Archive #5 All messages from the beginning of 2008 to March 22, 2008.
An image that you uploaded or altered, Image:OswaldChin2.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images because its copyright status is disputed. If the image's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the image description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 18:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Huge thanks for getting those pesky references looking decent again RexxS ( talk) 04:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for teaching me how to revert more than one edit at a time. I half included that in the edit summary in hopes someone would enlighten me. Take care. -- Breakyunit ( talk) 01:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Nengscoz416 (
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I have edited the article to include chemical info on "selenium sulfide". This is a case of a preparation with a name that sounds like a chemical formula. SeS2 is a mixture of cyclo-SenS(n-8) compounds. What it most certainly is not is Se=S or S=Se=S as I have seen in many places on the web. There are two CAS #:- 7488-56-4 (SeS2) and 7446-34-6 (SeS). There is a lot of confusion amongst suppliers regarding which CAS # is used for what. What you get when you order will be a mixture which will analyse to approximately SeS or SeS2.
I do not know the research paper(s) which triggered the health warning but I would be surprised if the precise chemical content of the sample of "Selenium sulfide" was determined prior to testing. The further difficulty with using proprietary sources of "SeS2" is that the provenance potentially determines the mix of compounds present. I believe that the health warnings refers to all preparations containing selenium sulfur compounds with overall stoichiometries of SeS and SeS2
[1]. Knowing that both compounds are mixtures containing similar compounds in different proportions - I guess that the thought process is - test either one, get a bad result - then on the precautionary principle warn on both of them. I have not changed the section.
Axiosaurus (
talk)
17:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for making a report about
75.75.104.77 (
talk ·
contribs ·
block log) at
Wikipedia:Abuse reports. Unfortunately, this IP has not been blocked enough times, and therefore does not merit an abuse report. Next time, please make sure that the IP in question has been blocked at least five times in recent
history.Original report available at
Wikipedia:Abuse reports/75.75.104.77
Rjd0060 (
talk)
04:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Replied on my talk page. — Nicholas ( reply) @ 18:01, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
The comment by Stephen B Streater in response to your post [2] is likely false since belladonna is poisonous. Homeopathic doses wouldn't be. Thanks for participating. Anthon01 ( talk) 01:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
aah.. - {{ help}} contains a category (Category:Wikipedians looking for help, or something like that, only it has the [[ around it so it works, if you get my drift), and adding {{help}} to your user/talk page will thus add the page to that category. Wikipedia:Template namespace may be useful, as well as m:Help:Template. That said, I learnt all I know about templates from observation, so I might write up a User:Dihydrogen Monoxide/Templates for dummies one of these days. Until then, cheers, Dihydrogen Monoxide ( party) 05:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
What was that latest post to my talk page, an "I told you so"? I stand by my actions. Several of us informed him in perfectly acceptable and Wikipedia-approved ways that his edits, as made, were not in a manner consistent with Wikipedia policies. He proceeded to completely ignore the increasingly vehement warnings, and opted instead to simply make the exact same edit. He never once claimed to be T.H. Shaffer to me, instead just mentioning that he was "a developer" on one of the edit summaries. On IP edit patrol, I see hundreds of claims a month that these people are friends of someone, that they are someone, that they have intimate knowledge of something. Wikipedia is not based on TRUTH, it is based on VERIFIABILITY. Even now, if he is who he says he is, that's great - and I don't really find it some great "honor" as you do. Fine, at least now the contributer is citing his sources, as I, JForget, and J.delanoy all told him to do. No one "bit" him, no one personally attacked him, stop making a bigger deal out of this than what actually happened. Tanthalas39 ( talk) 15:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Shaffer did make comments suggesting who he was, but you have to know something of the subject to have understood them. I explained elsewhere about that. You might not find it an honor to have somebody who is an expert editing an article, but if not, you should. We're all ignorant about most things, and most of us consider it an honor to have the opinions of an expert, when we can find one.
As for Wikipedia working on verifiability, not truth, that's a can of worms. The short answer is that Wikipedia needs and wants to have the truth, but since it is run by anonymous blowhards, it doesn't know how to get it, except by appeal to outside published authority (if you look into WP:V you'll find it's all about authority-- it's just somebody else's authority). Which is fine, but it forgets that knowledge-authority requires respect wherever you find it, inasmuch as truth is not always published (I'm telling you this and you're in the pharm development industry???). Notwithstanding that a template exists for "need an expert to review this article," Wikipedia's renowned disrespect for actual authorities who come here would not survive as an attitude in either business or academia (or for that matter, encyclopedia or science publishing), and only succeeds at all because Wikipedia is a childish creature of no responsibilities, with a childish disregard for any work-product for which it must be responsible. And is often run by adolescents who enjoy thumbing their noses anonymously at everybody else, especially academics. And also (let us admit it) because Wikipedia actually does benefit (without acknowledging the fact) from the writing of many people who know what they are talking about, editing articles in the spirit of improvement WP:IAR, and only providing cites when there's a dispute. Most of the true content here is still citation-free, for that reason. The rest would be a mishmash of cites and disconnected hash, if had to be edited by people who didn't understand their subjects, instead of experts in many cases willing to take liberties to clean up nonsense. Take a look at Lie Algebra, for example. One day, Wikipedia will have to face up to the need for expert review, but for the time being, it functions in fantasyland, documenting pop culture and barely tolerating the rest. But that doesn't mean the way it functions, which is something like a K12 classroom with a missing teacher and many bullies, is a good thing. In many ways, Wikipedia is what it is not because of its policies, but in spite of them. S B H arris 05:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Hey. I saw your "too heck with it" edit, and okay, I'll grudgingly admit that perhaps you did have a point. I don't agree with everything you say, and I don't even agree with all your basic viewpoints, but it's obvious to me that you have Wikipedia's larger goals in mind - as do I. You might not believe it, but I try very, very hard to uphold Wikipedia policy, not only in the black-and-white areas but in the gray, blue, purple and clear areas. What do you say that we just let this one go; we can both still claim to be mostly in the right, but I don't really care for an enemy here on Wiki, especially one so close to my career. I sincerely apologize for my part in this argument. The next disagreement we can fight to the death. Tanthalas39 ( talk) 05:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarifications. However, your links went to aircraft, not isotopes! I fixed them.
Why don't you write a stub about Hal O. Anger, who invented the gamma camera in the 1950s and pioneered internal imaging? He died about a decade ago, but I don't have the details. You could likely get it from the Society of Nuclear Medicine, of which I presume are a member [like myself]. Oldnoah ( talk) 05:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah
Thanks too for the Hal Anger correction.
Oldnoah (
talk)
05:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah
could you please explain to me how matter gets "converted" into energy during the process of nuclear reactions? :p BriEnBest ( talk) 07:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
In a bomb, the "mass" that seems to go away is potential energy stored in two kinds of fields holding nucleons together and trying to push them apart. When the things blows, some of both of these fields gets turned into kinetic energy of the fragments. No neutrons or protons disappear! Just the fields that push or pull them. But after, they're moving fast, and that's the "energy" associated with the passive mass of the fields. A gram of field gets turned into a gram of kinetic energy. Things moving fast have more mass. They keep it till they slow, and they whatever slows them picks up the mass associated with their kinetic energy, and so on. S B H arris 07:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
really? so matter doesn't get converted into "energy" - just different kinds of matter (or mass). i heard one time that "light is pure energy" this doesn't seem true since gravity (black holes) still affect them. what about this? they still have mass, so they are not "pure energy", right? BriEnBest ( talk) 08:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
i am wondering how i might try to describe this: (maybe you could help me) - i want to say, basically, that mass (matter) is to space what energy is to time. does this make sense, even? and if so, could you tell me, well, what you think of this, or maybe help me out to put it into better, more physics-friendly terms, or perhaps correct me if i am wrong? :) BriEnBest ( talk) 08:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
And BTW, mass is not to space what energy is to time. Rather, momentum is to space what energy is to time. S B H arris 00:59, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
how is Momentum to space what energy is to time? may i argue for my original statement for a moment? it seems (to me) as though mass bends space via gravity - likewise time is "bent" by energy, is it not? (although i do not completely understand how this happens or the specifics..) also mass (well, matter...) is actually defined by space. likewise energy can only be defined if there exists time. i don't know if you have time to go over all of this with me, and i do not claim that my understanding is correct, but it would be very nice if you could continue to help me. thanks, :) BriEnBest ( talk) 05:56, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
i have another question - it's along the lines of relativity... i need to start with newton's (one of the three) law, which implies that in order to go forward, we must push something in the opposite direction. now, in relativity, it is possible to basically go "farther into the future" than we would normally. here i am thinking of time as a dimension - like forward and backward. now, i don't understand what causes the person to go farther into the future than he would normally, except that he would have to move close to the speed of light for a certain amount of time, but i don't know why this CAUSES him to move "farther" into the future. My question is: does newton's law apply? is something "pushed backward" for the person to go forward? in effect, travelling into the past? i know that there is an inconsistency here, and that it is "impossible" to travel into the past, i'm just not sure where. BriEnBest ( talk) 22:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Where did you get this garbage of an explanation. Let's face it, we do not really know what mass is. We haven't found the Higgs boson! Mass is just something attributed by Newton to his theories- inertia and gravitational, and as far as experiments can see, are of equal value. 81.159.84.158 ( talk) 23:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Who has been grossly vandalizing the argon page also. Look, could we have this guy blocked for longer than 3 days, just to allow the rest of us to get work done? As far as I can see, NOTHING but vandalism has issued from this IP, EVER. So why are we coddling "it" when there are thousands of indefinitely long blocks per month issued against good faith nameusers who are not vandals, but are simply disagreeing with somebody? This whole block policy is so completely ass-backwards that it's not funny. People who obviously care about writing the right thing as to mouth off to a admin about something (often with good reason!) are banned. Whereas people who CLEARLY mean to destroy and disrupt the work by deleting stuff or writing obsenities, are blocked for 72 hours again and again and again. Madness! So please, don't 3-day block this guy the next time. Block for 3 times the time between his last vandalism and the one before. Then up from there. On the very long shot that this is a shared school IP, it's up to the guys on the other end to do something about the little delinquents, not you. S B H arris 21:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Did you speedily delete Image:Feynman-book-cover-pic.jpg, or was it subjected to a deletion review that I missed? I ask, because as a book cover it certainly would have passed the WP:RAT test, and I think should have been given a chance to do so. As is, you wiped out the main photo illustrating the bio of the man! What was the rush? S B H arris 05:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I thought that since hemoglobin was linked in the very first sentence it made it pretty clear that the correct pronunciation was met + the pronunciation of hemoglobin. If you think either the pronunciation of hemoglobin or the link between methemoglobin and hemoglobin is unclear feel free to add the IPA notation, I myself am not well-versed in IPA and the hemoglobin page doesn't have an IPA so I didn't bother. -- Sgt. Salt ( talk) 11:31, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for going with Sask there on the SBT page - I am frankly a little bewildered by him. He seems completely fixated on establishing that Oswald fired three bullets that hit and can't seem to see the problems entailed when we start the clock as late as he suggests. And he seems to want to dismiss physical evidence if it doesn't match the witness testimony he embraces. But he obviously knows a lot on the subject... Just don't know what to make of the guy. Perhaps I should just shut up... Canada Jack ( talk) 21:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Good stuff on this "lean" issue. Sask did me a favour by locating the WC volumes which print various reenactment frames, though he linked to z255 where JFK is sitting erect. I quickly found the fatal head shot and Muchmore film which seems to back up my contention (see what I just added on the page).
I'm not sure his "lean" has ever been much of an issue anywhere, so it's interesting that it is here. Here's another little tidbit that may play into the issue of JFK's expression - Connally's as well - as they emerge from behind the freeway sign. They both to be looking at the camera, towards Zapruder. But in fact they both may have been looking at something rather odd - the man with the umbrella who was, at that moment, lifting it and spinning it. Now, Connally might have thought to himself "what the hell?" but Kennedy likely knew the reference and was in the midst of a scowl or some similar expression. It was a reference to Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, and the Kennedy role in that, and the umbrella as a symbol of that was well enough known that Kennedy might have perceived the insult. Pure conjecture, there is no way to know this, but I mention it as a possible explanation for JFK's quizzical look as he emerges, one which others have suggested he was already reacting to a bullet strike earlier than circa z224. Cheers. Canada Jack ( talk) 17:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I reckon perhaps the most gracious way to deal with the proposed deletion of this article may be for you yourself to edit the quoted material, with a view to its value being preserved but its bulk being reduced? Benny the wayfarer ( talk) 20:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I don't have magic powers. I just have an account on Commons, and I'm actually not that good of an SVG editor. You should ask User:Atanamir to fix it instead, since he's the one who converted the PNGs to SVGs. He's made other errors too, like on Boron's periodic table image. → FISDOF 9 04:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Hello, after seeing your comments at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_32#all_sides_can_agree_in_principle_to_an_orderly_process_of_making_a_determination_of_what_to_do, I thought you might be interested in this page, Wikipedia:Delegable proxy. Although it is currently phrased in terms of delegating authority, it will probably be rewritten soon to clarify that it is part of an advisory process, not a voting process. 71.63.91.68 ( talk) 05:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi Sbharris,
Wow, iut's been a long time since i've worked on these =P. Doesn't lithium already have an illustration that's SVG? Lithium. Is there something wrong with it? Also, for Iodine, are you saying you DON'T want the 'N' abbreviation for Neutrons? It matches all the other ones I've seen... Thanks atanamir ( talk) 05:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Re this thread: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Evidence#Sauce_for_goose.2C_sauce_for_gander:_where.27s_Weiss.27s_wife_on_WP.3F
The stock market operates on ads, which are closely kept track of by the SEC and FTA. In opposition are consumer reports and stock analysts. Nobody censors anybody, really. If you wish to "pump and dump" a crummy penny stock, there are many ways to get around the rules. And naked short selling is a potent way to counteract such bull. We need both. So, we should discuss both fairly. If Overstock needs a puff page, with a summary of criticism on it, AND a separate criticism page, with a summary of the puff page, well, that's within policy. We did it with the Apollo moon landings and the Apollo moon landing hoax accusations. What prevents us from learning the lessons we learned THERE, and applying them HERE? S B H arris 05:18, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I do advocate a system of experts. And precisely because that is how we make progress in the rest of the world, and it's a mistake to compare real models with utopian ideals, instead of with the available other real choices. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy has many problems, but the alternatives are worse. For every engineering disaster, there are improvements next time-- are you going to argue that technology doesn't improve? Or that you have a way to make it improve faster? Some of your examples illustrate the problem directly: the shuttle disasters were results of failure to listen to engineers (the only experts nature respects). As for the rest, again you compare reality to utopia. In the 20 years in the US before 9/11 we have about 2300 fatalities total for 8 TRILLION passenger flights, and god knows how many passenger miles. In a recent year we didn't have ANY. We don't compare the 2300 deaths to zero, but to what has come before in aviation history, and to what the toll has been with autos, and so on.
It's rather the same with courts. I won't argue that justice is swayed by money/time and passion, but so equally it is on Wikipedia! PLUS many additionals ones: star chamber hearings, anonyomous accusers, defense gagging, a lack of due process with punishment handing out before adequate appeal or clear guidelines evenly applied, and so on. Whether Justice is delivered in the real work is beside the point: at least the real world looks at its statistics. Wikipedia couldn't even begin to see if it works better or worse. From a procedural point of view, it's far worse. Outcomes measurements haven't even been suggested, except for a few recent suggestons that we collect some data on who gets stomped/blocked, and why (prelim results are horrid).
Lessons learned from the faked moon landings and the articles on homeopathy, is that it's possible to construct an encyclopedia in which a lot more people feel fairly treated, since their side of the argument is told, not surpressed. Which is what clearly happened with Overstock, like it or not. Was this Overstock's "fault"? In warfare, and in most human relations, much morality depends on who starts the fight. In this case, Overstock felt attacked and then muzzled, following which they then decended into open warfare. But hey, that's what happens when you first attack and then muzzle people: they tend to fight back and fight dirty. If Wikipedia doesn't want to be engaged in continuous total war, sort of like the US, it had better learn to quit treading on toes. I advocate NO BLP, except for people famous enough for paper encyclopedias. This would be a good rule to follow for publically traded companies. We don't need the hassle, and we certainly cannot swim these fundmental stock analysis waters without subject-matter expertise. But we seem determined to do it, almost masochistically. Damn if I know why. Lack of empathy by anonymous kids for real world adults with adult problems, including buisness problems, I think. The little snots. S B H arris 08:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Sorry. The silliness was not in you comment. It seems to me it would have to be W, or perhaps his wife (as you said), or less likely in very close best man or something. The silliness was in the replies—the first, which was a joke, and the second, which was a diversion into epistemology on the internet. Cool Hand Luke 06:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi Sbharris, thank you for the added info on Wyatt Earp! There is a touch of the artist in ol' Mantan, no? The socking has become crankish by now but early on he loaded every rift with ore.
For the record I didn't think your post was silly. It has the advantage of a kind of Eureka-like simplicity. As for me when an idea has legs I let it walk around on them and don't take to shaving 'em with no Occam's Razor. But that's me. At any rate my guess is that your post struck some as off-key because (a) bringing in spouses and loved ones, even if in an innocuously abstract and speculative way like you did, might seem to some to cross a line wiki-investigations as a matter of principle shouldn't cross; and (b) it might ultimately be inconsequential whether "it's the wife." Sock-puppetry is always ready to shade into meat-puppetry, and vice-versa, and where exactly this does or does not happen is beyond what we can know with any certainty or consequence in an online environment. But this, as Luke says, is a question of internet epistemology.
When the New Republic 's Lee Siegel was caught praising himself lavishly via a sockpuppet in the comment section of his column, he was fired, criticized and ridiculed, etc., but in a subsequent interview with the New York Times, he waved off any soul-searching and said look, "Every man is a hero to his alias." Brilliant! Great line. He won my forgiveness and enduring affection with that one. Weiss almost won the same from me when I discovered the intricate hidden pattern of his own self-love: his sense of his own vigilante bravado in taking on the mafia and wall street is shaped by the story of the Arizona Project, which it 'rhymes' with, so to speak; and both of these are in turn shaped by the deeper myth and more resonant rhyme of the Earp vendetta ride. And because Weiss has a touch of the artist in him, he couldn't help but leave traces and clues attesting to the elegance of his conception; and Tombstone is its luminous touchstone. Earp's posse rounded up in Tombstone in 1882 is the precursor to the IRE posse rounded up for the "Arizona project" in 1976, which in turn is the precursor to Weiss's posse rounded up for "Project Klebnikov" in 2005; which in turn, finally, is the precursor for the posse of sockpuppets – each with their connections to Tombstone – that Mantanmoreland began to round up on the semi-lawless frontier of Wikipedia in the spring of 2006.
But Siegel's comment is also a reminder that spousal love can't hold a candle to self-love. How many men are heroes to their wives? To ask that question is to answer it. Robert Louis Stevenson knew this when in the diary section of Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde, Jeckyl describes how Hyde "was knit to him closer than a wife." Stevenson's great book, incidentally, understood something about the expanding sphere of anonymity within the modern city, and how the tension between this anonymity and the Victorian obsession with social reputation could create fertile ground for multiple identities. A prescient insight, from the vantage point of the internet age.
Nice article you started there on Earp's vendetta ride. Love it.-- G-Dett ( talk) 15:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Pen names, nom de plumes, nom de guerres, and so on, have a long and fine history which is detailed in the Wikis on them. The Federalist Papers were written by several men under the house pen name of Publius, probably to protect the guilty. Authors using sockpuppet names to praise their own works and deride others, are not unknown (one thinks of Edgar Allan Poe, and so on [3]).
In Wikipedia, nom de guerres are all but encouraged, to the point that the practice of "outing" an editor by connecting them with their real world name, is a punishable offence. Unless we're in full witchhunt after a sock of somebody who is also real-name editing, go figure. But Wikipedia wants to do this kind of thing, yet avoid the inevitable problems of nom de plumes--- to have their cake and eat it, too. And worse still, Wikipedia does this hypocritically, by claiming that Wikipedia is NOT a democracy; yet at the same time proving this is not the case by falling all over themselves at the unfairness of one person "voting" twice on an issue, or even giving two opinions on the same issue. Well, you can't have it both ways. If Wikipedia is not a democracy, two opinions on two facets of the same matter, given by the same person, should not make a bit of difference. Is it the argument itself that counts, or isn't it? If it is, and Wikipedia is not a democracy but a discussion in which best reasoning wins, it should make no more difference if one person gives two opinions than if one author writes two short stories for the same magazine issue, but uses pennames to avoid overexposure (Heinlein, Stephen King, etc.)
Personally, I don’t think anybody really thinks it's more of an invasion to suggest that Weiss's wife is editing under some username, than that HE is. We and I don't know her name, and so it's really not much of a privacy invasion-- certainly if it is, it's made up for in benefit, as an explanation for why Weiss appears to be using sockpuppets. I too, am a fan of letting ideas with legs walk under their own power to see how far they go by themselves. I was simply upset that this idea didn't get even that chance.
"Meatpuppets" as you may know, are an entirely separate issue, about which I've written a lot on the WP:SOCK TALK page. The problem with "meatpuppet" policies (at least for non-procedural issues that don't require Wikipedia-editing-experience to have a good opinion, goes) is that they really are profoundly antidemocratic-- to the point of counting any two people with the same opinion as one person, if one person is "new" and cannot be proven to be an actual sock. This assumes that newbies have no free will, and should be treated as children, or mental defectives. There is even a "submarine" punishment policy that says that remedies for "meatpuppets" shall be the same as for sockpuppets under certain conditions, a policy which is in explicit contradiction to the idea of WP:BITE. Somebody's trying to get around that, by not saying directly that they'd like to block meatpuppets for opinions they don't like.
If you want the epiphany of antidemocracy, you should see the prohibitions on Wikipedia against "vote canvassing" or "vote stacking", which apply even to people who demonstrably are separate people. Basically, it says that people with the same opinion don't count if they've been recruited-- even when everybody denies that any formal VOTE is being taken (i.e., we're not talking about RfA's etc). One can imagine what would happen if somebody suggested that it's wrong or unfair to have "voter registration drives" among the "wrong sort" of people in the real world, because of how the newly registered people in the Projects or on the factory floor (or wherever) are likely to vote, when they Do vote. (Gosh, maybe black people, say, might be more likely to vote for democrats, and specifically for Obama? See, no free will at all). Ah, wouldn't some people who think of themselves as "liberals" here on WP, be red-faced if they were caught opposing get-out-the-vote drives like that, in the "real" world. Yet here on Wikipedia, it's actually a policy that this kind of thing is wrong and bad.
But wait, these people will say-- it's not a democracy here, so it's okay to be against it. But again, the problem of wanting it both ways: It it's not a democracy, sock and meatpuppet problems take care of themselves automatically, without need of policing at all. If we're not voting, but merely taking note of best arguments (lumping people with the same opinion together), then numbers of opinions, and numbers of separate people expressing them, should not make any difference. It's the ideas themselves we care about, not who floats them, or the raw number of how many individuals back which idea. And the importance of idea over personality, or over reputation of person or personage, is either true or it isn't. We do things by reputation of editor now-- why doesn't that continue to hold if the "editor" has socks? Somebody has to bite the bullet one way or the other. Alas, it's a problem few are willing to face, because whatever they do, they may end up not liking the result. There's dishonesty at every level, here. S B H arris 22:17, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
With humblest apologies to I am user:sbharris = SBHarris (Steven B. Harris), it seems I have been mis-spelling your handle at the current arbcom case. This may be dyslexia, or other malady, it is not malicious! :) This user will be happy to certify, or reveal off-line real name, at some time in the future, and appreciate your stance. Happy to hear from you at any time, though user;newbyguesses remains for now, a wikichicken. Newbyguesses - Talk 17:29, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
<-- Yep, I am an Aussie. Well, there is the Great Barrier Reef, by all accounts that would be the best bet, and the Whitsundays in my part of the world. Also, for diving, I believe the Solomon Islands are good. In Western Australia the best marine environment is probably to the north of Perth, I am thinking Monkey Mia, though i haven't been there myself. When I visited Perth (1973) it was a sleepy, dryish place. Now there is a yachting colony at Fremantle. (Remember when Australia II won the America's Cup?) . If you fly into Brisbane, or Coolangatta better, that is the tourist strip, known as the Gold Coast. Or, north of Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast.
I went to Fiji, on my honeymoon in 1988. Also to Mount Hutt in N.Z, for the skiing, which was excellent, in 1990. Best of luck with your travels, I don't get around much anymore, but it is all good. If you want further information on australia, just ask. Thanks, Newbyguesses - Talk 03:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I think I know what you mean about culture clash. I found the commentary far afield from the discussion, but it does remind me of this RfC.
Incidentally, Crum explained that his BLP-inspired edit war was not actually about outing Mantanmoreland (who, after all, is the subject of the ArbCom), but about a certain administrator. I therefore read that section of Byrne's blog (and links) carefully.
I still can't figure out what evidence was used to ban so many long-time accounts in the Runcorn case. It seems like a double-standard to me, but I don't mind if we're going to apply higher burdens of proof from now on. Cool Hand Luke 22:52, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
User:GRBerry noticed that, and it's in his evidence section. I would look at that, but I'm afraid it might be a selection bias problem. Although few probably dropped off in November, some might have dropped off in April when Samiharris almost disappeared, but Mantanmoreland did not.
In other words, I suspect it's meaningful, and I'm glad GRBerry pointed it out, but it's not unique. Selecting that characteristic to compare editors involves more subjectivity than I would like. Cool Hand Luke 19:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I read your comment about having taken a whole bottle of homeopathic medicine and had no effect. This is not surprising. One dose of a high potency remedy is one dose, whether you take the whole bottle or a sip, and one dose is unlikely to have any effect on a healthy person, because the homeopathic remedy must be similar to the condition it is taken to treat to cause a reaction, or be repeated several times to prove it in a healthy person. Whether this effect is psychosomatic or physical, there is no danger of overdosing by taking a million doses at once of a high potency remedy -- taken at the same time, it's still one dose. — Whig ( talk) 07:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC) Maybe another way to explain this: a 30C potency is created from 1/100th of a 29C dose, so just that one "sip" becomes the next full potency once it is combined with 99 parts of diluent and succussed. I hope that is helpful. — Whig ( talk) 07:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
But by all means, keep going on and confirming to all and sundry that you refuse to accept other's experiences unless it agrees with your own however... Shot info ( talk) 00:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Sbharris, your arguments will improve once you learn something about homeopathy. For instance, we do not "treat" symptoms; we use symptoms to find the remedy. Further, whether a homeopath has or doesn't have medical training, we use whatever diagnosis the patient has been given, but then, we put more emphasis on whatever unusual or idiosyncratic symptoms the person has. And for the record, there is plenty of in-fighting in homeopathy...200 years worth...and different styles of using high and low potencies. Once you learn something about homeopathy, you may be dangerous. Until then, your lack of knowledge about this subject is simply amusing, not convincing. Still, I will AGF, and I ask you to consider avoid the strawman argument. DanaUllman Talk 07:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Second, the idea that homeopathy doesn't treat symptoms but rather "uses" them to find a remedy: Isn't that sort of semantic distinction? How does it differ from treating symptoms? If it treats an underlying cause, it's one that always shows itself via symptom-complex. Which is quite remarkable, but what of it? It doesn't help you, since all you see and treat is symptoms. You look up a bunch of symptoms in a repertory and pick a remedy, which is given according to the symptoms. So? What am I missing? Is it that you just don't believe in anything that has been discovered by modern pathophysiology about why people become ill? The same disease process that causes DIFFERENT sets of symptoms in different people? No matter what syptoms they have, if you treat the underlying problem, the symptoms resolve. There are about a dozen symptoms of mountain sickness, but they all respond to oxygen (for example). Do you suggest treating them with homeopathy INSTEAD? Why not? There are a dozen early symptoms of scurvy, too, and they all respond to vitamin C, and so on. Suppose you didn't know the person had scurvy, and they came to a homeopath. What do you do, give them something for bad breath and purple blotches on the feet?
And one more thing: has it occured to you that what you term as "allergic" types are merely suggestable, anxious, somatizing types? The sort of people who hypnotize well? Which I don't? S B H arris 04:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
There have always been some people who do not seem sensitve to a proving. In one of my previous discussions, I mentioned that the person be reasonable healthy...and we define that as mental/emotional/physical health. There may be a chance that the people who are unresponsive to provings are too sick. In my past personal interaction with hyper-skeptics of homeopathy, they have not been the most emotionally-balanced...and tend to be more than a tad mental (I am NOT saying that you are...I'm just speaking in generalizations). That said, figuring out in detail who is and isn't sensitive to provings are good questions that are worthy of further research. By the way, the Cantharis proving study that you reference above makes a special note that there WERE Cantharis-like symptoms and atypical symptoms DURING the proving that were not there at baseline. I guess you missed that one...and this is an important one. Look again. DanaUllman Talk 06:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
It was not present on all packages, and if it was, it was extremely small unobtrustive print. The ads on television and radio here do not play up the connection. You are free to believe whatever you like however since this subject is much much much too dangerous to discuss at the moment.-- Filll ( talk) 17:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I proposed the creation of Criticism of homeopathy on Talk:Homeopathy, and it was again called a POV fork. I believe that my proposal is not a POV fork, but I'm not sure how to get out of this impasse, and would appreciate any suggestions. — Whig ( talk) 17:25, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
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Hello Dr. Harris,
I'm a 62 year old retired civil engineer. I am inventing a wind energy scheme to stop global warming. Here's where I am now:
$ 0.04/kwhr....(no gov't subsidies); Power 24/7...wind or no wind Triple power output during peak demand (same wind speed)
I admire your knowledge, candor and humor. Could you review my report? Either you'll have a good laugh (happens to me a lot) or together we'll end GLOBAL WARMING.
Thanks,
Geoff Goeggel goeggel@hawaii.rr.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.97.232 ( talk) 21:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Archive #5 All messages from the beginning of 2008 to March 22, 2008.
An image that you uploaded or altered, Image:OswaldChin2.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images because its copyright status is disputed. If the image's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the image description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 18:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Huge thanks for getting those pesky references looking decent again RexxS ( talk) 04:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for teaching me how to revert more than one edit at a time. I half included that in the edit summary in hopes someone would enlighten me. Take care. -- Breakyunit ( talk) 01:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Nengscoz416 (
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I have edited the article to include chemical info on "selenium sulfide". This is a case of a preparation with a name that sounds like a chemical formula. SeS2 is a mixture of cyclo-SenS(n-8) compounds. What it most certainly is not is Se=S or S=Se=S as I have seen in many places on the web. There are two CAS #:- 7488-56-4 (SeS2) and 7446-34-6 (SeS). There is a lot of confusion amongst suppliers regarding which CAS # is used for what. What you get when you order will be a mixture which will analyse to approximately SeS or SeS2.
I do not know the research paper(s) which triggered the health warning but I would be surprised if the precise chemical content of the sample of "Selenium sulfide" was determined prior to testing. The further difficulty with using proprietary sources of "SeS2" is that the provenance potentially determines the mix of compounds present. I believe that the health warnings refers to all preparations containing selenium sulfur compounds with overall stoichiometries of SeS and SeS2
[1]. Knowing that both compounds are mixtures containing similar compounds in different proportions - I guess that the thought process is - test either one, get a bad result - then on the precautionary principle warn on both of them. I have not changed the section.
Axiosaurus (
talk)
17:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for making a report about
75.75.104.77 (
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Rjd0060 (
talk)
04:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Replied on my talk page. — Nicholas ( reply) @ 18:01, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
The comment by Stephen B Streater in response to your post [2] is likely false since belladonna is poisonous. Homeopathic doses wouldn't be. Thanks for participating. Anthon01 ( talk) 01:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
aah.. - {{ help}} contains a category (Category:Wikipedians looking for help, or something like that, only it has the [[ around it so it works, if you get my drift), and adding {{help}} to your user/talk page will thus add the page to that category. Wikipedia:Template namespace may be useful, as well as m:Help:Template. That said, I learnt all I know about templates from observation, so I might write up a User:Dihydrogen Monoxide/Templates for dummies one of these days. Until then, cheers, Dihydrogen Monoxide ( party) 05:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
What was that latest post to my talk page, an "I told you so"? I stand by my actions. Several of us informed him in perfectly acceptable and Wikipedia-approved ways that his edits, as made, were not in a manner consistent with Wikipedia policies. He proceeded to completely ignore the increasingly vehement warnings, and opted instead to simply make the exact same edit. He never once claimed to be T.H. Shaffer to me, instead just mentioning that he was "a developer" on one of the edit summaries. On IP edit patrol, I see hundreds of claims a month that these people are friends of someone, that they are someone, that they have intimate knowledge of something. Wikipedia is not based on TRUTH, it is based on VERIFIABILITY. Even now, if he is who he says he is, that's great - and I don't really find it some great "honor" as you do. Fine, at least now the contributer is citing his sources, as I, JForget, and J.delanoy all told him to do. No one "bit" him, no one personally attacked him, stop making a bigger deal out of this than what actually happened. Tanthalas39 ( talk) 15:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Shaffer did make comments suggesting who he was, but you have to know something of the subject to have understood them. I explained elsewhere about that. You might not find it an honor to have somebody who is an expert editing an article, but if not, you should. We're all ignorant about most things, and most of us consider it an honor to have the opinions of an expert, when we can find one.
As for Wikipedia working on verifiability, not truth, that's a can of worms. The short answer is that Wikipedia needs and wants to have the truth, but since it is run by anonymous blowhards, it doesn't know how to get it, except by appeal to outside published authority (if you look into WP:V you'll find it's all about authority-- it's just somebody else's authority). Which is fine, but it forgets that knowledge-authority requires respect wherever you find it, inasmuch as truth is not always published (I'm telling you this and you're in the pharm development industry???). Notwithstanding that a template exists for "need an expert to review this article," Wikipedia's renowned disrespect for actual authorities who come here would not survive as an attitude in either business or academia (or for that matter, encyclopedia or science publishing), and only succeeds at all because Wikipedia is a childish creature of no responsibilities, with a childish disregard for any work-product for which it must be responsible. And is often run by adolescents who enjoy thumbing their noses anonymously at everybody else, especially academics. And also (let us admit it) because Wikipedia actually does benefit (without acknowledging the fact) from the writing of many people who know what they are talking about, editing articles in the spirit of improvement WP:IAR, and only providing cites when there's a dispute. Most of the true content here is still citation-free, for that reason. The rest would be a mishmash of cites and disconnected hash, if had to be edited by people who didn't understand their subjects, instead of experts in many cases willing to take liberties to clean up nonsense. Take a look at Lie Algebra, for example. One day, Wikipedia will have to face up to the need for expert review, but for the time being, it functions in fantasyland, documenting pop culture and barely tolerating the rest. But that doesn't mean the way it functions, which is something like a K12 classroom with a missing teacher and many bullies, is a good thing. In many ways, Wikipedia is what it is not because of its policies, but in spite of them. S B H arris 05:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Hey. I saw your "too heck with it" edit, and okay, I'll grudgingly admit that perhaps you did have a point. I don't agree with everything you say, and I don't even agree with all your basic viewpoints, but it's obvious to me that you have Wikipedia's larger goals in mind - as do I. You might not believe it, but I try very, very hard to uphold Wikipedia policy, not only in the black-and-white areas but in the gray, blue, purple and clear areas. What do you say that we just let this one go; we can both still claim to be mostly in the right, but I don't really care for an enemy here on Wiki, especially one so close to my career. I sincerely apologize for my part in this argument. The next disagreement we can fight to the death. Tanthalas39 ( talk) 05:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarifications. However, your links went to aircraft, not isotopes! I fixed them.
Why don't you write a stub about Hal O. Anger, who invented the gamma camera in the 1950s and pioneered internal imaging? He died about a decade ago, but I don't have the details. You could likely get it from the Society of Nuclear Medicine, of which I presume are a member [like myself]. Oldnoah ( talk) 05:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah
Thanks too for the Hal Anger correction.
Oldnoah (
talk)
05:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah
could you please explain to me how matter gets "converted" into energy during the process of nuclear reactions? :p BriEnBest ( talk) 07:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
In a bomb, the "mass" that seems to go away is potential energy stored in two kinds of fields holding nucleons together and trying to push them apart. When the things blows, some of both of these fields gets turned into kinetic energy of the fragments. No neutrons or protons disappear! Just the fields that push or pull them. But after, they're moving fast, and that's the "energy" associated with the passive mass of the fields. A gram of field gets turned into a gram of kinetic energy. Things moving fast have more mass. They keep it till they slow, and they whatever slows them picks up the mass associated with their kinetic energy, and so on. S B H arris 07:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
really? so matter doesn't get converted into "energy" - just different kinds of matter (or mass). i heard one time that "light is pure energy" this doesn't seem true since gravity (black holes) still affect them. what about this? they still have mass, so they are not "pure energy", right? BriEnBest ( talk) 08:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
i am wondering how i might try to describe this: (maybe you could help me) - i want to say, basically, that mass (matter) is to space what energy is to time. does this make sense, even? and if so, could you tell me, well, what you think of this, or maybe help me out to put it into better, more physics-friendly terms, or perhaps correct me if i am wrong? :) BriEnBest ( talk) 08:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
And BTW, mass is not to space what energy is to time. Rather, momentum is to space what energy is to time. S B H arris 00:59, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
how is Momentum to space what energy is to time? may i argue for my original statement for a moment? it seems (to me) as though mass bends space via gravity - likewise time is "bent" by energy, is it not? (although i do not completely understand how this happens or the specifics..) also mass (well, matter...) is actually defined by space. likewise energy can only be defined if there exists time. i don't know if you have time to go over all of this with me, and i do not claim that my understanding is correct, but it would be very nice if you could continue to help me. thanks, :) BriEnBest ( talk) 05:56, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
i have another question - it's along the lines of relativity... i need to start with newton's (one of the three) law, which implies that in order to go forward, we must push something in the opposite direction. now, in relativity, it is possible to basically go "farther into the future" than we would normally. here i am thinking of time as a dimension - like forward and backward. now, i don't understand what causes the person to go farther into the future than he would normally, except that he would have to move close to the speed of light for a certain amount of time, but i don't know why this CAUSES him to move "farther" into the future. My question is: does newton's law apply? is something "pushed backward" for the person to go forward? in effect, travelling into the past? i know that there is an inconsistency here, and that it is "impossible" to travel into the past, i'm just not sure where. BriEnBest ( talk) 22:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Where did you get this garbage of an explanation. Let's face it, we do not really know what mass is. We haven't found the Higgs boson! Mass is just something attributed by Newton to his theories- inertia and gravitational, and as far as experiments can see, are of equal value. 81.159.84.158 ( talk) 23:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Who has been grossly vandalizing the argon page also. Look, could we have this guy blocked for longer than 3 days, just to allow the rest of us to get work done? As far as I can see, NOTHING but vandalism has issued from this IP, EVER. So why are we coddling "it" when there are thousands of indefinitely long blocks per month issued against good faith nameusers who are not vandals, but are simply disagreeing with somebody? This whole block policy is so completely ass-backwards that it's not funny. People who obviously care about writing the right thing as to mouth off to a admin about something (often with good reason!) are banned. Whereas people who CLEARLY mean to destroy and disrupt the work by deleting stuff or writing obsenities, are blocked for 72 hours again and again and again. Madness! So please, don't 3-day block this guy the next time. Block for 3 times the time between his last vandalism and the one before. Then up from there. On the very long shot that this is a shared school IP, it's up to the guys on the other end to do something about the little delinquents, not you. S B H arris 21:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Did you speedily delete Image:Feynman-book-cover-pic.jpg, or was it subjected to a deletion review that I missed? I ask, because as a book cover it certainly would have passed the WP:RAT test, and I think should have been given a chance to do so. As is, you wiped out the main photo illustrating the bio of the man! What was the rush? S B H arris 05:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I thought that since hemoglobin was linked in the very first sentence it made it pretty clear that the correct pronunciation was met + the pronunciation of hemoglobin. If you think either the pronunciation of hemoglobin or the link between methemoglobin and hemoglobin is unclear feel free to add the IPA notation, I myself am not well-versed in IPA and the hemoglobin page doesn't have an IPA so I didn't bother. -- Sgt. Salt ( talk) 11:31, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for going with Sask there on the SBT page - I am frankly a little bewildered by him. He seems completely fixated on establishing that Oswald fired three bullets that hit and can't seem to see the problems entailed when we start the clock as late as he suggests. And he seems to want to dismiss physical evidence if it doesn't match the witness testimony he embraces. But he obviously knows a lot on the subject... Just don't know what to make of the guy. Perhaps I should just shut up... Canada Jack ( talk) 21:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Good stuff on this "lean" issue. Sask did me a favour by locating the WC volumes which print various reenactment frames, though he linked to z255 where JFK is sitting erect. I quickly found the fatal head shot and Muchmore film which seems to back up my contention (see what I just added on the page).
I'm not sure his "lean" has ever been much of an issue anywhere, so it's interesting that it is here. Here's another little tidbit that may play into the issue of JFK's expression - Connally's as well - as they emerge from behind the freeway sign. They both to be looking at the camera, towards Zapruder. But in fact they both may have been looking at something rather odd - the man with the umbrella who was, at that moment, lifting it and spinning it. Now, Connally might have thought to himself "what the hell?" but Kennedy likely knew the reference and was in the midst of a scowl or some similar expression. It was a reference to Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, and the Kennedy role in that, and the umbrella as a symbol of that was well enough known that Kennedy might have perceived the insult. Pure conjecture, there is no way to know this, but I mention it as a possible explanation for JFK's quizzical look as he emerges, one which others have suggested he was already reacting to a bullet strike earlier than circa z224. Cheers. Canada Jack ( talk) 17:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I reckon perhaps the most gracious way to deal with the proposed deletion of this article may be for you yourself to edit the quoted material, with a view to its value being preserved but its bulk being reduced? Benny the wayfarer ( talk) 20:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I don't have magic powers. I just have an account on Commons, and I'm actually not that good of an SVG editor. You should ask User:Atanamir to fix it instead, since he's the one who converted the PNGs to SVGs. He's made other errors too, like on Boron's periodic table image. → FISDOF 9 04:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Hello, after seeing your comments at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_32#all_sides_can_agree_in_principle_to_an_orderly_process_of_making_a_determination_of_what_to_do, I thought you might be interested in this page, Wikipedia:Delegable proxy. Although it is currently phrased in terms of delegating authority, it will probably be rewritten soon to clarify that it is part of an advisory process, not a voting process. 71.63.91.68 ( talk) 05:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi Sbharris,
Wow, iut's been a long time since i've worked on these =P. Doesn't lithium already have an illustration that's SVG? Lithium. Is there something wrong with it? Also, for Iodine, are you saying you DON'T want the 'N' abbreviation for Neutrons? It matches all the other ones I've seen... Thanks atanamir ( talk) 05:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Re this thread: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Evidence#Sauce_for_goose.2C_sauce_for_gander:_where.27s_Weiss.27s_wife_on_WP.3F
The stock market operates on ads, which are closely kept track of by the SEC and FTA. In opposition are consumer reports and stock analysts. Nobody censors anybody, really. If you wish to "pump and dump" a crummy penny stock, there are many ways to get around the rules. And naked short selling is a potent way to counteract such bull. We need both. So, we should discuss both fairly. If Overstock needs a puff page, with a summary of criticism on it, AND a separate criticism page, with a summary of the puff page, well, that's within policy. We did it with the Apollo moon landings and the Apollo moon landing hoax accusations. What prevents us from learning the lessons we learned THERE, and applying them HERE? S B H arris 05:18, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I do advocate a system of experts. And precisely because that is how we make progress in the rest of the world, and it's a mistake to compare real models with utopian ideals, instead of with the available other real choices. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy has many problems, but the alternatives are worse. For every engineering disaster, there are improvements next time-- are you going to argue that technology doesn't improve? Or that you have a way to make it improve faster? Some of your examples illustrate the problem directly: the shuttle disasters were results of failure to listen to engineers (the only experts nature respects). As for the rest, again you compare reality to utopia. In the 20 years in the US before 9/11 we have about 2300 fatalities total for 8 TRILLION passenger flights, and god knows how many passenger miles. In a recent year we didn't have ANY. We don't compare the 2300 deaths to zero, but to what has come before in aviation history, and to what the toll has been with autos, and so on.
It's rather the same with courts. I won't argue that justice is swayed by money/time and passion, but so equally it is on Wikipedia! PLUS many additionals ones: star chamber hearings, anonyomous accusers, defense gagging, a lack of due process with punishment handing out before adequate appeal or clear guidelines evenly applied, and so on. Whether Justice is delivered in the real work is beside the point: at least the real world looks at its statistics. Wikipedia couldn't even begin to see if it works better or worse. From a procedural point of view, it's far worse. Outcomes measurements haven't even been suggested, except for a few recent suggestons that we collect some data on who gets stomped/blocked, and why (prelim results are horrid).
Lessons learned from the faked moon landings and the articles on homeopathy, is that it's possible to construct an encyclopedia in which a lot more people feel fairly treated, since their side of the argument is told, not surpressed. Which is what clearly happened with Overstock, like it or not. Was this Overstock's "fault"? In warfare, and in most human relations, much morality depends on who starts the fight. In this case, Overstock felt attacked and then muzzled, following which they then decended into open warfare. But hey, that's what happens when you first attack and then muzzle people: they tend to fight back and fight dirty. If Wikipedia doesn't want to be engaged in continuous total war, sort of like the US, it had better learn to quit treading on toes. I advocate NO BLP, except for people famous enough for paper encyclopedias. This would be a good rule to follow for publically traded companies. We don't need the hassle, and we certainly cannot swim these fundmental stock analysis waters without subject-matter expertise. But we seem determined to do it, almost masochistically. Damn if I know why. Lack of empathy by anonymous kids for real world adults with adult problems, including buisness problems, I think. The little snots. S B H arris 08:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Sorry. The silliness was not in you comment. It seems to me it would have to be W, or perhaps his wife (as you said), or less likely in very close best man or something. The silliness was in the replies—the first, which was a joke, and the second, which was a diversion into epistemology on the internet. Cool Hand Luke 06:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi Sbharris, thank you for the added info on Wyatt Earp! There is a touch of the artist in ol' Mantan, no? The socking has become crankish by now but early on he loaded every rift with ore.
For the record I didn't think your post was silly. It has the advantage of a kind of Eureka-like simplicity. As for me when an idea has legs I let it walk around on them and don't take to shaving 'em with no Occam's Razor. But that's me. At any rate my guess is that your post struck some as off-key because (a) bringing in spouses and loved ones, even if in an innocuously abstract and speculative way like you did, might seem to some to cross a line wiki-investigations as a matter of principle shouldn't cross; and (b) it might ultimately be inconsequential whether "it's the wife." Sock-puppetry is always ready to shade into meat-puppetry, and vice-versa, and where exactly this does or does not happen is beyond what we can know with any certainty or consequence in an online environment. But this, as Luke says, is a question of internet epistemology.
When the New Republic 's Lee Siegel was caught praising himself lavishly via a sockpuppet in the comment section of his column, he was fired, criticized and ridiculed, etc., but in a subsequent interview with the New York Times, he waved off any soul-searching and said look, "Every man is a hero to his alias." Brilliant! Great line. He won my forgiveness and enduring affection with that one. Weiss almost won the same from me when I discovered the intricate hidden pattern of his own self-love: his sense of his own vigilante bravado in taking on the mafia and wall street is shaped by the story of the Arizona Project, which it 'rhymes' with, so to speak; and both of these are in turn shaped by the deeper myth and more resonant rhyme of the Earp vendetta ride. And because Weiss has a touch of the artist in him, he couldn't help but leave traces and clues attesting to the elegance of his conception; and Tombstone is its luminous touchstone. Earp's posse rounded up in Tombstone in 1882 is the precursor to the IRE posse rounded up for the "Arizona project" in 1976, which in turn is the precursor to Weiss's posse rounded up for "Project Klebnikov" in 2005; which in turn, finally, is the precursor for the posse of sockpuppets – each with their connections to Tombstone – that Mantanmoreland began to round up on the semi-lawless frontier of Wikipedia in the spring of 2006.
But Siegel's comment is also a reminder that spousal love can't hold a candle to self-love. How many men are heroes to their wives? To ask that question is to answer it. Robert Louis Stevenson knew this when in the diary section of Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde, Jeckyl describes how Hyde "was knit to him closer than a wife." Stevenson's great book, incidentally, understood something about the expanding sphere of anonymity within the modern city, and how the tension between this anonymity and the Victorian obsession with social reputation could create fertile ground for multiple identities. A prescient insight, from the vantage point of the internet age.
Nice article you started there on Earp's vendetta ride. Love it.-- G-Dett ( talk) 15:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Pen names, nom de plumes, nom de guerres, and so on, have a long and fine history which is detailed in the Wikis on them. The Federalist Papers were written by several men under the house pen name of Publius, probably to protect the guilty. Authors using sockpuppet names to praise their own works and deride others, are not unknown (one thinks of Edgar Allan Poe, and so on [3]).
In Wikipedia, nom de guerres are all but encouraged, to the point that the practice of "outing" an editor by connecting them with their real world name, is a punishable offence. Unless we're in full witchhunt after a sock of somebody who is also real-name editing, go figure. But Wikipedia wants to do this kind of thing, yet avoid the inevitable problems of nom de plumes--- to have their cake and eat it, too. And worse still, Wikipedia does this hypocritically, by claiming that Wikipedia is NOT a democracy; yet at the same time proving this is not the case by falling all over themselves at the unfairness of one person "voting" twice on an issue, or even giving two opinions on the same issue. Well, you can't have it both ways. If Wikipedia is not a democracy, two opinions on two facets of the same matter, given by the same person, should not make a bit of difference. Is it the argument itself that counts, or isn't it? If it is, and Wikipedia is not a democracy but a discussion in which best reasoning wins, it should make no more difference if one person gives two opinions than if one author writes two short stories for the same magazine issue, but uses pennames to avoid overexposure (Heinlein, Stephen King, etc.)
Personally, I don’t think anybody really thinks it's more of an invasion to suggest that Weiss's wife is editing under some username, than that HE is. We and I don't know her name, and so it's really not much of a privacy invasion-- certainly if it is, it's made up for in benefit, as an explanation for why Weiss appears to be using sockpuppets. I too, am a fan of letting ideas with legs walk under their own power to see how far they go by themselves. I was simply upset that this idea didn't get even that chance.
"Meatpuppets" as you may know, are an entirely separate issue, about which I've written a lot on the WP:SOCK TALK page. The problem with "meatpuppet" policies (at least for non-procedural issues that don't require Wikipedia-editing-experience to have a good opinion, goes) is that they really are profoundly antidemocratic-- to the point of counting any two people with the same opinion as one person, if one person is "new" and cannot be proven to be an actual sock. This assumes that newbies have no free will, and should be treated as children, or mental defectives. There is even a "submarine" punishment policy that says that remedies for "meatpuppets" shall be the same as for sockpuppets under certain conditions, a policy which is in explicit contradiction to the idea of WP:BITE. Somebody's trying to get around that, by not saying directly that they'd like to block meatpuppets for opinions they don't like.
If you want the epiphany of antidemocracy, you should see the prohibitions on Wikipedia against "vote canvassing" or "vote stacking", which apply even to people who demonstrably are separate people. Basically, it says that people with the same opinion don't count if they've been recruited-- even when everybody denies that any formal VOTE is being taken (i.e., we're not talking about RfA's etc). One can imagine what would happen if somebody suggested that it's wrong or unfair to have "voter registration drives" among the "wrong sort" of people in the real world, because of how the newly registered people in the Projects or on the factory floor (or wherever) are likely to vote, when they Do vote. (Gosh, maybe black people, say, might be more likely to vote for democrats, and specifically for Obama? See, no free will at all). Ah, wouldn't some people who think of themselves as "liberals" here on WP, be red-faced if they were caught opposing get-out-the-vote drives like that, in the "real" world. Yet here on Wikipedia, it's actually a policy that this kind of thing is wrong and bad.
But wait, these people will say-- it's not a democracy here, so it's okay to be against it. But again, the problem of wanting it both ways: It it's not a democracy, sock and meatpuppet problems take care of themselves automatically, without need of policing at all. If we're not voting, but merely taking note of best arguments (lumping people with the same opinion together), then numbers of opinions, and numbers of separate people expressing them, should not make any difference. It's the ideas themselves we care about, not who floats them, or the raw number of how many individuals back which idea. And the importance of idea over personality, or over reputation of person or personage, is either true or it isn't. We do things by reputation of editor now-- why doesn't that continue to hold if the "editor" has socks? Somebody has to bite the bullet one way or the other. Alas, it's a problem few are willing to face, because whatever they do, they may end up not liking the result. There's dishonesty at every level, here. S B H arris 22:17, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
With humblest apologies to I am user:sbharris = SBHarris (Steven B. Harris), it seems I have been mis-spelling your handle at the current arbcom case. This may be dyslexia, or other malady, it is not malicious! :) This user will be happy to certify, or reveal off-line real name, at some time in the future, and appreciate your stance. Happy to hear from you at any time, though user;newbyguesses remains for now, a wikichicken. Newbyguesses - Talk 17:29, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
<-- Yep, I am an Aussie. Well, there is the Great Barrier Reef, by all accounts that would be the best bet, and the Whitsundays in my part of the world. Also, for diving, I believe the Solomon Islands are good. In Western Australia the best marine environment is probably to the north of Perth, I am thinking Monkey Mia, though i haven't been there myself. When I visited Perth (1973) it was a sleepy, dryish place. Now there is a yachting colony at Fremantle. (Remember when Australia II won the America's Cup?) . If you fly into Brisbane, or Coolangatta better, that is the tourist strip, known as the Gold Coast. Or, north of Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast.
I went to Fiji, on my honeymoon in 1988. Also to Mount Hutt in N.Z, for the skiing, which was excellent, in 1990. Best of luck with your travels, I don't get around much anymore, but it is all good. If you want further information on australia, just ask. Thanks, Newbyguesses - Talk 03:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I think I know what you mean about culture clash. I found the commentary far afield from the discussion, but it does remind me of this RfC.
Incidentally, Crum explained that his BLP-inspired edit war was not actually about outing Mantanmoreland (who, after all, is the subject of the ArbCom), but about a certain administrator. I therefore read that section of Byrne's blog (and links) carefully.
I still can't figure out what evidence was used to ban so many long-time accounts in the Runcorn case. It seems like a double-standard to me, but I don't mind if we're going to apply higher burdens of proof from now on. Cool Hand Luke 22:52, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
User:GRBerry noticed that, and it's in his evidence section. I would look at that, but I'm afraid it might be a selection bias problem. Although few probably dropped off in November, some might have dropped off in April when Samiharris almost disappeared, but Mantanmoreland did not.
In other words, I suspect it's meaningful, and I'm glad GRBerry pointed it out, but it's not unique. Selecting that characteristic to compare editors involves more subjectivity than I would like. Cool Hand Luke 19:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I read your comment about having taken a whole bottle of homeopathic medicine and had no effect. This is not surprising. One dose of a high potency remedy is one dose, whether you take the whole bottle or a sip, and one dose is unlikely to have any effect on a healthy person, because the homeopathic remedy must be similar to the condition it is taken to treat to cause a reaction, or be repeated several times to prove it in a healthy person. Whether this effect is psychosomatic or physical, there is no danger of overdosing by taking a million doses at once of a high potency remedy -- taken at the same time, it's still one dose. — Whig ( talk) 07:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC) Maybe another way to explain this: a 30C potency is created from 1/100th of a 29C dose, so just that one "sip" becomes the next full potency once it is combined with 99 parts of diluent and succussed. I hope that is helpful. — Whig ( talk) 07:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
But by all means, keep going on and confirming to all and sundry that you refuse to accept other's experiences unless it agrees with your own however... Shot info ( talk) 00:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Sbharris, your arguments will improve once you learn something about homeopathy. For instance, we do not "treat" symptoms; we use symptoms to find the remedy. Further, whether a homeopath has or doesn't have medical training, we use whatever diagnosis the patient has been given, but then, we put more emphasis on whatever unusual or idiosyncratic symptoms the person has. And for the record, there is plenty of in-fighting in homeopathy...200 years worth...and different styles of using high and low potencies. Once you learn something about homeopathy, you may be dangerous. Until then, your lack of knowledge about this subject is simply amusing, not convincing. Still, I will AGF, and I ask you to consider avoid the strawman argument. DanaUllman Talk 07:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Second, the idea that homeopathy doesn't treat symptoms but rather "uses" them to find a remedy: Isn't that sort of semantic distinction? How does it differ from treating symptoms? If it treats an underlying cause, it's one that always shows itself via symptom-complex. Which is quite remarkable, but what of it? It doesn't help you, since all you see and treat is symptoms. You look up a bunch of symptoms in a repertory and pick a remedy, which is given according to the symptoms. So? What am I missing? Is it that you just don't believe in anything that has been discovered by modern pathophysiology about why people become ill? The same disease process that causes DIFFERENT sets of symptoms in different people? No matter what syptoms they have, if you treat the underlying problem, the symptoms resolve. There are about a dozen symptoms of mountain sickness, but they all respond to oxygen (for example). Do you suggest treating them with homeopathy INSTEAD? Why not? There are a dozen early symptoms of scurvy, too, and they all respond to vitamin C, and so on. Suppose you didn't know the person had scurvy, and they came to a homeopath. What do you do, give them something for bad breath and purple blotches on the feet?
And one more thing: has it occured to you that what you term as "allergic" types are merely suggestable, anxious, somatizing types? The sort of people who hypnotize well? Which I don't? S B H arris 04:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
There have always been some people who do not seem sensitve to a proving. In one of my previous discussions, I mentioned that the person be reasonable healthy...and we define that as mental/emotional/physical health. There may be a chance that the people who are unresponsive to provings are too sick. In my past personal interaction with hyper-skeptics of homeopathy, they have not been the most emotionally-balanced...and tend to be more than a tad mental (I am NOT saying that you are...I'm just speaking in generalizations). That said, figuring out in detail who is and isn't sensitive to provings are good questions that are worthy of further research. By the way, the Cantharis proving study that you reference above makes a special note that there WERE Cantharis-like symptoms and atypical symptoms DURING the proving that were not there at baseline. I guess you missed that one...and this is an important one. Look again. DanaUllman Talk 06:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
It was not present on all packages, and if it was, it was extremely small unobtrustive print. The ads on television and radio here do not play up the connection. You are free to believe whatever you like however since this subject is much much much too dangerous to discuss at the moment.-- Filll ( talk) 17:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I proposed the creation of Criticism of homeopathy on Talk:Homeopathy, and it was again called a POV fork. I believe that my proposal is not a POV fork, but I'm not sure how to get out of this impasse, and would appreciate any suggestions. — Whig ( talk) 17:25, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
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Hello Dr. Harris,
I'm a 62 year old retired civil engineer. I am inventing a wind energy scheme to stop global warming. Here's where I am now:
$ 0.04/kwhr....(no gov't subsidies); Power 24/7...wind or no wind Triple power output during peak demand (same wind speed)
I admire your knowledge, candor and humor. Could you review my report? Either you'll have a good laugh (happens to me a lot) or together we'll end GLOBAL WARMING.
Thanks,
Geoff Goeggel goeggel@hawaii.rr.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.97.232 ( talk) 21:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)