[WikiEN-l] Response to Anthere; the many Gaia articles

[Toby Bartels]

RK wrote in part:

>Anthere wrote:

>>The name the articles had this morning were all given 
>>long before I even discovered Wikipedia. Since these
>>articles were written by several authors, I guess that
>>makes more than me using that terminology :-)

>Oh come on, that is disingenuous. A few of us are trying to
>clean up this horrible mess, and Anthere alone repeatedly
>prevented any fixes.

That's not the least bit disingenuous.
It hadn't been left in an acknowledged state of mess before.
I don't know if the terminology is correct or not,
but it's rather -- dare I say it? -- disingenuous
to suggest that only Anthere ever supported it.
Or do you argue that the previous article title system
developed by pure chance?

>>RK wrote:

>>>Anthere has created, or supported the creation of: 
>>>[[Gaia hypothesis]]
>>>[[Gaia theory]] (lower case t)
>>>[[Gaia Theory]] (upper case T)
>>>[[Gaia theory (biology]]
>>>[[Gaia theory (homeostais)]]
>>>(And a few more!)

>>Sure.  Gaia hypothesis was created before feb 2002. But I
>>support the unknown person who created it :-)...

>Anthere's discussion that followed was misleading. The fact
>is that no one in science uses the bizarre terminology that
>Anthere insists on keeping.  Also, the fact remains that
>Anthere keeps refusing any consolidation, making the
>current set of five articles confusing to scientists, let
>alone laypeople.

Count again, please.  Or else tell us what the other articles are called.
Because there are currently 3 articles whose names begin with [[Gaia ...]]
(not counting [[Gaia]] itself, which is completely different).
There used to be 4, one of them being a disambiguation page.
(Also the move from [[Gaia Theory]] to [[Gaia Theory (biology)]]
took 2 hours!)

>>>And ALL OF THESE are on the same topic.  The content
>>>is or was nearly identical!

>>YES ! The content is REDIRECT [[Gaia theory]] or
>>equivalent ! AMAZINGLY IDENTICAL

>Oh, Anthere, that is very misleading; most of these Gaia
>articles were NOT redirects at the time this started.  Most
>of the ones that now are redirects, were created yesterday
>by *ME*, and this was against Anthere's wishes.  He is now
>taking credit for work I did, as if he suddenly hadn't been
>fighting against it.

True, most of them didn't exist.
And you created a grand total of 1 redirect
(not counting the results of moving pages).
This redirect was a change from a historic disambig page,
whose existence you somehow blamed on Anthere
(when in fact the history and talk show that
she'd been against it from the start).

>Now, I am happy to see that he apparently agrees with me on
>those particular redirects..but perplexed to see him take
>my position as his own.

Perhaps there's discussion that's not on the talk pages.
If so, you ought to tell us where to find it.
There's no indication there that Anthere ever wanted
more pages with content (that is, other than disambig and redirects)
than there are now: three.

>>Being a biologist myself, as well as an agronomist,
>>and an enginneer (I never remember how to spell that
>>word) in food science and biotechnologies, with a
>>minor in computer science, and focusing my writings on
>>biodiversity and ecosystems, I happen to know that
>>others use *my* bizarre terminology.

>You are confused. Your terminology does not appear in any
>textbook or science article.  No one in science has
>separate discussion on the Gaia Hypothesis (capital H),
>Gaia Theory (capital-case T), Gaia theory (lowercase t),
>Gaia theory (homeostasis), etc.  Your are fooling yourself,
>or are not widely read.  Please stop making these incorrect
>claims.

True, nobody does.  Not even Anthere!
In fact, one of the pages that you mentioned above
has never existed, although you're somewhat close;
and the capital "H" has never been used to distinguish pages.
(At least not according to the record now available.
If this is incomplete, then you'd better tell us about it!)

>And of course it may be appropriate to
>have more than one (sensibly titled) article on this
>subject (and I never said otherwise.)

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Gaia_Theory&diff=994892&oldid=994786

>BTW, I take offense at the insults that others on this list
>sent me in response to my message.  Stop insulting my
>knowledge of this subject; that's just childish.  Further,
>I am surprised to see someone admit that they will refuse
>to agree with me, even thought they admit I might have a
>good point, just because they disagree with how I
>characterized the situation.  Making decisions based on
>semantics is not proper, and does not reflect the level of
>mature professionalism this encyclopaedia requires.

Actually, I think that siding as a matter of principle
against those that consistently misuse the charge of vandalism
to be much along the same lines as reverting [[User:Michael]],
which is also done regardless of the content under discussion.
But as I said, one shouldn't depend on such things alone.
(And I also never said that I'd said *with* Anthere!)
But as for insults ... they've come from you, not me.


-- Toby