User talk:Plumbago/Archive 8

Admin?

Hi there, I'd like to nominate you as an admin. If I nominated you, would you accept? Tim Vickers (talk) 21:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tim. Thanks for your vote of confidence! I'm afraid, however, that now's not a good time for me. I'm (rapidly) coming up on the end of my latest post-doc, and am going to be busy sorting myself out for at least a couple of months. I'm also not feeling especially wiki-worthy at the moment, not having created any new articles for ages, and having gotten myself stuck defending stupid articles like Cydonia Mensae from loons!  ;-) Anyway, I really appreciate your offer, and will definitely take you up on it, but just not now! Best regards, --Plumbago (talk) 12:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, drop me a note sometime. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:03, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Survey request

Hi, Plumbago I need your help. I am working on a research project at Boston College, studying creation of medical information on Wikipedia. You are being contacted because you have been identified as an important contributor to one or more articles.

Would you will be willing to answer a few questions about your experience? We've done considerable background research, but we would also like to gather the insight of the actual editors. Details about the project can be found at the user page of the project leader, geraldckane. Survey questions can be found at geraldckane/medsurvey. Your privacy and confidentiality will be strictly protected!

The questions should only take a few minutes. I hope you will be willing to complete the survey, as we do value your insight. Please do not hesitate to contact me or Professor Kane if you have any questions. Thank You, BCproject (talk) 16:21, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. I've e-mailed in my response as requested. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 16:53, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi

Hi Plumbago, per our earlier exchange over at the Garbage Patch (hmm that does sound rather odd), I will continue to try to bring the article up to a higher standard. I have contacted the Algalita Foundation and am wondering if you are interested in collaborating on this rewrite (I am not an oceanographer, so a seasoned eye would be appreciated). I see from the above you are busy, but any modest role you might be able to play would certainly be welcomed. I am also trying to rope User:Casliber into assistance. Eusebeus (talk) 18:35, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi Eusebeus. Sorry for my absence. I'm still rather busy at present, but I'll try to have a look at the article for you. I should have some time next week. Best regards, --PLUMBAGO 16:31, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Tx. There is no rush: the improvements I am making have all the speed of molasses sliding uphill on a cold day. Eusebeus (talk) 20:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:AvP M02 AYool.jpg)

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Trilobite renewal

Hey, good to see some tidying up being done... I'm doing something similar via my sandbox. If you're going to sort out the references or anything else you can rip from there if you want, might save time. Some extra images that seem useful too. Cheers Psuedomorph (talk) 12:51, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Wow. Your sandbox version's really good. I'll certainly look there the next time I edit Trilobite! Are you planning on merging your edits with the main article soon? Knowing my usual form, I'll probably leave Trilobite for ages now, so there's no rush, but it does seem like a merge would be really useful. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 13:19, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Got most of it over onto the main page. Still need to find something interesting about the Pygidium tho... Mode of life next up I guess. Psuedomorph (talk) 19:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Oxford Wikimania 2010 and Wikimedia UK v2.0 Notice

Hi,

As a regularly contributing UK Wikipedian, we were wondering if you wanted to contribute to the Oxford bid to host the 2010 Wikimania conference. Please see here for details of how to get involved, we need all the help we can get if we are to put in a compelling bid.

We are also in the process of forming a new UK Wikimedia chapter to replace the soon to be folded old one. If you are interested in helping shape our plans, showing your support or becoming a future member or board member, please head over to the Wikimedia UK v2.0 page and let us know. We plan on holding an election in the next month to find the initial board, who will oversee the process of founding the company and accepting membership applications. They will then call an AGM to formally elect a new board who after obtaining charitable status will start the fund raising, promotion and active support for the UK Wikimedian community for which the chapter is being founded.

You may also wish to attend the next London meet-up at which both of these issues will be discussed. If you can't attend this meetup, you may want to watch Wikipedia:Meetup, for updates on future meets.

We look forward to hearing from you soon, and we send our apologies for this automated intrusion onto your talk page! Addbot (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Ozymandias

I noticed you deleted the picture. I know it is messy, but it is the only picture I could find that has him wearing a mask. If you could submit a better one where he's wearing his full costume please do. I'm disputing the deletion. Inconsistant with other articles is unfortunate but not enough of a reason to remove it, because they could have additional pictures added too if they are differently enough. The other characters maintain a consistent appearance whereas Ozy doesn't (removes his mask). Tyciol (talk) 21:14, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi there Tyciol. Aside from the messy nature of the picture, I'm not convinced that the presence of the small mask justifies the additional image (from a copyright standpoint; as well as an aesthetic one). My experience with video game articles suggests that there are a dedicated band of editors that police copyright issues, and they might take exception to an extra image that adds little to the article. A much stronger case could be made for including pictures of the other characters out of costume, or pre-transformation in the case of Doctor Manhattan, since they actually appear quite different (though, obviously, the Silk Spectre's costume doesn't change her appearance much). Regarding adding a better quality image, while I've a scanner at home, I'm reluctant to break the spine of my copy of Watchmen to get a good quality image from it!  ;-) Anyway, if you still want to add it (or a better quality alternative), I'd suggest placing it (left-justified) in the Powers and abilities section, so that it doesn't interfere with the article's lead sections. Hope this helps! Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 09:21, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Left-wing really means "reality-based"?

Hello, I wanted to reply to the content of what you said in opposition to the "Left-wing bias watch" proposal, which proposal I have now withdrawn due to the offering of a better suggestion. On that page you wrote-

"While the proposal is made in good faith, that Aletheon raises global warming as an example is, to my mind, indicative of what's frequently really meant by "liberal, left-wing", which is "reality-based". This sort of labelling goes on all the time in "controversial" science articles, where scientific consensus is repeatedly tarred as some sort of "liberal" or "left-wing" conspiracy rather than the product of literally millions of hours of careful thought by experts. Anyway, enough ranting. I can't see how this proposal will help the WP. While there may be articles where "liberal, left-wing" bias dominates, my experience in science articles makes me very skeptical that this proposal is helpful."

And to this I reply --- While I do not doubt that a lot of sober scientific analysis went into the current theory on global warming, I do doubt whether politically motivated people such as Al Gore really understand that science in a thorough way. I also doubt whether such politically motivated people aren't simply using the speculation about global warming to scare up votes and further their own careers. I also would like to point out that my concerns about left-wing bias on wikipedia had nothing to do with scientific claims which are "reality-based." For instance, I am not a creationist, neither am I a right-winger in the currently used sense of the word. I believe your comment that "left-wing" is commonly equivalent to "reality-based" is indefensible. Aletheon (talk) 14:03, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Aletheon. To clarify, I don't mean that "liberal/left-wing" = "reality", I mean that things that are often labelled as "liberal/left-wing" are sometimes more accurately labelled as "reality-based". I was thinking of "hot button" topics like global warming and creationism, but there are also others where the scientific consensus is discounted as merely "one opinion", and a scientific fringe [*] is presented as reasonable dissent, worthy of equal-time. Furthermore, I find it rather interesting that the scientific consensus is rarely, if ever, described by anyone as "conservative/right-wing" in quite the same way. I'm sure that there are sociologists out there for whom this is a key concern, but I won't add my speculations here. Anyway, these observations make me somewhat wary of efforts to identify and label political bias in science-related and other articles, but I can well appreciate that this isn't black and white. I hope this explains my remarks better. Best regards, --PLUMBAGO 14:50, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

[*] Which is less than even a fringe in the case of creationism - there is simply no "creationist science" out there.

I'm curious why you would choose to describe whatever the current scientific consensus is as determining a "reality-based" point of view. Consensus among any group of people is not determinative of reality in any sense, unless you mean "consensus reality," which I doubt you intended. Surely it isn't a novel point to note that many of the discoveries or demonstrative proofs which have advanced the general pool of human knowledge have broken what was then the consensus point of view-- I have in mind such events as the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Perhaps you view what is called "scientific" knowledge as a special class of knowledge, immune to the skewing influence of personal beliefs and preferences? I think you will say yes-- that scientific knowledge counteracts beliefs adopted due to religious dogma and ignorance in general. However, I would reply to this that observation of experience only corrects the prevailing premise if this prevailing premise is itself open to being questioned. There are plenty of examples of so-called scientific pursuit being used to merely justify foregone conclusions-- the global warming speculation being only the most recent example. A good recent counter-example to this would be the findings in physics relating to general relativity, which seem to violate Euclidean (consensus) geometry. By this I mean that Euclidean geometry has been the foregone conclusion that nearly every physicist adopted without question. Were they entitled to adopt Euclidean geometry habitually, merely because every other physicist had done the same (that is, because it was the prevailing consensus)? No. Consensus among any group of people is no reliable substitute for reality itself. Aletheon (talk) 14:59, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Aletheon. As a professional scientist, I'm well aware that I only ever deal in approximations to reality (frequently very bad, but tractable, ones), and that today's widely accepted "truths" may be completely overthrown by tomorrow. However, I am also aware that the scientific method is the best approach for narrowing the gap between base reality and our approximations, and naturally view scientific knowledge as somehow "special". But I certainly wouldn't mistake it as infallible, and no scientist that I know does. And, yes, you're right - consensus among people is no substitute for reality, but if that consensus is the "best guess" at reality, it's probably the one to (provisionally) go with. "Guesses" taken by others that don't draw on the widest range of observational data (and which, suspiciously, confirm comfortable "truths") are surely no-one's idea of a good bet.

Regarding consensus, you may be misunderstanding how this is achieved in the scientific community. The scientific consensus on a topic is not the product of some agreement reached by genius scientists and passed to their underlings. Scientific consensus is actually achieved through the dynamic competition of ideas, with congruence with observational data as the gold standard. For individual scientists, the kudos (and, potentially, financial rewards) to be gained from overturning "sacred cows" is extremely high. Any such "cow" that survives and prospers does so not through mere patronage, but because is it able to see off waves of less successful alternatives (where success is agreement with reality).

Picking a specific example that appears close to your heart, scientists involved in climate-related work (and I'm sort-of one of these) do not necessarily have an overwhelming investment in anthropogenic climate change. I'm certain that many, if not most, would actually prefer there to be no such phenomenon, since that would free their time up to study more fundamental or interesting topics. Strangely enough, sorting out problems created by technology is not high on the list of sexy science topics for many people. Unfortunately, when observational evidence keeps pouring in, and our models that incorporate this keep making alarming predictions about the future, it's difficult not to have attention, both pure science and funding, directed this way. And, returning to my previous point, that anthropogenic climate change is the community's consensus is in spite of years of unsuccessful attempts to explain observations in other ways [*].

Anyway, this all started because I suggested that some (note: not all) labelling of topics as "liberal/left-wing" could be more reasonably changed to "reality-based". I hope that the above clarifies this for you. Sorry that it's so long-winded. Best regards, --PLUMBAGO 07:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

[*] Which should hardly come as a surprise since, in large part, the fundamental basis for anthropogenic climate change has been around for more than a century.

Thanks (re. Nature journal article)

Thanks for fixing up the mission statement info. 75.45.101.98 (talk) 09:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

No worries - thanks for bringing it to my attention! I'd never have spotted the mismatch myself. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 09:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:Xen halflife 07 AYool.jpg)

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Orphaned non-free media (Image:Xen halflife 10 AYool.jpg)

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Orphaned non-free media (Image:Black Mesa entrance AYool.jpg)

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OMG reply

Me too. I devote many happy hours to defending the likes of Alister McGrath and John Polkinghorne from vandalism. Hello again, BTW. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 08:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Ocean Acidification Image

Hi - I'm wondering if you have (or are willing to make) a 2048x1024 (or better, 4096x2048) rectangular cylindrical projection of the ocean acidification image you posted (and as far as I can tell, created)? If you didn't create it, can you direct me to the creator? We have a couple of spherical display systems that I'd love to use this on at our non-profit science center. thanks. Evildonut (talk) 21:49, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Evildonut. I can almost certainly do this for you. I'll have a look in work tomorrow. If you can send me an e-mail I'll send the graphics directly to you. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 22:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Economic Freedom

Hi, Plumbago. Would you mind taking another look at Economic Freedom. All attempts to include any reference to views other than those of the Heritage Institute are being reverted by a user with a severe case of WP:OWN. Rather than engage in edit warring, I'm trying to get some fresh perspectives on this.JQ (talk) 11:57, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi JQ. I've had a look, but must confess to being way out of my depth. The changes you've been making to the article appear sensible to me, but at the same time the current version of the article (which is sans your changes) also reads OK to me. As I've no background in economics, I'm loathe to suggest which is the more accurate representation of the field. Certainly, while the current draft presents a very "free market" interpretation, it's considerably less biased than other articles I've occasionally comes across (which certainly isn't an argument to leave it as it is!).

All that said, a quick poke around the Web of Science finds the term "economic freedom" a not infrequent phrase in paper titles (101 with this exact phrase, let alone those that include it in the abstract), and there's certainly a body of work our there that might inform the article. To give a single (and possibly biased) example, I quickly came across an article by someone called John Carter (Public Choice, 2006) that empirically examines the relationship between "economic freedom" and "economic equality", and which sounded like it tied in with the more recent comments by Vision Thing (basically, Carter seemed to find negative correlations that contradicted earlier analyses).

Anyway, at this stage, I'm probably not going to be of much use to you. If I had more time (ha!) I'd look around more of the papers my preliminary trawl pulled up (not least because I trust the journals that WoS includes a whole lot more than a bunch of cites from the CATO institute!). What I saw suggested that the concept of "economic freedom" isn't as monolithic as the article suggests, but that's just my first impression (and, to be honest, may just reflect my biases). Sorry I can't be of any more help just now. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 15:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Noah's Ark

Did you even read the two policy sections that I pasted before you made your comment? The policy is clear, and Nathan is wrong based on that policy. Cheers, T Berg _{Drop a Line ޗ pls} 16:43, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Read, understood and discounted. None of the policy quoted thusfar directly informs this particular discussion. One of the key aspects of any encyclopaedia article is surely to provide some sort of category description for included topics (i.e. what is it?). The term "myth" is the simply the most appropriate for describing this sort of topic. I can imagine alternatives, "religious/sacred narrative/story", but I suspect that whatever is used will, at some point, become synonymous for some people with "fiction". Given that many of these narratives depart from what is discerned objectively from history (in the broad sense that includes natural history), this seems inevitable to me. Anyway, we're clearly not making any headway with this discussion, so I've tried to solicit additional viewpoints. Best regards, --PLUMBAGO 10:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Cydonia mensae

Hi. You're right in that two of the three references do not mention D&M pyramid by name. However, first one (the one currently being number 7) does so on the picture. The other two shows the images of Cydonia taken by different spacecraft, without mentioning D&M pyramid by name. If they have to, as per some wikipedia rule, I don't have any objection to that--Logos5557 (talk) 19:40, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah-ha. I hadn't spotted that (despite it being the first thing that one sees on the page!).  :-) Anyway, I've tidied up the references so that they cite the correct source (Malin Space Science Systems rather than NASA) and article title. I've removed the two that show the pyramid but neither name it nor talk about it. I don't think they're necessary here, and we shouldn't overburden the article with multiple references for essentially the same thing (many statements in the article could be similarly referenced multiple times). I've left the Bad Archaeology reference because it explains why it's called the D&M Pyramid. Anyway, thanks for uploading the images - it's good that the article has a bit more than just the Face in it. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 09:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

RFC at Talk:Noah's Ark

Since you've contributed to the recent discussion at Talk:Noah's Ark, this is just a courtesy note to let you know a RFC has been filed here. Thanks, Ben (talk) 22:38, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

List of Common Misconceptions

Thanks for the input - the person with whom I was arguing was incorrect, but you were certainly right about the scope of the article. Pwhitwor (talk) 21:31, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Pwhitwor. Thanks for your message. Although I may have been correct on this occasion, judging an article's scope is an easy thing to get wrong. I find that when one first visits an article, one usually has a pretty good idea about what's important and what's not. But if one edits it for a while, it's very easy to lose perspective, especially if most of the time you're fending off vandals. That tends to lower one's tolerance levels somewhat, such that even sensible edits by other editors (who may, of course, be visiting for the first time and have better perspective!) are subjected to an unnecessary level of scrutiny. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 08:46, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Carbon Equivalance principle

Hi, The science is clear the land and sea are equally productive in a steady state ecology. Just ondering why you would delete that on Primary_production and Carbon Cycle. I have a nice image which I could upload. Was the explanation unclear? [sparky@navpoint.com]

Hi there. I had a number of reservations about your edits. Firstly, the concept that you identify, the Carbon Equivalance principle, has no article describing it, nor appears to be a scientifically understood term (at least, not judging from a quick Google search). To this end, it fails our notability standards. If it is a notable concept, please write an article about it first, being sure to establish its notability with reliable sources. Secondly, while, yes, there is a broad equivalence between land and sea at this time this may just be coincidence. I'm unaware of any hard and fast rules that link land and sea productivity. I can certainly imagine that there could be a connection, but given that different processes apply on land and in the sea, it's not obvious that there should be a particularly strong relationship. Finally, linking your personal e-mail address into the article is strongly suggestive of advertising, and Wikipedia does not exist to serve this purpose. Anyway, my apologies if I seemed a little brusque in deleting your material, but it's important that the only material we present is notable and reliably sourced. If you've any more questions, please just drop me a line here. Best regards, --PLUMBAGO 18:16, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Pubmed

Please see comment here:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons#PubMed_listings

Obliged if your could explain, please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.11.86.4 (talk) 11:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)