Revision as of 20:12, 1 July 2008

If you're here to talk about conflicts of interest, please read (all of!) this.

You are welcome to leave messages here. I will reply here (rather than on, say, your user page). Conversely, if I've left a message on your talk page, I'm watching it, so please reply there. If your messages are rude, wandering or repetitive I will likely edit them. If you want to leave such a message, put it on your talk page and leave me a note here. In general, I prefer to conduct my discussions in public. If you have a question for me, put it here (or on the article talk, or...) rather than via email.

Please leave messages about issues I'm already involved in on the talk page of the article or project page in question.

The Holding Pen

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Current

8.2 kiloyear event

Would you agree with re-naming the 8.2 kiloyear event to Misox oscillation, since this is the name given to this event by Heinrich Zoller in 1960 (see German article Misox-Schwankung)? —Bender235 (talk) 21:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

You mean to Misox? Oh no. Its universally known as 8.2 kyr. Why change to an unknown name ? Who is Heinrich Zoller anyway? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Heinrich Zoller was a Swiss botanist who first discovered (and named) the Misox and Piora oscillation. But you're probably right, the term Misox oscillation is not well known among English speaking scientists. I just felt uncomfortable with the fact that there are dozens of variations of that 8.2 kiloyear event name, like "8,200 year event", "8.2 ka event", "8,200 cal. BP event", "8,200 years cooling event", and so on. —Bender235 (talk) 21:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I'm used to "8.2 kyr event". At least its descriptive William M. Connolley (talk) 21:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

could you please do me a favor?

Hello,

I am a master student at the Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. Currently I am wrapping up my master thesis titled “Can Misplaced Pages be used for knowledge service?” In order to validate the knowledge evolution maps of identified users in Misplaced Pages, I need your help. I have generated a knowledge evolution map to denote your knowledge activities in Misplaced Pages according to your inputs including the creation and modification of contents in Misplaced Pages, and I need you to validate whether the generated knowledge evolution map matches the knowledge that you perceive you own it. Could you please do me a favor?

1. I will send you a URL link to a webpage on which your knowledge evolution map displays. Please assign the topic (concept) in the map to a certain cluster on the map according to the relationship between the topic and clusters in your cognition, or you can assign it to ‘none of above’ if there is no suitable cluster.
2. I will also send a questionnaire to you. The questions are related to my research topic, and I need your viewpoints about these questions.

The deadline of my thesis defense is set by the end of June, 2008. There is no much time left for me to wrap up the thesis. If you can help me, please reply this message. I will send you the URL link of the first part once I receive your response. The completion of my thesis heavily relies much on your generous help.

Sincerely

JnW 05:09, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I will certainly have a look; do send the URL. BW, over here we call it a "favour" :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 06:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello, here is the link

Pretest webpage

If you have any question during pretest, please contact me.

Please finish it before 25 June. Thanks a lot. :)

JnW 14:59, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Well I had a go. The Java takes aaaaaaaaaaaagggeeeeeeeeeesssss to load, and the results didn't seem to be very interesting. The categories presented made little sense in many cases William M. Connolley (talk) 20:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. It's really a problem for Java applet. Another questionnaire is near completed, and I think that would be more interesting. I will send the link to you, just as the pretest. Please help me the last time. Thank you. :)

JnW 12:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC) JnW 12:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello, the questionnaire is completed. Link:

evaluation questionnaire

thanks for doing this questionnaire, and I hope that you will feel interested about this. :)

JnW 04:40, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

RFA

Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/oren0 - What do you think of this? Oren0 hasn't been as prolific in causing problems on the global warming related articles as some of the other contrarians, but do you think he's trustworthy enough to be an admin? I do find it a bit galling that he's using my reluctance to continue to track down Scibaby as a reason to request it. Raul654 (talk) 02:15, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I'll have a think and review contribs William M. Connolley (talk) 18:49, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I commend you

I am sure that you place very little weight on my personal opinions, but I am trying to be better about giving positive feedback when I believe that it is warranted. I finally had a chance to read Lawrence Solomon's talk page and I noticed your contributions there.

I would just like to say that I think you showed an admirable level of objectivity in this case given his publications which mention you by name. I admit that I was surprised by this and for that I owe you an apology, so here it is. --GoRight (talk) 23:55, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, thank you. I do try, even if it may not always be obvious William M. Connolley (talk) 06:42, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

laffeaux

Apparently now if you post on G33's talk page and he doesn't like you, it counts as trolling. Never mind the hypocrisy of claiming to be anti-censorship while hiding the opinions of those he dislikes... Jtrainor (talk) 21:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

G33 is thrashing around; ignore him William M. Connolley (talk) 23:00, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I can't! It's like watching a train wreck in progress-- you know it's horrible, but you can't look away. Jtrainor (talk) 23:37, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah. Perhaps that explains the incredible sloooowness of the arbcomm - do you think they are drawing it out to provide spectator sport? William M. Connolley (talk) 07:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

More likely they're busy with the whole Cla thing, which is really more important. Jtrainor (talk) 22:40, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

This bit about Singer believing in martians

Given the public and private discussions that have occurred related to this reference:

"More on the Moons of Mars". Singer, S. F., Astronautics, February 1960. American Astronautical Society. Page 16

I assume that you have some way that it can be verified? More importantly, there is some reasonable way that Misplaced Pages readers can verify it? --GoRight (talk) 19:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

How about checking with your local library? There is no requirement that sources must be online. In fact that is pretty much impossible with books, and older material. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:09, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The journal is available in some libraries. A while back, someone dug it out and send me a scanned copy. Ask your local library for interlibrary loan, or, unless you think I would fake it, let me know where to mail the PDF. The file is around 1 MB. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:13, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

That someone would be me -- I got it thought the interlibrary loan, courtesy of Kansas State University's library. Raul654 (talk) 19:18, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I know, I just didn't want to out you, especially now that we have secret trials. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

There's your question answered. It is, when you think about it, an odd question, though people often ask similar; indeed I've seen it asserted that a mere paper reference is not as good as a website. Obviously, the reverse is true.

I appreciate all of your responses. I had added this item to WP:BLPN before I saw KDP's pointer to the talk page. My apologies. --GoRight (talk) 21:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem William M. Connolley (talk) 21:43, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Secret trials considered harmful

">22:28, 27 June 2008 (UTC)]

The secret trials stuff is disturbing. I'm going to have a look before saying more William M. Connolley (talk) 21:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've read the evidence: general impression is that this is revenge by DHMO's friends for his RFA failure. Why? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

And now I've read the judgement. And it seems to me that arbcomm has run itself off the rails. It would seem that they've got themselves infected by the bad blood from DHMO's RFA. So:

• Given the sanctions, which are more humiliating that restrictive, the case was clearly non-urgent.
• There is a good deal of interpretation and selective quoting in the evidence. I don't see any eveidence that OM was given any opportunity to respond, and that is bad (looking at OM's page, I think this response from arbcomm is revealing: when asked directly if OM was given the chance to respond, the reply is weaselly).
• I'm missing the result of the user RFC that obviously the arbcomm insisted on being gone through first. Could someone point me to it?
• Could all these people please get back to the job of deciding the cases validly put before them, most obviously the G33 and SV/etc ones

William M. Connolley (talk) 21:43, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, whatever the actual substance of the complaint: I'm deeply concerned about ArbCom (or unspecified parts of it) trawling through a years worth of contributions, selectively quoting parts that support a certain point of view, assemble all this into a large document, and without further input from the user in question or from the community issue an edict from above. And for good measure they (?) declare a priori that an appeal is possible, but will be moot. Well, maybe it's acceptable because, as we all know, the committee is infallible. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:46, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I admit, my prior opinion was that arbcomm is generally slow but usually got the right answer. In this case, I'm doubtful. BTW, I'm almost sure I had a run-in with OM once. Can anyone remember when/where? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:50, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

In case you have not yet noticed: This seems to be deeper. . --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:58, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Holy @#%$! I was wondering how all of them took leave of their senses at once. R. Baley (talk) 22:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

!?! That looks bad William M. Connolley (talk) 22:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Is this some sort of hallucination?????? WTF??? BTW, you did run into me, because you blocked someone in a manner that I felt unfair. When I found out you are/were one of the "good guys" on global warming, I had mixed feelings. Now, I feel safe that you're watching over the article, especially since Raymond Arritt is gone.OrangeMarlin 22:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

This whole notion of "good guys" and "bad guys" is a seriously poisonous and harmful way of seeing fellow contributors. It encourages the worst excesses and does not lend itself to reaching consensus with the dark side/evil ones/whatever. Orderinchaos 16:03, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I like to think that the people reverting vandalism might be considered "good", and the vandals "bad". Perhaps thats a bit too old-school, and you prefer a more nuanced approach? William M. Connolley (talk) 16:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm taking William's interpretation of good and bad editors. However, I consider NPOV vandals to be vandals too. Yes there is a nuance to all of this, and that's the problem. It's difficult.OrangeMarlin 16:20, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

So whats going on?

Most discussion is at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Orangemarlin and other matters, it seems.

Presumably someone will be along to sort out this car crash at some point. In the meantime I've been trying to see whats going on, and I've found...

• As we know, KL has repudiated FT2's postings . But rather suggests that secret proceedings were indeed going on.
• tB has "temporarily" blanked the page , which is nice, though not as good as "permanently"
• Jimbo has weighed in, saying basically "I haven't got a clue whats going on" . Later updated to the Arbitration Committee itself has done absolutely nothing here , which does rather suggest FT2 acting alone in acting, though doesn't address discussions.
• CM is cryptic turns on the interpretation of "formal" in "formal proceeding", a semantic point that is not vacuous
• JPG says its miscommunication and begs for patience but confirms the secret case
• FN thanks us for our patience as does Mv
• Jv appears to endorse FT2's version, adding the OM case to those recently closed and posting the result to ANI . How does Jv know this is the will of arbcomm? And interesting question, which I've just asked him, and which he is studiously ignoring.

Other arbs appear to be far too busy to deal with trivia of this type.

So its hard to know what *has* happened. But clearly its not just FT2 running amok, or the other arbs would say so. My best guess is that secret trials (discussions?) were indeed in progress and that they are too embarrassed to admit it; and that there is some frantic behind-the-scenes talking going on to try to get a story straight.

• CM . The statement is bizarre and is going to leave a lot of people (including me) unhappy. It looks like "it was a regrettable miscommunication, please don't ask any more questions" is going to be the line.

William M. Connolley (talk) 18:31, 29 June 2008 (UTC) & 20:30, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

What stuns me is how any arbitrator thought that allegations of uncivil behavior (however true) needed to be urgently addressed in a blatantly out-of-process manner while a case of full-bore socking by a repeat offender, resulting in high-profile articles being locked for weeks, was allowed to languish. Hopefully the committee realizes they cannot put the business of Arbitration on hold to focus solely on this drama, and will continue the voting. - Merzbow (talk) 03:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Yup, still baffled by that one William M. Connolley (talk) 21:30, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Notice

I won't re-revert, but I think the wording of the notice needs work - it's not even grammatically correct, and risks being seen as pointy (though I don't believe that was the intent). Orderinchaos 16:02, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Grammar is below noise level at this point. The purpose of the notice is to alert people to the uncertainty as to the pages authority. I think its important to have something there, feel free to fiddle the wording if you like. I'm going to point out its existence to CM, who though cryptic is at least talking William M. Connolley (talk) 16:15, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, fixed the wording to something I think should work - feel free to tweak as appropriate. Orderinchaos 17:15, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

User:GoRight's block

What's your opinion of this? He was blocked for "harassing" you and he said that if you approve of the block he'll stop objecting. It'd be nice if you'd comment over there to help diffuse the situation (if you think it's justified) or request that he be unblocked (if you disagree, he was supposedly harassing you after all). Oren0 (talk) 19:22, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear, are we all suffering a fit of collective madness? My opinion is that GR's edit cited by RB is clearly a violation of NPA, and had anyone made that edit about any other editor-in-good-standing, and had it come to my attention, I would have blocked them for that reason; but it all shades into something that could be called harassement from the outside. If it were me blocking, I would offer to lift the block conditional on removing the offending comment and refraiming from similar in future William M. Connolley (talk) 19:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

My personal view is that GoRight has been dancing around the NPA policy for about a week now. He was clearly warned, and a 24 hour break is not that much. Hopefully it will be all that is needed for the message to sink in (but I'm not optimistic in this regard). R. Baley (talk) 19:49, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Just for clarity, I wasn't taking either side on the block issue. I just thought it might make everyone's lives easier if you made your opinion on the matter known. Oren0 (talk) 21:54, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I assume that people realize that you were merely conveying my request, per , and nothing more. --GoRight (talk) 22:59, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it's time to community ban him from all GW topics. Because it's either that, or let him keep going with his current behavior and earn himself an indef block. Raul654 (talk) 22:14, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

WMC, after reviewing the second part of this edit, , I agree that I was out of line. I offer my sincerest apologies for having made it. R. Baley has already reverted the comment. --GoRight (talk) 22:56, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks; accepted William M. Connolley (talk) 07:24, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

On the subject of harassment, I would like to know if you sincerely feel as though I have been singling you out or harassing you in some fashion. Could you please let me know if this is the case? --GoRight (talk) 22:56, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

On that, I've said what I want to say above. I'd also urge you to pay attention to what Raul said William M. Connolley (talk) 07:24, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, as you wish.

Just for the record, it is not my intent to harass you. It is just that the LS stuff is my current focus.

My only purpose in my support of the LS material is to extract the key points that he asserts, sans the personal aspects as much as possible, included as what I consider to be fair criticism mostly of the environment here as opposed to you personally. Unfortunately you were the one he homed in on, presumably because of your prominence on the GW pages. I certainly don't think that the content here is only the work of you and a few others, but you have to agree that you, and KDP, and Steven tend to be in the middle of a lot of disputes on a huge set of GW pages ... rightly or wrongly ... and that the minority is going to see things as LS describes them. Being in that minority perhaps that is why I resonate with the key points about the environment here so much (in general, not you specifically). --GoRight (talk) 19:23, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Up to now, the issue of whether LS's crit is fair or not hasn't arisen. Thats part of the great weakness of wiki sourcing, of course. I believe his crit to be twaddle. Which bit of it did you think made sense? For the avoidance of doubt, you may insert any direct LS quotes here with no fear of accusations of PA William M. Connolley (talk) 20:36, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/June 2008 announcements/Activation of view-deleted-pages

Hi William. I have removed your commentary at the top of this page. As relevant a notice as this may be, it likely belongs on the talk page, as the main page should not host remarks by users. Cheers, -- Anonymous Dissident 10:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I've added back in a notice (with diff from yesterday) to indicate the ArbCom is still working out what their decisions are. . .R. Baley (talk) 11:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The page should very definitely have a note on it. It purports to be from Arbcomm, but whether it really is so, is in doubt. People need to know that when they read the page, not just if they happen to read the talk too. That seems very obvious to me. Whats worse, arbs are aware of this problem and are failing to clarify. What I take from that is that they really don't know what the situation is, which makes all the "don't worry, its just miscommunication" stuff less plausible William M. Connolley (talk) 12:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I have removed it (30-15, seeing Wimbledon is on). But only because Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/June 2008 announcements now has an update explaining (in outline) how we currently intend to proceed. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:55, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I do not think a note is necessarily a bad idea, but commentary from individuals on a fully protected page should not really be a way of making such a note. The current note seems fine to me. -- Anonymous Dissident 15:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the current note seems entirely unclear to me. In particular, I cannot figure out what "a number of proposals are being mooted by the Arbitration Committee" is supposed to mean. I checked Leo, one of the most comprehensive online dictionaries, and it could not help me with "mooted". My intuitive interpretation would be "to make moot". But Charles note seems to indicate that they are very much not moot, but are being actively discussed. I also don't see any indication on this page that the OM case has been withdrawn - it's not mentioned in the explanatory note, but left standing very much as if it was still valid, with the link pointing to the blanked case page. Also, the (N1)-(N3) references point nowhere, and the end note by FT2 still looks like it's the last and final word on the issue. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:25, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Try wikipedia... see Moot court --BozMo talk 18:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That didn't help directly, but the embedded link to Wictionary did. I only was aware of the US meaning of "moot" (as in "of no consideration"), not the original one. Anyways, my impression is that this is a fairly specialized term that may not be the most appropriate or clearest. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Try the Concise Oxford: as a verb it is 'raise (question) for discussion'. This is querulous stuff, I think. There are new things there, sure. Details and updates are also promised. What William was asking about is answered clearly enough. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:18, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Its probably about as clear as it needs to be, though there are important ambiguities ("following discussions" - where were these discussions? Presumably, on the arbcomm mailing list; but it remains unclear. Its also painfully obvious that the arbcomm isn't paying attention to these pages, as witness the header on Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/June 2008 announcements/Appeals Review List - I would have hoped that someone who knew the mind of arbcomm would remove or update it. Arbcomm isn't doing well at the moment, and desperately needs to start paying attention William M. Connolley (talk) 20:55, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

When the announcement was first made, before Kirill said anything, I sent an email applying for the Appeals Review List, today I received an email that my application had been forwarded to the arbcom mailing list, so it appears that status of that thing is still vague. Also do you mind if I convert your blue bar'd message boxes to a standardized box? Thanks. MBisanz 21:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. As to the notice: please go ahead. I'll learn to do these things right one day :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 21:33, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Global_warming&oldid=222813131

Would you please explain your reasoning for removing "The Royal Society asserts that..." and "mean" from Global warming? I do not see why they are unhelpful to the point of requiring a revert. Saying that the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree is somewhat subjective, as there are many climatologists that do disagree. Mean global temperature makes more sense than simply global temperature, as at a given time, there can be a great variation in temperature across the surface of the Earth. (For example, this week, there has been a 120°C difference in the highest and lowest temperatures.) Whatever is the problem? --UberScienceNerd _{Talk Contributions} 19:17, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Giano block

See this thread. Three hours seems short for his 4th block under the remedy (and the block should be logged, btw). Avruch 19:21, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Its done now; I don't think there is any going back. I just saw the edit and blocked for incivility; I wasn't aware of the arbcomm sanctions. If I had been, I would probably have blocked for longer. Hopefully there won't be a next time, but if there is, I'll be aware William M. Connolley (talk) 20:12, 1 July 2008 (UTC)