WikiEN-l September 2003

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

70 participants
113 discussions

Adam acting the ass again *sigh* (and he is only just back)
by james duffy 28 Sep '03

28 Sep '03

I'm afraid Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] is acting the ass again in exactly the same way as he did before. He new stunt was to try to edit the [[Talk:List of heterosexuals/delete (final archive)]] page. For people who may not know, to preserve long debates that used to be moved to talk pages from the VfD but which then ended up deleted if the article and talk page were both deleted, and to avoid the problem of inconclusive delete debates on talk pages, where the debate got sidetracked as debates on deletion and on the article blurred together, a recent innovation is now being used by increasing numbers. A special /delete page is created and attached to the talk page. A set of rules are followed: 1. /All/ the delete debate is focused there, not on the talk page. 2. A strict timetable is followed. The article is created on 'x'. A decision is taken on 'x + 7' meaning that debates no longer meander on for ever but are decided at the end of a week. 3. The /delete page is kept, even if the article and talk page isn't, and preserved on a page linked to the VfD page, meaning that we will now have a back archive of these debates for people researching the history of wiki to review. 4. Once the page being debated is deleted, the debate ends, the page ceases to be 'live' and becomes a record of the debate that decided the issue. Everyone has been following this. All debates have ended when a decision was taken. But Adam, in one of his tantrum-throwing spoiled child moods, decided as so often in the past that he wants to be above the rules. The vote on that page ran from 31 August to 8 September. 70%+ voted to delete the article. It was deleted, then the /delete page closed, archived and linked to the [[Archived delete debates]] on the VfD page. Adam however doctored the archive page to add in his vote and comments, weeks after the page was closed. I reverted back the archive version that has been sitting there untouched for weeks. Adam again doctored the page. Ed Poor protected it but inadvertently preserved the wrong version. I corrected to the archive version that everyone had originally signed off on and left the protection. Adam is now going ballistic, throwing accusations of censorship and bizarrely demanding the right to vote in a vote that finished on 8th September as to whether to delete a page that was deleted on the 8th of September. It is so bizarre it is like an episode of Fawlty Towers. He is alone complaining on the [[Problem Users]] page, where no-one has supported him and he has been attacked for his behaviour by RickK, Angela, and Cyan. (I also commented.) However, all past experience of Adam is that he starts off like that and keeps at it, childishly setting off edit wars the way some children set off fire alarms. We all expected that /this/ time he would stop acting the ass and grow up. It doesn't say much for the future when within days of returning he is acting /exactly/ as he did as Lir, as Vera, as Susan Mason, as Dietary Fiber, as Pizza Puzzle, etc. This behaviour has got to be nipped in the bud immediately or we are going to have weeks if not months of it, as he plays his little games. I was one of the first to say Adam should be allowed back, but that was only if he behaved himself. IMHO Jimbo, he needs to be told clearly, unambiguously and explicitly - STOP THIS NOW. Any more antics like that, any more returning to the spoiled child antics and you will be banned immediately, permanently and for life. No more warnings. You are back because people, even after all they put up with before, agreed to give you /one/ more chance. But even the slightest whiff of your old foot-stomping 'I want my way' screwing around with articles and you are gone for good. That /has/ to explicitly spelt out to him now, not one week or one month later when he has done it 5, 10 or 20 times elsewhere. Wiki doesn't need to have to put up with Adam acting the ass again if that is his game plan. And his behaviour on this one article tonight suggests that he has every intention of acting as before and thinking he can get away with it. He needs to know, bluntly and directly, that he cannot, ever again. And for the record, I don't want Adam banned. But he has to stop acting like a spoiled 9 year old throwing tantrums and seeing how many fights he can start. Adam has shown for long enough that 'softly softly' doesn't work with him. The rules have to spelt out to him unambiguously and forceably. JT _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Welcome back Adam
by Jimmy Wales 28 Sep '03

28 Sep '03

Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] will be back and editing. I ask anyone who has had any trouble with him in the past to be especially welcoming and let's all try to make this thing work out well for everyone. In my earlier message on this topic, I said that Adam could edit under the name 'Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons]'. He didn't object to that, but on my own, I realized that I don't really care what name he uses as long as it's consistent. A consistent name will let him earn the reputation that he deserves, based on his edits. Really, folks, I'm asking everyone for a kindness of heart to let all bygones be bygones. Welcome home the prodigal son. This, of course, goes double for me, the guy who banned him in the first place. --Jimbo

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [roy_q_royce@hotmail.com: --A Request RE a WIKIArticle--]
by Roy Royce 27 Sep '03

27 Sep '03

First, let me thank Mr. Wales for his reasonable reply. But I find it sad that some people are willing to dismiss a simple fact without even trying to check the cited source. Here are the relevant quotes from Wheeler's book, _Spacetime Physics, page 148 (1963 edition): "Commentary: The equivalence of energy and mass is such an important consequence that Einstein very early, after his relativistic derivation of this result, sought and found an alternative line of reasoning that leads to the same conclusion." "[A. Einstein, Annalen der Physik, 20, 627 (1906)]" "However, to secure a derivation free of all direct reference to relative principles, he [Einstein] based the conclusion p = E on the following elementary argument." [etc., etc.] The fact that E=mc^2 does not support SR is not merely "my fact." Also, posting to the Newsgroups per se does not make one a crank. I challenge anyone here to find where I lost any argument to anyone in the Newsgroups. I hate to say this, but Mr. Tim Starling is either a liar or an easily-fooled person because I have never - by any stretch of anyone's imagination - except Starling's - suggested "a direct test of some aspect of relativity which is hugely expensive or perhaps even technically impossible." And I have never ignored "the huge body of slightly less direct tests of the same theory," and I have not then "obliquely suggested some sort of conspiracy theory to explain why no-one is spending millions of dollars on his simple test." And it is complete balderdash to say of me that "Everywhere he goes, he feels persecuted by co-conspiring mainstream physicists, who are out to suppress the 'truth' he has discovered." Mr. Starling, I demand either an apology or some proof of the above serious accusations. Now that I have proved the validity of the E=mc^2 fact, I should be taken seriously when I note the one-way light speed facts that not only has no one ever made such a measurement using two clocks, but such a measurement (sans man's interference by definition or convention) is physically impossible. The fact that no one has ever used two clocks to measure the one-way speed of light is a part of scientific history. The fact that this has long been technically feasible is also a part of scientific history. The only fact that is personally mine is the obvious conclusion that such an experiment cannot be performed. If any of you still insist that it is possible, then the burden of proof is on you to show how it can be done without first forcing your pre-chosen (and baseless) result (by using some definition of clock synchronization). In other words, can anyone out there in WIKI-land tell us the step-by- step process for using two clocks to measure light's one-way speed sans any interference from man? If not, then my final fact has been validated by you all. (And that fact tells us that there can be no light postulate because where there is no experiment, there can be no prediction (or postulate)). (Bear in mind that Einstein's light postulate pertained only to the one-way speed of light. He did not have to postulate re the round-trip case because it had already been essentially closed by the round-trip Michelson-Morley experiment.) Factually yours, ------RR------ (Sorry for using imminent for eminent, but I wrote it a little too quickly!) (Nobody's perfect, and certainly not me!) >From: Tim Starling <ts4294967296(a)hotmail.com> >Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> >To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org >Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [roy_q_royce(a)hotmail.com: --A Request RE a >WIKIArticle--] >Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 11:07:09 +1000 > >Jimmy Wales wrote: >>I know too little about physics to have anything helpful to say here. >>Reading between the lines here, I'm guessing that Mr. Royce's views >>are not mainstream? Is there any helpful accomodation that could be >>made here? > >A quick google search shows that this guy is a sci.physics.relativity >crackpot. See: > >http://groups.google.com.au/groups?selm=XySVa.41611%24F92.4248%40afrodite.t… > >> >>----- Forwarded message from Roy Royce <roy_q_royce(a)hotmail.com> ----- >> >>From: "Roy Royce" <roy_q_royce(a)hotmail.com> >>Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 13:58:58 -0600 >>To: jwales(a)joey.bomis.com >>Subject: --A Request RE a WIKI Article-- >> >>Dear Mr. Wales, >> >>Your primary policy "You can edit this page right now" hopefully applies >>to the >>addition of facts to an article, especially important facts. However, it >>seems to >>be impossible to (permanently) add just three simple - but critical - >>facts to the >>Wiki special relativity article. > >That's right, it's impossible to add facts permanently if they are >considered by community consensus to be inaccurate. It's the nature of the >process. Sounds like he's experiencing some Usenet withdrawal symptoms. > > >>I cordially invite you to check out the validity of the following >>statements for >>yourself (these are the three facts of which I spoke above): >> >>[1] No one has yet used two clocks to measure the speed of light (one >>way). >> >>[2] Since we have long had the necessary technology, the reason for the >>lack >>of a one-way light speed measurement must be the physical impossibility of >>making such a measurement. (In other words, there cannot be a one-way >>version of the Michelson-Morley experiment, and scientific minds should >>wonder >>why not - because the implications are grave for special relativity!) > >If anyone cares, this is what he's talking about: > >http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a0ac0bee.0211081401.61c7eee9%40posting… > >Suffice to say that he doesn't seem to have any supporters on s.p.r, where >he's been plugging his theories for years. The tactic he's using is a >typical red herring: he suggests a direct test of some aspect of relativity >which is hugely expensive or perhaps even technically impossible. He >ignores the huge body of slightly less direct tests of the same theory, and >then obliquely suggests some sort of conspiracy theory to explain why >no-one is spending millions of dollars on his simple test. Everywhere he >goes, he feels persecuted by co-conspiring mainstream physicists, who are >out to suppress the "truth" he has discovered. It's a common story. > >>My request is that someone please add these facts to the Wiki special >>relativity article because pertinent facts are important to any >>encyclopedia. > >Anyone can add them, and anyone can take them away. Luckily for us, >Wikipedian co-conspirators greatly outnumber the enlightened individuals >who want to expose the shocking truth. > >-- Tim Starling. > > >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _________________________________________________________________ Get McAfee virus scanning and cleaning of incoming attachments. Get Hotmail Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es

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Re: BuddhaInside banned
by Björn Lindqvist 27 Sep '03

27 Sep '03

> The vandalism of the Main Page was the last straw. I have banned > BuddhaInside. This should not require Jimbo's approval since it was a case > of simple and obvious vandalism. > > I hope we can get rid of all these Deletexxxx pages he idiotically created > now. > > Regards, > > Erik If you had looked a little closer you would have seen that it wasn't done on purpouse. BL

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [roy_q_royce@hotmail.com: --A RequestRE aWIKIArticle--]
by Roy Royce 27 Sep '03

27 Sep '03

[Poor's message failed to appear in my Hotmail inbox, so I am replying to him via Saintonge's message, which did appear] [Mr. Poor wrote:] >Mr. Royce, >Please do not call other list members names or otherwise make nasty >personal remarks. > "Mr. Tim Starling is either a liar or an easily-fooled person." Which is worse, calling someone a liar or libel? As you should know, libel is a false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation. If someone tells lies about you, what are you going to call him? (And anyone who reads my Usenet messages can see that I am by no means a vicious person.) -----RR----- >From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> >Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> >To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [roy_q_royce(a)hotmail.com: --A >RequestRE aWIKIArticle--] >Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 10:49:02 -0700 > >Poor, Edmund W wrote: > >>Mr. Royce, >> >>Please do not call other list members names or otherwise make nasty >>personal remarks. >> >> "Mr. Tim Starling is either a liar or an easily-fooled person." >> >Yes, he has fallen into the same sewer as those who called him a crackpot. >;-) > >Ec > >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _________________________________________________________________ Frustrated with dial-up? Get high-speed for as low as $29.95/month (depending on the local service providers in your area). https://broadband.msn.com

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Re: [roy_q_royce@hotmail.com: --A Request RE a WIK I Article--]
by KNOTT, T 27 Sep '03

27 Sep '03

I used to hang out on sci.physics, but was driven away by the crackpots. IIRC al.sci.physics.new-theories was created especially to keep them off sci.physics.relativity. It didn't work, they just crossposted. I think we need a separate policy just for physics crackpots, because they are in a class of their own. I'm in favour of wiping the talk page of special relativity. ( it's strange that they always go for special relativity not general relativity) Theresa -----Original Message----- From: Tim Starling [mailto:ts4294967296@hotmail.com] Sent: 26 September 2003 02:07 To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [roy_q_royce(a)hotmail.com: --A Request RE a WIKI Article--] Jimmy Wales wrote: > I know too little about physics to have anything helpful to say here. > Reading between the lines here, I'm guessing that Mr. Royce's views > are not mainstream? Is there any helpful accomodation that could be > made here? A quick google search shows that this guy is a sci.physics.relativity crackpot. See: http://groups.google.com.au/groups?selm=XySVa.41611%24F92.4248%40afrodite.te lenet-ops.be&rnum=2 > > ----- Forwarded message from Roy Royce <roy_q_royce(a)hotmail.com> ----- > > From: "Roy Royce" <roy_q_royce(a)hotmail.com> > Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 13:58:58 -0600 > To: jwales(a)joey.bomis.com > Subject: --A Request RE a WIKI Article-- > > Dear Mr. Wales, > > Your primary policy "You can edit this page right now" hopefully applies to > the > addition of facts to an article, especially important facts. However, it > seems to > be impossible to (permanently) add just three simple - but critical - facts > to the > Wiki special relativity article. That's right, it's impossible to add facts permanently if they are considered by community consensus to be inaccurate. It's the nature of the process. Sounds like he's experiencing some Usenet withdrawal symptoms. > I cordially invite you to check out the validity of the following statements > for > yourself (these are the three facts of which I spoke above): > > [1] No one has yet used two clocks to measure the speed of light (one way). > > [2] Since we have long had the necessary technology, the reason for the lack > of a one-way light speed measurement must be the physical impossibility of > making such a measurement. (In other words, there cannot be a one-way > version of the Michelson-Morley experiment, and scientific minds should > wonder > why not - because the implications are grave for special relativity!) If anyone cares, this is what he's talking about: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a0ac0bee.0211081401.61c7eee9%40posting. google.com&rnum=1 Suffice to say that he doesn't seem to have any supporters on s.p.r, where he's been plugging his theories for years. The tactic he's using is a typical red herring: he suggests a direct test of some aspect of relativity which is hugely expensive or perhaps even technically impossible. He ignores the huge body of slightly less direct tests of the same theory, and then obliquely suggests some sort of conspiracy theory to explain why no-one is spending millions of dollars on his simple test. Everywhere he goes, he feels persecuted by co-conspiring mainstream physicists, who are out to suppress the "truth" he has discovered. It's a common story. > My request is that someone please add these facts to the Wiki special > relativity article because pertinent facts are important to any > encyclopedia. Anyone can add them, and anyone can take them away. Luckily for us, Wikipedian co-conspirators greatly outnumber the enlightened individuals who want to expose the shocking truth. -- Tim Starling. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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Physics, NPOV and policy
by Robert 27 Sep '03

27 Sep '03

Jimbo writes, in regards to various speculative theories about physics: > I think this presents challenges for our NPOV policy, > but not _special_ challenges. As with any controversial > subject, and many uncontroversial ones, there are > mainstream views, minority views, and singular views. > NPOV does not require us to present all these views > as if they are equal! ...If a view is the majority view > of a broad consensus of scientists, then we say so. > If a view is a minority view of some scientists, > scientists who are respected by the mainstream that > differs with them on this particular matter, then we > say so. And if a view is held only by a few people > without any traditional training or credentials, and if > that view is dismissed by virtually all mainstream > scientists, then we can say that, too. > The reason we can do all of that is that, usually, those > statements are not controversial to any of the parties > in the debate. I agree fully. My experience on Usenet has shown me that crank theories arise on every science subject; the topics that get the most cranks are relativity, anti-gravity, thermodynamics and "perpetual motion" and anything related to pre-1200s archaeology. (Lots of odd theories are out there about mainstream science and/or "the establishment" somehow surpressing proof of advanced science in ancient India, ancient Egypt, etc.) Jimbo's clarification makes sense. The only thing I would add is that we should follow the above along with the current provision that Wikipedia is not a place for one's won personal reasearch. If an idea is by only held one person (plus or minus their family members!) their views should not be in any Wikipedia articles. Otherwise, we'd have literally hundreds of pages on relativity or gravity, each idea unique, held only by an individual. > Singular views can be moved to a separate page and > identified (disclaimed) as such, or in some cases > omitted altogether. For such topics it best to omit singular views. There are hundreds of people out there who believe they have "proven" that perpetual motion machines exist; each one of them has their own unique theory and mathematical model of why mainstream thermodynamics is wrong, and each would probably want their own Wikipedia article. Unless a "crank" view starts to become accepted by some tiny percentage of mainstream science, there isn't much of a need or reason to discuss them in our articles. However, there is a great need for a good article on this phenomenon. We desperately need an article on the scientific and psychological reasons why so many people keep working on perpetual motion machines, why they believe that you can travel faster than light in normal space (*), why they believe that fully modern humans lived 5 million years ago, etc. Robert (RK) (*) One very well might be able to travel faster than light, given wormholes, or the Alcubierre warp drive, etc. But none of these violate Einsteinian relativity. They are special cases that are included in relativity; they are accepted as legitimate areas of research by the mainstream scientific community. The problem with cranks is that they are ignorant of, or dismissive of, the very open-minded nature of the scientific community. (Physics is very open-minded; just consider the proliferation of well written papers in highly regarded physics journals on FTL, time travel, quantum computing, etc.) Cranks, by contrast, are characterized by conspiracism and a refusal to allow inconvenient facts to enter into their research. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

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Re: BuddhaInside banned
by Björn Lindqvist 27 Sep '03

27 Sep '03

>>>The vandalism of the Main Page was the last straw. I have banned >>>BuddhaInside. This should not require Jimbo's approval since it was a > case >>>of simple and obvious vandalism. >>>I hope we can get rid of all these Deletexxxx pages he idiotically > > created > >>>now. >>> >>>Regards, >>> >>>Erik >> >>If you had looked a little closer you would have seen that it wasn't >>done on purpouse. >> >>BL > > > Do you mean the move of the main page was not done on purpose? How could it > have been an accident? from what others have said this needed a hand-edited > URL - it wasn't just a mistaken click of a link. Can you elaborate? > > Thanks > > sannse Yes I can. What I claim is that BuddhaInside (BI) wasn't intentionally vandalising the Main Page even though that is what happened. Since none of the developers had realised that moving a main page was possible, it is not justified to believe that BI realised that. Because IF BI's intention was to vandalize, why didn't he continue after the first move with other protected pages? However *if* we assume that BI believed that moving the Main Page would create a *copy* of it on his talk page the story becomes more reasonable. It is possible that he used a URL instead of a link because he was busy moving his talk page to the Deletexxx pages. Tim Starling was the developer that solved the problem so I guess he knows. A compilation of the relevant edits BI made are up for public display at: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BL/evenmorestuff BL

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articles about Serbian history
by Nikola Smolenski 27 Sep '03

27 Sep '03

Hello to all. I subscribed to this list in order to give my word about what I see some people perceive as a problem made by my actions. By the way, I tried to subscribe yesterday, but it seems that that didn't work for some reason. I noticed that there are two separate issues here: the NPOV of the articles and the links on them. I think that they are separate enough that I could discuss them separately. About NPOV: the site is like it is, some of its contents might be "propagandistic, wrong and/or biased", it might even contain, as someone said, falsifications of history, but the particular articles that I copied from the site are not such. Some of them contain simply raw data that has no POV at all, and those that were not such I NPOVed and, after I was kindly asked by Eloquence, I NPOVed them even more then I think is needed. And they could be even further NPOVed by other contributors. I think that this subject is closed. Now, about the links. First, some people misunderstood the issue: these links are not ==External links== which, of course, (at least that is my opinion) could be freely removed by anyone who doesn't think that they belong where they do. These are links to the site which is the ==Source== of the article, from which the articles are copied, which is the same case as with the articles that are copied from, say, FOLDOC. As I understood it, such links are requirement for copying the data from the site (I used standard permission text, you can see it at [[User:Nikola Smolenski/FreeSrpska]]). I understand that some people don't like to see links to such a site here, or perhaps anywhere on the web, while at the same time don't mind if there are no articles about the topics. But some other people don't mind the links and like the articles (and I'm one of them, obviously). I can say that article about [[Prince Lazar]] is already twice its size, and it did not exist at all before I copied it from FS. As I said already, the articles would take days instead of hours to make if they were not copied from the site. And some of the pictures from them would be very hard or impossible to find elsewhere. Personaly, I doubt that anyone will click on that links in order to find more information about the subject (the article is based on a text from the site; obviously, there is no more information about the subject on the site) or in order to find information on similar subjects (they are warned that the site is biased; and if they don't mind reading biased data then why shold we mind?). So, to conclude it, I don't think that extracting NPOV data from POV sites is something wrong or that it will hurt credibility of Wikipedia. To the contrary, I think that we could be proud for being able to remake even such sources into brilliant prose. Finally, I feel the need to stress that, to the best of my knowledge, I have broke no Wikipedia policy. It is, again to the best of my knowledge, allowed to copy to WP any material that violates no copyright law, is NPOV, and encyclopedic in nature, which is what I did. Perhaps new policies have to be made, but I did nothing wrong.

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Re: [roy_q_royce@hotmail.com: --A Request RE aWIKIArticle--]
by Poor, Edmund W 27 Sep '03

27 Sep '03

Mr. Royce, Please do not call other list members names or otherwise make nasty personal remarks. "Mr. Tim Starling is either a liar or an easily-fooled person." Ed Poor List Administrator Wikien-l

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WikiEN-l September 2003