User talk:Orangemarlin/Archives 1

Apologies, Mea Culpa, etc

You are right. I get on a roll and just slam away at tiny bits of editing and I get sloppy and don't add a summary. I should do more I know. But I do think that I did wear away at a lot of the nonsense and make the references and links clearer; I expect that a lot of these will eventually have to get dumped but it will be easier when we can actually see where the links and references go. Some go to blogs. Some go to commercial sites. Some go to real peer-reviewed papers. Some go to government sites. And so on. It definitely needs more massaging and I am a bit nervous about what sort of response we will get from the hard core naturopathic types.--Filll 00:53, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Falsifiability and evolution rough draft

Please take a look at Talk:Evolution/falsifiabilitydraft2.--Filll 01:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

There are no changes to the policy proposed at all. What I have proposed is the clarification of the section that summarises the policy. The new version of this summary is Here if you wanted to comment. However, I don't want to stir things up by proposing ANY changes in meaning. All I would like to do is make what is here a bit easier to understand. Tim Vickers 01:45, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey You

Since you're a real doctor and I'm just an ignorant vandal, maybe you could take a look at Melville Y. Stewart. It doesn't seem to contain any real assertions of notability, and I suspect the subject doesn't warrant inclusion, but maybe I'm missing something? Possibly something which your elite academic background would pick up on? It's true he's delivered 28 papers, but I've delivered hundreds myself...I used to have a paper route. Doc Tropics 04:18, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I no longer believe you exist. You're a figment of my imagination. Orangemarlin 04:53, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

But if I'm a figment of your imagination, then you'll have to get yourself blocked for vandalism. And if I write an article about you, then you could be banned for WP:COI. This looks like a win-win situation : ) Doc Tropics 05:02, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I haven't forgotten about the K-T extinction event article, I swear! Firsfron of Ronchester 19:03, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

It's that or Living dinosaurs. ROFLMAO. Orangemarlin 19:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey, the lead and the first section aren't bad at all! Firsfron of Ronchester 19:42, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Return of Raspor?

I strongly suspect that User:Octoplus is a sockpuppet of User:Raspor. Should we check? Here is why I have my suspicions:

• endless trolling
• badly formed sentences and grammar and lack of punctuation, similar to Raspor, although he is capable of writing clearly
• wildly exaggerated indenting on occasion (started when Raspor was chastised for not ever indenting)
• Raspor's suggestions that evolution is not a hard science or inadequate because of its lack of mathematical rigor, and Octoplus' allusions to a mathematical proof of the inability of evolution to produce life that uses differential equations
• long and frequent posts to talk pages but never any constructive suggestions to change the article
• familiarly of Octoplus with the page and the WP rules even though the account is quite new
• when frequently invited to produce something, Raspor and Octoplus both decline, and blame their lack of output on some sort of discrimination by other WP editors
• both have a similar attitude and seem aggrieved about something
• both tried to direct the attention to themselves and remain in the spotlight (when I moved material to Octoplus' talkpage, he deleted it and then claimed he had never seen it). When this was pointed out, he moved on to another complaint, much as Raspor would.

Suggestions?--Filll 12:19, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Paleocene dinosaurs

I've been reworking Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event--yes the lead is improved. I've been digging up references for these dinosaurs, and short of a lot of Cryptozoology articles (talk about junk science), there's one hadrosaur femur in New Mexico, some supposed research in China (can't find references), and some information that dinosaurs existed above the K-T boundary in the Hell Creek formation. But really, there are precious few references supporting it, but a lot in opposition. Thinking about undue weight, I'm beginning to wonder if this needs to be a POV fork (and away from Living dinosaurs). Just a thought that maybe you can consider as we move forward. Orangemarlin 23:30, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll take a good look tonight, OM. Firsfron of Ronchester 00:06, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: Waffen-SS

Regarding your edit summary "...by the way Orangemarlin, this is obviously not OR, the article itself cites 20 different sources including books and websites." Websites don't count as original sources, so do not have much credibility. Specific statements lack any references, and may or may not be a digestion of primary sources, but it is impossible to tell since statements or sections are not attributed to specific sources. If you review WP:CITE, you will note that a verifiable reference is required for anything that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Full citations should be used, and inline citations are preferred. Primary sources far outweigh secondary ones (and websites are unverified secondary sources). Therefore, in lieu of references that support statements in the article, it is, by definition original research. Orangemarlin 00:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Your statement about the credibility of websites is more a personal opinion than a fact, and while it might be useful I'm afraid it does not represent the thoughts of the whole Wikipedia community. As you might probably noticed we have to analyse and use every source available while adding information, even if that includes other websites; hit the random article button, and look for yourself how many pages do not include websites as sources. Likely to be challenged? I believe half of our history-related articles are likely to be challenged, but as I said before that does not mean they are all original research. While in-line citations are doubtlessly an useful addition to our encyclopedic quality, their lack is not a proof of an instant OR article, and WP:CITE states it clearly. You are adressing this problem from the wrong way; I suggest you to think twice about it next time, please. —Coat of Arms (talk) 22:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

What????? There are no references, so it's all challenged. It is original research. I don't give a crap about inline citations, it just makes it easier to confirm the source. I'm not sure I appreciate your tone. Orangemarlin 22:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I left a comment on the Waffen-SS talk page. If people really want it fact-tagged, I'll do it, but the fact-tags will overwhelm the article. •Jim62sch• 23:17, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

OR relates to making novel conclusions not already published by reliable sources. Something can have the hell sourced out of it, and it can still be OR because it draws novel conclusions from those sources. NOR and CITE are totally distinct ideas. Guettarda 01:12, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Merci beaucoup, Messr. Guettarda. Orangemarlin 02:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

not sure why we were arguing, but thanks for jumping into the bio page

hope i can be of some more help.Wikiskimmer 08:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Because I'm going to teach you how to write in the English language. If you want to play with the big boys, then you better know how to handle the bat and glove. First, your spelling is atrocious. It is what I find typical of those of you who text message all the time. Second, your punctuation is non-existent. Third, your grammar is confusing. And lastly, you need to read a manual of style. I'm certainly not arguing with you. But I'm offended that you condescend to me, someone with what 4 years college, about 8 years of graduate level education, and who knows how many years of experience in these fields. Orangemarlin 09:03, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

My question was: did you have any problems with my edits to biology? i thougth they were improvements to the mechanics and sense of what i found there.

second, i did not mean to erase anything on the bio discussion page, must have been a mistake.

Again, i certainly was not considering putting any of that stuff i posted THERE in the bio wiki. i was merely stating that wiki articles i've been working on: ant eukaryote slime mould biology seem to read like kludges and are lacking in a proper complete perspective in their topics.

I am sorry if you thought i was being condescending. If you want to teach me to write, i'm happy with that.Wikiskimmer 09:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

First of all relax. You can't change everything overnight. Second, you are smart, I can tell. Just focus on writing. If you have good edits, trust me, we'll clean up the English--but that's going to make it hard to see the quality of your edits. Orangemarlin 14:15, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

If you are going to critisize me, simply tell me where my edits in the Biology page showed poor English. If you'll notice, I have NOT gone and changed everything over night.Wikiskimmer 16:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm reading your discussion page edits. They're kind of hard to read. For example, it's criticize, not critisize. Orangemarlin 16:51, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Civility

Watch your civility when it comes to dealing with other users, specifically User:Fatalis or you will be blocked for your continued hostile attitude. Thanks. Sasquatch t|c 21:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. I guess you missed my comment where I said I'd ignore his vandalizing my user talk page, his rude comments about me, his uncivil comments, and too much else to be bothered. I love one-sided opinions. Orangemarlin 04:59, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I have visited the mentioned talk page. Said Fatalis has said to the user owning this page, quote: "Don't get your panties in a wad", and: "stop being a dick" as two among the very first phrases directed at him. I have also checked that said Fatalis hasn't been warned about civility issues, the user of the present has. Oh, well... (I am a total outsider here, but I understand things behind the scene...) --209.150.255.84 05:27, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

You are using the label "vandalism" completely spuriously, and the aggression was initiated by you and your prejudice. –Fatalis 09:07, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Prejudice is a serious charge: explain. •Jim62sch• 10:44, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

You should take the high road still... Two wrongs don't make a right and I've seen people blocked for less. Both sides need a serious time out though but you're just the first person that was brought to my attention. Sorry if it seems a bit harsh but you really do need to watch your comments, as does Fatalis. Sasquatch t|c 18:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I have taken the high road. Note the level of support that I got over this issue, because Fatalis was plainly wrong. My indignation and hostility was righteous, in that I saw someone totally demolishing a talk page (wrong, two talk pages), getting angry about it, blah blah blah. I did not call him names. I did not tell him to f off. I was pissed, that's for sure, and my level of pissedoffedness (my word) was apparent. And I saw an innocent editor blocked temporarily for doing much less than I did as a result of this episode. However, I chose the high road by not continuing the BS. That was before I noted the ANI. And note how bad Fatalis looks in this matter. I still have righteous indignation here. For you to warn me when someone was so egregious in violating a variety of Wiki-rules is beyond my simple understanding. I honestly don't get it. You get on my case, someone who has endeavored to provide a lot of work to this project, is just not right. Orangemarlin 18:48, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

In the interest of equity I'd hope that someone trying to calm the situation would ask all parties to be civil. Righteous indignation is understandable, but if at all possible it's best to look over what you've typed and say forget it and cancel. Not that I always achieve that. But think, if they're really trying to wind you up to create difficulty for you, that's the time to get really polite and civil. Put them in the position of undermining themselves, don't do it to yourself. Easier said than done, and it's an approach my background has encouraged so it may not suit everyone, but think it over. We need your work on improving articles, not getting distracted. ... dave souza, talk 19:02, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Dave, I'm just concerned that Wikipedia has a culture that the first person to bitch is the one who is in the right. Sasquatch went right after me, completely ignoring Fatalis. I don't mind a lot of things on this project, but watching how certain admins handled this situation (look at the block given to User:ConfuciusOrnis) just offends my sense of right and wrong. But really, I'm going back to writing about the mass extinction of dinosaurs.  :) Orangemarlin 19:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, Fatalis got his fair share of criticisms on the ANI page... as did I. But if you do take this from my perspective, your comments do come off as rather incivil. And per policy, you are to be warned. Anyways, I think this whole shabang is over with in any case. Sorry for being overly harsh in this case. Cheers and happy editing. Sasquatch t|c 16:41, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I still can't believe how much feces hit the fan over one guy taking it upon himself to archive a page, which 90% of the time would barely call for a peep. Thanks for your note. Orangemarlin 18:59, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment regarding AN/I

Hey OM,

Thanks for your note. You've made it clear here that you want to move on, and I hope the other user, who appears to be a newb, will also just back off. I didn't see any vandalism on your talk page, just some incivility. Yes, I'm aware you're not here to destroy articles, kick around noobs, or anything awful. I can't believe this turned into a small edit war over archiving. :/

It is really unfortunate that Ornis was blocked, but it's a very short block, and it likely won't affect his chances for adminship if he chooses to pursue one at some date, so don't worry about that. The AN/I thread isn't fair, and the block worries me (I don't see a violation of WP:3RR, though I do see incivility from Ornis).

My advice for now is to go back to editing the encyclopedia (if you can; sometimes it's really hard when you're upset), and if Ornis wants to open an RFC tomorrow, you can support him at that time. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:09, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Firsfron. The vandalism is here and here — Fatalis reverts OM's choice to delete the old quarrel, because he thinks "people should see your feats". Nice, and vandalism as well as harassment, I reckon. I've warned Fatalis, and will block if he does it again. As for being a newb, people who know to shelter behind WP:BITE often aren't, compare my ANI note. Bishonen | talk 10:30, 5 July 2007 (UTC).

It was not "old", but active, and it continued after I restored it. He was deleting something that was critical of him. Also, you should check my edit history to see that I've made very little edits until recently. –Fatalis 11:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Though I agree that I should probably have let it go, but that still doesn't make it vandalism. –Fatalis 11:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Editors are allowed to delete comments on their talk pages, Fatalis, even commentary that is critical of them. It doesn't seem to me like restoring talk page comments is vandalism, but "forcing" someone to have the comments on their talk page can be seen as harassment. I'm glad you see you you probably should have let it go, and I'm glad OM is moving on. The only user truly harmed in all this is Ornis. Firsfron of Ronchester 17:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello

I don't really know you, and I'm trusting you have a sense of humor (re my post on B's page). Having just read the AN/I thread (by coincidence) it seemed funny at the time, and if it isn't then I'll gladly remove it. Cheers. Peace.Lsi john 16:26, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

uh oh!!!!! Orangemarlin 17:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm too well conditioned now.. I have to say its a JOKE, and include it in the same diff, so that I'm not misquoted as calling you a fucktwit by people who might otherwise be out to prove I'm more obnoxious than I really am!. Peace.Lsi john 17:18, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, before I noticed the massive edits performed by said editor, I nearly wet myself when he called another editor an "audacious fuckwit." It was amusing. However, in light of what has happened, the humor is now lost. Except with you :) Orangemarlin 17:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Humor is rarely lost on me. Though my humor often misses its mark. ;) Cheers. Peace.Lsi john 17:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

<unindent> What is this humor? Anyway, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to undermine the whole basis of science and make your country into a theocratic state where The Truth is Jesus, and if you don't believe it you get burned (to paraphrase St. John). Under such circumstances politeness is even more important, and as I've advised Fatalis, "Try to avoid arguments. When this is not possible, try talking privately to those involved, or take a deep breath and sleep on it." At least we now know that such damage to a talk page history can be undone. It's unfortunate that the advice at Help:Archiving a talk page was ignored and the less suitable procedure used, but it's the sort of error a newbie with only eight months of solid editing experience can easily make, especially if they've been learning more about complaints procedures than the mundane how to do stuff guidance. All's well that ends well, back to sorting out the unlikely history of creation[ism]. :) ... dave souza, talk 18:06, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Raspor

I agree that the evidence is pretty good, but I've had no contact with raspor, so I'm not sure I can comment. Would it be alright for me to simply post my opinion on the evidence, without having any of my own so to speak? Oh and for your support in the creation science debacle, I can't thank you guys enough, you all rock. I will get around to thanking everyone eventually... ornis 20:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I would assume so, but it would be more in the behavior area, rather than comparing. Also, no big deal on the Creation science crapfest. I'm dealing with that one now, because that offends my sense of right and wrong. Orangemarlin 20:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I am paranoid, but something just seems very wrong in that entire situation. In very short order, the editor in question had others streaming in to lend support. It was quite strange and interesting.--Filll 20:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that too. Very troubling. Orangemarlin 21:07, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

A newbie with only 8 months editing experience inverting the archiving guidance then posting with all those diffs and policy refs. shortcuts? It's a miracle – or perhaps intelligent design? <ducks> ... dave souza, talk 21:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

ROFLMAO. That is too funny. But you need to see this to see how horrible this has gotten. I don't know what to say! Orangemarlin 21:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I had actually noticed, it, and here dropped a gentle hint. The daft thing is, if he'd followed the archiving instructions and when Filll queried it, said "Sorry guys, I'm in the middle of trying to copy back all the current discussions. Hope this procedure is ok" at least there would have been a civil discussion, I'd hope. Strangely, his earlier edits were pro-science. Anyway, hopefully politeness will pay off in the long run. .. dave souza, talk 22:17, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I know he's on our side. This is what I don't get--I threw a vandalism warning on him, because it just appeared like vandalism. There have been other editors who have done archiving without gaining consensus. Probably my fault that this whole thing started, but the guy definitely lacks civility. Orangemarlin 22:21, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well. at least he's now apologised for part of his error, and I suppose it's a language problem that he doesn't read point 4 in the guideline as I do, which is "if you archive it, you move current discussions back". Though deleting and moving back was actually the way to go, I've only done that once but it seems the right idea. Something to remember – if a history is lost again somewhere, get an admin to fix it. He's still fulminating about the vandalism accusation – the vandal tag was justified imo, but then it would have been better to check out the policy and gently point the error of his ways rather than repeating the accusation. Sage advice given with the benefit of hindsight :) By the way, the "dick" issue was probably a reference to WP:DICK which gives a soft redirect to a daft essay. Evidently came over as a language thing, so to speak. Anyway, probably best to let it pass, now. In my amateurish opinion. .. dave souza, talk 22:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

You take AGF to the extreme. You're a good man Dave Souza!!!  :) I don't think the editor is all that uncomfortable with English. In fact, he uses idioms that indicate a native speaker of the language. So when someone says, "don't be a dick," I think they know what it means. However, I don't think I've used that particular phraseology since high school, and I'm quite old! You know, I did use the vandal tag #3, which probably was a bit too harsh. I should have used #2, maybe #1. But in these articles, time and time again, I AGF, and it ends up hurting. There was a sockpuppet who went on and on, and several people were helpful. I even snapped at him once, and just felt guilty, apologizing left and right. Then I said I'd help him out, trying to guide him. Then one day, he forgot to log in, posted with his IP address, then stupidly logged back in, correcting his IP address. It lead right to a banned user. I felt used. So when Fatalis did the archiving, and got so mean about it to editor prior to my involvement, I just went to the #3 warning. I'll try to follow your example, but you have the patience of....hmmmm...I'm not Christian, so I can't use a saint, so how about patience of a Rabbi teaching a 12 year old boy how to read the Torah. LOL. Orangemarlin 01:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

<blush> Just before reading this I was having a look at Daring Fireball, and found there this link which preserves for posterity Grey's Law (currently at AfD). Seems pretty appropriate, or perhaps better to think of its corollary, Hanlon's razor. All the nice advice at WP:EQ works pretty well. When dealing with argumentative contractors I learnt from the example of my boss Soapy Jim that expressing my annoyance at them didn't work as well as praising the high standards they had a reputation for, and unfortunately in this particular instance they were letting themselves down... if you're dealing with a potential friend, it's good to keep them onside. If it's a sneaky enemy, be extremely polite so as to avoid giving them ammunition. Though I must admit to a weakness for pushing things rather close to the edge of sarcasm sometimes! Think I should apply for a job as a lay Rabbi? <ducks> ... dave souza, talk 15:06, 6 July 2007 (UTC) (edit summary was meant to read thought for the Day but I pressed the wrong key)

Featured Article Review: Intelligent design

Intelligent design has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. --FOo 09:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for kind words ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thomas Arelatensis (talk • contribs) 08:12, July 9, 2007

Are you saying that :

a person can not troll if they have made many edits? Not very logical. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheBestIsYet (talk • contribs) 23:43, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

evo-devo

Now that things seem to be stabilizing at the Evolution article, would you consider looking at and working on the evo-devo article? As you mentioned, at one point, this is an important growing area. I did some work on it a while ago an exhausted my relevant knowledge, but it still seems like the length and quality of the article do not match its importance. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:03, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Gulp. What am I going to get myself into? LOL. I'll check it out! Orangemarlin 18:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't want you to over-commit!! I just know this article deserves to be better than it is. You can start by looking at one editor;s suggestions here and also I have a comment in the section of talk that follows (on, concerning the tendency to microevolution). Slrubenstein | Talk 15:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

A brief history of literalism

Well, folks, Creationism as a theological schism rather than religion vs. science seems to be an aspect worth examining, and my prayers for a source have now been answered at Ivy Cottage : E-Books Reason Science and Faith, Roger Forster and Dr Paul Marston. Chapter 7 - Genesis Through History. (javasript link to pdf). A worthy read, and astonishingly the authors seem convinced that YECs misrepresent Christianity pre 1961 as being literal when it wasn't. Whooda thunk those creationists would change history, and get it misrepresented in Wikipedia? Will aim to clarify the Creationism article in the fullness of time, or fairly soon with any luck. ... dave souza, talk 23:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes I believe that this biblical literalism business is pretty recent. Even Young Earth Creationism is a fairly recent invention, and was quite unpopular before about 1960; even William Jennings Bryan of prominent Scopes Monkey Trial fame was not a biblical literalist or YEC. Many other famous early creationists were not either. It was definitely a minority position of only a few crazed extremists that most other creationists avoided because of their clear irrationality. Somehow, though, this extreme viewpoint has become increasingly popular recently , which is quite interesting.--Filll 23:26, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I was reading a book last night about Creationism (can't remember the name), and they said the same thing. In the 1800's, the "fundamentalists" believed that the earth was millions of years old (I believe the author said that at the time billions of years wasn't comprehensible), and they did not dispute the science, other than they believe that G-d's hand was in there. I'd take those fundamentalists any day of the year. Anyways, I'm now more convinced than ever that Creationism should be positioned as a religious debate, and not a science one. Of course, I believe that science and religion can be compatible, so this may help that argument. Orangemarlin 23:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I am wondering if it is not due to the advance of science and technology, and as science has become more advanced, and technology as well, that the average person is more and more disconnected from the current scientific understanding and current technology. In this situation, where the average person does not understand the science or the world around him, magical thinking and being dismissive of science might become easier and easier. The average person today is alienated from science. One hundred years ago, most people lived on farms and had to repair farm equipment and understand technology and by extension, the science behind it. Now, everyone has magical devices to talk on and to compute with and to get information, and no one can understand the guts of their car or anything else. So if someone comes and talks about magic, how hard is it to subscribe to it? After all, how different is that than the average person's understanding of his surroundings?--Filll 23:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Oddly enough, it may be that most people today lack the theological background and sophistication that anyone literate in Darwin's day was fully familiar with. In the chapter I've read, pp. 43 to 53 credits the prophetess Ellen Gould White with coining the literalism that inspired George McCready Price to create his 1923 magnum opus The New Geology which all but 7th day adventists ignored until the 1961 revelations of Morris that "Having shown that virtually all those he accepts as spiritual Christian leaders between 1859 and 1940 were gaptheory, age-day or evolutionary creationists, he elsewhere proclaims all such ideas to be equivalent to evolution which he says is inherently atheistic and ‘pictures God as a sadistic ogre’." Which doesn't stop him blatantly claiming that they all shared his "literalism". .. an interesting read. ... dave souza, talk 23:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I've concluded that most Biblical literalists are in fact not Christians, but bibliolaters. TCC (talk) (contribs) 00:03, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been speaking to someone off-wiki about the Creationism debate. And what I said was that I could probably write a better article defending Creationism than most of the religious types could. What I've observed is that this anti-science, anti-intellectual attitude of the current crop of religious writing serves no one well. Although Morris' description of evolution is very descriptive, it serves nothing for the debate. Creationism can be written as a wonderful religious dogma--not in conflict with current science, because that's a battle that will be lost. We can do better. Orangemarlin 00:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

<unindent> The conclusion of the e=book chapter, pp 53 - 54, covers it neatly, ending with "Finally, the word ‘creationist’ is itself confusing. The creatorship of God is central to Christianity, and it is in our view impossible to be any sort of a Christian without being a ‘creationist’. So to a Christian theist who believes that God can work through ‘natural’ processes, when does a so-called ‘progressive creationist’ become an ‘evolutionary creationist’? Exactly how much micro-evolution is acceptable? R L Numbers, having called his book The Creationists, seems to want to limit it (for some reason) to non-evolutionary creationists – though at times is hard put to delineate them. Morris and other youngearthers seem to use the confusion of language to disguise their own origins. To them the word ‘creationist’ is a flexible word. Sometimes it means just those who believe in a literal six days and recent earth – at other times it includes the many figures in the last two centuries who have accepted mainstream geology but not macro evolution. By juggling the terms, the radical break marked by young-earth creationism with mainstream Evangelicalism is masked. Let us be clear on this one thing. Young-earthism is a clear and radical break differing in its whole approach to the issues – and its modern roots are in Seventh Day Adventism not in later nineteenth century Evangelicalism nor in early Fundamentalism." And for non-Christians, p 7 discusses such scholars as Ibn Ezra who is currently cited as a creationist... So endeth the lesson, at least in my time zone. Will get in touch later today (UTC) ..dave souza, talk 00:42, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

This is true. The definitions of creationism and Christianity and science and evolution are all distorted, so that they can be defined at will to whatever needs they have at any given time.--Filll 01:02, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

As per request

Yum. I'd prefer a good steak, but some puppy keeps stealing it from me. A cookie will have to suffice.  :) Orangemarlin 23:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Article writing

Seeing as you're currently opposing me because of my lack of article writing, I would appreciate if you looked at this. I hope you don't mind me posting this on your talk page, but I know some people probably don't watchlist everything they ever edit. Thanks, R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 02:05, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I usually don't appreciate being solicited regarding my vote on RfA's. I'll make an exception here, because you really seem sincere. First of all, I hate the Yankees.  :). Glad they're losing. Second, I watch everything I edit. Third, after reading what you had written, I think it's an excuse. I'm a CEO of a medium sized company, a physician, lots of hobbies including passionately attending 45 or so hockey games a year, driving about 200 miles round trip, spending time with my children, and reading a book or two a week, and I find time to edit new articles. OK, I admit that some of the books I read relate directly to the articles about which I write. But my question would go back to one thing: if you don't have time to write articles, then you probably have no time to administer the project. OK, that's me I admit, but it's not that hard to write and edit an article or two per month. I had the flu one weekend, and completely rewrote the Minoan eruption article.  :) I would edit and write while watching the Yankees lose! Anyways, the reason I don't vote for people who haven't done a lot of editing and writing is that how can you know about the project if you don't? I've noticed admins all over this place who have no clue as to what's going on, then they make serious mistakes. Look at my page above (unless I archive it tonight)--two or three admins have completely screwed up because they are admins rather than editors. The better admins around here, and I won't name all of them that I noticed, participate in the development of articles too. They see patterns of trolling, disruptiveness, sockpuppets, and POV warriors. You can't learn that by reverting vandalism (as admirable and thankless as that job is). This is, of course, all in my not so humble opinion. And go Sox (just because I really hate the Yankees, not because I'm a fan of the Sox). Orangemarlin 06:24, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to back OM up on this. Having contributed to over 1000 articles or so at this point, and having over 15000 edits, and having started a fair number of articles from scratch, I now feel that I have a far deeper appreciation of the processes here than I did before I had done much editing and authoring. Even with this level of experience, I feel that there are still immense areas that I have only a marginal understanding of. Someone with less experience than me is necessarily even more ignorant than I am, and I shudder to imagine the types of mistakes that they would inadvertantly make. I have seen many administrators with limited experience make atrocious blunders which have to be corrected by other more experienced editors, disrupting the process and wasting everyone's time, and doing a lot of damage to the goodwill that WP depends on. This is why there are several anti-WP websites; abuse of administrator priveleges can turn eager contributors into aggrieved malcontents who leave the WP project.--Filll 15:00, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Now it turns out this guy is in Junior High School. That means he is probably 12-14 years of age. Do we want a 12 year old to resolve a dispute between two 60 year olds with PhDs? If we do, I would say we are nuts.--Filll 19:41, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event

It's starting to come together. I think it's much more informative now, and it is actually a pleasure to read. I wish we could dig up some more editors to help out. I think it has the makings of a very good FAC. Orangemarlin 00:02, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm pulling out my books to add more details, but, yes, it is looking much better, thanks to all your hard work. I had asked Sheep81 to take a look, and I know he will, but he suddenly went to Africa on some work-related excursion. Any excuse not to help us with this article! ;)

IIt feels weird to have an article with no infobox or taxobox. I think the pictures should be moved around, as they should be scattered about in the text. And we need to cite the last seven uncited sections... Firsfron of Ronchester 02:54, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

There's got to be a geology info box somewhere! This really isn't a dinosaur article, it's more of a geology and paleontology one. BTW, the more I've been reading for this article, the more I'm wondering if many dinosaurs actually made it to the K-T boundary. I'm wondering if most were extinct before the asteroid hit, the Deccan traps exploded, and Noah's flood killed all of those nice animals. Orangemarlin 06:26, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I wasn't planning on sticking a taxobox on the article, I assure you. As for the dinosaurs, Dodson (1996) indicates they were probably in decline in terms of variation, but there were still plenty of Trikes, Edmontosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Thescelosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, and some Torosaurus and Leptoceratops. Why didn't Noah at least save them? I guess we'll never know. Until we find The Bible 2: Sail Harder, that is. Firsfron of Ronchester 09:50, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks like none of the geology-related Featured Articles use infoboxes. So that scuttles that idea... Firsfron of Ronchester 16:56, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Common descent

Common descent is true. But there was no "last common ancestor". Plese read http://mmbr.asm.org/cgi/content/full/68/2/173 which is written by the world's foremost authority on the subject. Horizontal gene transfer is also good reading (but see the topmost external link listed in the bottom section. Citizendium's coverage is ten times better than ours.) In pre-darwinian evolution times genes moved between cells like memes between people or species between ecosystems. Cells back then were communities in which seperate genes learned (evolved) more and more complex interrelations creating tighter and more efficient mechisms until genes could no longer usefully move from any cell to any cell and thus species began to exist. There was no first species that everything today evolved from. There was a common pool of co-evolving genes that moved freely from cell to cell. WAS 4.250 19:07, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

One man's opinion. And WTF is "pre-darwinian evolution?" And please, go to Citizendium if it's so much better. Please. Orangemarlin 00:08, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Fish-talk

Hey OM!

I think the first step to be taken is to explain to the user in question that a revert of her work isn't vandalism, and that she can help by citing reliable sources. Be welcoming and friendly, and explain to her your concerns. I'm reluctant to leave a message on her talk page when it appears you haven't discussed anything with her on her talk page. If that approach fails, I can certainly leave a cautionary message. Firsfron of Ronchester 04:59, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome and friendly? Obviously you haven't seen her edits to the article! I'll do my best (which is going to fail the friendly scale). Orangemarlin 13:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

K-T

See this. Hmmmmm. Orangemarlin 16:29, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. I hadn't seen this paper before, but this was sort of the thing I was trying to get across before. Dodson believes dinosaurs were already on their way out before the K-T boundary, and that "dinosaurs may have witnessed an asteroid impact that gave them the final nudge into oblivion. But [...] they were already failing". Currie's later paper just goes one step further. Whoever wrote our original article gives great emphasis to the detritus-feeder theory provided by Sheehan while ignoring the Dodson/Currie-type arguments. I tried to modify some of this (such as outright removing the sentences which baldly stated there was no decline in the number of species, and changing did to may have in some sentences. But is this enough?

The marine K-T extinction chart you added looks great. I'm also glad the images were finally moved from the clump at the top. But I did put one back. This article doubles as Wikipedia's article on the K-T Boundary, so I added an image of that to the lead. In the absence of an infobox, the opening looked a bit barren; people should be excited to read this article, and plain text can often be spruced up by adding an image to the intro.

There's more I wanted to write here, but I've forgotten what it was... Firsfron of Ronchester 19:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The new 400px image configuration takes up most of the space in my browser now, OM. The text is limited to a tiny strip on the left. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

LOL. What are you using for a browser--An iPhone? Wait a minute, it looks good there. Well, on my browser (Apple Safari), it looks sexy. Make it smaller for your browser. I thought they all looked the same on all browsers. See what I know about browsers? Orangemarlin 21:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I edit Wikipedia with an iPhone. ;) No, IE set at 600x800. I can't stand the text any smaller. 300 might work, but 400 comes out huge. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:21, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

You must be an old fart!!!! OK, I use all my browsers at 1680 X 1050 (thinking differently on a Mac of course), and the images looked so sexy, I thought it was good porn. I had a big white space with the smaller images, and I still have one now, but it should work. We need some more images too. Orangemarlin 21:31, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm old enough to remember when Noah brought the dinosaurs on the ark. He had quite the time cramming Amphicoelias on the ark, I recall! I've actually got a 15 inch screen on my (Windows XP) laptop, probably the same size as the wind-ups the WMF is sending those starving African children. We want them to be able to see this article clearly, don't we? We can request images to be made here or do you think we could find some? Firsfron of Ronchester 21:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

You just can't get over that Noah and the dinosaurs thing. LOL. Well, I can't either, but it's only 1 out of 500 billion things wrong with that myth vs. science. There was this image I once saw where a T. rex, looked up from feeding on some other dinosaur to see a big asteroid slam into the earth. That would be a lovely image. Orangemarlin 22:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Holy Big Boat Batman. That's one big dinosaur. I just went to the article on Amphicoelias, and I'm impressed. Well, now I know how Noah kept T. Rex fed on the Ark. Orangemarlin 22:10, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, on a steady diet of Amphicoelias! One per week (Noah kept extras for just such an emergency). Once he started running low on those, he used up some extra Bruhathkayosaurus that were just taking up space anyway. Eventually, he ended up with just a pair of each of the 1,000 dinosaur genera. Plus all the other animals. And rations for everyone. Firsfron of Ronchester 22:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Grr, iPhone envy. Sounds like nice toy, though don't see myself queuing for one when they arrive here – for Christmas? Anyway, Firsfron, can't you increase the "Text zoom" on IE: with my wee 12" laptop at 1024 x 768 my usual is to bump up the text size a couple of clicks for easy viewing. Seems to also work on IE 5 for mac, though overlapping things get rather untidy if you overdo it. .. dave souza, talk 21:57, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't be too envious. I end up reading Wiki articles while sitting in the movie theatre. Is there some wiki-rule on image sizing? Orangemarlin 22:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I can set the text size larger, but it's already set on medium, and I'll feel old if I have to set it any higher. Firsfron of Ronchester 22:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

WP:MOS#Images indicates 180px is the default size, but that exceptions should be made, for example, "On a lead image that captures the essence of the article" Firsfron of Ronchester 22:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, when you get to my age.... anyway, as I recall, Noah just took all the eggs, and didn't have to feed them because they were all eating manna etc. or in the case of T-Rex it had big teeth to eat watermelons – no carnivores before The Fall, or was it The Damned or perhaps The Stranglers or The Rezillos... anyway, diagram doesn't look too bad to me at 800 x 600 on this 12" laptop, and at 640 x 480 all the text gets shoved under the image so that's ok. Ymmv. .. dave souza, talk 22:19, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Here's a nice Deccan traps-inspired illustration. Perhaps we can e-mail for permission to use? This one isn't nearly as good. Firsfron of Ronchester 22:42, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Here's a great one that combines both Science and Religion into one great image. Firsfron of Ronchester 22:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

<RI>The first one is great. I've never gone through the image uploading process, so maybe I can observe. As for the last two...LMAO. Those were hysterical. Too bad they can't be used legitimately in a few different articles, Living dinosaurs being the first one. Orangemarlin 22:53, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Can you find a few that you really like, OM? I don't want to go through the process of collecting permissions and uploading, only to find out that they're not what we want for the article. Firsfron of Ronchester 23:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I"m trying to find the one I mentioned above. I just can't remember where I saw it. Orangemarlin 23:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

re: This will amuse you

See this comment from an editor who's complaining that her POV edits to the Herpes zoster article is being reverted because they are unsourced BS. Orangemarlin 03:22, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh don't act like you're surprised... hey on a related topic have you seen this abomination? ornis 04:21, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't surprised. I'm just in the mood for rabble rousing after watching you get screwed on that block. Well, I'm attacking that abomination. That lead was full of BS. Now, just so you know, there are some aspects of naturopathy that I respect--but only if the practitioners have an MD or LPN, so that they can detect if the disease state underlying the symptoms. There are some issues like food allergies that a differential diagnosis misses--Naturopaths do a better job. I just don't buy into naturopaths who sit around with herbs and crap. That's nothing more than the other garbage articles we've cleaned up. Orangemarlin 05:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh I agree completely, properly applied natural medicine can be a useful complement to conventional medicine. It's only when it is used in place of conventional treatment for life threatening ailments that it becomes objectionable. Though I have to say, an MD is sometimes no guarantee of good sense. A good friend of mine's mother died of breast cancer, because her doctor, rather than referring her to a specialist for a lumpectomy, lymph node biopsy, chemotherapy etc, fed her a bunch of herbal crap. Anyway I'll be with you there in a bit. ornis 05:47, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I have often had people seriously object when I point out that 50% of all doctors graduated in the bottom half of their medical school class.--Filll 13:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I do not defend MD's across the board. There are many physicians are incompetent. But, incompetence might still be higher on the social order than the charlatans who claim that root of dandelion cures all that ails you. Alchemy, astrology, crystals, creationism, the Loch Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle, Noah's Ark, herbalism, homeopathy, alien abduction are all equal to me in being pseudoscientific hooey. Orangemarlin 16:18, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, alright I had a look at the US an Uk sections of homeopathy, and tried to condense them a bit. The article is way too long. On the coriander thing, yeah I agree with you cutting it out, but I reckon as far as historical use goes it's reasonable to note medicinal uses through the ages. ornis 00:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Vandal from Alexandria VA

Who do we known in Alexandria VA? Wow. He got a nice 3 month block for actions on your talk page, my user page and on FeloniousMonk's page.--Filll 11:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Always do a traceroute, don't rely upon Whois or other tool. It resolves to dc.cox.net, which is the provider for User:Rbj. He's back. Orangemarlin 16:15, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Rbj ?= User:72.196.232.174

You are probably right. But even if we knew for sure, I doubt we'd block an IP for much more than the three months I already did, so not much point in chasing this. Feel free to add "suspected sockpuppet" tags on this and others you feel you have evidence for. Oh--and let me know when you decide to run for adminship! :) Owen× ☎ 17:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I would support you for sure. And I bet many others would as well. --Filll 17:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate all that, but my civility level would probably negate any positives. I'd love to be an admin, but I suffer fools so poorly. Like this Fatalis episode recently--two admins came in here and "yelled" at me.Orangemarlin 18:16, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Same problem with me. I would like to have the power and the extra buttons, but I am more of a creator, not an administrator. I am afraid I might misuse my powers. Instead, I just write mediocre articles (however, they still please me, even if they are not world-class) and fill in gaps here and there. --Filll 18:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

One of the most fun things I did was take two articles to GA. I learned a lot from that. You should take one of the articles you did awhile ago, clean it up, submit it for GA. You'll get good feedback, clean up according to their recommendations. Then take it to FA. This is a great process. Orangemarlin 18:47, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I might go back and rewrite the Bee article, although it already reached GA. Also there is the Evolution as theory and fact, which I have a huge amount of other material to use in the rewrite. I am having fun writing new articles however. I have written a very large number of stubs for the Isle of Wight, for example. I get a real sense of accomplishment in fleshing this out a bit and making the red links disappear. It might not be as satisfying in other ways as some other kinds of articles, but it is restful. I should rewrite the Frere Jacques articles, and I have been slowly cleaning them up. Of course I still am working on the falsifiability draft. It is a real bear to do, however.--Filll 19:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Articles

Orangemarlin Hi my friend! As you know, I just wrote and put online 5 new articles in my Republic of Texas/Comache Wars series, Buffalo Hump, Council House Fight, Great Raid of 1840, Battle of Plum Creek. and Battle of Pease River. I also completely rewrote from beginning to end, quadrupling in size, Peta Nocona. Would you do me a huge favor, and give me your honest opinion on those articles? I would like someone who is not a military history buff, but a well versed layperson, to read them and tell me whether or not they are informative, and well written. I want them to be interesting to the lay reader! I would appreciate the help, and thanks for the good wishes on the RfA nomination; if i am elected, I will do my best! In the interim, I am winding up this series of articles, and getting ready, once they are reviewed and passed, to start the large task of rewriting virtually all of the articles in the Mongol Era, and adding additional ones. Anyway, thanks for your help in linking the articles, and if you do have time, thanks in advance for reviewing them!old windy bear 21:20, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I looked at Buffalo Hump, and made some suggestions, which you can apply to all of them.--Filll 22:03, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

K-T extinction

So, do you think we're ready to submit for GA status? Orangemarlin 00:21, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I see you got the last few citation needed areas cited... but there are still entire paragraphs that are uncited... GA might be possible, depending on the reviewer. Have you done a scientific peer review before? It might help us target areas for improvement. Or it might be a big fat waste of time. The one for Styracosaurus was really helpful, but I've had others which received no comments at all (which was discouraging and wasted a lot of effort). Firsfron of Ronchester 02:19, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy

Hey weird dude stop deleting good NPOV material from this article. your POV comments do not enhance the view that scientists are neutral persons. Your comments like "this junk science" reveal that you are wholly incapable of editing an article about which you have very prejudicial views and about which you know nothing. Your persistent vandalism of this article will be reported. Peter morrell 08:43, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

It is junk science. Don't worry, others will deal with it. I'm done for the evening. Orangemarlin 08:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

You have been disrupting Wikipedia recently on the Homeopathy article, possibly violating the three revert rule and deleting useful material from the article. You are being invited to stop this disruptive behaviour. Disruption of the functioning of Wikipedia is a blockable offense under the blocking policy. If you do not stop, you may be temporarily blocked from editing Wikipedia. Peter morrell 08:54, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Good luck with that. LOL. Orangemarlin 08:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Orangemarlin, although it is junk science, I think you can edit this article without calling it junk science. Best not to reveal your cards, and it doesn't really serve a purpose other to inflame. Just make sure whatever they put in can be sourced by a reliable reference. If not, tough tooties. Wikidan829 10:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi there, Orangemarlin, could you cool it a bit in your edit summaries? Combatively worded-phrases like "junk science" and "cruft" only serve to raise tempers and inflame the situation. If you are concerned about the notability of some of the statements in the homeopathy article - which aims to give an overview of the usage and popular support for this idea, as well as an assessment of any scientific claims - it's best to do it on the talk page. All the best Tim Vickers 16:21, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I see you have added some warning templates in USer:Peter morrell's talk page. What comments did you regard as personal attacks? If you want me to look into this, please provide some diffs on my talk page. Tim Vickers 16:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

As a general comment, Peter has some very unusual views and occasionally a short temper, but his wide knowledge of the history and practices of the homeopathic community make him a valuable contributor to that page. This is a subject where what we would regard as a rational viewpoint is diametrically-opposed to that of may contributors to the article. This makes for interesting editing! Tim Vickers 16:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy harms people. Maybe not directly (because dilution of compounds to <1 molecule means even arsenic isn't going to harm you), but indirectly by keeping patients away from scientifically tested and appropriate therapy. I note his rationality, but illogical rationality is no different than illogical irrationality. It's all junk science to me. This person edits the anti-science article!!!! What knowledge can he provide, other than what is not appropriate. Orangemarlin 17:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

What does editing the anti-science article mean? I edit the Eternalism (philosophy of time) article despite being a Presentist, and I do so while upholding WP:NPOV. And are you sure that keeping people away from "tested" medicie necessarily harms them? People are misdiagnosed with ADHD all the time, and are thus put on drugs that are both unnecessary and harmful. But more than that, regardless of whether or not we believe in the effectiveness of homeopathy (I am skeptical, despite primarily using alternative medicine myself) the issue should be dealt with in a neutral way and—to some extent at least—on its own terms. Phrases like "junk science" and "cruft" simply don't pass muster in that regard. So while I am sympathetic to your point of view, POV is precisely what we are trying to avoid. Postmodern Beatnik 17:19, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I know nothing about your field, probably never will, and not trying to be insulting, I don't care about your field. Editing the anti-science article in a manner to indicate that he dislikes science, not editing to tell a story, which would be fine. And implying that misdiagnosing ADHD indicates all medicine sucks is just bad logic. Most ADHD prescriptions are from frantic parents whose parenting skills are bad trying to get little Johnny or Suzy to be better children. Most medicine cures patients. High blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes II, and many other diseases have been treated effectively with modern medicine. It is junk science. It qualifies under the title of junk science. It meets the standards of junk science. Logically, I can call it junk science. Cruft was for some really bad writing, which had nothing to do with POV. I don't cruft in any article. I have an MPOV here. Medical POV. And yeah, I'm completely sure that keeping people who are dying of malaria away from common treatments by diluting the malarial drugs to <1 molecule per volume of water will kill the patient, but withholding appropriate treatments. So Homeopathy kills. There, I'm done. Orangemarlin 17:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

The Short Version:

All I was saying is that you should try to be nicer.

The Long Version:

First, no offense taken. No one cares about my field. ;) The point was that it is possible to maintain an NPOV while editing an article you disagree with. Second, your comment above merely referred to editing the anti-science article, not to editing it in a POV way, so that is what I was responding to. Just saying that someone edits such-and-such an article says nothing about who they are and is not a sufficient reason to dismiss them. That would be the guilt by association fallacy (which brings us back to my philosophy of time example). If he edits the article poorly, that would be a different issue. Either way, if you're going to critique someone, clarity is important.

And speaking of clarity, let me explain that my comment about ADHD was in no way meant to reflect on the medical establishment as a whole. Indeed, I completely agree with your characterization of why most diagnoses of it are made. But that was precisely my point. It was a counterexample to what I saw as a false dichotomy in your earlier comment. You seemed to be implying that all traditional/alternative medicine is bad and that all modern/institutional medicine is good. That is simply not true, as the over-diagnosing of ADHD demonstrates. But neither is it true that "most medicine cures patients." Most modern medicine treats patients, removing symptoms but not curing disease. There is a fundamental—and important—difference. You yourself slip between the two words in your last comment, but such an elision can easily hide equivocation. We must be careful not to commit such a mistake.

As for "junk science," I'm going to need a definition before I can agree that homeopathy counts. But even if it is junk science, my point was that you were being needlessly uncivil. Your comments do not support your claim to an MPOV, but rather suggest that you are unable to AGF. One can disagree vehemently while remaining calm. And more than that, you need to be fair. The malaria example is just an appeal to emotion and does not logically support the ordinary interpretation of the brash claim that homeopathy kills. Sure, the decision to use homeopathy in that case might lead to death, but so might the decision to undergo a risky surgery in another situation. So there is just as much evidence for the statement "surgery kills" if we accept the standard of evidence you are implicitly proposing above. But the common interpretation of "homeopathy kills" is along the lines that it typically or frequently kills. As yet, you have provided no evidence for that claim. Perhaps such evidence exists. If so, you are free to search for a way to put it in the article without violating WP:NPOV. But until then, try not to let your claims run loose in the museum. Postmodern Beatnik 14:28, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that any claims of efficacy need to be carefully-written and well referenced, however, descriptions of how the preparations are made, the history of their application and how popular they are are areas where simple, factual descriptions are pretty non-contentious. This is where Peter's expertise is very valuable. Tim Vickers 17:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Sure it is potentially valuable. I just am shocked at the state of this article, pseudoscience or not. If a homeopath is proud of their discipline, at least write teh article so it is understandable and not a mess. This article has been around for 5.5 years. It has gone through an external review or two. Peter and some editors I regard as very competent have worked on this article. Why is it in such a state? People complain about intelligent design, but it is vastly better than this.--Filll 17:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, that too. But most of these articles are poorly written, because most of the editors are uneducated and can't write in the English language. But that's my POV, obviously. Orangemarlin 17:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

To Tim, I might agree, but the section I specifically reverted was a poorly written, sourced, and essentially useless section on the history of Homeopathy in the USA. It used a bunch of useless quotes. Also, I know you brits are fascinated with your royals, but we're not (save for that Diana crap that clogs my television). Who care is the highly inbred Prince of Wales like Homeopathy? That matters? In what way? By the way, I probably agree with you and Peter on Bush, so maybe we have some common ground. If he said that Bush believed in Homeopathy and that was the reason for the Iraq conflict, I'm there with you! Orangemarlin 17:47, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Nomination for Admin

I was considering nominating you for administrator. Would you accept? Wikidudeman ^(talk) 22:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

How very flattering. But check my edits first. My civility level is rather suspect.  :) See what you think, and email me (let's keep this personal). But I really appreciate your considering me!!! Orangemarlin 23:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this would be great, but what would the little dog think?--Filll 00:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

She might be neutral on me, but I don't know. She gets me on civility all the time! I think I test the patience of the Evolution cabal! Orangemarlin 00:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

You should seriously consider it, OM. As long as you can stay civil, there's no reason you shouldn't have the tools. Oh, BTW, K-T extinction event is ready for GAC, IMO. Firsfron of Ronchester 01:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. How far away do you think it is from FAC? Shall I nominate it? Orangemarlin 01:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

It hasn't had a peer review or a scientific peer review. I'd submit it to one of those before any FAC, personally, but if you go for it, I will help out as much as possible if there are objections. Firsfron of Ronchester 01:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I did a diff between the edit prior to my finding this article and today. I think there's one word left!!! LOL. Orangemarlin 01:27, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Bwahaha! And it's "the", right? ;) Firsfron of Ronchester 01:31, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

No, "and". Geez, can't you read? Orangemarlin 01:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Hee! Nope. :) On a more serious note, this indicates you've put in a sickening amount of edits on the article: 135! That's ridiculous! Firsfron of Ronchester 01:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

<RI> That is the coolest tool I've seen around here. I love it!!!!! Orangemarlin 01:49, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Do you ever use Wannabe Kate? Firsfron of Ronchester 01:57, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Always use that tool. When I review RfA's I use it to see how much editing is being done. I like admins like you who spend more time editing and less time policing, because I think a good policeman is also a good editor and vice versa. Orangemarlin 02:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd probably police more, but at home I am on dial-up, and by the time I revert, someone else usually already has, leading to me reverting to a vandalized version, and a huge mess... So I only work on counter-vandalism from work. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:27, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

' Orangemarlin I did not realize you were not an admin. You certainly deserve the mop - I second Wikidudeman ^(talk) and would certainly be willing to put your name up -you do an amazing amount of work - look just at your recent help to me in getting my articles ready for submission - and you are extremely helpful to all those who ask for your help. Would you accept the nomination if one of us puts you up? I certainly feel you should have the tools. The project would benefit. (and THANKS AGAIN for the help on Pease River - I went back and very carefully changed the ethnic/racial descriptions!)old windy bear 02:43, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Will you accept? Wikidudeman ^(talk) 12:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to initiate it, but I need your acceptance first. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 15:26, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I really appreciate it, but I want to think about it for a few days. Let me talk to a couple of people off line and see what they think. Orangemarlin 16:52, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Orangemarlin I agree with the Wikidudeman, and will co-nominate you, if you will only accept it. I will wait a few days if you want, but if you decide to let us, let two or three of us co-nominate you, it will carry more impact. old windy bear 18:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

This has both advantages, and disadvantages.--Filll 18:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

sycosis (suppressed gonorrhoea)

Is this really suppressed gonorrhoea? Is this current mainstream medicine? Current homeopathy? Was it ever a belief in homeopathy or allopathy?--Filll 18:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Sycosis seems to redirect to Homeopathy, interestingly. Orangemarlin 18:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

In regular medical dictionaries, it seems to just be some sort of rash under the beard (dont know if women could get it).--Filll 19:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

K-T Extinction

WOW! Orangemarlin 16:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Woohoo! Great job, Orangemarlin! Notice the reviewer said the sources were "brilliant". I've added Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event to my watchlist, and am looking forward to seeing reviews come pouring in (or even one comment; Herrerasaurus still hasn't gotten any comments on its SPR). The article looks terrific; you should really be proud of all your efforts. This article started out as crap. Firsfron of Ronchester 08:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Now I'm moving onto Permian–Triassic extinction event. I will be the amateur extinction expert. I just ordered 5 books from Amazon on extinction events. Orangemarlin 15:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations. You really are a dinosaur expert huh? --Filll 14:43, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

No, not really. It all started with working on Creationist perspectives on dinosaurs. I went to K-T boundary, and the article was a mess. Much less controversy than pseudoscientific medical articles and/or creation science articles. Orangemarlin 15:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

It was user:OhanaUnited. I know the user quite well. I'm not sure why it was placed back on hold without an explanation. A quick message on his talk page might suss out the reason... Also, we had quite a determined vandal on the page a little while ago. Firsfron of Ronchester 14:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[[Category:Obsolete medical theories]]

My personal feeling is that homeopathy belongs in that category, but I do not want to start another war. I can see that practitioners might not like it, of course. I also wonder if you and other medical doctors might object to the phrase "medical theory", wanting to distance medicine from any previous association with this subject? I think that Category:Obsolete medical theories is a great underused, underpopulated category and putting homeopathy there might make it easier to find the article. Comments? Opinions? Meanwhile, I will be bold and just do what my intuition says, but I will certainly agree to what the consensus is, whatever that is. I cannot easily tell at this point, however.--Filll 14:30, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

OK let's try to make a fresh start. I agree we must try at least. I accept your olive branch and apologise for any prior hurtful comments. How does that sound? Peter morrell 16:46, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

If we keep fighting, then we're just like Bush. That would make me nauseous. But I'd rather find common ground with you, and get the article to a GA state. Also, I am NOT anti-homeopathy. I am pro-science. But, I think there's a way to get the article balanced between your POV and mine. If we can keep the personal attacks (on both sides) away, we'll figure it out, because, knowing that you're anti-Bush means you're smart!!!!! Orangemarlin 16:51, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

OK that sounds a good basis. I don't really have a strong opinion on Bush - or Blair come to that - but Bush appears to be somewhat challenged in the brain department & in a less endearing way than Reagan was, who for example, allegedly enjoyed comic and colouring books (so I believe) as his sole staple reading matter. OK we can try to get the article improved and that is a noble goal. I am aware of your science views let's hope we can steer ourselves round them most of the time! cheers Peter morrell 17:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Reason for including the date

I agree that "Author (21 July 2007)" looks unusual, but the date sometimes comes in handy when papers are sumbitted in quick succession and the progression of an argument can be seen. I also occasionally find it handy as it's easier to remember that you're after the July 2006 issue of a journal that issue number 1529...
Further, the example at WP:CITET contains a full date (the year parameter would suffice otherwise). If the inclusion of a date were deletorious, I may agree with trimming it - but I can't see that the extra data causes any harm, whilst it may be of use to some readers.

Verisimilus T 19:16, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe, but I don't think it looks clean. It's much easier to look up an article by doi or pmid number if it's a journal article. Orangemarlin 05:02, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hey, I noticed you have been deleting large amounts of content from articles that you don't agree with. While I agree that citations are vital to keeping the information on wikipedia encyclopedic, I believe that you should show some trust towards other editors, and allow for time for citations and supporting links to be added before you delete content.

A difference in opinion does not constitute grounds for deletion or criticism of medicinal plants, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki wiki1 (talk • contribs)

I'd like to second that opinion. It seems you have some strong ideas on the validity of traditional medicine. You certainly don't have to agree that these plants are effective in their ascribed medicinal properties, but the fact that people in different places do actually use them for these purposes is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedic article. Waitak 21:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Calling me vandal? Right. As for traditional medicine, I have an opinion that Wikipedia follows WP:NPOV#Undue weight and requires verified statements, neither of which was accomplished in the article. And "traditional medicine" means that it has been scientifically tested for safety and efficacy. Orangemarlin

Let's take the heat level down a peg or two, okay? For the record, I never called you a vandal.

Traditional medicine means nothing like "it has been scientifically tested for safety and efficacy." It means that there are or were cultures where these herbs are believed to have the listed properties, and are used for that reason. You certainly have the right to disagree with traditional healers. You certainly do not have the right to deny that they use these plants in what they do!

I do agree with you in part though. These really ought to be cited, and I'll commit to tracking down sources and making sure that there are reputable sources that ascribe these properties to these herbs. I've already made a start at it. Can you please stop deleting them in the meantime? Waitak 01:50, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Just keep undue weight in mind. If a herb has been historically believed to have certain properties and you've got a good ref for that, fine. But unless there's some good scientific evidence to back up those properties, it needs to be presented as belief not fact. ornis 01:56, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. My real objection is to wholesale deletion of all information on medicinal properties of these herbs. Some have been used very effectively for the purposes listed in the article, for centuries, in many, many places. I agree with the need for rigor, so let's move the article in that direction. If there are claims of medicinal properties that don't have proper sources, I have no objection to deleting them. Waitak 02:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, sometimes it's impossible to make sure I'm answering the right person. It was the comment above you that accused me of vandalism, and they made the same comment in the edit summary. Both are inappropriate. I'll be dealing with that editor next week, rest assured. As for your points, much more reasonable. I disagree with you, and I disagree with you that herbs that haven't been tested should not have any medical claims associated with it, unless it can be scientifically verified (not asking you to do the clinical trial, just that someone has). That may not seem fair, but undue weight means you cannot make a statement without some high level of verifiability. Orangemarlin 05:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Global pharmacy costings

Hi! you said you might be able to help on this topic? basically what I think the homeopathy article requires at some point is some figures to illustrate and contrast the global financial positions of regular pharmaceuticals and homeopathy. Boiron say 0.03% of the total pharamcy market is homeopathic and 99.97% is the regular drugs stuff. Now that's fine but it needs confirming and it needs ideally translating into some hard cash terms, if you follow. Can you investigate that and see if it is true and if it is possible to present this overview comparison in fairly simple cash terms? If so, then that would be great. Is it worth me asking the question what most specifically do you hate about Mr G W Bush? thanks Peter morrell 06:40, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow, you are asking for some hard to retrieve data. Let me see if I can ask someone to dig it up for me. Last time I volunteer for something like this!!!  :) Bush? Everything. But in general, I'm a progressive liberal on most issues, he's not. Orangemarlin 16:21, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

OK thanks I put an example on the homeo talk page taken from their online websites to compare Pfizer and Boiron and it serves as a good exmaple I feel...but feel free to critique it or suggest a better example. Bush...well I agree with you but there is always a context when folks like him get into power; another example being thatcher or indeed Blair...things, even Bush! can be understood better when the wider context is known. Maybe a backlash against clinton, for example? Monica who? cheers Peter morrell 16:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

KT extinction event

Hi,

I spent a lot of time reviewing your article for GA. I left detailed comments but was left at the post by another User who passed your article with no comments.

I planned to do only 5 articles for GAC but do them well. This article had been specifically chosen by me for the GAC Backlog elimination drive for which I was expecting credit towards an award.

I want to know if you are going to respond to my comments. If yes, I'll be happy to remain involved. If not, then I want to unwatch the page, detach myself from this review, delete files from my hard drive and delist this wiki from my GAC backlog elimination drive review list.

May I request you to kindly let me know your mind.

Regards, AshLin 16:06, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I'd like to stay involved.AshLin 16:14, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

AshLin indicated that there're issues with the article, which shows that Vikrant Phadkay's review is, unfortunately, not detailed enough. I respect AshLin's review, and respect his opinions on whether the article should be passed or not. He thinks the article is not ready to pass just yet, so I put the article back to on hold status. Please note that I haven't take this article out from the list in Wikipedia:Good Articles. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:57, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Please understand that I really appreciate AshLin's responses. They are outstanding, and I think it will get the article to FAC soon enough. I just noticed that you reverted the GA, and I was wondering why. Orangemarlin 18:58, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Orangemarlin,

I find that I am in many ways the cause of your unhappiness over KT extinction event which is a very good article and doesn't deserve any controversy. Perhaps I should have let the matter rest when Vikrant Phadkey had paaed it and just moved on. Disappointment at not being able to put my work forward led me to raise the issue. I am since grateful that my comments are helpful to you. BTW It was me not OhanaUnited, who removed the article from the article's name from GA list. I was unaware of some of your exchanges with OhanaUnited for which I apologize for my discourtesy to you. May I suggest that we resolve the issues I raised so that I can pass it with clear conscience and the GA issue which became crummy because of me can be laid to rest. Any way I do not know how to make amends except to offer to do a peer review or pre-FAC review for any different article you are interested in. In good faith, AshLin 20:17, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I was worried that you would misinterpret my issue. OhanaUnited reverted the GA status without comment. I wasn't sure what had happened. If you note how bad this article was a month ago, and what a bunch of us had done to get it where it's even close to being GA, you'd understand our commitment. I want to make it better!!!! So being disappointed was fleeting. Now I know I've got some hard work to do, and I'm not sure I have time this week :( Orangemarlin 20:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, so where is the list of fixes that are needed? I don't see them anywhere, and I can do it... If I know where they are! Firsfron of Ronchester 22:03, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, I see it has been added to the talk page. This was done weirdly (GA status added by one user, removed by another without explanation, and an explanation 24 hours later by a third user: this is not the ideal way to review an article at all!), but all these problems can be fixed. Firsfron of Ronchester 22:08, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Dinos

I'm glad a real paleontologist can take of these type of edits. I have no clue what you're talking about. !!!! LOL. Orangemarlin 02:18, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Hee! I'm not a real paleontologist; I just play one on WiKi. ;) Bipedal dinosaurs used to be depicted in Kangaroo-like "tripod" positions, with their tails like third legs: Image:Iguanodon feeding.jpg. We now know that most dinosaurs didn't drag their tails: their tails would actually have had to have been broken for them to stand like that, and mounted museum specimens actually had their tails broken to get them into the tripod position. (Norman 1985) WP:DINO had sooo many awful, outdated images (and ones like this!) that we cracked down on that sort of thing and started an image review page, and started removing outdated and inaccurate images from all articles. We've only left them in where they have historic relevance: next to text where it's discussed how our conception of dinosaurs have changed over the centuries. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:56, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Naturopathic medicine

If you've got a moment, your help would be appreciated, an anon POV pusher keeps trying to remove or water down critical material. ornis (t) 15:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Coriander medicinal uses deletion

Hello, would you mind offering some commentary for the discussion here on the deletion of the medicinal uses section? Your input is greatly appreciated. Thanks! Eliz81 15:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Gnixon

Oddly enough, as far as I can tell, Gnixon is just about the only Creationist POV-pusher who I haven't clashed with (at least I can't remember any clashes, and none come up on a quick search). I dare say Gnixon is just as charming as the rest of that breed, but I don't have anything specific to bring to the RfC. Thanks for the tip though. :) Hrafn42 17:48, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Familiar?

Does User:Cult of the Sacred Or_nge seem familiar to you?--Filll 18:31, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Not really. I looked as their edits, and they seem fairly obsessed with the color orange. Orangemarlin 18:34, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah. It appears to be a sockpuppet of Rbj: [1]--Filll 19:05, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Why? I don't see it. Orangemarlin 19:32, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

On the last RfC about Gnixon he weighed in, in a very familiar fashion. Also, his lack of a vowel in his name. That pretty much clinches it.--Filll 19:39, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I forgot about that. So, in other words, he spent 2 months editing orange articles just to set this up? Hmmmmmmm. Orangemarlin 19:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

They just unblocked him. But I still have my suspicions.--Filll 11:56, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

RfC

Thanks for your note. Being a long-time admin puts him down three rungs in my view, unless he proves himself otherwise. Admins, in my experience, bely the good intentions of the system that creates them. Intelligence isn't always used well.

I'll look further into it. I've had pleasant interactions with Gnixon, and it all seems out of balance to me. Tony 05:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

PS Your contributions look interesting—the pharmacy stuff. Tony 05:16, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

On the goodnesse of Katie and other things..

Well, Bones, I always knew you could do it (paraphrasing Kirk beyond repair). Now its time for you to make her anhonest woman.

All the very best. AshLin 04:39, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Peter

Hey, Orange, could you have a look at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Peter_morrell? Adam Cuerden ^talk 09:13, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Katie

From henceforth, we have officially renamed the event. In that tradition, you should know what Petey is!!! Orangemarlin 19:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Bwahaha! And I guess this one is Holly? Firsfron of Ronchester 19:35, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Holly

This may be outside of your current interest, but you should read this crap. I'm a big time pro-Gore, anti-destruction of the environment liberal, but I had to delete a statement (unsourced of course) that says the Holocene event was the largest of the six extinction events. I'm hard-pressed to consider Holly an actual extinction event, but maybe it fits the definition. So, do you want to help write about mastadons, and other mammalian species? Or are you more of a dino-dude? Orangemarlin 16:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi OM!

I'm a dino-dude (because there isn't enough of me to work on all the dinosaur articles and spend a lot of time on mammoths and Smilodon, etc). However, if you restore the assertion that you removed here, I promise to find a source for it.

There has never been a bigger extinction on the planet than the one we are causing right now. The last few thousand years have seen the extinction or near-extinction of thousands of species, from mammoths to leopard frogs. We are responsible for the extinction of most of the megafauna, and we have cause irreparable harm to entire classes of animals, particularly but not limited to Aves and Amphibia. If we can kill off the most populous species of bird ever in less than 50 years, there's no doubt that we're causing major ecological damage to the planet. The Pimm-Russell-Gittleman-Brooks estimate of up to 140,000 extinct species per year definitely places Holly in the category of "worst ever". Firsfron of Ronchester 17:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying that humans are worse to the planet than say a giant comet hitting the Gulf of Mexico? Seriously, this isn't some POV Greenpeace crap is it? My brain is not getting around THAT factoid very well. Orangemarlin 17:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I promise that any reference I provide won't be from Greenpeace: I'll find some peer-reviewed journals, as always. Firsfron of Ronchester 18:00, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've been reading up on Holly. The rate of extinction is the highest, but it still isn't the largest extinction event...yet. Apparently, the "background" extinction rate is about one species per year. The Holocene extinction seems to be going at 30-40,000 per year (that sounds high). By the end of this century 50% of the species in existence at the end of the ice age will be gone. OK, maybe this is bad! Orangemarlin 23:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Gnixon

Our dear friend has decided to rewrite physics. Oh brother...--Filll 22:00, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Because his friends came to his defence at the RfC, I think he thinks he can do anything he wants. He doesn't quite understand the purpose of an RfC. Whatever. I presume he'll disappear again, or let's hope he does. Orangemarlin 23:57, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, lets see if he slips up again. It is bound to happen.--Filll 19:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the RfC, I see that User:SandyGeorgia really put a HUGE amount of effort into saving his butt. I am a bit confused as to who she (or he?) is, but I was not overly impressed at the intelligent design FAR with what I saw from her. I also notice that User:FeloniousMonk was not too happy with her, and I think I trust his judgement in most of these things.--Filll 19:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll send some thoughts about this travesty by email. Orangemarlin 19:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The whole conversation would be better made by private email or (better still) not at all. I've been wondering if it occurs to people that the people being discussed read the talk pages of people with whom they're in editing conflict. It would seem better if you want them to see it to post it directly to them, and if you don't want them to see it to carry out the conversation by private email, or not at all. Nothing I've seen here seems likely to help de-escalate an inflamed situation. Just a thought. ElinorD (talk)

Thanks ElinorD. That's why it's being sent by email.  :) Orangemarlin 20:06, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. ElinorD (talk) 20:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I do stand by my comments above, however. I am pro-science, and I do not mind saying it or having anyone know it. If that offends anyone, I am sorry and apologize, but it will not change my stance. Also, the entire FAR just made my head spin and seemed to have a lot of "behind-the-scenes" political stuff and infighting and nastiness associated with it that I do not understand, nor do I want to understand it. I only want to edit the articles and make them better. I think a lot of energy associated with the FAR could be better spent looking for typos, grammatical errors, fixing the references, etc. As I have said repeatedly, is this all really worth it for some gold star?--Filll 20:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

{{sprotect}}

Sorry, my edit summary was cut off. User:SallyForth123 tagged a lot of articles as semi-protected last night that were in fact semi-protected but on which a semi-protection template was not transcluded. Adding the template is fine as long as the page is in fact semi-protected (if it's not, a bot will take it off anyhow.)

Cheers! — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 19:17, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Sigs

Cool sig! :) Firsfron of Ronchester 01:04, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Bored today, so I thought I would try it out!!! You need a little dino in your name or something, especially since I have no clue what a Firsfron is? Or where is Ronchester? LOL Anyways, thanks. OrangeMarlin^Talk 01:12, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Your new sig really is cool. As for me: a Firsfron is me, and Ronchester is where I am at. (Actually, I've used this silly handle for a decade, and it helps keep me humble wherever I go: hard to think highly of yourself when you've got a ridiculous username, no?) Firsfron of Ronchester 01:46, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I invented mine because I have a very common first and last name--it was hard to register for websites, and I was getting confused. I invented this because I went to Syracuse University (the Orange), and my favorite baseball team are the Florida Marlins. OrangeMarlin^Talk 01:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

John Smith! I knew it! ;) No, the Marlins are pretty cool. I didn't get a chance to see any of their games while I was living in FL; I actually prefer the Diamondbacks, of course. My username is modified from Firsfram of Runchester, mixed with my own name for that extra geeky effect. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Nope. James Smith. Sheesh. OK, you've totally clarified your name. And I thought you grew fir trees in Rochester, NY. I'm particularly clueless. OrangeMarlin^{Talk•Contributions} 02:16, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I do grow fir trees in Rochester! And then I fron them, whatever that is. Dang, now my cover is blown! Firsfron of Ronchester 02:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Fron is a placename - Wales or Norway. I thought you were a fir tree from Fron, myself, who happened to be living in Rochester. See how little puppies know? KillerChihuahua^?!? 02:34, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Creationist cruft

Having just fought my way through another round of cleaning up A Dissent from Darwinism, and Project Steve, and seeing the mess you are dealing with at Flood geology, and the barely touched articles at Abiogenesis and Origin of life, and the mess still at Creation-evolution controversy, and realizing that even my "own" article at Level of support for evolution has picked up a lot of "lint" and needs rewriting, I realize there just are not enough of us pro-science people to go around. Homeopathy and its companion articles remain a horrendous mess. (what is it about the anti-science types, that they do not at least know how to write?) I spend hours just trying to get one article in semi-readable form. The forthcoming Falsification in evolution is coming exceedingly slowly, but it is progressing. With all the people working at cross-purposes here, it is a wonder that anything gets done at all!--Filll 01:58, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to tackle these things one at a time. First, I'm trying to focus on some non-controversial articles, Minoan eruption, Katie, Holly, and Petey. Flood geology had become an incomprehensible mess. I'm watching the other ones, trying to squash any vandalism or Creationist POV's. Please watch over Physics. That article worries me, but I haven't a clue what it's saying. I'll focus on the various articles in a few days when I get these articles to FAC (I hope). OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit nervous about what is happening at Physics and I should go check and see what they are up to. I was part of the WIP project at physics but it petered out somehow. People who had a high school level education were overruling me and another PhD, so it started to not seem like such fun. And it moved vvvveeeerrrryyyy slowly. I did alert them when our friend started to edit like a mad dog, but I didnt check back to see the outcome. Take a look at my draft in the sandbox at User talk:Filll/dabrera if you get a chance. I plan to launch it in conjunction with some more material for A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.--Filll 10:53, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy rough draft finished

I have finished my draft of the Homeopathy article. The draft is a rough approximation of what it should be like. It obviously has some flaws in it's format and wording right now but they will be kinked out within the next couple of days. Right now what I want is for you, if you're interested in helping to improve the article, to come to the articles talk page. There we will all discuss the article and how it could be improved before we replace the current homeopathy article with it. In order for this to work we need to follow a few rules. The first rule, the most important rule, is that no one but me can edit the rough draft. Do not edit the rough draft. This precaution is used to prevent edit warring and loss or addition of information that might not be up to consensus. Don't worry, It's just a draft and you'll have all the time you want to make changes after we've replaced it with the current article. The second rule is that all proposed changes in the rough draft must be made on the talk page of the rough draft and must be clear and concise. At that point anyone involved will discuss the proposed changes and if agreed by consensus they will be implemented. We will do that until there is no disputes or disagreements. After all disputes are hammered out, we will replace the homeopathy article with the rough draft. At that point there shouldn't be anyone needing to make huge edits, and if you do see an edit that you want to make, be sure to add a note on the talk page PRIOR to making the edit so that consensus can be reached and then you should make the edit. If you have any questions you can leave me a message on my talk page. Here is the link to the rough draft Link to rough draft. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 13:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Houston, we have a problem.--Filll 13:35, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

What's the problem? Wikidudeman ^(talk) 13:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Well I might be mistaken, but I suspect that this promises to be quite contentious. Just a hunch. We will see.--Filll 14:18, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Well read the draft and tell me what you think should be changed. When we're all done, there won't be any edit wars, no complex hodgepodges of articles, no incomprehensible gibberish, just the facts in a clear and concise manner. I remember you wrote about the homeopathy articles being overwhelming, confusing and overall a "endless maze of mirrors and poorly explained "technical terms" with vague meanings"? My goal is to fix all of that and get rid of the pointless articles with useless material and merge them all into a single article, compacted for size, and turn the homeopathy article into a featured article within a few weeks. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 14:42, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I understand this is your goal and I applaud you in having such a goal. However, I feel there are some large potential problems:

• immense scientific opposition
• opposition on ethical and moral and safety grounds
• too much material for one readable accessible article

I do complain about the problems with the material. There is too much of it, and much of it is not clear English. This is accompanied by sniping from both sides, pro- and anti-homeopathy advocates, and these have to be balanced. Probably the biggest problem is that:

• this rough draft is not very widely publicized, and therefore will be pretty much ignored by most people until it becomes a real article, when it will come under immense attack. If you do not have a consensus of interested people behind you to defend it, the new article will be worn away under a volley of changes.--Filll 15:29, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Trouble with a recalcitrant creationist at Talk:Level of support for evolution

Anyone wanna come by and help out? --Filll 23:56, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Water memories

Look at it this way: when the study is done, you can cite it on Wikipedia: "A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial showed that water doesn't retain memories." Then no more endless stream of arguments along the lines of "It hasn't been explicitly debunked, so it should be presented as True." That'd be worth a few tax dollars, right? But seriously, you're preaching to the choir about the effects that the NIH budget cuts are having, not to mention the deep cuts in Medicare reimbursement and Medicaid coverage. Priorities, right? MastCell ^Talk 23:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I know, but 5-7 years before we see a publication out of this, just to put it in Wikipedia does seem a bit of a waste of money!!! At least it's being run by clinicians and scientists. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:23, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

What's your opinion on this article? ornis (t) 23:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I actually used some of the article. For some reason, a few medical schools that have online guides to medicine always get weasely with alternative medicine, rather than telling everyone that it lacks scientific testing. It's not bad. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:51, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

That's what I thought, particularly the note on poor protocol in homeopathic studies, the weakness of the meta-studies and the fact that none of the properly controlled studies that showed positive results have been successfully repeated. I wasn't sure if it counts as WP:RS though, as they're written by students and at least one of the articles there (wheatgrass) is rubbish. ornis (t) 02:05, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Reference formatting on Attachment Therapy

Thank you for your improvement on Attachment Therapy (i.e., replacing reference with reflist). Just for my education, what is the difference between these two templates?

If you are able, can you guide me as to how I can make DOI's work with a pipeline, like ISBN's apparently do?

Thanks, Larry Sarner 00:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the editing information. I will pursue what you suggest. BTW, my browser does not list the references in two columns with reflist|2, but that's no big deal to me either way. Larry Sarner 03:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

general discussion of the topic

So, since it's my birthday, humor me and tell what the name means why don't you? VanTucky ^(talk) 01:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

What name? I mean it is your birthday and all, but I need to answer the right question! OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I knew I recognized your name from the Tai chi chuan article. By the way, what DID you write over at Conservapedia to get kicked out so quickly? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

J4J

I had added the Judaism banner not because J4J is a part of Judaism, but because it is topic that concerns people of the Jewish faith. Antisemitism would also be also a part of WikiProject Judaism, if there was no WikiProject Jewish history. I can see your point, and perhaps the banner does not belong there for the reason you stated. --Eliyak T·C 02:20, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, these Christian evangelists are not interested in the "Jewish faith." You can read the article to get the full details (it's fairly well presented and NPOV). But it really has nothing to do with Judaism per se, it's sole purpose is to convert Jews to Christianity--I guess Hindus or Buddhists for Jesus would function in the same way. I'm personally offended by putting the banner there, but I wouldn't stand in front of a train to stop it. Anti-semitism does belong under that project, because it is part of being Jewish. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 03:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for taking the time to add your thoughts to the discussion at my recent Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Angus Lepper RfA, which failed, with no consensus to promote me. However, I appreciate the concerns raised during the course of the discussion (most notably, a lack of experience, particularly in admin-heavy areas such as XfDs and policy discussions) and will attempt to address these before possibly standing again in several months time. Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 16:07, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

		My RFA
		User:TenPoundHammer and his romp of Wikipedia-editing otters thank you for participating in Hammer's failed request for adminship, and for the helpful tips given to Hammer for his and his otters' next run at gaining the key. Also, Hammer has talked to the otters, and from now on they promise not to leave fish guts and clamshells on the Articles for Deletion pages anymore. Ten Pound Hammer • (((Broken clamshells • Otter chirps))) 17:13, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

AT

I've started a discussion on the talkpage on the 'variants in the intro' issue as I'm sure it's something we can easily resolve. Fainites ^barley 21:19, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Hand needed

at British Centre for Science Education--Filll 22:32, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the crisis is averted. I had some problems with some fairly hostile editor who seemed to have a creationist bent.--Filll 00:42, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Updated "Physicians and Surgeons" articles

I have updated the Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity article, and spun off the petition itself as Physicians and Surgeons who Dissent from Darwinism. Any comments would be welcome.

I have also made a lot of improvements to A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism and Scientific Support for Darwinism, Project Steve and Clergy Letter Project. A lot of funny stuff turned up with some digging.--Filll 16:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

For amusement

To see how famous you are, do a google search for User:Orangemarlin and see what you get.

C. Everett Koop

Sort of embarassing his article here is so bad. I also noted that some seem to claim he is a creationist, and I wonder how true that is. It looks like it might have some substance from what I found, but I am less than certain.--Filll 23:43, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

RfA User:Wikidudeman

Referring to User talk:Wikidudeman/Homeopathdraft; Come on Orangemarlin. There are bound to be differences, but what is important is that the user wants to resolve the dispute amicably. The intention is paramount. The rest is up to you. Thanking You, Altruism^{T a l k - Contribs.} 07:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

discourse

Hi Orangemarlin (talk · contribs)—I notice that you seem to have had a disagreement with Macdonald-ross (talk · contribs). I have taken some time to encourage his contributions, I think he makes very good contributions. I am unable to identify the major concern, can I ask you what it is? I found a thread, but the source of any disruption is not apparent to me. Excuse me, making this my business, but I want him to hang around. Regards, Fred ☻ 11:31, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I find it hard to believe we are talking about the same user! Are you referring to the discussion on his talk page? Please supply some diffs warranting your description, I am inclined to a different view otherwise. Fred ☻ 14:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't care that much. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:51, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I have horribly grievously wikilinked the name "Macdonald-ross" back to his user page which is User:Macdonald-ross so that people passing by could go easily to Macdonald-ross' talk page and see what the commotion was about. This terribly offended User:Fred.e apparently. Why it offended him, I am still really not sure, but it ended with a huge disturbance, with Fred.e accusing me of threatening him. See the details and my very humble apology at this page. Please come and see what a terrible jerk I am and how I overstepped all the bounds of decency and proper behavior. I am truly sorry and I want to post this apology and the entire record of my horrible behavior EVERYWHERE on Wikipedia so people can know how terrible I am.--Filll 23:26, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Hell, since it's my talk page, I'll do whatever I freaking want.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Remove any personal attack and changes to my comments. I will leave [it to] others to characterise your behavior. Fred ☻ 06:13, 11 August 2007 (UTC) / [Insert] , Fred ☻ 06:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I am notifying of my post at WP:WQA. Fred ☻ 15:43, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Let me be passive aggressive. Whatever. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 15:54, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Evolution

Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions. One of the core policies of Wikipedia is that articles should always be written from a neutral point of view. It appears you have not followed this policy at Evolution. Please always observe our core policies. Thank you. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You left the above under the heading 'edit war', which I resent, as I am involved in a very civil discussion at Evolution since making one edit and one reversion of its reversion (with reasons). Please note that I consider myself an experienced editor having edited for many years. You should not assume that a contributor has only edited since registering, or with a given name (name change is perfectly permissible, but not of course sockpuppets) but even then, I have done a considerable amount of editing under this name. I am very familiar indeed with WP:NPV etc etc, and would point out that the rules require balance on controversial topics, where NPV becomes a not very useful terms and several points of view exist 'out there' non of them 'extreme minority'. I can go through the fine detail point by point if you wish, but I'd rather move on. Rest assured, I will not edit-war or revert-war. --Memestream 20:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Facts indicate otherwise, but whatever. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments on your actions on modern evolutionary synthesis

You know user Macdonald-ross is fairly new to wikipedia so letting him know that he should include edit summaries for his edits is a good idea. However I thought I would point out that edit summaries such as "Where to start....probably by wholesale deletion, but trying to clean up this cruft." and " Deleting popup. This is so poorly written, I don't even know how to rewrite it. Who wrote this crap?" hardly seem more helpful. That article had been in need of serious attention for months before I did a little and Macdonald-ross came a long and did a lot more to improve the article. His work hardly deserved that kind of edit summary or sarcastic talk summaries with obscene words (or worse than that calling him a creationist). I realize that you are a far more experienced editor than he is or I am but I think that hardly justifies the tone of your comments or those edit summaries. I noticed that you have a link to WP:Civility on your talk page. You might want to follow it and read it a little. It talks about things like that. Rusty Cashman 05:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Rusty, I am quite aware of WP:CIVIL. I'm also well aware of WP:AGF. A week ago, I very politely contacted M-r, and asked that he add edit summaries and utilize a standardized method of references. His fuck-off reply indicated to me that he didn't give a crap about the project. Here are my concerns with his edits:

1. They are poorly written. His writing style utilizes poor grammar, sentence structure and style.
2. They are outside of standards of WP:MOS.
3. Edit summaries. It is impossible to see what he did.
4. The references are a mess. It's going to take days and weeks to clean up the mess. He utilizes reference styles that went out before I was born. What so cool about Wikipedia is you can click on a footnote, it leads you directly to the article, and you can click on any links (if any). Most articles like this utilize doi and isbn numbers for articles and books--you can get summaries and abstracts quickly.
5. Complete violation of WP:NPOV.

This article can be a contentious. We don't actually need editors like M-r until such time they take advice and learn how to contribute effectively to the project. This article is so far away from GA status that it's sickening. I'll fix it. If I leave a word in from his writing, I think it might be one "the" and a couple of "and's". OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 15:34, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

"His fuck-off reply" Huh? That reply looked reasonable to me. Was that the correct diff? Spa toss 22:43, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Correct diff. I thought he was unreasonable, and the article is a mess. My opinion exclusively. In other words, I'm done with M-r, and I can't understand why anyone else cares what I think????? So I think he's not very useful to the project. There are lots of editors who are pretty useless around this project, and basically I ignore them all. I'm ignoring M-r. Now, I'm back to cleaning up stuff elsewhere. Thanks for visiting. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:52, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Orangemarlin, please refrain from personal attacks. Your comments about Memestream were unnecessarily hostile; according to his user page, he is an atheist, so accusing him of promoting creationism is particularly nasty. This comment is also a personal attack, and something that has no place on Wikipedia. I appreciate your input on that article, but collaboration on Wikipedia requires a modicum of civility (even with people who actually are creationists).--ragesoss 20:08, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

1. Your diff is most definitely not a personal attack. Show me in what way it is, and I'll apologize. I give much more than a modicum of civility, but I suffer fools poorly. 2. Memestream, if not a creationist, lacks knowledge of the basic tenets of Evolution, as shown by his various edits to that article. Whether he is a creationist or not is totally irrelevant to me, his edits may as well be. He has been reverted numerous times on several articles, because he lacks an understanding of the science of evolution. I place zero credence in anything posted on a User Page. His actions bely what he has written, and as such, good faith has been shot to pieces. In summary, I do not attack people whom I respect--in fact, check my contributions, there are a number of creationists with whom I have come to consensus, and in fact, fought against certain SPOV types to maintain the NPOV established with those creationists. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

FAC

Katie is getting ready to have her Bat mitzvah and become an adult. What do you think? I haven't gotten the peer-review that I wanted, but I did get a bot peer-review, and I made a number of changes. I also reviewed WP:MOS, and it appears to be there. I got rid of a lot of weasel words, cleaned up the language here and there, checked the references, and got her a new dress. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey OM!

You've done a wonderful job, and I think it's ready for a FACing. Are you? ;) Firsfron of Ronchester 19:28, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll drink some scotch. It should get me there!!!!! OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:33, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Based on the comments so far, I've requested the Cavalry's editing assistance. I'll try to check back tomorrow, but I'm on vacation out of state, so my internet access is sort of spotty. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

white line added to mark the transition.

The K–T boundary exposure in Trinidad Lake State Park shows an abrupt change from dark to light colored rock.

<undent> I've been copyediting what seemed to me to be minor grammatical errors or wording which jarred a bit – it's still "ongoing" (aaargh!). Where it seemed a matter of taste or I wasn't sure what you meant, I've added hidden comments. On my wee 12" laptop at 1024 x 768 the Trinidad Lake boundary image is a bit confusing, as the white line shows at the expense of seeing the boundary and at first glance I wondered if there could actually be a horizontal white layer marking it! Here's a suggestion showing the original pic with the white line pic added as an explanatory marker. ..dave souza, talk 08:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Dave, go ahead with your grammatical suggestions and tweaks. Same for the picture. If you haven't done it by the morning (California time), I'll do it. SandyGeorgia has made a ton of suggestions, and I've probably gone through 10%. I can't believe I even nominated it--this is hard word!!! OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 08:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Have made the image change, hope that helps – by the way, my suggestion was made this morning and it's late morning here now. Have removed superfluous comments: under North American fossils I wasn't sure if "abundance of fossil records of dinosaur taxa prior to the K-T boundary, and the nearly complete absence of fossils immediately thereafter" meant an absense of dino fossils, or all fossils – am guessing the latter and have removed the suggestion of "such fossils". Yes, FAC is indeed a lot of work -– good luck with it. .. dave souza, talk 10:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I"m having a brain-freeze with regards to the first paragraph of the first section. I'm trying to get it right, so if you have a suggestion, go for it. The problem is that the global event (say a meteor) causes the extinction event. Yet the article is about the extinction event. An impact event by itself is kind of mundane. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Hope your brain's unfrozen, have popped in the suggested pics, you may well wish to rethink the captions and / or use different pictures. ... dave souza, talk 22:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Cheer up

Mammoth effort (pun intended, though off by a 60 odd million years) - a few rearranging sections, a couple of critique paras here and there and it'll be over the line. Heck of a lot easier than a lot of poor prose... cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

You back?

Katie has become a pain in the butt. Need help :) OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:22, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey!

I am finally back. Many apologies for my vanishing act, right at this crucial time. Looking at all the objections, I think your recent comments may be right. We may want to break this off into two seperate articles: one on the boundary and one on the event. Sheep's comment about providing critiques might be helpful, too. I'm so sorry I haven't been around to help. I had limited internet access during my second week of vacation, and was really too busy to even reply to e-mails. I just got home, and plan to take a good scrub-brush to this article. Feel free to take a break for a while; you've worked very hard on this article. I promise to put some serious effort into this article tomorrow, but it is too late to do anything serious tonight. Firsfron of Ronchester 07:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy draft, take a look.

Please comment on the Homeopathy draft that is being composed. It has made numerous improvements and I would appreciate it if you could make some suggestions on improving it. Thanks. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 12:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Where I am

I've been a little under the weather, so I've mostly been going through all the old stuff I have in my Victoriana collection and pulling out images for use. I've been around WP:FPC a bit, but mostly, uploading pictures and taking it easy.

That said, I have spent some time cutting down some woo articles: Royal Rife Georges Lakhovsky, Electromagnetic therapy, etc. Adam Cuerden ^talk 19:09, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I think this one's my favourite.

Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions

I simply reverted the edit of an editor who blanked an entire section, a section that has been the subject of much work and discussion in the past, without any discussion or consensus. A discussion is taking place on the talk page, and there does not appear to be any consensus for the blanking. Skeezix1000 20:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Let me look. I may have gotten in an edit conflict with someone else. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

invitation

You are being recruited by the Environmental Record Task Force, a collaborative project committed to accurately and consistently representing the environmental impact of policymakers, corporations, and institutions throughout the encyclopedia. Join us!

Cyrusc 20:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

History of paleontology article

Hi there. I was having a look at that section and since it puts the ideas in a historical context, I don't really think it violates undue weight. Tim Vickers 00:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. It deserves one sentence, that's it. I supported some creationist cruft being put into the article, but not a section on an idea which was an evolutionary dead end to the science of Paleontology. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:28, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that describing the history of a subject involves describing dead ends as well as fruitful hypotheses. After all, putting a paragraph on the history of the idea of spontaneous generation in an article about the history of microbiology wouldn't seem out of place. Tim Vickers 00:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Extinction template.

Hi,

Have you just noticed this issue in the last hour or two, or is it a persistent problem?

The reason I ask is that I've just broken the template in the process of unrelated improvements - I wasn't aware of width issues when it was working properly.

Verisimilus T 19:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I just noticed it right now. What it does is makes the article go wide by maybe 50%. So on a laptop, I have to scroll back and forth to read the article. I just noticed it because I'm starting back on editing K-T extinction. I deleted the template for now, but please put it back in when you get all of this figured out. BTW, it's a nice template, big improvement, save for the size issue. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:16, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Fixed! Would you mind checking it out now? It's in position at Extinction event. It looks fine to me, but there <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/navpop.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css&dontcountme=s">may well be compatability issues. What browser are you using? Verisimilus T 19:28, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I tried it, and it still messes up the formatting. Go ahead and compare the K-T event article with and without the template. With it, it cause the page to go really wide. I notice some background image, it looks like a Wikipedia watermark or something. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy draft

Please take another look at the draft and tell me if you think anything else should be changed. I think it's about ready. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 19:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry

I've e-mailed you, OM. Firsfron of Ronchester 01:28, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

K-T Extinction Event

OK, per your latest bout of personal attacks, I think I'll leave it to you to edit the article in future. For the record, if it was you who added the short statement and cite about the dinoflagellates, then I'm afraid that yes, you did misquote the reference, because that's not what it says. Everybody makes mistakes, there's no need to take it all so personally. You certainly have invested a great deal of time in this article, and I sense that you have a personal investment in its success. Good luck with it. Badgerpatrol 22:52, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Personal attacks? Give me a break. No personal investment on my part, but obviously you to ignore what I wrote. I want it to succeed, and I want people to help, because I am not a paleontologist. I prefer your help, but I don't prefer your attitude. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:42, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's what constitutes a personal attack per WP:NPA:

• Racial, sexual, homophobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, or other epithets (such as against disabled people) directed against another contributor. Disagreement over what constitutes a religion, race, sexual preference, or ethnicity is not a legitimate excuse.
• Using someone's affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views -- regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream or extreme.
• Threats of legal action.
• Threats of violence, particularly death threats.
• Threats of vandalism to userpages or talk pages.
• Threats or actions which expose other Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other persecution by government, their employer or any others. Violations of this sort may result in a block for an extended period of time, which may be applied immediately by any administrator upon discovery. Admins applying such sanctions should confidentially notify the members of the Arbitration Committee of what they have done and why.

Just in case someone is reading. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:14, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Oops

Sorry... I guess I got the tone of that all wrong. --Rrburke^(talk) 20:36, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

RLS

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n8/full/ng0807-938.html This is about the article on Restless Legs Syndrome, since it says that the genetics are unknown. That is not correct any more. Bunty.Gill 22:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Han and Shang

I think in this instance you'll see that the stable version of these articles, before Hong Qi Gong's recent edits used BC notation. I have checked a random selection of recent archived versions of the articles, and they have all shown this to be the case.

Hong Qi Gong is free, of course, to argue his case for this change on the talk pages, but so far he has failed to gain consensus for his proposed change. Until and unless that changes, the original form of the article should remain - and that is why I am reversing your reverts.

I should note that I do not wish to take sides and push any particular opinion of mine here. Were I to see Hong Qi Gong's main adversary, John Smith's, make a similarly undiscussed change of an article that is stable using BCE notation to one that uses BC, I would apply the same principle, and revert back to the BCE version. Foula 19:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I should add that I have seen your comment here. As noted above, I think you've made a factual mistake here, hence my reversion. Foula 19:12, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Christian POV does not belong in an article that has nothing to do with Christianity. John Smith is POV-pushing, pure and simple. The template for Chinese Dynasty figures uses only BCE/CE, and there should be consistency. Just because someone placed Christian POV in an article long ago, does not make it right. AND, I am not making a factual mistake. It is POV-pushing by John Smith's. Time to deal with it through channels I suppose. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:16, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Fourdee

If I thought that Fourdee eve intended to make a constructive contribution to Wikipedia, I would tolerate his racist views as I have other editors. But it is now evident tht he has no interest in wo9rking on articles but rahter will use talk pages as if hey are his personal blog. We HAVE policies that Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and that talk pages should be for constructive discusion, and he violates those policies all the time. That is my problem. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Censorship

I noticed some of your comments on AN/I about Fourdee. I think you've missed a crucial distinction here. I agree with you that Fourdee should be allowed to say whatever he wants, on his own website. Wikipedia is not his personal homepage, it's an encyclopedia. We're not intending to run a forum for free speech here- it's simply outside the scope of Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox. Friday (talk) 20:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Friday and SLrubenstein

OK, yes I do sort of agree with you, but only barely. He does not have the right to change articles into racist or anti-Semitic diatribes, especially in violation of WP:NPOV and a whole host of other wiki-rules. And if he persists in that behavior, screw him, toss him out of the project, get a community ban, and I'm there. But whatever he writes outside of the article mainspace, I guess I personally don't care. We all soapbox to some degree, so whether he does or not, doesn't bother me. I guess I edit too many of the science articles, and I see lots of soapboxing by both sides of the issue. It's part of the game. Fourdee's racist commentary on talk pages is perfectly acceptable to me (not in the sense that I agree, only in the sense that I ignore it), because if he were more subtle, he would keep his mouth shut, and put racist POV in articles, and we may not catch it. Everyone watches his BS, so we catch him. If he wants to rant about Jews, let him. I've heard worse, I've heard more subtle, and I have a thick skin. Free speech trumps everything IMHO, except in articles. But, like I said, if he tries to do this to articles, I'll be the first to ask for his banning. And once again, I'm going to shower thoroughly after voicing support for his right to state his disgusting racist POV. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree very strongly. If he were allowed to rant his views here it would both frighten away otehr editors (includinmg our Jewish and black contributors) as well as giving a terrible view of the project as a whole. We are all volunteers and need a nice, friendly atmosphere in which to work and with him that was clearly impossible. I am personally unwilling to tolerate rascist atatcks merely because I work here, SqueakBox 21:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Soapboxing is not part of the game. The only opinions relevant to talk pages are opinions about how to improve Wikipedia. Opinions about the world in general are out of scope, and are regularly pruned if they get out of hand. As for "Free speech trumps everything", absolutely not. It's way more accurate to say that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" trumps everything. If you see soapboxing on talk pages, remove it. Friday (talk) 22:54, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

It does give me pause personally to see racist views expressed anywhere on Wikipedia; on private pages, on talk pages, on main pages- anywhere. Of course some cranks will put them there. But that does not mean I have to like it. It reflects badly on all of us at Wikipedia to permit it. If someone wants to have a racist blog off site, then so be it. We have nothing to say about that, although we might not want to link to it, or link to it only in very special circumstances.--Filll 23:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I was looking over his comments, and honestly, I am unconvinced that he violated WP:SOAP or WP:NOT#BLOG. He is a racist. He lacks civility (though I am on principle opposed to the civility rules of this project, because one person's civility is another's normal and common mannerisms). He is disgusting. He shouldn't have been banned. But again, I am NOT going take up his cause. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:47, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

new policy

any thoughts about this? Slrubenstein | Talk 22:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your proposal, though I still contend he did not violate those issues, and was banned for being a racist. I think people throw around wiki-rules without actually reading them. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:49, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I think its more accurate to say people throw around policies without re-reading them, SqueakBox 00:54, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Possibly. I keep being accused of personal attacks, when I don't actually violate WP:NPA. Civility, all the time, but never NPA. So I uncivilly post the NPA rules in any response that I make when I'm so accused. However, I'm now concerned that I do violate WP:SOAP on my user page. I really ranted about soccer a while back, and some Man United twit berated me. I removed it because the last thing I'm going to do is piss off a bunch of drunk Englishmen. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:57, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Yep you dont want to piss off a drunken Englishman, lol. As I just posted to AN/I, and I'll rephrase, you can say you dont like me for being drunk or for loving football cos those would be personal choices (and I love alcohol much more than football) but dont slag me off for being English cos that is a matter in which I have no choice. Your user page isnt even vaguely offensive. Regards, SqueakBox 01:12, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey I like Englishmen. They made easy targets when we threw them out of our country (and that's about the limit of my patriotic soapbox). Oh but I hate their warm beer. And that driving on the wrong side of the road is quite annoying. And they owe the world for Benny Hill and Mr. Bean. And soccer. Hell, I'm going to be a English-racist starting today. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Err you mean football? Actually I live in Honduras and am learning my American, zee and all that, but driving on ther right is plain unnatural but fortunately as a cyclist here we can use both sides of the road. And yeah i like Americans too as it happens, SqueakBox 01:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:Jewish atheists CfD

Hi. Thanks for your note. You wrote:

• "I think the deletion is a bit silly."

I'm sorry to hear that, as I was the nominator.  :)

Seriously, though, if you examine this user's contributions, I hope you'd better understand my strong negative reaction. --Rrburke^(talk) 14:08, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Your edit: Alternative medicine

Good decision to remove that POV paragraph from the alternative medicine article. As I've done quite a lot of editing of that article recently, I decided to leave the fate of some of the other content (including that para) to other users so as not to take over. Hence, I'm glad you chose to do that. :) Davwillev 18:44, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Jim62sch

I suggest you read WP:UP#NOT and WP:SOAP. ELIMINATORJR 18:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Moreover, it's not appropriate to use warning templates, especially vandalism templates, for experienced users who are following written guidelines with their edits. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah whatever. It's vandalism of another page, attempted censorship, and quite rude. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:33, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, I suggest both of you check my contribution history and not tell me to go fuck myself again. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:34, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

But it's OK to tell me I'm vandalising pages? You really need to reel in that civility problem that you have. FYI, I'm a Brit who has major problems with the Iraq war myself, but I'm also an admin who needs to make sure that everyone is treated equally. ELIMINATORJR 00:46, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Navou

You have a solid history as a Wikipedian so I'm curious how you reached your decision about that RFA. I decided to make admin coaching a priority this year because the site needs more good sysops. Navou came to me six months ago and has been one of my most active and productive proteges. What particularly impresses me is his willingness to handle tough disputes where policy and content issues dovetail. There's a serious shortage of sysops who take on those cases and he does it well. He's demonstrated to me over the long run that he wants the tools for the right reasons and can be trusted with them. Perhaps his RC work turned you off? Durova^Charge! 18:22, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't like applicants that don't add to the project. I don't care about the admin tools, don't care about reverting vandalism, just care about building the project. A good admin needs to resolve issues, kick some ass when required, but add to the project through leadership. You're mentoring a follower, not a leader. I'm adamant that we need leadership in this project, not a bunch of janitors to clean up the mess. Navou is nothing but a janitor. Not useful to the project. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:21, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Those are harsh judgements very much at odds with my observations from half a year of coaching him. In your opinion, what constitutes adequate leadership? What prompts you to conclude that he falls short? Very few RFA candidates (or sysops for that matter) take the initiative to run an experimental dispute resolution venue. He's also been closing WP:CSN discussions for months, which is a bold way to participate at a controversial board. Durova^Charge! 02:41, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

So you're an expert on what constitutes a wonderful admin, and I don't. Thanks, I appreciate your kind assessment of my knowledge and understanding of human nature.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:38, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration request

- A request for arbitration involving you has been filed here. Please view the request, and add any statements you feel are necessary for the ArbCom to consider in deciding whether to hear the dispute. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 03:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

NOR

I don't mind at all, in fact I welcome it - but would you mind if I first run it by a few people who have been most vocal in the debates over NOR in the past couple of weeks? I want some time to tweak it, and then I would love your comments/edits. (It would just make it easier for me to keep track of changes) Slrubenstein | Talk 15:07, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Homeopathy lead

After some battle, I've managed to get the homeopathy lead oown to about half its old size. It might still be a little long, but I'm not sure what else to remove. (Ironically, I had just removed a third of it when you put up the tag - C'est la vie. Adam Cuerden ^talk 17:08, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

While I don't think the lead was ever too long, as it coincided perfectly with WP:LEAD], I won't oppose the recent changes to it as they might be a little clearer and have better flow. I however do want to point out one thing to OrangeMarlin. Please explain your edits on the talk page if they are disputed. If you add a tag to something or remove something or add something and someone else disputes it then you need to discuss it. You recently removed some material which I object being removed and I posted my reasons on the talk page of the article. So please be sure to respond to them so that we can reach a consensus. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 17:26, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Show me any rule that says I have to discuss tags. One tag I placed says specifically that an editor is concerned with the section. Quit owning this article. Step away. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:32, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

If you won't explain WHY you're concerned with the section then the tag needs to be removed. If you can't elaborate and give details on the problems of the section then there is no way to improve it since I have no idea what you're even concerned about. In such case the tag should be removed. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 17:38, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The fact that I put it there is good enough.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:11, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Why did you put it there? Please explain in detail so that I can know what you see wrong with it so that I can improve it. Otherwise it serves no purpose and must be removed. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 18:12, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S., The tag says "Please see the discussion on the talk page". If there is no discussion on the talk page then the tag is obsolete and serves no purpose. It's supposed to be used to notify new editors that it is being discussed, However you aren't discussing why exactly you placed it there nor are you giving details on how to improve it to get the tag removed. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 18:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, then join me in a 3RR battle please. Stop the ownership battle. It's one that you will lose. Oh fuck, you're wasting my time. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:17, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't engage in 3rr battles, so please don't invite me to do so. They aren't productive. I've already explained that I claim no ownership to the article as numerous other editors are contributing to it, I'm simply working hard on improving it and am making myself vocal, That's not ownership. And again, I will repeat myself, You can't keep a tag in the article without detailing the reason for it being there. That's not how it works. If you don't detail the reasons for it being there and the problems with the section then it serves no purpose. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 18:21, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Stop the incessant nagging. I've replied to your request. And yes you are showing all signs of ownership. This fucking chain of comments clearly points that out. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:26, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

As long as you continue to reply on the articles talk page, I won't remind you to do so. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 18:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

This edit alone, where Adam Cuerden fixed your writing, is proof enough of a high level of POV on your part. You made it appear that Hanneman was right. Of course, some of your writing is indecipherable, so how do we know if it's POV or just poorly written? I don't know. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:44, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

How did my writing make it appear that Hahnemann was right? Wikidudeman ^(talk) 14:40, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I think something might be wrong with your script....

Assuming that you use one, that is... I guessed as such, given the link you seem to be accidentally inserting into others talkpage comments... Thought you'd want to know. --SQL^{(Query Me!)} 07:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I was using some sort of popup program that left random script wherever I edited. I must be doing something wrong, so I removed the program. Again, thanks for pointing it out. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 15:51, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

It was Lupin popup tools. They work fine for me, You probably didn't end the code with the "//" under it. Try:

//
// [[User:Lupin/popups.js]]
importScript('User:Lupin/popups.js');
//
Wikidudeman ^(talk) 15:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm about to give up. I made your changes, now the popups are translucent. The text underneath the popup shows through the popup. I'm using a Mac with Safari, so it's probably an Steve Jobs unapproved script that causing problems.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 16:06, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

That's the problem then I have some other good scripts that you can use though if you want. Wikidudeman ^(talk) 18:08, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

K-T

Congrats are in order. --Filll 11:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

For what? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 12:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Surprise....--Filll 13:46, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

yeah I went to the article, and there it was. I am surprised. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 13:55, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

email

Are my emails about the administrative matter getting through? I am sort of surprised to have had no response to the last couple of requests. Am I missing something?--Filll 11:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what you're asking. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 12:42, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Katie passed!

Thanks for helping out as much as you have. This is a frustrating process, but now with one down, let me try a second one after sufficient drinking has been accomplished. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 12:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Congrats, OM. I wish I could have been more help. Firsfron of Ronchester 22:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey Firs, you did tons on this. We couldn't have gotten this done without you! OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:46, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

After a difficult GA/FA delivery Katie is born! Congrats to you and Firsfron. AshLin 03:27, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but OM did almost everything himself. My work on this was quite minor. I'm really glad to see his efforts paid off, though. Firsfron of Ronchester 19:06, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

Actually when I saw your contribution history and barnstars I figured there was some sensible explanation for your decision. In an ideal world I'd agree with you, but the Wikipedia where I edit has a chronic shortage of volunteers to address sneaky exploitation. After the WP:RFI board collapsed for lack of manpower I made a commitment to identify, coach, and nominate good people in this area. Have a look at this investigation for the type of report that catches my attention. Hu12 isn't a wordsmith - never was and probably never will be - but he's got the right stuff to be an outstanding wikisleuth. Virgil Griffith's WikiScanner has finally shown people how much we need sleuths. I do encourage my coaching students to spend time in mainspace and I prefer if they earn at least one GA before asking for a mop, partly because of sympathy with your perspective and partly because I've seen strange and unworkable ideas from editors who headed into Wikipedia namespace without enough field experience writing articles. We've all got our strengths and our weaknesses. Durova^Charge! 14:11, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's the problem with some of the applicants lately--they lack experience. Look at some of the arguments going on with regards to image deletion and wiki-lawyering by a few individuals. Admins who step into that minefield are getting abused or are quitting. It's because some of those admins lack experience in establishing consensus and resolving conflict. Experienced editors who are involved in contentious articles learn what to do and what not to do. I don't mind editors like Jim62sch, even though they are this side of civility, because they have tremendous experience in dealing with arguments and bad faith discussions. Though Navou may work out in the end, what troubles me is that he/she has spent so much time being rather vanilla, it's hard to ascertain how they actually can help the project.

But yes, we do need janitors on this project. But we need skill full negotiators and leaders much more. I want to demand both. So, let me see an editor who got into a battle over an important issue, stood their ground, pulled together a consensus, and made the project better. That's a great admin. Who cares about violating WP:CIVIL or WP:AGF every once in a while? We are getting mediocre instead. And no, I do not know if Navou is mediocre or the best ever--but I'd be happier with a lot more experience over a wider range of contentious and difficult issues in both mainspace and in talkspace. Oh, and i demand at least one FA. I nearly quit this project over my first FA. I'm still recovering. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

And...

Oh, and this is also incivil. Please show some caution William M. Connolley 11:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm an experienced editor with no blocks. Please show some caution. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 12:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Just because you are experienced with no blocks doesn't mean that your comment wasn't incivil. Your response to William is also inappropriate. Majorly (talk) 16:39, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

This is the second time that you've attacked me. And please indicate in what way the above response was uncivil. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Second? I don't see any attacks, just a reasonable warning. Mimicking in your response is what I meant. Majorly (talk) 17:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but this comment was rude and #1. Above was rude and #2. William requires a slap on the hand for his being an involved admin and blocking someone. In both cases, you attacked me without all the facts in hand. In #1, you made no effort to look at my consistent voting patterns on RfA's. On #2, you appeared to (and I'm going to make a minor good faith effort here) not make an effort to examine the facts behind my arguments with William. In both cases, your response was not balanced to my viewpoint. So that's why I feel I've been attacked twice by you in a week, and these attacks came out of the blue, since I have never seen you until #1 occurred (and that really doesn't matter, since we just don't cross paths I assume). OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:54, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Your nomination of Jim just goes to show how inconsistent you are. If you think I'm attacking you, please report me to an administrator who will deal with my behaviour immediately. Majorly (talk) 18:23, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't, as I explained to Durova (publicly I might add). Jim admonishes vandals (the janitor side) and develops article (the leadership side). I expect both. Please read my comments here and here which I believe outline my feelings on RfA's. I am highly consistent. Furthermore, I don't complain to admins. It's not my style. I point out what I see to the editor directly, and if you choose to ignore it, dismiss it, or accept it, feel free to choose one or all. Oh, just in case you look through my thousands of edits, and choose to think I am inconsistent, I do file sockpuppetry charges against those who evade blocks or bans (I just find that offensive), and I participate in RfC's or ANI's with respect to editors and/or admins who are abusive. You are not. WMC is not (at this time, but he bears watching).OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Alright, sorry to have bothered you. Majorly (talk) 18:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

No bother. I appreciated this conversation. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Abusive edit summaries

Hi there. The recent set of edit summaries in Homeopathy that contain profane and abusive langauge are unacceptable and constitute personal attacks on other editors. Acting in this way is disruptive and will lead to sanctions against you. If you feel yourself losing it, please step away from the keyboard! Tim Vickers 16:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Tim, personal attacks? On whom? Certainly not you, because I'd be quite upset with myself if I had ever attacked you on anything.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, sorry to butt in, but it looks like you're hearing from a couple of pretty reasonable folks who are concerned about some of your recent comments. Without judging those comments or throwing around policies, I do get the sense that you're getting a bit stressed. This is a very common occurrence, particularly among editors like ourselves who work on controversial topics and deal with difficult situations and editors. I've been there. Again, without judging your previous comments, let me add my voice to those that suggest that it's a good time to take a deep breath and recharge your tolerance for the inevitable by-products of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I think I'd be remiss if I didn't add my voice to those suggesting that cooling off would be a good idea. MastCell ^Talk 17:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not stressed. Just pretty upset with the level of censorship around here. I'm making a point that censoring is unacceptable. And I think civility is a judgement call. I'm a Californian, and I consider it uncivil for someone to not let me change lanes after turning on my signal--around here, we allow people to do that. In New York, turning on your signal is license to block you from changing lanes. In Utah, giving someone the finger for blocking your lane-change might get you arrested. It's unfair that one admin can block someone based on their perception of what is or is not profanity, is or is not civility and is or is not a personal attack. These are judgement calls that harm a person's <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/navpop.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css&dontcountme=s">reputation. BUT, I will cut the profanity, because my point isn't being made, and though I'm concerned that some admins are NOT reasonable, you and Tim Vickers certainly are. I will heed the warning. But please don't worry about my stress level--I'm pissed at the what goes on around here (try looking at the image deletion wars), but I guess violating WP:POINT is not worth the trouble. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Whenever I feel that POV-pushers, religious nuts and plain off-the-wall weirdness are upsetting me, I just go off and edit articles that have absolutely no interest to such people, such as Ellman's reagent or Electron-transferring flavoprotein. Keep in mind that there's no point in getting worked up about stuff here - it's just an encyclopedia. Tim Vickers 23:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Believe it or not, back when Evolution was going through the FAC process (that you did a great job leading), and I had gotten tired of the 28th troll saying that Evolution was JUST a theory, I went off and started to edit Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event because I just thought that it wouldn't even be close to being contentious. It was in miserable shape. First, I had to move away from the various theories of what caused the extinction and just write about the extinction. Then, I got it to GA. Then the hard work (and contentious editing) to get it to FA. Now I'm going to work on Minoan eruption--except there is a battle out there in the academic world on how to date the eruption (C14 and everything else give it one date, Egyptologists think it was 100 years later--if the eruption is actually 100 years earlier than the archeologists believe, it sort of blows up a whole bunch of Egyptian timelines). So, I'm just to intellectually curious to edit say an article on the UEFA cup, because it has to be very dull and uninteresting to the English Wikipedia audience.  :) But seriously, thanks for your advice. I won't let the fools get under my collar. But I really was trying to make a point.  :) OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

If you're interested, given your medical background, we could definitely use your help at WP:CLINMED. Right now I've been meaning to work on pancreatic cancer (especially given increased traffic in the wake of Pavarotti's death) and chronic myelogenous leukemia, which is about 52% of the way to FA (I think). Anyway, neither is likely to be controversial, so if you need a break we could definitely use your help. MastCell ^Talk 23:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd be interested. But as for noncontroversial, just keep away the editor who writes "if you eat 7 kg of peaches with 1 l of cheap red wine, pancreatic cancer will be cured. See, Journal of Alternative and Sub Eastern Pharmacology." I'll proceed to blow out my right coronary artery and die. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Break to move on to another topic

Must agree that's wise, however infuriating the nonsense. Speaking of which, could I draw on your expertise to confirm that this answer is correct? Well it made me laugh ;) .... dave souza, talk 18:36, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It is infuriating, but when Tim and MastCell have to slap me around, then I have to stop. But can I just growl a bit now and again? Please?  :) OK, to answer your question, every time I read this kind of comment, it goes to those old Creationist canards. He's confusing Abiogenesis with evolution. Right now, we don't have a good handle on what started life, but there are some very healthy theories. In addition, through the use of a confusing logic, including the use of big words, he's trying to convince us that macro and micro evolution are different. Again. Your reply was good. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:54, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Worrying about predicting individual outcomes in a statistical process! Does "a simple Wiener Process" mean that the writer is a sausage? Oops, excuse my growl... dave souza, talk 19:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

restless legs syndrome

stop being an idiot Bunty.Gill 07:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Let's define "idiot"--1. an utterly foolish or senseless person. 2. Psychology. a person of the lowest order in a former classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25. Since a "foolish or senseless" person would be wholly subjective, it's probably a personal attack on me. On the other hand, unless I've fooled 4 different universities, my medical school, and several medical boards, my IQ probably ranks quite a bit above 25. Therefore, I would suggest a good reading of WP:CIVIL and the aforementioned rules on personal attacks. What so you? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 16:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Starting with RLS, but fascinated by your userpage

I first noticed you with your comment on unsourced approaches to RLS, but thoroughly enjoyed your userpage, and, if you don't mind, grabbed a fair number of userboxes. I suppose I now need to create user boxes for interests in infectious disease/antibiotics/infection control, disaster management, and medical use of psychotropic drugs.

This is just a friendly "gee, we seem to hae a lot in common." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hcberkowitz (talk • contribs) 17:13, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

3 revert rule

yeah you just use your buddies to get around the three revert rule. lol — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.104.22.182 (talk)

It's called consensus, and I advise you not to revert again, a report has been filed. ornis (t) 08:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant!!!!!

I feel the same way on so many of your views. You are truly brilliant in your writing, and hopefully others will also. Jodi Justice —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.186.74.186 (talk) 23:08, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

CBU

OM, please explain how my latest edit at California Biblical University and Seminary is POV. Seriously, I don't even HAVE a POV on this issue, or school, or guy, or whatever! All I did was simply moved one paragraph up to make more sense in context; corrected some poor grammar; and modified one word in an uncited section. Please, before you go reversing my edit, assume good faith. This article is incredibly poorly-written, and my edits are helping to clean it up. Thanks. --profg 18:48, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Your useless post on my talk page.

Please do not add commentary or your own personal analysis to Wikipedia articles, as you did to Symbiosis. Doing so violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy and breaches the formal tone expected in an encyclopedia. If you would like to experiment, use the sandbox. Thank you. OrangeMarlin ^Talk•

Can you explain your self- this seems like a very petty post and its intention seems only to be to intimidate.Hardyplants 16:21, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it happened inadvertently. — [ aldebaer⁠ ] 00:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)