User talk:ImperfectlyInformed/Archive 2

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Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

I'm copying this section from the talkpage of WP:LIBRARY as a heads-up to the people who happen to watch my talkpage.

This bill (GovTrack link) is a bill to keep on eye on -- add a GovTrack tracker to it. It is an attempt to shut down the new mandate supporting PubMedCentral, that government-funded articles be made freely accessible. The following links cover it: [1][2][3][4]

While it would seem impossible for such a blatantly abusive bill to pass, I'm no longer surprised by the government. II | (t - c) 04:41, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

UPDATE: This bill has been reintroduced [5]. Track it on Govtrack [6].

From the ATA [5]:

Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information through the PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.

II | (t - c) 17:41, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out. This is a big fight that has been going on for years. I'm sure this was introduced to keep the "Fair Access to Clinical Trials" (F.A.C.T.) act from being reintroduced again. People interested in public access to clinical trials and in all trials being reported have been trying to get F.A.C.T. through for years: 2004 FACT 2005 FACT 2007 FACT It has been introduced, and reintroduced, year after year, and defeated everytime. This is a good summary of why the bill was created: Senator Dodd's remarks about the F.A.C.T. bill. What is the point of "evidence-based" medicine., if the evidence is hidden?

this year, they are introducing a more limited version for cancer trials: house senate . I hope this one will fare better.

--stmrlbs|talk 05:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You might be interested in this: comments requested on expansion of the clinical trial registry and results data bank (ClinicalTrials.gov). Summary:

Summary
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) held a public meeting and is requesting input from interested parties on issues that the agency will consider as it develops regulations to expand the clinical trial registry and results data bank commonly known as ClinicalTrials.gov in accordance with section 801 of the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (FDAAA) [Public Law 110-85]. Comments on these issues from all interested parties will inform the development of draft regulations, which will be made available for public comment via a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that will be issued in the Federal Register at a later date.

--stmrlbs|talk 05:33, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Fluoridation

Thanks for your reply to my comments on the water fluoridation article. You're probably right that the H2SiF6 is probably right from the plant and anyway that the dilution is such that any threat from its acidity is inconsequential. What I didnt understand and didnt want to bog-down an already crowded talk page with, was your comment that fluoride contributes to lead poisoning. I would have thought that the same argument that the concentration is vanishingly small would also imply that the corrosiveness of F- would be minimal. I dont have the numbers, but I would guess that the formation constants for lead fluorides are low. But maybe I am missing the argument. I'll check back here so there is no need to respond on my page. Thanks, --Smokefoot (talk) 23:17, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

PMID 17697714 is a laboratory study on the issue. It suggests that your intuition (which is certainly more qualified than mine) on corrositivity is wrong. If you want access to the full-text, I can send it to you, although you'll have to email me first. Here's some of the basic clues from the article:

Under some conditions, NH and FSA, as such, react to produce silica and ammonium fluoride (Mollere, 1990). How that affects corrosion is not known, but whatever its reaction with NH may be, FSA does not leach lead simply because it is an acid. The fluosilicate anion [SiF6]2� and/or partially dissociated derivatives have a unique affinity for lead. Lead fluosilicate is one of the most water soluble lead species known, a property recognized and exploited for many years (Stauter, 1976). FSA has been used as a solvent for lead and other heavy metals in extractive metallurgy (Cole et al., 1981; Kerby, 1979) and to remove surface lead from leaded-brass brass machined parts (Bonomi et al., 2001; Giusti, 2001, 2002).With or without CA, FSA would extract lead from brass. Besides, in the water plant situation it is reasonable to expect FSA to combine with NH as ammonium fluosilicate, an excellent solvent for copper alloys (Hara et al., 2002) and other metals (Silva et al., 1995).

II | (t - c) 01:53, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

The linked paper looks pretty flakey to me (minor institution, minor journal, and primary source). No surprise that choramines and fluorosilicic would attack lead (and other materials) under some conditions so the question is one of relevance to water fluoridation, and you seem to have drawn the conclusions I would anticipate. Thanks again for the ref, catch you later --Smokefoot (talk) 02:46, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I prefer not to base my beliefs on arguments from authority if at all possible. Primary sources are best for evaluating the actual data, which are ultimately what all secondary arguments are derived from. I've seen too many ridiculous mistakes and omissions from authority figures to take things on faith. Much of medical science is simple enough for me to feel comfortable with my own analysis (based in large part on secondary interpretations, of course). I'm not saying the study is conclusive -- neither side in the fluoridation debate is above twisting facts, and it's hard to say which one twists or omits facts the most. The above study is the first laboratory study of the FSA's effect on leaded brass pipes. I wouldn't be surprised if some dentists do a similar study and find the opposite conclusions -- until then, though, the above study suggests that fluoridation should be discontinued in areas with leaded brass pipes. The best way to resolve differences might be to get them to work on their studies together.

It doesn't matter that much to me whether fluoridation increases lead poisoning. As I've already shown to you, WHO statistics show that several nonfluoridated (neither salt nor water) nations in Europe have less tooth decay than the United States [7]. Water fluoridation is an imprecise, wasteful, and potentially dangerous mass medication device. Since I weigh less than most people and drink more water, my fluoride intake on a bodyweight basis could be twice as much as average. I'd rather not risk an IQ point [8]. Similarly, I'd rather not worry about an adverse effect on my thyroid. The NAS reports that thyroid effects occur with adequate iodine intake at .05-.13 mg/kg/day [9]. If I drink 2 liters of water per day (less than recommended by Mayo Clinic [10]), that would be 2 mg per day of fluoride, from water alone. That's .04 mg/kg if I weigh 50 kilograms, which is too close for comfort.

Anyway, let's not pretend that I'm the only one who's drawn the conclusions anticipated. You make your disdain for environmental health and the possibility of politicized research from your perspective quite clear. One interesting difference is that the political bias for your perspective includes industry support and liability issues, while the political bias for my side is simply personal concern. II | (t - c) 18:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, got it. Thanks for writing things out. My comments on the weak journal article were snide but that is how the publishing world works IMHO. In any case, it's helpful to me to see how you view things and view my edits. We're probably not as far apart, not that that matters in an NPOV world. Later,--Smokefoot (talk) 04:03, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

organic farming

hi, i requested a move of organic farming to organic agriculture, as i proposed on the talk page, which i consider uncontroversial. since you edited the article recently, if you think this is not the case, could you respond to my proposal on the talk page? thanksTruetom (talk) 17:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Copyright and plagiarism thread at Water fluoridation FAC

Would you mind collapsing that thread in a hidden box? I think that issue has been addressed. Xasodfuih (talk) 22:31, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Please see the WP:FAC instructions; using the hide templates is discouraged at FAC as they cause the archives to exceed template limits. More common is for FAC to remain focused on specific issues and examples relating to WP:WIAFA, with longer commentary placed on talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Iodates

The series that I use for industrial chemistry says that "A normal person requires about 75 mg of iodine per year, which is usually consumed as iodized salt that contains one part sodium or potassium iodide to 100 000 parts of sodium chloride." According to this series, iodates are used (together with iodides) in animal feeds: "About 25% of the reported domestic consumption of iodine was in animal feeds, primarily as the compound EDDI [=ethylenediammonium diiodide], but also as potassium iodide, calcium iodate" So if you have a source for iodates in table salt, please pass that on.--Smokefoot (talk) 01:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I misworded my comment. PMID 11396703 says health authorities recommend iodate since it doesn't break down as quickly, so I assumed it was more common. By the way, my guess is that fluoridation became much more controversial not really because of sophisticated understanding that fluoride is more toxic or a cost-benefit analysis (dental caries vrs. cretinism), but mainly due to fluoride's reputation as an ingredient in rat poison [11]. Back when the two schemes were being introduced, there was little concrete knowledge on adverse effect, and they just noticed few obvious adverse effects and obvious benefits. II | (t - c) 08:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You might be right about the coinciding introduction of sodium fluoride for rats and fluoridation for drinking water. At rodenticide, sodium fluoride is not mentioned, possibly an oversight. My industrial source (Ullmann's Indust. Chem.), which tends to list any application that makes or made money, doesn't mention NaF being sold as a poison. Sodium fluoroacetate is/was used as rat poison, so it is conceivable that the similar names sodium fluoroacetate and sodium fluoride were confused at some stage. Figuring out why people acted in a certain way would take more time and sources than I have.

I don't know if you can find fluoride rat poison now. See [12], although a self-published website, it has a legitimate coverage of the historical use. Perhaps they weren't as efficient as modern insecticides and aren't used today, although this ancient source says DDT is no more effective for cockroaches than "the familiar old sodium fluoride".II | (t - c) 18:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

On the iodide theme since that interests you: iodide is "one of 14 mineral commodities .. being used for domestic meat production." - would be interesting to know what else is used.--Smokefoot (talk) 13:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Reported violations of arbitration decisions for enforcement

I have reported your actions at Orthomolecular psychiatry to WP:AE for enforcement. See this. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience

[snipped]

This message is to so inform you. This message does not necessarily mean that your current editing has been deemed a problem; this is a template message crafted to make it easier to notify any user who has edited the topic of the existence of these sanctions. [snipped] PhilKnight (talk) 20:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, although considering that I already posted on the thread, don't you think this was a bit late? II | (t - c) 20:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Community ban of myself

For those interested in seeing me gone, please weigh at the proposal at WP:ANI: Wikipedia:ANI#Community_ban_of_ImperfectlyInformed. Like medieval England, in Wikipedia the jury and the accusers stand as one. Although I'll admit my source on medieval England is a perhaps flawed recall of a passage in Born in Blood. Perhaps even medieval England had unbiased juries. II | (t - c) 20:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

• Jury of accusation or jury of trial? There were three forms of jury known to mediaeval English law [13]. 72.255.4.87 (talk) 21:31, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

• Wow, thanks. I looked briefly but couldn't find anything. II | (t - c) 22:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

• • Surely the jury is the entire community that gets involved at ANI, and they haven't all accused you ;) I think this is an overreaction (the call for a ban), and it's all a bit soap-operaish - including this section! Best, Verbal chat 21:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I plead guilty to drama-whoring with this notification. :) I figured if the proposal was out there, I might as well let people watching know. ANI moves fast. I wish there was a function that notified me if people had any number of things: 1) Requests for adminship, requests for bans, requests for comment, ect. Wikipedia needs to move into Web 2.0, but this is the closest thing we've got for now. II | (t - c) 22:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

More WP:AE drama, FYI

The drama continues. Your name is mentioned (by me, and peripherally) in a thread I started at WP:AE, here. So it goes. regards, Middle 8 (talk) 00:21, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. I would trim down your posts to the bare details. A bit funny how that thread turned out -- do I read it right in seeing that Orangemarlin reverted you with a "NPOV" edit summary, and then you did the same, but yours was then brought up as a possible personal attack? Interesting. Wikipedia is getting crazier these days; such a tiny population in the medical articles, and the most aggressive ones are flagrantly anti-CAM. II | (t - c) 02:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Reported actions to WP:AE

I have also reported some actions you have made to here. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:13, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

You are listed at...

...Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge#Active participants.

Are you still interested in this project?

If so, please drop me a note.

The Transhumanist 00:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but I don't have time for it at the moment. Dropping notes about it on my talkpage is not worth your time. You could post messages on the project talkpage. II | (t - c) 02:13, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion

Perhaps you could change one paragraph at the time on Opposition to water fluoridation. If other users continue to play thick after that, I'll open a banning a discussion for disruption. Xasodfuih (talk) 14:03, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Hipocrite doesn't give me the impression that he's going to contribute anything useful to that article, so I've started a topic ban discussion here. Xasodfuih (talk) 16:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Wal-Mart

The reason I haven't edited the mainspace beyond adding the tags is because the leading book on the subject is written by a visiting fellow at an institution I work at, and I've been accused of a COI merely for mentioning the book (among a dozen other links) on the talk page. I don't think I'd violate WP:COI by making neutral edits to the mainspace, but history has shown me that people who don't like me will throw a giant fit over the most innocuous edit over the most attenuated allegation of conflict of interest, so I'd rather avoid the wikidrama. (For example, someone once accused me of a conflict of interest because a former client from my job at a former employer might dislike the movie whose article I was making edits to, and they clearly paid millions of dollars to my law firm in 2004 on the off-chance I would quit and three years later edit Wikipedia in my spare time.) THF (talk) 04:23, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I still think you should give it a shot, and I'd be willing to keep an eye on your edits and support them -- or even reinstate them myself -- if I think they're supported by the references and appropriate. It's not really an area which I'm motivated enough to do the research myself. II | (t - c) 08:25, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your permission and support doesn't stop Anderssl from raising a COI complaint elsewhere, and I have so many kooks raising complaints against me (three on ANI in the last 24 hours alone) that a complaint with a scintilla of plausibility will cause a gigantic piling on. THF (talk) 21:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Just so you know

I liked this edit. However, I am going to continue to stand up to the pejorative wording "mainstream" or "conventional". Medicine (and for this discussion, nutrition is medicine) is science. Those issues that lack scientific evidence cannot be medicine, mainstream or otherwise. This will always be my point with respect to alternative "medicine"--show me the science, and I'll be 100% behind it being "medicine". Anyways, just wanted you to know that I think 90% of your edits usually are really good. We're going to probably continue to disagree with the other 10%!  :) OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 16:53, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm flattered, but by count we disagree on more than 10%. ;) I hope we can come to agreements more often, but I'll always be pulling for an interpretation of WP:NPOV which includes describing the "fringe" theorists views in their own articles as fairly as possible and accurately qualifying the mainstream ones. And the place in NPOV where it says "and any mention should be proportionate and represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, should explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly" seems like an endorsement for putting "mainstream" behind the mainstream view. I honestly can't understand how mainstream would be pejorative. I can understand how conventional could be pejorative.

As far as science, I'm not so sure I can trust you to stick to it. I wholeheartedly agree with Edzard Ernst that probably 95% of altmed is nonsense; in my only edit to homeopathy, I noted that CAM journals had a terrible publication bias towards it (and didn't note its lack of plausibility, which is unforgivable) [14]. I think funding for homeopathy is a massive waste of money. I'm not keen on chiropractic, acupuncture, or much of anything besides nutrition and herbs (which I'll admit don't have a ton of evidence), which is why I don't edit those articles. However, when I "brought the science" on fish oil for blood pressure, you seemed unwilling to budge. A similar thing happened with that whole 5-HTP/tryptophan deal. II | (t - c) 17:26, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

ADHD

Yes I have :-) Currently reading "The loss of sadness" http://www.amazon.ca/Loss-Sadness-Psychiatry-Transformed-Depressive/dp/0195313046 which is more of a technical discussion of were one should draw the line between health and sickness and how currently we have missed the mark when it comes to depression. I come across people who do not realize that sadness is a normal part of life. Anyway Thanks. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Which of those books have you read, outta curiosity, and which did you like best? II | (t - c) 23:22, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Laetrile

A minor point (and question, I guess). You said at WP:RS/N that the Cochrane Library's review of laetrile "called for another clinical trial". To my knowledge, laetrile has never been subjected to any clinical trials. The existing data (certainly at the time of the 2006 Cochrane review, and I believe through present-day) is entirely in the form of uncontrolled case reports. The Cochrane review states: "No RCTs or non-RCTs were found, so no abstraction of outcome data could be performed in this systematic review." (PMID 16625640). The same authors wrote in a subsequent review: "The claim that laetrile has beneficial effects for cancer patients is not supported by sound clinical data." (PMID 17106659).

To my reading, the Cochrane review was simply saying that there is a total lack of any sound data on laetrile. Your post implied that the Cochrane Review was suggesting that laetrile was perhaps unfairly overlooked or making a comeback. I think that a closer reading of these sources shows that they confirm the mainstream view that laetrile lacks any sound evidence of effectiveness and has never been subjected to any sort of organized clinical evaluation. The appropriate stance for a Wikipedia article to take on laetrile is that it lacks any evidence of effectiveness, has never been studied in any sort of organized clinical trial, and has been promoted as an (archetypal) "cancer cure"-cum-quackery. It seems inappropriate, at least based on the above sources, to imply that the Cochrane Library sees anything beyond a total lack of data there. MastCell ^Talk 17:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The implications for research from Cochrane was this :

In view of recent promising laboratory studies on the anti-cancer effect of amygdalin (Fukuda 2003; Kwon 2003) future laboratory investigations might be considered. Well designed controlled clinical trials to assess whether Laetrile or amygdalin have any beneficial effects for cancer patients could also be considered.

Implication for practice, obviously, was to recommend not using it. My main problem with the QW article is not about its contrast with the Cochrane review or spinning negative, which is entirely appropriate, but about its exclusion of the basic fact that laetrile is basically nontoxic intravenously. As far as I know, it was originally proposed for intravenous use as well. For people who are looking for the facts, that's pretty misleading. One can argue that telling the whole story could encourage cancer patients and lead to poor outcomes, but I'm more convinced by the argument that excluding such facts is counterproductive and feeds conspiracy theories. When facts are excluded, one has to wonder what else is being excluded.

It was subjected to a clinical trial by Moertel (PMID 7033783), the same guy who tested oral vitamin C for cancer. It was not a controlled clinical trial, much less a randomized one, which is common in cancer trials because cancer doesn't usually respond to placebos anyway. Julian Whitaker, who admittedly gets a lot of things wrong, says that there was a response during the 3 weeks of intravenous even though the form was relatively inactive (isoamygdalin) and the dose was 1/40 of what it should have been [15]. Somewhat paradoxically, he goes on to recommend 10-20 apricot pits per day. My access to NEJM only goes back to 1993, but there may be letters to the editors making similar points. Then again, considering that NEJM would not even publish Pauling's letter to the editor in one response to Moertel, maybe not. II | (t - c) 17:52, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. Re: the question of IV vs. oral, my understanding is that the IV form is excreted essentially unchanged and undergoes no conversion to any active metabolite. So while it probably lacks toxicity, it would be assumed to lack efficacy as well. Does that sound right? Or am I making a leap? MastCell ^Talk 18:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Bit of a leap. I'm no expert, but I don't think laetrile was just a "natural" way to get cyanide into one's veins. The idea is to selectively release cyanide in tumor tissue. The Cochrane review discusses this mechanism:

Different rationales have been proposed to explain the alleged anti-cancer effect of Laetrile. Two similar theories claim that cancerous cells are deficient in rhodanese enzyme and have higher than normal levels of betaglucuronidase and betaglucosidase, enzymes responsible for the breaking down of Laetrile and amygdalin respectively (Krebs 1950; NCI website). Since rhodanese can convert cyanide into the relatively harmless compound thyocyanate (Bruneton 1999), when Laetrile is broken down by the betaglucuronidase, producing cyanide, this would affect cancer cells more than healthy ones. However, there is no experimental evidence to show that malignant and healthy cells differ in rhodanese enzymes (Gal 1952) or that betaglucosidase is contained in tumor tissues (Biaglow 1978). High levels of betaglucuronidase have been noted in tissue, blood serum and urine of cancer patients (Conchie 1959; Fishman 1955), so that drugs such as 1-mandelonitrileglucuronide may selectively release cyanide to tumor tissues (Biaglow 1978).

I'm not a laetrile advocate, and I haven't read any of the proponents' books. While I briefly mentioned the results of the Cochrane review to you in the merge discussion, I didn't change the way it was cited in the laetrile page, which was that it simply found no evidence. It was an anon IP which recently did that. Of course, if betaglucuronidase is high in cancer patients blood, then one could assume that intravenous laetrile could be rather toxic if enough was used. This might be the case. It would be better to discuss how toxic laetrile is than to simply say "it is". II | (t - c) 18:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I certainly agree. I guess I can see where Quackwatch is coming from on this one: laetrile (and other alternative cancer therapies) are often promoted by means of unflattering comparisons to "toxic" conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The implication is that chemotherapy is toxic (obviously, it often is) while natural means are not. Presumably Quackwatch is trying to counter this advertising pitch by pointing out that natural products can be toxic as well.

Also, toxicity is usually contextualized as part of a risk/benefit ratio. For instance, cisplatin has horrendous toxicities - but it is a lifesaving drug, particularly for people with testicular cancer, and so those toxicities may be described as "manageable", "acceptable", etc. On the other hand, for a drug with no known benefit whatsoever, any toxicity is notable and excessive since there is no accompanying prospect of benefit. But I agree - for the purposes of Wikipedia, we should probably preferentially cite any existing studies which looked systematically at the toxicity of laetrile, rather than Quackwatch's simplified take on the subject. MastCell ^Talk 19:17, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been reading Drug discovery lately and I was amused to find that the FDA had approved what Sneader described as "a proprietary" Fowler's solution for leukema [16]. Given the toxicity of standard cancer medications, laetrile seems relatively nontoxic even orally. The only death from it that I've heard of occurred in a 3-year old child. There are some issues which should have been resolved in that Cochrane review. I haven't investigated deeply or read Biaglow 1978, but "1-mandelonitrileglucuronide may selectively release cyanide to tumor tissues" because "high levels of betaglucuronidase ... in tissue, blood serum and urine of cancer patients (Conchie 1959; Fishman 1955)" seems like it doesn't quite follow. The authors responded to Vickers point about Moertel's trial showing no effect and said it was regarded as flawed, but they didn't discuss whether it actually was flawed. The issue should be resolvable: simply contrast what doses and type of laetrile Moertel used with the ones recommended by Krebs. They also don't mention what relevance the in vitro tests really have. II | (t - c) 17:33, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Politics

Hi II. I noticed your comment just now over at ANI when I stumbled on Wikidemon's latest act of character assasination and smearing against me. While I appreciate your oppose to Wikidemon's abusive proposal (having been dismissed on the merits of his report), I was troubled by your assumption that you know what my politics are. Rest assured that I am an exceptionally fair and moral individual, and despite the difficulties of dealing with incivility, soapboxing and abuse of process, I am committed to improving the encyclopedia. As far as compromising, in spite of the fact that (as you note) those bits don't belong in the introduction, I've even been willing to compromise there and suggested that if the opinions are important to include, they could be balanced with notable opposing viewpoints. I am always happy to compromise, but there are characters here that are simply unwilling to do so and who hijack discussion with their attacks and disruptive behavior. I respect any editor who is willing to abide by and be consistent with guidelines. None of us are perfect, but I do try to be fair. Sorry to post this here if it's a bother, but I wanted to open a dialog in case you have any comments or concerns. Take care. ChildofMidnight (talk) 00:11, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I'm sorry I haven't responded. My excuse is procrastination. I'm sorry about the comment on your politics, but I think I made a well-educated guess. I'm not impressed by the way that Republicans have tried to offload the responsibility of this crisis on Barney Frank. Ironically, the biggest proponent of affordable housing during the Bush administration was, of course, Bush. Do a Google search. Your vague presentation of this manufactured controversy in the lead ("Frank's role in the housing crisis has been scrutinized") is frankly terrible. Your edit-warring has not been good either. I only defended you because I'm used to seeing worse around the WP:MED circles, and Frank is being promoted in that article beyond neutrality. I'm sure you're "exceptionally fair and moral" in your own way, but I can't hope you're joking. II | (t - c) 09:49, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Barney Frank

I ask that you plz restate your opinion on the Barney Frank talk page. Thank you. Soxwon (talk) 03:12, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Several experienced editors have expressed similar sentiments, but I think at this point most sane editors are steering as far away from that article and its talk pages as possible. I can't say I blame them. On the other hand if there were broader involvement I am confident reason (a.k.a. a compromise consistent with guidelines) would prevail. The Obama article has seen some improvement, I think, at the margins since all the drama, so perhaps with increased attention some good will come of the craziness. I would like to do an RfC on the specific issue of the speechwriter quote (one thing at a time), but frankly I'm not very good on the formatting. Apologies to ImperfectlyInformed for cluttering up their talk page. I am appreciative and thankful for their willingness to step forward and offer an assesment in an ugly/messy dispute. It takes courage to enter an honest assessment when there is so much mud slinging. I hope I haven't in any way deterred them from doing so in the future and if they don't want to involve themselves any further, well, I think that's understandable. It will be interesting to see how it all work out I suppose. ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Ecological economics

Hello I.I. - If you could take a look at the link that is in discussion on the Ecological economics art. page, and see what you think. To me it seems corporate promo. and link farmish. skip sievert (talk) 15:23, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Update on the Outline of knowledge WikiProject & Geography WikiProject (Country outlines workgroup) - 04/16/2009

Momentum in the development of the outlines is continuing to build, even though we haven't added any new outlines lately. Plenty of work is being done on the outlines we already have.

Keep up the good work everyone!

Inspiration!

Kudos go to Buaidh, who has dived head first into outline development, continuing improvement of the country outlines, and doing so vigorously. Take a look at his contribs. He has taken the initiative and has been expanding those outlines' design and coverage. Be sure to let him know what you think of his work!

Zinc

Thanks for the help with the zinc article. I have a point on your edits. The inline cites in the lead are only necessary if the topic is controversial the references should go to the place where the subject is discussed in full length. Another point is that the first last and coauthor style for the quotes is used in the rest of the article so if you add further refs, could you please use this format? I added several review papers to the zinc talk page, it would be good if you can have a look. --Stone (talk) 08:33, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Copyedting

There is not a prohibition on copy-editing comments and it is a common courtesy done by many editors. It's not something I will apologize for and was done in good faith. I will most certainly avoid correcting the posts of those editors stalking, harassing, and filing inane reports against me. If it isn't obvious they are in fact out to get me, I don't know what more evidence would be needed.

While Grsz and I disagree on guidelines and content issues, I think I have had a courteous relation with this editor prior to his aggressive comments and clear assumption of bad faith (a clear violation of policy). In fact, if you go to his talk page, you'll see I posted a request for his consideration of an article I had created. I have yet to receive a response, which seems rather rude, but clearly I've shown laudable decency towards someone with whom I have differences.

As I noted yesterday:

"Rest assured I will never again dare to copy-edit any of Grsz's comments. I will continue to extend this courtesy to other editors, however, and I hope they will do the same for me."

I'm not sure what else I can do, but to request these editors steer clear of my talk page except when it's appropriate to make a post there. Their attacking me for an innocuous copy-edit is in awfully bad taste, and it continues a pattern of uncivil and aggressive behavior that is clearly inappropriate if not blockable. ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:49, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Please never copyedit any of my comments. I would find that quite offensive even if was trivial. I don't like it; you should restrict that sort of thing to people who you know won't mind, perhaps because you've asked them about it previously.

If they comment on your talk page, delete the comments. Eventually they'll get the point. II | (t - c) 17:58, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Barney Frank

Could I plz get your input as a past contributer on the talk page on the section Lead (again) Soxwon (talk) 02:29, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Alexander Technique per NCCAM publication? [17]

HI II,

I don't understand your revision.[18]

"Introduction

Under the umbrella of manipulative and body-based practices is a heterogeneous group of CAM interventions and therapies. These include chiropractic and osteopathic manipulation, massage therapy, Tui Na, reflexology, rolfing, Bowen technique, Trager bodywork, Alexander technique, Feldenkrais method, and a host of others (a list of definitions is given at the end of this paper)."[19]

Ward20 (talk) 03:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Diagram

No idea how it is that an editor wants to change the diagram on the article. The original one is not great... but is better than the newly minted one. Ecological economics. skip sievert (talk) 16:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Diagram again

Apart from Skip and myself you seem to be the only person actively interested in the Ecological Economics article. I have now given this topic a lot of attention and am much better informed than I was a month or two ago. I have made a number of what I regard as rational and reasonable suggestions for improvement of this article. Skip IMO has been totally uncompromising in his approach either reverting or systematically negating everything I have suggested. I am at a loss as to how to try and contribute to this article under these circumstances. I ask that you read again and consider as objectively as possible what I have suggested. I trust your judgement and believe you are editing in good faith. I will then accept whatever conclusions you reach and will not pursue these particular matters again. The reason I suggest this is that Skip and I are on an unproductive edit-war trajectory and I am keen to contribute to this article. Granitethighs (talk) 04:37, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy

I read your post of the Fringe theories noticeboard; you seem to have some good ideas on how to improve Homeopathy. I'm going to paraphrase your ideas on the talk page. Fences and windows (talk) 15:37, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Request for assistance

Please see my notes on the Ecological Economics talk page. Your assistance would be much appreciated. Granitethighs (talk) 11:07, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

FAC zinc

You added a sentence and I do not get it: Two thousand years from 2007, emissions of zinc from mining and smelting totaled 10,000 tonnes a year. Is 4007 the right answer? or 2007 - 2000 = 07? Sorry for the question, but I am no native speaker. Thanks for the help with the article! --Stone (talk) 20:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

It means 7 AD. The article says 2000 years ago. Since it was published in 2007 I said that to be precise. I'll just say about two thousand years ago to be simple though. II | (t - c) 21:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Looking at it again, it's ambiguous even for a native speaker. Not sure why I bothered wording it like that. :p II | (t - c) 22:05, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Getting to the nub

II, one last try in re to th diagram (yes I understand your frustration) but I think you have missed the point here. What we are talking about in relation to the diagram is the depiction of “weak sustainability” and “strong sustainability”. I suggest googling images for “strong sustainability” to get a feel for this (or both for that matter). Ecological economics is clearly in the “strong” camp – environmental economics the “weak” camp. No offence but are you aware of this distinction because it is both basic and very important for this article and its graphic depiction which (needless to say) I think is, at present, mistaken. I am mentioning this because you have treated my question as a matter of “taste” – and you like the Venn diagram, which is fine, but not the point. What I am pointing out is that this is not a matter of taste but fundamental to the nature of the content of the article and a long debate about weak and strong sustainability. There is no doubt IMO that ecological economics, for the reasons I have discussed before, falls into the “strong” camp and should be depicted accordingly. Granitethighs (talk) 06:09, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Let's please keep article discussion at the article page. II | (t - c) 07:12, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Compost tea

I added a reference to the titled article and made some minor edits that you treated as vandalism. What am I doing wrong? The following references are currently listed in the article:

4. DIY automated compost tea machines http://www.biocompost.eu/tea.php 5. Commercial compost tea brewing barrels http://www.growingsolutions.com/

Besides DIY and Commercial barrels, I attempted to add another category that was not mentioned in the article (Personal compost tea brewing systems http://www.soilsoup.com).

SoilSoup (talk) 03:20, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Those are all commercial websites with very little good free information. Please look for expository articles. Try Google Scholar or Google Books. II | (t - c) 17:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I understand that these are all commercial websites, but what I don't understand is why you deleted the reference to www.soilsoup.com as an example of a type of commercial compost tea brewer. Why do you allow the reference to http://www.growingsolutions.com while excluding http://www.soilsoup.com? Please explain. SoilSoup (talk) 01:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Insurance contract

Hi, it would have been nice, and standard practice, to have opened some discussion first about the best name for the article before making the move. An insurance contract is a distinct thing from an insurance policy. The contract is incorporated in a policy but the policy includes other things such as a copy of the application, etc. Given that the article was specifically about contracts it was probably better to keep it there. There are quite a number of links to redirects to clean up either way. - Taxman ^Talk 13:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Copied a response to the talk page. II | (t - c) 16:34, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Chlorinated pesticides

Hi I have heavily edited several articles on chlorinated pesticides lately. Since you may have strong interests in this general area (and might be skeptical of my intentions), you might take a look at my edits to see if you find anything amiss. In general, I removed what appeared to be unfounded extrapolations and especially redundancies. Hopefully the articles are clearer. It was not my intention to diminish the infamy of these materials, indeed I felt that leaner articles might be more helpful. Thanks,--Smokefoot (talk) 05:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I noticed your edits to endosulfan, which I had no problem with. I've glanced over your other edits and haven't seen any substantial problems; thanks for your substantial work in so many areas. I am truly flattered that you'd let me know about these edits. I appreciate that you didn't remove material which was unreferenced if it wasn't "fact-tagged" and was plausible. I can understand your frustration with the relatively less-educated public. I'll admit that I'm a still skeptical about your earlier statement that you are, contrary to some of your edits and statements, truly concerned about the environmental impact of industrial chemicals. Regards, 07:52, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

So long and thanks for all the...

Thanks for the barnstar. I've enjoyed working with you, and am sorry to leave you in the lurch. I've got to focus on priorities and prior commitments. --SV Resolution(Talk) 16:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Hey, no biggie. I was kinda kidding. Wikipedia can become a time-suck, I'll admit. II | (t - c) 16:43, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Questionably Deleted Material

I am writing to you because you gave me a barnstar, and you offered your help. I was just checking my watch list and I found that someone had deleted a huge chunk of an article on my list. The article is "Siddha," and the deleted sections were about the traditional siddha medical system.

I have never contributed to this article and I have no direct investment or knowledge about the topic. Nor am I completely up to snuff on the Wiki rules for substantiating material. The editor who deleted said the content was "unsourced fringe material." However, it looked to me like a very knowledgeble description of an old, traditional medical system. Shouldn't there be some kind of warning and an opportunity to obtain suitable references before such a major delete? The article isnt't saying that the approach of siddha medicine is scientifically proven, or that you should follow its recommendations instead of going to your M.D. It just describes what people actually believed and practiced. The fact that it isn't scientifically proven doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

What would you suggest? --Little Flower Eagle (talk) 19:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

There are no sources, and I don't think the material should be kept. The material added didn't only describe what the people believed. For example:

The Siddha system is capable of treating all types of disease other than emergency cases. In general this system is effective in treating all types of skin problems particularly Psoriasis, STD, urinary tract infections, diseases of liver and gastro intestinal tract, general debility, postpartum anaemia, diarrhoea and general fevers in addition to arthritis and allergic disorders.

Deleting plausible old legacy material is discouraged, but these days we really need to have sources upfront. Besides, that article is really about the type of person (siddha) rather than siddha medicine. Siddha medicine actually seems to broadly overlap with Ayurvedic medicine -- perhaps they should be merged. II | (t - c) 20:04, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Appropriate References

You commented on my talk page that review articles are preferred, and that editors might remove "focused original research articles." Once again, I am new to this strange world of "Wiki-science." If I want to give a sense of what has been researched on a given topic to date, would it be OK to say "There are 12 animals studies on PubMed investigating the antioxidant effects of "X." ...or something like that. If that is OK, would it be acceptable to indicate how many studies yielded positive results and how many yielded negative results? It just seems crazy to me to ignore (censor?) all the work leading up to the point where there is enough data and enough attention on a topic that review articles are being generated. Thank you for your guidance. --Little Flower Eagle (talk) 20:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

It wouldn't be OK to say that there are 12 animal studies on PubMed based on your own searches -- that's hard to verify and could quickly become out of date. However, you can describe what studies you do find, including animal studies. Most recent articles will summarize earlier work. I'm not a stickler on using review articles; I find that original research articles often have good coverage of prior work, sometimes even better than review articles. I'm just saying that, given WP:MEDRS and a bit of dogmatism among many medical editors, your work will stay around longer if you use review articles. II | (t - c) 21:05, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Natural products and chemoprevention

Curious if you'd seen this from the most recent issue of JCO. I thought it was a fascinating review, and probably has a good deal of material which would be useful in our articles on the subject. Also seemed like the sort of thing you might find interesting. MastCell ^Talk 23:14, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing it to my attention, but I don't have access to it. Unsurprisingly, my libraries aren't buying subscriptions for things which become freely-accessible after a year. II | (t - c) 19:37, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh... well, if you're curious and don't feel like waiting that long, email me. MastCell ^Talk 23:49, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

topic banning by a single admin

(in reply to your question at Talk:Cold_fusion "At the risk of sounding like a wikilawyer, is there some sort of "authority" (like WP:PSCI) or precedent for unilateral topic bans like this?"[20])

I suppose someone should open a discussion on WP:AN about whether a single admin can topic ban an editor without discrectionary sanctions and without blocking them. I remember some previous discussions on this, will have to locate them. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:26, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The answer has always been "yes" as far as I can remember, though I doubt you'll find it codified anywhere. Banning someone from an article is not a major exercise of authority - it's much gentler than blocking them, which is unarguably an ability admins possess. I mean, confronted with a disruptive editor, an admin can a) block them entirely from editing Wikipedia, or b) ban them from the subset of pages that they are disrupting. The latter is actually a softer and more targeted solution - it's essentially giving the person a chance to avoid a block by focusing elsewhere, at least for awhile. It's backed only by the admin's ability to block the banned editor if they violate the ban, and like any block or administrative action it can be appealed on AN/I or anywhere else that people gather to debate such things. I would be shocked to see this considered somehow an overreach of administrative authority when admins are already empowered to block other editors. I also don't think that we need to throw out common sense and write strictly legalistic and airtight policies covering every possible combination of events simply because one editor has a nearly endless facility for wikilawyering, but that's just me. MastCell ^Talk 18:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I beg to differ with you on this point, MastCell. There are clear policies at WP:BAN and WP:BLOCK that describe the circumstances and procedures to be followed for each. I see nothing in either that gives Administrators an unrestrained ability to issue WP:BANs. Bans and similar sanctions are always accomplished through community consensus or actions of the arbitration committee. In some limited circumstances the arbitration committee has delegated their authority in such matters to uninvolved administrators. Cold Fusion does not appear to be onve of those limited circumstances. --GoRight (talk) 20:12, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Just because an admin has the tools to block people doesn't mean they can do everything in between. Blocking is meant to be used for people who are obviously vandalizing, trolling, or sockpuppeting. The fact that ArbCom specifically made an allowance for discretionary sanctions to be imposed on pseudoscience areas is decent evidence that most people on Wikipedia don't think admins are free to impose discretionary sanctions. I'd never seen such a thing before WMC did it. Grr. I hate how Wikipedia makes me sound like a lawyer. II | (t - c) 00:15, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, there does appear to be overwhelming community consensus for the ban in question, so I don't see a lot of policy loopholes to exploit. In general terms, I think we can agree to disagree about the mechanics, though I think we agree that no ban (or block, really) can exist if there is community consensus against it. MastCell ^Talk 20:26, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, but even that !vote there is insufficient to declare a community WP:BAN in a formal sense, IMHO. The !votes are expressing a wide range of opinions and there is no clear statement as to what the details of the ban actually are. For example, would the ban be indefinite, or merely for a month duration? Either way Abd is agreeing to abide by the sentiment expressed there so mission accomplished. As I said all along, I support an enforced cooling off period which is what this amounts to. So the question at hand, whether a single Administrator can unilaterally impose a ban remains untested. --GoRight (talk) 16:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

About WP:PSCI, the pseudoscience discrectionary sanctions apply only to "(...) articles which relate to pseudoscience, broadly interpreted", while cold fusion is classified here as fringe science, and we have mainstream sources saying unambiguously that it's pathological science (see here). So we would have to ask Arbcom if it's covered by the pseudoscience case or not, or even ask Arbcom directly to put cold fusion also under discrectionary sanctions....

As for Arbcom stuff that could apply, I can only find the remedies in the Fringe science case "Editors warned" and "Editors encouraged". Also, about not causing disruption in articles, see the homeopathy arb case where DanaUllman was banned for his editing in talk pages (he argued himself that he shouldn't be banned because he almost never edited the articles themselves, just the talk pages). --Enric Naval (talk) 20:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Fringe Science by its very nature will be held in low regard within the mainsteam scientific community. That's what it means to be fringe, is it not? So the fact that you have mainstream sources calling it pathological is wholly unremarkable. But the Cold Fusion, or LENR, or whatever else areas are having "legitimate" research conducted. (I put legitimate in quotes here to signify that I recognize there are those that would despute this claim.) So the whole argument boils down to what constitutes "legitimate" research. There are clearly peer reviewed papers being published in the the area by individuals at "legitimate" scientific institutions. The fact that they must (generally) publish in specialized fora dedicated to the field should also be considered unremarkable given that the mainstream views them as "fringe".

The whole point here is that Wikipedia should not be censoring fringe findings as long as the article makes it clear that they are fringe findings (with the clear understanding of the distinction between fringe science and pseudoscience). As an outside observer I believe that there clearly exists a group of coordinated editors who are working to censor and expunge points of view with which they disagree (whether their ultimate intentions are nefarious or not). To a large extent I believe that Abd's actions are primarily motivated by a desire to insure that the article ultimately reflects the proper balance which must include mention of the fringe science points of view (but this is only my outside view of his actions ... Abd can speak for himself on this point). In that regard I view his actions and contributions here to be both appropriate and supportive of what the stated policies appear to be. Obviously YMMV.

I have supported a cooling off period simply to allow the otherwise less assertive editors a chance to get a word in edgewise because, like as not, they are most likely reasonable people who also just want to do the "right thing" according to policy. A cooling off period would allow these less strident voices an opportunity to weigh in and turn the tide on various sub-points one way or the other. --GoRight (talk) 17:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I reluctanly have to agree in that the fringe POV is underepresented in Cold fusion, and I have tried to insert more of it (I tried to insert the list of "proposed explanations" made by Storms). But I have to say that this is not the solution. (and by "this" I mean placing the fringe POV at the start of the section, without qualifications, as if a fringe book with only two reviews, one of them in the frigging Journal of Scientific Exploration (*) was the definitive source for defining the current state of the field, and ignoring all objections raised in the talk page)

(*) and the other review by Sheldon in Contemporary Physics, which means I could have squeezed something out it as a secondary source for book. Unfortunately the first and second discussions about Sheldon were derailed big time by Abd who exaggerated the importance of the review and ignored the objections raised by others, so I gave up on making anything useful with that source on that climate, imposible to enter any remotely controversial POV opinion, fringe or not, with that polarization, and much less anything that Abd didn't agree with. And that was before Hipocrite appeared on the page!

(repeat this same complaint for almost every other discussion in Talk:Cold fusion since Abd started participating heavily in the talk page, couple it with reverts of anything he didn't like, and you'll see why I almost didn't edit the page for weeks in a row, and why I'm now editing a lot, and why I wouldn't be happy with Abd returning with the same attitude without learning anything from the ban). --Enric Naval (talk) 22:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Argh, I wasted again lots of time in arguing about behaviour instead of spending it in writing some content >-< --Enric Naval (talk) 01:29, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Hum, btw, II, this edit at RfA/r catched my eye. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't notice this earlier. Note the careful wording in that comment. What is "normal review"? Community discussion, of course. So saying that an admin can instituted a ban after "normal review" simply says that they can declare a ban but it has to be reviewed and ultimately has to be upheld by community consensus. And in the case of a ban community consensus means way more than a small handful of involved editors voting yes to the ban. It means real discussion and !voting. Use the discussion that led to my topic ban as an example of what I mean: [21]. --GoRight (talk) 01:07, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

"whether by an indvidual administrator (subject to normal review) or by way of community discussion". I don't think that you are parsing Vassyana's comment. See the "whether X or Y" construction. I don't think that "normal review" means exactly the same as a full-fledged community discussion, although the former can become the latter as more people gets involved or as problems get found in the normal review. I see too many discussions that finish with a few people saying "yes, it's ok" to agree with you. And I think that you are assuming that your own situation applies the same to everybody, and incorrectly believing that every banning has to be a great deal with lots of discussion and input of lots of people, even in clear-cut cases. I think that WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY really apply here. If a banning has strong clear arguments then you don't need "!voting" to make a decission. You sound too much like we should start making votations in banning discussion instead of making arguments. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:57, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I did parse the sentence. That's why I labeled "subject to normal review" as being "careful wording", because it is. It is a wording that suggests there is a power to ban by a single administrator (i.e. to keep the facade alive) while acknowledging that in the end it is always a community decision. MastCell did pretty much the same thing with his carefully worded response somewhere in this thread. That's what I mean when I say that they (collectively) won't acknowledge or refute whether they can or they can't unilaterally ban someone. Personally, on wikipedia and the way the culture is I think that a single admin being able to unilaterally ban someone is ridiculous on its face. If the community, and by community I mean more than a hand full of involved editors, disagrees with the purported ban it will be undone. That's just a fact.

How many people need to be involved to make the call? I agree that it probably depends on the situation. For simple cases when even a hand full of UNINVOLVED editors unanimously agree, that will probably suffice unless and until dissent shows up. But if the opinions are basically split, then !voting starts to come into play and unless it is totally obvious from that we err on the side of inconclusive. There is probably some unspoken magic number like a 2/3 or 3/4 majority that people have in the backs of their heads. The closer the true split of community opinion matches that number the larger the pool of opinions that will be generally required to make the call. That's why my particular case came down the way it did. But of course this is just my personal view of it. YMMV. --GoRight (talk) 17:27, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You are right in that this is how thing usually happen. However, the ideal situation is when we are not counting !votes, the ideal situation is when we are looking at the strength of arguments (per WP:CONSENSUS, not because I say so), and we should strive to achieve that. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:35, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

No-one troubled to notify me of this discussion, so I missed it all. But it does't seem as though you've needed me. I've reverted II's misleading edit to the section header though William M. Connolley (talk) 22:57, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I guess you're referring to this thread header, where you headed the section where you decided to topic ban Abd and Hipocrite and used a thread heading titled "Decision". How was my version ("Decision (1 month topic ban of Abd and Hipocrite)") misleading? That's not a rhetorical question. Think about the categorical imperative. If we all decided to use thread headers like "Decision", "A note", "Stuff", ect. this place would be even more of a mess than it already is. Your action is drastic enough that it deserves to be seen at a glance. And just because you start a thread doesn't mean you own it. II | (t - c) 23:08, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

It is misleading because the ban isn't for one month. Indeed, I don't own that talk page. But there is enough disinformation swirling around this subject that I feel obliged to maintain the purity of at least my own statements. I can only apologise for not having noticed and corrected your error earlier William M. Connolley (talk) 23:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

In that section (see the diff above) you say "User:Hipocrite and User:Abd are both banned from editing cold fusion, and its talk page, for an arbitrary time of approximately one month". So it's not one month? II | (t - c) 23:35, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

That was wikipedia user WMC's way of gaming the system. He knew he wouldn't get away with an outright indefinite ban, so he had to mention some duration and picked 1 month. But he is trying to leave it open ended by saying "approximately" like he gets to retain some sort of review status or something. It will go to ArbCom if he persists after the month (my guess). --GoRight (talk) 23:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

(EC) Heh. Well I guess we will get to test your assertion at the end of the month then assuming you refuse to agree. I, for one, dispute your (or any other administrator's) authority to unilaterally topic ban anyone for indefinite periods of time. Abd disputed your authority to ban him at all and the only reason he acquiesced was the community discussion on the matter. But the community discussion clearly assumed a 1 month restriction, all involved at Cold Fusion assumed a 1 month restriction, and even your original notice mentioned a 1 month duration (although you left it a bit more wishy washy than that by including "approximately"). All in due time, then, I guess. --GoRight (talk) 23:42, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

@II: Your quote from me is correct. The quote answers your question. @GR: as I've said elsewhere, I cannot and will not try to correct everyone's misinterpretations of my words. If you have specific questions, you may use my talk page William M. Connolley (talk) 23:53, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

WMC:I think getting Abd out of cold fusion is a good thing, but it's kind of irritating how unconcerned you are about transparency, consistency, evidence, ect. Sounds like your "power" has gone a bit to the head. I'm guess I'm just glad you're not a police officer, if this is how you act when everyone's watching. I guess you are consistent in one thing - that is, downplaying efforts to display more information on administrative actions. You removed a header about the block of CoM today [22], and you're apparently quite happy not making a log of your block of Abd on cold fusion [23]. II | (t - c) 00:15, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

JzG refused to log his "ban" of Jed Rothwell as WP:RESTRICT even when explicitly asked to do so. In this case wikipedia user WMC has refused to do the same (see my comments on his talk page). If memory serves in both cases they encouraged non-administrators to go do it if they wanted. My interpretation of that is they know that they don't have the authority to unilaterally ban people and by encouraging non-admins to put the restriction at WP:RESTRICT that it will, effectively, have no real weight. BUT, if people buy it and start behaving better then mission accomplished. If it gets challenged then they simply remove the entries siting the fact that they were placed there by a non-admin. All of the admins who I have been queried on this point have been evasive without explicitly claiming such authority and without denying it either.

In the case of logging a ban at WP:RESTRICT I suspect that the admins know that doing so will cross a line, some sort of unwritten rule, but it is in the community's interest in some regards to let this topic banning by admins point remain fuzzy and ill-defined. It allows the administrators to bluff some people into behaving and so they maintain the facade. (I am talking generally here, and not specifically about WMC.)

I have been trying to get the admins and even ArbCom to make a definitive statement on this point since the Jed Rothwell incident at ArbCom. I still maintain that Rothwell is not technically banned, even though he is effectively so unless he challenges his block which he is unlikely to do. Abd is more likely to do so, IMHO, and probably much more effectively so it will be interesting to see how this plays out. --GoRight (talk) 00:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Now that this pops up in my watchlist, see Wikipedia_talk:BAN#In_second_condition.2C_not_community_banned_unless_he_requests_unblock_and_it_is_denied. GoRight was right after all. Jed is not banned, he is only indef-blocked. Forget it, and experienced admin has reverted that, with a good explanation.

Also, I'm not going to open a community discussion to get Jed actually banned because he has not edited lately. Also, if/when he returns, I'll look at how he edits before taking any action, just in the miraculous event that he manages to contribute in a sensible fashion. Finally, I still think that he should be banned and that the community would support the ban, but, hey, I guess he got himself another opportunity in the very unlikely case that he decides to abide by wikipedia policies and stuff. Nah, I'll revert him as soon as he puts a foot on the page. this discussion and the multiple complaints at the talk page of cold fusion show that the community's patience was exhausted. I don't know what the hell I was thinking when I decided to pay attention to what GoRight was saying. We are talking about a person that doesn't give a **** about wikipedia and just wants to push his own POV. Asking to make a full structured community discussion with a formal close is just pointless bureaucracy and goes against WP:COMMONSENSE. Also, the opinions of banned editors are not welcome by the community, and trying to repost his comments on the talk page is reportable as meatpuppeting. GoRight should do what I told him at the start: go to some noticeboard and try to get an admin to unblock Jed. Claiming that there could be admins willing to unblock this unrelent reincident unrepented POV-pushing editor is preposterous, and GoRight should go do something better with his time.

Notice that I have communicated with him by private email, not to translate his opinions directly, but to get RS for certain points of CF history, or at least indications of what I need to search in order to find RS. This doesn't mean that I would welcome him freely posting at Talk:Cold fusion, because, you see, there are a lots of problems in wikipedia editing that don't happen in private email communication. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:38, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

In case you didn't notice this, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley --stmrlbs|talk 16:52, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

PFOA

I made a recent edit to the paragraph you noticed before in this section. I incorporated the German source I've been meaning to. Wondered if you thought the wording has improved. Thanks. -Shootbamboo (talk) 03:51, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that you fixed it immediately after I brought up the issue. Your new fixes look good as well, although I haven't looked at the original source on German Society of Toxicology. II | (t - c) 00:07, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Coconut Oil

I'm wondering what you think about the coconut oil article. I did a little work on it a while back. I just looked at it again (6/16/09) and at least two sections have been added making very strong claims for the health benefits of coconut oil with almost zero substantiation. Are you an experienced enough editor to know how to handle this type of situation? Should I just delete all unreferenced material? It looks as this has happened a couple of times in the past. Any suggestions? --Little Flower Eagle (talk) 19:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I think I know the part you're talking about, and yes, please delete it. That website is not citeable. Note that I'm purposely not going to do it because I think you should practice at it. II | (t - c) 19:26, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Notification of arbcom discussion

Your actions have been discussed here as relevant to an ongoing arbitration case. You may wish to comment. I have linked a prior version of the page because the person who added this material reverted it and then incorporated the material by reference to the reversion, so as to make it impossible for you simply to search for your name. (Hope that's not too confusing.) Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:42, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

-ine, -ology, ect.

You've probably noticed that I reverted a few of your redirects to Wiktionary. I opened a discussion section on Wiktionary about how they handle references ([24]). Some of these Wikipedia pages were referenced and much more informative than the wiktionary pages. II | (t - c) 18:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Prefixes/suffixes/affixes are not really valid articles in the wikipedia. Among other problems WP:MOS says that article titles are supposed to be nouns/verbs which these aren't. Also the definition of the subject can never be a lexical rule, because that allows multiple completely distinct definitions of the title word, like Rocket and Rocket. There's very few of these articles right now, and the ones that there are were done by people who hadn't thought it through.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Affixes are perfectly good dictionary topics though.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:54, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

That was a rotten reference, if you added to the wikipedia and I spotted it, I would remove it. It never even says anywhere that autistic is derived from autisme.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:53, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Just because the Manual of Style says something doesn't mean it's a good policy. Obviously your position is controversial, because one of the AfDs you just did on -graphy was closed as keep (Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/-graphy_(2nd_nomination)). So saying that there's any consensus behind your position is completely untrue.

They had to rename it to a completely different name to keep it, and it remains a ridiculously ill-conceived article in every way.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 20:07, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Let's imagine that you say: "I really don't like that article on the suffix '-ine'." What is the word -ine in that context? It is not a verb. It is not an article. It is not an adjective. It's not a preposition. It is a noun. So these articles do have noun titles. II | (t - c) 22:23, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Nope. "-ine" is a morpheme there, which isn't even a word.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 23:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

But that's not the problem. The problem is that wikipedia is not a dictionary, and that article is just a dictionary definition of the lexical implications of that morpheme. Dictionaries routinely do this they have prefixes and suffixes list in most dictionaries I've ever read. I've never seen that in any encyclopedia.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 23:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

And -ine is a really clear dictionary article. It has at least two different definitions of the morpheme. Encyclopedia articles only have a single definition, or multiple largely or completely synonymous definitions.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 23:24, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The -ine article is not just a dictionary definition. I added the history of its use in chemistry. Wiktionary doesn't seem to like to get into a narrative style which suits some of these words. And -ine can certainly be a noun. After all, 'things' are nouns. I could say "-ine sounds annoying". The way I'm using -ine makes it a 'thing'. Similarly, I think I would be using -ine as a noun if I described how it (it, in this case, being a pronoun for the noun -ine) originated. Noun is a very broad category. II | (t - c) 23:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The core value is that wikipedia is not a dictionary, not that wikipedia is not wiktionary. Whether certain narrative styles are supported well or not there is not our problem, the same is true in the wikipedia; a more discursive style would doubtless help this article as well, but would be non encyclopedic. No. A primary problem is that -ine is defined in mutually exclusive ways here. That's not permitted; that's what dictionaries can do, but encyclopedia articles are about one meaning of a term, or synonymous meanings of multiple distinct terms.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 00:11, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

The Yale Economic Review article said: "The use of the French term 'autisme' harkens back to an older meaning – 'abnormal subjectivity, acceptance of fantasy rather than reality' – but it also refers to the continuum of neurological disorders". Autistic is an adjective describing people who have autism. Are you saying autism was not derived from autisme? It doesn't seem like a stretch to me. At least it's a reference - I've never seen a wiktionary article with a reference. II | (t - c) 19:09, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not a reference to what you claimed, it stops short of that. In fact references are encouraged in the wiktionary, just like the wikipedia.[25]- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 20:07, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Discussion and poll on reviewer usergroup criteria

You may be interested in a discussion and poll I've started to decide the criteria that will be used for promoting users to the reviewer group at Wikipedia talk:Reviewers#New discussion and poll: reviewer criteria - please put your comments there. AndrewRT(Talk) 17:56, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Your edits to mining

I reverted your recent edits to mining, please see the talk page.--kelapstick (talk) 23:20, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

That National Geographic article made an excellent source to add an environmental section to Batu Hijau mine. Cheers.--kelapstick (talk) 16:06, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

That AN/I

You should look at User talk:Ryan Postlethwaite/archive22#What happens. There was an active Medation in progress, involving Lawrencekhoo, Skipsievert, and ten other disputants, when Lawrencekhoo began promoting the AN/I. Lawrencekhoo was told by an admin who is also the Chairperson of the Mediation Committee that Lawrencekhoo was canvassing (which would be wrong in any case), and it was made plain in that discussion that the Mediation was being endangered. With the support of that admin, Skipsievert tried removing the promotion, but it was repeated restored. The Mediation was aborted, and the lead Mediator was appalled when he discovered that some disputants had jumped into the AN/I. —SlamDiego_←T 08:06, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I was as guilty as LK in that instance, and I attribute it in my case to misunderstanding the nature of what we were getting into with mediation. I (foolishly, it turns out) thought the mediation was about getting to substance, and so would be something separate from conduct. I commented at the ANI and also started a thread about Skip's behavior during the mediation. I'm now more-or-less convinced this was bad judgment on my part, although it's only more-or-less because I'm very doubtful the mediation would have been productive in any case. It was my first WP mediation and ... I hope if I have another it goes better.

Related to the judgment that these things could be treated separately, I don't see this as improper canvassing. Skip is very active in WP Econ, which relates to Sustainability, and so people should be able to comment with their positive or negative observations about his behavior. LK did not selectively advertise the ANI on, for instance, my talk page. I do think it was bad judgment to link to the ANI, but only because the mediation was happening, and LK, like me, didn't account properly for temper. CRETOG8(t/c) 09:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

There surely isn't equal guilt amongst the editors who promoted and pursued the AN/I, as some were surely unaware of the discussion on Ryan Postlethwaite's talk page. Those who read that discussion (and Lawrencekhoo participated in it) were positioned to know that failure to withdraw the notice and pull out of the AN/I would almost certainly abort the Mediation.

The issue of canvassing isn't one of people who somehow shouldn't comment being encouraged to comment, but of inducing sample-selection bias. Ryan Postlethwaite felt that the notice was not written in a neutral manner; and I take his contention that it still would have been canvassing had the notice been neutral to imply that he felt that there were a bias associated with the WikiProject itself. —SlamDiego_←T 09:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

BTW, beyond temper, there are such simple practicalities as the impossibility of Mediation with a disputant who is blocked — which would certainly have been one of the possible outcomes of the AN/I. —SlamDiego_←T 09:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Without getting further into fine arguments, the point I was trying to make was that I am--and I believe LK is--a newbie with respect to WP mediation. I suppose he may be more culpable in that, as the mediation filer, he should have read this. So, bad judgment, which is different than bad faith. CRETOG8(t/c) 10:11, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, the point will remain that Skip's take on things wrt to that AN/I notice isn't simply arbitrary and ex nihilo. —SlamDiego_←T 16:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

• I'm sorry I took me a couple days to get back to this. I can see your point SlamDiego; obviously LK wasn't in the right in jumping to ANI. But I still think Skip is showing zero inclination to collaborate and listen to other people, and he's spinning out of control into paranoia, wasting a lot of people's time. He's using Wikipedia to preach Technocracy and thermoeconomics, and when people call him out on he says they're all in a conspiracy. Anyway, I don't have the time or interest to get deep into this but he's not very pleasant to discuss things with.
  I can't agree about canvassing; Wikipedia has crude technology and lots of things going on. If Wikipedia had the tech, I would have automatic notices sent to me whenever people I interact with regularly have notices on ANI, WQA, ect. But Wikipedia doesn't have that technology, so dropping a note on a decently-sized WikiProject seems appropriate. We shouldn't encourage no notices WikiProjects simply because a user hasn't been able to get along with anyone. I do agree with Cretog8 that mediation should be about substance and behavior should be discussed elsewhere. Obviously Skip isn't going to compromise, but I'm pretty sure that all reasonable people (and hopefully SlamDieogo as well) can agree that a lengthy discussion of thermo/biophysical economics is inappropriate in economics, and that the page on economics should basically describe the field of economics from the perspective of economists (although outside perspectives are appropriate when noted as such). II | (t - c) 22:10, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Whether one actually agrees with the claim of canvassing, the aforementioned admin agreed with Skip that it were. Unless we take that admin to be wholly unreasonable, again Skip's perception isn't simply some wack delusion on his part. And the AN/I isn't the only case where inappropriate behavior on the part of those with whom Skip is most often in conflict has reïnforced his beliefs about those opponents.
    As to what Skip is and isn't trying to insert in various economics articles, as I have said elsewhere, I don't follow the articles in which these conflicts have taken place. I have been involved in this issue because a bloc of editors has inappropriately tried to use WikiProject Economics to rewrite Wikipedia policy, in part to defeat Skip. —SlamDiego_←T 03:25, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Fair enough on the point about LK and canvassing; you're probably right. However, I don't think you just not follow the articles which these disputes center around and remain credible in discussing Skip's behavior. These articles include economics. If you have time to comment at length on talk and community pages, you have time to look at the content disputes which Skip is involved in. II | (t - c) 18:42, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Nope.
        First, most of the lengthy discussion in which I've been engaged has been concerning the content of policy. Let's say that someone announces that various cats are a menace, and that in response they are going to invoke that passage in the US Constitution that calls for the wholesale extermination of cats. Do you have to go investigate each of these cats in order to note that there is no such passage in the Constitution? If you have time to argue that the US Constitution does not call for the extermination of cats, does this prove that it would also be a good use of your time to investigate the behavior of any given cat?
        Second, more information on Skip's behavior is grist for further discussion, not a substitute for it. Look at the length of this discussion, which has been on just one point (and some of the more problematic editors have not been participated here). It wouldn't be a good use of my time to get further involved.
        Why are you challenging my credibility in the first place? Could anything that I've said here become less true or more true if someone else said it? Would anything that I've said here become more or less true were I more an expert on Skip? —SlamDiego_←T 19:23, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
        • Well, I happen to think that WP:ECONRSW looks OK, even if's a bit superflous. If you find that upsetting, try looking at WP:MEDRS. There's certainly a precedent for these sorts of things. And it doesn't hurt to list places to look for sources specific to economics.
          I also disagree with your comments at the mediation against academic and peer-reviewed articles ("Further, I wonder what empirical testing there has been of the proposition 'In economics, the most reliable sources are academic and peer-reviewed publications'" under Reformulated Guidelines at WT:ECON). Academic articles are clearly the most reliable for understanding the views of economists of the field. Isn't it? Or are you saying that sociologists would describe these views better? Whether economists are the most reliable for understanding the economy is a separate question, but academic research is likely the only place we'd find a decent empirical investigation into the reliability of academic articles and books. What else are you trying to get at - corporate, government, or journalist research? Anyway, WP:VERIFIABILITY describes academic, referenced sources as the best, so this is a fight you would want to take up there.
          UPDATE:After reading Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Economics#Reformulated_guidelines further, I think I can see and appreciate your point: it's a call to look more closely at sources on a case-by-case basis. Academic sources come from the ivory tower and have unique issues, even if referencing is standard. It reminds me that the best piece of work I've read on the efficient markets hypothesis and investment, David Dreman's Contrarian Investment Strategy, was by an asset manager, extensively referenced, and received high reviews from various other asset managers (eg Buffet) when it was published in 1980. Economics academia is notorious for its own issues with empiricism, as noted by Solow in that quote Skip picked out (in the Reformulated Guidelines section). However, at the same time I have to admit that Dreman relied mostly on academic research. II | (t - c) 02:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
          • I don't know what position you want to stake-out on these issues, but I don't want to debate the issues in multiple fora. If you are for some reason interested, my exact position is most clearly stated and explained in my original statement at the Mediation (this statement was later redacted, along with those from other participants, when a Mediator imposed an ex post length limitation on us). —SlamDiego_←T 03:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for arbitration

You are involved in a recently-filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Skipsievert and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Requesting Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, The Four Deuces (talk) 19:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Venezuelanalysis

Hi, thanks for commenting on Venezuelanalysis at WP:RSN. I've actually started a new section to summarise and refocus: WP:RSN#Venezuelanalysis Reboot - perhaps you could comment there? (I'm asking everyone who participated in the old WP:TLDR thread.) Thanks. Rd232 ^talk 13:02, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

You may be interested ...

in this RSN discussion, as you commented in the past on one of the sources. Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:47, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Global warming

Thank you for your contributions to the encyclopedia! In case you are not already aware, an article to which you have recently contributed, Global warming, is on article probation. A detailed description of the terms of article probation may be found at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation. Also note that the terms of some article probations extend to related articles and their associated talk pages.

The above is a templated message. Please accept it as a routine friendly notice, not as a claim that there is any problem with your edits. Thank you. -- TS 16:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Re twinkle

Sorry; not sure why it's started doing that. What does "specific to leads" mean? I'd interpret that as "information not present in the rest of the article", but that's jut me. Ironholds (talk) 19:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

The lead of a well-developed article generally shouldn't have anything not in the body. It means that statements likely to be challenged should be cited. People who come across the article don't have time to read the entire article digging for the citation in the body. Since that first paragraph makes some bold interpretive statements, it should be cited - plus it directs people to the (freely-available) source where they can find more information. As far as twinkle, mine doesn't automatically tag edits minor, but I think I might have tweaked it to do that a long time ago. II | (t - c) 19:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Both points make sense. I've managed to re-jig twinkle; curiously, I don't recall it being a problem before (or perhaps nobody had brought it to my attention, no idea). Either way, solved now. Ironholds (talk) 22:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

efficient markets

I have noticed that you are also involved in efficient market dispute. I completely agree with you, the first paper in fact (the only one making P=NP connection) is ridicilously badly written, and is very vaguely talking about this. Inspecting it easily shows that it is not proving what it claims. The other quotations have nothing to do with efficient markets, they do not even claim they do. They are decent papers but about another subject (computational complexity of assesing certain types of bets). I hope we will not let this bad OR steming from one half serious sensationalistic, not even peer reviewed paper and random interpretation by some editor creep in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.198.212.127 (talk) 18:36, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Pepper v Hart

this discussion/comment request may interest you. Regards, Ironholds (talk) 06:48, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

On the ongoing discussion

While I feel sympathetic to your approach, I can almost guarantee you that no action will be taken on the said user on the grounds of his edit pattern so far, exactly because he exploits a loophole and his individual edits are all below the threshold of those WP guidelines which would involve a block, such a incivility, 3RR, etc. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 21:51, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

It's not unheard of for Wikipedia to ban editors who are (1) basically civil, (2) willing to engage in discussion and defend their edits, and (3) basically use sources honestly, without misrepresenting what they're saying. These people are banned for "pushing their point-of-view" (see User:GoRight and UserPcarbonn, for example). In this case, we have an editor who appears to be using sources dishonestly and does not want to defend the edits. Many people on Wikipedia would consider, as User:LiberalFascist said [26], such behavior to be the worst possible behavior in Wikipedia, and it should not be difficult to ban such people. II | (t - c) 23:13, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I am with you, but Wikipedia talk:Verifiability is the wrong place where people just don't decide on these matters. Let's keep the discussion there focused on the general policy. After that, we can see how next to tackle the probem. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 23:34, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

See here and here. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 13:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the links. 61,000 edits is creepy. You say you'll chip in when the party starts, but I believe it is best to come with your guns already loaded with concrete evidence because that is what we will be immediately asked for. So, if you could contribute some diffs on D-Day, that would help a lot. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 01:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll look into it, but it seems like you guys are already pretty loaded. Could we separate things into timeblocks or something so we're not all looking at the same stuff? II | (t - c) 03:50, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

That won't happen, given a sea of 60,000 edits. Anyway, I do tech stuff, Syncat and Steve science. Right now, only Syncat and me have enough diffs, so I still think we need to win over more editors to look at least for a couple of them. It's not that hard, check out five and you'll get one or two misinterpretations. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 04:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Economics census

Hello there. Sorry to bother you, but you are (titularly at least) a member of WP:WikiProject Economics, as defined by this category. If you don't know me, I'm a Wikipedia administrator, but an unqualified economist. I enjoy writing about economics, but I'm not very good at it, which is why I would like to support in any way I can the strong body of economists here on Wikipedia. I'm only bothering you because you are probably one of them. Together, I'd like us to establish the future direction of WikiProject Economics, but first, we need to know who we've got to help.

Whatever your area of expertise or level of qualification, if you're interested in helping with the WikiProject (even if only as part of a larger commitment to this wonderful online encyclopedia of ours), would you mind adding your signature to this page? It only takes a second. Thank you.

Message delivered on behalf of User:Jarry1250 by LivingBot.

Firstly, thank you for signing the census, and an apology if you are one of those editors who dislike posts such as this one for messaging you again in this way. I've now got myself organised and you can opt-out of any future communication at WP:WikiProject Economics/Newsletter. Just remove your name and you won't be bothered again.

Secondly, and most importantly, I would like to invite your comments on the census talk page about the project as a whole. I've given my own personal opinion on a range of topics, but my babbling is essentially worthless without your thoughts - I can't believe for one moment that everyone agrees with me in the slightest! :)

All your comments are welcomed. Thanks, - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:02, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Misuse of sources

I noticed some of your comments on a particular editor's talk page and wondered if you might take a look at the material at User:Syncategoremata/Misuse of sources, where I (and others) have collected examples of problematic edits by that editor? I would be particularly glad of any advice about the best way to proceed with this. All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 09:22, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Gunslinger (band)

The article Gunslinger (band) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

I'm going to call the studio tracks a claim of importance (even if a bit shaky), making this ineligible for speedy deletion, but no evidence of meeting WP:MUSIC is found in a google search. Allmusic only comes up with an entry for an earlier country music band, which also is not notable.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Fabrictramp | talk to me 15:46, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

RFC discussion of User:Jagged 85

As someone who showed an interest in some issues associated with this editor at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 37#A massive loophole in WP:Verifiability, I'd would just like to mention that a request for comments has been filed concerning the conduct of Jagged 85 (talk · contribs). You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85. --Syncategoremata (talk) 17:46, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for your certification of this dispute. We have now agreed to close the RfC/U by agreement and I've put a closing summary on the main page. As one of the certifying editors, and assuming you are happy with the summary, could you add your signature to it? We can then close and archive the RfC/U.

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 10:54, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay but I've been meaning to thank you for signing the closing summary to this RfC/U. I'm glad that it is now behind us and I hope we never have to go through something like that again.

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 21:50, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Standard practioner

That nearly spilled my coffee! Thanks.LeadSongDog come howl 16:51, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Economics Newsletter (Issue I)

Positively Economics The Economics WikiProject Newsletter Issue I (May 2010)
Use the show/hide button to display or hide this newsletter. From the (self-appointed) editor Hello to all the economists who signed up on the census (covered in more detail below) and whom I have boldly signed up for this, the first in hopefully a long line of WikiProject Economics newsletters. The aim is simple: to distribute the project's news and developments in order that every member gets the opportunity to contribute to their fullest. It mirrors the ideals of any WikiProject: to support and assist. In creating this, on a whim, I have picked a name and stolen the layout of the Military History WikiProject's newsletter. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to leave them on the main newsletter talk page. The non-talk version of that page is also the place to unsubscribe yourself from the newsletter, which, for the moment, I anticipate will be monthly. Enjoy! - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 11:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC) Articles of note New featured articles: Economy of the Han Dynasty New featured lists: None New featured topics: None New good articles: Price elasticity of demand Production-possibility frontier Monetary Policy Committee Confederate war finance Redlinks to be squashed Skysmith has posted an updated list of missing economics topics. Most will need redirecting or new articles written to blueify them, so, if you can lend a hand with the effort, please do. There are some from virtually all areas of economics and hence to suit all tastes. Project news Census completed A big thank you to everyone who signed the census, an attempt to renew the project's membership list. Jarry1250 explained its purpose: "once we know how many active participants we have... we can make sure no interested parties get left out of discussions; ...to get everyone included. Not just to make them feel involved, but also to actively try to make them more involved [in the supportive atmosphere of the WikiProject]". Around forty editors, with a good range of specialisms and interests, have currently signed to show their activity, and it is still open for more. Project-wide discussions commence: A series of discussions have been commenced on the census talkpage about what, if anything, should be done to strengthen the Project. All comments are welcomed on a range of topics: the economic style guide, weight guidelines, notability and the creation of this newsletter. Other discussions, on categorisation, tagging and compiling an accurate list of unreferenced BLPs, are currently active. Your comments are invited in the following other ongoing project discussions: The normative economics of central banking. What article might this fall under? Does one exist already? Does it need a separate article? Inflation. Thoughts invited on the inflation article and how best to word the lead. 2010 European sovereign debt crisis - comments requested.
To start/stop receiving this newsletter, please add/remove your name from the list here. Thank you. This newletter was delivered to you by Jarry1250 at around 10:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

comments about your ideas

I was looking at your ideas, and agree that there is much information, especially in the history of an article, where it would be nice to have more tools available to analyze what is going on with an article in a more efficient and timely manner than what is currently available. I also think being able to correct a tag of "minor" would be good (although I am sure there would be long arguments about what is minor and what isn't). I especially like the idea of being able to reference past discussions/topics brought forward when a new incident is posted - only I would like that for all noticeboards. The noticeboards are very unwieldy, and hard to use the way they are now. Imo, a lot of problems with the noticeboards are because they are treated like big articles, instead of set up like the discussions that they really are. If the noticeboards were set up to be real discussion boards, then some standards could be set to tag "topics" to indicate the subject/incident/nature of problem, and a search could find those "topics" based on this criteria. The way it is set up now, you can't really search per topic, but instead the results are long pages containing many discussions, which might have common words / phrases, etc. Or you might bring up a page that has already been archived, then you have to figure out what archive it would have been placed in. A search on a true discussion board would at least allow you to bring up posts or topics where something has been discussed. It can select by user as well. However even that can bring up too much to search through. But if you combined a discussion board with some kind of categorization or tags, I think it would be a big improvement over what there is today. Plus, you could put a topic on your watchlist. I've seen discussions about "Liquid Threads" (what happened to that?) and thought they should first try it on a small noticeboard. See how it goes. stmrlbs|talk 17:58, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback - did you notice [Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&oldid=360164717#Ability_to_edit_edit_summary|my discussion]] of some of this over at WP:PROPS (permalink)? As far as minor, for the most part we default to non-minor in disputes (see WP:MINOR), and therefore I don't think it would be that controversial. As far as Liquid Threads, a very smart kid named Andrew Garrett took on the project (see his latest December 2009 post on it), but I'm not sure what happened.

I think ultimately I just need to just really learn programming and do this work myself. We'll see if I ever get around to it. I went through a Java book not long ago for an introduction, but didn't do most of the exercises; next up is a PHP book. Do you know programming?

Incidentally, here I just had to do a minor edit (not marked as minor since I'm adding this) to fix a hyperlink - if you had minor edits screened out of your watchlist, you wouldn't see that I'd responded. Thus illustrating my point that minor edits are not handled correctly at the moment. II | (t - c) 22:55, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I hadn't read the "Ability to edit edit summary" before - thanks for pointing it out. I have been in the situation where I goofed on the edit summary, and also where I accidently marked something as minor that wasn't, and vice versa - and wanted to go back to correct it, and couldn't. So, I think the idea of being able to correct an edit summary within a certain time limit is something that would be good. It would make the marking of minor edits more credible by responsible editors. However, I used to hide minor edits, and quit - not because of the bug you pointed out, but because certain editors on some of the articles on my watchlist would try to get some major edits by by marking them as minor. If it happened once, you could mark it up to a mistake, but when you see certain editors do this several times and always with controversial edits, well, I just went back to showing everything on the watchlist. I have wondered if there should be some "size limit" for marking an edit as minor. Like 50 chars or something like that. It would probably be something that should be configured and tuned. Don't know how much they do that on wikipedia. And, yes, I'm a programmer. Good luck with learning Java and php - there are certainly many good resources available for learning programming languages. Programming can be fun. I tried to see what happened with liquid threads.. doesn't seem to be much. Too bad. I think having a discussion forum structure for discussions instead of an article structured for editing, would really improve discusssions and just being able to track and follow discussions. Wikipedia is not the most user friendly medium. btw, you might like this tool: see all contributions for a page from a certain user. Here are your contributions to WP:PROPS. stmrlbs|talk 19:24, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

You asked over on the RS Noticeboard why 75.2.209.226 painted a biased picture of the situation, and I wanted to make sure you were aware of Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#User:75.2.209.226. There is a good chance that dispute has something to do with it. ɳorɑfʈ ^Talk! 22:26, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Q6 at my RFA

Dear ImperfectlyInformed,

Something seems up with the layout of Q6 that you asked (part of the question has spilled over into the Answer section). As I'm not 100% sure exactly how you want it to read, could you take a look at it so that I can come back to you with an anwer please? Regards -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 19:45, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Alexandr Dmitri's RfA

Thank you for taking my comment in the way it was intended - in other words, not as a criticism of you or your !vote! As I said, I obviously disagree with your stance, but I understand why you take it! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 19:54, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Osteoarthritis

Have attempted to address your concerns here Talk:Osteoarthritis#On_May_14.2C_18_kbytes_taken_out_of_article. Let me know if I missed anything. BTW with a little further work I do not think it would be hard to get this article to GA. Cheers Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Stephen Ambrose , , ,

I appreciate your comments on my most recent work on the Stephen Ambrose article, and your additions to it. I really was trying to craft a compromise - a concise paragraph that clearly laid out the many problems with the book, acknowledged the views of both professional and hobbyist historians, and was supported by reliable sources. I also quoted the sources so it could be seen that I wasn’t trying to spin what they had to say. To satisfy Centpacrr, I added his website to the external links section. Still, Centpacrr is not satisfied, and does not appear willing to compromise. Considering his outrageous claims about endorsements of his website, I’ve decided to file a report on the COI noticeboard because, frankly, I don’t see any other way to proceed. Thanks for your efforts to improve the article. 75.2.209.226 (talk) 02:40, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Re: My "Unreasonableness"

Ah, another nose where it shouldn't be. Ya ever notice that when there is a problem, everyone wants to get a word in? That is what is happening now. All this talk of how I have been unreasonable, but not a shred of evidence to back it up. We call that here at Wikipedia, original research. I will not go into mediation for something I feel doesn't need it, plus, it is voluntary and non-binding too.

You are obviously one of the many people I have pissed off doing my job here at Wikipedia and keeping it nice and clean of people who make daily life "interesting". I mark 'em for vandalism, they get blocked, I move on. But they always find me later to file a compliant. It's the way it works. I have been here for 4 years, made plenty of allies and plenty of enemies. THIS IS THE INTERNET, NOT REAL LIFE (as a friend would say). Time for some people to realize that.

So please, show me how I have been "unreasonable" and I will consider making changes. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 15:06, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I held back on posting because getting into it makes me very angry, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised because I noticed in the earlier thread (User_talk:Neutralhomer/Archive6#Consequences) that you seem to feign innocence and ignorance of your history and problems. Did you read the consolation note I posted at User_talk:Necrat#Hope_you_don.27t_leave.3B_NeutralHomer_is_obviously_unreasonable? Read that in conjunction with my statement to you that "I see you are very problematic and unreasonable editor who continually edit wars and marks edits which are not vandalism as vandalism". I noticed in User_talk:Neutralhomer/Archive6#Consequences that the admins (several, that is MuZeMike, DS, and BWilkins) involved noted that you have a history of marking non-vandalism as vandalism. MuZeMike even said:

"NeutralHomer, you've been having significant problems understanding what vandalism is and what it isn't and how Twinkle factors in on that. This isn't an isolated case, either; this has been going on for the past 3-4 years from looking at the numerous other ANI discussions regarding this. Obviously the "blacklist" doesn't work, and it seems clear to me that any "discretionary ban" regarding the use of Twinkle or any other automated tool doesn't help, either. Because of the long history, blocking would be the next appropriate step".

When I said you were unreasonable, I was being polite and not saying what I actually think (WP:SPADE), which is that you act as a WikiThug and that allowing this behavior to continue brings disrepute to the rest of us by making people think we tolerate this behavior. I'm making a good faith effort to try to get you to see the problems here before taking this to ANI or something. II | (t - c) 00:56, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

This is called "jumping the gun". I just woke up from a very nice disconnect with life for a few hours in the order of a nap. Also, there is nothing where is says I have to immediately respond to any post. I get to them in a timely fashion. I am actually jumping over one to get to yours.

Now, I am glad you dug through my archives to find some "dirt". It shows you are really only in this to see my blocked in someway. The biggest difference is that I have been using "undo" in my reverts and not TWINKLE.

But since you already jumped the gun, didn't wait for a response, there really isn't anything to talk about. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:29, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Responded to everyone you posted to. Should I give you the same hour you gave me before calling you "unresponsive" and show no "willingness to really discuss it"? Also, one question I really need answering. Why do I need to continously discuss a dead and buried issue with you after AGK (who isn'y my mentor) said "policy is on [my] side here, and this is a editor conduct, not an article content, problem"? I don't, I can, but it isn't necessary. There is this thing called WP:STICK which essentially says "Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass". This has been beat to death and there is now a dust cloud where a perfectly good horse used to be. It needs to be dropped and the lot of us moved on. But you seem to only want to see me blocked hence why you only gave me an hour. Hell, I don't expect an hour's response on Wikipedia with real life and all. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:47, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

After your initial flippant response, I saw that it was clear that there wasn't going to be any progress without some other people involved. I wasn't waiting for a response when I notified people. I made it clear what I was talking about when I said you were marking non-vandalism as vandalism and I linked to Necrat's talk page, where I listed specific examples. Since these incidents had been happening in the past few days, you should have been honest and brought them upfront. The edits include this (which was done with Twinkle) as well as this set of edit-warring edits (also done with Twinkle), which is complemented by your statement that you "feel it is vandalism to push is "abortion is bad". position, which makes it sound like you want to be put into the very select "pro-abortion" group. As far as Twinkle, whether it is used is completely irrelevant - if you mark non-vandalism edits as vandalism, you're trouble. And that's on top of the general edit-warring, thuggish behavior which you impose on people. What's even worse is that you're completely wrong in both of these cases. As far as dropping the case since you drove both of the editors out - nope, sorry. I'm working to prevent future casualties. The statute of limitations on egregious misbehavior does not span a few days in my book. We need to decide on a centralized location to discuss your habits and I think ANI might be the most appropriate. II | (t - c) 03:56, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

So, you dug through my contribs to find something unrelated to this? Cool. Oh and let's not make abortion about this, it is about the WABC (AM) page. You want to open that can of worms, you go right on ahead, I will stand about 5 miles back of the blast radius while you do.

Anyway...when I block vandalism, I do it after giving the user ample change with the trusty undo button and directing them to the talk page. This was only brought to talk after the use of TWINKLE. Not cool. This should have been taken to talk by Necrat before I even thought about going to TWINKLE. But saying you are "prevent[ing] further casualties", what casualties? One of those two people can come back whenever they want....the other blew his own chance (didn't do it for him) when he continously violated a topic ban that had to be put in place to keep him from disrupting a page. That wasn't me, that wasn't caused by me, though I was part of the discussion. So, if you want to prevent casualties from that, then you need to prevent every POV pusher in the land from speaking his or her mind and I don't think it can be done.

I love how you throw the word "thug" around. Let's go to Wiktionary, shall we? "Thug, noun, A criminal who treats others violently and roughly, especially for hire." Well, there is your problem. I am not a criminal, I don't treat others violently and I am not for hire (that is against the rules here). I could be considered "rough", but if I am, that is because I expect everyone to follow the rules I have to follow and not go off and do something else cause it is easier. Necrat never showed his work, just claimed his 13 years of engineering experience was knowledge. That is original research and not allowed. This should have gone to talk, plain and simple. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 04:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I originally found you through the abortion article, when I was researching Jzyehoshua (talk · contribs)'s case. It concerns me that you were allowed to weigh in on that discussion, as it's not clear to me that your !vote should count, considering the behavioral issues you have, your tendency to not be upfront, and your extreme views on the issue at hand. So that is another area where I'm working to prevent casualties. I already explained the WABC (AM) issue on AGK's page (User_talk:AGK#Re:_WABC_.28AM.29_mediation). When no source is provided, we default to the more general statement or no statement at all. So Necrat was plainly correct. Further, there is reason to believe he is factually correct. Unfortunately, what is missing in this discussion is a confession from you that you were in the wrong and a promise to behave appropriately in the future. At this point, however, I don't think that confession is the best route. Ideally I think you need to be put under close supervision, your ability to mark edits as vandalism stripped, and banned from commenting at ANI unless it's an issue you are involved in. II | (t - c) 04:33, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

"a confession from [me]", what you the local police? :) Also, cars.com isn't a reliable source for radio. Plus, Necrat wasn't correct as I have an admin saying I have policy on my side. Even more so, you don't get to say what abilities I have and where I can be banned from. No one is banned from ANI that I know of. So with that very lofty thinking like you are in some power (hey, neither am I), unless you can back down from that and talk to me on an eye-to-eye level and not as if you were someone of a higher power than me (you have the same editing abilities I do), then you need to reevaluate what it is you want here cause you obviously aren't out to "prevent further casualties", no, you want to see me punished. Blocks and edit restrictions are punitive not punishment. Read the rules. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 04:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't have to be an admin for you to skate on thin ice. We can't just let people run around edit-warring all the time, and marking non-vandalism edits as vandalism while doing so. In the Consequences thread, DS mentioned that a longer block (than the 72 hours) would happen if the actions continued. I'm almost reluctant to explain this everything to you as I'm worried that I might talk some temporary sense into you, in which case you'll get off and then continue your regular actions in a month or so. Sadly, I suspect that people don't change all that much and that you are overall a distraction, hindrance, and in the worst cases a disreputable representation of Wikipedia's community to the world. Now I'm going to go read a scientific article for a couple hours, maybe do some article work. Good night and good luck. II | (t - c) 05:06, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

With your comment "I'm worried that I might talk some temporary sense into you", you have essentially proved my point, you wish to see me punished. So, go read your "scientific article", I hear the pull out is pretty good this month and do leave me alone. I have more pressing issues to deal with like, oh, I don't know, real life and I don't have time to deal with the petty antics of the "let's punish Neutralhomer cause he pissed in our Wheaties and go someone blocked" crowd. Don't like the rules here, don't stay, plain and simple. But don't come bitching to me when you get a vandalism warning on your talk page and say I am being "unreasonable". What, I should let you do what you want around here cause you might report me? Nah, sorry, not how it works. You follow the rules, the same rules I follow and everyone else does, or you get warned and blocked. Just like your bud Jzyehoshua did (which you failed to mention). It is just the way Wikipedia works. Don't like, leave....want to stay, follow the rules. Now read your "scientific article" (that is what you kids are calling it these days) and leave me alone. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 05:17, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Eh, just to set the record straight, I have no relationship to Jzyehoshua (talk · contribs), nor have I have ever edited abortion or related articles, although I did add some liberal criticism to Obama a while back. I came across the issue while browsing ANI. I'm pro-choice, although I wouldn't say pro-abortion. I think the ban (case Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive615#Jzyehoshua.2C_again) was handled wrongly (as all these types of bans are), but at the same time I think the end result was necessary. Incidentally, thanks a lot for collapsing those huge walls of text. II | (t - c) 05:47, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

The main reason I am not an admin. I wouldn't want to give out blocks and bans. I !vote on them as I see fit, but mostly I steer clear of them because I don't want to deal with WikiDrama. Particually why I semi-retired half a year ago and didn't fully come back to Wikipedia until just recently. I don't deal with WikiDrama and I don't want to. Some people see this website as real life and it isn't...it is a website. People have lost focus on what we are doing here and that is building an encyclopedia. Not creating articles are mindless things, creating real sourced information that people can use. Having debates on stupid shit isn't what this is all about. Another reason I feel this should be dropped. It is just another mindless debate taking time away from you and I were we could be building an encyclopedia....plus there is also WP:STICK. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 05:54, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Courtesy Break

• Just a note, following me around to other threads and talking about something unrelated (like your obsession with getting me punished) is disruptive and could be considered Wikistalking. You would be best if you moved on and found something more constructive to do. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 18:52, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Do keep this up. It makes my case against you for Wikistalking all the more sweeter. Already have three instances of you following me to pages I was on and posting. You are following me, which I find cute. Trying to get me to slip up? Find more "evidence" my of "unreasonableness"? Nah, you are just following me around. Go away troll before you make things worse on yourself. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 20:55, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Awww, you just can't stop yourself, can you? Now you have followed me to here and I wasn't there. Proof you are watching my talk page. Awww, so cute you are. Hell, I don't even have to be online for you to wikistalk me. Do keep it up, won't you, this case against you will be quite nice. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 20:42, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I will continue to keep an eye on you since you have a history of trouble and need supervision. I look forward to you "reporting" me. Hopefully that will help to deter future misconduct. Why is this, this, and this marked as vandalism? These look like unsourced contributions (and the articles have tons of unsourced contributions). Unsourced contributions are not vandalism and should not be marked as such. II | (t - c) 21:36, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, if you would pay more attention to the rules than on me you would know that sockpuppets edits are immediately reverted regardless of whether they are good or bad. Socks don't edit....period. So, it is revert everything with socks. Also, I do keep watching, just make your eventual block for wikistalking all the more sweeter. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 21:44, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

How do you know the IPs are sockpuppets? II | (t - c) 21:47, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Same IP lines as indef blocked users and serial sockpuppets User:BenH and User:Mmbabies. You would this also if you spent more time learning things about Wikipedia and less on me. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 21:49, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Those users were blocked several years ago. How are you making this connection exactly? II | (t - c) 22:03, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

You obviously didn't check out their sockpuppet categories. You go do that and get back to me. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 22:11, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the prompt responses - I appreciate it. After glancing at the suspected and confirmed, I noticed that there's few confirmed but lots of suspected, particularly for User:Mmbabies. Are you really just looking at the IP lines and not the contribution, though? So essentially anything from a similar IP gets tagged as vandalism regardless of the type of contribution? Do you think that could possibly be problematic? II | (t - c) 22:22, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Mostly cause Admins rely on the WP:DUCK test. We look at the contribs, the IP, and we look at the date. Schools out. Mmbabies is a kid, schools out, means Mmbabies is back online. BenH is year around. I am not quite sure who the IP in question is (leaning toward Mmbabies at this point) but just looking at some of the contribs (the ones you failed to link or mention), it is a clear sock of someone and all vandalism. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 22:31, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Bear with me as I'm still trying to understand this - how is it vandalism to add unsourced content? The content looks plausible. I'm really not understanding here and it is concerning to me that you appear to be biting what look like good-faith IP edits. II | (t - c) 22:34, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Ya kidding, right? Now you are just fishing. These are not good faith edits. Not in the slightest. I think you need an eye exam. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 22:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't watch a lot of TV. What I see is an IP editor editing TV shows (without sources), which are in addition to already listed (and unsourced) TV shows. How do you know the IP editor isn't right and these shows are syndicated on the channels? II | (t - c) 22:42, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, let me help you (you obviously need it). Sabrina, the Teenage Witch is no longer in syndicated production. That is from the 90s (with Melissa Joan Hart, you may have seen it on Nick). Kim Possible is a Disney Channel and ABC Saturday Morning cartoon, wouldn't be on daytime. Grace Under Fire is from the early 90s and isn't in syndicated production anymore. So, it is obvious this is vandalism. Also, now that I think about it, with the Kim Possible additions, that is definitely a Mmbabies sockpuppet. He has a thing with Kim Possible additions. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 22:49, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Reading broadcast syndication it is not clear to me that syndication refers only to active shows and not the licensing of older shows for rerunning later - in fact Broadcast_syndication#Types_of_syndication specifically includes reruns as syndicated (see off-network syndication) - but I guess I'll take your word for it in these cases.II | (t - c) 23:12, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't going by a Wikipedia article, I was going by a website for television syndication which lists all the programming currently in syndication. Those aren't. So forgive me for thinking outside the box.

Question for you...what exactly are you getting out of this little back and forth? What are you getting out of watching my edits? You clearly don't have the knowledge of the rules as most do as you are a newbie. Why question what I do and not what other do, when they do the same thing. What makes you think I am doing something so bad that I need a shadow? If I was doing something bad, I would have an admin as a shadow...probably several. So, why do it? - NeutralHomer • Talk • 23:39, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

The fact that you have to ask this question is the main reason. I've already explained what's wrong with your behavior above and your response was to call me names. Although I reviewed only a few days worth of your editing, I found two edit-wars and some appalling marking of vandalism that was clearly non-vandalism, coupled with an explanation that just doesn't make sense (the Necrat-HD2 scenario). Your willingness to quote "AGK says policy is on my side" as a defense instead of thinking about your conduct and admitting the error further concerns me. My reading of User_talk:Neutralhomer/Archive6#Consequences is that you do have some admin shadows, but they're too busy to watch you at the moment. As for me being a newbie, I've been around for about as a long as you have and have a lot more content contributions, although they're spread out in more articles (mainly medicine/economics/law). I've also probably done more work in the policy pages than you. II | (t - c) 03:40, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

You want to compare edit stats, OK. At present, I have 31,485 and you have 7,058. Not even close. So you edit "content". Whoopdeedo. I edit content too. Since you are having fun looking at my contribs, you should know I edit a great deal in radio and television stations. Hell, I create the damned articles when possible. So, I have content contribs as well. But that isn't the subject, is it "OptimistBen"? It is your constant following me around. Ya know, that is called stalking. You can't say why you want me blocked, banned, shooed away, you just do. So, you continue to "review", I will continue to mark down your little stalking problem. You will get blocked or have a edit restriction put in place. Whatever. No skin off my back. To be honest, you are becoming boring. See, I am like House. I find things interesting until they bore me. You bore me. You are just a petty troll who wants to start some shit cause I pissed off your friend or something, who knows. Who cares. Take your troll-ness and go play somewhere else....unless you answer my aforementioned questions. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:54, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Q on OR

Hi, I asked you a question a few weeks ago at Wikipedia:No_original_research/Noticeboard#question_as_to_bar_for_WP:OR if you care to respond. 0¹⁸ (talk) 21:26, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I responded. I'd rather not get into further discussion (other priorities on my mind) but I'll see if you bring something I'm not seeing in your response. II | (t - c) 20:36, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Here's an idea for notifying Keegscee...

Since you seem to be skeptical that the apparent Keegscee socks at his ban discussion are actually his, the obvious way to make sure that Keegscee actually knows about the discussion would be to email him (you can email him and he can email you back, he just can't send mail through Wikipedia's email a user function). I personally believe Keegscee wouldn't even be interested in defending himself based on the blatant abuse he's demonstrated before and after being blocked, so it's quite plausible that he would inject trolling that wasn't in his best interest. By the way, unblocking Keegscee is a bad, bad idea, and I'm not just saying that because I don't like him, but because I don't trust him. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 16:23, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Economics Newsletter (Issue II)

Positively Economics The Economics WikiProject Newsletter Issue II (June 2010)
Use the show/hide button to display or hide this newsletter. From the editor Sticking to my promise of sending these out monthly, it's time for the June edition of Positively Economics, covering the events of May, which has passed relatively quietly for the project. Nevertheless, Wikipedia is a wiki, and things can change quickly and often without much notice. All contributions can be, and often are, important, regardless of how trivial they may seem. I, for example, have been working on our new list of unsourced BLPs, having added a significant number of economists to the project earlier in the month. But more on that in the newsletter itself. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 14:28, 27 May 2010 (UTC) Articles of note Note: this week's "new" FAs, and so forth, are ones that previously weren't included in the project but now are. New featured articles: Akhtar Hameed Khan New featured lists: None New featured topics: None New good articles: Abram Lincoln Harris George Lee (journalist) Stephen Harper Yulia Tymoshenko Redlinks to be squashed Skysmith has posted an updated list of missing economics topics. Most will need redirecting or new articles written to blueify them, so, if you can lend a hand with the effort, please do. There are some from virtually all areas of economics and hence to suit all tastes. Project news Unassessed articles: A whole swath of articles have been added to the WikiProject recently, mainly on notable economists. They are yet to be assessed on their talk pages; this also provides a good opportunity to check and improve some of our least monitored articles. Unsourced BLPs: Before the articles about economists were added, the project had very few unsourced biographies of living people; now there are a little over a hundred. If we can clear them, however, then it is unlikely that there will be many more. Again, they represent some of our least cared-for articles, and often present good targets for cleaning up. Your comments are invited in the following other ongoing project discussions and requests for help: Too big to fail Slowflation Jobless recovery Small Business Lending Index
To start/stop receiving this newsletter, please add/remove your name from the list here. Thank you. This newletter was delivered to you by User:Jarry1250 at around 14:35, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Loan to value

Thanks for the specific edit summary relating to LTV. It helped me realize something needed improvement. LTV is used in all kinds of credit, not just mortgages, so I put a "generalize" tag on it. If it were to be merged into a more general article, it'd probably be loan.

The specific mortgage stuff might be better suited to the mortgage loan article, and just summarized in mortgage loan.--Pnm (talk) 14:23, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Economics Newsletter (Issue III)

Positively Economics The Economics WikiProject Newsletter Issue III (July 2010)
Use the show/hide button to display or hide this newsletter. From the editor Sticking to my promise of sending these out monthly, it's time for the July edition of Positively Economics, covering the events of June. It's been another constructive month for the project. Wikipedia remains, as ever, a very popular source of information about basic economic theory, as well as for biography and more specialised topics, and we shouldn't forget that contributions to these core articles remains our greatest strength. Onwards and upwards, as they say, for another month. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 14:28, 27 May 2010 (UTC) Articles of note New featured articles: None New featured lists: None New featured topics: None New good articles: Brander–Spencer model Redlinks to be squashed Skysmith has posted an updated list of missing economics topics. Most will need redirecting or new articles written to blueify them, so, if you can lend a hand with the effort, please do. There are some from virtually all areas of economics and hence to suit all tastes. Project news Unassessed articles: A whole swath of articles have been added to the WikiProject recently, mainly on notable economists. They are yet to be assessed on their talk pages; this also provides a good opportunity to check and improve some of our least monitored articles. Unsourced BLPs: Before the articles about economists were added, the project had very few unsourced biographies of living people; now there are a little over a hundred. If we can clear them, however, then it is unlikely that there will be many more. Again, they represent some of our least cared-for articles, and often present good targets for cleaning up. Your comments are invited in the following other ongoing project discussions and requests for help: Featherbedding Herbert Hoover Intelligence-related citations
To start/stop receiving this newsletter, please add/remove your name from the list here. Thank you. This newletter was delivered to you by User:Jarry1250 at around 19:48, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Reliable sources

FYI: The linked discussion at the RS noticeboard may be of interest. 76.22.25.102 (talk) 21:43, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Comments on your R&I evidence

Hi,

I just wanted to provide some feedback on your R & I evidence. I don't think these comments are that important, but I wanted to provide them to you anyway.

First, thanks for the assumption of good faith. I am a newbie. I make lots of mistakes. But I try to be trainable. Second, it would have been nice to mention in your evidence that I (and others) have taken your a (?) advice to heart. For example, I had much better edit summaries after you (I think it was) requested them. Indeed, I think my edit summaries to R & I during the period following that request are in the top 95th percentile of Wikipedia edit summaries.

Second, I don't think of myself as "pro-hereditarian." My personal opinion is like Flynn's: there is not enough evidence to believe the hereditarian position, but hereditarian scholars like Jensen do goo work that we should all take seriously. I am "pro-including the hereditarian position in Wikipedia." Other editors, think the hereditarian position is fringe as does not belong in Wikipedia. That is the central source of the dispute. It is easy for me (and others) to work with editors like you precisely because, on this fundamental divide, we are on the same "side."

Third, I would take issue with "drastically overhauled the page without real consensus." You can check all this with the mediator Ludwig2, but there was consensus that a single person should tackle re-writing the whole thing and I was the only person to volunteer to do so. No one complained about Ludwig's decision to have me do it. (There was complaint once I started and several editors argued that the editing should occur in Talk.) As best I know, if the mediator authorizes you to do something, no one complains, and then you do it, you are OK.

Fourth, you provide an accurate summary of some of the material that I removed. But I removed just as much on the pro-hereditarian side. Surely you can see that by comparing the start and end versions.

Fifth, with regard to source removal. I could be wrong, but I think that too many sources is a bad thing. It is easy to provide 1,000 psychology articles (all peer reviewed) that mention intelligence. Shall we include them all in this article? I think not. I think one aspect of a good article is that it prune its sources down as much as possible. I certainly tried to remove sources from all sides of the debate equally. (Got rid of several Lynn sources, for example.) But, if this view violates a Wikipedia policy, please let me know.

Sixth, as you can see here, I have proposed a suggestion that seems consistent with your comments about focusing on the best sources. Your comments would be much appreciated.

Again, I don't think these comments are important enough to waste space on the evidence page, but I did want to share them with you. David.Kane (talk) 20:43, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate your comment and I'm sorry for taking so long to respond.

(1) What's the question mark about?

(2) Honestly, I haven't read much of Flynn's work but I'm skeptical that your position on this issue is analogous to his, since my impression is that you favor the hereditarian side more than him. I agree that it may be easier for us to work together because I believe that WP:NPOV requires a fair presentation of both perspectives, particularly when both are published in peer-reviewed journals by scholars with PhDs, but I'm not sure the anti-hereditarian side is opposed to presenting the hereditarian arguments. Mathsci seems to perhaps easier to work with than Slrubenstein, who continually says it is fringe science.

(3) I don't think Ludwigs is a good judge of the consensus, and you're dangerously skirting the edge of outright dishonesty when you say that there was consensus for your change. If you look at the applicable thread on sixth archive page, you had Aprock and Mathsci both pushing for doing the revision in a subpage. Despite that, you went on ahead over their objections. You also made some odd comments about how Xavo's opinion wasn't applicable because he didn't sign up for the mediation - as if that made him not count. Strikingly poor commentary there. Mathsci explicitly said: "I haven't approved it yet. I am not a single purpose account. Xavexgoem has already said that it is important that mainstream editors like me play a role in this article.Consensus is unfortunately not gauged by strength of numbers. I hope that's OK with you, Captain Occam". Personally, I almost never use the word consensus because it is so over-used. If one person in the applicable population disagree, consensus is broken. That is all-the-more true in small circles like Wikipedia articles.

(4) I can't see that you removed as much pro-hereditarian as anti-hereditarian. I'm not sure how accurate my summary of changes isIf you had provided a list of the sources and accompanying statements you removed, perhaps I could, but unfortunately I'm not organized/interested enough to look at it scientifically, and you declined to give a detailed summary, instead referring me to the mediation page where no summary exists. However, you inspired me to look again closer: comparing those two versions (old), (new), the phrase "scientific racism" was removed from the article and only appears in an article title; and the Fryer and Levitt (2006) article appears to be removed, which appears to say that black and white infants are equivalent in intelligence; although the Pioneer Fund is still mentioned, the Southern Poverty Law Center criticism of it was entirely removed; the Korenman criticism of Herrnstein's research was removed; and Singer's perspective on the policy implications was removed. I do not see an equivalent removal of pro-hereditarian statements.

(5-6) I agree that too many sources is bad but an arbitrary limit on the sources is not the right approach. It's not inconsistent with policy to trim sources and prefer review articles (see WP:MEDRS) and we should try to consolidate and use freely-available but high-quality sources whenever we can.

I would like to post this to the ArbCom talk page if that is OK. II | (t - c) 20:33, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

1) I wasn't sure that you were the person that requested the edit summaries. 2) I can't think of a single statement written by Flynn that I would disagree with. MathSci also believes that the hereditarian position is fringe. 3) I did not say that there was consensus for "my change." I said that there was consensus that a single editor should attempt a global rewrite of the article. I said that I was the only editor to volunteer to do so. I said that no one objected to my selection. Now, after I started, there was a dispute over whether or not that editing should occur in a subpage or in main space. The mediator agreed with me that editing in main space was fine, despite objections from aprock and MathSci. Surely no one can accuse me of bad faith when doing something in accordance with the mediator's instructions? 4) Among other things, note all the Lynn-related material that I removed. I would also dispute whether some of the material you cite is actually anti-hereditarian. For example, lots of pro-hereditarians love Levitt and Fryar because they cite, with respect, Jensen and Rushton. If you take Levitt seriously, you can't dismiss the hereditarian position as fringe. 5) and 6). I agree but, obviously, standard Wikipedia approaches have not worked on this article for 5+ years. What makes you think they will work in the future? Slrubenstein is not about to change his views about what is fringe.

Obviously, you should feel free to write whatever you want at ArbCom, either new material or edits/updates to your already submitted material. But I would prefer that you not quote me there. If I thought anything I wrote above was worth ArbComm's time, I would add it to evidence myself. David.Kane (talk) 23:56, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

For the guideline on reviewing, see Wikipedia:Reviewing. Being granted reviewer rights doesn't change how you can edit articles even with pending changes. The general help page on pending changes can be found here, and the general policy for the trial can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. —DoRD (talk) 00:40, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Halo

Regarding this, I find your post unnecessary. To call his well intended posts "disruptive" is untrue and quite frankly a violation of WP:CIV, WP:AGF, and WP:NPA. Please AGF before making such offensive and disruptive comments again. Blablaaa, as you should understand, is German, therefore English is not his native tongue. He goes to great lengths to explain himself so that other editors understand him better. Human compassion and open discussions are the key to a healthy environment. Not censorship. Thank you. Caden ^cool 21:49, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

ANI

You are mentioned on ANI. You are famous! RIPGC (talk) 04:07, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Pretty good Web sleuthing

... by you at Talk:Econ too, II. That way narrowed plausible options in the article Edit. --Thomasmeeks (talk) 09:55, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

clarify

When i went to milhist, i described the case neutral. I didnt say who was involved. MY intention ( kinda trick) there was to imply that i want to include this change so the editor will give his "neutral" opinion. Before a discussion evolved eyeseren joined and pointed to the actual discussion ( thus revealing who is involved) and putting the other editor under pressure, he changed his opinion. Thats why i finally "accused" the guy who responded first. Only that you know....

User:EyeSerene/Sandbox/RFC draft

You forgot to sign your post again; not that I mind adding the unsigned template, but I thought I would make you aware of the absence of the signature so you cold autograph your own statement. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:16, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

I scanned over both articles for duplicate information and material so some information was not merged because it already existed within the Dodd-Frank article. I meant to add merged from Obama financial regulatory reform plan of 2009 in the edit summary but forgot while doing the work, I apologize for any confusion and keep up the good work.--Nemesis63 (talk) 22:34, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

No problem, looks like you did a good job in the merge. Have you gotten the chance to read much of the bill? II | (t - c) 22:37, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

hi

When you first started giving input to RFC i thought you dont want to get too commited to the issue an so i hestitated to contact you but at the moment i think you are kinda involved so you should maybe look the talk of battle of jutland. [[27]] , if you are short of time skip to subsection sources. its worth to mention that most of the the participants are milhist members and also cooordinators. Blablaaa (talk) 21:55, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

i think this talk page can be linked to WP:OR as kinda illustration. :-) Blablaaa (talk) 22:01, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• I glanced through.I'm not sure whether I'll weigh in, but I did find one spot interesting:

Let me reproduce this for you, as you apparently missed it the first time:

From the tactical point of view, since neither fleet was able to inflict a crippling blow on the other, Jutland belongs to the series of inclusive battles...which are the rule in naval warfare." (Tarrant, p. 278)

Also, please learn how to spell my name. I took the time to spell yours right, do me the courtesy. And do not condescend to tell me what I do and do not know; I probably have a far better understanding of the Battle of Jutland than you do. Those historians who specifically study this battle and the naval war in the North Sea generally state that the battle was inconclusive tactically and a strategic British success. Moreover, any historian who calls this battle inconclusive is of course referring to the tactical side. No one disputes that strategically the British won the battle. Parsecboy (talk) 02:11, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

^^ please look the full quote you forgot something: since neither fleet was able to inflict a crippling blow on the other, Jutland belongs to the series of inconclusive battles or partial victories which are the rule in naval warfare. From the strategic point of view, which is what .., why did you cut this words out? please tell me one reason why you cut this words out? ^^ regardeless the fact thats its only one source it only says both failed to cripple the the ofter but its doesnt say it was inconclusive, both had failed but still germany hat the tactical edge . The only quote which you have is not even supporting what you claim...Blablaaa (talk) 07:12, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Selective quoting at its finest... II | (t - c) 22:19, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

yes missing the part which dont sounds goodBlablaaa (talk) 22:55, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Heho

maybe you are interessted [[28]]. But you are not allowed to write there so only something interesting to read, maybe ^^ Iam away from wiki for a time. Not much time at the moment. I wanted to say thank you for your help. its kinda unpleasent to hit a hornet's nest, so thanks...Blablaaa (talk) 23:03, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

yeah you are correct. In german iam more eloquent, i hope. The problem is the amount of lies. No time to search 30 minutes for a diff to show he lied ^^. Dapi for example, look the RFC talk, i refuted his comments totally and showed diffs what he did and who lied, nevertheless nobody cared Blablaaa (talk) 08:16, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Re: Question on original research; Blablaa discussion

Replied at my talk. EyeSerene^talk 10:26, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

talkback SCIRS

I replied to your comment at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (science-related articles)#Promotion to guideline?. If you think there is traction in that discussion, I think we can start a new section and hash something out. - 2/0 (cont.) 13:04, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Please review

Hi, you cast a vote of oppose on a proposed content guideline; I and a few other editors have made significant changes to the proposed guideline to try and resolve the issues of the opposers. I initially opposed the guideline but now support it due to the changes made recently. Would you mind reviewing the changes and commenting on this section. Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(science-related_articles)#Towards_consensus_acceptance_of_the_guideline.2C_lets_discuss Thank you very much.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:10, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

BlaBlaBla

I was in the process of asking Eye' to review something for me, when I noticed you were inferring that I had been misinforming the group at the arbcom. The 'Tactical' victory problem extends to the Battle of Prokhorovka, key battle in the Battle of Kursk. BlaBla deleted referenced results and decided he was going to use a German website, which doesn't say anything about a tactical victory, and Frieser. The failure of the Germans to defeat the last line of defence makes it a tactical defeat - this is self evident. I have, after withdrawing from editing the article mostly because of his behaviour, I returned to it to find he has done it again [29], so I reverted, again. As you can tell from the history, he has been in conflict with everyone. I took pitty on Bla' at the Arbcom, but it seems that the others are right, his evaluations are poor, and he is bias. Though I would stop short of calling his edits agenda driven. I hope this makes things crystal clear. Dapi89 (talk) 13:29, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

BTW, I have copies of Frieser's version from my University library. He doesn't say it either. Dapi89 (talk) 13:33, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Science in the Middle Ages

Hello. You are invited to take part in the discussion on Science in the Middle Ages. The question is should we keep or remove the section on the Islamic world. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 08:33, 21 August 2010 (UTC)