User talk:The Four Deuces/Archives/2014/May

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jews_and_Communism_(2nd_nomination)

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jews_and_Communism_(2nd_nomination). Thanks. MarkBernstein (talk) 21:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

American politics arbitration evidence

Hi. You contributed to a recent RFC about this topic area. This message is to notify you that the arbitration proceedings at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics are underway, and evidence about all disruptive edits to articles within this topic is being accepted at the relevant case page. If you wish to submit evidence for the committee to consider in reaching its decision, please do so now. The evidence phase of the case ends soon, and evidence submitted after the deadline may not be considered. Further advice on submitting evidence, and what evidence the committee will accept, is linked at the top of the evidence page. Please contact me or the other drafting arbitrator if you require more time to submit evidence. Thank you. For the Arbitration Committee, AGK [•] 14:12, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom of course

An arb decided that there is sufficient evidence to sanction me for American Politics (broadly construed) it seems. I find the "evidence" submitted to be a tad inadequate for the purpose, but that arb was the one who submitted the "evidence" in the Tea Party case, so I cannot say I am really surprised. The same arb proposed the "kill them all" final solution there. [1] shows the dramatis personae and evidence. I think you recall the "discussion" about ArbCom and the Tea Party case? Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:24, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

We'll see what happens. TFD (talk) 15:48, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Question

Hallo The Four Deuces
and good morning! last year you participated into a discussion on the Fascism article about the insertion in the article of a citation from the authorised english translation of "La dottrina del Fascismo", a seminal article written by Mussolini and Gentile on the Enciclopedia Italiana about their movement. The translator boldy :-) translated the italian sentence "Fascismo, secolo della destra" in "Fascim, century of the left". Your intervention closed the discussion and we reached consensus, so that we could remove from the article this sentence. Now, after that the users that pushed this addition put it in other articles, and also created more of them, inserting everywhere this sentence, talking about a "controversy",but without giving sources: these articles are Controversies over Italian Fascism’s political placement, Jane Soames, this one (submission declined) and, last but not least The Doctrine of Fascism. About the first one, I would like to point out that I welcome articles dealing with the different interpretation of fascism, but not using OR. I tried to remove the sentence from the latter article (BTW, the sentence with the "right" meaning was already in the lead, so now we have in the text twice the same citation with opposite meaning), invoking the consensus reached on the Fascism article talk page and writing my opinion on the talk page, but with no effect: several users and IPs (the same users logged out?) reverted me. After two reverts of mine I opened a request for semiprotection of the Doctrine of Fascism article, hoping to block at least the IPs, but it has been declined. What do you think about all that? I think that here we have at least WP:UNDUE, WP:POVFORK and WP:OR at the nth power... BTW, I went to the main library of my city, and found several translation of the 1930s in German and French of this article, each one with "destra" correctly translated. Thanks, Alex2006 (talk) 06:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I have edited these articles since your posting. TFD (talk) 02:37, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks! If they will continue, I will go to ANI (Never done before in my life... :-)) Alex2006 (talk) 03:44, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Golden Wiki award

		The Golden Wiki
		Dear TFD, Wikipedia owes you a huge collective thank you for researching the origins of the horrid "Jews & Communism" article and bringing about its well-deserved final demise. Thank you so much!! Your consistent rejection of its premises and clear recognition that it was pseudo-scholarship and your fearless first nomination of it for deletion and never wavering from your highly principled reasoning served as an intellectual and moral beacon in what at some points became an "insane world" by those defending the indefensible. May you go from strength to strength. Your sincerely, IZAK (talk) 11:02, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, IZAK. Much appreciated. TFD (talk) 00:24, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

It is my great pleasure to show appreciation. It is a great privilege for Wikipedia to have editors and intellectuals of your caliber. IZAK (talk) 21:05, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

A word of thanks

Hi! I just wanted to leave a word of thanks for this, and to say that I hope you won't take my talk-page comments as any kind of criticism (it occurred to me that they could be read in that way). Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:52, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. TFD (talk) 02:43, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Molyneux

At Talk:Stefan Molyneux#Survey, you wrote "he wrote about philosophers in his MA thesis, but there has never published anything". Have you seen the list here User:Netoholic/Molyneux#Primary source? He's authored 8 books on various philosophical areas (political, ethical, and atheist), had articles published on multiple sites, has 1500+ videos, and 2700+ total podcasts... altogether a sizable amount of output. He's unconventional, but no less a philosopher. -- Netoholic @ 05:01, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Making youtube videos where he explains basic philosophy is not the same as publishing papers in philosophic journals. Most of his opinions on current events etc. are not really philosophy, just opinions on current events. We do not call everyone who has an opinion column a philosopher. TFD (talk) 14:49, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I think you're artificially minimizing the impact of his videos (since he's made 1500+ of them, has 160k subscribers and 32 million+ views). Even ignoring that, his writing has been cited journals/theses. Also, all philosophy I guess could be minimized to "opinion" if you want, but that seems like a narrow view. Opinions about the nature of politics, ethics, and the universe... backed by logic, reason, consistency, and empiricism... and then formulated into written or spoken appearances, is philosophy. --Netoholic @ 19:10, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

That is not the definition of philosophy. No more than 30 or 40 thousand people have listened to them. I suggest you listen to the entire series and determine whether what he normally talks about can be considered philosophy (by his definition) and whether his talk is original philosophy or merely an introduction to philosophy. Has he come up with any original theories on causation, the mind-body problem or determinism, or merely outlined the views of philosophers? TFD (talk) 19:45, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the series you're refering to was his 18-part introduction? Yeah that's all it was, an introduction to people new to philosophy... not really a major explanation from him. On the topic of determinism, he's made quite a few videos and participated in a debate - see here. His deep-dives into new ideas in philosophy have been put to book form. One was his attempt to tackle the is-ought problem and to define an objective standard for morality called Universally Preferable Behaviour (which he admits in the introduction is a long-shot considering the long-standing question). He's also written a book on strong atheism vs agnosticism called Against the Gods. -- Netoholic @ 20:35, 30 May 2014 (UTC)