," it can even be part of what makes them good writers. We need more people like PHG. We need to focus on how to utilize people like PHG, recognizing their tremendous contributions, instead of demanding that they satisfy every technical requirement we set. Writing a decent article takes far more work than editing it or even fact-checking it, which can be done piecemeal. The argument that his errors were too great to be tolerated is pretty silly, given that we have tons of material I read every time I do vandalism patrol that is much weaker. And I'm not talking about the vandalism, I'm talking about what might be defacing those articles. It is enough that any editor, on average, contribute more good work than the editor consumes in cleanup, and the idea that any individual is responsible for cleanup is not in accord with the wiki model. I saw, in the discussion of his alleged transgressions, that at least one prominent editor seemed to consider that PHG had laid a special burden on her to clean up after his mess. That's a kind of ownership, created by, I'd suggest, some animosity, however developed, toward PHG. Such an editor, and especially such an administrator, should be hands-off for such a user. And, indeed, this administrator has been so advised by many.

As to obscure sources and the idea that any reader should be able to verify Wikipedia content. It's a great idea, but utterly impractical and not in accord with actual practice. The question is how much effort need the reader expend. In many articles, facts are sourced to articles that aren't easily available except upon payment of a relatively high fee. The reader could possibly, with quite some inconvenience, for articles in some journals, go to a specialized library. I would suggest that it would be enough to allow an obscure source that independent editors are provided, not for publication, copies of sources, with independent review by other editors or experts, and that such be documented in article Talk. This is what a print encyclopedia would do, they would not demand sources in the same way that we sometimes do. Likewise secondary sources we consider reliable fact-check with experts or the fact-checkers look at primary sources. We do rely upon secondary sources for judgment of notability, but extremity in demanding easy verification conflicts with our overarching goal to be the "sum of all human knowledge." In any case, PHG's real problems were in interaction with other editors, and with his not having clear guidance or support in overcoming the difficulties that a strong writer like him is quite likely to encounter here. He seems to be quite able to respond to clear direction, when he's stepping over behavioral guidelines. Like anyone, he needs to know that this direction or advice is being presented by someone "on his side," so to speak, not someone who has an axe to grind, or alternatively, who doesn't know and doesn't care about the overall quality of his work. And, we hope, some of those who came into conflict with him may need similar guidance and limitations. --Abd (talk) 23:17, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

If this boils down to Franco-Mongol alliance (as I assume it does) then as I understand it, the issue wasn't that PHG was using obscure sources (plenty of articles in virtually every field rely on obscure sources that aren't easily checked; most of mine rely on books that are often decades out of print), but that he was allegedly actively fabricating sources as opposed to "reading too much into them". I have had no dealings at all with PHG, and all my interactions with the other editor involved have been negative (note that I was the first, very lengthy, "oppose" on her RFA) and I have absolutely no position on whether the allegations are true; speaking neither Arabic nor Mongolian and with little knowledge of the period, I wouldn't be able to verify the claims either way.

My original question(s) above weren't intended as any kind of dig at you, if you've read them that way; I was just curious as to why you were being named as an involved party in a case where I can't see you mentioned at any point. – iridescent 23:33, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

In line tags

Abd do you have any thoughts on inline tags? One was added before to the US gov cite from 1999 questioning it reliability. I am concerned they will be used as weasel words to try to decrease the reliability of well sourced statement editors disagree with. Scuro is still pushing for there inclusion. Would appreciate you input on this topic. See Talk:Attention-deficit_hyperactivity_disorder#Inline_tags talk--Doc James (talk) 17:10, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

A Nobody^{My talk} is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Flaming/MC2008}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--A Nobody^{My talk} 03:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Merry Christmas. I hope things have been going well for you, and that you have a good holiday. Take care of yourself. Thank you for everything. Ottava Rima (talk) 05:59, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

PHG ArbCom request

I've posted a request for possible additional evidence at Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/PHG/Evidence. Cool Hand Luke 18:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Account Creation Tool Confirmation

Hi Abd, someone, probably you, requested access to the account creation tool. For security purposes could you please confirm that it was you who made the request so we can approve you, thanks. If you use IRC, please join us on the Freenode Network, #wikipedia-en-accounts. Hope to hear from you soon! The Helpful One 12:00, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I did not make this request, to my recollection. How was the request made? --Abd (talk) 17:32, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

It was made through the ACC tool, at http://stable.toolserver.org/acc/acc.php. The account request has been declined. Thanks! :) The Helpful One 21:15, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Is there a record of the IP from which it was made? Impersonation is a serious matter. --Abd (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Abd!

I'm sorry I wasn't able to participate in this. After my sanction I wanted to take a break to let the dust settle, but five months later this place hasn't changed one bit and the harrassment continues unabated from the usual sources. I dropped out around the time you had asked for my participation. Is there anything I can still do to help or has that run its course?

Anything new and interesting you are involved with around here or is it just the same old thing?

--GoRight (talk) 18:59, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, Jehochman ended up acknowledging that his warning wasn't justified (in retrospect). That warning was the basis for the block, so the next step would be for me to negotiate something with User:Iridescent. I have other fish to fry, and I assume she does too.... At some point I might ask for a review, and continue examination in my own RfC. You did some good work with relation to the user who had been topic banned, while I was blocked, that I appreciated. Right now, I came across, a few days ago, what appears to be an abuse of admin tools to add a library of documents on cold fusion, lenr-canr.org, to the spam blacklist, based on the admin's POV and personal judgments, without discussion. I'm simply pursuing that one step at a time. The admin is intransigent; he was asked to remove the blacklisting, which he eventually did, but only after going to meta and getting it blacklisted there, again without discussion from anyone knowledgeable; he simply tosses a series of charges -- without evidence, as to the central ones -- and, given that he's a "respected administrator," he is simply believed without investigation. I asked admin DGG to investigate and comment, and he did, with a contrary conclusion: the site should not be blacklisted. There are a number of admins who seem to think they own this place, and, to some extent, they do. But not legitimately, it's simply institutional inertia and the problems of mass process without coherent deliberative structure. There are some good signs, there have been some excellent additions to ArbComm, but ... it's tedious.

My own activity has declined greatly due to the press of other responsibilities. I was doing a lot of vandalism patrol, which I find fascinating and rewarding. Better than video games.... Wikipedia is designed to make maintaining the project highly inefficient, and there are proposals that would make it much, much simpler, without sacrificing the core wiki traditions; but the defacto oligarchy has become highly conservative, resisting change simply on that basis: it's change. Users who arrive with a glimpse of the wiki vision, what might be called a common-law understanding of it, are often blocked quite quickly, under all-too-common conditions. --Abd (talk) 20:44, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Yea, I noticed the elections to the Arbcom too. There were a couple people there that I think will be good additions. I'm glad to hear that some level of resolution on the block discussion came to fruition and it sounds like everyone is moving on. That's good. If only I could get others to do so as well, eh? --GoRight (talk) 00:22, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I haven't been watching the admin noticeboards, but, looking for a report on the webmaster of lenr-canr.org, Jed Rothwell, I did notice the activity there about you. I commented. Damn crystal ball, ugly images in it! What a waste. --Abd (talk) 23:48, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Well there is no controlling these things, but I trust that the neutral parties there will see this for what it is and come to the right decision. I plan to stay out of the discussion other than my one statement, unless something significant develops that requires a further response. Thanks for your support, though. --GoRight (talk) 00:22, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, good to stay out of it. Let others defend you. And if they don't ... shame on them! What's sad to see in so many AN and AN/I discussions is how someone makes a charge against somebody and the crowd starts to shout "Off with his head!" It's a strange perversion of WP:AGF. When one editor is accusing another, AGF is fine, but it should not go to the extent of assuming that the charges are accurate. Far too many editors will comment without any investigation, or will investigate very shallowly, jumping to conclusions. I can understand it -- it takes a lot of time to do better -- but it's frustrating to read. I can see why some editors lose it and start raving. --Abd (talk) 00:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is exactly what happened to Wilhelmina! --GoRight (talk) 00:45, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

lenr-canr.org

Thank you for your interest in the lenr-canr.org case. I agree with you, that it is a huge can of worms. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 20:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

So learn How to Eat Fried Worms, so you can have a Diet of Worms! :-) *Dan T.* (talk) 01:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

All in pursuance of the Edict of Worms.

I must say, I started reading up on the field of LENR, which I'd mostly ignored since 1990 or so. Wow! The big obstacle then was that proof of nuclear reactions was thin, easily subject either to experimental error or to accusations of same, etc. Excess heat was difficult to confirm, allegedly involved mysterious experimental variables; however, the SPAWAR work has apparently come up with reproducible results; not only excess heat but such strong and clear evidence of nuclear reactions (beta radiation detected with CR-39) that the shoe has moved to the other foot. It's the smoking gun. The 2004 DOE report, flying in the face of claims that this is "fringe science," recommended further research. My guess is that another, similar review, today, would be more positive. But once a field has been tagged as "fringe," there are some editors who become like bulldogs, defenders of the wiki, saving the world from POV pushers, fringe fanatics, and the rest.

In any case, lenr-canr.org has been an invaluable resource, personally. It seems fairly objective, given the topic. My guess is that there is a bias in selection of papers, but not necessarily one which the site is responsible for: it may be more difficult for them to get permission to put up copies of skeptical papers! --Abd (talk) 00:46, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The plot has thickened. I'm known for wordiness. However, in response to a query on the meta blacklist Talk page, I was pretty succinct. JzG seems to have come unglued, with reams of irrelevant argument. The spam blacklist isn't a content control device, used to prevent editors from inappropriate sourcing, unless there has been such a level of linkspamming that it can't be controlled in any other way. There wasn't, as far as I've found, any linkspamming. The original edit that got me involved here, in Martin Fleischmann, wasn't added by Pcarbonn or Rothwell, it was added by you, Petri Krohn, and you took it from Cold fusion, where the link had been added by User:LeadSongDog, a critic of Rothwell as far as I've noticed. The original source, the paper by Fleischmann, was indeed first referenced by Pcarbonn, but quite legitimately, and it wasn't controversial, and JzG didn't remove the reference to the paper, only to the copy found on lenr-canr.org. It's all so obvious to me that I really wonder why JzG doesn't just give up. There wasn't any avalanche of linkspamming. The links were there for a long time before he removed them. I'm trying to find if there is anyone whom JzG trusts who might mediate. I've got at least one idea. --Abd (talk) 04:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Confused

I am confused here. The thread about me at WP:AN is gone, but I don't seem to find it in the archives either. Is it simply gone (other than in the history, of course) or is it archived someplace special or what? What was the final resolution? --GoRight (talk) 23:39, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, I found it in archive 181. --GoRight (talk) 23:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The final resolution was that the attempt to get you banned fell flat on its face. Be careful. As you were well advised, you may need to keep your behavior spotless. This is still not a safe place, where someone like you could make mistakes and be able to easily recover. Someone like some of those you've been in conflict with can make lots of mistakes, never apologize, never acknowledge them, and nothing happens. There is no policy that Wikipedia must be fair. If it were "selling" something, it would fail consumer fraud laws. That is certainly not deliberate, but it's the effect.

Now that you now this, now that you know that we are working, here, in the real world where human beings are irrational, inconsistent, and, amazingly, often right even when they are wrong in how they explain it, which can drive some people crazy, it's up to you what you want to do. Wikipedia is highly inefficient, because it doesn't value the volunteer labor. That may be changing, Flagged revisions is a step toward that, and there are others that may eventually penetrate the severe conservatism that has, quite naturally, infected the place. ("Severe conservatism" means that whatever disturbs the status quo, no matter how much damage is being done, and no matter how clearly useful and rational the change might be, will be strongly resisted by those who have some excess power as a result of the status quo, which in a volunteer organization, means those who, as individuals, contribute the most work, often. Practically by definition, the system works for them, so why should it change? If not addressed, the situation will become more and more unstable, as editors burn out and either leave or become increasingly frustrated and therefore angry at the "vandals and POV pushers" whom they see as responsible for their increased workload. Wikipedia has been a bit of a Ponzi scheme, depending on a constant influx of new editors to take the place of those who burn out, are blocked, or simply move on because they got a life that places demands on their time. When I've looked at the edit history of an admin with 70,000 edits, and see that every minute or so, even several times a minute, for hours and hours on end in the middle of the night, he pushed a save button for content boringly presented to him by Twinkle or one of the other assistance tools, I begin to wonder what kind of person this takes. Dedicated, for sure. Then, of course, he feels entitled to exercise a little power. It's his project, after all.) --Abd (talk) 01:11, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Aether22 block

Hello Abd, I have something I want to tell you, following your message at Talk:Urination about blocking Aether22. I came to that page in response to the RfC, and happened to come down on the side of retaining Aether22's image, but I've been trying to be even-handed in the dispute. I noticed at Aether22's talk page that the block was initiated by Nandesuka and then reviewed by you. I agree with your decision, based on 3RR and incivility, and note your concerns about some of the details of Nandesuka's initial action, but there is something more that I'd like to make you aware of. Nandesuka has also been repeatedly deleting the image, based on copyright violations, and that seems to have been the original reason for the block. However, after the first deletion by Nandesuka, I looked at the image's main page, and could see nothing wrong with the GFDL (unless of course I'm missing something). I repeatedly asked at the talk page for Nandesuka to explain the claim about copyright, but never got an explanation. Bottom line: although I agree with your final disposition of the block, I'm worried that the original block was placed for invalid reasons, perhaps with an agenda of suppressing the image. I hope I'm not out of line in telling you this, but it makes me feel uncomfortable. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The bottom line is that Aether22 was legitimately blocked the first time for 3RR violation. It's a bright line, he could be doing everything right in terms of policy, except that if he edit wars to that extent, he *will* be blocked assuming that it comes to an administrator's attention, and an editor warned him, and he didn't stop, he barged ahead. There may be extenuating circumstances, but it was only a 24 hour block, not a big deal in itself. Now, if Nandesuka was involved in a content dispute with Aether22, that's a problem in itself. It's a huge can of worms, though, and unless some serious ongoing damage is done, I'm not inclined to waste a lot of time on it.

I've requested that an admin look at it, though I'm not holding my breath. I advise against asserting an "agenda" unless there is proof, it poisons the atmosphere. My suggestion is to seriously defend the image and ignore, unless it becomes *necessary*, the behavioral issues. It looks like the existence of the image in the article has settled, and so Aether22's position was basically vindicated, but not his edit warring. If he'd only been more patient, he probably wouldn't have been blocked.

I'm quite certain that if I were to hit an arguable 4RR, I'd be blocked in a flash. I'm watched closely, possibly by some admins, or by blocked users or others who would drop a hint. I might be blocked below that, I'm an experienced editor and am expected to refrain from edit warring, which, I agree, usually is taking place below the 3RR level. Aether22 hit 4RR or more. The sock puppetry thing was a big red herring; I have an issue with editors who file sock puppet reports for an acknowledged IP edit. That's not sock puppetry at all unless it's deliberately done to conceal the editor's identity, and it probably wasn't.

The second block, though, is shakier. I think a week was extreme, under the circumstances (the relative mildness of any "edit warring," if there was any at all). I'd cut Aether22 some slack on the incivility; he should have been warned, not blocked. Essentially, a block there, without further warning, seems punitive. My sense is that Aether22 would respond to supportive assistance as to how to comply with policy, there is far too much blocking; it's a bit weird. You can come in as an IP editor and vandalized, vandalize, vandalize, and you will usually get three warnings before being blocked.... I have a sense that Aether22 is a bit bewildered by it all.

By the way, to make it clear, I'm not an administrator, so I have no authority to accept or reject an unblock request by Aether22. I simply made some comments. --Abd (talk) 00:52, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much. That all makes very good sense to me and is very helpful. (My apologies for assuming that you were an admin.) --Tryptofish (talk) 01:14, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Abd. I just wanted to chip in my thoughts. While I'm personally not in favor of the image, I did think the week long block of Aether22 was excessive as well. Seems like good folk. I was really impressed with the efforts you went to in order to coach him and all. Shows what a good person your are. guess that's all I really wanted to say. Ched (talk) 15:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

FYI: Removing sourced material

I was given the link to the policy you quoted, it came from an arbcom ruling: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Hkelkar#Removal_of_sourced_edits_made_in_a_neutral_narrative_is_disruptive

I replied to your question about CF if you're interested in reading it. Phil153 (talk) 04:17, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. I've started gathering a list of other interesting rulings here if you are interested. Feel free to add additional ones as they present themselves.

Abd, you might be interested in the context of how Phil153 was given this particular reference. See the current discussion at Talk:Robert M Carter if you are interested. --GoRight (talk) 05:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. GoRight, I'm formally requesting that you inform me of any discussion that you consider might be of interest to me. If you ever do so and are pinged about canvassing, refer to this. However, if you choose, you can email me; and I will occasionally watch your edits. You know and I know that I'm independent and won't necessarily agree with you, that I would make no assumption that your position on a matter is correct, but would investigate as necessary before opining or reporting. I doubt you would waste my time. And thanks. There are some very interesting things going on right now, on and off-wiki. There is hope. --Abd (talk) 14:21, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I've looked at the dispute in Robert M. Carter and you are basically right; however, the problem is subtle enough that I'd suggest avoiding a battle over it, there is so much that is worse. Carter is right, science is supposed to be independent of funding; being a member of an advisory board of an organization that receives funding is hardly conflict of interest, unless he's paid large sums for the service, about which I have no idea. If income from "consulting" is relatively minor, it wouldn't establish serious conflict. That the funding of that organization is even mentioned in the article is undue weight. However, note that his defense against charges of conflict of interest is in the article. It's a little odd to have a defense in the article when there isn't any notable accusation. If there is a notable accusation, why isn't that in the article. Maybe you could put it in! That would confuse them! You might get reverted just out of habit. (Seriously, I've been learning a lot from reviewing the edits of Pcarbonn. He was really good at what he did, and he got a raw deal, I'd say. He actively sought and promoted NPOV, including when it meant inserting material contrary to his alleged bias.) --Abd (talk) 14:39, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Abd, the topic is more complex than you know. He has a massive conflict of interest. He also makes tons of money promoting himself as a paid speaker on global warming denial to businesses and organization, but there are no reliable sources that document this because no one writes about him (as a geologist, he's not very prominent). He had a page on site which said he was for hire which was toned down after I pointed this out.

Gee, no reliable sources! And we should take this into account? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Now, I don't go around removing text that I think is true even if it isn't cited. I do find it a bit odd if someone has a conflict of interest because he's got opinions and is asked to speak about them. How much money does he make doing this? Should Wikipedia editors keep this alleged COI in mind when trying to balance the text of the article? But wouldn't that be introducing bias based on editor opinions and original research instead of reliable sources? These are just questions, I'm not assuming the answers. Yet. --Abd (talk) 23:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Look, here's what happened. An editor added this to the article, with no other commentary: Carter's website [16] states that his research "has been supported by grants from competitive public research agencies, especially the Australian Research Council (ARC)," and that he "receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments.". There was no mention of his funding before that. This statement, which is merely Carter's POV and not a reliable source, strongly implies that he has nothing to gain financially from denying global warming, which is why it was added. This claim is absurdly false for the reason I mentioned and others now noted. Despite this, I left it in because it's sourced. I also did not - despite having the source - add in an RS statement that he's a member and adviser to front groups that do little more than lobby for the tobacco, timber and oil industries, because frankly I didn't care for the ensuing edit war by POV pushers (they'd tried hard to remove previous RS statements from a major newspaper that noted his lack of expertise in climate science). Some weeks later another whitewasher came in and started making the article even more praiseworthy, so I inserted the sourced sentence about his affiliations to balance the POV pushing.

Now GoRight comes in (he doesn't like global warming theory, and frequently edits global warming articles, something which I do not) and tries to remove "however", and makes other challenges which are false (see the recent talk page of the article). The changes appear designed to obscure the plain facts and happen all the time in these articles. GoRight may genuinely believe the article is not fair; fringe advocates are frequently seen a do-no-wrong heros (you saw that with Jed) and normal language is seen as an attack. Anyway, the use of "however" is ridiculously appropriate given the clear intention of his statement. If we're going make an editorial decision to keep his non reliable claims, the least we can do is point out where the scope of them conflicts with reliable sources. And however means "in spite of this", not "the preceding is false" as GoRight seems to think.

Anyway, I'm sure you've got better things to do on your talk page. I merely wanted to give a link to the source you couldn't find earlier, but GoRight chose to open the topic for discussion. Phil153 (talk) 01:10, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

And Phil, thanks for the citation. It's actually pretty common knowledge, even though it's also often neglected when some editor or group of editors think that "fringe views" should be ipso facto excluded, not merely balanced. --Abd (talk) 14:23, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

If you want to quote arbcom-created policy, then you must also subscribe to these: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science/Proposed_decision#Scientific_focus about to pass by the new committee, and Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Cold_fusion#Encyclopedic_coverage_of_science. Personally I think it's more helpful to use actual editorial argument than quote narrowly scoped policy. Phil153 (talk) 20:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The question of "ArbComm-created policy" is a knotty one. Theoretically, ArbComm doesn't create policy, it recognizes it and enforces it when lesser mechanisms break down. As to the decisions (recent and upcoming) you cited, yes, I'm familiar with them. Your point? I don't see anything particularly new there. --Abd (talk) 23:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

My point is that blindly quoting knotty policy at editorial decisions, and doing so as if they're authoritative (as SA has frequently done and been admonished for with his "mainstream" stuff) is not a good way to go about solving editorial decisions. BRD is perfectly valid and isn't facilitated by quoting arbcom at people as "the right way" to do things. Phil153 (talk) 01:10, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Who did that? Of course BRD is "valid." Phil, who and what are you arguing with? As far as I recall, I simply noted that removing sourced material is generally not the best way to proceed. I never stated that there was a policy that *must be followed. All decisions, very few exceptions, are up to editorial consensus; the only question, really, is how many editors get involved. A few in an article, a few more with an RfC, maybe more in a noticeboard discussion or a mediation or an arbitration. Only at ArbComm is there really any other process than consensus, if we except admins taking matters in their own hands.... --Abd (talk) 02:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

ok, thanks for taking the time to respond. I think I may have misunderstood you. Phil153 (talk) 02:54, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

cold fusion report recommendation

as my edit says, it's a cookie-cutter standard recommendation, it was used to POV push that the controversy was still open, so I'd rather keep it out of the page for now unless a proper explanation can be done for it. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:43, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a look, Enric. I haven't followed the history, and, to me, it's irrelevant that someone used a reliable source to POV push. It's a reliable source or it isn't, and the text is supported by the source or it isn't. If imbalance is introduced, the standard response is to balance it, not remove it. So ... if you can support the claim that this was a "cookie cutter standard recommendation," by all means, put it in with source. Otherwise it looks to me like what is being pushed is a POV that the controversy is not open. It's obvious that it is, reviewing recent reliable sources. Enric, I was familiar with the topic back in 1990. I had concluded from all the mess back then that the probability was low that fusion had taken place, there were too many mysteries, too many opportunities for experimental error; as you know, cold fusion has been used for years as a paradigmatic example of junk science. The mechanism is obvious: some finding would be very attractive, so lots of researchers try to confirm it. If they fail, they are angry that their time was wasted. Some will "succeed," i.e., perhaps, make the same experimental errors, etc.

However, there is an alternate hypothesis: the conditions under which fusion occurs are very sensitive to poorly understood variables. It seems there is a consensus now among those in the field that deuterium loading must exceed 90%, or excess heating doesn't happen. Most of the early attempts to quickly verify the effect didn't wait for that. There is now a new technique that effectively loads to a high level, approaching 100%, and that, it is claimed, immediately produces excess heat; but even more to the point, it shows immediate alpha particle radiation, as shown by CR-39 detectors, sourced in the active electrode. No cogent alternate explanation for the apparent radiation has been advanced. Alpha radiation is a clear signature of nuclear reactions, and it is essentially helium nuclei, so it simultaneously shows helium production, the ash of a fusion reaction. The best I've seen is the possibility of arcing that somehow burns the plastic detector; however, the phenomenon doesn't only happen under high voltage excitation, it happens a very low voltage; and arcing in aqueous solution? (This is from the SPAWAR experiments, i.e., the U.S. Navy laboratory, and it's been peer-review published, apparently.)

I appreciate your note, thanks. Let's see what we can do with this. This affair may be one of a few examples I know of where what was thought to be junk science turns out, in the end, to be valid, if poorly understood. Pons and Fleischmann made political errors, prematurely announcing their discovery, which they had been working on for many years, before peer review. They were essentially forced to do this by university management, it's claimed. Regardless, whatever errors P and F made is irrelevant to the actual science; their biggest error was in claiming fusion, they didn't have sufficient evidence for that. They'd have been more successful, in hindsight, simply publishing the reports of excess heat and other experimental data, without even speculating on the source of it. Even though it was pretty obvious -- if they hadn't made errors in their calorimetry and if there wasn't some other explanation that they simply couldn't imagine. But the CR-39 results are stunning. The shoe is now, from my point of view, on the other foot, there is the smoking gun or something that looks so much like it that it's time to tackle the one with the gun. Probable cause! Proof if confirmed, and there has been confirmation. The field includes researchers who are now being far more careful, far less simply enthusiastic, actively looking for loopholes and flaws.

As to the "cookie cutter" idea, that's suspicious to me in this case: the recommendation wasn't unanimous, it was "almost" unanimous. If it was cookie cutter, there wouldn't have been opposition, I'd have expected. As to the other findings, there was no unanimity on the review panel, there clearly are independent experts who think that this field isn't closed.

And the 2004 DOE report was before the CR-39 results were available, I think. CR-39 had been tried before, but in order not to interfere with deuterium loading, the detector was placed at a distance from the electrode; apparently the radiation is at relatively low energy, on the order of 1 Mev, which doesn't travel a sufficient distance in water to show results above background at the distance involved. With the new loading technique (the palladium is electroplated on the electrode instead of the electrode itself being palladium, and so it's 100% loaded with deuterium at the same time as the palladium structure is built up, atom by atom, and so the effects, including excess heat, are seen very quickly), the CR-39 could be placed much closer to the electrode.

There are many other findings in the literature of radiation and other signs of nuclear reactions, but this one is so simple and so direct that it's overwhelming. --Abd (talk) 14:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Errrr, I think that I'd rather quote good experts on their interpretations of the CR-39 results, instead of citing directly the results as if they were proof of anything.

You see, in science there are these little issues like reproducibility where you need other people to reproduce your results in a somewhat predictible way, or like measurement problems and other stuff that is not noticed by non-experts like us and that gets noticed only when other scientists look at the results in depth. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:46, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course! Enric, this discussion here is Talk, for background. I haven't seen a secondary source comment on the results yet. Anyone who has, please, let us know! Now, there is a question of "expert." Who is an expert on this field? The specific field of expertise would be important. An expert on hot fusion isn't an expert on cold fusion, or on the techniques that are used to allegedly demonstrate it, necessarily. I'm still looking around, becoming familiar, a little, with the recent work. Slowly. --Abd (talk) 17:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you are right, I haven't seen either any secondary comment presented on the talk page. About experts, I suppose that we would want expert physicists for some of the energy stuff, people like User:Kirk shanahan for calibration stuff, maybe metallurgics or chemists for what molecules are getting formed, etc. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:16, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed that JzG AfD'd Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments, the AfD is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments/ Contrary to what one would assume from JzG's assertions in the AfD, the principal editor -- or a least one of them -- was Shanahan, a critic, not Pcarbonn, though Pcarbonn did create the page.

The nomination text:

Yet another POV fork from Pcarbonn's attempts to boost cold fusion. Most of the rest were cleaned up some time ago, obviously this one got missed. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cold fusion for the gory details. This gives undue weight to one aspect of a subject that is covered more neutrally by the day at cold fusion. Guy (Help!) 21:19, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The page was an attempt to resolve disputes over detail on Cold fusion, it's mentioned in Talk for Cold fusion. You can see it at User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments. This page should then have been taken back into Cold fusion using summary style. Enric, if you aren't already familiar with that page, would you look at it? It seems a good page for detail on calorimetry issues, well-sourced, and, on the face, neutral. I'm considering moving to get it undeleted, would you support that? --Abd (talk) 14:55, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

If I read the timestamps right, that AfD was closed 3 hours and 13 minutes after it started... so it looks like a tight clique using the AfD process to rubberstamp their actions, rather than a true attempt to get community discussion and consensus. *Dan T.* (talk) 16:11, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, thanks for pointing that out. I've requested reversal from the admin who closed and deleted so quickly. If he does, the AfD may be reopened for comment, and we can solicit comment neutrally, on wikiprojects or on Cold fusion. If not, then we go to WP:DRV. Please remember to assume good faith. --Abd (talk) 17:05, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Your request

Done, except for the talk page (since the only edit to it was Wikiproject tagging, and restoring that in your userspace would just mess with the Wikiproject). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work. If that was the only edit, no problem. If I did want to ask for restoration, I'd simply want the tags poked in the eye.... --Abd (talk) 20:56, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Because I'm not exactly clear on the reasons for the talk page's deletion, I've shot JzG a note asking if he'd mind if I undeleted. If there's some urgency, I can e-mail you the content straight away; otherwise, I'd rather hold off until I get his thoughts. Cheers, Sarcasticidealist (talk) 02:52, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

No harm in asking him. --Abd (talk) 04:07, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Restored. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Much thanks. Now I get to actually see the CANofworRms. I was warned I'd be eating worms if I got involved in this! --Abd (talk) 19:41, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Question

I have been in a minor revert war with user http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Rtol - He is not friendly... has called me names a couple of times... may have a conflict of interest... because he is a writer on the subject... in the sense that he has precluded information that is connected... hence narrowing the perspective of the subject in a way to make the understanding of the term less expansive in my opinion. He does not leave explanations of his edits (edit summaries). He does not sign his user name at the discussion page in the normal way. He has accused me of being anon. for some reason even though I leave reasons why I edit and always sign my comments... - Do you think I should try to keep making constructive changes to the page... or do you think I should back off and just stay away from it?

It seems to me like this person is doing a lot of things against guidelines... and it seems to me like the improvements that I think I am making are being reverted out of some kind of anger that he thinks maybe I am someone he somehow knows... or at least he implies that on the talk page. I do not know the guy from Adam... and edit the article because of interests only. I have noticed that you are open minded and good at figuring out strange situations... so ... maybe you could give me your opinion or even interact if you care to, after looking at the Energy economics discussion page... and article. Thanks. skip sievert (talk) 22:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, but do not edit war. Rather, seek to find consensus, both with this user, but ultimately among all editors. If there are only the two of you paying attention to the article, and you can't find agreement, then ask for comment from others, there are standard ways of doing that, besides what you have already done. Reverts are a last resort, and should reflect consensus; if any reverts you do are like this, you will be in no danger of edit warring sanctions, because you won't make repetitive reverts, but only one. I'll look at the editor's behavior, and at yours, and if I think it appropriate, I'll call it to the attention of administrators, but not before I discuss it with you both. My goal is generally to encourage the proper participation of all editors, no matter what their point of view. Whatever has happened in the past should be left there.... --Abd (talk) 00:29, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. I have not been able to get this other person to address the issues I have brought up. I also like the current existential approach you are suggesting. Mostly it seems I go by that. I have no luck trying to engage so far with the other user in a positive way... though I have tried and will continue to. Thanks. skip sievert (talk) 01:47, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

You did an excellent thing by seeking help (as did he). You actually sought it in the best place, he got some generic advice, which was correct, but probably not enough to educate him. Basically, when two editors can't find agreement on their own, seeking help from an uninvolved editor is probably the least disruptive first step, it's recommended in WP:DR. That editor does best by facilitating consensus between the two disputing editors, but may also confirm one side or the other as to content. 2:1 is still not consensus, though; ideally consensus is complete or almost complete, so there are further steps in DR, which generally requires involving more editors. That can take time. In the meantime, edit warring only inflames the situation; generally, unless a violation of policy is blatant and is a true emergency, as with biographies of living persons, poor content can stand for a while. When we have 2:1, we have a default (the "2"). So we will have a default in Energy economics quite quickly. But the best solution will involve you and Rtol coming to agreement, and, with improved communication, I don't see that as particularly difficult. He needs to learn that you are, here, a peer, you need no "credentials," and you need to, I'd say, recognize that he is probably a leading expert in the field and be very careful about assuming ignorance as the basis of his opinions. You'd probably be wrong about that! See you in article Talk. --Abd (talk) 14:05, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Standing Offer/Request

Given our past interactions on various topics I thought I would make the following offer.

If you ever have something you want me to offer an opinion on or that you feel I might personally be interested in anywhere on wikipedia, its talk pages, or within any of the official forums such as noticeboards, RfCs, RfAs, and the like, please contact me directly on my talk page and feel free to reference this standing request. I trust your judgment in deciding which topics might be of interest to me, and please keep me informed of any topics in general as well as items specifically involving you personally. --GoRight (talk) 00:46, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm currently working on the situation with Cold fusion, having seen what looks to me like involved administrator intervention on one side of an extended content dispute. If you have time, you might become familiar with the issues; in particular, see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cold fusion, which resulted in a topic ban for Pcarbonn, a poster boy for civil POV-pushing, allegedly, though my opinion is that what he was "pushing" was closer to NPOV. But one side almost always looks at NPOV as POV. I've got some admin support, but don't think it's time to directly confront the issues, there is due process to be followed still. --Abd (talk) 14:13, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll read up on it. Was there an Arbitration on this, I think? --GoRight (talk) 14:52, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Isn't that what I pointed you to? Any time you want, of course, you can see what I've been up to by looking at Special:Contributions/Abd, but I'd like you to stay as neutral as possible. There are some quite knotty problems with Cold fusion that ArbComm bailed on addressing, but some editors are assuming that the AC ruled on these. See what you think. Take your time, it's really easy to jump to conclusions here. There is a related arbitration, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science that, last I looked, was in voting, where they take a closer look, but, in my opinion, still an inadequate one. I became aware of it before that, but by the time I became clear on what the issues are, they had moved on to voting. I'll discuss it more with you after you've read the Arbitration on Cold fusion. --Abd (talk) 16:50, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

"Isn't that what I pointed you to?" - LOL, so it was! I am so distracted lately I miss the obvious. I have skimmed through most of that but have not had time to go review the actual comments on the page itself to come to my own conclusions regarding Pcarbonn. I have also read the commentary here on your talk page on the topic. I will say that I certainly empathize with his fight against an entrenched status quo. This is exactly the same type of thing we see on the GW pages, as you know. Can you summarize why you think the ban is unjustified? --GoRight (talk) 20:50, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's only a tentative opinion, but it seems to me, reviewing Pcarbonn's edits, that he was "pushing" NPOV. If he arrived with an outside agenda -- that isn't crystal clear, but might be true -- he may have seen the article as biased, and attempted to remove the bias. Since to anyone with a bias, an NPOV article will appear biased, or, as a corollary, to such a person, a biased article with a bias matching that of the person may seem NPOV, the fact that someone has an external bias should not, by itself, be sufficient to result in a ban. Removing bias in existing articles brings in many editors. It's not harmful in itself if the editor respects behavioral guidelines, doesn't edit war, etc. I haven't reviewed Pcarbonn's old behavior, but recent behavior seemed to be toward balance in the article, and there is a significant example where he welcomed and encouraged the participation of an editor as being one of the few experts commenting on current research in the field, who is negative. The decision to ban seemed to be based most significantly on http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/2008/NET28.htm#wiki (an article he wrote for New Energy Times) on the Wikipedia situation. (Sorry about the nowiki link; the web site is blacklisted courtesy of JzG, now confirmed by, as I recall, Beetstra.) The article strikes me as quite neutral and unbiased. It's unusual for ArbComm to even allow consideration of external behavior like that, normally off-wiki behavior is considered irrelevant unless it amounts to harassment or the like. I've looked a bit at how the ArbComm decision was determined; the evidence cited in the decision seems a tad weak, [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Cold_fusion/Proposed_decision#Pcarbonn pointing to] a discussion on AN, for example, that went both ways, that did not seem to conclude that Pcarbonn was engaging in sanctionable behavior.

As an example, admin Ronnotel commented:

While I agree that dragging an on-Wiki dispute off-Wiki is never a good idea, I think we should primarily consider PCarbonn's on-Wiki contributions to the page and behavior before we start boiling up the tar. PCarbonn has worked diligently and in good faith. I see no reason based on his record to support a topic ban. Ronnotel (talk) 17:03, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

The record is full of comments like that. Given how much support was expressed for PCarbonn, for ArbComm to make a decision based on a "finding of fact" that isn't clearly and explicitly supported is rather odd. The diffs cited in the proposed finding of fact leave me with "huh?" Did they copy the wrong diff into the text?

Here is the final finding of fact: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cold fusion#Pcarbonn. I think it's the same evidence as in the proposed finding. It's absolutely the least clear of any finding I've ever seen, though I certainly haven't read the majority of ArbComm decisions. It looks very poorly researched and considered. But by no means have I yet reviewed all the evidence, I've been following JzG's trail of involved edits plus administrative actions, and trying to undo some of the damage. Eventually I may get to Pcarbonn. Right now, I'm just trying to get some pages from lenr-canr.org whitelisted, which, given that the pages were not placed there by a linkspammer, were apparently acceptable by a consensus of editors, there wasn't any apparent controversy over them, and, indeed, one of them was originally linked by an *opponent* of the webmaster (the alleged linkspammer, whose offense seems to be principally making contentious Talk page edits as IP and signing them with his real name and URL). The other was inserted by Pcarbonn, I think, but was likewise not controversial. We've been told that it should be easy to whitelist, that was an argument made supporting blacklisting when it was appealed; but it's turning out not to be, the request, fairly straightforward, from two editors, not contested there, or anywhere that I know of, is just sitting there. MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org --Abd (talk) 01:35, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Very important point: a witch hunt is to be rigorously avoided. The community is divided on the issue of "fringe science." I see no reason to assume other than good faith on the part of those who may have acted in, for example, what I've called conflict of interest, though the technical Wikipedia term is that they are "involved," plus others, more technically neutral, may have acted in a simple assumption that someone they trust has asserted a position and they have not investigated deeply enough to see beyond that. Hence I'm starting with the lowest levels of WP:DR, always beginning with an assumption that simple edits or requests will be honored. One of the reasons why DR isn't always rigorously followed is that it takes time. An editor who is attached to an edit or article or result may escalate prematurely, may start edit warring and tendentious argument, incivility out of understandable frustration, and all the rest. I have, myself, a tendency to say too much; it's always a question for me as to how far I should restrain this. I want to make sure that an argument -- say for the undeletion of Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments -- has been presented with sufficient thoroughness that it isn't rejected because an important point is omitted, but I don't want to go to the point that arguments are being repeated or "nailed in." I don't want to waste the time of other editors, who may dislike it when they find themselves having to defend what seemed to them like an obvious conclusion (i.e., with the AfD mentioned, that it was snowing Delete). They may have made process errors, technically, but they are volunteers, and they are not obligated to always get it right. One remarkable thing about the Pcarbonn NET article is how far he went to rationalize his "opposition" and attribute good faith and even good sense to it. Wikipedia, I'm coming to think, needs more editors like this, not fewer. It's clear from the support shown in the Arbitration that many would agree. So how to deal with this without disruption? The errors that are made in trying to fix Wikipedia are typically to ignore the high cost of disruption and premature confrontation. When the ducks are in a row, opposition to constructive change tends to melt away with surprising rapidity. --Abd (talk) 15:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind if I stick my head in. All other things set aside, the stated agenda finding is rock solid. Moreover to state that the community is (or at least was) divided on an issue at arbitration is missing the point--if the community were not divided the arbitration committee would not have had to get involved in the first place. Our policies need to be enforced, and Neutral point of view is our most important policy. --TS 21:56, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, in a way, Tony, you are butting in. However, I don't mind. Welcome to my Talk page. Here, have some tea!

When the community is divided and ArbComm reaches a finding that seems to take one side, normally ArbComm will, as part of the process, address the specific issues where the community is divided, doing so in such a way as to establish at least reasonable guidelines for behavior. It seems that they did not do that; however, I have not read all the comments and associated talk pages yet. When I look at the core decision, the finding leading to the topic ban of Pcarbonn, the explanation is totally inadequate to establish and justify the action. I read the evidence and come to opposite conclusions. I'm accustomed to much better than that from ArbComm. So my essential response to it: Puzzled.

I'm not sure that NPOV is our most important policy, but it's certainly up there, and is impossible to disentangle it from the other important ones. However, one of the reasons I question the decision (informally, here, please don't be confused about that!) is that the effect is likely a warping of NPOV, not NPOV. I have seen and am dealing with the fallout of this decision.

Above, you link to a lengthy discussion on AN, as if "the finding is rock solid." But if that finding had been solid, you also have implied that arbitration would not have been necessary. That seems a tad circular to me. ArbComm likewise cited that, as I recall, as if it were conclusive, which it most certainly was not. Have you read the article in NET written by Pcarbonn? It seems to me to be a quite careful and fairly neutral description of the situation on Wikipedia; pretty much an Apology for Wikipedia process, fairly well-written. I don't read it as an "admission of an [illegitimate] agenda," nor as any declared intention to do battle, any more than I've seen many editors who proclaim a dedication to NPOV and other project values. Now, maybe I'm wrong about all this. I'm not taking this back to ArbComm, or anywhere but mention in certain Talk pages, perhaps, because I'm not sufficiently certain to do so, plus, even if I were certain, I'd need, then, to take this back up WP:DR, step by step, avoiding, as far as possible, disruption. It's easy to disrupt the project being right. I wouldn't challenge an ArbComm decision unless I had high confidence of success, probably including opinions from arbitrators based on private consultation. (That could be tricky, in itself.)

ArbComm decisions must be respected and not directly challenged; however, that doesn't mean that we can't question them or notice shortcomings in them. ArbComm may make decisions for any of many reasons, and not all of them are necessarily stated. However, here, as you acknowledged, the community is divided, and there is a current arbitration on fringe science that more directly addresses the issues, but, so far, it looks to me like it's not going to go far enough; if my judgment is correct, we will see further conflict. Simply affirming what we already know isn't going to cut the mustard.

Thanks for visiting my Talk page. Welcome back, any time. --Abd (talk) 22:46, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, well the finding is that Pcarbonn came to Wikipedia with the specific intention of making Cold fusion appear more credible. That merits a topic ban straight away. You say that "if that finding had been solid, you also have implied that arbitration would not have been necessary." No. The fact is solid, and the community ban discussion did reveal very strong support for a ban, however there was a lot of "bickering", as Jehochman puts it. There seems to be no doubt that PCarbonn came to Wikipedia for the purpose of advocacy, but some editors even defended his "right" to do that.

If you think NPOV is not the most important policy, well I'm sorry but you're simply wrong. It's the one policy which Jimbo Wales has declared to be "non-negotiable."

On PCarbonn's New Energy Times piece, I think the nicest thing I can say is that at least on that occasion he chose an appropriate and sympathetic venue to misrepresent the outcome 2004 Department of Energy review. No editor can ever be permitted to abuse Wikipedia like that. --TS 23:23, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, you've got my interest! What was the outcome of the 2004 DOE Review, and how did he misrepresent it? (I do not agree that to express a biased point of view outside of Wikipedia is "to abuse Wikipedia," but let's set that aside for a moment.) --Abd (talk) 23:42, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not here to refight those battles. The article at present seems to be balanced. --TS 23:50, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) No battling is expected or permitted here. You stated something interesting, I asked you to be specific. No obligation. The article "at present" is in flux on this. I made an edit adding exact quotation from the DOE report and it was reverted. I did not edit war, but discussed. It's still being worked on, by other editors. The article is more balanced than it was when I made my edit, and probably than it was when Pcarbonn began his work.

There are a whole series of misconceptions that those new to this topic hold, and likewise some familiar with it, perhaps too familiar (i.e., familiar with old ideas, almost twenty years out of date). First of all, "cold fusion" is generally rejected, including by the community of CMNS researchers. Whatever is happening in those cells isn't "fusion" as it has been understood. I'll note that the 2004 report isn't about "cold fusion." It's about "Low energy nuclear reactions." I can't put a convenient link to the report here, courtesy of JzG and his friends at meta. However, it's easy to find, just google "lenr-canr.org 2004 DOE report." First hit, of course. "Cold fusion" is mentioned this way: In 1987 Pons and Fleischman first reported the production of “excess” heat in a Pd electrochemical cell, and postulated that this was due to D-D fusion (D=deuterium), sometimes referred to as “cold fusion.” Practically nobody is claiming D-D fusion any more, and, indeed, there is no single hypothesis of what is happening in the cells (and in other "cold" experiments) that is generally accepted even within the field. There are hypotheses worthy of investigation, though. Some explain the excess heat as some kind of general -- i.e., repeated -- experimental error, such as unexpected and uncompensated recombination of D or H and O in the cell. Others note findings of radiation, which would confirm that some kind of low energy nuclear reaction is taking place. Others find transmuted elements, which, by definition, would mean nuclear reactions. Quite a bit of work has been done since the 2004 review; however, since you commented on that, what did Pcarbonn say about it in the article?

Here is the article (there is another report in the previous issue of NET, but this is the one that seems to have been most cited, and it has the most detail, I think): http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/2008/NET28.htm#wiki. Again, sorry for the nowiki URL, we can also thank JzG for this, he also blacklisted newenergytimes.org; Durova requested delisting, I supported it, totally inadequate evidence was presented for blacklisting, there wasn't any linkspamming, but the delisting was denied. Apparent reason: "fringe." I'll next, when I can get to it, make some whitelist requests.

Here is what he wrote on the 2004 DOE report. I don't see it as supporting what you said at all, that's why I asked.

The 2004 version of the article was featured on the front page of Wikipedia, recognition of the page's quality. Since then, content requirements in Wikipedia got more restricted, and controversial topics must now be supported by sources that are more authoritative and trusted as reliable. For this reason, some editors, including me, brought in references such as those from the 1989 and 2004 Department of Energy Cold Fusion review.

Contrary to what most scientists think, these two Department of Energy reviews provide plenty of evidence that supports the view that the cold fusion controversy is far from over. They confirmed that cold fusion is a continuing controversy, not a closed case of pathological science.

Thus, editors defending the pathological science opinion fiercely resisted the improvements to include references from the 2004 Department of Energy review, in effect conducting censorship. Mediator Seicer was courageous enough to defend the Wikipedia policy of reliable sources, and this insured that the references to the Department of Energy reviews remained in the article, thus presenting a balanced view of the field.

Now, he's not exactly correct. "Cold fusion" was a mistake of Fleischmann's, but, on the other hand, Fleischmann's actual work wasn't "pathological science." He simply made too much of a revolutionary hypothesis as an explanation of his results. Carbonnelle is using "cold fusion" as might any nonspecialist, as a reference to some kind of nuclear reaction hypothesized as taking place, even if it isn't D-D fusion. And the DOE Report doesn't "reject" this, it simply considers it unproven, which was the consensus in 1989 as well. It's not clear what a review today would conclude. But what is actually in the reports has often been misrepresented, and that is why PCarbonn wrote what he wrote. I don't know that I would word it as "they confirmed that cold fusion is a continuing controversy," that's incautious synthesis, perhaps. But they certainly suggested that continued research was appropriate. If "controversy" were closed, they would not recommend that. I've looked at some of Pcarbonn's work. He was pretty careful; my guess is that he simply tried to report more completely what the 2004 DOE report concluded, and it was reverted by those who considered it "too much detail" or introducing "POV spin." And he's right: these are tactics used by the "pathological science" crowd, quite often, to keep reliably sourced material out of articles. The result is spin in favor of some kind of "general consensus," as seen by the editors, excluding minority opinion even when it is notable and reliably sourced, and sometimes when it is not even minority opinion among those knowledgeable on the topic. ArbComm may come down on this issue soon, there are proposed principles and findings that look fairly good. There are NPOV solutions that respect WP:UNDUE, that don't involve removal of accurate and reliably sourced material, and, from what I've seen, these solutions have been rejected by the antipseudoscience crowd. The solution is subarticles, so that every article is balanced *and* complete. As an example, see the deletion of Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments and the redirection of Condensed matter nuclear science plus the out-of-process deletion of Talk:Condensed matter nuclear science. I just managed to get the Talk page restored, and the Calorimetry article has been userfied to User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments. The major editor of the Calorimetry article is an expert critic of "cold fusion," not Pcarbonn as JzG implied in proposing the AfD, which was closed less than one day after being opened; the only editor, as far as I can tell, notified of the AfD was PCarbonn, who was, of course, under a topic ban and unable to object. In any case, these are all minor things, really, though there are some implications. I'm proceeding step by step to undo what damage I can.

Thanks for dropping by. I hope I haven't been rude to you, I assume that people who get by the warning at the top of my Talk page are consenting adults (or the equivalent) and ready for frank and honest discussion. More tea?--Abd (talk) 00:52, 26 January 2009 (UTC)