This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Alright, we've witnessed an administrative demonstration of power as with the "protection" of the article; thanks Bundy, for your kind warning. Can we now constructively return to the matter in hand? After all, it is the task of all of us Wikipedians to see to it that articles contained in this Free Encyclopedia adhere to encyclopedical standards and not those of the yellow press, isn't it? 'Free' should not stand for 'free of correct facts', 'free of truth(fulness)' or for that matter 'free of ethical restraints'. One would think we all, at least those of good will among us, agree on that. Now it happens to be the case, if not by willful disruptive tendentious editing then by negligence, that in its current state the article Francesco Carotta is full of errors of all sorts and easily verifiably so, some of which were mentioned in the previous, now "deleted" comment. Especially the section on the "Dutch media controversy" is a complete distortion of the real events, for instance, the review of Peter Veldhuisen was not related at all to the activities and pronouncements of van Hooff. This section needs a thorough revision, or maybe the best thing to do would be to just delete it, since it does not provide any information on the theory and might be of interest only to the yellow press. Furthermore, we the Populares, the People's Front of Rome so to speak, hope that it is not considered a personal attack if we dare to ask the reputable user Rubenstein what exactly he thinks it is that qualifies him to act as the expert for and supervisor over this particular article. If User:Slrubenstein does not deem us worthy of an answer, as has been the case a few times on this page, maybe other editors or just readers could try to help us understand. In any case, we fail to see why Slrubenstein's arbitrary words and deeds should carry any special weight for the decent normal Wikipedians. We also don't understand why there seems to be so little opposition to what appears to be his self-arrogated authority. So in closing we ask an unbiased and honest administrator—there certainly must be one around here—to remove the editing protection from the article so that some much needed reasonable work can be done by knowledgeable and sincere editors. In order to prevent tedious unfruitful edit wars we suggest discussing changes to the article on this talk page first. — Populares ( talk) 21:03, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
The last sentence in the article is: “When a few academics were asked for their opinion in a short article of the Leiden University newspaper, they backed Van Hooff's position.[24]” Besides the fact that other academics in MARE back Carotta, the sentence as it is written now, needs a clarification. Two academics indeed “back” van Hooff in the unacademic approach of neglecting Carotta’s discovery by not reading it: OK. But being a christian and an atheist they have fundamental different opinions about the historical Jesus. The are not as unisono as it wiki-looks-like. Van Hooff, as an atheist, also supports the position of the historical Jesus. (vpro 11– 4 – 2004) So, who is backing which position? You see: it is much more complicated than the sentence solo and the article suggests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.239.7 ( talk) 06:29, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Let's talk about truth and/or verifiability. You had corrected the name "Stadtzeitung" we have in note #4 of this article into "Stattzeitung", because only the latter was verifiable, you said. Then, by chance, somebody found out the link to the "Stadtzeitung für Freiburg" and the erroneous correction could be reverted. Notice that if there had been no documentation of the "Stadtzeitung für Freiburg" online, but only, say, in a press archive in Freiburg, or if nobody had made the effort to verify the verifiability, the error would not have been detected, and the "truth" would now be, erroneously, "Stattzeitung". A beautiful mistake, by the way, very evangelical, being of the same sort as those we can find in the manuscripts of the Gospel. ;-)
But let us apply this to another case, take Anton van Hooff, who is in charge to turn King's evidence for "pseudo-science", "severe methodological flaws" and "factual errors". Of course, he has written this, among several name-callings, so this is verifiable. But can we take it seriously? If we look closer we see that the first accusation of van Hooff towards Carotta was to not have taken into account the well known Tacitus-passage about Nero and the "christians". But since Carotta had treated it in detail, van Hooff was exposed, because he had shown that he had attacked a book without having read it, so that he himself was convicted of the "severe methodological flaws" and "factual errors" he tried to impute to other people. The subsequent escalation with the accusation of "pseudo-science" was only his embarrassing attempt to divert from the lack of professionality he had shown. This, too, can be verified. The question is then: Which verification is relevant?
Van Hooff is refered to as a "Senior lecturer of Ancient History and Teacher Trainer for Classics at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands" in the link given in note #17. But we see that at the University of Sofia he is also called "Professor Associate". Looking on the Internet we can verify that he is called a "professor" on several websites. Looking closer we can also verify that he was never a professor, and is by now a teacher in a secondary school, as he himself stated in a newspaper article. If we look to the list of publications he is giving there, we see that he is speaking of "numerous books and articles" but specifies only one title. Modesty or showing-off?
Van Hooff being a notorious polemicist, can his accusations be taken seriously? Nobody does it in The Netherlands (why is there no article about him in the Dutch WP? – The only Antoon van Hooff listed there is a zoo director, who was ashamed of the homonymy), but he is taken seriously here, in the English WP where most "judges" do not even understand Dutch. Why? Because it is so stated in the German WP already? If we take a look at the history there, we can verify that somebody had first put the article in the category "Pseudowissenschaft" (pseudo-science), but then, this being not allowed because libelous, they "discovered" "Van Hooff", taking him as "proof", without examining his credibility, happy to have the possibility to maintain their libelous allegation in an appearance of legality: it is "only" a quotation! ;-)
So much about verifiability and truth. The question of Pilate, BTW. — Populares ( talk) 15:34, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
1991-1995: Secretary of Euroclassica, the European Federation of Associations of Classical Teachers 1988-1994: President of the Association of Classicists in the Netherlands
TEACHING EXPERIENCE since 1976: teaching under- and postgraduate courses in ancient history since 1973: teacher trainer 1966-1973: teacher of classical languages and ancient culture at secondary schools
PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH AREA
Numerous books and articles on Roman imperialism, Caesar, Polybius, ancient bandits, old age in antiquity, suicide (From Autothanasia to Suicide, London 1990) and the Spartacus tradition (Dutch book appeared 1993). Dr. van Hooff is co-author of textbooks for history, ancient culture and Latin. He co-designed and presented a television course on Latin. Dr. van Hooff writes for several Dutch newspapers and takes part in public discussions on radio and television as well."
And in a book [3]
Anion J. L. van Hooff, PhD, is a senior lecturer in ancient history and teacher training in classics at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands. He was president of the Association of Classicists in the Netherlands from 1988 to 1994 and secretary of Euroclassica, the European Federation of Associations of Classical Teachers from 1991 to 1995. He has published several books and numerous articles on Roman imperialism, Caesar, Polybius, ancient bandits, old age in antiquity, Greco-Roman self-killing {From Autothanasia to Suicide. 1990), and the Spartacus tradition (in Dutch, De vonk van Spartacus, 1993; an English version. Spark of Spartacus, is in preparation). He is the coauthor of numerous textbooks on history, ancient culture, and Latin.
Clearly he is credible. Dougweller ( talk) 19:03, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia take Van Hooff more serious as a scientist than he does himself? He writes: ‘Most of my activities have little to do with science: newspaper columns, schoolbooks, teachers training, general lectures ancient history and lectures for highly diverse public.’ In: Henk Procee e.a, Bij die wereld wil ik horen ( Boom 2004) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.239.7 ( talk) 12:40, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Cliteur writes: "The method of Van Hooff is as follows: He gets in touch with someone via e-mail and then in a public document freely paraphrases what you allegedly replied to him."Paul Cliteur, Modern Zealotism, in: De Vrijdenker, june 2008. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.239.7 ( talk) 11:51, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
Populares block has been extended for abuse of multiple accounts, I am deleting his attempts to evade his block by using an IP address as 91.89.168.201 ( talk · contribs) who has now been blocked. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Populares Dougweller ( talk) 05:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
In copyediting rounds, I come across other kinds of claims about fringe ways of understanding ancient texts. Today, it is Robert Haralick, who is apparently an expert in computer vision. However, he has also got some fringe publications in using some kind of mathematical analysis of the Torah, and in his article, there are some unsourced claims about the relationship of the Torah (or something) to Moby Dick and War and Peace. Frankly, I can't understand the article, I just know that in the middle of an article about robot vision, there's something about Torah, War and Peace, and Moby Dick, and on the talk page, the subject of the article chimes in to mention whatever kind of numerical analysis he does (pattern recognition of some kind). I don't see any kind of "fringe" tag - just the neutrality tag (which the Haralick page already has). So do articles just stay the way they are, with a warning to readers? And, is there anyway to use a search tool on Wikipedia to establish whether or not an article is an orphan? Thanks for any help. I've been following this page for awhile with great interest. Levalley ( talk) 22:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Looks like our friend Populares has decided he's right after all and that all of us are wrong. I'd like to invite him to stop edit warring and give another go at discussing the issues. If he fails again to gain consensus, I'd like him to be courteous enough to recognize that consensus can and does exist without him, and that he cannot always have things his way. Thanks to all.-- Ramdrake ( talk) 21:37, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Seeing as how Populares' edits have no support but his own, I've reverted them. It is clear there is no consensus for them. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 08:00, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Dougweller that Populares is heading for an indef black - I'd say his next chance is his last chance. But the problem here goes deeper than that. Other editors should assume good faith on 85's part. But 85, please understand that if some people jump to the conclusion that you are a Pop. sock, it is for two reasons: (1) a loss of good faith in Populares, and in my view for very good reason, and (2) that your attitude towards others seems so much like Populares's. Do you wish to respond that this is true of others? Okay, genug, let's stop finger pointing right now. The purpose of this page is to discuss improvements to the article. Improvements must comply with policy. I have seen articles where people with impossibly conflicting views were able to work together, that is possible here. It means abandoning pettiness and finger-pointing, and also respecting editors who want Wikipedia articles to be held to the hightest possible standard, even if this means hard work. It means consensus based editing, which means that we provide explanations for our views but do not ask someone to provide the same explanation twice; it means we consider and respond to what others say, and give others a chance to consider and respond to what we say. And when a consensus emerges, one either works through it, or continues to try to change it on the talk page without getting into the silly revert campaign we saw yesterday. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Alright, we've witnessed an administrative demonstration of power as with the "protection" of the article; thanks Bundy, for your kind warning. Can we now constructively return to the matter in hand? After all, it is the task of all of us Wikipedians to see to it that articles contained in this Free Encyclopedia adhere to encyclopedical standards and not those of the yellow press, isn't it? 'Free' should not stand for 'free of correct facts', 'free of truth(fulness)' or for that matter 'free of ethical restraints'. One would think we all, at least those of good will among us, agree on that. Now it happens to be the case, if not by willful disruptive tendentious editing then by negligence, that in its current state the article Francesco Carotta is full of errors of all sorts and easily verifiably so, some of which were mentioned in the previous, now "deleted" comment. Especially the section on the "Dutch media controversy" is a complete distortion of the real events, for instance, the review of Peter Veldhuisen was not related at all to the activities and pronouncements of van Hooff. This section needs a thorough revision, or maybe the best thing to do would be to just delete it, since it does not provide any information on the theory and might be of interest only to the yellow press. Furthermore, we the Populares, the People's Front of Rome so to speak, hope that it is not considered a personal attack if we dare to ask the reputable user Rubenstein what exactly he thinks it is that qualifies him to act as the expert for and supervisor over this particular article. If User:Slrubenstein does not deem us worthy of an answer, as has been the case a few times on this page, maybe other editors or just readers could try to help us understand. In any case, we fail to see why Slrubenstein's arbitrary words and deeds should carry any special weight for the decent normal Wikipedians. We also don't understand why there seems to be so little opposition to what appears to be his self-arrogated authority. So in closing we ask an unbiased and honest administrator—there certainly must be one around here—to remove the editing protection from the article so that some much needed reasonable work can be done by knowledgeable and sincere editors. In order to prevent tedious unfruitful edit wars we suggest discussing changes to the article on this talk page first. — Populares ( talk) 21:03, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
The last sentence in the article is: “When a few academics were asked for their opinion in a short article of the Leiden University newspaper, they backed Van Hooff's position.[24]” Besides the fact that other academics in MARE back Carotta, the sentence as it is written now, needs a clarification. Two academics indeed “back” van Hooff in the unacademic approach of neglecting Carotta’s discovery by not reading it: OK. But being a christian and an atheist they have fundamental different opinions about the historical Jesus. The are not as unisono as it wiki-looks-like. Van Hooff, as an atheist, also supports the position of the historical Jesus. (vpro 11– 4 – 2004) So, who is backing which position? You see: it is much more complicated than the sentence solo and the article suggests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.239.7 ( talk) 06:29, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Let's talk about truth and/or verifiability. You had corrected the name "Stadtzeitung" we have in note #4 of this article into "Stattzeitung", because only the latter was verifiable, you said. Then, by chance, somebody found out the link to the "Stadtzeitung für Freiburg" and the erroneous correction could be reverted. Notice that if there had been no documentation of the "Stadtzeitung für Freiburg" online, but only, say, in a press archive in Freiburg, or if nobody had made the effort to verify the verifiability, the error would not have been detected, and the "truth" would now be, erroneously, "Stattzeitung". A beautiful mistake, by the way, very evangelical, being of the same sort as those we can find in the manuscripts of the Gospel. ;-)
But let us apply this to another case, take Anton van Hooff, who is in charge to turn King's evidence for "pseudo-science", "severe methodological flaws" and "factual errors". Of course, he has written this, among several name-callings, so this is verifiable. But can we take it seriously? If we look closer we see that the first accusation of van Hooff towards Carotta was to not have taken into account the well known Tacitus-passage about Nero and the "christians". But since Carotta had treated it in detail, van Hooff was exposed, because he had shown that he had attacked a book without having read it, so that he himself was convicted of the "severe methodological flaws" and "factual errors" he tried to impute to other people. The subsequent escalation with the accusation of "pseudo-science" was only his embarrassing attempt to divert from the lack of professionality he had shown. This, too, can be verified. The question is then: Which verification is relevant?
Van Hooff is refered to as a "Senior lecturer of Ancient History and Teacher Trainer for Classics at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands" in the link given in note #17. But we see that at the University of Sofia he is also called "Professor Associate". Looking on the Internet we can verify that he is called a "professor" on several websites. Looking closer we can also verify that he was never a professor, and is by now a teacher in a secondary school, as he himself stated in a newspaper article. If we look to the list of publications he is giving there, we see that he is speaking of "numerous books and articles" but specifies only one title. Modesty or showing-off?
Van Hooff being a notorious polemicist, can his accusations be taken seriously? Nobody does it in The Netherlands (why is there no article about him in the Dutch WP? – The only Antoon van Hooff listed there is a zoo director, who was ashamed of the homonymy), but he is taken seriously here, in the English WP where most "judges" do not even understand Dutch. Why? Because it is so stated in the German WP already? If we take a look at the history there, we can verify that somebody had first put the article in the category "Pseudowissenschaft" (pseudo-science), but then, this being not allowed because libelous, they "discovered" "Van Hooff", taking him as "proof", without examining his credibility, happy to have the possibility to maintain their libelous allegation in an appearance of legality: it is "only" a quotation! ;-)
So much about verifiability and truth. The question of Pilate, BTW. — Populares ( talk) 15:34, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
1991-1995: Secretary of Euroclassica, the European Federation of Associations of Classical Teachers 1988-1994: President of the Association of Classicists in the Netherlands
TEACHING EXPERIENCE since 1976: teaching under- and postgraduate courses in ancient history since 1973: teacher trainer 1966-1973: teacher of classical languages and ancient culture at secondary schools
PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH AREA
Numerous books and articles on Roman imperialism, Caesar, Polybius, ancient bandits, old age in antiquity, suicide (From Autothanasia to Suicide, London 1990) and the Spartacus tradition (Dutch book appeared 1993). Dr. van Hooff is co-author of textbooks for history, ancient culture and Latin. He co-designed and presented a television course on Latin. Dr. van Hooff writes for several Dutch newspapers and takes part in public discussions on radio and television as well."
And in a book [3]
Anion J. L. van Hooff, PhD, is a senior lecturer in ancient history and teacher training in classics at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands. He was president of the Association of Classicists in the Netherlands from 1988 to 1994 and secretary of Euroclassica, the European Federation of Associations of Classical Teachers from 1991 to 1995. He has published several books and numerous articles on Roman imperialism, Caesar, Polybius, ancient bandits, old age in antiquity, Greco-Roman self-killing {From Autothanasia to Suicide. 1990), and the Spartacus tradition (in Dutch, De vonk van Spartacus, 1993; an English version. Spark of Spartacus, is in preparation). He is the coauthor of numerous textbooks on history, ancient culture, and Latin.
Clearly he is credible. Dougweller ( talk) 19:03, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia take Van Hooff more serious as a scientist than he does himself? He writes: ‘Most of my activities have little to do with science: newspaper columns, schoolbooks, teachers training, general lectures ancient history and lectures for highly diverse public.’ In: Henk Procee e.a, Bij die wereld wil ik horen ( Boom 2004) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.239.7 ( talk) 12:40, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Cliteur writes: "The method of Van Hooff is as follows: He gets in touch with someone via e-mail and then in a public document freely paraphrases what you allegedly replied to him."Paul Cliteur, Modern Zealotism, in: De Vrijdenker, june 2008. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.239.7 ( talk) 11:51, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
Populares block has been extended for abuse of multiple accounts, I am deleting his attempts to evade his block by using an IP address as 91.89.168.201 ( talk · contribs) who has now been blocked. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Populares Dougweller ( talk) 05:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
In copyediting rounds, I come across other kinds of claims about fringe ways of understanding ancient texts. Today, it is Robert Haralick, who is apparently an expert in computer vision. However, he has also got some fringe publications in using some kind of mathematical analysis of the Torah, and in his article, there are some unsourced claims about the relationship of the Torah (or something) to Moby Dick and War and Peace. Frankly, I can't understand the article, I just know that in the middle of an article about robot vision, there's something about Torah, War and Peace, and Moby Dick, and on the talk page, the subject of the article chimes in to mention whatever kind of numerical analysis he does (pattern recognition of some kind). I don't see any kind of "fringe" tag - just the neutrality tag (which the Haralick page already has). So do articles just stay the way they are, with a warning to readers? And, is there anyway to use a search tool on Wikipedia to establish whether or not an article is an orphan? Thanks for any help. I've been following this page for awhile with great interest. Levalley ( talk) 22:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Looks like our friend Populares has decided he's right after all and that all of us are wrong. I'd like to invite him to stop edit warring and give another go at discussing the issues. If he fails again to gain consensus, I'd like him to be courteous enough to recognize that consensus can and does exist without him, and that he cannot always have things his way. Thanks to all.-- Ramdrake ( talk) 21:37, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
Seeing as how Populares' edits have no support but his own, I've reverted them. It is clear there is no consensus for them. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 08:00, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Dougweller that Populares is heading for an indef black - I'd say his next chance is his last chance. But the problem here goes deeper than that. Other editors should assume good faith on 85's part. But 85, please understand that if some people jump to the conclusion that you are a Pop. sock, it is for two reasons: (1) a loss of good faith in Populares, and in my view for very good reason, and (2) that your attitude towards others seems so much like Populares's. Do you wish to respond that this is true of others? Okay, genug, let's stop finger pointing right now. The purpose of this page is to discuss improvements to the article. Improvements must comply with policy. I have seen articles where people with impossibly conflicting views were able to work together, that is possible here. It means abandoning pettiness and finger-pointing, and also respecting editors who want Wikipedia articles to be held to the hightest possible standard, even if this means hard work. It means consensus based editing, which means that we provide explanations for our views but do not ask someone to provide the same explanation twice; it means we consider and respond to what others say, and give others a chance to consider and respond to what we say. And when a consensus emerges, one either works through it, or continues to try to change it on the talk page without getting into the silly revert campaign we saw yesterday. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)