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April 20

Why did User:Deleet get banned from Wikipedia?

Speculation on a WP:BLP at best.--WaltCip (talk) 11:42, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I'm not really sure if this is the correct place to ask this question; so, if someone here knows a better place to ask this question, please point me to it. Anyway, though, here goes:

Why did User:Deleet (a.k.a. Emil Kirkegaard) get banned from Wikipedia? As in, what exactly did he do that was improper, unacceptable, and/or over the line? I'm asking because I know that he's a prominent independent researcher in regards to intelligence research and especially the extremely controversial race and intelligence question. So, I'm wondering what exactly it was that actually got him banned from Wikipedia. The guy did previously get at least one Wikipedia Barnstar, so clearly someone on here thought that he was doing constructive and/or productive research. Futurist110 (talk) 20:50, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As the block was by the Arbitration Committee you will have to ask them. BTW barnstars are a nice way for editors to acknowledge each others work and nothing more. MarnetteD|Talk 20:58, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Or you could try asking AGK (talk · contribs), who indeffed that user on February 21, 2019.[1] However, sometimes users will get banned for stuff that the WMF doesn't want made public. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:33, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks; I have now wrote a message on this Wikipedia user's (AGK's) talk page. Let's see if he will ever actually respond to me. Futurist110 (talk) 03:03, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This editor was very active in articles and content relating to the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, which was subject to discretionary sanctions. He focussed on performance gaps in intelligence tests between different ethnicities, such as here in one of his last edits, and tended to be rather polemic in his approach, which may have led him afoul of the editing restrictions. His subpage User:Deleet/intelligence research FAQ, since deleted, was considered inappropriate. But I don't know what was the straw that broke the camel's back. --Lambiam 00:20, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what this polemicism consisted of. Futurist110 (talk) 03:03, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The user page was deleted after he was banned though with some claiming it contained more synthesis (WP:OR) or cherry-picked sources than was good for a FAQ. Rmhermen (talk) 00:40, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If he was pushing a racist agenda, that would be sufficient to get him booted. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:55, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The word "racist" can be overused at times, though. For instance, was Arthur Jensen a racist? He was certainly very open to the hereditarian hypothesis in regards to racial average IQ gaps, but at the same time, as far as I know, he also opposed things such as discriminating against people based on their race and mistreating people based on their race (something that he was quite vocal and explicit about in his various statements and/or works). So, should the word "racist" be limited to those people who actually advocate in favor of discriminating against people and/or mistreating people based on these people's race? Or should the term "racism" be defined more broadly to also include people who are open to hypotheses that, on average, portray one race in a more favorable light than another race even if these people oppose discrimination and mistreatment of people based on their race? The problem with defining the term "racism" more broadly (as in my second/latter approach here) is that this could result in some scientific hypotheses being labelled as "racist" even when they have not been conclusively ruled out--which could create quite a problem if at least one of these scientific hypotheses will subsequently be proven to be true/correct. Using such a definition of "racism", one would have to say in such a scenario that "racism" would have been proven to be true/correct in some sense--and I really don't think that we would actually want that! Futurist110 (talk) 03:02, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If he was trying to prove that one race was "more intelligent" than another race, then he's a racist. Intelligence is in individuals, not in races. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:28, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We're talking about a person who's real name is given above. Please don't speculate on what he might or might not have done. WP:BLP applies here as it does on any Wikipedia page.-gadfium 05:35, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If the OP hadn't posted the user's real name, would you still have the same BLP concerns? --Viennese Waltz 06:59, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In the absence of an answer, it might be just as well to delete this section. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:39, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The user posted his real-life identity on his Wikipedia home page himself. Should that be a way to avoid your conduct as an editor being discussed? --Lambiam 08:07, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Had he known he was going to be banned, maybe he wouldn't have done that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:53, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to add one more point here; even after his banning, Emil Kirkegaard appears to be quite open about his identity on Wikipedia:

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=8021

He's explicitly listed as the author of this blog post as well as of this blog in general (please see the very top) and he also wrote this there:

"Do any researchers in the field edit Wikipedia/have Wikipedia users?

One quick way to get some expert feedback is if experts are active Wikipedians. Expert here is taken more broadly to include people who have published academic literature on intelligence research. The following experts have Wikipedia profiles:

Timothy Bates as User:Tim bates

Bryan Pesta as User:Bpesta22

Emil O. W. Kirkegaard as User:Deleet"

So, Yes, he is being completely transparent and up-front about his Wikipedia account and Wikipedia identity. It is for this reason that I was willing to publicly state his real name here. Had he not been open about this, I would have refrained from doing this. Futurist110 (talk) 21:52, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Have you asked him? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:46, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

About why he got banned from Wikipedia or whether it's okay to publicly post his name here in association with his "Deleet" Wikipedia account? Futurist110 (talk) 03:05, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This association is also found in the list of "experts" with Wikipedia profiles in the blog post which he publicly posted himself, which relates in detail how he got unjustly blocked. Is it reasonable to maintain that it is OK for him to post (after he got blocked!) his real-world identity in association with his Wikipedia account for the whole world to behold, but not for us to discuss the user's behaviour on Wikipedia because his real-world identity is known and he might not be okay with us making the association? --Lambiam 06:00, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The former - to ask him why he got banned. But you don't need to. The post which you linked to answers the question. Or at least gives the same answer he would give you directly. Whether the ban was objectively justified could be a matter of opinion. But his research has a major flaw: He's equating IQ scores with actual intelligence. The only thing an IQ score demonstrates is an ability to take an IQ test. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:15, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, as an editor he was rather selective in the sources he added to Wikipedia articles on the intersection of race/ethnicity and intelligence and listed in the deleted FAQ: nearly all were studies confirming some gap in the IQ or similar score between different segments of populations. I think a high IQ test store mainly demonstrates your ability to guess what they want you to answer – regardless of whether you yourself agree with that answer. --Lambiam 13:30, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like a good time to re-box this section. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:14, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

US strategic petroleum reserve

I mean it's not literally an underground tank, but more like some chunks of desert-like land consisting of porous salt or sand or something like that, I think. The pump oil down into it and it becomes oil-saturated rock, similar to a natural oil well, and they can pump the oil back out of it.

Lately it's all over the news that next month's oil future prices are negative because there is no place to store the oil being pumped. But, is it not possible to do SPR-like things of more or less unlimited size? And, why don't they stop pumping temporarily if the issue is they pump oil out of the ground and have no place to put it?

Is the US SPR even full right now? Why didn't they make it a lot bigger years ago? There have been times when that could have been useful. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:E0CB:579B:1F5:84ED (talk) 20:02, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (United States) is a set of literal underground tanks. You should really read the article before asking the question. However, that is not to be confused with what are also called, in general, "U.S. oil reserves", which is just the term for oil that is still underground in it's natural state. Once it's out of the ground, it's not going back. It's like (as the metaphor says) putting all the toothpaste back in the tube. Once it's out of the ground, you need to find a tank somewhere to put it in. --Jayron 32 20:15, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, somewhere in between, I think. Our article is a bit confusing on this point. I gather that the "tanks" are not made of metal, but are caverns hollowed out of natural salt deposits. This source seems to explain it most clearly. Our article does mention the salt, but the use of the term "tanks" in the first sentence is likely to mislead readers.

The OP may also have been conflating the method somewhat with the National Helium Reserve, which indeed is pumped into porous rock. --Trovatore (talk) 20:24, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

They are excavated man-made voids carved directly into underground salt deposits. If you want to call them tanks, or you want to call them man-made caverns, or you want to call the "Bob", it doesn't change the nature of what they are, they are not "porous salt or sand or something like that", they are purpose built vessels for holding large quantities of oil, and to increase the capacity of the US SPR, you'd need more of those things, whatever word you want to call them. Don't get hung up on the word. If the word "tank" bothers you, use a different word that doesn't. Whatever word you use doesn't change what they are. --Jayron 32 20:32, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is that the same Bob who is your uncle? --Lambiam 06:06, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

These underground caverns have a capacity of 797 million barrels (126,700,000 m³) (from our article) or maybe 713.5 million barrels (from Trovatore's link). Mikenorton (talk) 20:17, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I did look at the article but didn't realize the caverns were excavated and filled with liquid oil. I had thought it was oil-soaked salt in natural formations. Meanwhile I'm surprised to hear that the helium reserve is not stored in tanks, since helium has such low viscosity (if that's the term) that it would escape from almost anything. I also half-remember a very stupid move in recent years, where a lot of it was allowed to escape on purpose. 2601:648:8202:96B0:E0CB:579B:1F5:84ED (talk) 20:43, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See Helium Privatization Act of 1996, especially its reference 2. --Lambiam 06:13, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As to the other topic you brought up: the oil being traded in the May West Texas Intermediate futures is already out of the ground. It has to be available for delivery on the first day of the settlement month. The costs of getting it out of the ground and preparing it for transfer are already spent; they're sunk costs. But the oil producers and anyone else selling futures are actually the ones benefiting (kind of), at least for the May contract. They've already sold their contracts and gotten paid. Futures contracts are legal obligations; the only way the long side can get out of their obligation to take delivery of the oil is to sell to close their position. So many people were doing this because of the drop in demand for oil that the price of the future went negative; the longs were paying people to get out of their positions. Longs who intended to take delivery may have changed their minds because of the drop in demand for oil and the glut in storage, which has made the price of storing oil jump. For these longs, paying to get out of their positions may have still been cheaper than the loss they'd take paying to store the oil or reselling it on the spot market. Going forward, oil producers are almost certainly going to respond to the drop in demand and curtail production. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 18:33, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Some like Canadian tar sands oil cannot easily reduce production because the product is heated to extract and ship and the cost to restart and reheat would be excessive. Rmhermen (talk) 16:40, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]