User talk:Hans Adler/Archive 4

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Because of he is your friend

Copycat! [1]. Good analysis, though! A very recent example: defending the spelling land-lady as correct [2] No face-saving techniques, indeed. Bishonen | talk 16:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC).

Sorry for the plagiarism. As to land-lady, I agree it's really eccentric, but I seem to remember a rule that foo-bar and foobar are equivalent in the sense that if one is found in a dictionary then the other is also admissible, but that foo bar is not equivalent with them in this sense. Unfortunately I don't remember the context where this rule lives. Hans Adler 17:08, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

PS: I just realised that he also defended "land lady". Now that's about as weird as the google hits it produces. Hans Adler 17:11, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah right

Then he will get a yes or no reaction that he can't ignore. Ha, I wish. Look at Coren's response to Ottava in regard to my "abuse of admin power in addition to talk page harassment and attacks of [Ottava's] work". (See my Evidence section "Attacks" for the context.) I admit I was very disappointed in Coren — "personality conflict" ! — while Ottava, going by his second post, was highly encouraged to continue with the abuse and the inventions. Bishonen | talk 23:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC).

It looks a bit as if Coren might have tried to be diplomatic with Ottava. I think most of us learned only during this Arbcom case (or are about to learn it) that Ottava has no sense for nuances at all and that he interprets even the most strongly negative feedback as positive if you offer him the slightest chance. "I was cheeky to an Arb and wasn't blocked for it." → "I have top position in the pecking order." // "I say that I can trace my family back to 200 AD and nobody contradicts." → "They all admire me so much that they believe me whatever I tell them." // "Coren mentions a personality conflict." → "Coren is telling me I need to take into account that Bishonen is mental."

I have seen more than one editor with this problem (another has recently disrupted the Arbcom election; no, not as a candidate), and it may be worth describing it in an essay and collecting evidence about what strategies work in such a case and what doesn't work. Hans Adler 00:55, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Mmm. Well, I knew that, and an arb has had many previous opportunities to learn it. Grumble. About the election—are you by any chance talking about yet another editor whose problem is that Bishonen is mental? [/me adjusts trusty tinfoil hat and blows a light mist of cupcake crumbs at Hans.] I'd love to see one of the Adler essays un-bone that guy's methods. You un-bone so well! Bishonen | talk 01:32, 21 November 2009 (UTC).

In spite of your having once edited Talk:Solar System I doubt that you have had any interaction with the editor I was referring to. It's the only election incident that I became aware of as it spent some time at ANI. Of course, if there is any monster that I can smash for you to save you from a castle and get admittance to the Cabal, just let me know. (However, I preserve the right to make up my own mind about which is the monster and which is the princess, or whether it's just a couple of frogs.)

PS: Aaaargh! I think I got it! Count me out!!! Hans Adler 11:51, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation

I noticed you had said on WT:MOS that the American style of punctuating quotes can be confusing. I think the problem is a general underuse of ellipses in our MOS, not with the placement of periods.

If I write, in American style punctuation,

She said, "He is a dog."

You actually can conclude that the quoted part was an entire sentence, or at least an entire thought, because otherwise I would have written:

She said, "He is a dog ...".

Similarly, if someone using the European system writes

He said, "She is a princess".

and the quoted part is not an entire sentence or thought from the original, then an ellipsis should have been used:

He said, "She is a princess ...".

So the problem is not with the placement of the periods, it's with the underuse of ellipses. On the other hand, if I write,

She said he is a "dog."

then it is clear from the brevity of the quote that it was not a full sentence. So I don't see that there is actually any real chance of confusion with American punctuation if people use ellipses properly; but there is an equal chance of confusion with European punctuation if people do not use ellipses properly.

I looked up the Chicago Manual once to see what an actual American style guide would say. They have three different levels of "strictness" for quotations, which vary in terms of punctuation and the number of ellipses required. Presumably people who are concerned about any possible misquotation would just choose the strictest option. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense. I admit that I don't take the discussions with that particular user very seriously any more. For me the main arguments are: (1) There is a project-wide consensus, and that's much less confusing than an ENGVAR-like solution. (Even though I prefer the -ise variant of BE spelling myself, I am a strong advocate of standardising on the -ize variant, because it's closer to AE. I think ideally we should standardise on a single variant of English for articles without national ties, and I would agree with AE even though it would be a bit painful for me.) (2) Logical quotation is the "natural" way of doing it, the other way is eccentric in global/interlingual comparison and has lost its technical purpose. (3) It's easier to explain because you needn't worry about handling ; differently from ,. Hans Adler 21:18, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't mind the idea of picking one way and being done with it. But I personally don't see the issue as relating to possible confusion, I think it's just an arbitrary style choice like many others. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:47, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I actually agree that it's not a very valid argument. I tried to find where it first came up on "my" side, but failed to find that. Currently it's mostly being used as a strawman by the opposite side, so perhaps I shouldn't try to defend it. But as I said, I am not taking darkfrog24 seriously after pages and pages of fruitless discussion in the MoS talk archive. My two topmost comments in that most recent thread are serious, though, even though the second ends in creative invective. Hans Adler 13:13, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Italian romantic epic

I've written up an account of the Ludovico Ariosto argument here. Basically, in spite of what Ottava claims, it is not "fringe" to call Orlando Furioso a "romantic epic". In fact it's remarkably common and it's called such by the most recent translation (Slavitt, 2009). None of the following people could be persuaded that the "romantic epic" epithet was fringe: Moreschi, Dougweller, Itsmejudith, The Hand that Feeds, Dbachmann, Akhilleus, Paul Barlow, Mathsci, Ettormo, Drmies. Akhilleus and Dbachmann suggested compromises, however, and Dbachmann even invited Ottava to change "romantic epic" to "romance epic" if it bothered him that much. He refused for some inexplicable reason. But thus began his monumental grudge against users who had taken part in that Fringe Theories Noticeboard discussion. The first hint of it came at Itsmejudith's RFA in January, when he alleged she was part of a cabal. --Folantin (talk) 10:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the context. Perhaps a thorough analysis of that debate would really provide additional insight. On the other hand I am not sure that it's needed any more. Ottava doesn't stop shovelling, and I have some hope that the only real question will be what to do about his behaviour. Hans Adler 10:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a behaviourial issue. The important thing about that debate is not the content dispute but the vendetta that followed, with Ottava stalking me and Dbachmann to the Persian Empire page eight months later. It's obvious he had a grudge against me over the Ariosto issue because he said so himself on a user talk page in June [3]. (Of course, it's complete nonsense that I made it impossible for him to improve the page. I merely altered a single word. I never reverted other additions he had made [4]. Perhaps I should have though. I see that Ottava referred to Ariosto's "rye sense of humor". Was that whisky-induced? Fortunately, someone else fixed it [5]). --Folantin (talk) 10:56, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

"Rye humor" seems to be the kind of Google search that's well worth repeating once every few years when there is nothing else to do. Hans Adler 11:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it's like "corny" jokes (sorry for that one in advance - bad puns go against the grain with me usually). --Folantin (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

• You might want to recheck your statement [6] here. Many of the works here, that you used as evidence, do not classify Orlando as a "romantic epic" but an influence on the romantic epics by the Romantic poets. This one does not have such problems. Notice that even Barbara Reynold's translation comes up in that search. Then check out these [7], [8], [9], [10], etc. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I never claimed that nobody refers to Orlando as a "romance epic". I just said it was common and perfectly acceptable to call it a "romantic epic" and anyone familiar with the subject would have seen it referred to as such. Hence there was no reason to change the page. Britannica uses the term, so why not Wikipedia. You said this was "fringe" and took it to Fringe Theories Noticeboard. Understandably, nobody agreed with you or your assault on Reynolds. You put this down to a "cabal". --Folantin (talk) 15:30, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

(unindent, ec with Folantin above) OK, Ottava, so you know that it is totally wrong to call Orlando Furioso a "romantic epic". (Not that you have convinced me, but so what.) Why then did you not correct it? Not even after Folantin, and then Dbachmann, invited you to do so? They felt it wasn't necessary. You felt it was absolutely vital, yet you insisted that Folantin had to do it? I am beginning to entertain the possibility that you are not just playing stupid but that you are really, really unable to see the difference between

• "'Romantic epic' and 'romance epic' are equally valid in this context."

and

• "Only 'romantic epic' is valid in this context."

The first was your opponents' position. The second seems to be what you imagined their position to be in spite of all the obvious evidence to the contrary.

Such serious miscommunications are extremely rare unless you are involved. It doesn't matter whether you have a binary brain that can only deal with black and white and never learned about different shades of grey; whether you are roleplaying; whether you are intentionally disruptive; whether you are so preoccupied with fantasies about conspiracies against you that you can't pay attention to what your opponents are saying; or whatever is the reason. Getting to the root of this is none of our business here at Wikipedia except that it would be nice to have some guidance on possible ways to get you out of this problem. But one thing is absolutely clear: your communication problems are leading to massive disruption in this project, and this disruption must stop. It can only stop (a) by you changing your behaviour, or (b) by you leaving the project. I hope it will be (a), and since it's clear that this will be hard for you I think we must think about ways of protecting unsuspecting editors who run into you before you have finished that process.

Perhaps the following gets through to you as a demonstration that you have a problem:

• When you say "I am civil" you actually mean "I am not breaking WP:CIVIL in a blockworthy way" – a dramatically weaker statement.
• When Folantin says "'romantic epic' and 'romance epic' are equally good and there is no need to switch" you assume that he actually means "'romance epic' is wrong and therefore the wording 'romantic epic' must not be changed" – a dramatically stronger statement.

Interpreting your own statements as something weaker than what you said when you have to defend them, and your opponents' statements as something stronger than they said when you are attacking them. That's an ultra-cheap rhetorical technique that only works when your opponent is stupid or doesn't get a chance to respond. It's despicable to even try it in a consensus-based project such as Wikipedia, but it looks as if it has become second nature to you so: you can't even control it in front of the arbitration committee. Hans Adler 15:56, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It's quite a mystery why Ottava never took the opportunity when it was offered to him. --Folantin (talk) 19:23, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

• "never claimed that nobody refers to Orlando as a "romance epic"." If that was true, you wouldn't be so obstinate against use of Romance Epic instead of Romantic Epic for the page. That is the center of the argument. Either you allow the compromise, or you don't. If you don't, then you are ignoring lots of major criticism without a good justification. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:33, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey, you were offered a chance to change it yourself to "romance epic" way back in January. Why didn't you do it? --Folantin (talk) 19:34, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't edit war. You made fun of me for it. I -did- originally put it up and did make a revert, and Moreschi and you edited it out of existence. I'm not giving you some excuse to claim I am breaking rules. If you want to prove that you discuss and compromise, you would put it up yourself. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:37, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Then you got the green light to make the change [11] but you didn't make it [12]. You insisted I make it for you. --Folantin (talk) 19:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

You've already expressed what can be construed as ownership and have brought up the issue over a dozen times in multiple unrelated pages. If you want to show that you really care about compromise, discussion, and working with people, why have you not bothered to change it yourself? Why are you so aggressive on so many pages about it, yet when you say it could be okay you have not done it to prove such? Ottava Rima (talk) 19:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

"[You] have brought up the issue over a dozen times in multiple unrelated pages". Eh? You're the one who took it to Fringe Theories Noticeboard, user talk pages (including, it now appears, one on Wikiversity), the Content Noticeboard and canvassed the issue several times on IRC. If you are so desperate to make the change, go ahead and make it. Either that or drop the whole matter. --Folantin (talk) 19:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I have canvassed about Ludovico Ariosto? Then how come no one except people you've had a long time editing with participated in both the talk page and the fringe noticeboard page? And when I asked someone who blatantly does not like me, Geogre, he agreed with me on the matter? Your argument is rather odd, and you still haven't provided a reason as to why you haven't changed it yourself, which is rather odd too. You've been asked many times, and yet nothing. Are you afraid to? Ottava Rima (talk) 21:22, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you canvassed on IRC. But nobody paid any attention to your pleas because, frankly, it seems pretty much everyone is bored of your badgering by now. You've already had my reason for not changing it myself: I don't care. It is perfectly accurate to call Orlando a "romantic epic" as the page (and others on Wikipedia) do now. If you are so passionate about the phrase "romance epic" then it's up to you to alter it. --Folantin (talk) 21:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Have proof that I "canvassed" on IRC? By the way, I altered it four minutes before you responded. Now that it has been changed, are you going to answer the question posed to you for eleven months as to why you haven't changed it yourself if you really believed it was an acceptable compromise? Ottava Rima (talk) 21:40, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I've got proof. It's on its way to the arbs. As for the rest, you've already had your answer. Ciao. --Folantin (talk) 22:00, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to involve myself in the mess that the Ottava Rima ArbCom case has become. However, I will just restate here what I said on WP:FTN. His on-wiki assertion that the scholar Barbara Reynolds is a "hack writer" is his own personal opinion, and probably a BLP violation. She is usually referred to as a leading expert on Dante. His other assertion that her post-war appointment as University Lecturer in the University of Cambridge was inconsequential and that anybody could have such a post is also a personal opinion and quite untrue, just as much today as it was then. Barbara Reynolds is now in her nineties. It is quite inappropriate for her reputation to be smeared on wikipedia, even by editors who despise her work. Why am I reminded of User:Log in, log out's comments about Johanna Nichols? Mathsci (talk) 22:40, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, one only needs to look at your inappropriate and harassing comments over at Wikipedia Review where you admit your friendship and bias towards Moreschi. And yes, Barbara Reynolds can never be classified as an expert on epic and it is amazing that you would try to suggest otherwise. And lecturer is not an advanced position. Cambridge has thousands of lecturers, most teaching low level classes. If you want to call pointing out the obvious a "smear", then there is really nothing to be said for you. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I suppose it's true that lecturer is not an "advanced position"; its rough equivalent in the US system is assistant professor. Of course, Reynolds has been a bit more than a lecturer; she's been a visiting professor at institutions in the US and at Trinity College, Dublin, and a readers at the University of Nottingham. She's also been honored by the Italian government for her services to Italian literature [13]...quite impressive for a "hack writer". --Akhilleus (talk) 00:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

But not once a professor of epic, let alone Renaissance Epic. It is always "Italian" literature, which is based on her ability to translate. And Akhilleus, a "hack writer" is one who writes to make money, not one who writes for academia. Her record is nothing close to someone like Zatti or David Quint. You keep thinking that some publications (based on standards, not that much for her long career) equals expert whereas they aren't the right publications. David Quint for comparison. Remember, I listed many such people. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:32, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"based on her ability to translate"? Do you have any evidence for your bizarre contention that Reynolds' positions were granted because of her ability to translate, and not because of her competence as a translator, lexicographer, teacher, and scholar? And is there a reason why you feel compelled to insult Reynolds' accomplishments? I notice you're still referring to her as a hack writer. I have to agree with Mathsci that this is a BLP violation.

I have no idea what a "professor of epic" is. Is there an epic studies department out there somewhere? David Quint teaches in a department of comparative literature. Based on the logic you're employing here, I guess that means he has the ability to translate literature from two languages... --Akhilleus (talk) 01:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

← (ec) Just a few comments, if Hans will forgive me. WR is somewhat irrelevant: I commented on OR's editing style (I compared it to that of User:Mrathel, which I find exemplary). What OR has written about the University of Cambridge is clueless and inaccurate. Most lecturers in Cambridge teach one undergraduate course, one postgraduate course and supervise Ph.D. students. They are appointed primarily on the basis of their research, not on their teaching ability. The standard lecture load is 40 lectures (16 + 24). (There might conceivably be some confusion between college fellows and university lecturers; there is also a difference between an assistant lecturer in Cambridge and a University Lecturer.) The vast majority of lecturers in Cambridge are now professors following the campaign of Gillian Evans, Emeritus Professor of Theology and Medieval History, in the 1990s [14]. Prior to that, unlike the USA, there were very few professors in the university, most of them having named chairs; now that is no longer the case. Moreschi is not a friend of mine - I've never interacted with him to my knowledge. I once participated on WP:ANI with Folantin when User:Log in, log out showed up making disparaging remarks about the female academic from the University of California at Berkeley mentioned above. Mathsci (talk) 01:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

• "Do you have any evidence for your bizarre contention that Reynolds' positions were granted because of her ability to translate" I take it that you didn't bother to check her "scholarly" publications. Most of them were a handful of translations with no real books of criticism. "Is there an epic studies department out there somewhere?" See, there are professors of "Victorian poetry", "Professors of American Fiction", etc. Normally, when universities have positions, they hire people based on a focus area. Epic is a focus. "I have to agree with Mathsci that this is a BLP violation." Go ahead and claim it as such all you want, but the term "hack writer" is not a pejorative. It merely denotes that one writes books to sell, which translations and popular biographies fall under.
• "The vast majority of lecturers in Cambridge are now professors" I'd love to see proof of such claims. Seeing as how the "majority" of faculty at Cambridge probably never will have permanent positions (if you go by numbers). "I've never interacted with him to my knowledge" And yet you showed up at quite a few of these pages and vigorously defended him at WR. I find that interesting. I already provided examples of conversations with both you and Akhilleus arguing... what you are arguing above. How odd that you happen to coincide together at the same time while trying to argue the same point. You wouldn't happen to be sharing details of what you wish to say before posting, do you? It would make sense for you to get your talking points synchronized first. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I was a tenured faculty member in Cambridge. 20 years ago there were probably only 6 or 7 chairs in the department. Now there are over 20 and promotion is usually a simple matter, based on age, provided research contributions remain constant. Almost all university lectureships in Cambridge become tenured after 3 years. There might be some confusion due to posts such as junior research fellowships in colleges or college lectureships. There is a distinction between university posts and college posts. University posts are tenured; these often come with college fellowships, coterminous with the university appointment, although life fellowships are often awarded after 25 years service. Appointments solely through colleges and not the university are usually temporary; that is not what is under discussion here. Mathsci (talk) 01:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"was a tenured faculty member in Cambridge" Fascinating. Most people I know who worked with Cambridge or just went to Cambridge referred to a specific college, but you haven't at all. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I have two colleges, one where I was an undergraduate and one where I was a fellow. But why do feel you need to know this? And why do you think somebody who's been employed in Cambridge for years would put their college attachments before their university department? That seems completely crazy. (Incidentally one ex-arbitrator intersected with me in Cambridge, so you should be extremely cautious on how you write if you're in any way attempting to cast doubt on the statement you cite. It might indeed be advisable for you to refactor what you've just written.) Mathsci (talk) 04:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't care if you taught at a college at Cambridge, but normally people who did actually refer to that college and don't make sweeping generalizations about faculty and the expertise of faculty as a whole, especially when they are people who are merely at the entrance level for permanent staff. As I showed below, the people I cited aren't "first" level and have many publications on -epic-. By the way, about your threat. Have that ex arbitrator contact me, and I can discuss with them how your approach is completely unfounded. It would be nice. I'm curious as to who you are referring to, as I've talked to most of the ex Arbitrators in the past and only two would really fit the bill. "why do you think somebody who's been employed in Cambridge for years would put their college attachments before their university department" - that statement alone would really cast doubts about you knowing how Cambridge works or you are just saying such things in order to reinforce a generalization that you know can't be reinforced. There is far too much pride between the different colleges to ever associate yourself as just "Cambridge". However, since I already exposed how you were attempting to argue a first level position as something of significance, it could just be a continuation of bluffing about things in order to win an argument. Of course, if you really did teach there, it would just simply say that you know you are wrong and hope no one can figure that out. An odd thing, really, but with some of the nasty comments you stated against me at Wikipedia Review, it seems that you would really hate to be wrong after making them. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Please rest assured that I have not been bluffing. I was a tenured member of the Mathematics Faculty and simultaneously a fellow of a college. I was not in any way at the "entrance level" as incorrectly suggested, since it was not my first tenured university position. You still seem to be rather confused about Faculty (where lectures are given) and Colleges (where supervisions are given). Perhaps one of those many people you know that have been to Cambridge can explain this to you. It must also be in the wikipedia article on the University of Cambridge. You might also want to take a look at DPMMS. I don't see where pride between colleges comes into this, particularly after having attachments to two colleges. Perhaps when people are students that might seem important. But now in fact many faculty members prefer not to be attached to colleges, e.g. Ian Grojnowski and Burt Totaro. Mathsci (talk) 06:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"Please rest assured that I have not been bluffing." I said bluffing about Barbara Reynolds. That one was obvious. And if you had multiple tenured positions, what is to say -she- did? You haven't provided any actual history of her background, let alone publications. I, on the other hand, have provided extensive backgrounds for those I cited. It is interesting how that happens. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Ottava, your line of reasoning is becoming increasingly hard to follow now. This is a question of post-war appointments where most of the modern points of reference that you've mentioned are quite inapplicable. Mathsci (talk) 23:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

My line of reasoning? You stated that her status was something worth while. You have failed to show how she compares to any of the individuals I have put forth. The rest of your logic equally falls flat. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

What a lot of bluster Ottava comes out with when he's lost an argument. If I remember correctly he was making sneering statements based on Barbara Reynolds' employment as a University Lecturer. His statements still seem to be severely confused about this. Having abandoned that line of reasoning, he is now attempting to rescue himself by suggesting an alternartive method of evaluatung her. But WP editors don't evaluate authors in that way on wikipedia. This might be an amusing pub game for graduate students, but not here thank you very much. Mathsci (talk) 08:36, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it is interesting how you continue to claim that you are correct when it was pointed out time after time that a lecturer is merely the first permanent position. You still have yet to provide a lower permanent position. And Mathsci, I find it delightful how you ignore all of the conversation, especially the part when you are trying to claim a translator overrides what 8 different experts in epic classify the work as (remember, the original discussion? or did you forget?). Perhaps your memory has slipped because you realized you were wrong. As such, I can only assume that you are conceding on the original discussion. Thank you for that. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:22, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

A response to Ottava: Ah, another unsupported accusation of meatpuppetry. Perhaps I will add my voice to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava Rima restrictions/Evidence after all.

I'm quite familiar with the idea of academic areas of focus. But listing "epic poetry" as one of your areas of focus on your CV, webpage, etc. doesn't make you a "professor of epic"--it makes you a professor of comparative literature (or English, Italian, Classics, whatever) who specializes in epic poetry. As far as Reynolds, there's plenty of reason to think that she knows a bit about epic (she translated one, after all, and taught Italian literature--which includes some epic--for many years). Your arguments that she isn't qualified to speak about epic boil down to insults directed at Reynolds' scholarship and an apparent disrespect of the craft of translation--as if translators are automatons who don't have valuable opinions about the literature they translate.

The idea that "hack writer" is "not a pejorative" is ridiculous. You could profit from reading the linked article, if only to see that your concept of the term is idiosyncratic. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"Ah, another unsupported accusation of meatpuppetry" No, just a question. After all, you edit conflicted while saying the same thing. It is quite amusing how you are both arguing the same points and yet trying to distance yourself from any relationship with anyone else. "as one of your areas of focus on your CV, webpage, etc. doesn't make you a "professor of epic"" - Zatti is a professor of epic. David Quint is a professor of epic. They publish books on epic as a genre. They tend to hang out in the same groups at various conferences. Specialists in epic are rather prominent. "The idea that "hack writer" is "not a pejorative" is ridiculous" - Samuel Johnson said that there was no legitimate reason to write except for money. Grub Street had a very old tradition of it. There are thousands of dime novelists authors that don't see their trade as a bad thing. Hell, popular books are called popular for a reason. Wanting to make money is not a negative. But it does place someone as less reliable when they don't lack standard academic works in a specific area. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Ottava--I should have said "another unsupported insinuation of meatpuppetry." I apologize for the error. --Akhilleus (talk) 02:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Don't apologize yet, because I never said you were posting on his behalf. You could just be tag teaming. :P But seriously, you don't really do yourself a favor when you are both defending yourself and the other. If you aren't actually working cooperatively, it would probably help to focus on yourself and not the other guy. Regardless, I didn't even bother to list you on any of the workshop proposals, so there is no real reason to be so agitated or defensive. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:41, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not defensive, though I may be a bit agitated. I've told you several times that I don't appreciate your insinuations of meatpuppetry, tag-teaming, or other illicit collaborative behavior, and I'm going to offer some evidence about it, whether or not you've listed me at the workshop. --Akhilleus (talk) 02:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

You did edit conflict with an individual while basically saying the same thing on the same topic. Just look at the responses you and he made above. Compare the times. If you don't like to be described as a Zebra, maybe you shouldn't wear white with black stripes? :) Ottava Rima (talk) 02:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Ottava Rima has not responded to the point I made about the distinction between tenured university lecturers, like Barbara Reynolds, and college employees. The former are called UTOs (university teaching officers), the latter CTOs (college teaching officers). He presumably has come across Christ's College in connection with John Milton. (His deathmask is on display in the Senior Combination Room.) Mathsci (talk) 03:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Cambridge, like all Universities, is split into many different units, mostly referred to as colleges. I find it interesting that you referred to it as Cambridge when referring to two different people, as people don't refer to it as a whole, especially when making sweeping statements about faculty. People who are closely associated with the different schools tend not to do that. And Christ's College comes up quite a lot. Lecturer - "is the name given to those who teach in their first permanent university position. That is, lecturers are academics early in their careers" What a prestigious position. I guess the idea of "first" and "early" weren't figuring in when you were trying to promote her status, right? Now, as for Sergio Zatti, 6 major publications on epic, oh, and that was Harvard he was visiting. David Quint at Yale? Oh my. Look at all of those academic publications listed. You might have me on Andrew Fichter, he is just a Yale PhD graduate who also graduated from their Law School and published on Epic while working as a lawyer and a professor, but Jane Everson is an actual Professor in the UK with quite a large selection of books. Poor Dennis Looney is just a student of Zatti with a large selection of awards and publications for his work. I could go on if you would prefer. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

←What you have written about Cambridge is incorrect. The University of Cambridge is divided into faculties and then departments. The colleges are separate entities. They lodge undergraduates, graduates and some fellows. Undergraduates attend courses in the university and then are supervised, usually in pairs, in the colleges. The newly remodeled Faculty of English is on the Sidgwick Site off West Road, the other side of the river Cam from most of the colleges. I don't think it's that easy to be appointed a University Lecturer in Cambridge. Richard Borcherds is an example of somebody who proved his main results that were later to win him a Fields medal before his appointment as a University Lecturer. As you correctly write, "what a prestigious position". Mathsci (talk) 05:12, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I find it funny that Ottava attacks Reynolds as a "mere" Lecturer in Italian at Cambridge when he can't read basic Italian himself. He also thinks that specialists in Ariosto (such as Professor Peter Marinelli) are not qualified to talk about...Ariosto. There again, the whole idea that there is an important distinction between the "Italian romantic epic" and the "Italian romance epic" is simply a product of his overheated imagination. This is a guy who is quite prepared to argue that Malory's Morte d'Arthur is a work of "Renaissance poetry", remember. --Folantin (talk) 08:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I think I still haven't seen a diff for that. I once found a discussion here that referenced a long list on Wikiversity that contained that error, but I don't remember seeing him defending it. Are you sure he did that, and do you remember where? Hans Adler 08:28, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

He attempts to defend his boo-boo here [15] by dodging the whole "poetry/prose" issue and slipping in some sophistry about Malory being part of the Renaissance rather than the Middle Ages (even though he’s dealt with by the Medieval department at Oxford University, to take one example [16]). Of course, Ottava is infallible and can never admit he has just made a mistake. That's the basic problem. --Folantin (talk) 08:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a pretty good example after all. I am already a bit spoilt and was looking for a totally clear statement of the type "Why do you want to destroy Wikipedia by claiming Malory ever wrote prose?" (Example completely made up, of course.) Hans Adler 08:51, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

It’s pretty obvious from this [17] that he's not overly familiar with English Medieval and Renaissance literature. Apart from making the Malory error, he has Langland down as prose, Sidney's Arcadia as poetry (it is a long prose romance with a few sections of poetry) and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene has the unusual spelling “Edmund Spencer: The Fairie Queen”. OK, everyone makes mistakes but if you make these kind of slip-ups you don’t get to call Professor John Beer and his associates “unscholarly hacks” as Ottava did here. [18]. --Folantin (talk) 09:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's unfair to judge him by that page. We all write some pretty embarrassing things on notepaper occasionally, and the initial versions of wiki pages (what is not an initial version on Wikiversity?) are often very similar. Personally I draw the line where he defends these things as correct. Hans Adler 09:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

...although it's quite intriguing to note that he has Tennyson down as "Alfred, Lord Tennyson" there ;) . --Folantin (talk) 11:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

As I stated in both the Byron discussion and the Tennyson discussion, my personal thoughts and use do not reflect our policies, guidelines, and standards as "personal preference" is not an acceptable rationale. 14:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I never defended the "poetry" vs "prose" as correct because I put down Morte D'Arthur in poetry instead of the Alliterative Morte Arthure, which is -definitely- a poem. I did defend it as a Ren work because it was the first major publication which heralded in both Ren printing and set the tone for Ren works. It was a piece edited by Caxton and definitely altered by Caxton. Caxton's version and the later rediscovered version are two very different things. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah right. So you ascribed the authorship of the Alliterative Morte Arthure to Malory then put it in the Renaissance when it belongs to the 14th century? --Folantin (talk) 15:05, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Both works belong on the list. It was thrown together and that was only the first stage. It isn't hard to look down, see two of the same words and then put the wrong one up when you are putting up a section. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"He also thinks that specialists in Ariosto (such as Professor Peter Marinelli)" How strange that a person without major publications in Ariosto is now a "specialist". Interestingly, I couldn't find a university page for him.... The other critics I listed all had prominent pages by prominent universities with long catalogs of publications in the field and awards that go with their research.... this specialist doesn't seem to have anything.... Ottava Rima (talk) 14:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

He died in 1993. [19] Voceditenore (talk) 14:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

He wrote a book on Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of Orlando Furioso and was chosen by Cambridge University Press to write the section on 16th century narrative poetry for their History of Italian Literature. I think it's fair to say he was a specialist in Ariosto. --Folantin (talk) 15:05, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

See also his Shaping the Ore: Image and Design in Canto 1 of Orlando Furioso; "The flight of Ariosto's hippogriff: genesis, elaboration, and function" in Ficino and Renaissance Neoplatonism, Volume 1 of University of Toronto Italian studies; and "Redemptive Laughter: Comedy in the Italian Romances" in Versions of Medieval Comedy, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1987. His major work, Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of Orlando Furioso has over 100 citations on Google books alone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by voceditenore (talk • contribs) 16:20, 23 November 2009

16th century Italian means expert on epic how? By the way, merely writing on a work does not mean you are expert on epic. Feminists have written on Ariosto also, but they aren't reliable sources for genre classification. And 100 citations? That is it? Andrew Fichter had 198 citations there. Yet you don't recognize him at all. Your understanding of "specialist" and "expert" leave much to be desired. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I was merely responding to your query: "How strange that a person without major publications in Ariosto is now a "specialist". I didn't realize that what you meant was: How strange that a person without major publications on the epic is now a "specialist". I was also explaining why Marinelli doesn't have a university staff page since he has been dead for 16 years. But if you're interested in Ariosto in general, and Orlando in particular, you might find Marinelli's writings useful.Voceditenore (talk) 17:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

There are plenty of dead critics with university pages or the rest. And Voceditenore, my interest in Ariosto is only as a translation of epic from the Classical to the Christian. Hence, why I have so many works on the matter. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Pity, it's a gripping read. But never mind. ;-) Voceditenore (talk) 23:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying Marinelli's works are gripping? Or Ariosto? Because it was Marinelli who I wasn't going to bother with (whereas, I have read Ariosto). Ottava Rima (talk) 04:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I find the whole idea of "specialising" in the epic quite amusing. That would require a knowledge of Greek, Latin, most of the major and minor modern European languages, Sanskrit, Persian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Georgian, Tibetan, Mandinka and so on and so on. But Ottava thinks he is the maestro di color che sanno and can dictate who is competent to talk about Ariosto, even though he doesn't know basic Italian (he thinks basta means "bastard") and seems never to have read Orlando. --Folantin (talk) 17:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"That would require a knowledge of Greek, Latin, most of the major and minor modern European languages" - you do know that we have translators now, right? You have been promoting one as an expert. And you can easily specialize in Latin, Italian, and English and have a large selection of epics to discuss. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

By the way, Basta is used in English as something different than modern Italian slang. But if you want to suggest that a modern understanding of Italian slang means no understanding of Ariosto, or that I haven't read the work when it is rather obvious that I have (after all, you tried to claim there was nothing Christian about it, which was absurd), then you are only making yourself look silly. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"Basta!" means "Enough!" or "Stop it!" It's not slang. The verb bastare is basic Italian and you won't get very far reading a book in that language if you don't know it. "You tried to claim there was nothing Christian about it". No I didn't. I said it was undue weight to call it a "Christian epic". You claimed Christ was a major character in the poem which is proof that you have never read it. --Folantin (talk) 21:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The word "crap" exists in English and can be used in a standard term. However, it is still slang. "No I didn't." The whole top of talk:Ludovico Ariosto contradicts you. There were no references provided by you that states it wasn't a Christian epic, so you can't pull "undue" at all. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

"I don't think it's that easy to be appointed" Over 17,000 students. That means over 1,000 positions. Having someone with no publications except a few notable translations definitely shows that she was pointed more for honorary/publicity reasons than academic publication. Happens quite often with notable writers. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Hans, your talk page has been Pythonised. Bwa ha ha! --Folantin (talk) 22:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

No problem, since I'm a fan. Can I get a bit of Jacques Tati next week? By the way, where did this basta/bastard nonsense come up first? The earliest references I found were by you here, then here. Hans Adler 23:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

It’s way back when Ottava got upset at Jbmurray for criticising one of his Featured Article candidates. Jbmurray finally got tired and wrote, "I tried to copy-edit this sentence, only to get reverted and to have abuse on my talk page for my trouble. Basta!"[20]. Ottava claimed Jbmurray was swearing at him and the following conversation ensued [21] (scroll down). I forgot about that until the Ariosto hoopla kicked off last Christmas.--Folantin (talk) 08:21, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Bonus comedy argument sketch from Youtube [22]. Disclaimer: obviously, debates on Wikipedia are never like this. --Folantin (talk) 09:12, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, that's great! What's different here to Wikipedia debates that draw most attention to themselves is that the thick woman is emotionally detached from the fine. If she were doing this for her own parking offence that might come much closer. Hans Adler 09:35, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Referencing you

I noted your diff in my comment here. You may want to post an official statement of your concerns. Jehochman ^Talk 13:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Some thoughts

I'm sorry you feel that way. But it's unfounded. If you asked wider, or read better, you would learn:

1. The evidence isn't just "provided by me", it isn't just "one bit" or "out of context". The current case is about outright plain acknowledgement of abuse of process to "get" at another user, then lied about to the community, and later admitted true. Matters to you? Or not really?
2. Because of drama and such, the matters you're thinking of have been reviewed numerous times (2007 - 2009), both by people who have seen the evidence but are happy to look at it all again, and also by people who haven't seen it before. Full disclosure provided.
3. Arbcom's been rather happy this year to desysop and de-functionary numerous people who did wrong, and explaining why.

I don't mind addressing admin and established editor abuse cases. People who are established in the community should show high standards. A minority play serious games behind the scenes. Most times they get away with it. Sometimes they don't. I do a lot of work on admin abuse and review of seriously substandard admin conduct. It tends to make high level enemies and get "drama", because users who've been round long enough tend to have friends. It's also impossible to be an arb without making enemies, and some people can't believe their friends could do that wrong.

Yes they can.

I've taken several such cases to Arbcom. These are senior trusted users who secretly breached trust, abused others and their standing to harm the project, made false accusations (including false bans) against users, pushed POV, ruthlessly lied, and deceived the users who trusted them. These matter if you ask most users. You can assume I do not make statements lightly, I know the high standard of evidence needed, and you may notice Alison (having seen the evidence) is harder in this case than I am.

Anyhow, think as you will. But reflect on the above too. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:03, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Apology

You quite justifiably demanded a retraction of my recent commment about you on t:GW. I've now done so [23] and offer you my apology. You are correct: I had no reason to say that of you. However, I maintain my original sentence, which does not reflect upon you.

I'll read what you have to say more carefully, and may return here to discuss the matter. t:GW can get noisy William M. Connolley (talk) 19:07, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, the retraction would have been enough actually. I can understand how this happens. I once claimed without any foundation that I generally didn't agree with a certain relatively new editor at Talk:Homeopathy. Hans Adler 19:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Outed?

Outed as a racist? What are you referring to? --William S. Saturn (talk) 03:01, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I was referring to this comment, which was uncontradicted at the time, in connection with this. I now see that you deny the connection on Jehochman's talk page and that this doesn't mention you. Therefore in retrospect my characterisation of you was not appropriate, at the very least not based on this evidence: At the very least the term "outing" doesn't apply, given that you deny the connection.

I apologise for the error (which I could have avoided by checking my evidence and noticing) and will try to set it right on Jehochman's talk page. My error does not strongly affect the point I was trying to make, though, unless Jehochman knew that you deny the connection when he opened the SPI.

If there is no connection, the block log is a serious problem. As you have seen, people will draw the conclusion that you are connected with that account, and it affects their attitude towards you. I guess there is nothing you can do about it yourself: It doesn't make much sense to address this on your user page, as it would draw additional attention to your block log and people might not believe it. Even the fact that this category doesn't contain you doesn't prove anything, since it might be because of privacy concerns related to your real name(?) account. If it is clear that you are not, after all connected to this user, or at least that there is no sufficiently strong evidence for such a connection, then you have a strong case for a zero-length block by Tiptoety that sets the record straight. If the situation is more complicated than that (e.g. you having operated some but not all accounts in that sock drawer), then you need better advice than I can give you. If, on the other hand, the situation is very clear and you are editing under your real name, then you might manage to become one of the very rare cases where a developer removes entries from a block log; although that's rather unlikely. Hans Adler 06:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I've tried to set the record straight back in June, but a few editors did not believe me. Admin Happyme22 confirmed my explanation at AN, but nothing further resulted. Perhaps the best course at this time would be ask Tiptoety for the zero-length block, I'll see what he says. --William S. Saturn (talk) 07:11, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Also

Hans Lukaschek could use an article - he's on German wiki [24]. "Königsberger Kreis" should probably have one too since it appears notable, but alas, nothing on other Wikis AFAIK.radek (talk) 20:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I thought about translating de:Hans Lukaschek, but I have only a finite amount of time and I am not too interested in these right wing figures. Fortunately they are becoming less and less of a problem since most Germans agree that the wailing of some(!) "second generation displaced persons" is mostly a joke. I guess they still have an unproportional amount of influence, but it's far less than it used to be. Hans Adler 20:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, actually I've heard this said many times and I'm sure it's true. But this is Wikipedia. Anyway, thanks.radek (talk) 20:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I see I must take back "right wing figures" wrt. Hans Lukaschek. It turns out that after the 20 July plot he was arrested for being close to the Kreisau Circle. I would have created a little stub, but it's hard to decide what to drop from this long biography, and the German article is completely unsourced! Hans Adler 20:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

From what I gather Lukaschek was a right winger, but he was an anti-Nazi right winger. I saw a source to that effect somewhere awhile back and I would put it into the commission article if I could find it again.radek (talk) 01:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Compliment

I liked your good judgment on the deletion review already, and [25] shows that you also have an open mind for other opinions. — Sebastian 20:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't think it's a big deal. It's a side effect of not caring about the topic itself, but only about a reasonable compromise. And thanks for your support! Now that Wwwolf3 has stricken a large part of their initial statement, perhaps we will get the deletion review on a more rational track. Hans Adler 20:35, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

It may come natural to you, but the Gratwanderung between caring and reason isn't always a Spaziergang for most people here.

Rational track: Well, maybe. I'm not so sure after reading that last reply to my post. It probably would have been better to not feed such arguments, but I couldn't resist, since I do care about contributors in deletion reviews (see e.g. here) and hate to see this point misused. — Sebastian 21:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure that I understand your last comment in the DRV correctly. The Foswiki article was deleted in February, about 3 months after the fork. The Foswiki people tried to discuss Foswiki in the TWiki article, but the discussions on Talk:TWiki indicate ownership issues by User:PeterThoeny. Example diffs: [26] [27]. TWiki will need some attention in the near future to prevent this from escalating.

I think what happened is that the TWiki people (1) had problems adjusting to our culture and syntax (an interesting form of systemic bias!), (2) were bullied away from the TWiki article, and (3) were deprived of their own separate article after someone made a tactical error and canvassed off-wiki, and (4) were busy with their fork anyway. Hans Adler 21:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks for summarizing the background so that I can understand it. I'll see if I can edit my reply appropriately, or simply delete it altogether. — Sebastian 21:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Troy Davis

Dear Frau Adler: Rather than simply reverting edits, you should attempt to verify whether or not the edits are incorrect. In the case of the edits to the article on the convicted murderer Troy Davis, the edits were in fact correct, substantiated, and considerably less biased than the version that was being cleaned up. MJustice (talk) 02:41, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Compliment for the innovative attempted insult and the creative use of an American timezone instead of UTC, while not changing "(UTC)". User warned for BLP violation. Hans Adler 08:10, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Offensive

I found this [28] offensive. You can't say "I think you're playing silly mind games, oh and if you find that offensive then I apologise" William M. Connolley (talk) 00:30, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Hans Adler didn't say, 'if you find that offensive' rather, he said if it was 'incorrect'. WMC, from our brief interactions you do seem to exude the air of a person who doesn't believe that he needs to talk plainly. I find that to be a shame as I am fairly certain that there is a lot which could be learnt from you, if only you shared. Unomi (talk) 02:30, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to hear HA respond, not you William M. Connolley (talk) 20:59, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems you measuring yourself and me to different standards.

• I said: "[...] to me your question [...] sounded very similar to: 'Please read my mind and do what I want you to do. If you don't guess correctly I will be angry.' You know, the game that some people [...] play with their partners."
• Your interpretation: "I think you're playing silly mind games [...]."
• I said: "Apologies if I am totally of[f], but that's the association I immediately got in my mind."
• Your interpretation: "oh and if you find that offensive then I apologise"

My constructive feedback about how your post on Jehochman's talk page can easily be (mis?)interpreted becomes my reading of your mind. My apology in case that's not how you meant it and my interpretation is eccentric becomes an apology in case you are offended.

No, if you did try to play such a mind game I am not going to apologise for making it explicit, even if it offended you. Because such games are completely inappropriate here. No, initially I didn't think I was necessarily on the right track. Now that others have made it clear they have the same impression, and now that you are reading my mind after insisting that Jehochman take your question at face value, I have less doubts than before. Hans Adler 21:31, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems you measuring yourself and me to different standards. (sic) - yes, this is most definitely true. When I made an error with respect to you I immeadiately retracted it and apologised. I regret that you are unwilling to do the same. Should you change your mind, please leave me a note on my talk page; I am unwatching here William M. Connolley (talk) 21:59, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

ANI

Hello, Hans Adler. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. GnarlyLikeWhoa (talk) 20:04, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

EURODOS

Hello Hans Adler,

I had put a diagram on the "labour theory of value" article which included a copyright notice. You have removed it. Consequently I have updated the diagram and encountered ridiculous problems which suggest that there was computer piracy involved to prevent me putting the diagram in the article. You are one of the suspects as you wrote in a comment to me "And it is especially inappropriate to do so while it contains a name that has nothing to do with the article".

The diagram expresses the core of the labour theory of value. There is no better way to present the essence of the theory and in addition it refelcts a very deep research into the subject. More of it you can find at http://eurodos.free.fr/mime Eurodos (talk) 15:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I did nothing more than remove the inappropriate image once and explain to you why you have been running into problems. I am a volunteer like everybody else, and your confrontational approach doesn't motivate me to help you further. Hans Adler 15:36, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Waffle fries

Hi,

Regarding this edit: the rationale was reference 23 on French fries. It's probably best that we don't have articles contradicting one another, so could you check that reference? I don't have the French-fu required. Cheers. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:32, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Your article very clearly shows and describes a variant of potato crisps. The French term pommes gaufrettes literally translates as potato waffles, although that's something else altogether. I would call them "waffle potato crisps", and there are a few Google hits for that.

The original definition in waffle fries was that of a variant of French fries. The photo seems to fit this definition. I am not familiar with American food traditions, but the fact that waffle fries are apparently served with chicken by some chain also suggests to me that they are more similar to fries than to crisps. And see the description here – perhaps the best source we can expect for such information.

The article French fries equates the two, but I have my doubts about that: I would like to see a source. I have never met either kind in real life, and I don't know how to research this further. Hans Adler 01:02, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The Great Wikipedia Dramaout

Hi! As you have expressed an interest in the initial The Great Wikipedia Dramaout, you're being notified because we are currently planning another one in January! We hope to have an even greater level of participation this time around, and we need your help. If you're still interested please sign up now at Wikipedia:The Great Wikipedia Dramaout/2nd. Thanks, and Happy Holidays! JCbot (talk) 04:31, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Concerning Ottava Rima and Dbachmann

FYI, I think that Ottava Rima [29] was right on the mark about Dbachmann. He, Dbachmann, is a very active editor, but all too frequently edits on subjects he fails to understand. The result is that frequently he ruins articles unintentionally. He can be a real dick when contradicted too. 173.52.187.133 (talk) 17:15, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't see how a mere expression of an opinion without any supporting evidence, by an anonymous uncritical Ottava fan, is of any use. Hans Adler 17:51, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I counted too much on you memory. The above was a reply to your edit [30] on Ottava Rima's talk page. You presented a diff to support your negative view of Ottava Rima, and I have replied to that. As for your describing me as an "uncritical Ottava fan", that is a little silly, and rather similar to Dbachmann's own dismissive approach to those who disagree with him. (As for your dismissive comment about IP users, IP users are less anonymous than most WP users, almost all of whom are hidden behind their WP aliases.)173.52.187.133 (talk) 18:35, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, a statement that Dab too frequently edits on subjects he doesn't understand by an IP who can't back up the claim is unimpressive. Dab gets testy but nothing like Ottava, Dab's a pussycat in comparison. And apparently the IP has practically no edits so I'm surprised he/she thinks they can comment. Dougweller (talk) 19:12, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I was perfectly aware of your editing history when I responded to you. The point about anonymity was that under your present IP you have not accumulated any credits that would justify trusting your word if you don't present any evidence. "Uncritical Ottava fan" referred specifically to our previous dialogue. Your way of arguing then and your way of arguing now are hard to separate from Ottava's. Since you have denied being a meat puppet, and since the timing of your edits in relation to Ottava's is suspicious, I have opened a sockpuppet investigation. Hans Adler 21:03, 19 December 2009 (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_italic.png

I had hoped that,as an intelligent person, you might be open to discussion. (I do admit that my characterization of Dbachmann as a "dick" was excessively abrasive -- although true -- and a more explanatory phrase would have been better.) Your wiki-lawering is deplorable, and exemplifies what I wrote on Ottava's talk page about those WP rules that allow some editors to become expert at using whining, squealing, and wiki-lawering to achieve problematic editing goals disguised as WP goals. Sorry if my well intentioned, but clearly misguided intrusion, disturbed your sleep. 173.52.187.133 (talk) 12:37, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Dbachmann is good editor. I don't think he likes trolls, but then again he would probably never call them that. Mathsci (talk) 15:44, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Troll? I responded to a rather negative statement by Hans Adler, comparing Ottava Rima's editing very unfavorably with Dbachmann's editing. So, if my edits on this page are "trolling", then Hans Adler's edits on Ottava Rima's page are even more trolling than my edits. In any case, I did not say Dbachmann never does good editing, but I have not seen it. 173.52.187.133 (talk) 16:26, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims

Thanks for creating this interesting article; with some expansion it could be an interesting T:TDYK nomination. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:42, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Possibly, although I would like to see some additional work first: The Schieder commission article must look neutral, and ideally there should be a stub on the Königsberger Kreis, since that passage looks like the most likely hook. And the article is still mostly unsourced. Only a Mommsen quotation was sourced in the original, and I only added a footnote for the Amt für Heimatvertriebene bit that I added myself. Hans Adler 21:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

If you like Mommsen, you might find this useful, both for your Königsberger Kreis project (pp.96ff) and for the "Schieder commission" (pp.105ff). Skäpperöd (talk) 17:18, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Hans, regarding the Schieder commission, I think I will take a break from editing and commenting on it, and I recommended to Radek he does the same. I am afraid the atmosphere there is not very relaxing, to say the least, and as such, contributing there is not very pleasant, at least for us. However, I'd appreciate it very much if you could try to improve the article, by making it more neutral and comprehensive; in any case I think we have exhausted most relevant non-German sources we have access to. Thanks, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Yes, I will try to extend the article. There are some really unnecessary tensions between German and Polish editors. It looks as if I am the only one who is (more or less) willing and able to do some work based on the German sources and who is trusted by both sides – so there seems to be no way around doing it.

In response to your email: No, I don't think you are being disruptive or unconstructive at all. It's a structural problem with miscommunication and plausible assumptions of bad faith. I guess it has to do with the choice of subject, the appearance of some kind of secrecy, and the strong focus on the otherwise totally justified main point. But the situation is much better than what I have experienced between English and Irish editors. Therefore I am very hopeful so far as this article is concerned. (I don't follow the EEML case and have no idea what's going on there.) I think what the article needs to become neutral isn't "balancing" information that would be consistent with an opposite POV, but filling in all the details that don't directly support the main thesis but are also part of the story. Details analogous to Armin Meiwes having become a vegetarian in prison, and having read a Star Trek book during the crime. Hans Adler 18:18, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

How's the work on Schieder commission going? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:42, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I nearly missed your question. I am travelling and won't be able to continue before 10 January or so. Hans Adler 14:03, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Humour

I was going to leave a funny comment about senses of humour here but apparently my being English is not the guarantee of being able to find something funny to say in all circumstances that I thought it would be. Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:05, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I find Hans' sense of humour to be self-evident, perhaps a little subtle for some sometimes, but I'm a fan.   pablo_hablo. 18:23, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Only constructive criticism please, no personal attacks. Hans Adler 19:22, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, I have struck any text which may offend the subtlety-averse reader.   pablo_hablo. 19:34, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks. Hans Adler 19:37, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

You also had the option to tag the quoted post with {{UserActual}}, e.g. {{subst:User actual|Rlevse|Joopercoopers}} → "— Preceding comment signed as by Rlevse (talk • contribs) actually added by Joopercoopers (talk • contribs)" — Sizzle Flambé (☎/✍) 18:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I actually looked for a template of this kind but couldn't find it. And of course in a situation where one doesn't immediately find an appropriate template the best solution is always to stir up a bit of drama; certainly much safer than trying to come up with your own text and perhaps getting a nuance wrong! Hans Adler 19:22, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

"Holiday Offer"

FYI: This topic on Gwen Gale's talk -- Proofreader77 (talk) 00:59, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Even after consulting Gwen Gale's talk page I have no idea what you want. It seems that even when you are not wasting your own time by writing sonnets that nobody wants to read, you still manage to express yourself in a way that forces others to either spend hours on trying to understand what you are driving at or simply ignore you. This is not acceptable. Hans Adler 13:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

• Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gwen_Gale#Proofreader77....Again --Tombaker321 (talk) 00:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

AfD

I've nominated List of former Jews, List of former Christians, and List of former Muslims together for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of former Jews.Kitfoxxe (talk) 18:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

JIDF

Hi and Happy New Year, The JIDF article is semi-protected for a month. I'm hoping to get some long-standing problems fixed during this time. I'm currently going through section by section proposing amendments. Please feel free to comment or add any ideas of your own.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:08, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

New ANI created.

I believe I should give you a heads-up on this ANI regarding Proofreader77 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Proofreader77_Established_record_of_continuous_unrelenting_Disruptive_Editing

--Tombaker321 (talk) 09:37, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

You should know...

...I kind of egged on Codex Til on the Fringe theory noticeboard regarding you and SA... :D Auntie E. (talk) 02:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Given a certain editor's knowledge of Jimbo's intentions and the fact that Wikipedia simply doesn't work that way it's probably best to let Jimbo know ASAP. I guess one is allowed to wonder if the editor gets the knowledge about his god's will with the same precision... Hans Adler 08:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Creation according to Genesis FAQ

If you're interested in helping me with the FAQ for this article I'm working off of the following test page Nefariousski (talk) 19:42, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Ancient Arabic units of measurement

Re your edit when I first tried to open the link it did not show me anything. If you beleive you have a reference that will support the article as written, add it to the article and correct or remove any errors you find. There are reference templates on my cite page. It is the article that needs referenced not the AfD. If I can be of any assistance let me know. Jeepday (talk) 00:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. How about basing a deletion discussion on facts, research and policy rather than conjectures, assumptions and process wonkery? Hans Adler 01:09, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Please See [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%2FAncient_Arabic_units_of_measurement&action=historysubmit&diff=341876412&oldid=341800541 edit] JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry for losing my temper. It's an unusual situation for me to find myself on the inclusionist side. Hans Adler 12:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

:) That is what AfD is all about, sometimes the first look is wrong. If I had my rathers I would rather that every time I did an AfD it lead to improvement and keeping. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Passport

Several weeks ago, you expressed support for removing visa-free articles from passport pages. This discussion has been continuing from that point on, on Talk:Passport, and eventually only between three users. Several days ago, Ozguroot (talk · contribs), a suspected sockpuppet, canvassed 15 users, all who have expressed a negative viewpoint, to come to the discussion and utterly overwhelm a budding and tenuously reached compromise, which users are now beginning to renege on. This is the second time he has canvassed users to the dispute. Prior to the canvassing incident, I requested mediation at Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2010-02-04/Passport, with no response. I have reported Ozguroot's canvassing at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Ozguroot_canvassing_again, again with no response. I am utterly disheartened by the community apathy, it seems our dislike for the "dramafest at ANI" has become a disdain for dispute resolution of any kind, an apathy for processes of justice. To make sure the weeks' worth of discussion at Talk:Passport aren't undermined by an egomaniacal nationalist, a sockpuppet, and their canvassed hordes, and in light of the utter apathy I have received from the community, I am notifying all editors who expressed support for the proposal. I am aware of the tenuous ledge on which I am pirouetting, but in the absence of better advice (as sought at ANI), I am sure you will agree it is only fair to attempt to balance the canvassed users who expressed a negative viewpoint. Your participation is required - not to be melodramatic, but to quote Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". —what a crazy random happenstance 14:15, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

ani notice

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Harassment. Thank you.. Pcap ping 01:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I posted this without noticing that Pcap notified you above; I'll leave this in case it's of interest. You appear to have been accused at WP:ANI#Harassment of harassing User:Gregbard. Greg Bard has not mentioned you by name, but accused a Hans [31] of harassing him as IP 71.139.28.90. An anonymous editor, 66.127.55.192, pointed out that this was probably you.

You're surely not obligated to respond, especially since Greg Bard has not named you (as such). But I thought this might be of interest to you regardless.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 02:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm tired.

And there's lots of em. Ben (talk) 16:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

The lead of homeopathy still says: The lack of convincing scientific evidence supporting homeopathy's efficacy and its use of remedies lacking active ingredients have caused homeopathy to be described as pseudoscience, quackery, and a "cruel deception". These insults, which are justified to some extent but have been cherry-picked from the scientific literature, are still in the article now, after many attempts to have them removed. In the case of homeopathy the believers are concentrated in Germany, in the case of biblical literalism they are concentrated in the US. This gives the biblical literalists a certain advantage when compared to the homeopaths. On the other hand the belief in biblical literalism is more zany, and for mainstream theologians it's standard to talk about the creation myth while no homeopath would refer to homeopathy as quackery. Under these circumstances I am quite confident that reason will win in the end, so long as it is defended prudently.

But yes, it's trying. Hans Adler 17:09, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I've started editing a page Nef started. I've never used ANI though so comments/edits/whatever would be appreciated. Cheers, Ben (talk) 11:03, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Final discussion for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

Hello, I note that you have commented on the first phase of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

As this RFC closes, there are two proposals being considered:

1. Proposal to Close This RfC
2. Alternate proposal to close this RFC: we don't need a whole new layer of bureaucracy

Your opinion on this is welcome. Okip 02:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

It's only a matter of time

"E.g. we could also have a section explaining the origins of small letters in Carolingian minuscules. That would be similarly helpful."

LOL!! This made me laugh out loud. And we probably will have that section one day. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 21:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing discussion

Hi Hans. I was honestly quite surprised by your remarks about my sourcing on the RS board. I think that forum of discussion is unfortunately not working for the JOGG subject, because it is vague and really comes from a content dispute. It is also laced with un-substantiated innuendo which I hope you recognize for what it is. But I am interested to hear the background to your concerns.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:54, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

to space or not to space

Hans, I'm not canvassing or pressuring, but I'm interested to know why you think the established advice about spacing is "bad": "The present version is bad because is inconsistent with traditional typography in many cases". In fact, publishers are often messily inconsistent—en dashes spaced/unspaced or hyphens, without care; from one publisher to another, it can be just as bad. I see nothing wrong with a single line taken by WP that relates to what some style guides and internal publishers' guidelines say. This is perfectly consistent with the rule on using sentence, not title case in our headings and subheadings; indeed, mostly one finds title case in both hard copy and on the Internet—certainly in academic text. But in its wisdom WP chose one style, thank heavens, many years ago.

Do you find anything intrinsically unsatisfactory about spacing the dash to avoid the "jamming" effect with the innermost elements? Tony (talk) 08:44, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's not an accident that quite a few mathematicians are interested in this topic and are on the "wrong" side: I have never seen "Seifert – van Kampen theorem". Of course it's more logical than "Seifert–van Kampen theorem". But it appears that no professional typographer ever sets it that way.

I think both are intrinsically bad. I know I needn't explain why this is true for the second version. On the other hand, the first version has way too much white space and separates any sentence where it appears into two parts. This separation happens right in the middle of a very low-level grammatical unit, where a pause makes no sense at all.

As a result, the spaced ndash is fine whenever you look at an isolated unit, e.g. where "Seifert – van Kampen theorem" appears in inverted commas, is set off from the surrounding text by italics as in Seifert – van Kampen theorem, or as a link target or title as in Seifert – van Kampen theorem. But consider this example:

We can avoid the problem by using the method of Seifert – van Kampen theorem proofs of the type we discussed earlier.

And the problem doesn't really have anything to do with whether the ndash has a disjunctive function, let alone whether it involves surnames:

I agree about the problem of New Zealand – South Africa flights making sentences notoriously hard to parse.

Can you see how this sentence can be understood in two totally different ways? In short: There is a reason why we normally don't space a disjunctive ndash. Unfortunately this reason doesn't go away just because we get an additional reason for spacing it. Hans Adler 09:21, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

NORAD Tracks Santa

Your excellent comments on the improvements needed to the "NORAD Tracks Santa" article

Well done, Hans, very well said. The "NORAD Tracks Santa" article is proof positive that just because an article is long doesn't make it good. I hope that the two contributors who have insisted that the artcle should say that Santa Claus is a real person and that NORAD really follows him on Christmas Eve will finally take notice and allow it to be reduced and rewritten from a real world perspective. Simon Peter Hughes (talk) 10:31, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

We HAVE NO CHRIST whatsoever in our secular holiday celebration of Santa Claus and in shopping to achieve the grosssest National Product on this EARTH !!!! To many of us in North Ameirca we may do some charity such as "Toys for Tots", but on this side of "the Pond" religion has for many of us a a very incidental role !!!!

with NORAD our focus is on packaging our "countdown as in a missile launch and rocket which expresses NORAD just fine" NOT as some advent of someone's birth some 2,000 years ago. So again since we separate Church from "the State" in the US of A our focus is on the secular celebrations !!! Not the religious !!! BillJohnson0003 (talk) 21:22, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) ??? Calm down please. This is just a website and not worth getting a heart attack over.

But it's quite ridiculous to insist that your silly advent calendar isn't an advent calendar, just because you are counting down from 23 or whatever you use to 0 instead of counting up from 1 to 24. Advent calendars are probably the most secular aspect of Christmas anyway, and I am beginning to suspect that you only insist on the "countdown" nonsense because you want to continue writing the article from an in-universe POV. You can mention the "countdown" further down, but in the lead it's excessive detail. To test the hypothesis I will now replace your in-universe marketing hype sentence by a crisp encyclopedic sentence that doesn't mention advent calendars. Hans Adler 21:23, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually a rather short, but surprising expreses the countdown intent. I do not view the world the same as that nice easygoing guy TomSmith0002 does (he did the bulk of the work in finding out about the 157 plus 3rd party references about the NORAD Tracks Santa program to include the 1960's news article and rare video clips and music album) BillJohnson0003 (talk) 21:34, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

What you still don't get, apparently, is that Wikipedia does not want the excessive amount of detail about NORAD Tracks Santa in the first place. We used to have an excessive amount of detail about Pokémon and other stuff like that, but it was deleted. We are not providing you the free server space for you fansite. Hans Adler 21:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

COI in BillJohnson0003's editing?

Were you just advising BillJohnson0003 to familiarize himself with WP:COI, or is there evidence he actually has a COI? --Ronz (talk) 21:36, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The former. I have no definite, smoking-gun proof. However, we have two SPAs who are only interested in this super-obscure topic, and they have very similar user names: Tomsmith0002 and BillJohnson0003. They clearly know each other, and they have contributed a large amount of media files both on Commons and on YouTube. If BillJohnson0003 doesn't start looking at the rest of the encyclopedia soon to get an idea of what an article is supposed to look like, then dragging him to WP:COIN may be the only option left, I am afraid. Hans Adler 21:53, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Since the COI isn't clear, I think ANI is more appropriate if they continue. --Ronz (talk) 22:14, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

NORAD Tracks Santa article

Hans Adler - These days I only hear things second hand, since I am busy on other things in life. Understand that BillJohnson0003 was somewhat "over enthusiastic". Channeling his talents can be challenge. Myself, I am pretty easy going and if the article is small enough where your associates can do some edits to bring it up to the Wikipedia standards, I would greatly appreciate it. Also for the record, I am not affiliated with NORAD, nor the NORAD Tracks Program. Just someone who has seen NORAD Tracks Santa on CBS, BBC News, Sky News, the internet on the radio, in the newspapers, and on TV for several years (possibly even decades) (but then I have spent most of my time in North America with some time spent in Europe and East Asia where there is more Father Christmas and Christmas rather than Santa Claus as in the US of A and Canada). The one thing we (myself and my associates) have seen is that while the NORAD Tracks Santa website is available in December, it is not available the rest of the year. I have recently found places to take the bulk of material for use of outside of Wikipedia and have associates working on that. Would be interested in seeing an article on NORAD Tracks Santa similar to what I have seen on Star Trek (probably smaller), Caprica (TV series), Smallville and Stargate that each have an encyclopedic set of entries and provide access to fan Wikis such as Star Trek Wiki, Caprica and Battlestar Wiki, Smallville Wiki, Stargate Wiki. I think that approach will enable Wikipedia to keep its NORAD Tracks Santa article small and with a known External link in the article to an outside Wiki enable the devoted fans to go elsewhere to make their contributions on the subject. If I understand correctly is that the official Wikipedia approach ?? Again, I have been busy on other matters and really do not have the time to get involved in Wikipedia editing at this point. - Sincerely - Tomsmith0002 Tomsmith0002 (talk) 22:50, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Ghost

Thanks for pitching in on this. I feel like I walked into a minefield! I had no idea the subject was so sensitive, and in hindsight should not have been so bold in my edits.

After getting interested in this area I started a few articles on traditional views in different cultures: Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Tibet and Polynesia. None of them are great, but a start, with plenty of potential for expansion. There are some other existing ones like Dreamtime and Chindi, and some list-type articles like Ghosts in Malay culture and Chinese ghosts that could use expansion. What would interest me, if I don't get sidetracked, would be improving these articles and adding more to create a series on traditional ghost beliefs, each covering a different culture or religion, plus an overview article and a navbar template to link them. It would tempting to draw parallels and contrasts in the overview, but unless there are sources that should be avoided. Still, an overview would I think be interesting if it summarized information about the different beliefs in essentially the same sequence: nature of ghosts - ghostly experience - interactions with living people - miscellaneous.

The overview would ideally be part of the main ghost article, but given the passion that any change to Ghosts seems to arouse, it is probably best as a separate article that could be built out and improved in a more collaborative manner. The one big problem that if you stay involved in the main article (I will not) may be worth thinking of, is how to deal with European ghost lore. I pulled the detail on this from the main article into a sub-article on Ghosts in European folklore, leaving behind a summary, but DreamGuy changed it to a redirect back into the main article. He seems to feel quite passionately that the main article should have detail on European / British ghost lore, but not on any other cultures. So the problem would be that "Ghost" could be a parent of "Traditional ghost beliefs" which in turn could be a parent of "Ghosts in X culture" and "Ghosts in Y religion", but would have to point back to "Ghosts" for Europe. Maybe I am being too purist.

Any thoughts, comments? I am leaving this note here rather than on the talk page because I am looking for a second opinion without stirring up a hornet`s nest... Aymatth2 (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It makes no sense whatsoever that this subject is such a minefield. Just a bunch of maniacal pseudoscience hunters abusing the encyclopedia for their childish battles.

You can observe this in other fields of life as well: Once a person is obsessed with something, they see it everywhere. E.g. some of the idiots obsessed over obscenity even claim that public breastfeeding is obscene. Now here is an interesting thought: It's often said that those who are obsessed with fighting obscenity are actually obsessed with sex and feel guilty about it. Perhaps those obsessed with fighting against pseudoscience also get aroused by it?

Sorry for not responding to your technical questions, I am too angry for that ATM. Hans Adler 16:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Surely you are not suggesting there are closet wiccans involved in this debate? That could explain the need to keep all the detail about British ghosts, and reject information about any other types. Not that I have anything against wiccans. :~) Aymatth2 (talk) 16:28, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Scientist engaged in ghost investigation

• I just noticed how many people are watching the Ghost page (276), compared to the number who are contributing. I suspect that many of the observers are simply enjoying the entertainment value. Maybe a page like this is useful, drawing the passionate but immature editors away from more important subjects. Keeps them out of mischief. Just a thought. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Come to think of it, maybe there should be a "Ghost talk challenge". The idea would be to start a new heading on Talk:Ghost with a simple assertion, such as "The comments on this page show extreme bias. There is clear scientific evidence for the existence of ghosts". Then make no further contributions to the discussion. The winner would be the one who generated the greatest volume of argument over a period of two weeks, as measured in kilobytes. Not sure what the prize would be. Maybe a framed copy of the photograph here. I would start it, but it could damage my hard-won reputation as a serious editor. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I think your idea can be improved by the additional constraint that you are only allowed to start the disruption through a perfectly common sense statement taken from a scholarly source beyond reproach and with no occultist tendencies whatsoever. E.g.:

• "Unlike ghosts, angels are often overtly ambiguous in their gender." (Giving up the ghost, Wayne State University Press, p. 124; "an in-depth analysis of comedy and romantic ghost films")
• "A persistent yet somewhat ambiguous and contradictory refusal to admit the possibility that the dead might return in dreams or perhaps in conscious visions characterized the ecclesiastical culture of the early Middle Ages." (Ghosts in the Middle Ages, University of Chicago Press, p. 11)
• "Greek and Roman ghost stories, particularly as transmitters of folk belief. generally fit into the category of legends. [...] What the ghost stories have in common as legends is that to a certain extent they are believed, or believable, within the segments of the societies in which they occur; they are set in the real world, in the recent past [...]" (Haunted Greece and Rome, University of Texas Press, p. 2) Hans Adler 16:14, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Disagree. The only constraint should be a ban on use of sockpuppets, canvassing etc. to prolong the discussion, and perhaps a 20-word limit to the proposition. Of course, the winning proposition would have to be designed carefully to generate the maximum commentary. "Contributors to this discussion who deny the existence of ghosts run a serious risk of visitation by Dorje Shugden" would probably be incomprehensible to most contributors, so unlikely to win. An apparently serious middle-ground assertion such as "the proposed change violates WP:Religion" may generate more debate. But I would not impose any constraint on the assertion beyond the basic ground rules. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:52, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Lattice (order)

Hallo Hans Adler,
ich habe mich auf der Diskussionsseite zu den Hasse-Diagrammen geäußert: Talk:Lattice (order)#Which Hasse diagram? Wäre nett, wenn du verraten könntest, was an dem alten Diagramm besser sein soll. Grüße, Lipedia (talk) 17:00, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

In English, please. This is the English Wikipedia. Hans Adler 17:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank God for common sense

[32] --Malleus Fatuorum 00:40, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

You might be interested in the RfC at Talk:Ghost, where I first became aware of this nonsense. Hans Adler 00:43, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

History of logic

It's fine from a philosophical POV. Just right. Thanks for the suggestions From the other side (talk) 22:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The sequence of events with me there is somewhat strange. Usually I just avoid FAC. Since Paul asked me, I left some detailed comments on the talk page, giving an idea of what sorts of things could be researched to fill in the modern history section. Most of my comments ended up copied, verbatim, into the article; at that point, I felt a need to clean them up. I agree it isn't clear that the extensive focus on mathematical logic really matches the overall topic of "logic" but I will defer to FTOS on that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:31, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I simply don't have an opinion about this. For obvious reasons this is, and should be, mostly a philosophy article, and mathematical logic just isn't philosophy. So it's up for philosophers to decide how much of the mathematics is relevant. I would like to help, but my ideas about what this article could/should say are simply too fuzzy. I don't see a clear narrative in the history of mathematical logic. I am not even sure it's one field in the first place. Hans Adler 11:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

history of logic

How much of the work on that article was actually done by Peter Damien? I always thought Damien's editing was of fairly low quality even in the subjects he claimed to be an expert in, but I didn't look at much of it. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 17:36, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea. I have completely open mind about his qualities as an editor. The kind of logic articles he usually edits just doesn't interest me enough to look. It was once claimed that he used to edit more, but then got detracted and during his temporary unban didn't actually edit properly. So if you want to research this, you will have to look at his contributions before his first ban, under whatever account that was. Hans Adler 17:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I might examine the history of that article but I remember looking at some of his other editing in the past and not being impressed. If someone is a really good editor (there are not so many of those) then it's worth tolerating a fair amount of headache dealing with them. But there is a real distinction between editing that's merely useful (that kind of editing is not in terribly short supply), and editing that's really good. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 18:15, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I will be interested to hear about your findings. Keep in mind that he may have worked on the article using various sockpuppets, so it may be hard to analyse. Hans Adler 18:17, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Tarski's definition of truth

I tried to clean up this description by Peter Damien. Could you check my version, currently in the article? Thanks. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 00:06, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I am probably not the best person to check this kind of general statements, where you have to pick out the most "important" trees from the forest. I certainly can't see anything zany in there, but I guess I wouldn't notice any weight problems anyway. I'm a bit surprised what is supposed to be what he is best known for, but it seems plausible enough. I have an impression that Tarski was a key figure in connecting logic to mathematical culture. His work on quantifier elimination (not mentioned at the moment) was motivated by that. If I am right, then it should be easy to find a source for that somewhere. Hans Adler 01:00, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I was mostly asking for you to check the technical correctness of my exposition of the truth definition, particularly the connection between the T-schema and interpretations. Yes, of course Tarski was very important, and most of that diff is not so bad. (The part of the diff about Gödel's incompleteness theorems is mostly pasted from the lede of that article). 66.127.52.47 (talk) 01:07, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Art student scam, formerly "Israeli art student scam"

This article happened to be up for WP:DYK, and I've added a credit for you, in recognition of your significant re-write rescuing it from deletion. cmadler (talk) 20:16, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I am not sure that I feel flattered to be credited for such an article, but if you need to credit someone I won't object. Hans Adler 20:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

On March 18, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Art student scam, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Mifter (talk) 12:03, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Neuschwanstein Castle

I saw this in the GAN queue. I can't review it at present, but can tell you two issues that are going to be problems there: it is insufficiently referenced (whole paras, and in one case a whole section without any inline cites), and the images are out of control. Reduce the images to a limited number that illustrate the key points of the article (I'd say about half the current number). Not sure what do do about that gallery of 19th century photocrom prints - maybe have a link to them at commons or something? Anyway, some feedback to save you a rapid fail when a reviewer finally gets to it. Cheers, hamiltonstone (talk) 01:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I was not aware that GA has become so strict about sourcing. I thought it was a way to get detailed feedback before making it fit for FA. Part of the article is a translation from the German featured article, and they use inline citations a lot less. (I once had to remove lots of them to get a German article through GA.) In that case I will just withdraw the nomination. Hans Adler 06:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

OK. The criteria state that it should provide "references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout; and (b) provide in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons..." This has additionally been interpreted that, in general, there should be at least one in-line cite per para. It does sound as though the two Wikis may have different approaches to citation. Additionally, I note you say "Part of the article is a translation from the German featured article". You might want to take a look at this discussion. The essence of it I think may be summarised as that the nominator at an English wiki article has to be able to discuss sources for the article, and a translation from another Wiki cannot rely on sourcing having been checked at that wiki. Thanks for all your work. Cheers, hamiltonstone (talk) 23:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I know about the problems with the article. That's why I am not taking it to FA yet. The problems are very hard to fix because I don't have one of the key sources used by the German author. Also I am not doing much work on the architecture aspect because an expert has promised to deal with that later. From my past experience with GA I thought the article would pass it. If I had been aware of the huge backlog I would not have contributed to that anyway with an article that's probably going to FA in half a year or so. So I have now withdrawn. There are other places to get peer reviews and advice on dealing with the obvious picture problems: Perhaps through a subarticle or two, but it seems a bit premature at the moment. Thanks for your very helpful comments. Hans Adler 23:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi

Please don't target others in your comments or edits, I don't feel I've done anything to deserve the comments you've directed at me or made about me. I'm not your enemy, and I'd like to get back to us working together. I disagree with you about a few things oh Ghost, that's not the end of the world. You have a problem with what you see as a campaign by BR, and you may be right or not that he is on a campaign - but don't get sucked into being on a campaign against BR. I have not discussed anything with him, and I'm getting bored of all the personal attacks being made. The arbcom sanctions should remain on ghost, but as to the other header added by BR I'm really not interested, but Abd's comment shouldn't be allowed to stand in the header. Please, let's just dial it all back a bit a take some time off. I'm not sure I'll be on much for the next week. I hope you're alright, and I hope this doesn't come across wrong. I think both you and BR are good editors, and sometimes you are both wrong - as am I. On some parts of this current little dispute, I think you're both wrong - or at least both too extreme. Anyway, I have to go. Thanks, Verbal chat 22:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that you are also on a campaign, not just BullRangifer. When everybody on your side returns to normal, ethical wiki editing methods, I will do the same. Perhaps even a bit earlier. So long as your side is using unethical methods in order to skew articles into an unencyclopedic state (including blatant misrepresentations of sources that suit your bias), unethical methods which unfortunately are effective, so long I will use creative methods that are effective in dealing with the problem. So long as your side is using unethical and effective methods in order to kill other editors' reputation for no worse offence than being the "wrong" kind of scientist (relaxed, open-minded, playful rather than obsessed and sectarian), so long I will do what it takes to prevent damage. To the degree that I am convinced that you guys stop, I will stop as well. Hans Adler 22:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

This is really disgusting. I have to spend more time with this absurd pushing of the meme "Everything I don't like is pseudoscience" than with dealing with actual fringers. You are not doing anybody a favour with your extremism. It reflects badly on science when it is treated as a religion. Hans Adler 22:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Declaration of war and extreme failure to AGF noted. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:42, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Everyone take a deep breath, apologize, and return to proper editing. --Ronz (talk) 22:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Hum.... that request for clarification is about Abd's restriction, not about the dispute at Ghost. I have read your statement a couple of times, and it's about 100% off-topic. How is that background relevant to Abd wading into the dispute in relation to his restriction? --Enric Naval (talk) 22:47, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Even though on the surface it always looks as if everything is being done purely on behavioural grounds, it makes a great difference whether someone is a positive factor for the encyclopedic content or not. There is a reason why Abd is under such a restriction and BullRangifer is not. There is a reason why it took so long to deal with the disruption caused by SA and that caused by Ottava Rima, while some very well-behaved people are dealt with so quickly that I can't remember any of them to present as an example.

Some journalists have expressed their sense of wonder that Wikipedia can function with an Arbcom that doesn't settle content questions. The answer is simple: Arbcom does settle content questions. It may not know that it does, but it does.

Abd is generally seen as someone who pushes pseudoscience, because most people think cold fusion is pseudoscience and he vehemently defends it. (I have no idea if it is, and I am not really interested in the question.) So people naturally assume that he is on the wrong side in that dispute. What they don't see is that he was responding to an extreme, irrational provocation, and did something that would have been exactly the right thing, if not for his restriction.

That's crucial because whether Abd violated his restriction may easily turn out to be undetermined, because Arbcom members didn't really think things through originally, or miscommunicated so that everybody had a different idea what the restriction meant. In such a case they will still come to a yes or no decision, and the question whether Abd was acting rationally and in an appropriate attempt to defend reason or whether he was disruptively pushing a POV, this question will ultimately decide the outcome. Of course not officially. Everybody will deny that it played a role.

You needn't agree with what I said, but this was my main motivation. If a clerk removes my comment as off-topic because officially it's not relevant, then so be it. But it is worth trying.

My secondary motivation was anger that Verbal, who has been quite disruptive recently (although much less so than BullRangifer; the problem with Verbal is mainly that he supports BR) is dealing out against an editor who is (at least currently) much less of a problem than he is himself. (At least as far as my watchlist is concerned.) Hans Adler 23:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

No, Abd is under that restriction because he makes a convoluted mess out of any dispute where someone holds an opinion he disagrees with. If you think that the problems at pseudoscience articles deserve arbitration, then I suggest you make a separate request that is centered around that topic. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Hans. I tend to agree with Verbal and Brangifer on the pseudo-scientific nature of ghosts, as you know, although I could be persuaded and I'll accept either the broad interpretation of pseudoscience or the narrow one, whichever may achieve consensus on this article.

This is just to let you know that there is no "we". Sometimes editors happen to agree with one another, it doesn't mean they're organized in a weird conspiracy against you just because they disagree with you. A moment's search in my contributions history will show you that my path has seldom met the path of either of the other editors. This isn't about us.

It is actually about your recent conduct. Here are the relevant diffs, all from talk:Ghost. this. this (edit summary) and to a somewhat lesser extent this. That's unacceptable behavior because it's moving from comment on the issues to personal attacks on other editors.

There is a way to deal with what you regard us unacceptable conduct by other editors (I'm doing it now). It's called dispute resolution. Firstly raise the conduct with the editor, then if you don't get a satisfactory response there are various other methods including user conduct RFCs, mediation and arbitration. What you're doing is side-tracking the discussion and making it about meta-issues, and that's not going to help. --TS 23:39, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry. I didn't put you in a pigeon hole. E.g. I also don't have Enric Naval in a pigeon hole at all, although we often disagree. I don't exactly have Verbal in a pigeon hole either; sometimes he is quite reasonable, but not recently.

I must say I totally disagree about your diffs of my editing. They are perfectly appropriate under the circumstances. In order to support the category and the Arbcom notice, BullRangifer has misrepresented a source and spread this misrepresentation all over the encyclopedia. (I had to remove it from Ghost, Witchcraft and List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. At some time it was even at WP:NPOV. When I tried to remove it from Pseudoscience this was reverted, and even my "failed verification" tag was reverted at first. That article is now protected with the misquotation, but also with the fv-tag.) He opened an RfC that begged the question: He didn't ask if his quotation was appropriate, but whether the NSF is reliable. When he didn't manage to get his nonsense into WP:NPOV he opened another RfC there which he misrepresented in his "neutral" summary. As a result, most a lot of people replied to the summary only. When it was closed accordingly, he insisted that no, there wasn't just a consensus that the NSF is reliable; in his opinion the RfC proved there was a consensus for his policy change. Similar shenanigans with many totally unfounded claims of earlier consensus happened at ANI. There is also the character assassinations targeted primarily at Ludwigs2.

When people use such techniques it's not a good strategy to let them "win" first and try to deal with it by RfC later. First, it's an immense effort. Second, they "learn" that the strategy is efficient, so they continue to use it. They must be conditioned not to use such disruptive techniques in the first place.

The huge Arbcom notice is an example. Normally when people think of ghosts, they don't think of pseudoscience. (Unless they are obsessed with pseudoscience and read too much "skeptical" literature, of course. I have seen a lot of that literature, and it often discusses ghosts, religion and pseudoscience in close proximity, seeing it as different examples of the same phenomenon, something I agree with. They are also almost unanimous in not actually claiming that ghosts and religion do fall under pseudoscience. I agree with that as well. BullRangifer and Verbal don't agree. They are more extreme than the standard "skeptical" literature in lumping together everything they don't like, and now they are trying to push this "it's all the same" view into the encyclopedia. That's simply not OK.

Without these extremists an article such as ghost can easily be defended against the fringers. When there is an attack of many of them, we just notify a noticeboard and it's easily dealt with. (Unless it's something big like climate change.) But once they are there it all gets into a big mess because they insist on making the article incorrect to suit their POV. This prevents all progress. In the end the article contains a strange mixture of hocus pocus fringe and pseudo-pro-science fringe opinions, and the article's primary topics are hidden behind all undue weight of the fringe-antifringe stuff.

Now the huge Arbcom notices look very official, and there is no denying that they are efficient. They tell us that this is a topic where we should naturally expect pseudoscience-related disputes. This skews the discussions. This header is new at the article, there is no consensus for it, it doesn't belong there, and if Verbal insists on it then it has at least to be made clear that it isn't there by consensus or as the result of an Arbcom decision, but because an editor or two forced it through. I can't see anything wrong with that.

I don't know if you are happy with this response. I don't mind discussing this further, but if you prefer one of the other three things you are proposing I wouldn't mind that either. Haven't had any of them yet and it might be interesting. Hans Adler 00:12, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I have commented below about the above paragraphs by Hans. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

And yet again you resort to discussing content issues and the purported misconduct of other editors in order to justify your own. That is precisely what is unacceptable. Use dispute resolution. It isn't optional. These are the only acceptable methods of handling disputes. The way you're doing it, and the justifications you use, are extremely destructive to Wikipedia. Stop. --TS 00:14, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention that after it became clear that outside sources would not be acceptable for informing policy, he opened yet another RFC regarding NPOV policy following categories.. I mean, I think that he thinks he is being entirely reasonable, but basically it boils down to trying to influence an ongoing content dispute by changing policy. Which is generally frowned upon last time I checked, but you know, obviously I am misrepresenting his intentions and actions etc etc. Seriously and generally, it is incredibly hard for me to understand how anyone could think that this particular NSF position had any value at all apart from the giggle/facepalm factor. Unfortunately it seems that for some who purport to embrace skepticism, independent -- critical thought is sometimes not considered or not acted on. Utilitarianism is laziness. Unomi (talk) 00:28, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Unomi, I'm surprised you would sink to the same low level of Hans by belittling me. The third RfC doesn't change policy in any manner, not the wording or the intent. Look at the wordings in the four Guidelines. (Guidelines 3 & 4 aren't exactly the same anymore as the originals.) Try to remember the ArbCom where that wording came from and the process by which it became part of NPOV policy. The wording is very precise and refers to Category:Pseudoscience. Read it. There is no attempt to change policy, much less to gain an advantage. Please strike those comments. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:18, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

BR, I don't know how you can say that I am belittling you by assuming good faith on your part. You keep confusing the definition of Pseudoscience employed by Arbcom with the one employed by NSF, the NSF one is clearly not scholarly and they are only tenuously related. Arbcom stated clearly what they meant by pseudoscience, NSF is employing an eccentric definition. It is entirely unreasonable to expect that Wikipedia policy is dictated by outside sources, the recent RfC on that matter is clear, you are the only one in favor of it, and I think you should reconsider. There clearly is an attempt on your part to change policy and it clearly is due to an ongoing content dispute. You can see that blueboar disagrees with you in your last assertion, an editor who is probably more involved in NPOV and RS than any of us. I still think that you think that you are being entirely reasonable, but in fact, you are not. Please, for the umpteenth time, read demarcation problem. Unomi (talk) 03:49, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Hans, I will say though there is truth in what TS is saying, it does seem to be affecting your style a bit. I think your exasperation is completely warranted, but perhaps the energy is best directed towards a DR process instead of hoping that people just 'snap out' of it. Neuronal plasticity has likely a limited potential for many of us at this point in our lives. Unomi (talk) 00:35, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) OK, then let's be completely formal if you prefer. Let's pretend I am an obvious fringe POV pusher and therefore on a short leash; let's pretend I can't get away with the same kind of egregious behaviour as the self-elected protectors of the religion of science:

This is a very long diff, so I must guess what you actually object to:

• "So please explain why you took part in the edit war." – Seems appropriate when someone reverts as part of a tag team and provides a diff to the revert instead of a sensible reason for the revert. A category being potentially useful for a reader is a silly reason in this context.
• "Given the general context of some editors here trying to turn this article about a basic topic that has/had some prominence in all known human cultures throughout the ages, has been extremely influential on the arts, etc. into an article that talks almost exclusively about hocus pocus such as spiritism and "ghost hunting", this seems to fit the general pattern." – This is an accurate description of the problem as I see it. The article is not primarily about spiritism and ghost hunting, and I reject all attempts to give these topics undue weight. Whether positively or negatively. NPOV is unnegotiable.
• "The revert by Verbal was probably the most frivolous. When you push a borderline appropriate category that is already implied through the category tree into an article after it has twice been removed on the same day, 'no harm in making it explicit' is just about the most inane justification I can imagine." – Talk:Ghost was not the right place for this comment per WP:TALK. Editors do not always follow WP:TALK, because doing so can have undesirable consequences. I could have made that comment at Verbal's talk page (no effect other than delaying things); or to WP:ANI, but that would have increased the general disruption and would have led to parallel discussions. We already had parallel discussions about BullRangifer's RfCs at Talk:Ghost, WT:NPOV and WP:ANI. In the hypothetical case of me having to be very careful, I would have had to give in to Verbal's bullying because ANI would have been too dangerous for me.
• "This is transparent category pushing by a tag team that apparently tries to extend the scope of the Arbcom decision on pseudoscience to this entire article, rather than just to the small fractions to which it rightfully applies." – That's exactly what it is. The same principles as in the previous paragraph apply.
• "As a result of this ruthless warring, the article is now blocked (on the wrong version, obviously), making it harder than necessary to replace BullRangifer's misleading NSF quotation by a sane consensus version." – Perhaps I should have omitted BullRangifer's name here. By now everybody knows he is behind this misquotation anyway.

[33] "Verbal is only putting it here because he thinks it gives him an advantage when others disagree with his extremism. (Yes, I am assuming bad faith.)" – I plead health reasons: Today I learned that my asthma spray is not available without prescription in Austria, so I will have to do without it for a few more days. I am no adrenaline instead (yes, it seems to help). Normally I wouldn't put this into an edit summary.

[34] – There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. These comments were necessary so that the boxes would not create false authority. Hans Adler 00:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what it is, but I still don't seem to be getting through to you. Please stop launching these personal attacks on other editors. --TS 00:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

What? Could you please be more specific? You seem to be suggesting that my above comment contains personal attacks inacceptable for my own talk page. Please give a concrete example so that I have a chance to understand what you mean. Thank you. Hans Adler 00:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

PS: Please make sure not to confuse "extremely destructive to Wikipedia" with "threatening the modus operandi of some editors I agree with". I don't know if you are making this mistake, and I am in the process of examining whether I have been destructive to Wikipedia ("extremely" seems to be hyperbole), but it's certainly a mistake that we are all prone to. Hans Adler 00:47, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Hans's edits in TS's three Talk:Ghost diffs are a little bit blunt, but are within the normal range of semi-heated talkpage discussions. I don't see a persistent enough issue of contention to warrant full-scale dispute resolution, which is very burnout-inducing. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 01:14, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

On looking further--Hans, you had the right idea earlier: start a user conduct RFC against Bull Rangifer. Others: Hans is basically right on this issue; Bull Rangifer is wikilawyering, his content RFC's were bogus, and his anger and aggressiveness, here and elsewhere, are unhelpful. Bull, can you tone it down? Hans should probably also recognize that this has reached the point where a more formal style is appropriate. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 09:31, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Hans, above you tell some untruths, grossly exaggerate, and make some very serious personal attacks, all because your failure to AGF has turned misunderstandings into something else in your own mind, and there's no sign that you're going to stop. Here are just a few of the falsehoods you state above (and you've been doing this for some time now):

1. Untrue: "misrepresented a source and spread this misrepresentation all over the encyclopedia".

Two RfCs determined that the source and its proposed use was proper. You're fighting against the consensus in two RfCs, even after being warned to desist. Those RfCs were closed properly and the thread at AN/I was also closed in my favor to stop this disruption.

2. Repetition of a total untruth: "his policy change".

This false charge has been challenged before (see below) and he has failed to produce a shred of evidence. Instead he just repeats it. Such a charge is very damaging to my reputation. It has been repeated several times. I have numerous times clearly stated that I wasn't trying to change policy. In fact I didn't even propose to change a single word of policy! I'd like to see some proof for this false charge in the form of precise quotes and diffs. Barring that, I want an apology and a cessation of the personal attacks and gross failures to AGF.

In this section, an interesting exchange occurred, in which this untruth was told and I challenged it. Note the continual attacks by Hans Adler:

Then Brangifer started an RfC about whether the NSF is a reliable source for such a statement. Almost everybody agreed, only a few protested and said that while they agree with the RfC, the RfC had nothing to do with the original dispute. Then Brangifer decided to change policy to get an advantage, was reverted, and started this ambiguous RfC. How much more does the gaming have to see so that Brangifer's friends recognise it as such? Hans Adler 16:28, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Focusing on editors isn't going to help resolve the dispute. Shell ^babelfish 16:45, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

The dispute has been manufactured out of thin air by a single editor. This kind of dispute is best resolved by focusing on the instigator. Hans Adler 18:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Hans, please AGF. This constant harping on me as a bad person just doesn't cut it. On top of assuming bad faith, you have made a serious charge that requires proof. You wrote: "...Brangifer decided to change policy to get an advantage..." Please prove that with precise diffs. That's not true. I never have tried to change policy, and it isn't my intention to do so. Nothing could be further from the truth. You made a totally false accusation, now prove it or apologize. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:44, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

3. Untrue: "When he didn't manage to get his nonsense into WP:NPOV he opened another RfC there..."

That's not only totally backwards timewise, it's false even if turned around! The sequence is important. First I started a thread on Talk:NPOV. When Ludwigs2 immediately reponded with taunting comments, I then decided to start an RfC. It was only after the RfC was closed much later (with a large consensus that accepted my proposed addition of the NSF statement as a ref) that I added it as proposed and approved. This edit was a consensus approved edit. It can't get anymore official or approved than that! There is better way to make sure that an edit will stick. In spite of that fact, it was still deleted twice by Crum375, one of the editors who !voted against the consensus. How can someone (Crum375) who loses a consensus be allowed to edit against the decision of the consensus? Crum375 was acting unbecomingly of an admin and should be desysopped for those reverts, among many other reverts of my edits. He has been edit warring against me for some time.

4. Untrue: "...not actually claiming that ghosts and religion do fall under pseudoscience. I agree with that as well. BullRangifer and Verbal don't agree."

As for my own views, that's total BS, and I suspect also for Verbal. I don't include religious beliefs under pseudoscience, except for certain ones that make directly falsifiable claims that are against the evidence in the real world. The rest of religious beliefs and claims are simply belief, and have nothing to do with pseudoscience. The List of topics characterized as pseudoscience lists some of those types of beliefs.

Hans Adler's (and Ludwigs2's) harassment has gone on for far too long. Even though Ludwigs2 has been engaging in the same behaviors, he at least was involved from the start. Hans, OTOH, jumped into the fray with an old grudge and started to attack me, and he's been at it ever since. It's got to be stopped!

Hans even admits he is not AGF: "Yes, I am assuming bad faith." [35] That's a pretty bold and self-incriminating violation of policy. Block him for it.

The policy that requires AGF needs to be enforced. We can see that Adler's consistent violation of this policy has colored his whole perception of the issue, thus creating an unnecessary conflict. If he had bowed to the consensus, the conflicts could have been avoided and it would have been easier to deal with Ludwigs2. Misunderstandings have been blown up into exaggerations, untruths, and gross personal attacks. Gross and consistent violations of AGF and NPA are blockable offenses. This isn't about minor incivility. The time has come for a longer block and then a topic ban under the ArbCom sanctions, IOW covering all fringe topics (paranormal, alternative medicine, etc.) and their talk pages, where the disruption is worst. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Facepalm Hey, Tony Sidaway, look here: "You're fighting against the consensus in two RfCs, even after being warned to desist." That's a good example of the problem I am trying to address. A couple of statements of this nature in a public place like ANI, by several dummies who agree with each other, and you have the perfect character assassination with absolutely no basis. That happened to Ludwigs2 recently. – People tend to become more similar to the things they fight. People who fight pseudoscience often use the same kind of invalid arguments that pseudoscientists use. When I try to address BullRangifer's attacks of this type, it's hard to stay entirely on the high road.

1. Both RfCs were closed essentially as "NSF is a highly reliable source". More details on BullRangifer's talk page.
2. BullRangifer wanted to (1) add a suggestive footnote to the policy, and when it became clear there is no consensus for this, to (2) inject three links to the pseudoscience category into the policy. Obviously such things have a strong influence on how policy is interpreted. And on a purely pedantic level it's also a change of policy. It is also true that he didn't "propose to change a single word". This hair-splitting is an example of what I have called "BullRangifer's problematic relation to truth" elsewhere.
3. I have addressed the claim that the RfC as closed by Gwen Gale supported the policy change in detail on BullRangifer's talk page. The RfC was closed as "National Science Foundation is a reliable source".
4. WTF? You don't even believe the bullshit that you have quote-mined from the NSF paper? Then are you just doing it for the disruption, or what? I think WP:COMPETENCE needs to be enforced with blocks more often. I am totally assuming good faith with respect to BullRangifer at all times, by the way. See Hanlon's razor. Hans Adler 08:53, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Regarding 4. ??? Of course I believe the NSF statement. I don't know what you mean. Your statement isn't AGF. -- Brangifer (talk) 02:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Regarding 2. You are being deceptive by using events that happened after your statements to justify them. I started the third RfC here, on March 17. Your accusation that I tried to "change policy to get an advantage" was made on March 16. (See above.)

BTW, the third RfC doesn't change policy in any manner. It just adds a wikilink to make clear the actual meaning, which isn't a change of policy. Do you understand what that third RfC was about? Do you understand the intention of the ArbCom and the wording in the NPOV policy, when they gave the right to place things in Guidelines 1 & 2 in the Category:Pseudoscience? Maybe you don't remember that ArbCom, or the ensuing adoption of its wording in the NPOV policy. It's interesting.

The second RfC attempted to add a ref, not as a change of policy, but an example of what Guideline 2 was referring to. Guideline 2 describes a situation, and the ref demonstrated it in action, IOW a perfect example. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:04, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

PS: BullRangifer got the order of events at WP:NPOV right. He proposed the policy change in an RfC before putting it into the policy itself or discussing it on the talk page in any way. What he did earlier was introduce a helpful numbering into the description of the Arbcom decision, which was later reverted along with a few unrelated changes by others. I apologise for misreading the page history and will look for places where I made this incorrect claim so that I can strike it. I am not aware of more than one; if anyone sees another, please strike out the incorrect words in my name or point me to the page. Hans Adler 09:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for admitting that you got the order wrong, but you're repeating the false claim that I tried to "change policy". I have no interest in changing it, so why should I even think of doing so? That doesn't make any sense. I have never been attempted to "change" policy during this whole debacle. Please stop saying that. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi again. My intent wasn't to bring the dispute here, and I'm sorry for that - and I haven't time right now to read all the above. I haven't been offended by your actions - I just want everything to cool down as I think both you and BR are usually very good and very civil editors, although I realise you both had a falling out. I didn't mean to make things worse and I'm sorry if I have and that I've offended you or not helped your asthema (I had a bout a few years ago, absolutely awful). Not had time to read everything so sorry if I've got wrong end of any of the multiple sticks that are being bandied about. Best, Verbal chat 16:47, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Looking back at my start to this thread it's not as nicely worded as I thought - I'm sorry about that. It was late and I was tired, and I wanted to try and stop any further decent. I accept full responsibility for my failure there. I'm truly sorry. Verbal chat 17:55, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. This makes it easier for me to clarify that what I really want is everybody getting along in harmony. Unfortunately I have the impression that the pseudoscience category on an article and the Arbcom pseudoscience box on its talk page generally function as a declaration of ownership by a loose group of "skeptic" editors. Problems with fringers can occur at all articles. Usually they are either (1) ignored because nobody notices them (bad), or (2) dealt with effectively by assertiveness of mainstream editors and controlled escalation if necessary (good). At the articles labelled with pseudoscience both options (1) and (2) seem to be replaced with (3) overreaction by a number of skeptic editors that is so extreme that the mainstream editors feel it is more urgent to react to them than to the fringers. The conclusion of the skeptics is of course that the mainstream editors are siding with the fringers because they are fringers themselves. This is not at all healthy and is extremely stressful for the mainstream editors, who have to fight on two fronts.

Sorry for misleading you regarding my asthma; I now see the joke may not be easy to get, and if you don't get it it looks like a strange appeal for commiseration. I couldn't resist the temptation to pretend I abuse other people as a medical measure. The asthma was gone for the three years that I lived in Spain and UK. Now that I am living in Austria it's back and caught me by surprise, but is completely in tolerable bounds, even without treatment. Since adrenalene is a highly effective treatment, I thought I might try if high levels of endogenous adrenalene as from a lot of not too negative stress might help. From what I see on Google Scholar I guess it's actually more likely to have the opposite effect, but at least the placebo effect helped for two days. :) Sorry to year you also had it once. In case there is any chance it may come back, and assuming it was allergically induced: Make sure to treat any allergies you might have, especially hay fever. Nasal mucosa and lungs are strongly connected systems, and some study once found you can even treat asthma by applying [forgot what it was] in the nose.

Back to the original topic: I don't see you as an enemy at all, just as not at all helpful at times. Cooling down is a very good idea which I am trying to follow. I have started work on the RfC/U; that really helps because it addresses the problem constructively without causing immediate escalation. Hans Adler 18:47, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I have withdrawn the third RfC. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Funny SVG file

Hi Hans. I don't know if you remember, but you helped me out awhile ago when I noticed that an SVG file seemed not to be rendering properly (I can't remember where). Well, I now have the same problem with File:Massdistribution xy.svg. For some reason, the parentheses render before the letter y, so that it isn't enclosed. Do you have any recollection of how you fixed this problem? It seems to be a problem with the way the Wikimedia software packages the SVG file, since when I view it in the same browser on localhost, it looks the way it's supposed to. I'd appreciate any assistance you could offer. Thanks, Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. The bold y was implemented with nested tspan tags. I simply unnested them. Apparently whatever renders the previews, if it sees something like <tspan>text text <tspan>whatever</tspan> text text</tspan>, then it moves the inner tspan to the end of the text. Hans Adler 12:27, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! If I needed to fix this in the future, would I need to edit the XML file manually then? Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:33, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

That's what I did. I have next to no experience with SVG editors. Doing it manually is not harder than wiki editing, except the code looks more cryptic and you have too look for the actual text like for a needle in a haystack.

Tell me if this comes up a lot. It should be easy to write a program that deals with the simpler cases. Hans Adler 12:41, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

To clarify my above example, this is what you have to transfer it into: <tspan>text text</tspan><tspan>whatever</tspan><tspan>text text</tspan>. The example is not entirely realistic: This happens when the tspan tags are different, e.g. because "whatever" is bold text. Otherwise you could just remove the inner tspan tags. Hans Adler 14:01, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that explanation is helpful. Also, miraculously the unicode θ seems to work in my browser after your correction, whereas it did not before. Did you have something to do with that too? I was right about to convert all text to path (following a suggestion of TimothyRias), but I am happy that it no longer seems to be necessary. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

In my browser at work the theta doesn't work in either version. But that's an old linux that may have font problems. In my opinion we shouldn't use workarounds for such font problems unless they are very widespread, such as $\cup$ and $\cap$ making trouble. I think at home, with the latest Firefox under Windows XP, everything was fine. The only way in which what I did could have changed something is if my text editor added a Unicode BOM at the beginning of the file, as many editors do. (In case you have any problem with text editors, I recommend trying SciTE.) Hans Adler 18:11, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Good to know. I converted the theta to path so that it should now display regardless of missing unicode support. Thanks again, Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

User:Spyro02

Hans,

I have indefinitely blocked User:Spyro02 for sock puppetry. Next time, stuff like that should be reported to WP:SPI so we can take a closer look at the suspected socks, determine if rangeblocking/CU/etc. are needed. Thank you, –MuZemike 20:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. In combination with the semiprotection of the articles this seems to be perfect. Hans Adler 20:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

re that which we shall not name

The problem is that descendants are subject to restrictions and subject to low quality sources simply for having an inappropriate lineage. Worse, these restrictions are sought enforced. We have 2 cases where editors explicitly have disavowed the heritage yet are unable to escape due to interpretations regarding what such constructs imply. If we are going to have to have these discussions on individual articles anyway, why not at least let the consensus result of the discussion have a material outcome? Unomi (talk) 19:24, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Where are these restrictions other than in the brains of some pseudo-sceptics? I am trying to clean up with their disruption and you are not at all making it easier by mixing things up with an unrelated problem that is deeply rooted in the category system. If there is any rule of current relevance that says an article is treated specially because it's in a subcategory of Category:Pseudoscience then I really want to know about it rather than make a fool of myself by continuing to deny it. But even then the correct solution is to get rid of that silly rule. Hans Adler 19:28, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Not to quibble, but if there isn't then what is the harm of removing the swath of articles which are poorly related to pseudoscience from the tree? Anyway, I will defer to your better judgement, I do fear though that the strong evidence that you are looking for will come sooner rather than later. Unomi (talk) 19:44, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess they just think that it gives them an advantage, and they like to deface articles about topics they don't like, to show it to the fringers.

Strong evidence of what? Hans Adler 19:46, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Of the the fact that an article is a descendant of the pseudoscience category implies that it is subject to WP:FRINGE and its related arbcom restrictions. What of editors who are barred from editing pseudoscience, broadly construed etc. Anyway :) I need to get back to work. Unomi (talk) 19:57, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Carcharoth has proposed filing an amendment request to one of the pseudoscience Arbcom cases in order to get the current disruption under control. That's a good opportunity to get a clear statement about that as well. In the 2006 WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE Arbcom case they simply used the pseudoscience category to define the minimum extent of a single editor's restriction, but that's an old case that was very sloppy overall. I think this years Arbcom will see the problem and readily clarify that the extent of restrictions has nothing to do with what our articles or our categories say. Perhaps we can even find a solution for the Arbcom banner warring, but it's less straightforward because sometimes they are used specifically to mark an article as falling under a special rule. Hans Adler 20:02, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Discussing categories in NPOV

Despite your plea to let sleeping dogs rest... it's a topic that won't stay tabled... I have had to re-open (but more focused)... see WT:NPOV#Obviously bogus ideas. Blueboar (talk) 23:02, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

German editors use Extension:Cite/Cite.php!?

Hans! Help! Why is there an error message picked out in red at the end of this subpage, requesting a <references/> tag? There IS a fucking tag! I've tried <references/>, and for good measure I've also tried {{reflist|2}}, but nothing gets rid of the red text. The footnotes nevertheless do show up. What's WRONG with it? (Kindly do not explain "ref name" or such horrors, I have no intention of using those.) A case for Bugzilla, or have I merely lost my mind? Bishonen | talk 01:22, 22 March 2010 (UTC).

• Wow... no wonder it defeated me. Thank you! Bishonen | talk 02:24, 22 March 2010 (UTC).

Strange. The references tag doesn't catch footnotes that are defined after the tag. You can just use another references tag later, which will catch the remaining ones. But I guess it's better to avoid footnotes in the References section. Hans Adler 02:25, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting question. Good night! Hans Adler 02:26, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I find your phrasing confusing ...

Regarding the Arbcom request for clarification on Abd, you state "his unhelpful intervention at Ghost was an attempt to support the mainstream against the very real danger of being marginalised and treated as fringe." I am confused about why you refer to his edit as being unhelpful when, if I understand your position on the article correctly, you are against having the article treated as fringe science. Have I misunderstood your position vis a vis the article itself? --GoRight (talk) 01:54, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

No. He tried to help, but he wasn't helpful. I found it appropriate to mention that he was on the right side (the middle). I did not find it appropriate to go into the details of why I got angry at him while he was on my side. I made up my mind about him. Now I can understand a bit better why he has so many enemies. And I simply don't want him as an ally. Hans Adler 02:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

German editors have girlfriends!?

Truly, the differences between English as a first language editors and those who speak it as another (or not at all) is even greater than I realised. Next you will be noting that those under 30 years of age do not live with their parents... ;~) LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:43, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, actually I don't have a girlfriend. I only have a wife from whom I am not yet divorced, and a 5-year-old daughter from whom I don't want to be divorced. I wouldn't take such photos of either of them, so neither of them is even equivalent to a girlfriend in the sense of the discussion.

I guess one thing that really sets me apart from almost all natively English-speaking editors is that I got my last name from my wife. There seems to be no accepted way in English to refer to the last name with which I was born that doesn't sound silly. (I only know maiden name and née, which are both distinctly female.) I nearly failed to get my English bank account because my bank was so confused by my case. Hans Adler 23:54, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Birth name - it even appears to cover your situation. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:12, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow, you are right. That's exactly the word I always use, but people in the UK keep telling me it doesn't exist. Perhaps just a weird kind of humour? Hans Adler 00:16, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

The male equivalent of née is né. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 10:39, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

In French, yes. But née is also an English word. Is the same true for né? I was told by native speakers to use née because supposedly it is gender neutral. Hans Adler 11:08, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I've seen né in English though it's certainly less common. I think that would be for sociological reasons (men usually don't change their last name when they marry) rather than linguistic. "Née" for a male looks incorrect to me, but I'm viewing it as a French word while those calling it gender-neutral may see it as a loan word. If you want, I can check a reference dictionary for you; or you could ask at WP:RDL, where they're knowledgeable about these things. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 11:47, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

See also: wikt:né#English. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 11:55, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't know about the Wiktionary entry. I am simply going to use it from now on. Hans Adler 12:56, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

You understood the "Jodie Foster" situation quite well. I hate the whole "administrator's noticeboard" business, but I indeed came there in despair, before I resorted to say anything rude to the other user. best regards, Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 07:26, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

This wasn't the first time I have seen such silliness. I am thinking of creating a template that explains the situation in detail, linking to all the applicable guidelines, several prior discussions, and a few featured articles with foreign-language sources. Similar to a user warning template, only informational instead. Perhaps such a template could pull these users out of their comfortable "I am right anyway so I won't bother reading the guidelines or others' comments in detail" feeling. Hans Adler 07:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Could be a good idea. Cheers, Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 17:59, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Duh. And I thought this was over... :(( Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 19:15, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Do you remember why you marked your first two edits to that article as minor? [36][37] Hans Adler 19:55, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Abslolutely not. Possibly because I though they were, being about a little bit of trivia ? Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 20:17, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I can only guess, but this could have been at the root of the conflict. Wildhartlivie immediately reverted without even an edit summary. That's highly irregular. I don't know if that's normal behaviour for the user. It could also be a sign of feeling that you were trying some sneaky vandalism. See WP:MINOR for the official description of minor edits. In my experience that help page is out of touch with reality. You followed the spirit but not the letter. But even if you follow the letter of that page you can get into trouble. It's better not to mark anything as minor, except perhaps single typo corrections. Hans Adler 20:23, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Could be, though I don't believe it. That seems to be a little too trivial to be at the root of the conflict. And yes, from what I could see, it seems to be normal behaviour for this particular user. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 20:32, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Have you met the user before? Hans Adler 20:40, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and, it seems, one of her/his assorted sockpuppets (see Talk:Marisa Tomei) Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 21:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:Notability

Unfortunately notability isn't even a policy, it's a guideline. In particular, it does not override Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, which is a core policy.- Wolfkeeper 00:14, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:NAD is even a *deletion* policy, it explicitly overrides notability. WP:NAD is also mentioned on the WP:5P page, it's a core principle that under the charter of the WP has to be followed.- Wolfkeeper 00:14, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me that I inadvertently typed "policy" in the edit comment. Unfortunately I still don't understand what you were trying to achieve with your edit to the guideline. Let's discuss this at WT:Notability. Hans Adler 00:24, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me you shouldn't revert edits simply if you don't understand them.- Wolfkeeper 00:32, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Policies need to be clear. If you replace clear wording by wording that doesn't seem to make any sense, then there is something wrong. The author of a text or a change is not in the best position gauge whether the readers will understand it. Hans Adler 00:35, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

There is no sense that we need to write policies and guidelines to be clear, but wrong; or clear and technically accurate, but fundamentally misleading.- Wolfkeeper 14:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

The text you are trying to change is neither. You want to change a guideline so that it says something different. Obviously you can't do that against consensus. Hans Adler 15:07, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Manual of Style discussion

I've moved the MOS structure discussion to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Structure.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:23, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

It just doesn't work

I think I tried interwiki links on my talk page too; my guess is that they only work within certain namespaces (article, Wikipedia, user). A shame, but there it is.

So as not to be too negative, over there → is a picture you may be able to make use of, somehow.   pablo_hablo. 21:37, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a beautiful picture and nicely unobtrusive. I am going to use it.

I did a lot of searching on the web and found that there is no way of enforcing such interwiki links, not even with severe wizardry. It would require a MediaWiki extension that is not installed here. Hans Adler 21:47, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Request

Hans, by all means close the discussion on WP:ANI which has been completed now. However, please do not write uncivil summaries. Best regards, Mathsci (talk) 00:20, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Direct or indirect, a correct summary of the thread would be, "No action taken on TechnoFaye, mediation on Race and intelligence prolonged for two weeks". You did not given the impression that you had read what had been decided in the thread and elsewhere by the administrators User:JzG and User:Xavexgoem, chair of the mediation committee. Mathsci (talk) 00:39, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

You do not give me the impression that you understood what Xavexgoem said. And while I like JzG, there are situations in which I can't take him seriously. This was one of them. He tends to be a bit too credulous when certain editors (not you) bend the truth by claiming that other editors support pseudoscience, and use such unfounded allegations to mob those with whom they have the kind of disagreements that normally happen between rational people and can normally solved amicably. Ludwigs2 has been a target of this recently, and JzG was peripherally involved. Hans Adler 00:48, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec)I have left a message on the semigroup page. I agree with most of your comments, subject to a rewriting which might effect bits of the whole article. I hope this OK with you. I received a delightful email today from an admin whom I've seen around, but who turns out to another wikipedian UK mathematician, now the head of a charity. Actually it says so on his user page User:BozMo. I count you as one of my wikfriends, as you are another mathematician in Britain. What happens on wikipedia is a bit like what happens at a debating society. I see no reason to loose you as a wikifriend, even if I have been a little harsh on Ludwigs2, who I believe is also a wikifriend of yours. If we can work together on semigroup, I would be delighted. Best regards, Mathsci (talk) 00:59, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

For Xavexgoem, I will find the diff. I think Ludwigs2 and JzG communicated on Ludwigs2's talk page. Again I'll look for the diff. Mathsci (talk) 00:59, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

OK this is what Xavexgoem wrote (I've bolded the relevant statement):

Reubbz was and would have been fine. I will protect his name without exception. We all start somewhere, and if after 2 weeks he decides he wants to be a mediator -- a kind of peacemaker -- that is (was) a good thing. We learn quick. Picking up a big case is ambitious, and we would have all had his back. My first case was an Israeli/Palestinian case. My second case was a 9/11 conspiracy theory case. They didn't work out, but not because of my abilities. They didn't work out because the situations were plainly not suited to mediation. This may be one of the articles - and now that I'm hearing suspicions that supremacy is indeed one of the biases (another reason I left the case -- the ambiguity was too great, and my beliefs too strong), I really do think it would be hard to close this as successful. But Ludwigs2 has done a good job by the standards, far and above the standards folks are lowering him to. We're giving him and the case 2 more weeks. The success or failure of this case is not contingent upon him, since it's the parties to the disputes' job to actually put into place NPA, CIVIL, NPOV, etc. Not his or any other mediator. All he can do is suggest, after all. Xavexgoem (talk) 05:38, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

And this is the diff where JzG agreed with Ludwigs2 on JzG's talk page [38]. I left a message yesterday on the talk pages of Ludwigs2 and Xavexgoem, saying that what I now understand was the compromise suggested by Ludwigs2 was the best way forward. I hope this clarifies things. It's probably best to close the discussion with a summary from the statement of Xavexgoem above. Perhaps it would have been better if I had simply asked to change your summary rather than reverting it. Please go ahead and summarise the discussion. Mathsci (talk) 01:14, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I redid your close with a summary which I hope is accurate and also fair to Ludwigs2. I will leave a message on his talk page. Mathsci (talk) 01:26, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Hans Adler 01:31, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) No, I am not touching this again. I was under the impression that there were still unconstructive things going on. Otherwise I wouldn't have closed. My closing comment mostly referred to a slightly earlier change before this 2 weeks thing, by the way. Xavexgoem's sentence right before the one you bolded makes it very clear that he disapproves of the way Ludwigs2 was attacked in that ANI thread, and I was under the impression that this was still going on. You should be aware that at least two of the few editors who supported you there (JzG and Beyond my Ken) have recently been involved in a different matter where a few people who are thinking of themselves as sceptics tried to hijack the Ghost article and pretend that it is primarily about pseudoscience, which they can then debunk at length. This spread very far, and there was even a skirmish at Talk:Placebo. (At least one of these editors believes that the placebo effect is a mere illusion with no beneficial effects for patients at all, and therefore an article about it is fair game for putting references to pseudoscience in the lead.) Unfortunately these editors have been quite successful in spreading the unfounded meme that Ludwigs2 supports pseudoscience, so he is currently very vulnerable.

By the way, I am no longer in Leeds. I am at the Goedel Research Center in Vienna now. But I don't see why this should have an impact on our wiki relations. Hans Adler 01:31, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I've left a note for Ludwigs2. Believe it or not, you had some influence on me.

I was at the Schroedinger Institute in 2008, where kind Frau Miedel arranged for one or two of us to play the organ in the Catholic seminary next door. Do you see anything of Klaus Schmidt where you are? How do you like Vienna? Mathsci (talk) 01:48, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci has just attempted the same thing again, piggybacking a new group of complaints against Ludwigs2 on top of an unrelated AN/I post that Ludwig had made against a different user. As you can probably imagine, his repeatedly doing this is really disrupting mediation for the race and intelligence article, so I’d like it if someone could do something about it. It took several days for this problem to be dealt with when it happened around a week ago, and you’re the person who ended up dealing with it eventually, so I hope you don’t mind me bringing up this new example of it with you to see if you can do anything about it this time also.

If you have any ideas about how to prevent this problem from continuing to recur, I would appreciate that as well. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:26, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

harassment

Your reminder of the simple editing rules of the wikipedia is inherently derogatory, but that's why you did it.- Wolfkeeper 15:25, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

You are evidently referring to this.

No. I left you a personally formulated 3RR warning because at the time of writing I wasn't aware that you had already received one in template form [39] and removed it [40] with the absurd and abusive edit summary: "rv: abuse of editing priviledge". 3RR warnings are encouraged by WP:3RR#What to do if you see edit warring behavior. Although I remember having seen your name before, I don't know how experienced you are because I haven't checked your editing statistics. I appraised your experience purely based on your poor understanding of policy and came to the conclusion that you may need such a warning.

Moreover, I was perfectly open about what I am going to do if you continue your edit warring. You need not like this, but it is not harassment because I had reason to believe you might continue and if you do this reaction will be absolutely justified. This was not an adequate response, and by accusing me of "harassment" you are crossing a line. Your accusation of harassment against NeilN [41] was equally inappropriate.

It is not the fault of everybody else if you don't understand what an encyclopedia is (hint: they evolved out of dictionaries and some are still referred to as dictionaries although they are not) and read "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" as "Wikipedia must not cover anything that might also be covered by a dictionary" when it actually means, and has always meant, "Wikipedia pages are written as encyclopedia articles, not as dictionary entries". Do you know the joke about the motorist who hears on the radio that there is someone driving against the traffic on the motorway? He exclaims: "One? Hundreds!" Hans Adler 15:45, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Wolfkeeper

I was coming over here to comment on Wolfkeeper's recent actions, only to find that they are escalating the situation even further. Time for an RFC/U?--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:24, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be too trivial and too obvious for that. Or is this user causing a lot of disruption in AfDs? Hans Adler 17:38, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I hadn't looked at that, but his sustained disruption is getting really problematic. Continued edit warring on policy pages is some bad mojo, not to mention all the edit warring he's been doing trying to conform articles to his idiosyncratic views.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:16, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, after looking at Woolfkeeper's contributions I think I see what you mean now. [42] Clearly this user needs to be stopped. Perhaps an RfC is the right way to do this, after all. But I don't have the time to take the initiative. Hans Adler 18:25, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Nice dude. There's actually nothing wrong with that kind of edit; it's completely in line with WP:LEAD as well as WP:NAD and WP:MOS. This isn't a case where I'm imposing my own beliefs or content schemes on the Wikipedia; those are already the rules that you're supposed to be following. An RFC for making good-faith edits that are following the policies and guidelines of the Wikipedia would certainly be an interesting one. Tell me, do you harass people much or just me?- Wolfkeeper 00:38, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Obviously I disagree. Your edit caused a slight degradation of article quality in order to make the article fit your eccentric ideology. The fact that forbidden fruit don't actually exist in a physical sense because it's just a metaphor is key to understanding the concept, so it belongs in the first sentence.

I said I don't have the time to deal with you. What are you doing keeping this silly thread alive? Trying to force me to "harass" you? Hans Adler 06:06, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Clean-up of "NORAD Tracks Santa"

It has been two weeks since Tomsmith0002 or BillJohnson0003 have made any edits on Wikipedia, I think that it's now possible to continue the clean-up without further hinderance.

I have done some heavy editing to the article. I know that you're not interested in the topic, I'm sick of it too but I'm deeply involved now, but I hope that you can take the time to have a look at the article and see if any of the multiple issues that you tagged it for have been resolved. I have left a summary of my actions and my reasons for them on the discussion page. Regards, Simon Peter Hughes (talk) 14:32, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Clearly, you have other things to worry about. I'm not even going to read any articles on the English Wikipedia about anything that could possibly be categorized as pseudo-science and I'm definitley not going to edit any of them, I don't need that kind of trouble! Anyway, I have taken the liberty of removing the multiple issues tag that you placed on the article and replacing it with a primary sources tag. A lack of reliable third party references seems to be the only problem that is left. All of the fancruft, excessive detail, advertising-style prose and "in-universe" content have been removed.Simon Peter Hughes (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for being so unresponsive. I am having quite a bit of real life at the moment, with my little daughter and my parents visiting me in Vienna. Of course you can remove whatever tags you think don't make sense any more. Thanks for continuing to deal with this article. Hans Adler 14:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

That's fine, I completely understand. I'll continue to check on the article once a month but I think it's unlikely that any other obsessive fans of the programme will come along and put the article back the way it was. Given the subject matter, I don't think there will be much further editing of the page until November. As I said before, when Christmas comes around again, some normally sensible Wikipedia editors might insist on rewriting it to say that Santa Claus and the tracking service are real, to avoid upsetting the children. I don't think many future editors would still insist on saying that in March, though! Thank you for your support.Simon Peter Hughes (talk) 06:29, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

checking in

Hans,

Sorry that I've been absent from the NSF debate for a bit - had my hands full with the Race and Intelligence mediation (and associated drama) and thought it better to keep the two issues separate. I'll be back at it soon though. --Ludwigs2 04:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I thought that BullRangifer would calm down and begin to accept removal of this nonsense from everywhere, but it is beginning to look as if we do need the RfC/U after all. Hans Adler 05:01, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Now that Gwen has clarified her position, we should think about cleaning up the mess brangifer made. I'm not sure how many pages he spammed that stuff over. what do you think is the best approach? --Ludwigs2 19:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I have a precise overview of affected pages, see User:Hans Adler/NSF disruption. He mostly just inserted absurd paragraphs into leads, so they can simply be removed. Pseudoscience is a notable exception because Cirt protected this article very aggressively against edit warring. On that page we probably need an RfC or something.

At this point I am less concerned about the remaining nonsense in article space than about his persistence in calling us (i.e. specifically you and me) names. And he has made his modus operandi explicit: "In this case I was really in doubt because of the original objections of Ludwigs2, Hans Adler, and a couple other pushers of fringe POV. Since the arguments of such editors don't carry much weight, I decided to get more input."

That confirms the impression that I have had all the time: That he is personalising everything, and that for him the quality of an argument is a function of his opinion of the person who makes it, but basically unrelated to its inherent quality.

Due to some similarities to a case that had to be resolved recently by Arbcom, I think RfC/U may not be the best way forward, and I am currently considering a lightweight Arbcom procedure to prevent that BullRangifer repeats this kind of behaviour in the near future. Hans Adler 20:15, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I have refactored that statement to remove any ambiguity. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:29, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I am having a déjà vu. [43] Hans Adler 17:16, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

eh, name-calling I can deal with (in any actual test of reason he doesn't have a prayer of winning his case). Personally, I think this is a tactic: he generates hysteria and bad feelings so that he can sweep any attempt at rationality under the rug and win his case by pure emotional pressure. it's an effective short-run strategy, but in the long run it usually fails (the longer it goes on, the more he runs across people who aren't taken in by it, and sooner or later push comes to shove). but yeah, an RFC/U would be nice - with luck it would kibosh it for a few months. I don't actually think he'll learn the lesson, mind you, but I'll settle for putting the fear of god in him a bit so that he toes the line. Honestly, I just don't think he has the temperament to work on a collaborative encyclopedia, but what do I know?

Don't be hard on Gwen, incidentally - I suspect she closed the case the way she originally did on the assumption that everyone would read the closure in a reasonable and sophisticated way. no way she could have known that brangifer would twist her words just the way he twisted the NSF's. --Ludwigs2 21:09, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Damn.

I ſaw J. Wales' confusion re þorn and had made a mental note to reply referencing þe olde tea ſhoppes, but I ſee you have ſhot my fox. We need to protect the poor chap from ever discovering eð, let alone yoȝ!   pablo_hablo. 20:10, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I fixed a few typos for þee. I hope þou doestn't minde. Hans Adler 20:52, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Þat waſ a kindneß. Þankſ.   pablo_hablo. 21:04, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Nurembourg

Hi! Did you really want the red link? I fixed it here, but you reverted it. Stephen B Streater (talk) 20:19, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Obviously not, thanks. I meant what I typed originally, and then I simply assumed I had mistyped and there was a redirect for a typo. Thanks for teaching me how to spell that city properly! Hans Adler 20:22, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

National Science Foundation

Hey I noticed some changes you made regarding the National Science Foundation so I added a section to Talk:Mediumship. Thanks. ~a (user • talk • contribs) 12:50, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Corn

Thanks, Hans for the detailed explanations. In the US, corn literally means maize and does not have any other typical meaning! Wow, I am so US centric.

Regards, Raj2004 (talk) 23:02, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV

Please don't think I was saying you were not welcome to join in the discussion but there were 5 separate discussions iniated by Michael on Falklands units and we're getting rather fed up with the same repeated argument. Justin the Evil Scotsman talk 07:51, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually, after following you bunch to the Falkland Islands project page I think I fully understand the problem. I was previously only aware of it as far as it had spilled over to MOSMATH. Obviously I didn't mean to provide further ammunition to Michael Glass with what I said, either. Hans Adler 09:16, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Organizing the MoS

I thought your earlier suggestion for organizing the MoS into levels, with summaries and transclusion, had a lot of potential. Are you interested in pursuing it? I've just started a new thread to see if others want to take a fresh look at the idea, in the wake of the unsuccessful "core trial". I can't seem to find the right link to your sandbox mock-up. Your contribution to the discussion, with your current thoughts and any such relevant links, would be appreciated. PL290 (talk) 16:50, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

The 'good fight' continues...

Hi Hans,
I'm not going to change your recent edits, just hoping you might have read my comments in the AfD before you did it.
Thanks, Scott P. (talk) 12:53, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Excellent idea to blank the Eric_Ely page and refer commenters to look up the the article in the history pages themselves. Bravo! Scott P. (talk) 13:04, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I have also asked for page protection on one of the right versions (I don't care which one). Per WP:BLP admins needn't protect on the wrong version in such a case. Hans Adler 13:06, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

• FYI Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Edit war and protection on Eric Ely. –xeno^talk 14:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Fortunately everything seems to be fine for the moment. Hans Adler 14:58, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I dunno... I find the note peculiar. –xeno^talk 15:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean. It looks as if everybody in this discussion agrees that the BLP violation had to be removed and the page protected. What do you mean by "the note", and what is peculiar? Hans Adler 15:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I've done this which should explain what I meant by peculiar (an informational note masquerading as article text). –xeno^talk 15:11, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I got it almost immediately after my above comment. Of course I have no problem with your edit at all. When the extreme BLP violation (2 paragraph version of the article) was created my first reaction was to revert back to the long article, in the second instance I removed the second paragraph, and in the third instance I blanked the article and wrote that note. This was just to try something else rather than revert all the time. I couldn't care less about the article so long as it doesn't set a precedent that we simply leave BLP violations for the length of an AfD. Hans Adler 15:15, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Cheers, –xeno^talk 15:27, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for all of the work you did. It only took an act of Congress. -- Rico 22:27, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Julius Neubronner

-- Cirt (talk) 16:02, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

help?

Can you comment here: [44] and in the next section, which is entitled "Comment?" I am asking you to comment solely on policy, not content. This discussoon sorely needs the cmments of others who really know policy. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 09:53, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I have been rather busy outside Wikipedia, and this looks very complicated. Generally it appears to be a matter of adequately interpreting the full picture given by the sources rather than anything that can be decided by precise interpretation of policy. Hans Adler 10:06, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

GD/Bish?

That comment at Giacomo's talkpage, was a riot. GoodDay (talk) 22:30, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Request for Comment

It is proposed that summaries of articles be kept in a subpage ~/Sum and that a (to-be-written) template transcludes the summary into (a) the lead after the first paragraph and (b) any other article that needs to summarize the article. Please comment at Wikipedia_talk:Lead_section#Proposal_for_a_new_template_and_/Sum_summary_pages.

Hpvpp (talk) 09:28, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Hans,

I've taken a little time to think about your request on Jimbo's talk page. I agree that "myth" should not be an offensive term, and in most rational cases it is not. Perhaps a way to make it clearer would be to rename the article, Genesis creation mythology. To me, that would seem to clarify that the story is being analyzed in terms of a particular branch of study. That's just a suggestion, though. I hope it helps. Zaereth (talk) 21:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think the article is supposed to be more inclusive. It's about the text, not a specific view on the text. It was once at Creation according to Genesis, then after creationist attempts to strike the word "myth" from the lead there was a backlash and it became Genesis creation myth. Most recently it was renamed to Genesis creation narrative, and I don't think there is a chance for the title you are proposing. Currently we are at the point where the creationists momentarily accept the word "myth" in the lead but try to add language to the effect that some scholars believe it's not a myth, or even better, that some believe it's literally true. Hans Adler 21:18, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeak, I've not fully looked into the talk page discussions. I'm far too busy with real life right now. I've worked with both religious people and scientists, and what both have in common is that they can be very adamant about their beliefs. It's a shame that people have such trouble learning from each other. Anyhow, I don't really have time to get involved so I'll wish you good luck. Zaereth (talk) 22:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry. By the way, I know what you mean, although in my experience the problem on the science side is often not the scientist but the science groupies, and I guess on the religion side it's similar (i.e. the theologians are probably not the problem). Thanks for trying, enjoy real life. Hans Adler 22:09, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Etymology

Hi. I was wondering if you had any further comments for the RfC etymology subthread? I'm not sure if we had reached an agreement, or an impasse! (Hopefully the former).

Regarding the rfc in general, I'm currently thinking: If the discussions there continue to be fruitful, perhaps we can avoid the whole "formal rfc" process, and just have a useful conversation with each other, before moving on to refining the NOTDIC policy...

Thoughts welcome, as always. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:31, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Karlsruhe Pyramid

The DYK project (nominate) 00:03, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Why are you undoing improvements to article?

Why are you undoing recent improvements to the article about the Gymnasium Querfurt High School? Has anyone invited you to participate at the article project? Also, what do you think spam and what is unsourced? Do you think a CEEB school code needs a source? Go on collegeboard.com and look it up. Do you think the coordinates need more sources? I thought coordinates are universal and so you can put the information into Google Maps to confirm them. Do you think it needs further sourcing that grades 9 - 12 are taught in the second building, what reflects an American High School? Come to our school or call my principal, he can also provide you with the number of enrolled students and faculty, as well as the positions hold by staff and students. Do you think GQBC is not made by a student of the school? Then why is it named after the school and publishes information about the school? So I think it's worth to be named in the article, that's no spam. All information in the article have been provided by the school administration, particularly our principal, and should be put in the article as advised by them. Exterior people should not question the authority of such information as long as they cannot provide other sources. Please keep to the article about your school in the future. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.234.85.170 (talk) 17:13, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

You have had your chance to contribute constructively to this project, and you have used it up by spamming and hoaxing. I am not going to let you edit the article on your school, especially not when you are continuing to advertise your dead project in the process. Wikipedia is not the place for advertising.

I advise you not to escalate things to the point where someone from Wikipedia feels they have to contact your school to ask them to stop the silliness. It looks as if you must be easily identifiable to most of your teachers. Just stop thinking about Wikipedia. Hans Adler 22:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, my teachers and principal like me very much. We have worked close together at the GQBC project. And if you looked up our school code at collegeboard.com, you should find a match with "Gymnasium Querfurt High School". To receive this code, your school must be accreditted with either a regionally accreditation agency or education department and with English Testing System. On the request form for the code all information about the school including all programs and statistics must be supplied. This form must be signed by the school's principal and notarized by a notary public. And if you contact ETS Code Control now, they should be able to provide you with all these information and a contact email address: admin@gqbc-online.com. This proves that GQBC is affiliated with the school and that I am the administrator of the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) program at my school. Also, GQBC isn't dead, we just experience server issues with the network. But in the meantime everything resumed to normal. And if you look below the words "Upcoming Events", you will definetely see what's coming next at the school. Enjoy the site. Revenue from the commercial advertisement goes directly to my school. But we also maintain nonprofit advertisement for American schools of higher education. How charitable, isn't it? Just to remind you: if you left out that Albert Einstein created the relativity theory, you would give the reader a wrong image about this important American! You see the analogy? If you left out that GQBC was created by a student in consultation with the computer science department, no reader woud guess what geniuses are taught and teach there. Guess what? I am not the only one from my school editing here and why shouldn't we be able to write about our school as we please? We are proud of it and honor it with this article. It's the first progressive school in Germany (the emphasis lies on progressive, like against everything conservative, or like "fortschrittlich" in German). 217.234.101.152 (talk) 17:20, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

You have just no idea Adler. We don't let you stop us writing about our school. We are the Students! 74.106.205.48 (talk) 17:31, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

You are not a good liar, Spyro02, so I advise you to stop. I don't care about your server problems. Your site is very obviously dead in the sense of no participation. ("Last post: Sun Sep 07, 2008 9:06 pm"; "In total there is 1 user online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 1 guest (based on users active over the past 5 minutes) Most users ever online was 5 on Thu Mar 12, 2009 7:40 pm".) I don't mind if you stay in your dream world, but don't bother others with it who are writing an encyclopedia and don't want to play with you.

Yes, I am sure your teachers will be delighted to learn about this. I guess that means it's OK for you to just continue getting on everyone's nerves until I dial 034771/22450 and ask for help stopping the nonsense. Hans Adler 17:46, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

You are a very discriminating person and a perfect German pursuing their national mission of eliminating "parallel societies" or in good English: extinguishing pluralism. That's what the German Cult Ministry wrote in response to the question why homeschooling is outlawed in Germany. In response US press wrote "The Nazis are Back!" and "Deutschland, Police State: Germany drags homeschool kids to class" - I liked these headlines, they are so the truth. Everyone knows about these paleo-conservative idiots and its time to revolt or as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: the people reserves themselves the right "to alter or abolish government, and institute new government". Ah, if you call that number, you better hope Mrs. Wiesner has a good day, otherwise yours ears might not survive her mood. Just a friendly advice. So if you don't live in Sachsen-Anhalt, you better not call this number and make use of the forwarded email address you find on GQBC. As per school rules, no entity other than governments and educational institutions outside of our state may contact the school directly and must use the spam-filtered email address. Believe me, they have already received dozes of advertisement from all around the world, not at least the messages from some freaky Canadian terrorist. Aren't you the Hans Adler who killed this Adrian Palmer and was released by a German court because they "lacked sufficient evidence" as USA Today wrote. I will contact the appropriate authorities and provide further details on you. Don't wonder if US ESTA won't give you travel authorization if you ever want to board a cross-Atlantic flight. Your endless efforts to destroy the unquestionable reputation of the GQHS was just too much. 213.112.109.122 (talk) 18:38, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, great that you are back C., because I need your help. There is one thing I can't figure out: Is your father's name Andreas, Peter or Walter? We don't want to let the entire village know about your stunt, do we? So please cooperate. Hans Adler 18:55, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:Research discussion

I'm well aware that "language" is something that people can use to share ideas with each other. Can you give the patronizing a break? It's getting harder and harder to remain civil. I'm pretty sure that you aren't trying to be a jerk and you are really just trying to participate in the discussion, but my patience has it's limits. Can't we all just get along and figure something out without biting at each others throats? --EpochFail^(talk|work) 19:40, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

My point was that these things can be solved by communication instead of a new process. I seriously have the impression that you are trying to create a new process so that you can push things through against the community. That's not going to work. I am no longer interested in helping you figure something out now it seems clear that you are not prepared to respect the basic values of a wiki community. If you think I am your main obstacle then you are simply wrong. Your current method can only fail, and I was trying to help you understand that before you have wasted a lot more time on it. But I have already wasted more than enough of my time on this. Hans Adler 19:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Communication is insufficient in this case. I've shown you examples where communication broke down in the past. If you think I am trying to work against the Wikipedia community, then why did I follow WP:Policy's recommendations for policy RFCs exactly? If I was trying to work against the Wikipedia community, why would we have come up with an open consensus process for approving recruitment. Why would we have written into the proposed policy that research approved via the process must not violate Wikipedia's policies or cause disruption? I can't follow your reasoning, because it seems absurd. I never considered you an obstacle in this work. I try not to think of collaborators as adversaries. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 18:19, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

AN/I notice

Hi Hans. Left and right sock have started a case at WP:ANI#Issue about Gymnasium Quefurt article - Hans Adler and other users attack our school and delete content, but neglected to inform you. Favonian (talk) 17:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Please unprotect "Gymnasium Quefurt" again

Please unprotect the article "Gymnasium Querfurt" again. It's a problem with this Hans Adler who seems to dislike our school. It's like we are too American for this German. The article in its extended version is Ok. There is no advertisement in. The content is approved by the school. What this Hands Adler does is discrimination. Thank you. 74.106.205.48 (talk) 17:28, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

You might want to block this open proxy. See my talk page for context. Hans Adler 17:36, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I tapped out both IP's as they found their way to ANI. There is no chance that two unrelated IP's can figure out the same discussion location within two minute of each other, especially if both IP's never edited before. The 74.106.205.48 range seems to be a dynamic Verizon range from what i can tell, and therefor i did not block it as a proxy (to little proof). Either way the protection is in place, and therefor the article in question should be safe for now. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 17:50, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

OK. The IP 74.106.205.48 itself has an entry on RBL, but I am not sure about the implications. Thanks. Hans Adler 17:54, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Just stay at the things in Austria. No one wants someone else to come from Austria and infringe with the affairs in other countries. Hitler and Schwarzenegger are enough. The Gymnasium Querfurt High School is not affiliated with you in any way. You have just no idea. It was the wish of the school in the first place and still is to include information like the CEEB code and GQBC in the article. There is no advertisement. So back off! Or I am gonna call your Austrian University, lol, just joking. Just stay far away from the article about my school. 65.120.238.5 (talk) 21:14, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

*shrug* I am not sure why you insist that I call your school, but you are not leaving me a choice. OK. Hans Adler 21:18, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah, and if still someone thinks I am using a proxy, he is wrong. I use these IPs natively. As I said, my fiancé's grandma created the Internet Protocol and so I had access to this 1990 laptop with these awesome files. I am not giving out any more details. You can assume that only I and my fiancé are legitimated as descendants to take opportunity of this. So better let me do the edits to the article about my school. You can't win an Internet war against the grandson-in-law of one of the Creators. What sense would it make to harass someone whose family created this wonderful medium. 65.120.238.5 (talk) 21:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Pull the other one. Hans Adler 21:32, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

If you should really have the grace to talk to my principal, say you are referring to the Wikipedia article about our school he said was excellent just before several content was deleted. Below the email from ETS Code Control that was sent to my school:

Dear Dr. Daumer,

Please note that SAT AI (Attending Institution) code number 734150 has been assigned to Gymnasium Querfurt High School.

The name, address, and code number assigned to your institution will be entered in the National Secondary School List as noted below:

734150 GYMNASIUM QUERFURT HIGH SCHOOL AN DER GEISTPROMENADE 29 QUERFURT ST 06268 GERMANY

The Level II code assigned to your institution allows you to receive your students' SAT, PSAT/NMSQT, PLAN, or ACT scores; receive SAT or ACT publications; administer PLAN, PSAT/NMSQT, and AP exams.

Please advise your students to use this number when registering for either the SAT Program or the ACT Assessment. Let your students know that if they do not use the correct code number, copies of their score report will not be sent to you.

If any of your students have submitted Registration Forms before the above date, the code number will show as invalid on their Admission Ticket. If corrections are needed, advise your students to complete the correction form attached to their admission ticket and mail prior to the test date they have been assigned.

We have provided the below link for your convenience. Please refer to the Testing Basics tab for additional information about the SAT, PSAT/NMSQT, and Advanced Placement testing programs.

    http://professionals.collegeboard.com/educator/k-12-administrator  

We appreciate the opportunity to assist you. If replying via e-mail, please include all previous correspondence, or a summary of your inquiry. If you wish to speak with a customer service representative, please call us at 609-771-7091, Monday – Friday, from 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM EST.

Please take a moment and complete a short Customer Service Survey at http://surveys1013.websurveyor.net/wsb.dll/bfried/ETSProgramEmail.htm?WSB36=Code_Control

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Sincerely,

Code Control LH 2918 CRM#7075962

Should confirm that I am network administrator of my school. Guess would just make sense if I received this email. Whatever, do what you want. 65.120.238.5 (talk) 21:40, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Factory production vs. quality control, "would be manager"

Brilliant analogy! Jayjg ^(talk) 12:39, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. What made you just say that Baseball Bugs takes a certain website for reliable? Can you provide a diff? That would be most interesting. Never mind, I just saw it. Hans Adler 12:47, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Rummy

Hans, my dearest mathematician, I am here to thank you for the change in category on all those rummy games. It is a lot better now. Some more work to do on them yes, but once no significant change was made on the articles after my work there, I'm still waiting to begin working on them again. 'Till then, don't let the other users prevent you from changing the laws of phisics........:-) ! Krenakarore (talk) 10:20, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I am glad you agree. I noticed that the categorisation was a bit odd when I was cleaning up the card games category. I am mostly working on a specific class of trick-taking games at the moment. By the way, for obvious reasons I have put Mahjong and Rummikub in Category:Rummy even though they are not card games but tile games. There are similar relations with some domino games. E.g. there are quite a few trick-taking domino games (although I guess many of them don't have an article yet) and IMO they should be classified more precisely along with the related card games. What do you think about renaming Category:Trick-taking card games to Category:Trick-taking games? Conversely, some card games are really adapted domino games, but I would have to look closer at this to make a concrete proposal. Hans Adler 11:24, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

As we're talking about card games, the Category:Trick-taking card games sounds logic to me, but on the other hand trick-taking games also defines the same thing. As a mathematician you know that the order of factors does not alter the product. I for one believe that this should be left the way it is. Tiles are not cards, although many of these games are played with them, Mahjong included. I am a little bit more interested in knowing about this "specific class of trick-taking games" you mentioned about. That's my major. Krenakarore (talk) 17:43, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I am currently trying to get order into Category:All Fours. These games have a relatively recent and interesting history, and there are serious problems of terminology. I am working with about 3 or 4 dozen books that contain rules for various variants and trying to distill the standard games from them and to associate them with some of the many names that are in use. That's non-trivial because often totally different variants are described under the same name by different authors, and the same variant has many different names. We can describe this chaos, but we also need to use a convincing and internally consistent naming system for the major variants. (Even deciding what the major variants are is a bit of a problem.) Unfortunately John McLeod has only collected games in this group without really classifying them, and David Parlett seems to have neglected them a bit, too.

As to "trick-taking games" versus "trick-taking card games", I am not sure that you understood what I mean. Are you aware of 42 (dominoes) and Tien Gow? Hans Adler 17:55, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

There are probably thousands of variants for card games like Euchre, Poker, Bridge and so on as they migrate from one place to another. I for one love to play Towie. I used to take notes on each hand as for suit|NT, contract level, player|hombre and achievement (whether the player fulfilled his contract or not), so like this we could establish the percentage of improvement in his playing skills, how many times the player fulfilled or failed his contract, how many time a certain suit appeared in the game and so forth (a sort of Duplicate Bridge, but for three players only). But all this, you know, is WP:OR 'cos there's no such thing in a towie game. I had never heard of the term Comparing games before coming to Wikipedia (I know the term Vying Games, but not Showdown Games), but I understand that somewhere, somehow, someone is used to making use of the term, even if I can't agree with that, let alone a Category:Comparing card games - I guess a Card Game Concilium would have to take place so we could standardize this thing. Well, different authors describing a certain game by applying different terms to it is something quite understandable to me. You said: John McLeod has only collected games in this group without really classifying them, but how to classify a Trick-taking All Fours game ? Can you specify ? Yes, I may have not got the picture as for the difference between Trick-taking card games versus Trick-taking games. Card games are also table games. Yes, I am aware of 42 and Tien Gow. Krenakarore (talk) 07:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

All Fours: This is just about very minor points, like classifying the dialects of a language. There is a continuum of game variants, and when a new feature comes up in one it migrates to (some of) the others. At some random points some authors will write about the games known to them, under the names known to them. E.g. a particular game variant may be named after a common feature that wasn't present in its earliest forms and is now present in most other game variants as well. The problem is to identify the most typical, most commonly played game variants and put them under names that make sense, can be supported with reliable sources, and appear to be consistent with usage at least in part. They can't be consistent with most usage because that is so contradictory. E.g. the game now played in England under the name "All Fours" is actually almost exactly the most basic variant of Pitch. On this particular point David Parlett seems to be contradicting himself by describing the classical game of All Fours in one book, and the modern English game (i.e. Pitch) in another, both under the same name.

"Trick-taking" game just means you have a number of similar items, then you play them into "tricks", the winner takes the trick and leads to the next trick. You can play such games with dominoes, or indeed with marbles, just as well as with cards. The category Category:Trick-taking card games is not good in this form because it is the intersection of a game mechanism and game material. I think we should just have a category on the game mechanism. In practice it doesn't make a big difference because "card games" doesn't appear in the subcategories and of course I will simply categorise the two domino games in the most appropriate subcategories, as soon as I have understood which one that is. But still, it doesn't make much sense. It's very much like Category:White presidents of the United States. Hans Adler 07:51, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry Hans, this is rather confusing. I don't disagree on your point of view, I just can't see where it fits. As far as I understood, there must be a confusion about the meaning of the word "variant". If one says, for instance, that Minnesota is an Euchre variant, I agree, but if this one says that Euchre is an All Fours variant, that can't be. All the games listed in the Category:All Fours are "derived" from the game All Fours. On the other hand, all the games listed there are variants of one single game, whether Pedro or not I don't know. Which one came first ? That's why I always try to find dates to establish a progression of a specific game like All Fours, for instance. Pedro, Double Pedro, Dom, and then Cinch, Pitch, Double Pitch, Setback, also Seven Up (rather different from the one featured here in Wiki) are all variants of Pedro itself. Don't you think that establishing another category (read: Trump games) for the trick-taking games would be more productive ? Just the way you did to the Rummy family of games. That was one of my first questions here in Wiki, and the one through which I came to meet you my dear friend - Playing card. All Fours is a precious game here in Wiki Hans, and Euchre has deep roots in it. I wouldn't like to see other users disagree on your point of view. Krenakarore (talk) 11:56, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand you. The only connection between All Fours and Euchre is that both are point-trick games (but with different point values) and that the newer versions of Euchre have inherited the Left Bower (Off-Jack) from Euchre. Euchre is definitely not an All Fours variant, not even close. Hans Adler 12:23, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

You said it right, Euchre is definitely not an All Fours variant, not even close. One evolved from the other. All the best on your quest Hans. Friendly, Krenakarore (talk) 09:04, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

"One evolved from the other." – Do you have a source for that claim?

• All Fours was first described in 1674 as originating from Kent, but most likely originates from the Netherlands. Euchre was first described in 1857 in America and is believed to have been introduced by Alsatian immigrants.
• All Fours is played with 52 cards. Euchre was originally played with 32 cards (and is now sometimes played with even less, although sometimes a Joker is added).
• Both have different bidding systems, although both start with turning up a card.
• Not a single scoring card has the same card point value in All Fours and in Euchre.
• In Euchre the Jack of trumps is the highest trump. In All Fours it is in its natural position.
• In Euchre the Left Bower is the second highest trump. All Fours does not have such Off-cards. (Some 19th/20th century American forms of the game do have it, but they obviously got it from Euchre in America.)
• In All Fours you can trump instead of following suit. In Euchre you can't.
• In All Fours only six cards are dealt to the players, and being (at least basically) a six-trick game is a constant feature throughout all variants. Except for 19th/20th century American versions, if one player gets additional cards, then so do all the others. In Euchre, except for a widow which goes to the highest bidder, generally all cards are dealt to the players, and the number of cards dealt varies between variants.
• In Euchre it's all about winning most of the card points. In All Fours this is only one of four points you can win.

It would be reasonable to speculate that both games are derived from a 17th century Spanish game originally played with 40 cards, which was played in the Spanish Netherlands, where it may have acquired a special role of the Jack of trumps before branching into an English game (All Fours) and an Alsatian game (Juckerspiel, later Euchre). But I don't see how one could have evolved from the other, or how they are any closer to each other than both are to Jass, Klaberjass and Belote. Hans Adler 11:08, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

So, you made a comparison between the games, good ! I guess that corroborates my statement. Hans... if both games had the same features, one would be the other right ? Can't you really see a close pattern between them ? You said: "One evolved from the other." – Do you have a source for that claim? I say: D'ya have one which doesn't ? I guess you've been really working too hard lately. I see too many things happening for you now. Too many controversis about this US school and threats (my father taught me that we should never ever threat someone 'cos we would have to comply with our threats. I guess he was right)... My dear friend, I wish you'd "fall in love with a gorgeous blond blue-eyed girl, knowing you that she feels just the same" !

You said: It would be reasonable to speculate that both games are derived from a 17th century Spanish game originally played with 40 cards, which was played in the Spanish Netherlands, where it may have acquired a special role of the Jack of trumps before branching into an English game (All Fours) and an Alsatian game (Juckerspiel, later Euchre). I say: Here is your proof Hans. God almighty, you are absolutely right ! That's the mother lode Hans ! You are fantastic !!! I knew you wouldn't let me down. Hail hail Hans Adler ! Krenakarore (talk) 07:42, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

What are you smoking? Hans Adler 08:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not smoking, I'm playing All Fives...:) ! Krenakarore (talk) 20:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Arthur Drews translation

Hi Hans, thank you for helping with some translation recently regarding Arthur Drews. Could you translate the following for me? I've got the machine translation but that's always garbled. It's from one of Drews books.

"Alles Beste, was der germanische Geist gedacht, empfunden, wofür er gekämpft und gelitten hat, die tiefsten Ahnungen seiner eigenen angestammten Religion, die in dieser nur nicht zur Entfaltung gelangt, sondern vorzeitig durch die Missionsarbeit der christlichen Kirche zerstört worden sind, haben in jener monistischen Religion unserer großen Denker und Dichter ihre Herausgeburt ans Licht gefunden und da sollten wir ein für allemal verpflichtet sein, unseren religiösen Besitz aus dem Orient zu beziehen, und soll die Weltanschauung einer längst versunkenen Zeit und einer entarteten Kultur uns für immer in ihrem Banne festhalten?"

Thanks. Eugene (talk) 21:03, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

"All the best for which the Germanic spirit has thought and felt, has fought and suffered, the deepest hunches of its own ancestral religion, which failed to fully unfold in it but were prematurely destroyed by the mission work of the Christian Church, have found their childbirth to light in yonder monistic religion of our great thinkers and poets – and under these circumstances we should be obliged once and for all to obtain our religious property from the orient, and the world-view of a time long gone and a depraved culture should hold us in its spell forever?"

There is of course no chance that a machine translation gets such a convoluted sentence right. I have added a dash that seemed to be necessary for understanding. The original doesn't even have a comma in that place. Hans Adler 08:01, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much Hans. Eugene (talk) 14:10, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Growing a thicker skin

Hans, I don't like the new default skin (that's putting it mildly). In fact, help, I can't even find stuff! Do you know how I can get the old skin back? Bishonen | talk 10:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC).

There's a "take me back" tab at the top of the page, Bish. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 10:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

SlimVirgin was faster. :) Initially I didn't like it either. But about a week ago, when I had occasionally used it on Commons as it was already the standard there, I decided to just try it out and copied most of my monobook.js scripts to my vector.js. And of course I turned off the option for nagging you when you abandon an edit, which can be done under Preferences. After all these changes it's not so bad, actually, merely a bit different. The one change I really like is the star indicating whether a page is on my watchlist. I am already using a Firefox plugin that uses just such a star for quick bookmarks, so I guess it's a bit of a standard symbol. I am only really missing one of my old scripts, the one that allowed me to go directly from an article page to the history of its talk page etc. (I think it's called "Six Tabs"). Hans Adler 11:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both. Hmm. Does SeaMonkey have that star plugin? Bishonen | talk 12:08, 13 May 2010 (UTC).

Very strange. I can't find it in my list of extensions, and I don't remember its name. Perhaps it's actually a standard feature added in a recent update? It gives me an unobtrusive star at the right end of the URL bar. If the page is in my bookmarks the star is yellow. I can add a page to my bookmarks simply by clicking the star, no further questions asked. But if I click a yellow star (i.e. it's already in my bookmarks), I can edit the bookmark. Hans Adler 12:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

That's a standard feature of FF3 (details at mozilla.com). Clicking it adds the page to the "Unsorted Bookmarks" subfolder. ("Unsorted Bookmarks" is only directly accessible from the sidebar, not from the main bookmark menu). Clicking it again lets you remove the bookmark, or change its location and other metadata. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:02, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Hans Adler 18:11, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Nottingham Two & Rizwaan Sabir

Apologies for not leaving a summary message. I think it is important to leave Rizwaa Sabir's page as an individual page. Rizwaan Sabir's incident has been critical in terms of starting of a wider debate about the remit of the the UK's anti-terror laws and the affects this has had on individual people, especially students and researchers. While i understand that providing a wider context to the situation may be neccesary, i think its important that the individual page on Sabir is kept as an individual page. The Nottingham incident has complexities in the sense of conflation of issues and therefore i think it's critical to keep them as seperate, but linked.--Xplusy (talk) 13:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xplusy (talk • contribs)

I answered on your page. Let's keep the discussion in one place for simplicity. Hans Adler 14:03, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Manatee Palms

Hi Hans, thanks for your comment re: Manatee Palms. Please see my recent comment at DYK:talk. Thanks - Tkfy7cf (talk) 04:45, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Hans, thanks for your help on this Manatee Palms brouhaha. Please review this request for intervention on the Wikiquette alerts page. Honestly, I am a new user and I thought Wikipedia editors would be more welcoming and kind. Tkfy7cf (talk) 07:03, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

mw:Extension:HarvardReferences

Thank you for your interest on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). I've made a sandbox to test this extension as what you ask - http://wikiext.org/index.php/Sandbox:Test_page - this is on my site, or you can install extension on the other site. Becouse extension does not anything without explicit switch-on tag, it will not affect to any old pages of Wikipedia or other wiki-site. It was made for compatibility and avoid any surprises. X-romix (talk) 15:33, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! As I am not operating a MediaWiki myself I can't try it out on my own, so it's very convenient that you are offering your sandbox. I have started experimenting there. Hans Adler 17:48, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Your comments at WT:Identifying reliable sources

Thank you SO MUCH!! I've wondered if I'm the only person who's seen what's going on. I think this Fox thing with "Wikipedia is chaos" will finally force people to realize that "reliable source" doesn't mean "ram it into everything possible, even if the coverage is wildly inaccurate". I also looked at the 1986 Hvalur sinkings, and that's a perfect example of what I mean. Hopefully, we can continue the discussion there, and maybe get that added in. As an aside, I still can't understand why anyone ever described those sinkings as "terrorism"- that's so misguided it's not even wrong. The Blade of the Northern Lights (talk) 03:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it that way. Words are very flexible and have different meanings depending on whether they appear in ordinary speech, political speech or in an encyclopedia. In public speech you can't normally use obscenity to drive home the point that you strongly disagree with someone. Greenpeace and the Icelandic government couldn't call Sea Shepherd "motherfuckers" in a public statement, so they called them terrorists. The problem is when people take such statements at face value and glorify them by moving them into the context of an encyclopedia. As in: "In the A Convention, Politician B claimed that Politician C has an incestuous relation with his mother." Hans Adler 11:10, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

My thoughts on those types of organizations are not exactly complimentary- I don't know what you have where you're from, but here in the US we have PETA, who are the biggest pain you could possibly imagine. I tend to use the strongest possible language when describing them. As for government sources, I have no idea why we blanket them all as "reliable". This is a huge problem with Burmese articles, because people don't understand just how bad the situation is there. With Chinese and North Korean articles, at least people recognize that the claims are likely to be distorted, but people will just assume that the junta is telling the truth, even though things there make inland China look like paradise. The 1986 Hvalur sinkings are just more evidence that even in free countries, government sources are not really all that reliable, and shouldn't be taken seriously if they are spreading bogus information/opinions. The Blade of the Northern Lights (talk) 21:49, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Your edit summary

It made no sense. (Iceland not Ireland, book was not removed just consolidated, Iceland paper was discussing Iceland coverage, there was no cherrypicking and your edit confirmed it) And this is the second pointed one you have made in a day or so. I think the other was directed at the other editor. So stop it. Feel free to explain your edit summary or not if you are OK with just not starting trouble when it isn't needed. Also let e know if you see any grossly POV edits in the last two days of major expansion. Probably at 4.5% now. Cptnono (talk) 10:48, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the comment. There have been a lot of changes recently, and in your consolidated diff I saw a removal of the book reference that looked as if you were removing it from the article entirely. Apparently someone had duplicated the named footnote with its contents, and I didn't spot that because I didn't double check. I apologise for this mistake and note that I generally liked most of your recent changes as they really improved the article.

I now see what you mean about the media coverage in Iceland. The relevant sentence in the source ("Media coverage of the event was, unsurprisingly perhaps, one-sided.") was preceded by a discussion of the specific situation in Iceland and it makes a lot of sense to read it as part of that. On the other hand, it is followed by a discussion of Coronado's own take, so I am not entirely sure. In any case the fact that media coverage was universally negative was not restricted to Iceland, so from a global POV it doesn't make sense to stress Iceland given that we also have a source for a general statement. Hans Adler 11:01, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

No I'm not. I made a mistake in your case, I misunderstood the concept and gathered something else. My edits are all real otherwise. Sorry bout the mishap. Love 2 B Fair (talk) 10:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't really matter as you are soon going to be blocked for your vandalism and POV warring. Hans Adler 10:51, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

:::The only person I see warring is you. I make a hundred good faith edits and you stalk me, you stalker. Love 2 B Fair (talk) 10:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Love 2 B Fair is blocked indef as WP:DE sockpuppet of User:Sinbad Barron. --Tadija^speaks 20:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Jean Giono DYK nomination

I too am leaving the nomination alone – che sera sera. But concerning your reasoning about the 1939 imprisonment, I have something to say to you personally. Justifying the suspension of the rule of law on the basis of expediency, as in it was OK to jail G. without due process in order to (allegedly, he was never even charged) stop him tearing down posters “while it mattered”, is a very dangerous step onto a slippery slope. I urge you to think about it. Amicalement, Awien (talk) 12:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

We are talking about two situations here, and for the hook to be NPOV the description must be NPOV for both. For the first we have contradictory sources, and only those that don't mention the tearing down of posters say the imprisonment was unjust. That contradiction must be resolved or otherwise taken into account. The second situation has a different problem. After the war the situation was highly exceptional. Jean Giono had supported the German occupation by writing in the major collaborationist newspaper in France, one that was (as I found out while researching the article La Gerbe) subsidised and essentially created by the German ambassador and had a German staff member. To return to normal conditions, France had to do some kind of denazification. At the same time people must have been hungering. I know that in Germany at the time people were crammed together like mad in the few remaining houses, food was rationed, and a lot of people starved even a few years later. Putting a potentially dangerous (to the country's stability) person in prison while sorting out more pressing matters can be very much justified under such circumstances.

The Allieds did similar things in Germany. Apparently some ordinary Germans were forced to leave their houses and give them to people who had been freed from concentration camps. "Forced" in the strong sense that they were facing a death sentence or at least loss of their food rations if they resisted. That wasn't an ideal way of handling it, but it was certainly not "unjust". Biographers of artists and authors sometimes have an inclination to engage in apologetics, and it looks to me as if that may well be the case here. Hans Adler 13:02, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Just to set the record straight . . .

If G. were a nazi sympathiser I would have nothing to do with him. I consider WWII to have been a just war, I am proud of my decorated father who was on active service for the entire duration. Some years ago I broke off relations with a French acquaintance when they tried to use the development of the EU to justify their collaborationist past (as in, See, I was right all along).

G. was a professional writer, he had no other source of income, he had a wife and two children to support, he succumbed to the temptation of the good money La Gerbe paid, and sold them a novel to serialise in the books section. The novel, Deux cavaliers de l’orage, is the totally apolitical story of the love-hate relationship between two brothers; nothing in it articulates or implies support for the nazis. Neither in La Gerbe nor anywhere else did G. ever publish a single word in support of the nazis. This is an objective fact. I have also read most of his unpublished writings from 1938 to1948 and found no hint of pro-nazi sentiments in any of them either.

On the other hand, he tried to enlist, but was refused. He hid both resistance fighters and fleeing Jews on his property, obviously at considerable risk to himself. His play Le Voyage en calèche was censored under the Occupation because it depicted resistance against occupation.

This was no collaborator or sympathiser. The tearing down of posters you read so much into does not make him one, it's the action of a pacifist before he had second thoughts. This was not a person who needed to be silenced even in the name of expediency. This was not a person any programme of denazification needed to concern itself with.

Awien (talk) 23:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Focus discussion

Please focus the discussion at User talk:Vegaswikian, where the discussion was being carried out previously. I'm watching that page so you can post there rather than my talk page. Thanks. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Hans Schwerte

Gatoclass (talk) 06:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Ax–Kochen theorem

It's no problem with that page. I was just going through User:VeblenBot/List of mathematical logic articles looking for things that might be miscategorized. There are too many corner cases to worry too long about any one of them. I do see the argument in favor of the category on that article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)