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when you have 20 minutes

can you read and comment here? I expressed a concern about the article, and dab and Pelle Smith misinterpret my words to mean the opposite of what I thought I was saying. So i either really am not expressing myself well, or something else is going on in the "discussion." I am not asking you to pick a side, but i am hoping you can read through it, identify the source of misunderstanding, and put the discussion back on track. thanks Slrubenstein | Talk 11:37, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - it is possible that we hve moved beyon it but I kind of doubt it as these kinds of conflicts or confusions have a habit of coming back ... so I still appreciate your reading over it when you have time and providing your own account of the conflict/debate. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:48, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Many thanks for undoing the vandalism on my user page - I hadn't even noticed. Elonka not unexpectedly has misinterpreted this friendly edit on WP:AN/I. Apparently she has identified you as an "opponent" of the perpetrator. I have no idea what she thinks she's up to. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 07:17, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

As requested

Alright, you asked for me to provide details, so here goes. Please do not take this as an attack, but instead what you asked for, which is for me to lay out my concerns, and offer constructive criticism on how you can improve.

It is my opinion that you (and a couple other editors) have been doggedly pursuing Jagz to the point of harassment. Even though he is currently blocked, you are continuing to scrutinize his edits. Further, when you provide diffs of his misdeeds, you often include hyperbolic statements to "spin" things as worse than they actually are. It is also a concern that over the last few days, that you have been doing effectively nothing on Misplaced Pages except pursuing this course against Jagz: Ramdrake (talk · contribs).

When you have provided diffs about Jagz's actions, I have not found the diffs compelling, and I have found your overstatement of what they actually contain, to make it difficult to listen seriously to the rest of it. For example, when you removed Jagz's comment from Mathsci's talkpage, with an edit summary of "vandalism", this was excessive. Also, do you see the double standard here, where when Mathsci used that same image on Jagz, you saw it as acceptable, but when Jagz passed the same image back to Mathsci's talkpage, you called it vandalism? This kind of thing demonstrates that you are having trouble looking at Jagz's edits in an evenhanded manner, and it weakens everything else that you say about him. Going back further, this kind of comment is troublesome: "Can someone else remind Jagz about AGF?" It is not a mature way to state things. Further, when I looked into Jagz's accusation, it was accurate, because Slrubenstein does call people racists and trolls. Yet you seem quick to attack Jagz for his statements, but you do not challenge Slrubenstein for equal or greater incivility. If you want to have a stronger voice in these discussions, you need to treat infractions fairly. Don't just jump on someone who disagrees with you, while supporting the same behavior in someone who agrees with you. I would see exchanges on the talkpage at R&I where people were sniping at Jagz, he would respond in kind, and then you'd accuse him of trolling, but have no comments for the others who were being uncivil. I am not saying that Jagz was innocent here, but there was clearly disruptive behavior on the part of multiple editors.

I would also point out that some of my first interactions with you, were that you were complaining about the way that the page was being archived. As I pointed out to you then, that you would react with that much negativity simply because an admin adjusted an archive bot once a month, implied someone who was paying toooo much attention to a talkpage. What it was looking like to me, was that a certain group of editors (yourself included) had decided to "camp" on the R&I article, and were looking with suspicion at any outsider who dared to venture into the page, even for such a minor thing as archiving. Combine that with some of the extraordinarily negative statements that were being made by other editors, and it was clear to me that the environment at R&I had become toxic. Your own comments definitely were not the worst of the batch, but they were a part of the problem.

In terms of moving forward, if you would like to continue monitoring Jagz's edits (and I don't recommend it, but I'm betting it will be a tough addiction to break), and you see things that you feel are problematic, you are welcome to bring them to my talkpage. However, please try to resist the temptation to spin everything you see. Instead, concentrate on a few diffs which are specific policy violations, and present them in a neutral manner. Avoid name-calling, and try not to dwell on anything which you see as an attack directed at yourself. Instead, focus on unambiguous policy violations. If you can provide diffs that show Jagz (or anyone) misinterpreting sources, deleting sourced information, being uncivil, and so forth, present them, but just present them in a neutral manner, not in a vindictive tone. Also, when you do engage in tracking someone else's contribs, it is important that you find a balance. Try to keep no more than 50% of your edits in the area of dispute, and ensure that you are spending time doing other things on Misplaced Pages as well. When I find myself getting too emotionally invested in a particular controversy, I will often go work on something in a backlogged cleanup category, such as Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup. Or I'll format references on some random article. These kinds of small changes can be very therapeutic, and they help "break up" your contrib list so that you don't look single-minded on one particular issue.

Hope that helps, --Elonka 03:28, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

(With apologies to the other editors for inserting at this point in the chain, but I feel it is important)

Elonka, let's take your objections one by one:

• 1)Over the "last few days", I've had a lot of work to do "in the real world", so I've had less time to devote to contributing to Misplaced Pages. However, I felt it was important to follow this specific ANI thread, because I was familiar with Jagz' pattern of editing.
• 2)I happened to see Jagz' comment on his talk page, while this ANI was going on and while according to you "he'd made a lot of progress". This edit is a direct, unsubstantiated attack (no diffs) on 3 other editors
• 3)I've asked for someone else to ask him to AGF, as I know I would only get insults or smart remarks from him if I pointed this out to him.
• 4)The list I provided of his edits since he was topic-banned was as a counterpoint to your statement that "he's made a lot of progress since being topic-banned". To me, that indicates he hasn't made any progress.
• 5)Mathsci's original posting of the Cheshire cat image was to the R&I talk page, not to Jagz' talk page. Then, when Mathsci announced his retirement, Jagz posted the same image 1)to Mathsci's user page (twice) 2)to Mathsci's talk page (twice, I believe) and 3)to his own user page, under the section header "Mathsci has retired". Now, call me old-fashioned, but I take objection to someone posting a comment which can certainly be construed as derogatory to someone's user page, when that person has retired and may no longer be able to remove such derogatory comments. To me, it is very much like spraying graffiti on a grave, i.e. vandalism. Also, the very fact that the image was posted and reposted on three different pages by Jagz is proof enough that this was a deliberate act intended to provoke a negative reaction. If it wasn't intended to be, he'd have understood that the gesture was taken as offensive by some and not repeated it. I don't have to tell you how Misplaced Pages defines "something done deliberately to provoke a negative reaction", as you've already quoted yourself recently.
• 6)Your point about my initial objection to your adjusting the archive setting of the talk page has nothing to do with the Jagz situation, it is a non-sequitur. Also, for the record, I withdrew my initial objection.
• 7)Overall, you seem to miss the point that the issue with Jagz' behaviour wasn't one of civility, it was one of disruptive editing. Whatever lack of civility happened thereafter was once he had exhausted the community's patience, as pointed out by Mastcell .

I could go on somewhat longer, but I think I've answered your main points.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ramdrake, again, you are overstating the case. If you actually look at Jagz's contribs, and try to provide diffs for your claims above, you will see that your claims are inaccurate. --Elonka 15:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Of course the other explanation is that Ramdrake didn't know that mathsci had posted the same image on Jagz's talk page, and therefore was unaware that Jagz was acting in good faith, he may just have seen what he thought was an editor gloating. Jagz has a longstanding habit of posting images on talk pages as some sort of negative comment about a user he is in dispute with, ideed there is an example in the list I give of Jagz's behaviour on the AN/I thread. Alun (talk) 05:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ramdrake was actively involved in the discussion where the image was first used. --Elonka 06:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I didn't know. Alun (talk) 06:15, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Hold on there, Elonka, I did not post this image to Jagz's talk page. Searching through my history and the history of Jagz's talk page I last edited Jagz's talk page on January 11. The use of the images on the talk page of Race and intelligence, first from Alice through the Looking Glass (the Red Queen lecturing Alice) and then fromAlice in Wonderland (the Cheshire Cat), was to lighten the atmosphere after Jagz had started a surreal new section claiming that the article was in a finished state. Jagz simply vandalised my user page - I have never made a similar edit to his or any other wikipedia editor's page. Could Elonka please refactor her highly misleading comments? Mathsci (talk) 07:45, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe I ever said anything about Jagz's talkpage. But the image was very clearly posted by Mathsci to Jagz. The diff is obviously of the talkpage at R&I, but that does not change the targeted nature of it. Mathsci said that Jagz was going to "disappear" and posted an image of a Cheshire Cat. When Mathsci "retired" (again), Jagz posted the image on Mathsci's page, obviously implying that Mathsci disappeared first. It may have been misguided humor, but it wasn't vandalism. --Elonka 08:15, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

So I was correct to some extent, Mathsci never did post this image to Jagz's talk page and Ramdrake's response was appropriate. Jagz posted this image to Mathsci's user page (this can be seen as a simple mistake, Jagz has said that it was not meant as vandalism) and then to his talk page, but Mathsci never posted this image to Jagz's page. Jagz has claimed that Mathsci posted this image "in response to my leaving". But Mathsci didn't say it was in response to Jagz leaving and that it was in response to Jagz's claim that the article was "essentially complete", as evidenced by where Mathsci placed the image, this comment about the article being complete created bemusement all around. I suppose it's reasonable to take Jagz at his word that he didn't mean to be provocative. Alun (talk) 08:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I was unaware that editors could edit other editors' User pages, unless invited to do so. I have no idea how Elonka knows that Jagz's posting on my User page was "misguided humour". Has Jagz told her so? I personally did not see it before its removal, because I was marking Part III exams in Cambridge. I do not take any of Jagz's attempted insults ("Mathsci is French") seriously, although I'm sure I should. (BTW MastCell used the word "vandalizing" in his block summary .) Jagz had announced his retirement from editing R&I in an edit summary on the mainspace article; my remark was in parantheses. I wonder at this stage whether it might be possible to regain some sense of proportion? When an editor starts a section proclaiming that a WP article is "essentially complete", they clearly have misunderstood the nature of WP. That is what my own response at the time politely pointed out. In such circumstances, the original edit was disruptive. Mathsci (talk) 08:56, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Jagz said it was done in jest. --Elonka 09:04, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but after the event and after having been blocked. He provided no edit summary at the time to indicate his frivolous state of mind. Any mentor should firmly caution him against editing User pages, unless invited. When the image was removed from my User page, why was it also posted on my talk page? Does the joke become funnier the second time it's heard? I think User:Moonriddengirl, who monitored Race and intelligence until February, might be a good choice of mentor.Mathsci (talk) 09:29, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

domestication, extinct in the wild

Hi, Ramdrake, I think this guy must be screwing around. In the domestication article it clearly states that domesticated animals can also exist in the wild; and explains what extinct in the wild means, so maybe this guy just doesn't get it. It sounds like English might be his second language, so I suppose I should cut him some slack, but he's so insistent.Bob98133 (talk) 18:14, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

"Ostensible" white race

Please see my explanation at Talk:White race. A response would be welcome. I'm not undoing your edit, but I'd appreciate more of an explanation than one that says, in effect, "I'm removing this word because I think the word shouldn't be here." - Jmabel | Talk 23:40, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd really rather have a discussion than anything with even the potential to become an edit war, but as far as I can tell you still have not explained your edit. I think I laid out pretty carefully the basis on which I disagree. - Jmabel | Talk 06:48, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought I already answered. In my book, "ostensible" has a meaning of for show, which is different than the meaning you seem to assign to it (and which is why I found it incomprehensible initially). Maybe then an alternate epithet would work?--Ramdrake (talk) 10:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

That is one of this meanings, but here I intended it in its other meaning, which the Merriam-Webster gives as "being such in appearance : plausible rather than demonstrably true or real <the ostensible purpose for the trip>" which seems to me to be precisely correct. Can you suggest another word? (probably best answered at Talk:White people, apparently moved since I started this discussion). - Jmabel | Talk 17:13, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

RfC for Race of Ancient Egyptians

An RfC for this article has begun and I just thought that I'd let you know. I have no idea if I did it correctly but it needed to be done. Thanks. --Woland (talk) 18:56, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Dysgenics

Don't let your personal views obstruct the creation of a good article. You've mentioned that dysgenics is a fringe theory while offering no source to show that to be true. In fact, a significant segment of anthropologists believe that the gradual erosion of human intelligence is a real and inexorable trend. Many more believe that Richard Lynn's theories are, as a whole, accurate. It is clearly a theory that may not be entirely mainstream, but does not stray far. Verwoerd (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I might point out that citing Mankind Quarterly, a publication funded by the right wing "hate group" the Pioneer Fund diminishes your claims to the academic mainstream rather than bolster it. Alun (talk) 20:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

It is peer reviewed, which is the hallmark of good science articles. Mankind quarterly is not at all biased, despite contrasting with your own personal beliefs. The sheer circulation and repute of Mankind quarterly places it not far from the mainstream. EgraS (talk) 22:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but Roger Pearson is the director of the Institute for the Study of Man, which owns Mankind Quarterly (Pearson is officially the editor, so you'll excuse me if I'm not exactly convinced this specific article was very much peer-reviewed. In any case, that's one anthropologist's view, out of tens of thousands of anthropologist just in the USA. Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps!--Ramdrake (talk) 22:41, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Besides, the article discusses Richard Lynn's thesis on racial differences in intelligence levels, not dysgenics per se. So, I fail to see a strong link there.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:45, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

It depends what you consider "peer review" Egra, if you consider it proper peer review practice for the same set of people that hold the same or similar right wing political agendas to peer review each other's work, then you are correct. To me this represents little more than a cabal of pseudoscientists supporting each others work. Mainstream peer reviewed academic journals use a broad spectrum of reviewers and don't depend upon a set of reviewers that comprises only members or former members of the editorial board of the journal. Usually the reliability of a journal is determined by it's impact factor in academic circles. Mankind Quarterly has a pathetic impact factor of 0.043, lower than that the publications Voprosy Psikhologii, Media Studies Journal, Policing even The American Journal of Art Therapy has an impact factor of 0.062. Indeed it comes thirteenth from bottom of a list of Psychology journals by impact factor. It's certainly not the sort of place one would publish academic literature if one had good solid experimental data because with good data one would want and expect to be able to publish in a journal with a high impact factor. Indeed the impact factor of journals directly affect funding for scientists, scientists with a reputation for publishing in high impact factor magazines are more likely to get grant funding etc. For example Nature Genetics has an impact factor of 25.556 "This places Nature Genetics first out of 132 journals in the field of genetics and heredity." Alun (talk) 06:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

If there is disagreement about whether or not Mankind Quarterly is a reliable source, I recommend starting a thread at the Reliable sources noticeboard. --Elonka 03:41, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessarily about reliability Elonka. MQ is probably as reliable as any other magazine when it comes to citing the fact that human intellectual dysgenesis has been postulated. Verwoerd and Egra are using this journal as evidence that human intellectual dysgenics is not fringe. But the journal itself is not a mainstream academic journal, it has a very low impact factor and in reality highlights the fringe nature of the subject, because it is only discussed in relatively low impact and low prestige journals. For the purposes of citing research into dysgenics or for citing the claims of people studying dysgenic trends, then the journal is fine, but it cannot possibly be used as evidence for this subject being mainstream, or as evidence that this subject is not fringe. That's the point I was trying to make. Alun (talk) 13:03, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Verwoerd, your source, Roger Pearson, according to his article here, founded the Northern League "to foster the interests, friendship and solidarity of all Teutonic nations. He recruited Hans F. K. Günther, who received awards under the Nazi regime for his work on race, Ernest Cox of the Ku Klux Klan, and Dr. Wilhelm Kesserow, a former SS officer." Your source is from 1991, before the publication of Lynn's dysgenics book and papers and is not pertinent to the opinion of that work. I have shown on the Dysgenics talk page that, since 2000, less than two independent journal papers per year cite the research of Lynn or Vining on dsygenics. One of these was also published in MQ. This research is demonstrably fringe and not very notable. May I add that alleging that others are editing based on "personal views" is not helpful. Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:16, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

(unindent/ec) Here is a published criticism of Mankind Quarterly in MAN, a journal published by the Royal Anthropological Institute, by a member of the Honorary Advisory Board of MQ. Severely criticizing some of the contributions in the first issue (1960) he writes that they "seem to show such little concern for facts and to be so distorted by racial prejudice that I cannot allow them to stand without the most vigorous protest." This phrase was an excerpt from a letter written to the editor of MQ; subsequent interchanges with the editor are summarised, prior to the resignation of the author (an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute from former Yugolsavia). There were a further five pages of equally harsh criticism in 1962 in Current Anthropology by three other anthropologists; all this was prior to the establishment of the Pioneer Fund and the transfer of the journal to the USA. This response from senior academics indicates that from the very start the journal had problems that no mainstream journal would normally expect. It might be appropriate to make a detailed record of such published criticisms in the main space article on Mankind Quarterly. (Please note that MAN and Current Anthropology are mainstream academic journals, hosted by Jstor.) Mathsci (talk) 06:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Edit conflict

Yes, I understand there are POV issues, but if you want my help on the article, please don't cause me to lose time-consuming ref cleanup work to edit conflicts by editing while I have placed an {{inuse}} template on the article. I try to work to keep the article and citations clean, and that is how I begin to get a sense of where the POV is coming from; having edit conflicts while I'm trying to clean up and after I've placed an inuse tag isn't helpful. Thank you, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:52, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't usually forget things :-) Thanks for the apology. The way I work is that I first clean up the article; after that, the source of the problems usually becomes apparent rather quickly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't usually miss the Wiki dynamics either :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:10, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

By the way, when did Elonka become a biology, medical or genetics expert ? Nothing written by one editor on a talk page is set in stone; asking the other parent isn't always wrong. I haven't seen the sources and I am certainly not an expert in the field, but I don't suspect Elonka is either, based on her bio. Maybe we'll get lucky and Tim Vickers will take an interest; collaborative editing without edit conflicts is the way to encourage more interest in the article. I also find more editors are usually willing to work on cleaner articles, which is why I first work to get the article in decent shape. POV will sort itself out over time, by encouraging high-quality participation. If POV-pushing and impatient editing prevails, most people with a brain and an interest in self-preservation just unwatch. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:19, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you have those Nature articles mentioned on the talk page? That would be the way to cut through this quickly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:28, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

(Let's avoid the ping-pong, shall we?) I looked at the links. The Science article seems to be about Shockley being turned down by the NAS to do research on dysgenics. The Nature article isn't at all about dysgenics, they just mention the word in passing. It's about the heritability of IQ, and suggests that heritability of IQ may be lower than is thought in mainstream circles. However, I don't have subscriptions for either, so this is what I garner from reading the abstracts.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I can take a look at these articles in work tomorrow, I get access to Nature and Science in work but not at home. My original point in mentioning these articles was to show such a paucity of articles that mention dysgenics in these journals, and the fact that neither have mentioned dysgenics in over ten years, is direct evidence that this is a fringe theory and that there is certainly no scientific consensus that this is a trend in the human population. I'm baffled as to why anyone would claim that this theory has a scientific consensus when it is clearly limited to third rate low impact factor journals, and there's clearly no cross-discipline support for it. I can see no evidence of a consensus within any academic discipline. Even the publication Intelligence (journal) (cited in the article) has a low impact factor of 1.844 (below even The Journal of ECT (that's electric shock therapy. )). I'm going to try and sleep now. Alun (talk) 22:55, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah. Too bad those articles might not pan out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, the Nature article may have something to say about dysgenics; it's just not the central piece, and I can't tell because I only can access the abstract.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:04, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Devlin, B., Daniels, M., & Roeder, K. (1997) The heritability of IQ. Nature 1997;388:468-471, has been cited about 1500 times since publication according to Google Scholar. It seems to be a much better source on this topic than "R. Lynn (1996) Dysgenics: Genetic deterioration in modern populations or Lynn and Van Court (2004) "New evidence of dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States ". A similar search finds 27 and 9 citations of the Lynn works respectively, a significant fraction of which are book reviews and self-citations.

My impression is that Lynn and his collaborators favor a rather high correlation coefficient for the heritability of IQ. Devlin et al., in their much cited paper, argue for a low value pointing out that in studies of twins separated at birth, the twins share the same environment prior to birth. Devlin et al. say that this shared environment contributes 20% of the covarience with IQ "heritability being less than 50%".

One important development that has gained increasing attention within the last five years is the role of environmental womb effects (EWE) on human development. These would include fetal exposure to nutrients, toxins, and hormones. One of the ways in which genetic contributions to intelligence are measured is by looking at the similarity of IQ in identical twins (who share all their genes) who have been reared apart. Herrnstein and Murray (1994) recognized that such twins would also share a womb environment, and Gardner (1995) discussed development in utero in his review of TBC. However, it was apparently not until an article by Devlin, Daniels, and Roeder (1997) that EWE were quantified and presented to a wide scientific audience.

--Walter Siegmund (talk) 01:06, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Archiving assistance

Hi Ramdrake, would it be okay if I setup an archivebot on your page? It's currently at 150K, and some people's browsers start having trouble with anything over 32K. Let me know, --Elonka 20:02, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, yes, you'd be more than welcome. Thanks for the offer!--Ramdrake (talk) 20:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Done.  :) I did an initial archive of the 2007 threads, and set up a bot with a 90-day cutoff. It'll probably kick in within the next 24 hours. Feel free to tweak it to a different time delay, salt and season to taste.  :) --Elonka 20:14, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Human

Thought I'd let you know that there has been an attempt to include "dysgenics" on the Human article. I find this completely out of order, firstly although this concept can be considered notable with respect to ideas such as eugenics, R&I etc. it is certainly not notable with regards to the human article. Secondly this is so fringe that inclusion in the human article, as if it were a major source of research in the study of humans (medicine, anthropology, human biology) is ludicrous. Thought you might like to know where this is being steered. Finally there is bias in the way this has been portrayed, the citation for continued human "evolution" is from the NYTimes, hardly a reliable source, then the claim of "dysgenesis" is made immediately after, a clear synthesis. All the best. Alun (talk) 05:27, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep, just saw that this morning. I'll keep an eye on it. I especially liked the addition of it is also shown that evolutionary pressures are different between races too. Talk about POV pushing.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:37, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

Hello. I do not think Muntuwandi's objections to the section in European ethnic groups are justified. For some reason he is attacking articles written by dab. However, he is one of the editors responsible for the mess on Race of ancient Egyptians. How can articles on a European topic not be eurocentric? What dab wrote is uncontentious and is easy to support from sources, such as history books. So I suggest that, rather than reinstating tags, we just supply the sources, with possible modifications to the text as required. This is a straightforward WP article and we should make every possible effort to keep it that way. Best, Mathsci (talk) 23:10, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not really in with his charge of eurocentricity. I for one believe the section on pan-european identity should stay, although it needs to be referenced.

The part about European diasporas outside of Europe, approached from a "colonialist" point of view, I'm much less hot about. Makes it sound like Europe's legacy to the world was colonialism (ugh!).

The sentence "The culture of Europe might better be described as a series of overlapping cultures." also absolutely needs attribution somewhere. Without it, it looks somewhere betwee OR and editorializing.

As you can see, I'm not against such a section per se, but I think it needs to be seriously reworked. Finding sources for the different statements is probably the best start. Just my tuppence, though; I certainly won't go to war over this.--Ramdrake (talk) 01:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it's best to say that during the Age of Discovery and later, European countries established settlements extensively elsewhere, spreading their languages and other aspects of European culture. The section is there to explain how and why European ethnic groups, with their languages and customs, spread throughout the world, and why people elsewhere consider themselves European (or of European descent). The effect on indigenous inhabitants during this period is a separate issue. I have started adding potential sources to the bibliography. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 06:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

My personal problem with this is that I don't know that there is such a thing as "European culture". These colonial powers spread aspects of their own cultures, but the resultant cultures were not clones of any specific European culture. Citiznes of the USA who speak English as a native language are not ethnically English, citizens of South and Central Amrican countries that speak Spanish are not ethnically Spanish, and citizens of Brazil are not ethnically Portugese. They may speak these languages, and some aspects of the colonial cultures may persist, but clearly these cultures are different and unique.

Another fundamental problem with this synthesis is that it attempts to portray ethnicity as if it is hierarchical, but exceptional claims require exceptional sources. I'm not saying that some European people do not identify to a certain degree as European, I sometimes identify as European to a certain extent, but that doesn't mean that I think that being Welsh represents a sub-set of a larger British or European ethnic identity, my European identity is not ethnic in origin. It may be possible to categorise languages hierarchically, but ethnicity and culture are not so neatly pigeonholed. Welshness is not a sub-identity of Britishness, Britishness is not a sub-identity of Europeaness.

There was an attempt about 18 months ago to turn the White people article into an ethnic group article byt User:Lukas19, with all sorts of edits trying to portray so called western "civilisation" as "white" and "European" as white. Someone pointed out that this is a white nationalist ploy, to portray white or European people as if they are somehow an "indigenous ethnic group". To me this looks suspiciously similar. we are bound by policies that require us to use verifiable sources and these apply to everyone. I do not think that WP:CN applies to contentious claims like this. Alun (talk) 07:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Vote at Fête nationale du Québec (Saint Jean Baptiste Day)

Hi, I've set up a vote to try and resolve this here. As you've commented on the issue already, I wanted to ensure you take the opportunity to vote. Gabrielthursday (talk) 01:10, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Race

I noticed that my edits were being reverted. Race is certainly a concept that has much credibility and a minority say that race is just a social concept. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rushlow (talk • contribs) 22:03, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Human

You mentioned that the sources are poor, but that section on human is not exclusively about dysgenics. There are articles on Science, an journal of considerable repute, that mention this finding, yet you are deleting the entire section. I am not in a mood to fight, but instead of accusing me of being another user to stifle me, why not talk about the validity or lack thereof, of what was changed. I think you are overreacting. Verwoerd (talk) 23:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Conga rats

"Conga rats!" is an old meme from the rec.arts.sf.fandom Usenet newsgroup, for a long time my online home. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:35, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

With musical accompaniment from Los Congueros de Hamelin! --Orange Mike | Talk 14:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Sphynx (cat)

I understand why you deleted it, but it did have a reference. I don’t know how to get this book (that I got the reference from) into the References. I would appreciate the help if you could help me. Although if you are wondering what the reference is it is the new encyclopedia of the cat.--Talon (talk) 14:41, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

you %$@!* crake!

How dare you change my edit! You POV-pushing crake! You know, I have not got many edits which makes me a newbie if you think about it hard wnough so STOP BITING ME!!! Slrubenstein | Talk 13:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay! Peace, pax, I give up! Before someone takes this to ArbCom!! ;-) Slrubenstein | Talk 14:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi

Excellent thanks, though it's always a bit weird going home to Wales, I'm never sure if I'm foreign there or here! Alun (talk) 19:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, here, you missed a nice debate about Dysgenics, and also missed Slrubenstein calling me a "crake" ;>>> --Ramdrake (talk) 20:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Soulscanner... again

I find Soulscanner has gone way over board, especially his most irrational (cynical even) behavior at National Patriotes Day which is nothing short of vandalism from where I stand. What should we do about it? Should we start by filling a solid WP:WQA on his behaviour? Or should we ignore it and just initiate the long dispute resolution process right away, patiently walking our way up the ladder until the naming conflict over Quebec's National Holiday is truly over? I am confident I can remain WP:COOL & WP:CALM, however it would really really help to have the guidance and assistance of a Experienced & Established Editor, whether you or anyone you recommend.

There is a limit to the abuse of the consensus policy: a single user cannot fight common sense, verifiable facts, reliable sources, and generally more knowledgeable users (on a given subject at least) anyway he pleases, don't you think? This is very tiring for all of us, and not to the advantage of Misplaced Pages and its goal which is the diffusion of knowledge.

Also, on a related "case", I personally feel we (common sense people who know at least some about Quebec) have failed to support the actions of User:Joeldl over the Quebecois page problem this past March, especially his patient work on demonstrating "the fundamentally territorial nature of Québécois (in French). In June, I found excellent sources by accident which I pointed out to him on his talk page. Unfortunately, he has been away from Misplaced Pages for a while and I do not know when he will come back. (His last edit is dated May 27, 2008.) C'est à suivre... :-)

-- Mathieugp (talk) 03:14, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Survey request

Hi, Ramdrake I need your help. I am working on a research project at Boston College, studying creation of medical information on Misplaced Pages. You are being contacted because you have been identified as an important contributor to one or more articles.

Would you will be willing to answer a few questions about your experience? We've done considerable background research, but we would also like to gather the insight of the actual editors. Details about the project can be found at the user page of the project leader, geraldckane. Survey questions can be found at geraldckane/medsurvey. Your privacy and confidentiality will be strictly protected!

The questions should only take a few minutes. I hope you will be willing to complete the survey, as we do value your insight. Please do not hesitate to contact me or Professor Kane if you have any questions. Thank You, BCproject (talk) 07:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Your comments in RfC/Elonka

I think diffs would be helpful. I can't find this type of involvement by Elonka in the article you mention. --Ronz (talk) 18:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! --Ronz (talk) 19:56, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I noticed you made a suggestion about how to handle problematic editors (the sort that try to push junk into articles) and while I'm not sure that the Misplaced Pages community is ready to approve something like Subject Matter Experts, I think I may be getting a better idea of what you're concerned with. If I'm understanding correctly, its about the difference between "no edit warring" and "no reverts" - while keeping people from edit warring is more about keeping the editing environment sane, saying "no reverts" may put a barrier in the way of keeping the content sane. I think part of the problem may be that for administrator's trying to help resolve some of these long standing disputes, its hard to tell who the good guys are sometimes - with everyone reverting, claiming that their pov is the right one and being a bit snippy with each other, you'd need to have a good knowledge of the subject to sort it all out. Like you said, the problem is most of the editors and administrators trying to help out aren't going to be experts and I'm not sure there's an easy way to fix that. Shell 10:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)