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Unprotection

Since WP:SEMI states that "a page and its talk page should not both be protected at the same time" either the talkpage or the main page should be unprotected now in accordance with wikipedia policy.--Heyitspeter (talk) 00:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

That policy has purposefully been set aside in this instance because of the sockpuppet problem, as agreed on the administrators' noticeboard. When the article reverts to semi-protection, as it will shortly, it may be worth taking semi-protection off the talk page experimentally. But if Scibaby and the other sockmasters show up again I'm going to ask for the semi-protection to be restored. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Please link to this discussion it's not currently on the administrators' noticeboard.--Heyitspeter (talk) 00:21, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT is in play. Heyitspeter has participated in at least two different threads but finds it necessary to start new ones asking the same question. We need the protection to maintain some semblance of normality due to the Scibaby infestation which contributed nothing but personal attacks, proposals to violate policy, and "metoos". Viriditas (talk) 00:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Hahah not at all. I followed a link from another discussion and found a part of that section that was not being discussed which stated a wikipedia policy that this article is currently in direct violation of. I figured I would bring that out on a different section because it seemed important and unrelated to the section at which I found the link. Apparently, though, some administrators got together and decided that it was okay to violate wikipedia policy in this case because of the alleged havoc that they think seriously hampered discussion. Thanks to ChrisO for bringing this to my attention.--Heyitspeter (talk) 00:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
You've been discussing this in several different threads, and the answer has already been explained to you, but you keep asking the same question and making the same proposals. Traffic stats show this topic has already peaked, so there's no rush to unprotect. And considering the volume of socks used by Scibaby & Co. to disrupt this page, we are all benefiting from having to work closely together to make editprotected, consensus-driven contributions. So, the benefits outweigh the risks. Viriditas (talk) 00:35, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I've been discussing unprotection in several different threads. I don't believe I've asked any question twice. 'Traffic stats show this topic has already peaked, so there's no rush to unprotect'? There's a rush to unprotect because this is wikipedia and protecting pages in this manner runs counter to its stated policies. The reason people come to wikipedia is for content that has been contributed to and monitored by huge amounts of people both inside and outside of the relevant field. This 'sockpuppet' rhetoric is beginning to sound a lot like that employed by the Bush administration to justify removing civil liberties (e.g., "we can't afford to respect habeus corpus because terrorists exist"). --Heyitspeter (talk) 02:55, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
The thing is, it's well accepted on wikipedia that it is necessary to protect articles and talk pages, both in some instances, when there are too many problematic users. The dispute over habeus corpus and terrorism AFAIK primarily pertains to whether it's ever acceptable to suspend habeus corpus not whether the current threat of terrorism is suffient to suspend it. Also when habeus corpus is not respected, those affected have no choice and can't really do anything about it. We still have means, even if they are more difficult/require more work, for anyone besides those who have been banned to participate in the development of this article. Nil Einne (talk) 05:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Edit protection on this article will automatically revert to its previous state (semiprotected) at 05:31, 5 December 2009. --TS 03:06, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Jones stands aside as director of the CRU during investigations

"Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit" (Press release). Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia. Dec 1, 2009. Retrieved 2009-12-01.

Should probably be integrated into the article. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:02, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's the AP as a source, preferred I would think: [1] Ronnotel (talk) 20:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Don't use Google's hosted news. The links go dead too quickly. This is the same story at CBS. -Atmoz (talk) 20:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Google news can be used, provided that the editor adding it into the article uses a proper archiveurl link to WebCite. See Wikipedia:Using_WebCite for instructions. Viriditas (talk) 21:32, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


I propose an edit appended to the lead section:

"The university announced on 1 December that Phil Jones is to stand aside temporarily as director of the Unit during the investigation."<ref>{{cite news|work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6703400/Professor-at-centre-of-climate-change-email-row-stands-down-temporarily.html|title=Professor at centre of climate change email row stands down temporarily|date=2009-12-01|accessdate=2009-12-01}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=CRU Update 1 December|publisher=University of East Anglia|url=http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate|date=2009-12-01|accessdate=2009-12-01}}</ref>

--TS 20:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't we want to reference the actual press release from EAU? It is certainly more straightforward than referencing a US-based news service. Or is that Original Research?? Madman (talk) 20:48, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Secondary sources (i.e. AP, Reuters) are preferred over primary sources (i.e. press releases). See WP:RS, in particular the section that describes primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Ronnotel (talk) 20:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I was just about to say that. Here's the link: [2] -- JohnWBarber (talk) 20:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Since UEA is not a reliable source on this topic, their press release cannot be cited to support the article narrative, it can only be quoted as a claim. This Associated Press article, at the very least, can be taken as far more reliable and NPoV: "University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change." I'd think readers should be made aware of the allegations as reported by the Associated Press and it should go in the lead. Gwen Gale (talk) 23:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
If we really think that UEA is biased - and I agree, that is a possible opinion, though not one I share - then we shouldn't be using AP or the Torygraph or any of the current crop, because they are all clearly based on the UEA announcement. *If* you really believe this, we should wait a day or two until indep investigations occur William M. Connolley (talk) 23:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
We certainly shouldn't be using a link to Andrew Breitbart's site. We may as well use Drudge! ► RATEL ◄ 23:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
No need to wait, on en.Wikipedia an AP news story will tend to be taken as thoroughly fact-checked. The lead should also carry AP's reliable report as to the allegations: "...that he overstated the case for man-made climate change." Gwen Gale (talk) 23:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, WMC, that doesn't follow. We prefer to eschew Primary sources precisely because they may have a biased interest. We prefer secondary sources because they are paid to observe the primary statements, and repeat the ones they find credible, discard the ones they find incredible (or possibly report as a quote, but not as a fact), and wave a coherent narrative from facts from as many sources as possible. If the secondary source repeated the statement of the primary source, we expect that they has done due diligence to determine that it can be reported as fact. Obviously, this is an ideal to which some secondary sources fail to meet, but it is the basis of the polices of WP. --SPhilbrickT 23:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Alas, you haven't paused to read what I wrote. The AP stuff is clearly based on the UEA release, and so if the UEA release is biased (as you claim, not that I agree) then the AP story is unreliable. I don't think "tend to be taken" should carry any weight William M. Connolley (talk) 23:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
We disagree, I think AP can be taken as having checked the facts and background. I think it can and should be put into the lead now, along with AP's report of the allegations Jones "...overstated the case for man-made climate change." Gwen Gale (talk) 23:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm actually a little sympathetic to Gwen's point. I read the press release and it does seem to contain a bit of spin on the part of the university to downplay the accusations of wrong-doing. And to be honest, I'm not too great of a fan of using primary sources. Sure, they're allowed, but we have reliable sources to cite so there's really no need for a primary source. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:50, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Gwen. That's the very reason our policy says, "Our policy: Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from secondary sources. ..."--SPhilbrickT 23:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
(ce) Gwen's right. Not very important. And ChrisO definitely should not be the one adding to the article because Chris is so involved on the talk page. Don't do that again, please. Adding the primary source had no consensus, then or now. Please, some other admin, remove it. JohnWBarber (talk) 23:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I have no intention of adding anything to the article while it's protected. I did make one further small change above though, changing "has announced" to "announced on 1 December". -- ChrisO (talk) 00:16, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
My mistake, sorry. I agree with adding the date. AP would still be better than the Daily Telegraph. The CBS website seems to be a good link, as noted above. JohnWBarber (talk) 00:30, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I disagree. My main concern is presenting facts rather than rumors. The AP article says the he stepped down amid "allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change." Who has made these allegations? From what we see above, the allegations have been primarily made by industry-funded lobby groups representing the oil companies, who have the most to lose from the outcome of the Copenhagen summit. If someone can provide me the name of individuals or groups making the allegations, then we can determine if such claims are credible. My understanding is that the AP article is inaccurate. According to the report hosted by Breitbart, "Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change." However, looking at the press release, we see no such claim. The press release says, "Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit." Two completely different statements. In the former, the AP makes a claim about the CRU that was never made by them; In the latter, the CRU explains that a review will take place resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of data. Nothing about overstating the case for AGW, nor do we know who made such allegations. The allegations could concern many different things. I'm more than concerned that the so-called AP article is hosted by Breitbart, who along with Drudge, is quite open about their bias on this subject. Viriditas (talk) 00:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
The pith would be, AP is taken as overwhelmingly reliable (as to fact checking and reporting on background) on en.Wikipedia. Verifiability has sway here and meanwhile, the allegations are in no way rumours, they are notable allegations, being reported as such by AP and they belong in the lead. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Gwen, might I remind you of WP:PSTS? Phil Jones is an employee of the UEA. The UEA is the authoritative source for the status of its employees. All the secondary sources that are reporting on this are quoting from the UEA's press release. It is perfectly legitimate to use the UEA press release, a primary source, "to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge" as WP:PSTS puts it. In this case, the descriptive claim is exactly what is stated in the proposed addition to the article: that the university announced that Jones was stepping aside for the duration of the enquiry. Differing interpretive claims are being made by the AP and the UEA, but the addition proposed by TS does not address those. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:16, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
UEA has a looming conflict of interest and is not a reliable source on this topic. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Take it to the reliable sources noticeboard then. Your objection has no foundation whatsoever in policy. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:38, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
(EC) It seems to me there's several issues which are all getting rolled into one which isn't a good thing. We need to consider these issue by issue. From what I can see, the main issues are
  1. Should we link to the primary source as the main source? I think we have consensus that here the answer is no. In fact I've only seen one person suggest it and that person may not have much experience with that area of policy and hasn't argued for it once it was pointed out why
  2. Should we link to the primary source at all?
  3. Should we say he stood down or was stepping aside?
  4. Should we mention that the AP has said one of the things being investigated is allegations he overstated the case for human induced global warming?
  5. Which secondary sources should we use? AP? Telegraph? Both? Others?
I should also point out no one has yet added what we're discussing here to this article. It was added to Climatic Research Unit which is a different page. While it might be useful to have a centralised discussion, there may be difference in wording that arise given the different focuses of the articles so we shouldn't take that too far. Also CRU which isn't protected at all so anyone can add it, remove it or modify it but please don't edit war too much that that article is also fully protected
Nil Einne (talk) 00:11, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
My take:
  1. The primary source should be used as a supplement to a secondary source, within the constraints of WP:PSTS (using it for descriptive claims only).
  2. Yes, since it's a useful supplement to the secondary source. We should enable the reader to see what the UEA has said, unfiltered by the media.
  3. Since the primary source says "standing aside", this is the wording that should be used. We are supposed to be reporting what the university has actually said. It would be misleading to present something they did not say as being part of their statement.
  4. This is an interpretive claim which isn't reflected in the primary source - AP's spin, if you will. One news outlet's interpretation should not be stated as fact.
  5. I'm inclined to use the Telegraph, since it contains more direct quotations from the principals (Jones and UEA Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton). I felt that it was more directly relevant to the article than the AP piece, which contains a lot of rehashed content; only two paragraphs of the story relate to Jones' standing aside, as opposed to six in the Telegraph piece. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I've been doing much of the editing on this topic at the CRU page, and for what it's worth my basic line has been pretty similar to that outlined by ChrisO above. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 07:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

(redent) Viriditas makes a good point (00:05). The early AP story seems to have been written a bit sloppily regarding why Jones was temporarily stepping aside (it wasn't for "overstating the case"). Here's a much later, much better AP story. [3] Let's use that. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

AP editors are known to do that, spinning articles later on, cleaning up, so to speak. The earlier article isn't sloppy and can still be cited. Oh! Have I hinted AP may not be reliable? Nor EAU? Fye! What shall we do then? Gwen Gale (talk) 00:23, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
It's a little better but not much, frankly. Compare it with the Telegraph story I used in the proposed addition. AP has three paragraphs covering the UEA announcement; the rest is rehashed background or other related reporting. The Telegraph has six paragraphs with direct quotations from Jones and UEA Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton, which the AP story completely lacks. Here's the link. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:32, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think this article should be unprotected and edit warriors be handled as such. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Then let's leave out the reason for the investigation. TS's original wording was fine: ""The university has announced that Phil Jones is to stand aside temporarily as director of the Unit during the investigation." A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Leaving out the reason for the investigation would be highly unhelpful to readers. The reason is thoroughly verifiable: There are allegations jones "...overstated the case for man-made climate change." Gwen Gale (talk) 00:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
This is the AP's interpretation. Why do you believe that this interpretation by one news outlet should be prioritised over everyone else's? -- ChrisO (talk) 00:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
WP:V, y'all, WP:V. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree. As others have pointed out, the reasons given by the AP and the UEA differ. It's clearly an interpretive claim; I don't see any good reason why one news outlet's interpretation should be prioritised over everyone else's. Far better to keep it simple and stick with the undisputed descriptive claim represented by TS's wording. (Note that the tense needs to change - "has announced" will need to be "announced on 1 December".) -- ChrisO (talk) 00:37, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
It's ok to source sundry interpretive, verifiable claims published by reliable sources, that's what NPoV's all about here. For the editor who hinted Brietbart may have forged the AP article, here it is at CBC. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Further verified by the Washington Post: "...ClimateGate Scientist Phil Jones to temporarily step down... 'pending investigation into allegations that he overstated case for man-made climate change.'" Gwen Gale (talk) 00:44, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
This is damn strange. This version of the AP story doesn't have the reason at all. That indicates to me that AP doesn't stand by that early assertion. [4] -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes. As I said above (more or less), an AP editor spotted it and spun it, AP does that. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:50, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Gwen, there doesn't seem to be any actual evidence that Jones stepped down because of an "investigation into allegations that he overstated case for man-made climate change", and other statements made by the university seem to contradict that. I seriously doubt that anyone not relying on the AP article will be reporting that. It isn't a question of spin. People make mistakes, especially on short deadlines. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Actually that's verifiability, not NPOV. Yes, it's OK to source such claims, but it's not necessarily OK to use such claims if they represent undue weight on one viewpoint (which is an NPOV requirement). You need to explain why the AP's interpretation should be used rather than that of any other source - I see no reason to believe that the AP is somehow authoritative. We also cannot state the AP's interpretation as fact. NPOV again (bolding in original): "Assert facts, including facts about opinions — but do not assert the opinions themselves." It is the AP's opinion that Jones has stepped aside for this reason. The UEA gives a different reason. We can attribute opinions as required (the AP says this, the UEA says that) but we cannot state either opinion as hard fact. That's a fundamental NPOV requirement. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:45, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Ok, if nobody's authoritative, WP:V. Give readers the sources, that's what encyclopedias do. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it's about viewpoints. I think it's about sloppiness on the part of one source (probably one reporter and one editor) within a short time after the announcement. It happens. AP doesn't seem to be using that reason in later versions. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Since the UEA's press release doesn't reflect the reason the AP gave, I'd guess that an AP editor didn't feel the early assertion could stand up. They're fairly conscientious about fact-checking in my experience. But to be honest it shows why we should err on the side of caution and give the bare facts without disputable interpretations. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:52, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:56, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
More sources are bound to follow. Gwen Gale (talk) 01:02, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
This is why I suggested using the original source: the press release. Certainly it's a primary source, but you all are finding all sorts of problems with the secondary sources. I also think that it's rather USA-centric to use USA-based sources on what is arguably a UK matter.
So, let's us the Telegraph or the BBC, but let's get something up on the page -- we're getting a link from Google News but we're some 18 hours behind here. I'm a bit embarrassed for Wikipedia. Hop to it guys and girls. : ) Madman (talk) 14:03, 2 December 2009 (UTC)


{{editprotected}}

We've spent enough time talking about this, and I think we now have consensus at least for the bare facts.

Thus: append to the lead section:

The university announced on 1 December that Phil Jones is to stand aside temporarily as director of the Unit during the investigation."<ref>{{cite news|work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6703400/Professor-at-centre-of-climate-change-email-row-stands-down-temporarily.html|title=Professor at centre of climate change email row stands down temporarily|date=2009-12-01|accessdate=2009-12-01}}</ref>

I've omitted the UEA reference for now because, although it's obviously impeccably reliable as a source of what the university has said, one or two editors are still objecting and it would be inappropriate to go over their heads while the article is still protected because of editing disputes. --TS 02:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

plus Added I have added the sentence as there seems to be support for including it. I wasn't quite sure about the flow of the text with the preceding sentence though ... feel free to suggest improvements. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:41, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

More details about the hack(s)

Interesting report in today's Times:

We will no doubt see more information coming out about the hack(s) in the near future. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

This one leaves me cold. Heavy on speculation, short on actual sourced facts. I agree with Chris that we will see more information on the actual hacks, not sure it is helpful to include such sketchy info at this time. The article raises more questions than it answers. If there were hacks in October, why didn’t anyone at CRU know? Or did, they and were laying a trap? I’d like to see a little more on sourced conclusions before incorporating this type of info.SPhilbrickT 14:49, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
By itself this single story with sources protected by a journalist doesn't mean much (I'd hesitate to call this kind of story a reliable source). Let's bide our time. --TS 15:49, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Also it doesn't add much to the existing information/opinions; only that the theft was possibly done in more than one step.--J. Sketter (talk) 10:08, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I thought we had a start on this -- must have been archived. Perhaps someone can add a pointer for reference.

At any rate -- a persistent theme in the talk comments on improving the page has been adding more content from the leaked emails. The WSJ published an editorial selection from the emails, without further commentary, that looks like a fine choice for a link, and also a secondary source for quotes. "Climate Science and Candor" -- CRU emails selected by the WSJ, published Nov. 24, 2009.

Another good link would be climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon's column on Climategate, which I previously mentioned above. Pete Tillman (talk) 02:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Nature

Let's ref Nature [5] William M. Connolley (talk) 23:20, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Should this reference be attached to some specific part of the article? -- SEWilco (talk) 23:34, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
(ec)An editorial from a journal that was intimately involved in this event (i.e. Mike's "Nature" trick)? Hardly objective. Ronnotel (talk) 23:35, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
"Intimately" involved? Don't be silly. They had no involvement whatsoever. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree with WMC, it's from a respected scientific journal, commenting on a scientific matter. It's the most relevant editorial so far. If any should be included it's this one.
—Apis (talk) 23:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
It's from Nature. I haven't read it yet but it goes in. --TS 23:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I am completely surprised by the 180 degrees turnaround just shown by WMC and TS. This is an editorial, after all - the very thing WMC and TS were just fighting against as non-reliable; and the level of discussion is illustrated by these quotes: climate-change-denialist fringe, paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians ..., harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers. This type of language is typically not acceptable in mainstream publications and is never used in comments on scientific matters. This reference is below the blogs in both style and substance. Dimawik (talk) 00:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
As someone who has argued that opinion pieces need to be covered by a third-party reliable source, I say let's wait until the mainstream media picks up on the Nature editorial. Given Nature's stature, I find it hard to believe it won't be picked up by the media, so let's just wait. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
It won't be picked up by the media, and the reasons are obvious. Follow the money. Viriditas (talk) 00:36, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if someone's already mentioned this (but it's hard to keep up with all the traffic), but Nature has this straight news article here: Battle lines drawn over e-mail leak. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
It's a statement by Nature, the foremost authority on the opinions of working scientists. To argue that we would need some lesser source, such as a newspaper, is to miss the point by a mile. I've been arguing consistently against inclusion of opinions by those who haven't earned a right to an opinion because all they have done is to set up a blog or mouth off to a journalist. Nature's opinion, however, is very important to this story. It goes in. If you think there's a u-turn involved, you're wrong. --TS 00:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I assume that you are a practicing scientist. Do you really think that the ad hominem arguments (indeed, simple name-calling) I listed above have anything to do with science - or any educated discourse for that matter? I have never seen a scientific publication using such foul language before. This editorial is pure propaganda, and quite crude at that. If this is the best that climatic science can come up with, it is in a very sorry state indeed. Dimawik (talk) 01:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
The words "I assume you are a practising scientist" don't go well in a statement that also refers to "ad hominem arguments." If you don't like the editorial that's fine. Wikipedia has never before considered whether you personally like a Nature article in deciding whether to refer to it, and it's unlikely to start now. --TS 01:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Following up from Dimawik's observation, I have to say this article is an embarrassment to Nature as a publication. Such an unreserved expression of vitriol is unbecoming of a science journal, and really hurts its credibility in my eyes. I'm not saying Nature should not qualify as a reliable source in other instances, but it would be a travesty to make reference to the editorial in question in this article. »S0CO(talk|contribs) 02:21, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
So, let me see if I got this straight: you two think it's fine to include just about any random editorial, until finally a journal actually relevant to science publishes one. Then you don't want to mention it because you don't like it?
—Apis (talk) 04:46, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Please don't project motives on those you disagree with, Apis. I haven't stated support for the inclusion of the other editorial material. »S0CO(talk|contribs) 05:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, you didn't complain about any of the other editorials so I jumped to conclusions.
—Apis (talk) 06:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Two important statements that need to be included:

1) The fact that Nature has looked at the emails and found that they do not suggest that results have been fabricated. Nature will not invastigatethis matter:

The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers' own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a 'trick' — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature's policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.

2) A claim about harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers:

If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.

Count Iblis (talk) 01:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

  • Nature is hardly an uninvolved party in this dispute. It is partly Nature's refusal to enforce their own published rules, which require authors to archive and disclose supporting data as a condition of publication there, that has led to this whole mess. Pete Tillman (talk) 15:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
  • We need at least a reliable source that says that Nature is part of a consipracy to subvert climate science. Nature has a record of wihdrawing papers in case of scientific fraud, so they do act on their policies. Nature is indeed not uninvolved, a priori they are in a position that is opposed to the scientist that publish articles in that journal. Articles get evaluated critically and many papers are rejected. After publication articles can be retracted in case of fraud. If Naure says that there is no problem, then that's like a prosecutor saying that the defendant is innocent. If people criticize such a statement, then they would need good sources that e.g. point out that the prosecutor is corrupt. Count Iblis (talk) 16:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. to quote above: "An editorial from a journal that was intimately involved in this event (i.e. Mike's "Nature" trick)? Hardly objective"--Zeeboid (talk) 16:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Nature is an unquestionably notable and reliable source for all things science. A statement that Nature is not to be used is prima-facie evidence of disruptive editing. Hipocrite (talk) 16:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The current editing climate means we have to be absolutely clear and consistent about what sources are appropriate. I don't disagree with you but want to add some further comments. Nature is a prime example of a reliable source for science articles. This is not a science article but an article about a current news/policy event. So the question is: is Nature reliable for science-related news and events. The answer must again be "yes". Some clarification may be needed about "editorial", especially since there may be differences between US and UK usage. An opinion piece like George Monbiot's column in The Guardian or Christopher Booker's column in The Daily Telegraph is reliable for the views of its author. Editorials by the newspapers are in a different category. The unsigned editorial of Nature is the view of the editorial board of Nature and reliable as the view of journal as a whole. Attribution would be wise. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
It's still an opinion piece. AFAIK, we don't have separate rules for opinion pieces of academic journals. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Article Misnamed, or is a new Article needed?

The article is defining "Climategate" as a computer data theft, a hacking incident. However, the media that is reporting on "Climategate" is talking about purported data manipulation, and coercion by some in the academic community. Should we have two separate articles? Should the "theft / hacking" allegations be part of a Climategate (as science misconduct) article. I'm having a problem bestowing so much truth upon the "stolen" accusations. For example, I have read several of the sources identified for those sentences which claimed that the data was stolen. I couldn't find one of them that reported from a first hand source that the data was stolen or hacked, although several articles editorialized/concluded as much. It seems undisputed that some or all of the data that was released was being gathered in responce to a Freedom Of Information Act, under British Law. And such data, assuming it wasn't destroyed, would have been released anyway. We shouldn't speculate whether the release was merely earlier than intended, done so by an anonymous whistleblower, mistakenly place upon a public server, or hacked/stolen. The materials unquestionably are causing an uproar, and wiki should not irresponsibly repeat allegations that they were stolen without some form of proof. So I object to the "stolen" characterization appearing anywhere more than possibly in a "controversies" section. And if one were to consider a criminal aspect of Climategate, it seems that the materials, whose authenticity has not been denied, involved discussions about destroying evidence in advance of an investigation. This is a crime which is colorable. The appearance of data, even if confidential, is not necessarily a crime it could have been mistakenly placed on a public server. Let's at least be consistent. -- Knowsetfree (talk) 03:48, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

First, you're speculating about the theft. Secondly, the theft occurred and we're writing about that theft and the responses to it. Your speculations have been repeated many times but retain no more credibility--in the absence of evidence--than they did at first. --TS 04:06, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
There have been many different perspectives on this incident, some write about theft, some about whether there are any signs of data manipulation. Wikipedia should try to be neutral. If a serious investigation concludes there have been some kind of significant data manipulation it will be reported in many reliable sources, and then it will likely be mentioned in the article.
—Apis (talk) 04:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
See the preceding discussions on the article title. The article title either should be obvious from the material, or reflect how the article's topic is commonly known. The title is likely to change as the focus of the information changes. -- SEWilco (talk) 15:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Stagnation

What about adding the comments made by the head of the IPCC?

This article is in stagnation. I'm doubtful about the reasons to block this article in the first place, and doubtful about the reasons why it's still blocked. What's the concern anyway? What's the worst thing that could have happened if this article would never have been blocked?

I'm worried that AGW cheerleaders are misusing Wikipedia, its organization and its policies to further their own agendas and I would like to see all sides on this issue getting an equal voice without facing risks of being reprimanded. Anyway, can you bureaucrats please update this article to include Dr Rajendra Pachauri comments? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Devijvers (talk • contribs) 09:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

AGW deniers are actually falling foul of wp:FRINGE. They are akin to creationists. They should never, ever get an "equal voice". ► RATEL ◄ 11:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Interesting POV. Actually, comparing AGW non-believers to creationists might be entertaining for you and others but actually is not consistent in any way. Creationists don't believe in evolution by natural selection but on top of that they also offer an alternative account for the existence of species which involves a super-being. AGW non-believers cast doubt on the processes used by scientists and the so-called scientific consensus but don't necessarily offer any alternatives. In short, you're whining as in "To complain or protest in a childish fashion".
(edit conflict) I agree that the comments by Rajendra Pachauri is notable enough to be included since he is the chairman of the IPCC. See also previous topic #IPCC chairman comments.
If you took the time to read the talk page and talk page archives you will see why the page was protected: mainly because of substantial edit warring and sockpuppet attacks that more or less halted any constructive work on the article. The page protection is currently only temporary. On pages that are experiencing edit warring, temporary full protection can force the parties to discuss their edits on the talk page, where they can reach consensus. The worst thing that could happen would probably be someone using the page to post libel or threats of violence.
Like you worry about "AGW cheerleaders", I worry about deinalists and lobbyist groups hijacking the page, but everyone has an equal voice on the talk page (of course!).
—Apis (talk) 11:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I actually took the time to read the talk pages and I'm still in doubt. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Devijvers (talk • contribs)
My concerns are of course validated by the behavior of AGW cheerleaders, like the fact that since this article was protected for various reasons the blog realclimate.org has been treated as a reliable source contrary to wikipedia policy. So, AGW cheerleaders clearly abuse wikipedia policy which validates my concerns. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Devijvers (talk • contribs)
Then you either didn't see the previuos discussions about RC when looking at the talkpage, or you simply don't understand basic WP policy. And please don't insert text in the middle of other peoples comments.
—Apis (talk) 19:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
To which discussions are you referring? I can't find any discussion in this talkpage that promoted realclimate.org to a reliable source. Devijvers (talk) 19:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
It is blocked because of irresponsible editing. You'll see plenty of evidence in the talk above. Meanwhile, we should indeed report on this new development, but carefully. The BBC seems to have got it wrong. The UN panel on climate change says claims UK scientists manipulated global warming data to boost the argument it is man-made should be investigated. is what they say (and it is what I heard on the radio this morning) but it is *not* what the IPCC are actually saying. RP says "We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it," he said. "We certainly don't want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail." For example, the Beeb sez One of the leaked e-mails suggested CRU head Dr Phil Jones wanted certain papers excluded from the UN's next major assessment of climate science. What it *doesn't* say is that the paper referred to *was* included in the report. That the Beeb (and the Times, considered a WP:RS by some) routinely make these mistakes is a good reason not to push headlines into articles on the day they are created, just because they appear to support your POVWilliam M. Connolley (talk) 11:37, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Drawing a line under discussion of the scientific status of AGW (not the purpose of the talk page). I think we should turn attention to the sources we are using. We are all agreed that this is not a science article but an article about a media/policy event. Therefore the news reports of the BBC, The Times etc. are among the best sources for the article. (Not their op-eds, except attributed in the Responses section, and then we have to carefully select those responses that are notable/typical; also we may have ongoing problems in establishing where news shifts into comment). The quality news outlets may get things wrong or oversimplify, but we are going for reliability, not truth. Public statements of official bodies, whether parties or not, can also be regarded as reliable for this article. They could under certain circumstances be regarded as primary, and we do not want to go trawling for all official statements to create a synthesis, but I think it's clear that the IPCC's statement is an important development in this story and should not be omitted. I agree with the comment above that we must avoid recentism. "Headlines" are never a reliable source: they are not written by the reporters on the story but by sub-editors looking for effect. Even the news summaries that the BBC uses in its programmes should be avoided in favour of the clearer and more accurate expositions of the body of the story. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
We are not, however, obliged to repeat their mistakes. Allowing time for the stories to settle is a good way of avoiding this mistake (woop! woop! censorship nonsense aside). To be clear: I'm happy to add "the comments made by the head of the IPCC", providing we use his actual comments. I'm *not* happy to add the misdescription the BBC has used in its headlines William M. Connolley (talk) 12:28, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
“The BBC seems to have got it wrong” Well, William, you could post something on RealClimate then post that as a source of why it’s wrong. I’m sure you would defend that as NPOV. Otherwise Devijivers is right, you don’t see this kind of push for the sake of “Accuracy” when op-eds and blogs are referenced for the sake of AGW Cheerleaders.
I would actually prefer the realclimate.org source in this article remains as is ad infinitum as a testimony to the world of how AGW cheerleaders control wikipedia without having to answer to anybody. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Devijvers (talk • contribs) 15:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
““AGW deniers are actually falling foul of wp:FRINGE. They are akin to creationists. They should never, ever get an "equal voice".” – Ratel
“You see, this is where the Church of Global Warming comes into play. When people actually say science shouldn’t get an “equal voice”. Shame on you Ratel, people in the past have died because they tried to bring science to the front that others didn’t want shared (Earth being round, Earth not being the center of the Universe… etc)
““I'm *not* happy to add the misdescription the BBC has used in its headlines” – WMC
“William, it does not matter if adding properly sourced (from a reputable news organization) pleases you or not. In fact, I bet we could all care less in your “pleasure”. What is important here is to document this without bias… something that is clearly happening if people here are “not happy” with what the BBC reports. --Zeeboid (talk) 14:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
So, sweeping aside all the unnecessary inter-user sniping, we have consensus to add the comment by the head of the IPCC. We will use his words directly, side-stepping the possibility that the BBC has lost the nuances in its desire to simplify, definitely not use any headlines, avoid recentism and not rush. Good. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:55, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Addation to that, what the BBC reported should be listed below what the head of the IPCC is saying. something like
The head of the IPCC said this and this and this. The BBC reported however this this this this.
This quote/rebuttel is pretty standard through these global warming articles.--Zeeboid (talk) 15:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Why does it matter what the BBC reported someone said? This isn't the Criticism of BBC article Nil Einne (talk) 15:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
"Why does it matter what the BBC reported"? Did I read that right? Hey, I am just using the same standards I see in place on other articles on related topics. what does it matter what the BBC reported... thats funny.--Zeeboid (talk) 15:17, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
If there is consensus the BBC report misquotes or otherwise doesn't provide an accurate picture of someone said, then yes, it doesn't matter. This is the same with all articles and all sources. There's never any requirement to use any particular source in any particular article, many sources, even highly reliable ones do get it wrong on occasion and when we have multiple sources and one is the odd one out, then it can usually be safely ignored. P.S. Many creationists particularly the modern intelligent design type specifically avoid saying anything about god or a supreme being. In fact they like to use god of the gaps arguments and also are proponents of teach the controversy. Something even one former US President advocated. Part of their infamous Wedge strategy of course. This is completely OT so I won't discuss it anymore but if you want to make OT claims you can at least make sure they stand up to scrutiny. Nil Einne (talk) 15:24, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
moving over. a concensus by other news org, or a concensus by wikipedia editors? is that not origional research?--Zeeboid (talk) 15:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
No it isn't OR. The BBC is a good source for this article and we should use it extensively. But sometimes we will use our judgement to prefer other sources. For example we already have the New York Times and we should continue to use both UK and US sources. In this case he IPCC's published statement is more direct and therefore more appropriate. One reason we know it is worth including is that it was featured on the BBC. Got it? Itsmejudith (talk) 15:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Aren't primary sources discouraged? Should we even be using th IPCC as a source seeing as how they are kind of in the middle of this controversy?--Zeeboid (talk) 15:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
There is a difference between discouraged and prohibited. Basically, does mentioning the IPCC reaction improve the article? I think most editors and readers would think so. We're working on an article about an issue in the early stages of development, borderline news reporting on our part. Sometimes there just isn't a good secondary source. If there was one, it would be preferred, but that doesn't always justify leaving it out. Alas, hard and fast rules don't really exist for interesting issues and problems, like coordinating an ad hoc volunteer encyclopedia staff. Ignignot (talk) 16:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I generally agree that we should alow for the dust to settle a little so we get more than one news source to compare from. It's become pretty obvious that some of them often get the details wrong. I don't think it's particularly problematic to use a primary source for statements/quotes about what that source thinks.
—Apis (talk) 19:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

"'Headlines' are never a reliable source: they are not written by the reporters on the story but by sub-editors looking for effect. Even the news summaries that the BBC uses in its programmes should be avoided in favour of the clearer and more accurate expositions of the body of the story. Itsmejudith" This is true, and something not everyone might be aware of. The same is usually true about the 'lede paragraph' (summary usually in bold text in beginning of article) and the choice of images that go with the article and so on. Only the actual article text can be assumed to be the work of the journalist.
—Apis (talk) 20:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed addition to UCS reaction

After "opposed to addressing climate change" " could we add "the UCS subsequently stated that they were concerned by allegations that emails that were the subject of freedom of information requests were deleted." Union of Concerned Scientists on Climate Scientists' Behavior retrieved December 4 2009 Andjam (talk) 13:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

(made ref followable). I don't see that text on that page. What quote are you paraphrasing? William M. Connolley (talk) 13:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I think it is the italics at the top: 'Grifo clarifies in an interview that the group "does have concerns" about the alleged behavior of some scientists in this case. "If a US scientist deleted emails persuant to freedom of information act requests, that's reprehensible," she says. "Ultimately a lack of transparency doesn't work."' - but it is a blog and I don't think this should go in unless someone finds a better source. Ignignot (talk) 14:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Ah, I read that, but it was sufficiently distant in meaning from A's comments that I couldn't be sure they were related. Yes its a blog; and A forgot the "If" which is important William M. Connolley (talk) 14:47, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
That's why I used the word "allegations". Yes, it's a blog, but it's a blog run by Science, not by someone in pyjamas in his basement. Andjam (talk) 23:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed addation to Reactions to the incident

Acadamy Award members demanding revocation of Al Gore's Oscar for An Inconvient Truth

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/12/al-gore-oscar-global-warming.html

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Poliwood/Climategate_Hits_Hollywood%3A_Should_the_Academy_Rescind_Gore%27s_Oscar%3F/2780/;jsessionid=abcowwO-8vPzC5mPVAyvs

Also, the reaction section is quite long and unorginized. I also sugguest editing of that section with Subheadings to aid in the ability for the readers to go through the many reactions.--Zeeboid (talk) 14:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

William removed my request to add this as a reaction to the incident. I just wanted that clearly shown here. Acadamy members demanding revocation of Al Gore's oscar is because of this incident. spicifically, as the sources say.--Zeeboid (talk) 14:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Um you do realise that if you search the e-mails, the only time Al Gore was ever mentioned is by climate change sceptics/deniers right? An "inconvient truth" never. Yes I know this is WP:OR but you're linking to a blog and something called Pajamas Media so... P.S. From the sound of it, it's also highly doubtful that the two people even voted for "An Inconvient Truth" Nil Einne (talk) 15:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
um, you to realise that if you read the info and watch the video, the two accadamy members (Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd) are the ones actually speeking in that video right? Oddly enough on wikipedia, when you get something directly from the horse's mouth (esp by way of video or audio) that turns out to be the best source you can get.--Zeeboid (talk) 15:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Actually primary sources are explicitly discouraged on wikipedia. Video and audio as a source is also discouraged for a number of reasons of reasons including access issues, permanence issues... Nil Einne (talk) 15:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
"Academy Award members" seems to me as too broad a description for this source, "two conservative academy award members" would be a better description. But then again, is this a relevant/notable response?
do you realy want to play the nit-picking political label game on the topic of Global Warming? perhaps this shoudl apply to all refrences throughout global warming related articles. I sugguest that not be a game that is played here.--Zeeboid (talk) 15:21, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm just repeating what the source says, two conservative members. I don't feel I'm nit-picking here. Devijvers (talk) 15:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Re-added this entire discssion, as removed by WMC. Willaim, I would ask that you not remove discussion pages on a locked topic.--Zeeboid (talk) 15:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Totally NN. Hipocrite (talk) 15:26, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you have your answer - it is not notable, primary sources are discouraged, audio and video are discouraged, it is a blog. Ignignot (talk) 15:37, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Is that standard held for all blogs? I keep getting confused by this, as some blogs are included if they agree with AGW, and some are not included when they disagree with AGW, but I am trying to find an actual reason other then who agrees/disagrees to allow/disallow a blog.--Zeeboid (talk) 15:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
See the reliable sources guideline for comments on blogs. You can also search the archives of the reliable sources noticeboard. We do try to be consistent. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:46, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
moving over. Yes, as a techincal writer, consistency above all is what I wish for. thats what this is al about.
""Blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs. Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Posts left by readers may never be used as sources."
So by that deffinition, this source form the LA Times is valid because it is by two professional writers, and is subject to editorial control.--Zeeboid (talk) 16:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
It would tend to come into the category of op-ed, and since we have enough op-ed already, and this did not make the main bit of the paper, and we are covering a news event with implications for public policy, then it is not going to be a brilliant source. RealClimate, for example, is in a very different category because it is a party in the events. Its official statements (but not posts on the blog) are reliable for its own position. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:17, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
The other thing, which I was sarcasticly/snarkily hinting above is that this has little to do with the e-mail hacking incident. Yes it may have been in response to the incident but the fact that two random people are calling for an Oscar to be withdrawn isn't particularly relevant to the hacking incident. Perhaps it belongs in the article on the movie or the Academy awards but not here. There are plenty more important things to cover then this, I suspect even most climate change sceptics will agree with that. Now if the Academy Award committee (or whatever) annouced they were considering it or if the prize was actually withdrawn, that's another thing entirely but there's no hint of that here. The lack of coverage of course gives us a big clue that this is indeed not pf great interest. Nil Einne (talk) 16:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm sure you can agree, based on who they are, that they are hardly random people. they are members of the acadamy for which the award is named and like all members, have influance over who gets the award. also its relivence is directly tied to the email hacking incident, as is evident by the first thing they mention in the video.--Zeeboid (talk) 16:48, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Hardly, it's just another chapter in the far right's campaign against Al Gore. -- ChrisO (talk) 17:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Let's try to keep the petty political sniping to a minimum. We're working on an encyclopedia article here. That being said, I fail to see how this is directly relevant to the CRU incident. Perhaps it would be best if this topic were instead proposed at Talk:An Inconvenient Truth. »S0CO(talk|contribs) 17:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough but they are indeed just two random people (out of 6000?)*. As pointed out before, their views are fairly irrelevant unless they actually have an influence. Given that these people probalby never even voted for An Inconvient Truth in the first place and that there are ~5998 more people who haven't asked for the award to be cancelled and we're not even aware if there is any basis for the award to be withdrawn, their views are irrelevant unless there is evidence to the contrary. As I've already explained, evidence to the contrary would be for example a comment from the Award committee that they're considering removing the award or something of that sort. Else, at most it belongs in an article about the awards or the movie, but definitely not here. *Even if this was coming from say Steven Spielberg and George Lucas who I presume are probably members of the academy and hopefully we can all agree far more notable and influential members of the academy then Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, they would still be basically two random people. P.S. Also reading Roger's article, it seems he's the CEO and one of the founders of Pajamas Media which basically makes it the video you linked to a self published source i.e. even less of a demonstration of it's notability Nil Einne (talk) 03:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Do these two members out a total of 6000 members of the Academy have any significant support within the Academy for their views? Is there any chance that the Oscar will be called back? Unless these questions can be answered - this is really irrelevant and correspond to an Op-Ed in some newspaper by random people. Irrelevant, POV and undue weight. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

briffa_Sep98_d.pro

I think we are going to see alot more of this in the near future.

As the leaked messages, and especially the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file, found their way around technical circles, two things happened: first, programmers unaffiliated with East Anglia started taking a close look at the quality of the CRU's code, and second, they began to feel sympathetic for anyone who had to spend three years (including working weekends) trying to make sense of code that appeared to be undocumented and buggy, while representing the core of CRU's climate model.

One programmer highlighted the error of relying on computer code that, if it generates an error message, continues as if nothing untoward ever occurred. Another debugged the code by pointing out why the output of a calculation that should always generate a positive number was incorrectly generating a negative one. A third concluded: "I feel for this guy. He's obviously spent years trying to get data from undocumented and completely messy sources."

Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU's Fortran code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!" and "APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION." Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: "Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend - so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!"

CBS.

A little more

But the CRU’s temperature data and all of the research done with it are now in question. The leaked e-mails show that the scientists at the CRU don’t know how their data was put together. CRU took individual temperature readings at individual stations and averaged the information out to produce temperature readings over larger areas. The problem comes in how they did the averaging. One of the leaked documents states that “our flagship gridded data product is produced by [a method that] renders the station counts totally meaningless” and “so, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!” There were also significant coding errors in the data. Weather stations that are claimed to exist in Canada aren’t there -- leading one memo to speculate that the stations “were even invented somewhere other than Canada!” The computer code used to create the data the CRU has used contains programmer notes that indicate that the aggregated data were constructed to show an increase in temperatures. The programmer notes include: “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!” and "Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend -- so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!" The programmers apparently had to try at least a couple of adjustments before they could get their aggregated data to show an increase in temperatures.

[6]

So, how do we incorporate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by WVBluefield (talk • contribs) 18:57, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

WVBluefield (talk) 18:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we wait until it is out of the blog and opinion section. This is investigation, not reaction, so we can't use these sources. Be patient and it will end up somewhere, I'm sure. Ignignot (talk) 19:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I wonder what evidence these partisan bloggers feel they have that the code they are looking at is 'representing the core of CRU's climate model'? None, I'm sure. These are just bits of hack that people played with (e.g. at weekends) - probably non-programmers - just to get a feel for the data and the analysis techniques that were actually used in the real analysis code. It's a University that's been hacked, don't forget: people go there to learn as well as to teach and to do research. Looking at what may be students' projects will get us nowhere. --Nigelj (talk) 19:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Eric S Raymond is a notable programmer and has commented on this as well coming to a similar conlcusion. [7]. WVBluefield (talk) 19:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
You have to both understand climate science and be good at programming to make sense of it. As pointed out, we don't even know what this programs are supposed to do or what they have been used for. It's going to take time, and until we have something conclusive from a serious investigation (wich is going to show up in multiple reliable sources) we shouldn't include it. As for now it's just more wild speculation, not encyclopaedia stuff.
—Apis (talk) 19:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Why is it that “climate science” is portrayed as this arcane art, so complicated only those ordained by its high priests can comprehend its scope and magnitude? If its replicated in an RS, then it fair game for inclusion, remember Wikipedia is about verification, not WP:TRUTH WVBluefield (talk) 19:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm sure that eventually there will be some very thorough looks at the code and comments and results by reliable sources who understand both climate science and programming. For now, why don't we look for good sources instead of arguing about speculation about something we can't use anyway? Ignignot (talk) 19:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
In the same way It is difficult to understand Chinese for someone not familiar with the language, it is difficult to understand both programming and other complex topics. I don't think most people understand quantum mechanics without studying the subject for some time first, do you?
—Apis (talk) 20:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
ESR may well have some valid comments about that piece of code, however what has not been established is what, if any, relationship that piece of code has to any of the published scientific results. It could just be an experiment. Have patience, and reliable information will emerge (or not) Simonmar (talk) 21:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I suggest that people read Tim Lambert's comments here and the subsequent thread. I would have no confidence in sourcing anything to ESR (who seems to have some rather extreme political views) given the doubts that have been raised. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:36, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Gordon Brown attacks 'flat-earth' climate change sceptics

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/04/flat-earth-climate-change-copenhagen 'Dangerous, deceitful' attempts to derail Copenhagen summit condemned. Now, that's nice and simple and couldn't be more notable. --Nigelj (talk) 21:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The way I read it he is talking about skeptics in general and not the hacking incident in particular, but maybe there is more in there. Ignignot (talk) 21:35, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
[8] the leade is not written by the journalist but by an editor, it's designed to get attention.
—Apis (talk) 21:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
They are definitely discussing the hacking incident:
On the eve of the Copenhagen summit, Saudi Arabia and Republican members of the US Congress have used the emails to claim the need for urgent action to cut carbon emissions has been undermined.
But tonight the prime minister, his environment secretary, Ed Miliband, and Ed Markey, the man who co-authored the US climate change bill, joined forces to condemn the sceptics.
He said: "The approach of the climate saboteurs is to misuse data and mislead people. The sceptics are playing politics with science in a dangerous and deceitful manner. There is no easy way out of tackling climate change despite what they would have us believe. The evidence is clear and the time we have to act is short. To abandon this process now would lead to misery and catastrophe for millions."
I didn't know Saudi Arabia has been making statements, that should be mentioned in the article as well as those from Gordon Brown & Co.
—Apis (talk) 22:04, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, from the BBC story there is:
Saudi Arabia's lead climate negotiator has said the e-mail row will have a "huge impact" on next week's UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
Mohammad Al-Sabban told BBC News that he expects it to derail the single biggest objective of the summit - to agree limitations on greenhouse gas emissions.
"It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," he told BBC News.
As tiresome as it is, that should also go into the article along with UK response.
—Apis (talk) 22:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I think we can put some of this reaction in instead of rather than as well as some of the less notable reactions we have. Once we have reactions from actual 'world leaders', it kind of trumps those from bloggers and known activists, I think, on the notability stakes. Don't overlook the US reactions from Ed Markey in this article too. --Nigelj (talk) 22:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree. It might make sense to separate the reactions section into "political" and "scientific" reactions as well, and try to fairly represent the most notable ones? (I think that has been suggested before.)
—Apis (talk) 22:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Scientists and scientist organizations are important, editorials from major newspapers are important, the top AGW-skeptics are important (I get the impression we have them). Someone who's been quoted a lot by others is important. We can have a lot of opinions in a pretty short space if we note them briefly, except for the best quotes. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:32, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Can someone suggest extremely short language for Brown, the Saudi, etc.? I think Brown's comment might be worth a very short quote because of the nature of the comment. Politicians and a Saudi negotiator (who just, maybe, kinda might have an interest in tamping down enthusiasm for conservation and alternate fuels) are worth something, but if a government leader has a policy and if that policy might be threatened by the subject of this article, the government official simply has an interest in making the kind of statement Brown did. These reactions should be included -- they're important enough -- but they're not important enough for something more than a short statement. We might include a short sentence on reaction from the Obama administration. We're going to get a lot of quotes in the news coverage leading up to the Copenhagen conference, and some during the conference. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:28, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
They aren't just politicians, they are spokespersons for entire countries, their word carries a lot of weight from a global political perspective, especially with respect to the coming Copenhagen negotiations. These and the "Obama comments" are the most important political reactions so far.
—Apis (talk) 01:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps a "national governments" subsection would be appropriate under reactions? We've got the miniaturized flag images and everything. :) »S0CO(talk|contribs) 05:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

So, what's going on here?

I'm a long term, but not terribly active editor. I was surprised today to find that my encyclopedia had frozen this article and certain editors are not even allowing basic news into the article. To wit:

  • The head of the East Anglia investigation has been named. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oscar O Oscar (talk • contribs) 00:09, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Penn State, where Michael Mann works, has announced an investigation.
  • The UN/IPCC has announced an investigation.
  • The US Senate will be investigating this as well, although it appears that Inhofe & Boxer have different aims (so what else is new?).

I am also disturbed that this William Connolley fellow, who appears to be a colleague of Mann and Jones, has not recused himself from editing the Talk page but instead seems to have set himself up as a gatekeeper.

Folks, let's get on the dime here. I don't care much about the reactions and opinions. Readers can find them elsewhere in large volume. But at least keep this article up-to-date!! Oscar (talk) 00:07, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the facts must be added to the article. Some of the facts you mention have been added, some others (such as "UN/IPCC have announced an investigation") are not known to me, and some others are dubious (Penn State has not, to my knowledge gone beyond saying they're reviewing the emails).
Interested parties are always welcome to state their opinions, so William Connolley's comments are very welcome. Of course there is no suggestion that he has any involvement in the crime or in any other aspect of this affair. To say that he's "a colleague of Mann and Jones" is simply to say that he is a person highly qualified in the field. That's a good thing. We need more input from appropriately qualified scientists. --TS 00:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
To clarify what TS said, Penn State used the word "review", not "investigate". It's being discussed here. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I also freely acknowledge that I'm a bit out of date on investigations. Be patient--in just 5 hours the protection expires and we can update it. --TS 00:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I think he was referring to removing other people's comments on this talk page. Oscar, I wish the article page had been unlocked sooner but it will be open in 5 hours. We'll need to be on the ball with preventing it from being locked again, because this is going to be a magnet for argument. Ignignot (talk) 03:17, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Oscar, there is an edit proposal that attempts to addresses one of your concerns in the section immediately above. If you have an opinion on that particular proposed edit you could express it there. If we could keep discussions limited to facts, policies etc. rather than personalities that would be appreciated. Brumski (talk) 00:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I certainly didn't want to talk "personalities" or impugn anyone's motives or abilities or knowledge. I was just surprised to find Mr Connolly editing since he's at least peripherally involved in this whole affair (e.g. a couple of the CRU emails are to him) and he's a colleague of several of the main characters (involees?). I checked out the guideline and found this:
"Friedrich Engels would have had difficulty editing the Karl Marx article, because he was a close friend, follower, and collaborator of Marx.[2] Any situation in which strong relationships can develop may trigger a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest can be personal, religious, political, academic, financial, and legal. It is not determined by area, but is created by relationships that involve a high level of personal commitment to, involvement with, or dependence upon a person, subject, idea, tradition, or organization."
Wikipedia:Coi#Close_relationships
But as I said, I'm not a regular here, so if you all are fine with it, so am I. Oscar (talk) 03:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
P.S. I'm glad to see the protect end. I hope folks stay calm, and I expect they will.
Concerns about conflict of interest must be taken seriously, and while I would not by any means support editing restrictions against WMC, it would perhaps be a gesture of good faith if he were to follow Oscar's suggestion, and recuse himself from this article for the time being. Something very similar happened with User:Young Trigg at the time of the announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate in the last U.S. presidential election. Young Trigg performed extensive edits to Palin's article hours before the announcement, leading to speculation (even among mainstream news organizations which addressed this WP user by name) that YT was associated with the McCain campaign. Acknowledging his status as a low-level volunteer, but denying advance knowledge of the nomination, Young Trigg withdrew from the debate so as to allow normal editing to resume without further controversy. This article has been fully locked for days. Being as WMC is a party to this incident, however tangentially, a dignified sabbatical might be appropriate so as to avoid stirring up controversy that could lead to a renewal of this lockdown. »S0CO(talk|contribs) 05:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I think we need to remember there's a difference here between editing an article and discussion on the talk page. COI discourages editors with a strong COI from editing an article (many will dispute whether that includes WMC but that's not relevant to my point). It doesn't discourage, and in fact it encourages them to discuss matters on the talk page particularly if they declare their COI. I'm not aware of Young Trigg's history but it seems to me that someone involved with a politician, is going to recognise that it's a rather big problem for the politician if they're doing something controversial that's getting media attention and so it's understandable if they decide to stop. It's little to do with wikipedia expectations. Nil Einne (talk) 05:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
One of the reasons why many news items aren't being added is because whatever the proposal and however basic it seems, someone usually objects. Also it's worth remembering readers should not expect wikipedia to have up to the minute news. Yes it happens in some instances but it should never be an expectation since wikipedia is not a news source. If we are a few days behind because we have to get the wording right, that's fine. Nil Einne (talk) 03:14, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
@Oscar: Thank you, I agree. --Pevos (talk) 07:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Colleague defends 'ClimateGate' professor

Colleague defends 'ClimateGate' professor. Another reliable source that we can (potentially) use in the article. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

E-mail/email again aka first edit

Okay I admit I did this partially because I wanted to be the first person (and as a non admin) to edit the article after protection expired so was wondering what I could do that would be (hopefully) non controversial until I remembered something I'd raised before.

As I mentioned in Talk:Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident/Archive 4#Proposal Regarding statement characterizing the vast majority of the email and Talk:Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident/Archive 1#E-mail/email without anyone objecting, for consistency within the article per WP:ENGVAR, we should be using e-mail thorough the article except in direct quotes and for the titles of references and the like, as long as the article is titled e-mail. Yes this is a very minor but seemingly clearcut issue, so hopefully not one anyone is going to revert. (As I also mentioned e-mail is probably the better choice anyway so hopefully we don't have to discuss whether to rename the article solely because of that either).

P.S. Yes I know this technically violated Sphil's 'one person concurred' criterion but when you raise a minor formatting/spelling issue twice and people ignored you completely I think it's fair to presume no one cares :-P Nil Einne (talk) 06:22, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I didn't care. I would have told you if I had cared :-). Feel free William M. Connolley (talk) 11:31, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I personally prefer "email" but not strongly enough to challenge the decision. Obviously, my request has no authority behind it, only (I hope) a sensible way to reduce potential chaos. I also agree that the change has been discussed, and is "gnomish" in character.--SPhilbrickT 14:10, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussions needing attention

With such a long page discussions tend to die out even if they are unresolved when they reach near the top. I've reduced archiving time down to 36 hours a while back but am reluctant to reduce it further. But to try and focus attention the following discussions remain in need of editor feedback:

Please keep any discussion on the above issues on the appropriate threads, don't start new discussion here. Nil Einne (talk) 09:02, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Struck out section that's already been addressed without dispute so far. There's a new proposal for the Mann section (from me) and I've changed the Mann link to point to there. Nil Einne (talk) 05:04, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Second section addressed without dispute struck out Nil Einne (talk) 18:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Phil Jones: add the press release after "announced"?

{{editprotect}} We should of course use reliable secondary sources for the statement, but I think it's proper to include a reference directly to the announcement after "announced" (and of course use Webcitation, so we have a copy of the page on a reliable place). Would this work as a compromise? I think sourcing directly to the source of the info. increase the value of the article. WP:PRIMARY states "Our policy: Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them" so it's possible to use the Press Release with care.

I.e. Change from

The university announced on 1 December that Phil Jones is to stand aside temporarily as director of the Unit during the investigation."<ref>{{cite news|work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6703400/Professor-at-centre-of-climate-change-email-row-stands-down-temporarily.html|title=Professor at centre of climate change email row stands down temporarily|date=2009-12-01|accessdate=2009-12-01}}</ref>

to

The university announced<ref name=UEA20091201/> on 1 December that [[Phil Jones]] is to stand aside temporarily as director of the Unit during the investigation."<ref name=Telegraph20091201/>

and this in the reference section

<ref name=UEA20091201>{{cite web|title=CRU Update 1 December|publisher=University of East Anglia|url=http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate|date=2009-12-01|accessdate=2009-12-01|archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/5llbKvgku|archivedate=2009-12-04|quote=Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit.}}</ref> <ref name=Telegraph20091201>{{cite news|work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6703400/Professor-at-centre-of-climate-change-email-row-stands-down-temporarily.html|title=Professor at centre of climate change email row stands down temporarily|date=2009-12-01|accessdate=2009-12-01|archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/5llb6obB7|archivedate=2009-12-04|quote=Professor Phil Jones, the director of a research unit at the centre of a row over climate change data, has said he will stand down from the post while an independent review takes place. }}</ref>

I Also suggest that Phil Jones get linked and that the sources is added in the reference section as indicated

Nsaa (talk) 09:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I've just added {{editprotect}} since it seems to be a consensus for the proposed change. Nsaa (talk) 08:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
As mentioned below, the article is no longer protected so the edit protected template isn't necessary and I've removed it. However I haven't made the change as the addition of the primary source was fairly controversial when we discussed adding the Phil Jones thing and although no one has objected to this change and I personally agree we should include the primary source, I don't think it wise to make this change until we're more sure there's no dispute Nil Einne (talk) 08:51, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Well since I was unable to get any more feedback I've made your proposed change more or less (the UEA 01 ref was already in use so didn't need to add it, I did add the archive for the Telegraph article although I already moved it to the reflist sometime earlier). BTW Phil Jones is not linked there because he's already linked a few paragraphs back Nil Einne (talk) 03:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Gentle reminder - do DISCUSS; do NOT EDIT WAR

The full protection is going to expire in about 2 hours. Can we all hopefully agree, whatever your POV and however obvious you think the change is, to continue to discuss matters properly and to not edit war which will just get the page protected again if people go to far? Nil Einne (talk) 03:10, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

My guess is that will happen right after we spot a squadron of pigs circling over Heathrow; glaciers encroaching on Hell; and Sarah Palin being awarded an honorary doctorate from MIT. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I fear this isn't going to be pretty.
Can we all remember that even with unprotected articles, controversial changes should be discussed on the talk pages first. I suggest that anything other than a truly minor edit (typo, fixing wikicode and the like - everything else qualifies as controversial - even if you personally think it is obvious that it belongs, I guarantee someone else has a different opinion.
In light of that, I would support the reversion of ANY addition if the editor cannot point to the talk page, show that the edit was proposed and at least one person concurred. This obviously isn't a sufficient standard for inclusion, but anyone who just decides to add something they just found and thinks belongs isn't editing in good faith. Does anyone disagree?
If you think someone clearly belongs in the article, surely you can mention it here and find at least one person to agree with you.--SPhilbrickT 04:06, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Hopefully this attitude will forestall any need for further protection. I have asked Abecedare if they think that semi-protection of this page is still necessary. Evidence so far indicates that it may not be, but this may change as the US swings back into the daylight hours. - 2/0 (cont.) 10:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
And so it begins Special:Contributions/115.135.227.168. I've been sadly expecting the quiet wouldn't last. Ironically our first major problematic user appears to be a Malaysian, unless it's an open proxy or something... Nil Einne (talk) 16:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I have unprotected the talkpage too, since it doesn't make sense to have this page protected while the article itself is open to editing by IPs and new users. The protections can be reinstated on either/both pages if previous problems reoccur - but lets see how it works for now. Abecedare (talk) 17:17, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Iw

{{editprotect}} Can an admin please add an iw [[no:Climategate]] referring to no:Climategate. Nsaa (talk) 08:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

This has already been added by User:Zorrobot (i.e. a bot) so I removed your request. For clarification this page is no longer protected so you're free to make noncontroversial changes such as adding interwiki links yourself. Obviously discuss any controversial change first. Nil Einne (talk) 08:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! Nsaa (talk) 08:54, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Just for the irony points, has anyone noticed that our fellow foreign-language wikis have all comprehensively stuffed up their titles? William M. Connolley (talk) 11:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes but I didn't think it wise to bring that up as I expect we're going to find out in a few hours Nil Einne (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

George Monbiot misrepresented

I am concerned under WP:BLP that, by very selective quoting, the views expressed by George Monbiot[9] are currently misrepresented in the article. There is a preamble to the quotes saying, "while he did not see the vast conspiracy that global warming sceptics saw", but Monbiot himself went on to say after the quoted passages, "But do these revelations justify the sceptics' claims that this is "the final nail in the coffin" of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists." I don't think these two statements are in the least equivalent ('not...vast conspiracy' vs 'not at all' - he doesn't mention a 'vast conspiracy', so is being exaggerated for effect).

He is quoted as saying that 'this [is] a "major blow" and that "emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging"'. What is not made clear is what he is saying it is a "major blow" to, and that it "could scarcely be more damaging" to what. Reading our article it sounds like "...to the theory of AGW", but in fact his words referred to "...the credibility of three or four scientists". That is very different and, I believe, a wilful misinterpretation by putting words into his mouth and using selective quoting out of context. --Nigelj (talk) 11:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, should be corrected. But more appropriate use of Monbiots articles would be, imo, to write something like: 'Monbiot dismissed any ideas that emails would threaten the mainstream GW theory, but strongly criticised the conduct of [these 3-4] scientists and Jones in particular'. --J. Sketter (talk) 16:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I didn't see adequate support for the first part of the proposed statement in the link, but I suspect that it is true, so if the right reference can be found, I'd support something along those lines.--SPhilbrickT 17:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
In an BLP article like this, we don't leave unreferenced statements until 'the right reference can be found'. The whole sense of Monbiot's article has been reversed, and it is now given 'top-billing' under 'Reactions to the incident', so I intend to make it follow the existing reference. --Nigelj (talk) 17:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Nigelj, I didn't propose to add wording first and references later. My comment related to proposed wording, not yet included. Obviously, adequate referencing needs to be found before we can reach a consensus on the wording to be added.--SPhilbrickT 18:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
My original post here was about the existing wording, so that's where my mind was. I've already altered it slightly to use his own words where possible without toning down (the 1st point) or elaborating (the rest), as I felt was the case before. --Nigelj (talk) 18:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, my post was, by no means, any proposal for wording, but just my own try to summarise Monbiot's views. Actually I guess expressions like 'strongly criticised' wouldn't even stand long in the article... I re-attributed the blow to the incident as a whole, but otherwise current wording of Nigelj looks good to me. --J. Sketter (talk) 19:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Areas of concern

I've been moving all of the references to the reflist. While this is not strictly required, I feel it's helpful to make the text easier to read and edit. Anyway I noticed some odd things while doing this

  • we currently link the word trick to the wiktionary entry. While I've seen this done before, it tends to be controversial AFAIK. On the other hand the meaning of the word is in question here so it's likely to be useful
  • in a few cases, e.g. with AMS, UCS and Storch, the only source for their comments is a primary source. While this may arguably be acceptable particularly in the Storch case, it would be ideal if secondary sources can be found to avoid dispute. I presume some could be found for the AMS and UCS ones at least
  • we say "Lord Lawson, who in 2005 called for the IPCC to be shut down" which is sourced to something in 2005. Again while this may not be strictly verbotten, it's generally wise to provide a reference in relation to the controversy which mentions this fact to establish the relevance of him calling for the IPCC to be shut down

Nil Einne (talk) 13:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I support the link to the term "trick" as the definition is part of the controversy.
Regarding primary sources, I haven't been privy to a debate about the choices, but if I were, I'd reiterate the preference for secondary when possible, and note the concern about primary is not an issue of Verifiability, but of relevance. If, for example, the National Association of Tiddly-Wink players issued a statement on Climategate, we would not include it, no matter how well-worded. Anyone can issue a statement on anything, so part of the decision process ought to be the Notability of the issuer, and the relevance of the organization to the issue in question. Using these decision criteria, the Storch primary source passes. The AMS reference also passes easily, as there is no question about their relevance to the overall subject. (Both would be better in secondary sources, but my quick review didn't uncover any yet.)
It's a closer call for the UCS statement. With their very broad mandate, they potentially could issue a statement about virtually every scientific issue in existence. I doubt we would endorse adding their editorial to every article about science. I would prefer arguing that the AMS statement is notable enough that a primary quote is acceptable. However, I would prefer not to use the UCS quote unless reliable sources deem it relevant to the discussion, and even then, we can assert our own editorial judgment over whether it should be included.
As for the MonbiotLawson quote, I think it should be removed. Had he proposed that CRU be shut down, the relevance would be obvious. However, while the IPCC is obviously central to the global warming issue, and their statements about the incident are relevant, they haven't been implicated in any part of the alleged scandal, except in a most peripheral way. I don't see that the MonbiotLawson call for shut down of IPCC adds sufficient context to the sentence to include it.--SPhilbrickT 18:20, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
If you mean the mention of Lawson 2005 call, it looks like an irrelevant piece of trivia. There are articles about persons, if someone is interested in their past actions. --J. Sketter (talk) 20:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Oops, yes.--SPhilbrickT 22:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
So so far we have three people who agree we should remove the Lawson-IPCC 2005 bit, is there anyone who disagrees?Nil Einne (talk) 03:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Well I removed the Lawson-IPCC 2005 bit along with the reference which is unlikely to be of use for anything else given it's from 2005. I left in the description of him as a climate change sceptic which is supported by the existing source for his quote Nil Einne (talk) 08:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Shell game

I don't want to start too many topics here, but I have a few suggestions for reorganization and I'm not sure where else to put them. I would recommend the following:

  • Move subsection "University of East Anglia response" to Reactions
  • Create two subsections under "Calls for inquiry"
  • Subsection "Breach investigation," for the inquiries into how the hack/theft/breach/leak/whatever was carried out.
  • Subsection "Content investigation," or something similar, for inquiries into the implications of the contents of the leaked data.

Thoughts? »S0CO(talk|contribs) 16:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The University of East Anglia response should stay where it is, because it is a response to the Calls for inquiries (the section it's in now).
Regarding your other suggestion, it seems that the present trend is to breakdown the investigations by who is doing the investigating. Madman (talk) 00:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Secondary source for Zorita quote

Zorita quote at WSJ

I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files. They depict a realistic, I would say even harmless, picture of what the real research in the area of the climate of the past millennium has been in the last years. The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas. I [do not] think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere—and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now—editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the "politically correct picture". Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the "pleasure" to experience all this in my area of research.

Worth prominent mention, IB. Pete Tillman (talk) 17:06, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Zorita appears to have gone well off the rails [10] William M. Connolley (talk) 21:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I am not sure it shows good judgement on your part to advertise this writing of yours here. Feelings seem to be running so hot now on both sides that, in a few cases, the tone has moved to direct personal insults. --J. Sketter (talk) 23:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Not to mention WP:BLP applies to talk pages, too. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 07:20, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
You'd prefer that I hid my writing? OK: that was intended to save me typing here. So I'll have to say it explicitly: Z has said things about Rahmstorf that are so absurd that they cast doubt on his judgement for the rest William M. Connolley (talk) 11:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Opinion

The Reactions section starts off with Monbiot's blog, but doesn't mention either the Nature editorial or the recent New Scientist piece, both of which I'd say are more interesting/notable/useful than Monbiot's reaction. On the other hand, if opinion pieces are not good enough (a defensible position), then Monbiot's should really be out too. Simonmar (talk) 22:59, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I agree, and Monbiot shouldn't be at the top to begin with. Apparently user A Quest For Knowledge decided to make this edit just after the protection ended Move Monbiot. There where clearly no consensus for that to begin with. What happened with the agreement here: #Disruption?
—Apis (talk) 23:22, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I definitely think that the Reactions section needs a lot of work. It's quite the jumble there now. Maybe I'll sort them later, but this is a touchy area, so I haven't done anything there.
Regarding User:A Quest For Knowledge's move, I don't think it's a big deal and certainly nothing that should be starting any edit war.
I do think that some pithy quote from the Nature would be appropriate, particularly since Nature is mentioned earlier in the article. Care to write one up?? Madman (talk) 00:07, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Monbiot shouldn't be moved to the top of the reactions section, above the university response, that's just provocation. I think a lot of people agree the section needs a lot of work, but please start no more edit wars by making controversial edits.
—Apis (talk) 00:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I raised this move, with six other consecutive, undiscussed edits by AQFN, 4th comment down under #Disruption, for the attention of our friendly admin, but seemed to get overruled, by what I could understand of the pithy comments. So I tidied up the Monbiot para, to make it roughly follow what he actually wrote (rather than the opposite), per #George Monbiot misrepresented. I think it should be moved back down. Or replaced as per #Gordon Brown attacks 'flat-earth' climate change sceptics: "I think we can put some of this [world leaders'] reaction in instead of rather than as well as some of the less notable reactions we have. Once we have reactions from actual 'world leaders', it kind of trumps those from bloggers and known activists, I think, on the notability stakes." --Nigelj (talk) 01:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
(EC) Monbiot is one of the most recognizable of the AGW water carriers in the media and his opinion should be included. I am less concerned about the ordering but I see no particular reason that the Univerisity's response whould take precedence over any of the others. --GoRight (talk) 01:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
The agreement was about disruptive edits; my changes were minor and most were touched upon in one way or another on the talk page. Keep in mind the talk pages are archived very frequently so you may have to search through the archives to find them. Regarding 'critics' I remember saying that there were different criticisms and we shouldn't lump legitimate scientists like Eduardo Zoria in with fringe theorists. No one disagreed. Also, the #Disruption agreement said nothing about achieving consensus first. If consensus is always required, there was no point in unprotecting the page in the first place. If making minor changes to the article requires discussion and consensus, then let's lock down the article again. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 05:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Penn State launches new investigation of Mann

Penn State is investigating Mann as a direct consequence of this incident. [11] Impeccably sourced & clearly relevant to the issue at hand. Any good reason why this shouldn't go on the page? Ronnotel (talk) 01:35, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It might be appropriate to make mention of the fact that Mann's comments are being reviewed by Penn State (their words). The statement that he's being investigated is premature. --TS 01:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
(EC)Actually, it says "reviewing", not "investigating". Yes, I would wait until some third-party, reliable sources start covering this. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, reviewed is better, my bad. Ronnotel (talk) 01:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Farnshon (talk) 06:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The above user appears to be a sleeper sock created seven days ago and activated for the first time 60 minutes prior to this comment. Viriditas (talk) 07:28, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Interesting how quickly he got into the thick of it, and very soon after this talk page was semiprotected. --TS 08:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I concur with TS that the term "investigating" would be better served with "reviewing". The subject is clearly relevant, as the press release specifically mentions this incident. Should be included.--SPhilbrickT 12:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
While this article in the Penn State Daily Collegian is from a student-run paper and therefore not ideal, I would think a campus paper is considered a reliable source in the context of a situation like this. I will go ahead and add a brief mention since there seems to be consensus here. Ronnotel (talk) 13:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Here is the text I added. Please let me know if anyone has any suggested edits and I will gladly make them: As a result of the information contained in the leaked documents, [[Penn State]] announced that it would begin a review of Prof. [[Michael E. Mann|Michael Mann]].<ref>{{cite web | author = Laura Nichols | title = PSU investigates Climategate | source = [[The Daily Collegian (Penn State)|Daily Collegian]] | date = 2009-11-30 | accessdate = 2009-11-30 | url = http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2009/11/30/psu_investigates_climategate.aspx}}</ref> Ronnotel (talk) 13:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I thought that while the page was locked that we're supposed to reach consensus before making changes to the article? In any case, drop the "As a result of the information contained in the leaked documents". What information? That's WP:OR not contained in the student newspaper. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I believe there is consensus, but am willing to be convinced otherwise. In the mean time I will revise as you suggest. BTW, the phrase at issue was from the press release cited above (i.e. it wasn't pulled out of thin air). However, I have removed as you correctly suggest because the secondary source should have precedence. Ronnotel (talk) 13:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

[12] should not have been added to a protected page. Please take it out William M. Connolley (talk) 14:01, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, but please explain why you think this is controversial. Ronnotel (talk) 14:05, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Ronnotel, I'm neutral as to your edits and don't think you've done a nit of harm or anything, but I would say nobody should be editing this article through protection unless there is overwhelming and settled consensus on this talk page for someone to go ahead and make a given edit. Gwen Gale (talk) 14:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Given that there are no stated arguments for not including the material I deduced that there was consensus. Ronnotel (talk) 14:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I understand, it looked to me like you were being very careful, I'm only thinking, one might wait until there is also a looming consensus along the lines of, "Ok, that's settled, now, would an admin please make the edit?" Gwen Gale (talk) 14:20, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Using your admin bit to edit an article in which you already had staked out a partisan position is a massive no-no. Arbcom has nailed admins to the wall for far less. Lt. Gen. Pedro Subramanian (talk) 14:22, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes. Gwen Gale (talk) 14:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Consensus can be inferred from silence but it's clear now that consensus was not there (why did this additional input only become apparent after the good-faith edit was made?). Everyone please stop hyperventilating. This edit can easily wait until article is unprotected but I fail to see how the project will benefit. Ronnotel (talk) 14:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The project is indeed harmed by protected pages, but they're mostly taken as a lesser harm. Gwen Gale (talk) 14:53, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Looks like consensus to me. Has anyone objected to the factual nature of the edit or the relevancy? I see some process questions, but not a substantive objection to the content. I'm a bit puzzled why the actual wording used differs from the proposed wording, which I thought was better.I've reread and see the discussion.--SPhilbrickT 15:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

There is an aweful lot of talk on this page. It is not reasonable to assume consensus based on silence. This page has lots of problems - the current text including climategate is just one of them. Just about everything here fails WP:NOTNEWS; adding yet more news through protection is definitely wrong William M. Connolley (talk) 15:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I've read WP:NOTNEWS before, but I reread it to see if I had missed something. It is not applicable. This is hardly "Routine news coverage of such things as announcements, sports, and tabloid journalism". Let's concentrate on making this a better article.--SPhilbrickT 16:01, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
As a humorous aside, I note that "climategate" gets 12.6 million Google hits while "global warming" gets just under 10. (Yes, I'm well aware that Google hits are not the be-all and end-all of relevance). I assume no one would take seriously a proposal to remove the term "global warming" from WP.--SPhilbrickT 16:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
This topic is notable and will most likely become more notable. Hence, I don't think WP:NOTNEWS has any sway here. Gwen Gale (talk) 16:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
It also has to be recognized that not sticking to WP:NOTNEWS can make it unreasonable not to allow appropriate violations of WP:OR to place the latest news in the correct context. That context cannot always be given from published sources, but it can often be extracted from information after proper synthesis and analysis that is not yet done in a reliable source. Count Iblis (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether it's your grammar or my brain cells, but between the two we seem to have arrived at a situation where I don't know whether you're saying we should stuck to "Wikipedia is not news" or the very opposite. Obviously we should comply with Wikipedia's policies but you seem to be saying this would risk original research. Could you clarify? --TS 19:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The silence was possibly due to the fact that it was night time in the Americas and a lot of the English-speaking editors here were probably sleeping. Anyway, to satisfy WP:UNDUE, I would wait until reliable sources start covering this. Right now, the only paper that has covered this is a local paper, student run paper at that . A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

There is now a reference to it on the New York Times In a related announcement, Pennsylvania State University said it would review the work of a faculty member who is cited prominently in the e-mail messages, Michael Mann, to assure that it meets proper academic standards. So I think this can be added now. Ignignot (talk) 15:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I didn't read the article, but if the NY Times is covering it, we should add it to our article. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. Should also appear in Michael E. Mann, as well -- though, last time I looked, the Climategate deniers were still valiantly holding the line there against a "see also" to this article! (shakes head) Pete Tillman (talk) 21:10, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
There are no Climategate deniers. Tom Harrison Talk 21:14, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal - article addition re: Mann review

Okay based on the lack of feedback I feel I should try to move this forward. I'm proposing the addition of this under an "Other inquiries" subsection. If the IPCC section remains short, I will combine the two into the other iinquires section since I don't see much point having a seperate section for two brief paragraphs.

adding the following to the reflist:

  1. ^ John M. Broder (December 1, 2009). "Climatologist Leaves Post in Inquiry Over E-Mail Leaks". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-12-06.
  2. ^ "University Reviewing Recent Reports on Climate Information". Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-12-06. Retrieved 2009-12-06. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |p ublisher= ignored (help)
  3. ^ a b Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press (December 3, 2009). "Penn St. prof. welcomes climate change scrutiny". Google. Archived from the original on 2009-12-06. Retrieved 2009-12-06.

The most contentious part of this is probably going to be the mention of Mann's previous review. I felt that necessary since it was a part of the statement and the fact that they only have/are going to look at some things is of direct relevance to the review. And if we are going to mention that review, it seems to me the findings of that review are of relevance. Given the apparent dispute over the findings of this review, the opinion of the chairman of the organisation that conducted the review seems the most neutral description. However I'm not strongly pushing this part, if people feel it's too contentious/problematic we can simply remove that part.

People may also dispute whether it's necessary to add Mann's response. I feel it's only fair given this directly concerns him even if his response is what everyone would expect.

BTW I did look for additional mention of the fact PSU is conducting a review of Mann but couldn't really find anything except blogs and other junk. However the AP story with Mann's response which I found as a result of the search combined with the earlier NYT story is enough IMHO. There's also [13] (permanent link/archive) but I didn't use it.

Also I should add that I found 3 versions of the AP story. They basically say the same thing I think. I was originally going to use the Sacramenton Bee version as that was the first version I found but it doesn't archive particularly well [14]. I then considered the NYT version but that doesn't archive at all due to the robots.txt. So I finally chose the Google version. That does give an error but I felt it better then any of the alternatives.

BTW, while not relevant to this page, I don't think this automatically means it belongs in the Mann article. Issues of WP:Undue and WP:NOTNEWS come in this since it could easily be a very minor thing in the life of the man (pun not intended) if the review finds absolutely no fault.

Nil Einne (talk) 04:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Go for it. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 07:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Well I've done it. I did rename the section to Other responses rather then Other inquiries as it fitted in neatly with the existing sections. Also it did occur to me earlier that the wording could be misinterpreted to mean that was the university's description of the result of the NAS review but it didn't seem that likely and I couldn't work out a way to clarify without making the sentence even longer. Nil Einne (talk) 14:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Disruption

I'm going to revert and block just about anyone who edits disruptively. Let me know if anyone objects to that. Any admin should feel free to unblock if I've made a mistake, or don't respond quickly to a question. Tom Harrison Talk 16:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I support this short-leash approach for this article, and intend to follow it too. Abecedare (talk) 17:27, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I support as well. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, you said that, AQFN, while making a series of seven edits, toning down mentions of 'sceptics', removing adjectives etc, none of which I see discussed anywhere here. --Nigelj (talk) 17:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
WP:AGF--Heyitspeter (talk) 00:02, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Support in general. But -- how do we deal with undiscussed and highly contentious edits at variance with reliable sources?[15] Most of this is from anons so semi-protection seems like a good compromise. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm going to deal with that by reverting and blocking. Tom Harrison Talk 18:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Nigelj, the removal of the adjective "strongly" was actually made by another editor who happened to have made his/her edit in the middle of my edits.[16]

Could the article be semi'd again? Without it I fear there will be rather a lot of "noise" edits William M. Connolley (talk) 21:31, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, and this may be a good place to complain about your content edit here [17]. You can make that edit, of course - though I disagree with it - but that comes very close to sucking you into the content dispute. I still hope you'll semi the thing though :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 21:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
We shouldn't use semi-protection just to prevent anons from editing, or to give an advantage to established editors, or to prevent the addition of neutral summaries of mainstream sources. It's better to block whoever disrupts, which I'm ready to do, and which seems to be working so far. If anyone is going to complain, it seems like it would be the anons I blocked. Of course you can object to my work on the page if you want, but your edit that I undid[18] is pretty problematic, since it was directly contradicted by the citation. Anyway, I'm not going to hang around all night, so any admin should feel free to undo me, or handle things differently. Tom Harrison Talk 22:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
As I've said elsewhere on this talk page (and I thought we had agreement on this) the source is *wrong* (and you can tell that, by reading it. It is (regrettably all too typical) lazy journalism: paraphrasing a source to say something it didn't). I care about that William M. Connolley (talk) 22:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
WP:V 93.86.205.97 (talk) 01:05, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree that it would be prudent to semi-protect this article. Madman (talk) 22:05, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

More anon junk [19] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Can an admin please semi-protect?
—Apis (talk) 23:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Semi-protected article until 23 December, which was the cut-off date before full protection was applied. I have not cleaned any of the new additions; if such edits continue without clear consensus here, blocks may be applied. - 2/0 (cont.) 02:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Since there are objections to my approach to this, I'll step away and let others handle it. At this point the page is locked (though I think that's not the best choice) so there shouldn't be anyone to block. Thanks to all for your input. Tom Harrison Talk 13:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help with this article, Tom. For the record, I think your approach is generally a good idea, but in this specific instance a stronger approach is needed, so I support the restoration of semi-protection. -- ChrisO (talk) 13:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Victoria Incident

Resolved

A new and similar incident involving theft took place at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis at the University of Victoria. Please discuss if and how this information is to be included in the article. The incident involved hacking attempts and physical theft.[20][21] ~AH1(TCU) 20:08, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Deserves mention. There could be a section "similar incidents" for these and other occurrences. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

(e/c):I think the National Post is considered a RS, but this Andrew Weaver, their "key contributor to the Nobel prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," is a minor player at best and sounds paranoid to boot: ""The real story in this is, who are these people and why are they doing it?" Mr. Weaver said. ... "They're trying to find anything. They don't care what it is."

He believes the campaign is driven by the fossil-fuel industry, citing "a war for public opinion."
So, no, not for now. Mr Weaver's secrets appear to be safe. So far. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 21:30, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree; deserves mention William M. Connolley (talk) 21:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I also think it deserves a mention, it's similar to this incident both in time and nature, a "similar incidents" section sounds good.
—Apis (talk) 22:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
If this is similar, where has hacked information from CCCMA been published? Every server on the Internet gets hacking attempts. And every year computers are stolen from the university.[22] -- SEWilco (talk) 07:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
After reading how this came out in our article, I don't quite think this deserves the "ink" and the positioning it's getting. Goodness, this Weaver fellow doesn't even have an article of his own. I would favor striking the sentences or at the very least moving it down below Reactions. As it is, it's positioned two sentences before we even hear about the contents or reactions from others. Madman (talk) 14:34, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Theft, Hacked, Leaked, or Left

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Det Supt Julian Gregory and detectives of Norfolk Constabulary are working on this case with a team from the Metropolitan Police. Wikipedia is not a forum, and we don't engage in speculation on talk pages.

There appears to be a long running low level edit war over whether to describe the incident as data theft. Beyond the fact that data theft appears to be what the majority of reliable sources say, an important point that perhaps people are missing is that whether hacking was involved or an "insider" released the information, it would still likely constitute data theft. In fact our very own article emphasises the fact most data theft is perpretrated by employees and the like, not by external intrusion. The only cases I can imagine where it would perhaps not be data theft is if someone inadvertedly put the information on a public server although even then there may still be some dispute since it is unlikely anyone would genuinely believe the information is intended to be public. P.S. Also, if people genuinely saying it was a hacking incident is inappropriate, they should properly start a discussion to rename the article since it seems to me calling something a hacking incident is more serious then a few mentions of theft Nil Einne (talk) 13:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. There are hints of insider involvement, but without a credible case that the person leaking owned the docs (which is almost beyond imagination), it was data theft. If backed up by RS, it may be fair to note speculation about insider involvement, but only as speculation, not as established fact. In any event, I suspect that aspect will be resolved fairly soon, so we shouldn't expend too much energy debating the point.--SPhilbrickT 13:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I disagree. If this is an internal leak, then there are whistle-blower protections. The comparison most apt is probably the Pentagon Papers. This isn't referred to as document theft. Depending on the views of a writer, they might use terms like "whistle-blower", "leak", "security breach", but not theft. Perhaps a more neutral term needs to be used: "unauthorised release" or "data security breach"? The article currently is claiming external hack and theft. This can be viewed as partisan. Slowjoe17 (talk) 15:12, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
In a fantasy world, perhaps, but not in reality. There is no evidence of an internal leak. Viriditas (talk) 13:59, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
The unreceptive position that a theft must have taken place because there is no evidende of an internal leak is quite incredulous. Anyone who is intelligent enough to be a regular Wikipedia editor and that hasn't stooped to partisan editing should accede that the possibility of a whistleblower (i.e. an inside job) is a real one, not a far-fetched one belonging only in a fantasy world. And no, we don't have to request a claim that the leak is the work of an insider to accept that this is a real possibility. If there is merit to the plentifold allegations that this entire debacle constitutes a monumental scientific fraud, then it would not be hard to imagine how someone on the inside with a tortured conscience might commit the acts which brought the documents in question into the hands of AGW critics. __meco (talk) 14:19, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
We don't speculate on Wikipedia talk pages about hypothetical leakers that might exist. This may come as a shock to you, but what we do, is talk about how to improve articles with the best sources that we have at our disposal. A theft did take place, and it has nothing to do with speculating about a leaker. Stop trying to connect the two. Unless you have actual evidence, there isn't a connection. You're either here to write an article about the data theft at CRU, or you are here to push a POV that isn't based on the evidence at hand. Which is it? Viriditas (talk) 14:30, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Since we're NOT SUPPOSED TO SPECULATE on Wikipedia, calling it a hack is against the rules you so properly city. We have NO evidence of a hack, other than Phil Jones' self-serving accusation (just as we have NO evidence of global warming, other than Phil Jones' cooked books and his computer code full of "fudge factors" that are all positive for recent years, and negative for times decades ago. When the CRU presents evidence of a hack, it can be called a hack. Until such time, Occam's Razor leans towards it being either the act of a whistle-blower, or (since there is significant evidence in both the computer code itself, and in previous errant leaks of accidentally putting files on a web server that they did not intend to release) that this is typical data mismanagement because Jones and CRU apparently wouldn't hire anybody with any IT professionals (for fear that anyone outside the cabal would have blown the whistle a decade ago?) In any event, there is NO EVIDENCE of outside intrusion into CRU, so claiming that it was a hack is fraudulent. Just like Jones. Akulkis (talk) 09:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Akulkis. There are only accusations from former chief of CRU, Jones, but he mentioned no evidence of outside theft or hacking presented so far. Anika (talk) 22:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

To me this discussion provides a great insight to the wisdom of the no-news-rule. I pledge for leaving it as it is atm, and discuss the matter in future, when this point has been clarified (or if it'll become obvious that there are no intention by RS to clarify it). 84.72.61.221 (talk) 18:03, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. We only have allegations of theft. No evidence. No parties. Not only could it be an inside release, it could even be an accidental release as happened at the same site earlier this year. At most, it can be called "alleged theft." Doesn't innocent-until-proven-guilty apply here, particularly with absolutely zero evidence of it being a criminal act?Mr Pete (talk) 20:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

At this point, it would seem best to refer to an "alleged theft" or unauthorized release, unless directly quoting a RS. --Pete Tillman (talk) 20:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
It's also worth noting that, as of this writing, we have 12 cites to "leak" or "leaked" files, vs. 2 cites for "stolen" and none for "theft" (in article titles). Pete Tillman (talk) 05:06, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Left? The FOIA material appears to have been on a server external to the CRU. Blog moderators suggest that the most likely cause is the files were placed on an external server without proper password security. Accordingly they were available to the public to read/download. No evidence has been given that this was not the case. See: The CRUtape Letters™, an Alternative Explanation. The CRU promptly changed all passwords and switched from their external file server to an older data set on an emergency file server. See More on the RC Hack. Security specialist Pete Holzmann has a similar perspective Mr. Pete to Andy Revkin "In my experience, among security non-specialists by far the most common way that confidential information is released is through accidental disclosure. The second most common is purposeful disclosure by someone who either didn’t know the data was confidential, or someone who did know but released it anyway. External attack, particularly the kind that requires some kind of break in, is way down the list." Stating the data was "stolen" without evidence, when timing and CRU actions suggest it might have been "left" is POV favoring the CRU. Recommend discussing each of the options without favoring "Theft" or "stolen". I added "Leaked, or Left" to the section title as an example.DLH (talk) 04:50, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Per Tillman's note of no references for "theft" while there are numerous articles on "hacked", I changed "theft" to "hacked" in the subtitle. "theft" could be mentioned later in the text if evidence emerges for that.DLH (talk) 20:34, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually the ref we use when we mention theft explicitly uses the word 'stolen' which for the vast majority of people implies 'theft' if you're going to debate whether it does that's up to you I have no desire to participate. Regardless, while it's acceptable to add additional words to the topic of this discussion, please don't remove one of the words I added as the topic starter and discussed in my original comment as it's misleading. Or to put it a different way, this discussion clearly included the discussion of using the word theft, so please don't remove it from the topic regardless of the outcome of the discussion. Nil Einne (talk) 05:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Should this be renamed "Climatic Research Unit e-mail disclosure incident" (replace hacking with disclosure in title) since its not been verified that it was hacked versus an insider vs some inadvertent disclosure? Jmcnamera (talk) 19:14, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I know I should resist but I can't. Anyway sure of course we should be trusting someone who says "Often the FTP server for an organization may also be the organization’s external web server as the two functions are often combined on the same CPU or hardware box." and "by putting it in an FTP directory which was on the same CPU as the external webserver" (emphasis mine). Clearly an IT expert we have there... Nil Einne (talk) 09:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

This issue in itself justifies a section discussing these claims of hacked versus leaked vs left. The overall title is a separate issue. DLH (talk) 01:12, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

We don't have any reliable sources for the notion that it isn't hacking. We have plenty of reliable sources for the notion, accepted almost universally, that it's a hacking. We go with the sources. --TS 02:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Using NPOV to allow Phil Jones to play the victim is indeed ironic. Would this be allowed if the subject was different, as in murder? Eric Barnes (talk) 16:55, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

As I sit here in Houston's earliest snowfall on record I can only be amused by those defending the obvious bias in the unproven claim the emails were "hacked." They were obviously the subject of FOIA requests already and it's obvious by the confirmed genuine emails the disgraced scientists have tried to stonewall the public despite the lawful requests. There is little evidence of a hacking. The claim originated with the disgraced scientists at the CRU. As there is equal evidence of a deliberate leak by insiders within the organization the word "hacked" presents a point of view that has an obvious bias. The article's title needs to be changed. --DaleEastman (talk) 21:32, 5 December 2009

I think "liberated" (i.e., liberated to the public as law justifies and the researchers attempted to block, regardless if the process may be legally questionable) is an appropriate term.
Joe Sixpack
Editor: Global Implications of Mankind
A prestigous journal
http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=429018 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.177.23.147 (talk) 16:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Prestidigitatious, perhaps, but not prestigious. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there any evidence to support the hacking theory? soros (talk) 02:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Climategate is the clear public consensus - please change the name.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Despite this and several other discussions (see archive 5 and archive 6) no consensus has emerged to rename the articlee.

Everyone including the very pro-warming BBC are now calling these event "climategate". [23]. "Climategate" (as a single word) now has 1.5million hits on google. In contrast: "Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident" has a mere 3,870 hits. That is nearly 400:1 against the current name.

To put that in context I wondered what some editors here considered to be "notable" and so googled 'william connolley' (returning any page with these two words anywhere) to see how many google hits warrant the inclusion of the William Connolley article. I found a mere 28,500 hits 3x as many as for the title! (Of which 8830 appear for "william connolley climategate" - which to be honest must be just random noise as there are 9120 for "william connolley bananas"). Isonomia (talk) 15:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

That isn't actually noise. His controversial and sordid relationship with bananas is well documented, and attempts to cover it up by Dole and Chiquita have prevented it from being accepted by the mainstream. Ignignot (talk) 15:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Strongly reject, per Wikipedia:Words_to_avoid#Controversy_and_scandal and WP:GOOGLE. Hipocrite (talk) 15:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Hip and for the reason he cited. While the term "Climategate" is probably the most widely used name for the subject matter of this page, the subject matter of the page is still rapidly evolving. It simply has not settled sufficiently into the historical record. However, I think it's only a matter of time before someone issues a formal admonition, gets fired, or resigns. Then the argument for changing the name will become more compelling with a colorable scandal to point to. Evensong (talk) 17:10, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. There is no point speculating. A lot of very excitable right-wingers are jumping up and down with their hair on fire at the moment, but that does not make it a "colorable scandal". Even if any resignations or sackings occur the article is not going to get renamed "Climategate" for the reasons I set out above - it's a violation of NPOV. The policy issue will not go away. When Dan Rather resigned after the Killian documents controversy, our article on the subject was not renamed to the POV term "Rathergate". Likewise when Alberto Gonzalez resigned following the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy we did not rename that article "Attorneygate". -- ChrisO (talk) 18:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
The rule we've cited is not as absolute as you appear to believe, and, therefore, the future name of this article is probably not as immutable as you predict. However, we can both agree that now is absolutely not the time to change the article to "Climategate", and that is all that really matters when addressing present edits. Evensong (talk) 19:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I was responsible for writing that particular policy years ago; it's been stable for a long time and is standard practice now, so I think I'm fairly well placed to say what the policy means. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:40, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Good of you to tell us, CrisO! Where ambiguities of text abound, documents are construed against the draftsman. Evensong (talk) 18:57, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
The article is not going to be renamed to your suggested title, as it would not be compatible with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. Article names are expected to exhibit the highest degree of neutrality to satisfy Wikipedia's requirements. The use of "scandal" or "-gate" frequently implies wrongdoing or a particular point of view. Such terms are words to avoid and should not be used in article titles. For a point of comparison, the Wikipedia article on the "Rathergate" incident is titled Killian documents controversy. That sort of descriptive titling is our standing approach. -- ChrisO (talk) 16:10, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm neutral on this, I wholly agree with the en.W policy on -gate, I think it's "dumb" how the media is wont to tack on a suffix from a 37-year old scandal onto new scandals (I guess there may be some link to the word watershed and its meaning, thence stemming from Watergate, which makes this so easy for journos to do), I agree nevertheless that the search term is Climategate because that's what most sources are now calling it but meanwhile, Climategate redirects here so I think it highly unlikely many (if any) readers are being lost. Gwen Gale (talk) 16:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
It's simply because it's become a shorthand for lazy journalists and it's convenient for use when space or wordcounts are tight. -- ChrisO (talk) 16:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Even used in HuffingtonPost ... it appears to now be exceptionally common (hundreds of current news stories use the term). Collect (talk) 16:21, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Exponential growth -- Google now claims 16+ million hits on the single word. Collect (talk) 16:23, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
It doesn't matter how many sources use it. "Rathergate" is widely used as well but we don't use it because it's not a neutral or encyclopedic title for an article. Please see WP:GOOGLE. -- ChrisO (talk) 16:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
BBC radio this morning reported on developments but didn't use it - if it was indispensable they would have. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm dubious about that assertion, but as I said above it doesn't actually matter who uses it. We have a clear policy against using such terms as article titles and our standing practice is not to do so. -- ChrisO (talk) 16:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Looking at Google news searchable stories from the last week on "University of East Anglia", "Climate Research Unit", "Phil Jones", etc. with either +climategate or -climategate suggests that about 40-50% of news stories are using the term right now. So, it certainly isn't an indispensable title. Whether it is the best possible choice of title, I don't know. Dragons flight (talk) 16:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Note that Google News picks up a lot of unreliable sources (blogs, fringe websites, etc) so this is not a reliable indicator of how mainstream the term is. It's been promoted heavily by anti-science activists in the blogosphere (and originated with them); your Google News search will be picking up a lot of that traffic. -- ChrisO (talk) 16:44, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I know this will go exactly nowhere, but I would like to suggest Climate Research Unit science controversy. Surveying the reliable sources and the reaction to date, this story really isn't whether or not the purloined data was "hacked" or not (IMHO, it's far more likely to have been intentionally leaked by someone involved in responding to an FOIA request). The story that is forming is the impact this event will have on the scientific community and what harm may have been done to the scientific process itself. While different sides are saying predictable things about what the leaked information says about AGW, all sides seem to generally concur that the materials are an indictment of the way Science itself was practiced by CRU and others at the center of this episode. I don't think it's at all surprising that the first concrete reactions from this event have been administrative actions taken by CRU and Penn State against the main individuals involved. Clearly, these actions are in response to the perception of poor science. Ronnotel (talk) 16:37, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

They've neither admitted nor implied any wrongdoing. The investigations are the university administrations covering their asses. Ignignot (talk) 17:07, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes and I guess one should say that the title we have, Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident , is indeed unsupported. Gwen Gale (talk) 17:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

We have to wait to see whether the term catches on. At present the story itself is more often covered by sources like Fox News and is attracting little mainstream media interest. When the term "ClimateGate" is used it is usually in quotations, indicating that it is not yet generally accepted, and may never be. The Four Deuces (talk) 16:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Mainstream media -- as in New York Times [24] "A longtime observer of climate science cautions those on all sides of " climategate" to prepare for less certainty as answers emerge" [25] "as some have put it, 'Climategate'" and so on. BTW, RS/N routinely finds Fox to be an RS, so I am unsure why it is not accepted here. Washington Post [26] etc. Use of a word in quotation marks does not mean anything more than it was not a word in prior common usage. Collect (talk) 18:49, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Collect, of the sources you cite, two of them say that some people call it "Climategate" while the third source is actually from a posting by a reader of the NYT. So far MSM do not accept the name and imply that it is not generally accepted. The Four Deuces (talk) 05:47, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

There were millions of Google results for 'Climategate' before this hacking incident took place. The term has been in use for some time. Dynablaster (talk) 19:02, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It was 1.3 million this morning when I first thought of posting, it is now 1,580,000. That's 280,000 hits in nine hours. Isonomia (talk) 19:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Funny, I get 21 million. Either something is weird, or google hits are not a panacea for determining such trends. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:32, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

At the moment the only thing which is certain is that CRU and emails were involved. We'll have to wait to see what the last part of the event should be named. It has been widely discussed whether this should be called a hack or whistleblowing event, but one or two small pieces of information are unknown. What else develops is more unknown. At the moment we're watching side effects of the Watergate burglary appearing, without enough information to write Watergate scandal. The Climategate redirect ensures that the web searchers can find this article, and beyond that we'll have to see. -- SEWilco (talk) 17:34, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Now in major media sans quotation marks in headers. [27] Kansas City Star. [28] Calgary Sun. [29] Calgary Herald. [30] Boston Globe. [31] Forbes. [32] Atlantic. [33] Telegraph. [34] Even AccuWeather. Collect (talk) 20:17, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're wasting your time. Article naming is determined by Wikipedia's policies alone. It doesn't matter how many sources you find - if the name violates NPOV, which it does, it's not going to be used, period. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Current title is atrocious. Can't we do better than "Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident"? Henrybaker (talk) 06:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Face facts- The name is CLIMATEGATE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu_ok37HDuE
(36,506 views)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo2Mwnwpac
(96,805 views)
"Climategate now gets 20 million hits on Google. If you google in 'global warming' you only get 10 million." - Dr. Pat Michaels. You can watch him being interviewed here, where this quote is taken from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTP4NSPdZWs
If anyone has evidence of a more popular name for this scandal, they should 'put up or shut up'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.8.157.210 (talk) 22:30, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I have to agree that the name is Climategate.
That being said, if a reader knew very little about the ordeal and wanted read two different encyclopedia's to get a better understanding about it; when compared side-by-side, it seems like Wikipedia is discussing a different event than Conservapedia.
Based on the information presented, it seems like Wikipedia is discussing the controversy about the incident which released the data, while Conservapedia is discussing Climategate. So, in that case, maybe the name of this article doesn't need to change. This article goes no further into the subject than the incident where the data was released on November 19. It's not a bad thing, it's just not talking about Climategate - thus, shouldn't be called Climategate. 98.232.27.135 (talk) 04:54, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Then why does Wikipedia redirect "Climategate" to this article? As it stands, this is THE Climategate-esk article on Wikipedia, therefore its name needs to change to Climategate. If anything, "Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident" should be a section within this article and not the article itself. -MrGuy
Wikipedia does have deeper coverage of the subject, but it's not in the English version of the article. See the other languages. -- SEWilco (talk) 02:34, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
The ongoing investigations into this incident and the ramifications of it are clearly being called "Climategate" in all references and news articles except here. The article name really ought to be changed before NOT using it becomes a violation of NPOV. --Textmatters (talk) 15:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, seriously? This is what we're calling this on Wikipedia? Maybe we should change the article title for the color Blue to "Yellow/Green Color Mixture". Come on guys, this is Climategate. ==DioseeWarrior== —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.178.22.16 (talk) 01:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
"Climategate" is not going to happen, given the balance of editors on this talk page, and the hyperbolic nature of the title. There are more worthy areas where effort can be focused to balance the article. I posted a topic about this, but it appears to have since been archived - why is "e-mail" still a part of the article's title? Beyond emails, much of the content which was leaked and has been a matter of dispute is (to be blunt) absolutely wretched climate model code and documentation which suggests efforts to shape these models to produce artificial results that tow the AGW line. »S0CO(talk|contribs)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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