Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:49, 14 April 2009

Archives

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.

Abd is taking a short wikibreak and will be back on Misplaced Pages soon.

Notice to IP and newly-registered editors

IP and newly registered editors: due to vandalism, it has become necessary that this page be semiprotected, which may prevent you from leaving a message here. If you cannot edit this page, please leave me messages at User talk:Abd/IP.

WELCOME TO Abd TALK

WARNING: Reading the screeds, tomes, or rants of Abd has been known to cause serious damage to mental health. One editor, a long-time Wikipedian, in spite of warnings from a real-life organization dedicated to protecting the planet from the likes of Abd, actually read Abd's comments and thought he understood them.

After reading, his behavior became erratic. He proposed WP:PRX and insisted on promoting it. Continuing after he was unblocked, and in spite of his extensive experience, with many thousands of edits,he created a hoax article and actually made a joke in mainspace. When he was unblocked from that, he created a non-notable article on Easter Bunny Hotline, and was finally considered banned. What had really happened? His brain had turned to Slime mold (see illustration).

Caution is advised.

Edit ban on User:PJHaseldine

A permanent ban on my editing Lockerbie-related articles was imposed on 11 March 2009.

At the COI discussion, you advocated a temporary ban pending closer review as well as cautionary notices going to Socrates2008 and his partner Deon Steyn.

I raised these matters with Ed Johnston, which he dismissed saying they were simply your opinion (implying they were not to be taken seriously since "Administrators who enforce the ban are expected to use common sense"). It occurs to me that you might have something to say in response.

There seemed to be no support for a permanent ban when the issue was raised at the Adminstrators' noticeboard.

You might be interested to know how amazingly successful the concerted attack by Socrates and Deon Steyn has turned out to be. Two years ago, Deon added the Category:Conspiracy theories to the Alternative theories of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 article. Deon's move allowed Socrates to add the Category:Conspiracy theorists to my biography in January 2008. Then, less than three months ago, the title of the title of the Alternative theories article was converted to conspiracy theories without discussion.

Since the COI discussion on the two editors remains open, there's still time for you to help clip their wings.---PJHaseldine (talk) 12:05, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll look, PJH, and I take what you have written here as done in good faith, I intend to look at the situation. Because of my review of another topic ban, I've come to the conclusion that, pending review of your ban, it isn't utterly absolute, provided that you respect not only it, but the enforcement process as well, so if you are interested in making truly non-controversial edits to the article or the attached Talk page, ask me. However, you should abstain from any direct conflict. Asking someone else to review a situation, and to intervene on their own responsibility is, in my opinion, reasonable and not a ban violation. In fact, it may be better for such a request to take place on-wiki, because it could happen off-wiki through email without even being visible. However, extensive requests like this would be a violation of WP:CANVASS. Generally, I'd recommend only asking one or two editors to look at a situation, and probably only one at a time.

My goal generally is not to clip anyone's wings, but to help editors to fly right. As I'm sure you recognize, it's hard to fly right with your wings clipped. The fastest way for you to regain your editing privileges, assuming they have been restricted -- I haven't checked yet -- is to demonstrate cooperation with the community, and, if possible, with the other involved editors as well. I know that can be difficult, but it can also be well worth the effort. If you had been meticulous in this respect from the beginning, usually efforts to topic-ban a cautious and cooperative editor fail, and, indeed, the community's attention will be focused on any editor who proposes it, since such proposals often come from POV-pushers who are, themselves, not interested in cooperation. I assume I will comment more after investigation. Involving a neutral editor is, in fact, the next step in WP:DR whenever a conflict cannot be directly resolved.

As an SPA, you are vulnerable, and need take special care. SPAs are sometimes effectively topic banned as to the article, there is no clear boundary between WP:SPA and WP:COI. From the other side, experts in a field are often SPA or COI, so my view is that, while the community should set and maintain strict behavioral boundaries for such editors, we should also actively invite their participation in Talk pages, and attempt to moderate the disputes which arise. In my view, much damage has been done to the project and its reputation because of a lack of understanding of this, and experts have been rather badly treated. Many or most experts have, as a result of their extensive knowledge, a strong POV, as viewed from a general perspective, though not necessarily from within field. (When I've special knowledge in a field, I've been accused of POV-pushing when I've simply expressed what is well-known in the field, as I know through extensive off-wiki communication with others even more knowledgeable than myself, but which is not necessarily easy to prove from reliable source; without supporting RS, I can't incorporate such knowledge into articles, generally, but I should definitely be able to mention it on a Talk page without sanction.)--Abd (talk) 16:11, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

This is a revelation to me, Abd. I'd never heard of an SPA before or, at least, didn't know what it meant. I first came across SPA in Misplaced Pages Review in relation, funnily enough, to Socrates2008: "What I alluded to in the following post has been brought to the attention of WP:COIN by the S. African editor Socrates2008, who's turned into something of an SPA."

I'm digesting all your good advice. Many thanks.---PJHaseldine (talk) 17:32, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

SUCI Page regarding

Dear Admins, another puppet of User:Kuntan has appeared. It is User:59.91.254.3. Please check the discussion page of User:William M. Connolley. This puppet has challenged every one to go for another range block. I don't know what a range block is, but it seems that he is going to continue his miscreant efforts. --Radhakrishnansk (talk) 08:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Dear Admin, can I then remove those edits made by this IP range user from the articles that he has edited? Many have expressed concern that those edits are to mutilate the image of this organization for what ever reason he has for it. --Radhakrishnansk (talk) 12:12, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not an administrator. However, yes, you may revert edits from the range to the articles of interest, unless they could reasonably be considered to be from someone else. I suggest you not remove good edits, in your judgment, but you do not have to review edits for quality; and note that if any registered editor reverts them back in, you should leave them alone (and engage civilly and with assumption of good faith with the registered editor if you think the edits are a problem). If there are many such IP edits or other vandalism or clearly inappropriate edits to an article, you can request page semiprotection at WP:RfPP. Do not argue or debate with the editor, remove the edits with a comment like "rv banned User:Kuntan." Be careful about one thing. If anyone warns you about 3RR violation (making more than 3 reverts in 24 hours to a single article is a "bright line," and you might be blocked for it), stop and engage in discussion -- not with the IP editor, you may ignore warnings from that IP range), do not continue. Ask for help. I removed some edits from this IP to your Talk page, as I assume you know. You can remove edits from anyone to your Talk page, with few exceptions, but avoid insulting anyone, including this IP editor. I did not remove edits where a registered editor had responded. That's one reason not to respond to a banned editor.

If this editor were sincere in wanting to improve the encyclopedia, he or she would register an account and make useful edits and follow guidelines and policy, avoiding the articles where there has been a problem. After a lapse of time, the editor could return to the article, and, as long as the edits don't show the kind of disruption that was involved with this IP, it would be fine. In other words, even leopards can return, if they will change their spots. --Abd (talk) 13:29, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Good advice, Abd. Very thorough. (I'm not an admin either.) Except does this user also need advice on where to get the attention of admins for a problem like this? (e.g. WP:AN/I, Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations) Or maybe that's already being taken care of for this case. I don't know. by the way, User:William M. Connolley is an admin. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Of course, well aware of it. He's famous for it, in fact, with notice in media. The user has been to AN/I already. Good start, given his position, but not really necessary any more. Thanks, Coppertwig. --Abd (talk) 15:14, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I have reverted the edits made by User:Kuntan puppets as per the direction.--Radhakrishnansk (talk) 16:26, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

If you find yourself likely to go over 1-2 reverts per 24 hour period, ask for help. You can ask me or anyone who is familiar with the situation. Blocking the specific IP is probably a waste of time, except that it creates a record of admin support for enforcing the ban. There may be a page where reports of IP being used by this banned editor can be accumulated, if I have time, I'll look for it, it will make it all easier and less risky to you. If you ask William M. Connolley or any other admin familiar with the situation, they can decide to block, and they can also semiprotect the page, which prevents edits from IP and newly-registered editors, which will reduce the ability of the banned editor to edit. You can also go at any time to WP:RfPP and report the edits. Be very careful not to assert content issues or to attack the editor. The editor is banned, not condemned, by reverting edits you are simply assisting the community in enforcing what it has already decided.

If you make a mistake and remove edits from someone who, possibly, is not the editor, apologize immediately. (There is no harm in apologizing to Kuntan, should that happen, Kuntan quite likely would be much happier if you insist on some weak identification and get blocked for edit warring or incivility if for some reason a decision goes against you. Administrators make mistakes, as does anyone.) Do not edit war with anyone reasonably asserting that they are not Kuntan, but ask for help and independent judgment.

Do not treat an edit by this editor as an emergency, Misplaced Pages is constantly vandalized and sometimes vandalism isn't noticed for a while. Just deal with it as efficiently and with as little fuss as you can; I'll watch the article and if I miss it (my watchlist can get a tad busy) you can always point a situation out to me here or by email. A banned editor will probably relish any disruption created and especially any criticism of your work, so don't feed the monster, be careful, and share the burden.

When you see an edit by IP that is probably Kuntan, look at the contributions of this IP. Sometimes you will see old contributions, or occasionally even a recent one, that isn't Kuntan, that's because these IP addresses are shared. That's why admins will be reluctant to simply block the whole IP range that Kuntan has access to, it will cause collateral damage; but sometimes if there is enough disruption, they will indeed block the range, it's a question of balancing the one harm against the other. So do glance at the edits and I'd suggest leaving in anything that seems harmless. Banning is to protect the project from vandalism, incivility, and other problems, not to punish the editor, and not to prevent helpful edits. You may revert without examination any edit which is clearly this editor's. An example would be if the editor makes many edits in a row from the same IP. If the first and last edits are Kuntan, from content, you can assume that all the others in between are also Kuntan, and quickly undo them. Installing a semi-automated editor, the kind used on vandalism patrol, can make this very efficient, such that you -- or anyone -- can remove the edits of this editor faster than they can be made.

Now the other side. Kuntan, if you read this and you think you got a raw deal, back when, I'm willing to look at it. If you think that there is a specific problem with editors you've been complaining about, you won't fix it by doing what you have been doing. I have a page, User talk:Abd/IP that is kept open and unprotected for use by IP editors, and if you make a civil complaint there, I will investigate it and see if I can help. If you charge other editors with misconduct, include specific evidence that I can verify. Don't worry if you are reverted there, by anyone (including me), I will read whatever is put there from History. I don't always see it immediately, so be patient. I have been advising R based on general principles, and not with any decision about content or other editors or even R. You are banned, and thus expected to refrain from editing, period. The more you defy this, the more firmly your ban becomes cemented in place. If you really believe what you have been saying, you've been going about it in a seriously mistaken way. Change your attitude, and you might be much more effective. Bans can be reversed if the editor reverses their attitude and becomes cooperative. --Abd (talk) 19:16, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Dear User:Abd thankyou for the clear advice. I will follow the same and refrain from doing edits on the same page more than twice in a day. I was also adviced by some experienced editors through email that I need not respond to the comments of User: Kuntan. So here after I will not respond to him, but will intimate other concerned editors the moment that I see him creating more trouble. He simply is not civilised. I checked his history and the history of his puppets. He has over years (at least since 2006) abused a number of other editors. Unfortunate that these people cannot be stopped completely from Wiki editing. Thankyou once again. --Radhakrishnansk (talk) 22:24, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

As an example of what you should avoid: "He simply is not civilised." It doesn't matter if he's civilized or not. He's banned, end of question. Civilized, banned, revert edits. Uncivilized, banned, revert edits. You may do more than two reverts in a day, but by the time it's two, you should be asking for help with WP:RfPP or another editor to do some of the reverting, etc. Suppose he makes ten edits to an article before you find it. I have rollbacker privilege; for this kind of application I could revert those 10 edits with a single click. If you do it and you don't have rollback, you'd have to make 10 undos. (Note that consecutive reverts count as one for the purposes of WP:3RR). (You could also install Twinkle, which simulates rollback but which is harder on the servers and takes longer.) Just be careful. (One of the nice things about Twinkle is that you can request page protection with one click and entering a few options, very fast.) --Abd (talk) 22:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Edits by Kuntan

I was just tracing the edits made by Kuntan and his puppets. I kept on removing all that where ever it seemed that he was using abusive language or was dragging IPs of institutions into conflict. Sorry if it is inappropriate. --Radhakrishnansk (talk) 00:20, 16 March 2009 (UTC) I will change it all back to the previous state.--Radhakrishnansk (talk) 00:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

No. STOP NOW!. --Abd (talk) 00:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay...as you suggest. I was waiting for your reply--Radhakrishnansk (talk) 00:25, 16 March 2009 (UTC) Sure...I will then not search any further into the history of this User:Kuntan--Radhakrishnansk (talk) 00:27, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Cold fusion

I posted a message at Talk:Cold fusion with a link to a comment of yours which was deleted from that talk page. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 20:26, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Coppertwig. How did you like my self-revert, eh? Look below at the comment from Verbal. Just imagine, we could have been savaging each other at AN/I! Would that have been more fun? hmmmm....

No. --Abd (talk) 22:15, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Cold fusion talk

Thanks for understanding my edits to the talk page, and by further helping by collapsing a section. What do you think of the subpage idea? I personally, and I think generally, it is usually considered better to be more concise in posting than is your style. You can post as you wish, but I would ask you to try and cut down on the length a bit - sometimes this does mean ignoring a meta-meta discussion, or focusing on only one thing, but you can always return to the other topics later. For example, you don't need to keep defending other editors - if you find yourself repeating just note a diff ("See here for why I think you're wrong about X") or a section or subpage of your userspace. Sometimes meaning can get lost in excessive verbiage, a la Sir Humphrey. However, you can edit as you wish (within reason!) I hope you take this in the constructive way it is intended and as an olive branch. Yours, Verbal chat 20:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Verbal. No problem. You should understand that I have a problem: to condense what I write -- I have a lot to say on these topics -- takes me much longer. I can condense it, and I do when it's polemic, but normally I don't have time. You are certainly welcome to help us all stay focused. Indeed, that's what I'm trying to do there right now. This field, though, has suffered from a long period of tendentious editing and there are lots of issues to be faced. It will settle down, I predict. --Abd (talk) 20:44, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Haseldine

Thanks for the note on his talk page. Yes, you're right, I do want to do what's best for the project, hence the reason I initiated the two COI cases against him. This is also why I supported a CheckUser against the SPA account that's been harassing him. However he's been openly abusive towards me throughout, and I think I've endured this longer than many others would have. I'm finding it difficult right now to go out of my way for him while he's directing insults back at me, and while he has the impression that it's all personal. So for now, I'd prefer to take a passive role in monitoring these articles and make a contribution to the project in another way by getting on with the articles I've submitted for GA and FA. Socrates2008 (Talk) 03:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Certainly I understand. His behavior is quirky, I'll say I don't understand it yet. However, my goal is solutions, and I highly recommend letting go of what has passed, it may make it easier for him to let go as well. Hence the suggestion that, if you see a self-reverted edit, know that it is an attempt to cooperate with the community. You can help by encouraging that. The edit in question was slightly more complicated than a spelling correction, so if something is too much for you to deal with in the time you have, just ignore it. But if it's simple, is my point, why not just say, "Okay, this is good." Click. Done. Agreeing with people when they are right is an aspect of civility, very important in restoring civility when it has broken down.

As you can tell, I'm not about to tolerate incivility from Haseldine. As I wrote, if that is maintained, the positive contributions he can make are outweighed, and he'll be blocked. By all means, do what is of most interest to you. He asked you to look at his edit. I got to it first, I got the edit count increment.... not that this matters. A better answer than rejection would have been no answer at all. "If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all."

Good luck with your articles. --Abd (talk) 03:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, point taken. Socrates2008 (Talk) 07:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

UofA section #1356234 ..

Hi!  :-). Eh, question, did you ever get an answer from UofA (I recall you sent them mails)? Let me guess: No, they are too busy with promoting their marginally notable organisation. --Dirk Beetstra 08:57, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Special:AbuseFilter/36. --Dirk Beetstra 09:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, AGF is a good idea in general, not just for registered editors! However, as you know, AGF doesn't mean that we don't take a firm stand, it merely means that we avoid assuming a bad motive, at the same time as we act to protect the encyclopedia from inappropriate edits. UofA is an ambitious school, it is very difficult to get something like that going legitimately.

Consider this: they have competitors and disgruntled "customers," as do we. We really don't know that the IP edits are coming from someone hired by them. How about this: they hired an SEO, then realized that it was a mistake and refused to pay. The SEO says, okay, if that's the way they will be, we will still do this part of our job. The part that gets them blacklisted.

My point is not that this is what is happening, necessarily, but that it could be happening, and we shouldn't get our pants twisted over imagining the evil spammers, fangs dripping with the innocent blood of unsuspecting readers. We simply protect. Professional police, the healthy ones, that's what they do. They will be nice to you as they cart you off to jail, and will only harm you to protect themselves or others (including you) if you attack them physically. Friend of mine gave the finger to a cop who had given him a speeding ticket and wasn't nice about it. Dangerous? Yes. Some police aren't professional. However, all that happened was that the officer turned red, steamed a little, then got back in his patrol car and drove off. My friend is a lawyer and ex-cop. If the officer had been unprofessional, probably that would have been the end of that officer's career. But it's not clear that the citing officer knew that.

The UofA site is now blacklisted except for the home page. That's fine. If a need appears for another page, it can be whitelisted, and if it appears that the risk of spamming is over, the whole site might be delisted. But I'd see two conditions necessary for that. One would be explicit acknowledgment from the school that they will cooperate with efforts to stop linkspam or inappropriate editing on their behalf, and the other would be that a need has appeared as shown by another whitelisted page that is actually used and stable. Otherwise it's not worth considering.

Thanks for discussing this. It's a good example, actually. How much harm was done by delisting? Very little, I'd say, most of the "wasted time" was spent discussing process, which isn't wasted if it leads to more efficient process in the future. --Abd (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

True. Though if they do not reply, I suspect that they did not (yet) say that the SEO should stop (but we will never know). If the SEO will go on after not being payed that would be a Joe Job .. with different things to do with it. I think I will now shift from blacklisting/revertlisting to using the abuse filter (just see how it goes and if it works properly). I think it can keep out a lot of collateral damage (and when I see the filter is working in this case, we can again consider to de-blacklist the whole site)! --Dirk Beetstra 15:12, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Given the lack of response from UofA so far, I would put anything to do with them way on the back burner. I also posted to User talk:Amithani which is almost certainly an account of one of the corporate officers. No response. So, basically, do the minimum, as little as nothing. There is no demonstrated need for a link to other pages besides the home page; until someone needs that and requests it, the status quo is just fine. As you know, I'd like to semiprotect the whitelist page, plus, probably, routinely deny requests from obvious SPAs there, even if they aren't automatically prevented from making a request on that page. A new page would be set up for whitelisting requests from IP or new editors or SPAs, and admins wouldn't even need to look at this page. A registered user, not an SPA, would need to approve one of those requests and transfer it to the regular whitelisting page. Requests on the IP/blacklist page would be routinely denied without prejudice if no registered non-SPA account appears to close them by transfer. Essentially, they would be autoarchived. End of need to respond to obviously bad whitelist requests. Delisting should be requested as a whitelist request for the entire site. Again, less fuss for blacklist volunteers. A registered user, not an SPA, closing a whitelist request, would transfer it to a section to be implemented by an admin; certain users would become known as reliable to certain admins, who would probably routinely implement these requests with little fuss. The focus of the whitelist is content, not linkspamming or spam. Content is more important than preventing spam, and only if some conflict appears would there need to be a broader discussion. And in a case like that, it's quite likely that some more intelligent response -- such as a bot -- would be best instead of the blunt instrument of blacklist/whitelist.

As an example, suppose some class of edit, identifiable by bot, happens often, often enough that some substantial percentage of these edits is a bad edit (more than half?). But some of them might be good. If they are bot-reverted, and this is flagged in some way, the edits can be taken back in very quickly and efficiently. Poor man's Flagged Revisions, actually, requiring some kind of "sighting" to get possibly problematic content into mainspace. Bot operation is subject to consensus and the usual safeguards. We need both efficiency and intelligent decision, minimally disruptive, regarding content.

What this would do is to create a default exclusion of certain kinds of material. So what if, perhaps, good material is excluded? Suppose nobody is paying attention, and a good edit is missed, that could easily happen with a class of edits where most of them are bad, as with a spam filter, where an isolated good mail that happens to trigger the edit gets missed in the flood of garbage. What it would taken, then, is for some IP editor who wants to get this edit in -- and the bot can automatically notify -- to ask a regular editor to fix it. Any regular editor willing to take responsibility. A user category could make it easy to find editors willing to do this review. The vast majority of real spammers or vandals won't even bother asking, it would be a fast way to get blocked.

The key is to harness the broad community, to spread the load, to make it easy. The result would be not only more efficient, but more clearly reflect broad consensus. --Abd (talk) 16:44, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I indeffed the users, but am expecting new users any minute .. the nice thing about the abuse filter is that even if an edit is blocked, we can see what was attempted. And then the filter can be adapted to allow for such edits, or to do the edit. It is in any form way less bitey then indeed blacklisting links, protecting pages or blocking editors (in which case we would never see if good edits were attempted). The rule I applied was deemed too broad, but I am going to try and put it back in a slightly different form, I think. --Dirk Beetstra 11:26, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I have enabled warning in Special:AbuseFilter/36. Editors in the two used ranges, and unestablished editors now get MediaWiki:Abusefilter-advertising, having the choice still to save the edit. If they persist, I am going to tweak the system, create a second rule that blocks the edits from the IPs, and from specific users on these articles. It would in all cases be less disruptive than blocking the accounts, protecting the article or blacklisting the links (and I am curious if the filter can be used to do this in a proper way too, it could help us with a lot of problems in the future). --Dirk Beetstra 10:30, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

You know, the guidelines and instructions for the blacklist pages suggest that measures short of blacklisting should be used, including the use of bots. So, congratulations on going that way. Bot reversion is far more flexible, I have very little objection to it, especially if it is easy to review, and it is certainly easy to undo. I'd say that when a bot reverts an IP editor, a notice should be dropped on the Talk page. The notice should explain what to do if the user thinks the link is appropriate, such as suggesting it on the article Talk page. Bots can be far more focused and specific, they can prevent the anonymous or new-editor addition of links to, say, articles, but let them be for talk pages. Or if Talk page links are clearly abused for true spamming (which is by definition unrelated and nearly always useless), then the bot can be expanded in application, but, still responsible editors can add links. And lose their right to edit if they abuse it. It's far more efficient than the blunt instrument of the blacklists, once the proper tools are in place. Thanks. I'm not exercised about what happens to University of Atlanta, but ... we should not punish our readers for the actions of bad apples. If it's notable, it gets an article. It then gets a link to its web site. But it does not get to control its own article; I suggested to Amithani that if there were any problems with the article, that he ask for help on the Talk page. He ignored that. Too bad for him. I have no big investment that depends on his cooperation. --Abd (talk) 21:47, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Accusation of incivility

Perhaps you missed it, but Kirk Shanahan has politely requested that you explain your claim that his edits were uncivil. (You also claimed he was making "gratuitous inflammatory remarks".) Given the seriousness of the accusations you made, I would hope that you would respond to his request for clarification.--Noren (talk) 07:47, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be some mistake here, Noren. Please read the edit. It describes the collective behavior of two editors who were going back and forth. It did not make the specific allegation you mention against one of them. When you have two people going back and forth like that, and say that one of them is being uncivil, there is a good chance the other is, as well, only possibly more subtly. This was not a "serious" accusation, in that I didn't seek any action against either of them, and then I suggested that there might be value in their discussion, so, please, would they refactor their comments under a new section, this time taking care to avoid gratuitous inflammatory remarks. Consider this an informal warming regarding civility. An informal warning is not "serious." If I warned one of the editors on their Talk page, that's serious, because it can be the last stop before a block.

This was not a claim that Shanahan had made gratuitous inflammatory remarks. It was a claim that such remarks had been made in their discussion, and I'm trying to encourage both of them to participate in a more useful process.

I could easily make a judgment that one of them behaved more badly than the other, but, then, I'd be less effective trying to calm things down.

I did say that the editors had been exchanging "derisive comments." I have that impression. It might have been inaccurate. I make mistakes. I can say that if someone says something like this about a debate I've been involved in, I generally consider it moot. I want Misplaced Pages to become a friendlier place, and that would include improving my own behavior. Many, many things, far, far more serious, have been said about what I've done and am doing and nothing came of it. I'll take edit warring to a noticeboard, but not incivility directed against me. Sometimes when it's directed at someone else, I might, if I think it's doing damage.

Now, is it worthwhile, my going back over that debate to find why I considered Shanahan's comments to be part of the problem, not exclusively the other editor? Does it matter? What if he isn't? What would we do differently? The section was collapsed. Nobody challenged that. Why, Noren, are you asking me to waste time like this? If Shanahan remains exercised, he knows where my Talk page is and he is more than welcome here, I have no problem with him, personally, and I've been assisting him, I'd say. I had planned to respond to him. What, exactly, is the rush?

In any case, I responded there. The next step is up to Kirk. --Abd (talk) 17:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be some mistake here, Abd. Please read the edit. It describes the behavior of two editors who were going back and forth. It makes the specific allegation I mentioned against both of them. When you have two people going back and forth like that, and say that one of them starts to be particularly uncivil, there is a good chance the other may be provoked as well, even if only so far as frankly describing the uncivil behavior of the other. Instead of analyzing the issue and giving a measured response, or declining to respond accusations, you flatly accused both of them of wrongdoing and collapsed the discussion. Though he has asked you to explain your accusation, you seem to want to make him jump through your hoops before you answer the question he posed to you.

I didn't find your accusations to be convincing, but of course I also could have been mistaken about that- perhaps you saw something there that I did not, or perhaps you thought one or more of his more confrontational later statements had crossed the line rather stopping just short. I would have hoped that you would have responded if you had been aware of his request, so I pointed it out to you. Rather than giving a direct response to his simple question, you instead chose to dodge his question entirely and go off on a tangent justifying your own behavior.

If you were serious in your civility complaint, I would have thought that you would have had a specific behavior of his in mind and that you would have been pleased to explain in response to his direct question. That would be the civil response to a request that you clarify a criticism- indeed, clarifying an unclear criticism may be the only way to make the process worthwhile. Vague, unexplained accusations shed smoke and heat but no light.

This is not the only recent instance of your incivility toward Kirk Shanahan, your recent accusation of wikilawyering against him for what was a straightforward objection based on the quality of the source. While he should perhaps no longer be considered a new user, it may be a bit premature to start tossing accusations of wikilawyering at someone with a few hundred edits.

Please tone down your accusatory tone and assume good faith about Kirk. I would hope not to lose his input on this topic. More generally, it would also be helpful if you were to tone down rhetoric portraying the situation as being adversarial and of particular editors being on one 'side' or the other. --Noren (talk) 06:35, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Noren, in the absence of complaint from Shanahan, bug off. I did not make a "civility complaint." You did, about me, but only here, which I don't mind in itself. I took action to defuse a disruptive or potentially disruptive interchange, I did not "complain" about it, I described it in terms that deliberately avoided specific allegations. As to the "wikilawyering," this was a friendly comment, pointing out that a technical argument was being used to exclude one source, and I could go on, but, frankly, this is probably all moot and not worth discussing. If Shanahan has a problem, he is very, very welcome here. However, absent evidence of that, your intervention here is suspect. He asked a question, true, but doesn't seem to be exercised about it, and answering that question could do more harm than good, especially if his question wasn't more than a transient response. WTF are you doing?

Absolutely, if Shanahan wants an answer to that question, all he has to do is repeat it, here, or ask again in the article Talk page and I will answer on his Talk page. I should fill up Cold fusion Talk discussing his behavior? --Abd (talk) 00:29, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Now, I did respond, briefly, on the Talk page. I cited it above, based on your request. What more would you expect? --Abd (talk) 00:34, 21 March 2009

Stimulating discussion on open source notability

Hi there, I'm back after a Wiki-vacation! I've added some meaningful suggestions to User:Abd/Open_Source_notability I'm looking for a forum on Misplaced Pages to attract people to the subject (e.g., A request for comments on tech articles) -- LirazSiri (talk) 01:28, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Your edit-summary at

Please consider a retraction of your edit summary, even if it was intended as humour.LeadSongDog (talk) 14:08, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I've wanted to know for a long time how to fix an edit summary. Please help me with that. How would I do it?

I considered it, on your request, and I'd strike it if I could, simply because you requested it, but I rather doubt that this would be worth having an admin remove the edit from history. Uh, I take "mood-altering drugs" -- legally, of course -- and I suggest it to someone? It wasn't humor. It was straight. Quite a few of us might benefit! Please look at the context, see what I was responding to. --Abd (talk) 16:46, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Mail

Go check your e-mail. :) Fritzpoll (talk) 15:50, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Ping Fritzpoll (talk) 09:40, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Gotcha. --Abd (talk) 21:37, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Request feedback on article

Dear Abd. I've rewritten the article at User:Abd/TurnKey Linux and added reliable sources (the non-english sources are in the talk page). I also opened a RfC but so far no one has commented. Could you take a look and give me some feedback? Thanks! LirazSiri (talk) 08:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I will when I can. I did make a comment on the Talk page, but that was more about process. As to RfCs, be patient. You can also request comment from specific editors, if it is only a couple of them. Don't violate WP:CAVASS; in this case, it's more about not "spamming," rather than about possible undue influence. If you decide to do this, choose experienced editors, high edit count, good apparent reputation (you should be able to tell from the Talk page), and, in this case, knowledge of Linux would be a plus. I have very little; on the other hand, knowing little may allow me to simulate an evil, fangs dripping with blood, rabid deletionist position, i.e., "devil's advocate." If the article is solid, various creatures like that (who serve a useful purpose in the overall scheme of things) will not be attracted. --Abd (talk) 21:42, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Disputed speedy deletes automatically should go to AfD

If I understand them properly, I agree wholeheartedly with your comments that any disputed speedy deletes ought to go to AfD. I was involved in the TurnKey Linux thing in VPP and it absolutely blew my mind that those involved did not appear to understand how incredibly corrupt it looks for a bunch of administrators to repeatedly force an article into the speedy delete process bypassing AfD.

So is there anything we can do to try to inculcate a guideline / policy along those lines - that disputed speedy deletes need to go AfD automatically? Is there already a discussion of that underway somewhere? I haven't even searched, I wanted to hear your thoughts.

P.S. Am I correctly interpreting hints in your user page indicating that you're a Sufi? If so, Sufism is awesome, as is Islam in general. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 10:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll get myself into trouble. I don't call myself a Sufi, but some Sufis are awesome because they are like me. I do call myself a muslim because I meet the technical requirements; we have from the tradition, "Do not say that you are mu'min, but that you are muslim." "Mu'min" is usually translated as "believer," but it really meant someone who trusts in God, or Reality, or Truth, whatever name you want to use for it. Do I trust? I can look at my life and say, "Here I didn't, there I didn't. Sometimes I want to trust, sometimes I did. Times when I clearly trusted when it was tested have been the peak experiences of my life." To trust in Reality, and trust is a condition of the heart, not a profession or credo, is a goal, often difficult for us. "Muslim" means only that one has accepted certain things when they became clear, or even that one accepted for other reasons. End of khutbah. I used to be a Muslim chaplain at San Quentin State Prison; with only a few exceptions, that was the only congregation foolish enough to let me handle that ritual. Captive audience. --Abd (talk) 15:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Greetings, Struth. I disagree that disputed speedies necessarily have to go to AfD. The Wikipedian "consensus" system doesn't necessarily mean unanimity. If a speedy is contested by someone who seems to misunderstand the CSD criteria, and if the article appears to be an obvious speedy candidate, it can be speedy-deleted. Articles can be speedied during AfD: if they meet the speedy criteria, an admin can decide to speedy them, and this often happens. WP:Deletion says "Administrators can delete such pages on sight, even if contested as below." I believe articles can be speedied during an AfD even if there have been some "keep" votes; however, WP:CSD says that if an article has survived a deletion discussion it can't be speedied.

A lot of users spend a lot of time judging articles at AfD, and there's a shortage of users doing that: some articles get too few comments. Getting the obvious speedies out of the way helps save time and concentrate effort on the other AfD discussions. According to WP:Deletion, approximately 5,000 pages are deleted per day. It could be overwhelming if all contested speedy deletions were sent to AfD. However, it says that contested speedies can be taken to DRV.

In the end, though, it's the consensus of the community that decides. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 11:58, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Coppertwig. SB, I agree with Coppertwig that it shouldn't be automatic, however, the only question on a DRV for a speedy deletion would be whether or not the article meets speedy deletion criteria. If not, then the speedy should be reversed. I do not agree, again, that it should then automatically go to AfD. Rather, anyone who wants to file the AfD can then do so. Basically, the principle I operate under is for discussion to not take place on a scale beyond a handful of editors at most, with community process (such as XfD, RfC, AN or AN/I, etc.) only taking place when such small-scale discussion is inadequate to find consensus, and the matter is considered sufficiently important to open it to the community. Right now, that means one user willing to go to the hassle of filing an AfD. In the long term, I suggest, XfD should be like RfC/User: two editors would be required to sign on that they attempted to deal with an issue through WP:DR and that was either impossible or failed to find consensus.

Using DRV to determine consensus on notability, beyond the basic speedy criterion on that, is the wrong forum. That should be AfD. --Abd (talk) 14:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Coppertwig: I understand the concerns about the shortage of users hanging around AfD. But it seems to me that if there are enough users paying attention to collaborate in forcing something into the speedy delete process there ought to be enough users to comment on the same issue in an AfD.

The problem is, if an article has already been deleted and there's a DRV on it or there was a DRV on it for a few hours then in all likelihood only admins have actually been able to examine it. I had to look at the TurnKey Linux article through the Google cache of it that LirazSiri found. That is NOT the outcome being decided by the consensus of the community - it's the rest of us being forced to trust the judgment of the admin part of the community, coincidentally forced to do so through the use of admin tools.

It just does not make any sense at all why something would have to be repeatedly forced into a speedy deletion. I don't see any reason why the admins who would spend all their effort on the speedy delete and DRVs of speedy deletion couldn't simply spend the same effort within an AfD, except that they want to get their way and they don't want to have to be patient. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 08:41, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the heading of this section. Generally correct, with a few exceptions, such as apparent bad faith objections. For instance, if somebody creates an obvious attack page against a living person, they don't get to dispute its speedy deletion at AfD. Jehochman 09:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict with below edit by Coppertwig)Well, except for "automatic," I agree. Essentially, admin speedy deletes. Editor objects at DRV. Okay, did the article fit speedy criteria? That should be the discussion. "Not sufficiently notable," quite simply, should be a disregarded argument. "Sources not reliable" is stronger, but as long as there are sources that might be usable or sufficiently reliable, as long as the material appears roughly verifiable, it's out of the speedy category and into AfD. It's very difficult to debate the notability of a topic without seeing the article! What happens, if the article remains deleted during discussion, is that people !vote based on inadquate knowledge, far too often. They !vote because they trust the deleting admin. They !vote because they are inclusionist or deletionist. They! vote because they do a shallow search and don't find anything. These ones, at least, tried! Once someone is contesting it, it should be deletion for clear speedy-satisfying reasons. Speedy deletion criteria deliberately avoid marginal notability.

However, this is insufficient process, still. I think that DRV should be like RfC/User: A DRV should be made as a proposal, perhaps on a page for that, and it should not be opened unless certified by a user in good standing, probably an autoconfirmed user, perhaps with some edit count restrictions. The user certifies that (1) the undeletion request is reasonable, and (2) a good-faith attempt has been made to resolve the dispute directly with the deleting admin and the deleting admin has refused to undelete or, alternatively, to recuse (i.e., to not oppose undeletion by another admin). In a speedy deletion by JzG, I requested undeletion, and he refused, but he also stepped out of the way, so a request to another admin did the trick. I would also interpret lack of response by an admin to a reasonable request from an editor, maintained for a week, to be recusal.

In all this, we may need better "hierarchy." We currently have three basic levels: IP or newly-registered editors, auto-confirmed editors, administrators. (Higher privilege levels aren't relevant here). We need a level between autoconfirmed and admin. There could be several ways to create this level, I won't go into it here, but suffice it to say that it should not be difficult to obtain the privilege, unless there is major opposition, and it should also not be difficult to lose it. Frivolous requests or actions. This level could be the same as having the ability to modify Flags (which is just such an intermediate level), but it might also have different requirements, simplicity might argue for identity of the two, I haven't been following the latest on that.

Bottom line, this level is a more restricted group, designed to have a large active membership, but also having privileges that can be lost if abused.

If the consent of an editor with this privilege is necessary, then editors who don't have the privilege merely face the task of finding one with it to agree and take responsibility for a desired action.

In a purely peer structure, in traditional deliberative environments, a motion must be seconded before debate opens.

The article that started this was a subject of marginal notability. To my mind, it didn't meet speedy criteria.

Here is the evidence:

• User:Abd/TurnKey Linux
• speedy nomination as 'spam' by IP editor

Editor locates to Portugal. Also tagged NUbuntu.

Edits to List of Ubuntu-based distributions from this range:

Related IP with second edit above was a vandal same day as editing Ubuntu-related articles. IP contributions

• revision as of speedy.
• logs for page
• There was a first DRV, withdrawn by the nominator (the page creator).
• page log showing deletion of user copy of page (this is mentioned later). Admin is not only speedying article, but prevents user work on the page in user space.
• last edit in a problematic exchange on JzG Talk
• 2nd deletion review
• Closure by Spartaz. * TurnKey Linux – Deletion Endorsed Once nominators resort to personal attacks on good faith users contributing to the discussion we close them because DRV is not a platform to attack other users. There is a clear consensus supporting this deletion and, if you want to bring this back, you will need much better sourcing then what you have come up with here. – Spartaz Humbug! 18:08, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Head-scratching. The DRV is dense with bad arguments, including notability arguments not at the speedy criterion level. Speaking as an uninvolved user, I am surprised at the incivility of a number of the people arguing for deletion. This thing appears to have some valid sources and references that could be used, and thus, cannot be deleted under CSD. Thus, Overturn and list at AFD. Jtrainor (talk) 18:03, 10 February 2009 (UTC) The close by Spartaz was clearly improper: it made article survival dependent on the alleged behavior of a user, and it confirmed a speedy deletion based on a need for "better sourcing," when some editors clearly believed sourcing was at least marginal. The purpose of speedy deletion is to avoid debate over clear deletions. The assumption of some editors appeared to be that a review of a speedy deletion should address the ultimate notability question, which is a fundamental error. However, having said that, the best way forward is not, at this point, another DRV or further dispute resolution process. Rather, it is to find consensus that the article is ready for a return to mainspace, among those actually working on the article as it sits, userfied.

• Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_61#Notability_criteria_for_entries_on_free_software_projects.3F is how I noticed the situation, and I commented there on the IP edits as the basis for the speedy deletion by the admin.
• The more I look into this, the more worms are crawling out of the can. Must stop for the moment! --Abd (talk) 13:31, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Struth, I suggest that before taking an article to DRV that you ask an admin to userfy it. That way it can be seen by everyone during the DRV. If it's an attack page or something then that might not be possible, but in most cases I think an admin would userfy it, especially if you tell them it's so that it can be viewed (and edited) during DRV. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 13:02, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure. In fact, even though it had become clear to me that there was a problem with the DRV, I had the article userfied to my space. It should be realized that, before the second DRV, the one filed by SB, the article was userfied, but was speedy deleted from the user space of the creating editor. There was extensive abuse of process here. Speedy is designed for non-contentious deletions. Using it to pursue personal opinions is a problem. --Abd (talk) 13:37, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

That's why I didn't bother asking for it to be userfied again: the people who wanted it deleted were speedy-deleting userfied copies of it too and I have no interest in facing off with someone using admin tools in that situation. Why should I have to be patient, careful, and thorough and follow process at all if the admins don't feel they need to?

This whole sort of thing just needs to go into AfD or some other process where there are specified time durations and everything doesn't depend on the judgment of impatient, bitchy admins with questionable degrees of impartiality. Same amount of effort on everyone's part (perhaps even less, actually), just delayed by five days and process and propriety can be followed. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 23:55, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I see. Yeah, it looks like there were problems with process there. And I guess admins have to be careful doing speedy deletions, because it's a lot of power in the hands of one individual. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:16, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

On what grounds were they deleting the userfied copies? Were they deleting the page as a routine administrative action or is there evidence that they were "involved"? ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:48, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I've seen no evidence of involvement. My comment would be that the issue is, here, not one of involvement, per se, but rather of approach and style, and, further, a habit of, once a decision has been made, continuing to discover reasons why it was the right decision, while being unable to see reasons why it wasn't. This is a fairly common human dysfunction, it is one which often afflicts Wikipeida, and it's particularly pernicious where power is concentrated into the hands of a person prone to that, even more so when the person is persuasive and habitually trusted without independent investigation. --Abd (talk) 04:58, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

If I recall correctly (I haven't gone and checked), the person who deleted it from LirazSiri's user space was that JzG fellow, also the one who speedy deleted the mainspace article for the 2nd time. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 01:34, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

That's correct. However, my strong suggestion is to stay away from the person thing. However, if it interests you, watch User:Abd/Notices, as well as my Talk page.

Heh heh, well I must say that's not surprising.

But it wasn't just him, though: this is something that was openly discussed in VPP. I was staggered by the apparent number of admins who either didn't understand the ethics and process problems involved, or were straight-up endorsing the violation of process - all just for the sake of denying LirazSiri a procedural deletion of his article.

I always assumed that the bad admins I'd encountered were few and far between but this experience has made me seriously question that... I think in the future I'm just going to assume that admins are ready and willing to use underhanded tactics until proven otherwise. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 11:25, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

There are, what, 1600 administrators? Your conclusion above would be warped. Most admins will approach a topic fairly if it comes to their attention and they have time to consider it, they are not fed misleading evidence that appears conclusive, and they do not, in error, trust another administrator or editor (perhaps based on a history of positive interactions). Not as many administrators are "misbehaving" as you might think. Individually, they might be or they might not be. My operating assumption, with even the "worst," is assume good faith but also allow for error or personal bias -- if any of us think they are free from such, and if that person is an administrator, the person should be desysopped immediately and leave Misplaced Pages behavioral management to imperfect human beings, and I'm sure that a perfect person, in this respect, would have much more important things to do --- etc. Misplaced Pages discussions typically involve on a few editors, and typically no administrators or only a few at most. Participation bias is thus a risk. However, dispute resolution process allows for this, by gradually expanding the circle of involved editors until a broader consensus is clear. While it only takes one editor, theoretically, to escalate, when a consensus is truly snowing, appeal will be shut down quickly; for a single editor to move beyond that takes more than one editor, and even two can be shaky.

Behind all of the policies and guidelines is WP:IAR, which must be interpreted in the light of WP:CONSENSUS. The subject article was deleted, and I agree that the some aspects of the deletion (and especially of the userfied copy) were improper. But what will be raised in review of this, contrary to what I've stated above as what should be process, is the question of notability. I.e., the community will address this question: "Suppose the deletion was improper, that it should have gone to AfD instead. Is there any reason to believe that it might survive AfD?" Your expressed position, Struthious, is that the topic is insufficiently supported by reliable source, i.e., you have claimed that it would properly not survive AfD. Thus, in closing with a confirmation, your nomination would have been read that way. Requesting undeletion because of process wonkery (I.e., "right result, but bad process, therefore let's start over") is reasonably rejected.

I've seen horrible process confirmed at AfD, i.e., the nomination was abusive, the nominator edit warred with an administrator over the admin's speedy close for rapid renomination, the nominator was a sock puppet of a banned editor, under simultaneous discussion at the time over that, etc., but AN/I is so dysfunctional that when the admin asked for support (he can't block an editor with whom he's engaged in a dispute, so he properly went to AN/I), AN/I started, instead, to debate the notability of the topic. (The puppet master was a master at this kind of diversion.) This kept the discussion open long enough to attract enough comments that closure was considered inappropriate. The discussion, which became massive because of the wide attention attracted by the AN/I report, was divided between Delete based on notability (which was marginal, some very long-term editors !voted to keep) and Keep, the large majority of which was based on process violation. The closing admin closed as Delete, based on the proponderance of the arguments issue. See, process error isn't an argument for Keep or Delete! I was involved (not with the article, but over concern about process), I could have gone to DRV, but what would be the outcome there? Likely the same. So the article was userfied at my request so work could continue. I haven't looked at it for a while, but at some point, it could be reasserted in mainspace or someone could take it to DRV. My opinion, last time I looked, was that it was still likely to generate more heat than light. Consider the overall welfare of the project! Articles that are marginally notable can be highly disruptive at AfD. It's better to work on them to improve them, if possible, to give them the best shot. If the article is in mainspace at that point, every improvement can be a battle, as sources are challenged, POVs asserted and removed and the rest. In user space, a consensus of those who support keeping the article can develop, and, if it includes experienced editors who know what's likely to happen at AfD, the article will then have the best possible chance at free breathing again. Meanwhile, in user space, it's not "free" in some senses, but it is more free in others. Cooperative work can continue without disruption and contentious debate, the only debate being over how to best improve it. Want to cite a mailing list post? You know, they are not always unusable, under some narrow circumstances they can be cited. With the article in user space, it can be done. In mainspace, someone who really wants the article gone will revert such a citation in a flash.

Another feature of the article being in user space. I can solicit the participation of friendly editors. As long as I respect the limits of WP:CANVASS, there is no open question, so biased solicitation isn't an issue. There were long-term editors who !voted Keep, among the few !votes based on assertion of notability. At some point, I could ask each one of them to look at the article and help if they can. When the article goes back into mainspace, if they have contributed, the AfD notice, if it is filed, would pop up on their Watchlists. Further, it's legitimate to notify all the editors of an article under AfD. See, the process is, in fact, as it should be, somewhat biased toward Keep, when experienced editors are involved; that, however, is balanced, routinely, by deletionist editors, who, big surprise, follow Articles for deletion, many other experienced editors having decided to stay away, AfD is hazardous for their wikihealth. There is no WP:Articles for inclusion to follow!

Look to the ultimate goal, Struthious, and factor in some realistic understanding of how human beings and human societies function, you will find it much easier to understand what goes on here. And maybe even to tolerate it enough to have the patience required to make long-term changes for the better. --Abd (talk) 17:22, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

(<<<outdent) Admins are human beings and need to be treated as such. I think that when an article is at DRV, deletion rules should be interpreted more leniently for userfied copies (or even mainspace copies) during the DRV, so that people have a chance to see the page during the discussion, and I'm under the impression that this is usually done; and the rules for userspace also allow more freedom than for article space. (although e.g. clear BLP violations still need to be deleted immediately even from userspace). Abd, you're right: there's no point pointing fingers and worrying about what happened in the past. For the future, one idea might be, when userfying a page for discussion during DRV, to put a message at the top like "Please don't delete this page during the DRV discussion" and having a link to both the DRV discussion, and to a section of the talk page devoted specifically to the question of whether to delete the page before the DRV is over, i.e. "if you're thinking of deleting the page before the DRV is over, please discuss here first". I would hope that people would tend not to delete pages (especially in userspace) during a DRV anyway (except... etc.) but it doesn't hurt to make a polite request or reminder. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

A proper DRV could have been (could still be) for the speedy deletion of the userfied copy (But I oppose this, for reasons given here). That would properly have avoided, for the most part, notability issues, as long as there was some reasonable assertion that reliable source might be found. But, in fact, we did an end run around this, since the article is userfied, but to my space, and there is no credible assertion (or fact) indicating that I have an advertising motive, the basis for the speedy, as I recall. General rule: if there is a less disruptive way to get done what you want to get done, pick that way. If I wanted to embarrass the deleting editor, then, quite possibly, I'd have gone for DRV to show him who's boss. Sooner or later, this kind of attitude would backfire. Liraz Siri is now quite free to work on the article, without worrying about it quickly disappearing, and subject only to my general laissez-faire attitude, as long as serious contention doesn't break out, and I tend to bring along with me a contingent of experienced editors who notice what's going on here. I will let go of what can now be considered a draft with history, either upon my personal judgment that it's ready for mainspace, or a consensus of those working on it, in my judgment, or an outside consensus, which, note, would have to be a consensus to return! (As well, obviously, if I abuse my position as user-space manager, I could lose my custodianship, and if too much time passes, the draft would be vulnerable to MfD.)

There are admins who will routinely, absent specific objection, such as BLP violation (which they will then review and decide upon personally), userfy a deleted article. Sometimes if there is a violation or problem, they will userfy it in fixed condition. Before going to DRV, an editor should, I'd suggest, always userfy. Let me point out that if they cannot get an admin to userfy the article, it is totally useless and a waste of time to go to DRV. Then, at DRV, the commenting editors have an article to look at! Some of them might even improve it. What's sensible, though, is to not rush to DRV, if there were reasonably cogent objections involved in the original deletion or any review. Rather, fix those problems, if possible. If a perfectly good article is deleted, doesn't need fixing, still try to satisfy the objections. Does some problem section really need to be there? It could always be put back later, when the decision would be far less disruptive and more likely to be made using regular editorial judgment.

Think in terms of maximizing consensus. This requires considering the objections of that useless band of no-gooders, abusers of newbies, POV-pushers aligned against Truth, obviously careless and ignorant and mean, or, at least, not, without necessity, tossing a piece of meat in front of them! There are only two reasonable alternatives to this first one, really: second, go away, find something better to do with your time, which should always be there as an option (if it's not an option, you probably need to develop it as one!), or, second, exterminate them, get them banned. Which does pose a few problems, and even if you succeed, you will merely have reproduced them in yourself. --Abd (talk) 17:52, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

One more point, which I thought of several times in writing the above, and it escaped. Always provide opposing editors with a face-saving escape. If possible, of course. People who have !voted for Delete, say, may vote that way again because of normal inertia and will disregard new arguments. After all, if they were smart, wouldn't they have thought of these arguments themselves? By giving them new arguments without new substance, aren't you implying that they aren't smart? But if you present them with an article that has been changed, they now can say, "Keep. Great job! (I was right to !vote for Deletion but) Now it's ready." Even if their original !vote was thoughtless, based on no review of what was actually in the article and sources, etc. Or, more often, they won't be motivated to come back and !vote the same way, they simply won't show up.

Plus, of course, you may, at the same time, find new support or genuine conversion of editors who actually did know what they were doing when they !voted Delete. --Abd (talk) 18:03, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess that's pretty close to what I mean. If by default you have to manipulate others in such a way, instead of just clearly communicating with them - if they need help or special inducement to make the hard decisions EVERY TIME - to me that's the same as assuming they're really in pursuit of the ego-carrots you're going to dangle in front of their noses rather than seeking honest and egalitarian purposes.

I'm not saying that every admin is Ratso Rizzo but it appears to me that for most of them the standards they hold themselves to are pretty low. I'm noticing how few members of the admin community are really doing what's right every time I encounter them (and consequently I value such individuals all the more.) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:48, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Also - Requesting undeletion because of process wonkery (I.e., "right result, but bad process, therefore let's start over") is reasonably rejected. - I didn't request undeletion in my DRV, I specifically requested only that the article be listed in AfD for discussion and that everyone pour their vitriol against LirazSiri's article in there, for an above-the-board, WP-policy managed discussion. I specifically said I wasn't asking for undeletion (in VPP I said so, at least.) The "deletion confirmed" outcome of the DRV didn't even make sense since the deletion wasn't challenged by it - people wanted the article deleted so badly that they focused on answering a question that wasn't even asked. It's seeing that kind of thing as reasonable that I don't think I'll manage. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 19:02, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I know what you asked for. If you felt you needed to say this, please reread what I wrote above, which was based in having read your nomination. I haven't suggested that you take on some polyanna view of people as reasonable, nor that any given comment was necessarily reasonable, but consider this: you believe the article should have been deleted, and that would have been your !vote in the AfD you wanted to see started. While in theory, DRV for a speedy should be confined to reviewing whether or not speedy criteria were followed -- which would make these reviews less contentious -- that is my theory and hasn't become a guideline (or has it?). Many editors believe that the function of DRV is to make a fresh decision on keep/delete, which is often accurate as to what DRV actually does, sometimes. They don't want Yet Another Debate that will come up with the same result. You really must understand this. Your nomination was taken as evidence for Deletion, which in this case meant Confirm. The confirmation is of the deletion, not of the admin's action, which, in the end, is properly irrelevant to the Confirm/Overturn decision.

You noticed the vitriol at the DRV. If this surprised you, you've been naive. Try to understand what I'm saying: AfD and DRV are frequently, practically inherently disruptive, leading to vitriol and incivility. I won't explain why, if you want my view on it, ask. It was noticed, comments referred to it, on both sides. It's not necessary for me, here, to take a side on that, though it's fairly obvious to me what happened. Politics, Struthious, wikipolitics. Wikisociety behaves like other societies, should this be surprising?

Avoid AfD and DRV if you can. It is usually possible to avoid DRV, there are easier ways to get an article back, provided that the advice I've given above is understood and followed. DRV is still there as a backup, and if you've done the preparatory work, DRV is only reasonably likely under three situations: you are faced with an intransigent closing admin who insists on deletion no matter what, or who believes that his or her job is simply to measure and follow consensus without taking personal responsibility for the decision, which will also lead to intransigence, or, alternatively, you are being intransigent, or third case, there is an unresolved, unclear issue over the notability of the article, which may be worth wider attention.

If you are attached to any part of this, whether to the notability or non-notability of the article, or to "correct" process that neglects the ultimate questions as to content, you will have difficulty with viewing others as reasonable, and thus in responding with civility and effective presentation of arguments and evidence.

Struthious, I have a natural advantage here, I have Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder which, while it is a true disorder causing some dysfunction, also gives me certain unusual abilities, one of which is to look at a situation from more than one perspective simultaneously. Sure, you can read what I've written as suggesting skillful manipulation. However, there are many ways to manipulate, some of which are beneficial to all parties, some of which are beneficial only to the manipulator, and some of which are just plain stupid. What I've done is to suggest a reframe of behavior that is designed to seek consensus. That is, want to get something done? Find consensus for it. But the fact is that to do this, one must be willing to modify the goal, unless one is so lucky as to start out with what will enjoy consensus naturally (or one is a highly skilled manipulator of people contrary to their natural interests, which can ultimately backfire). In the end, the behavior I described is a selfish way of looking at seeking consensus, but, you should note, it works even if you are wrong to start with. And, since I've been suggesting general rules for sane wiki behavior, here is another:

Always maintain in your mind the possibility that you are wrong, and that jerk who's been rudely getting in your way is right. Whether he's rude or not. You could be wrong about that too.

What do you do when someone rudely demands that you do the right thing? Simple answer, least likely to cause personal mental distress. Do it with as little fuss as possible, and as quickly as possible consistent with doing it right. If what is demanded is relatively harmless, it can also be quite useful to do it, even if it might not seem optimal, also without fuss. Remember the judo, it leaves the one who tries to harm you flat, perhaps having difficulty understanding what hit him. At the very least, it doesn't feed enmity.

Personal example, from my experience here: When I became seriously involved as an editor, it was because of a situation I found where an article was being controlled by a COI editor supported by sock puppets. Nasty situation. I managed to dismantle it. Then, pursuing a long-term interest in wikis and similar process (dating way probably something like thirty years), I started to work on Misplaced Pages structure. This is often not taken well, I'm not the first person to run into hostility. Ultimately, when I confronted what looked to me like a particular administrative and procedural error, to make a long story short, I was blocked. Part of the block justification was my focus on the structure, which almost necessarily involves dealing with conflict, which looks like a seeking of WP:WIKIDRAMA. In the flap that ensued, I was told that I should really be editing articles, like a good little Drone, though without the D word. Now, I could easily have dismissed that. After all, I have over thirty years experience with consensus organizations, anarchic structures, and study of how to make them durable and efficient. Surely my work on structure is more important than the few edits I could make to articles. Consider the affair for which I was blocked. While I was blocked, another editor took up the cause, and it was successful, and the result was that a very young and very productive editor was returned to function; the likelihood that this editor's contributions, eventually, would overshadow anything I could personally do with article edits is great; and, in fact, I think that she was already there before I began working on the case.

However, old judo trick: accept the opponent's movement, do not resist it, move with it. Join it. In judo, this ends up with the opponent flat on the ground, having thrown himself there, albeit with a little help. (That only works if the "opponent" is trying to harm you. Otherwise, you just do a nice little dance....)

So, hey, why not? I installed Twinkle and off I went, doing Recent Changes patrol. It's like a video game: be the first to recognize a piece of vandalism and revert it and welcome/warn/threaten the editor. At some times of day, you've got to be quick! But at those times of day, you can look further down the RC listings and find stuff that was missed, sometimes.

Now, what did this do? Well, the first salutary effect, besides fixing some articles (nothing says I can't improve an article I come across because a vandal hit it.... or sometimes, vandalism isn't obvious, and sources need to be checked, and if the sources weren't there in the first place, it's a great opportunity to add one or more. Besides some of these articles are interesting and, my, isn't she beautiful and smart and talented? .... etc.): the admin whom I had supposedly attacked, the basis for my block, noticed what I was doing and spontaneously offered me the rollback privilege. And is now a reliable partner.

Probably because I didn't attack him, but instead went through a patient process of a self-RfC, a process which I've more or less invented, the admin who warned me, which set a precondition for my block, has also become quite helpful. I didn't move on to deal with the block itself, and I'm not sure it would be worthwhile. Originally, I put in the effort to address the block because I knew that once blocked, next block happens more easily; but now, I feel very little risk of being blocked more than transiently, and even that seems unlikely day-to-day, even though I'm now addressing some fairly large systemic issues, such as blacklisting/whitelisting process, which definitely needs some attention, I played a role in making sure that the ban of a certain editor was not as widely misunderstood as certain propaganda would have promoted -- you can see some warnings generated by that, still on this page --, and have challenged the use-of-tools while involved by an admin, as well as a series of the involved actions. The latter situation is set to produce my first user RfC, I'd been trying to avoid it, but it's practically been forced.

I also ran up, I don't know, maybe a few thousand edits fairly quickly, I didn't really keep track. My name was then in front of many editors and administrators, doing regular cleanup work. So next time they see my name on a noticeboard or whatever, the response has been shifted.

My own attitude also shifted, in subtle ways. I knew about consensus and its value, of course, already. But something deepened.

Recently, I became aware of a whole can of worms, the admin abuse I mention above, which led to discovering the blacklist/whitelist problems, and it got in the way of my Recent Changes patrolling. I'm hoping to finish working on the problem soon, so I can return to playing Whack-a-Mole, it's definitely more fun in the short term. Or editing articles more seriously, which has also started again. Studying the blacklist led me to finding a blacklisted source that is actually RS, I proposed local whitelisting which was ultimately accepted even though I had to go to WP:AN to break the logjam, and we may end up with a few hundred new articles, possibly, or at least a few hundred other articles improved. But one step at a time. Try to do any of this quickly, and .... resistance appears, and the more you push the more the resistance. Classic problem with a classic solution. --Abd (talk) 20:42, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I have ADD too. (hand shake, high five)

I apologize if I've misunderstood you at some points but the way you phrase things is such that they can often be interpreted multiple ways.

But I do appreciate the advice you've laid out here as well as the work you've put in on Misplaced Pages. You definitely seem like the sort of person who should be doing Recent Changes patrolling, moreso than many of the individuals I've met doing it. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 22:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Imagine what it's like when I try to be brief without being polemic! (Polemic is speech designed to influence opinion in a specific, desired way. I can write polemic, but it's not what I usually do.) But don't worry about those other people doing RC patrolling. They contribute, some of them contribute monumentally. It doesn't have to all be right, as long as most of it is right, we can fix the rest. IP editors are in a shaky position. We want them, because a great deal of content improvement comes from them, but if they have variable IP, they won't really know what hit them, so to speak. ADHD, yes. The good news and the bad news. I wouldn't trade my life for "normal" for anything. But ... it can be hard on people in relationship with me, and it can even be hard on me. It's essential for me to understand how I'm different from others and how others are different from me and to factor for it. One of the big hazards of having ADHD, of the variety I have, is that an attitude that others are stupid can easily develop. It gets a lot of us. The truth is that we are different, we are better at some things and worse at others. If everyone were like me, well, the subways wouldn't run. On the other hand, if people like me didn't exist, society would become rigid and unable to adapt to new circumstances. I.e., the variation is functional. Athens condemned Socrates to death. Contrary to their expectations, he didn't flee, he drank the hemlock. And Athens' power was destroyed, because it could not adapt to changing circumstances. See User:Abd/Rule 0 --Abd (talk) 22:33, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Some very good thoughts in this section. However here's something I disagree quite strongly with:

"Suppose the deletion was improper, that it should have gone to AfD instead. Is there any reason to believe that it might survive AfD?" Your expressed position, Struthious, is that the topic is insufficiently supported by reliable source, i.e., you have claimed that it would properly not survive AfD. Thus, in closing with a confirmation, your nomination would have been read that way. Requesting undeletion because of process wonkery (I.e., "right result, but bad process, therefore let's start over") is reasonably rejected.

I disagree; the deletion was not necessarily black and white, and in theory in cases where there is a large gray area, the incorrect process only clouds whatever would be the just result - in other words spending a discussion on BOTH the speedy issue AND the merits of deletion leads to a dissonance of logic. Do I really need to give the merits of following process? What about offending the editors, or getting people's backs up? What if Liraz Sari would have been content with a normal AfD outcome but instead is scourned by a blatant lack of process? Its inciteful. And after many hours working on her article she is entitled to a solid discussion not clouded by abuse of process. However, one could say that a Speedy-Deletion should not get challenged in a deletion-review, because the purpose of a Deletion Review is not to judge admin actions and their rightfulness; that is the job of AN/I. So if a speedy-deletion is challenged in AN/I, then I strongly feel their mandate is to correct the process here: the speedy-delete should have been overturned and moved to AfD for proper discussion where users that are (allegedly) experienced at judging articles for deletion can assess an outcome. Again, in theory the AN/I people are good at understanding admin tasks, the people in AfD (which include non-admins) are good at understanding deletion guidelines. We have the processes in place, and if the deletionists are going to be so beaurocratic with their deletions, they can be beurocratic about their @#$#ing processes. :p Rfwoolf (talk) 08:07, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not claiming there is no merit in following process. What I'm claiming is that there is very substantial opinion, perhaps a majority of those who participate in these things, that content issues trump process. See the section heading here, and substantial agreement -- including more specified agreement from me -- that speedy deletions that did not clearly meet speedy conditions should be quickly reversed. They should not automatically go to AfD, that's up to whoever wants to delete the article to decide and to file. I would actually take these decisions out of DRV itself into a special page where this is clearly specified. WP:Speedy deletion review. At that page, the only debate that is in order is the applicability of speedy deletion criteria. The existence of substantial dissent to the deletion should result in speedy close of the discussion with reversal. New criteria should not be invented during the debate. (That's to avoid the confusion of arguments that happens in these things. However, any admin could decide to close the original discussion as insufficiently, but, for the record, undelete and redelete specifying a criterion the admin considers valid, and this should not be the original deleting admin.) The goal is not a decision on keep/delete, the goal is to prevent useless unfocused discussion. If a speedy discussion is quickly closed, there has been little or no wasted editor time. On the other hand, if there is little or no cogent argument for overturn, besides the nominator, and the discussion is open for a week, that should be it. Deletion remains. The guideline would be worked out on the page.

However, once again, there are some troubling assumptions here. "If a speedy-deletion is challenged in AN/I...." Such a challenge should be limited to administrative abuse. I am aware that there may be a reasonable claim of such in the present case, but AN/I will tend, my observation, to turn the report there into a debate over notability, and possible admin abuse will be pushed aside and disregarded. The final part of your comment, R, shows that you have bought into the conflict of inclusionism vs. deletionism, and this leads you to an imbalanced view. It's not "us" vs "them." It's just "us." Want to deal with the problem? Change the guidelines and process, which will require finding consensus. It's not easy, but it is exactly what needs to be done. You won't succeed if you maintain the "us vs. them" attitude, because those who disagree with you will dig in their heels.

So, I named a proposed page above. If you create it and notify me, I'll participate. Consider this: if deletionists waste their time battling over marginal issues, they will be less able to find and delete or nominate the thousands upon thousands of inappropriate pages. I'm an inclusionist, but I also understand the important task that deletionists perform, and, in fact, most "deletionists" are more nuanced or balanced than the term implies, and it's only a few dedicated, perhaps even fanatic, editors who make for the bad reputation. How about User:Killerofcruft? The name itself was confrontational. It means "I destroy what you love." If there was ever a clear violation of WP:BATTLE, there it was. After some time, he requested a name change, but the fact is that the original name was exactly appropriate for what he was doing, and you can get an idea of the scope of strong deletionist perspective by looking at those who supported him and encouraged him. He openly said and did what they thought but wouldn't say because ... it could get them blocked. --Abd (talk) 13:37, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Category:Suspected Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Suciindia

For every category you create, you should specify parent categories to which it belongs. In the case of a category like this one, parent categories are provided automatically when you include a {{Sockpuppet category}} template.

I am a human being, not a bot, so you can contact me if you have questions about this. Best regards, --Stepheng3 (talk) 17:19, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Ditto Category:Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Suciindia. --Stepheng3 (talk) 17:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Since you request that I reply on your talk page. But for reference here, I'll say that the above message, while potentially helpful, doesn't tell me if anything needs to be done, or exactly how to do it, at least not quickly. For future categories I create, I'll be careful to follow the FAQ, assuming that it is intelligible to me. If not, now I know who to ask! --Abd (talk) 20:30, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing you need to do for the categories right now. If you study how I amended them, you'll quickly see what you should do if you ever create sockpuppet categories in the future. --Stepheng3 (talk) 20:38, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, your comment above didn't refer to your corrections, but when I looked at my Watchlist, there they were, and they made clear what was needed, and that you had fixed it. So I reverted my talkback on your Talk page. Thanks again. --Abd (talk) 21:35, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

New Page Patrol

I was doing new page patrol and ran across this: . Good.

By the way, I've proposed a new page patrol competition and am looking for people to sign up. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. As you know, I've got a few things to do first. --Abd (talk) 13:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Suspected_User:Fredrick_day_sock

As you participated in checkuser discussions pertaining to the above, your insights may be helpful. Sincerley, --A Nobody 20:35, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

This was archived at Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive524#Suspected_User:Fredrick_day_sock. A whole boatload of socks were found by checkuser. And I hardly had to lift a finger. I don't know if my comment helped, but I did conclude that the suspicion was reasonable.

Okay, I should make something clear, I didn't notice this in the report from the checkuser. Fredrick day uses multiple IP access. He is quite capable of making two accounts seem unrelated; the socks were multiple accounts from the same user as Ntoo2B. The checkuser report considered Ntoo2B to be unrelated to the IP, but the IP to be possibly Fredrick day. Since FD popped in with that IP to claim that Ntoo2B wasn't FD, that was a no-brainer (and we already knew that FD had used that range and, I think, that specific IP. Checkuser concluded that Ntoo2B and the IP were not related, something I questioned; however, FD is perfectly capable of simulating independent access within limits, and I don't know the extent of the CU evidence on which the conclusion of not related was based. I'd consider the matter open, but largely moot. WThe identified "master" is obviously is not the original account, that was simply as far back as checkuser could go, the user wasn't new.

It's an odd coincidence that a big sock drawer is opened because a user suspects that one of them is Fredrick Day based on behavior. Possible. But, more likely, this was just FD displaying his ability to use multiple ISPs, he's bragged about it and demonstrated it before. --Abd (talk) 04:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

However, if the checkuser found that the editor was clearly located elsewhere than where FD operates, that would be another matter. There are techniques for appearing that you are coming from somewhere else, and I don't know how sophisticated our system is in detecting all that. --Abd (talk) 04:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:Triple tracks in CR-39.jpg

Thank you for uploading File:Triple tracks in CR-39.jpg. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Misplaced Pages takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the file. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their license and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. — neuro 18:45, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I placed the information in the form provided, but the URL for the source was somehow stripped out. It's in the edit summary. It's an image provided with a press release by the American Chemical Society. The ACS page gives permission information, which stated "No restrictions." None of the templates seem to contemplate a release by an author (photographer) other than the uploader, yet this image was clearly released into the public domain, and it has been widely used in major media yesterday and by many web sites. I'm not sure that I've done it right, the lack of an appropriate permissions template worries me. I put in a template for a general release, with the credited photographer as the one releasing. --Abd (talk) 21:37, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Naturwissenschaften

See what their editors and description have to say. It is a Life sciences journal. Springer has been publishing this for a long time, they ought to know what it covers.LeadSongDog come howl 15:22, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

There is definitely an oddity there. LSD, did you look at the quote I put up? Yes, I saw what you saw, but the basic page on the publication shows something quite different. You are using searches for "life sci", so you find what you are looking for. Why are you looking for this? I'll speculate, but I won't write it.

Okay, "they ought to know what it covers." From what I wrote at Talk:Cold_fusion#Die_Naturwissenschaften_isn.27t_properly_described_as_a_.22Life_Sciences.22_journal:

, I took it out. This has been raised before, the SPAWAR results, published there, were discounted previously based on a claim that they were being published in a journal that wouldn't have adequate resources to review the work. At that time, I pointed out that the journal is a publication of the Max Planck Institut, and that it is, like Nature (journal), a general journal covering the natural sciences. : Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature - is Springer’s flagship multidisciplinary science journal covering all aspect of the natural sciences. The journal is dedicated to the fast publication of high-quality research following rigorous peer-review process and publishes a whole array of work that reflects the contemporary developments across the broad field of the natural sciences. Particularly welcomed are contributions that bridge between traditionally isolated areas and attempt to increase the conceptual understanding of systems and processes that demand an interdisciplinary approach. However, this does not exclude the publication of high-quality topical articles, which will continue to be the core of the journal.

Chemically assisted nuclear reactions (CANR) is a field which crosses the boundary between chemistry and nuclear physics. The journal is actually an ideal place to publish such research. --Abd (talk) 14:20, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Physics is a natural science. Why they have the journal classified under Life Sciences is not clear, but they have no category for "General Natural Science," and I notice that most articles are, indeed, in what could be called Life Sciences, but the claim before was that, because they are a "Life Science" journal, they wouldn't have the review facilities to assess an article in chemistry or physics. That's why I've pointed out that they are published by the Max Planck Institut. You have, perhaps, heard of Herr Planck?

repeats their desire for interdisciplinary papers:

Competition for space in Naturwissenschaften is keen, and the journal receives many more good manuscripts than can be accepted for publication. Current rejection rate reaches about 50% of all submitted work. Preference is thus given to scholarly works that present a compelling case for significant advances in a subject area or are of broader interest because of their interdisciplinary nature. Preliminary reports or work that just confirms previous findings, as well as articles that are likely to interest small specialist group only, will not be considered.

Calling this a "life sciences" journal in the text of the article provides a clear POV slant, attempting to impeach reliable sources has been frequently done with Cold fusion. Don't do it. --Abd (talk) 00:31, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I dunno, I'm neutral on that. On the diff I reverted, I objected more to the rest of changes done in it. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:44, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Enric, reverting changes that you don't object to, when the changes were as small as this, is a tad rude. I.e., take out what you need to take out, but leave what you can. It builds cooperation. --Abd (talk) 04:03, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec)It is a hallmark of every fringe topic that there are unreliable sources advanced as trustworthy. It is accordingly necessary to look carefully at all sources. We should not shrink from doing so. Naturwissenshaften is of course a fine, highly regarded journal, but there are many more clearly multidisciplinary journals. The authors could have approached one with a more direct focus on the relevant topic areas, but they chose this one - so why? Ease of correspondence between Berlin and San Diego? The expectation that its readership (of biologists etc) would be particularly well equipped to provide insightful feedback? It's not a reason that jumps out at you.LeadSongDog come howl 06:09, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

using "cold fusion" in the cold fusion article

What does this edit summary mean? (...) Been saying for some time, the field is LENR, not "cold fusion." (...). I already know that they changed the name to avoid the negative connotations, but we use "cold fusion" which is still the most common name in english, and is also the title of the article, and is also how it's called in the source, ffs. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

"Cold fusion" is a popular term. The press release was aimed at media, so that term was used in the headline. However, what did the DOE call the topic in 1989 and 2004? And if it isn't fusion, perhaps, this nuclear effect being seen, why is it in the "cold fusion" article? I can answer that question, but my emerging opinion is that we should have this kind of structure:

Condensed matter nuclear science, an article on chemically-assisted nuclear reactions or other nuclear behavior that is particular to condensed matter. Refers to other related articles, including muon-catalyzed fusion. Covers notable conferences on the topic, publication in the field, and the known science. This article would cover current scientific knowledge and experimental reports relating to the topic. It would include what is called "cold fusion," though that might be a separate article, Fusion in metal deuterides.

Fleischmann-Pons effect which describes the specific phenomenon of excess heat found in palladium loaded to a high ration with deuterium, and the specific scientific history of rejection and confirmation of that effect. This article may include a detailed discussion of calorimetry, or may, again, summarize a specific article:

Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments.

Coverage of evidence of nuclear transmutations would be in, big surprise, nuclear transmutation.

Cold fusion would not itself be a science article, but would cover the history and response of the media and scientific community to the 1989 affair and as it has been ongoing. It would, of course, refer to the other articles for the science.

All of the articles, like all articles on Misplaced Pages, would be required to be NPOV and verifiable. Subarticles would be created when coverage of a subtopic, as found in reliable source, begins to unbalance or overfill an existing article.

Enric, look at the diff you pointed out. Krivit wrote that it might not be fusion, but some other nuclear reaction. He's correct. Why why should we call it "cold fusion"?

There is a possibility, for example, that the neutrons are coming from hot fusion in the lattice. There is some evidence for localized hot spots. What if these become very hot on occasion, but on a very small scale. The neutrons might be hot fusion of tritium/deuterium, from the tritium impurities in the heavy water, caused by high energy conditions caused by localized cold fusion. The point I was making is that the field is actually low-energy nuclear reactions, that's what the DOE called it in 2004. Why are we insisting on a name which, though certainly common, implies conclusions? --Abd (talk) 18:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Because it's the most common name, by far. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

And that is exactly why it is the proper name for the popular, media, and general scientific community (as distinct from those involved in researching or reviewing it) topic. That does not make it the proper name for the science as reflected in peer-reviewed journals, where other names are used. Did the DOE in 2004 review "cold fusion" or did it review "low energy nuclear reactions"?

Certainly there is an interplay between the names. The ICCF was renamed CMNS, but they keep the cold fusion name to show the continuity with prior conferences. See Welcome to the 14th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, which is also known as the 14th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF-14). See also , with a list of the conferences. In addition to the ICCFs, there are been many other conferences on the Fleischmann-Pons Effect, including 12 in Russia, six in Japan, six in Italy, besides many sessions at various intellectual society conferences, such as the American Physical, Chemical and Nuclear Societies.

The Fleischmann-Pons effect is actually quite well-established, serious opposition to it died out long ago, with the objections to the prior failures to confirm never being cogently answered in peer-reviewed journals, to my knowledge. The origin of the effect remains quite controversial, and this is why dumping it all into one article that presumes a cause, a cause still widely rejected, as if the effect itself were rejected by scientific consensus. Some of the media reports this week have essentially claimed that ("nobody could confirm it."). In 2004, the DOE report was evenly divided on whether or not the effect was real; roughly one-third of the reviewers thought that there was a nuclear explanation. Obviously, if you don't think it happens, you don't accept a nuclear -- or any -- explanation other than possibly experimenter bias or wishful thinking or other error.

The current matter with the Mosier-Boss paper is fascinating. It really is no big surprise at all to those in the field, and that it made such a big splash is due to the background of automatic rejection of the topic by both the media and some segements in the scientific community. It doesn't confirm the Fleischman-Pons effect, the level of neutrons detected would probably not result in any measurable excess heat. But what isn't being said is the background: the neutron radiation is found, at very low levels (but well above background, and correlated with the cathode, and not found with controls), on the back side of the detectors, where the primary radiation product, ionizing radiation (probably alpha, i.e., energetic helium nuclei), can't reach, it's non-penetrating. But it causes massive pitting on the side next to the cathode, if the experiment is run as long as the ones in which the neutrons were found. And that effect is directly correlated with the production of excess heat: you don't get the heat, you don't get that level of radiation. Plus if you get the heat, you get helium, at levels correlated, in quite a number of reports, with the amount of heat generated. By the way, if they place the detectors outside the cell, against a thin mylar window, they get the apparent alpha radiation at reduced levels, as would be expected from the loss in the mylar, which just wreaks havoc on the alternate explanations advanced of dendritic damage or chemical damage or damage from corona discharge. No way, however, that the triple tracks are caused by anything other than proton recoil from high energy neutrons. By the way, see CR-39 for some images showing the triple-track effect. Some of the media reported that they found "three tracks," as if this were a report based on three isolated tracks, or even one set of three. I predicted that there would be blog response ridiculing the report based on this, and then I saw it.

Enric, there is a huge bias out there against cold fusion. The skepticism is quite warranted, but the automatic assumption that dedicated and professional researchers who've been working in the field for twenty years are bumbling idiots enthusiastically reporting something of no significance, is, shall we say, not warranted. --Abd (talk) 20:06, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Doh, if this about the "very significant" bit in the article, it's the researchers themselves who are saying it. I suppose that they must believe that it's really significant, and that it's necessary to say so? Anyways, the article needs to point out that the CR-39 is considered significant by proponents. (I mean, dude, I'm tired of people on the talk page bring up so many times how the CR-39 thing finally provides evidence of cold fusion, as if it was the Holy Grial of CF or something).

To sum it up, you talk as if adding that bit was an insult towards the researchers, but, man, they themselves felt the need to say it! --Enric Naval (talk) 23:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Krivit is being politically cagey, he is (correctly) pointing out that the neutrons might be coming from some process other than fusion. Lots of weird stuff, apparently, happens in the lattice. There is another paper, I think I called attention to it on Monday, that provides a theoretical basis for deuterium fusion in the palladium lattice, and that allegedly predicts the reaction levels found, plus his radiation measurements and reports. None of this mentions "cold fusion." Fleischmann's discovery of excess heat was rejected on the basis of theory regarding fusion. What if he had, instead, published a quiet little paper on anomalous excess heat, with no explanation other than, perhaps, an obvious speculation and a suggestion for further research? What if that original publication had emphasized how difficult it was to obtain the phenomenon? It's now well-known in the field how to get it with reasonable reliability, but it's still difficult. The difficulty may result in the process being unusable commercially, as one possible consequence. CMNS is not about "free energy." But we don't know what's possible. Maybe cheap, clean, renewable energy. Or not. To find out will take a lot of money, unless some garage experimenter happens upon something that is easily reproducible and robust enough to use in a commercial product. --Abd (talk) 20:06, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Really, I'm not going to argue on what would if have happened if things had been done differently. F and P made it that way, and the "cold fusion" name stuck. (btw, DOE 1989 uses "cold fusion" all over the place", and the DOE 2004 report uses "cold fusion" four times and "low energy nuclear reactions" nine, including the title. Not bad for a field that is supossedly not called that way at all. Mind you, that would establish the usage in government reports, it would still leave the common usage in mainstream, general public, scientists in general, journals, etc) --Enric Naval (talk) 23:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Enric, I have not said that the field isn't called "cold fusion." I also call it that, frequently. But it is not precise, and incorporates assumptions. You've called the palladium/deuterium co-deposition cells (that's what Mosier-Boss calls them and that is precisely what they are) "cold fusion cells." Does that mean that fusion at low temperatures is taking place in them? By the general usages, the Arata work with palladium black or other finely powdered palladium alloy, pressurized with deuterium, no electrolyis or energy input other than the transient chemical energy released when palladium absorbs deuterium, is a "cold fusion cell." Radically different in structure and operation (in Arata's recent work, the thing just sits there emitting heat steadily for a very long time, I don't see any limit in the reports, but they stop the experiment and open them up after some time to look for helium), but the common factor is that palladium is loaded to 1:1 with deuterium. Other metals are used besides palladium, some of them apparently show the effects. "Cold fusion cell," then, is a huge blanket category, encompassing many types of experiments.

In the subject text, I replaced "cold fusion cell," which really tells us very little about the cell, with "palladium-deuterium co-deposition cell." It is neutral and accurate. What's the problem? As Krivit points out, maybe it isn't fusion. If it isn't fusion but some other kind of nuclear reaction, would it still be appropriate to call it a "cold fusion cell"? --Abd (talk) 04:01, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I replied you at Talk:Cold_fusion#cold_fusion_cell, both sources use "cold fusion" all over the place including the title, and one of them specifically call the cells "cold fusion devices". I think that's pretty clear.... --Enric Naval (talk) 13:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Enric, this, once again, raises the issue of what the article Cold fusion is about. Is it a science article or is it a popular phenomenon article? (The history of science is a history of human efforts and opinions.) Absolutely, the cells are cold fusion cells. An grenade is an explosive. If we report an event, we could use general language, such as, the soldier died because of an explosion in his foxhole. Or we could be a little more specific, an explosive device was tossed in his foxhole, or we could say that it was a grenade. If our sources show that it was a grenade, should we use the more general term? "Cold fusion cell" is actually quite general, it covers many different kinds of experiments that are designed to show the effects of low-energy nuclear reactions. "Palladium-deuterium co-deposition" is a specific technique, quite notable and probably deserving of its own article; it has unique characteristics. You will not find "cold fusion cell" used in the research papers, beyond reference to the popular concepts. The papers are about the Pd-D system or Ni-D, etc. --Abd (talk) 13:42, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Scientific papers use specialized tech-speak that would only confuse the readers if we used it. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:09, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

So we should use confusing pop-speak that carries a POV? Enric, this is an encyclopedia. We define terms if they aren't obvious. Co-deposition should be defined in the article or in its own article, and if they are reading the Cold fusion article this far, we can assume that they know what palladium is and what deuterium is. The argument you are giving is a classic argument made by POV editors who want to predigest subjects for the readership, not trusting that they will be able to understand the issues and make their own choices. I just got the first of the pile of books I ordered on this subject, and it is utterly fascinating, A dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects, by Nate Hoffman. It says, back in 1995, just about exactly what I've been saying over the last two months on Talk:Cold fusion. Now there is reliable source for it. Watch. Have you read the book, Enric? --Abd (talk) 23:50, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

In Talk:Cold_fusion#cold_fusion_cell I have listed a good amount of sources using "cold fusion cell", including several papers hosted at lenr-car.org and several cold fusion conferences.

Anyways, you might well be right in that someone that has read so far can realize that it's a cold fusion cell even if we don't call it that way (and it probably be guessed by context anyways). My head hurts and I'm quite involved with this, so I could just be too stubborn in the matter. I'm leaving it for other editors to determine if it's confusing to call it a "palladium-deuterium co-deposition cell" and rewrite for clarity if it's necessary. I'd rather argue over more important things, like the sentences following that sentence, you know, the ones that we were arguing to mention Padley and Krivit or not. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

30 days for rfc have passed

It's been already 30 days since the MfD for User:Abd/JzG. I'll wait a few more days, in case you forgot about it, and then I'll ask that it gets deleted. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:42, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I knew it was getting close. It's not crucial, though it will probably be a little simpler if the page remains instead of the evidence being replaced when needed from my off-line copy (or through undeletion). There will be a question of where it lives. The problem with the deletion is that the page was cited in an ArbComm request and there were relevant comments made that were clearly based on it, but that's ArbComm's problem. --Abd (talk) 23:14, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The draft is up, still a few things to add. I expect it will be moved to RfC space this week. --Abd (talk) 06:44, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks, Abd. I... don't even know what came over me. Such ridiculous BS really isn't like me, so perhaps I just "needed a break". Anyway, thanks. I appreciate your words of wisdom. --Aepoutre (talk) 21:04, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

No problem. It happens to all of us. I can understand how it looked to you, as if you were being stonewalled. What speaks very well in your favor is that you looked again. Too many editors, once they have stuck their foot in their mouth, then argue tenaciously that it's bloomin' obvious it belongs there, how dare you demand that they remove it? So it's quite refreshing to see and editor say, "Oops! My bad!" and move on. These are the best editors. There are no editors who don't make mistakes, unless they don't make many edits. --Abd (talk) 23:09, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Question concerning an article

On Sustainability article there is a team that has been editing the article for months. Most every problem is met by them getting tighter control on the article, and then complaining that bringing certain things to attention, is stopping them from editing... which I do not believe to be true. Mostly it is two people that edit in tandem, Sunray being the ostensible leader. I have edited the article also as you know... but the team is not only not friendly toward me... they are hostile. Recently I pointed out that a team member there Granitethighs who authored a book that he reffed/linked in the article to cite an entire section, may have a conflict of interest, or may be spamming his book. I think he is. Apparently other team members were aware of his book without revealing that information. He became a wiki editor about the time his book was published and started an entire article also from scratch using his book as the back bone sourcing of the article Sustainable gardens, landscapes and sites http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Sustainable_gardens,_landscapes_and_sites&diff=prev&oldid=277643838

He reffed his book this many times below in the article he created. The book is done under the auspices also of where he is affiliated.

^ a b c d e f Cross, R. & Spencer, R. (2009). Sustainable Gardens. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood. ISBN 978-0-643-09422-2.

More recently three editors in the team have said that I am editing tendentiously because I have brought up two things consistently recently... one being Granitethighs book, which I believe is non notable... and over reffing the U.N. in the article. This persons book... also uses the U.N. as a jumping off point, and one user on the article has said previously that he is involved in the U.N. http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User:Nick_carson&diff=prev&oldid=275742185 - http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Sustainability&diff=277864633&oldid=277817578 it seems to me that a good B article is being used to showcase the U.N. it is not Sustainability and the U.N. it is just Sustainability. I have added lots of reff's and sources mostly to scientific things. I wrote the history section largely, and other information pieces here and there in the article. I have found editor Sunray to use any method of slanting things to be in a bad light toward myself. I might just ignore the article for a while and leave it at that... but it bothers me that it is over controlled... and a person is putting their book on it... without that being discussed or revealed... until it was brought up, seems way over the top as to neutral editing and seems very much crossing a line. Also that they are wildly attacking me (my opinion) for bringing up that issue. skip sievert (talk) 05:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Page of Shibdas Ghosh, Linked to SUCI

I now see a new IP editing the wiki page of Shibdas Ghosh. He is removing a citated evidence stating that it is not a reliable source. It is a journal published from India of which the editors are reputed people. Please look into it.--Radhakrishnansk (talk) 09:10, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Hot Stain Comment

I have left a comment for you on Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Hot_stain. Gigs (talk) 20:54, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Abd/JzG

Are you going to file an RfAr using the material? Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 14:37, 29 March 2009 (UTC)cl

I certainly hope not. As you might recall, the page was already used as evidence before an RfAR/Clarification; however, that RfAR, filed by JzG, was rejected as premature. At the time the evidence page was compiled, there were a few arbitrators tending toward confirmation of the request. After the evidence was put up, the tide turned toward what was clearly much more appropriate: rejection based on lack of proper prior process, and there was reference, direct and indirect, to my comment, which was founded on the evidence page. (JzG had unexpectedly bypassed almost the entire dispute resolution process, jumping to RfAr.)

It remains possible that JzG will come to his senses. However, his tendentious involvement with Cold fusion has continued, with edit warring at Martin Fleischmann without regard to consensus process and simply repeating arguments after there has been careful examination and rejection of them. This is background here and is only intended to explain my own actions.

The RfC never was an "attack page" or "laundry list of grievances," if you look at it. With the exception of "conclusions," It was an attempt at a neutral examination of JzG's involvement with Cold fusion and related articles, necessary to understand his administrative actions with respect to related articles and involved editors. If a list of diffs or logs from an editor, particularly when compiled completely as to relevant pages, with very little comment, is an "attack," the editor has a problem.

What I have done, now, is to create a draft RfC, referring to the evidence page, which should be ready to move to RfC space today or certainly within the next few days, it's at User:Abd/JzG/RfC.

Why did I wait so long? It should be realized that I've been loathe to impeach an administrator as long as lesser measures did not suffice. It really is not fun. Administrators are volunteers, do or have done a great deal of work, and probably the bulk of it is useful. In spite of my conclusion that JzG's actions have deeply damaged Misplaced Pages in certain areas, I'd have preferred for the community at large, and especially those administrators who share his POV on fringe issues, to restrain their friend, to allow him to continue his useful work with the tools. They have not. The MfD essentially forced this, but the extended time allowed me to, for a time, put it at the bottom of my to-do list. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 15:20, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I was somewhat surprised (but not completely so) by the result of the MfD for this page. After all, there was ample precedent that such pages are allowed to be kept publicly viewable for completely indefinite periods of time, and even when they contain commentary that goes well beyond the mere collection of diff's. I guess it pays to be an administrator so that you can just do whatever you want. For my part, I have not actually asked to have Raul's page deleted because it actually works in my favor in that it clearly demonstrates the blind bias on Raul's part. I couldn't prepare a better set of diffs and associated commentary to illustrate Raul's bias even if I wanted to. --GoRight (talk) 20:16, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages process will never be understood without having some understanding of the involved politics. The MfD for this page was very strange, because by filing it, JzG essentially forced me to file the RfC. I have difficulty imagining what he was thinking, if he was thinking and not just reacting. He may have been counting on my inertia, he may believe his own rhetoric, he may be counting on his many friends to support him, and he's won many battles before, but generally only where participation bias works in his favor. It is not true that if you are an administrator, you can "do whatever you want" without consequence. However, "consequence" may require that more than one editor seriously confront the issues, it is a huge hassle, and there are usually ways to finesse the problem with respect to any given particular situation, so many conclude it's not worth it. However, at some point, if a problem isn't transient, someone realizes that there is an ongoing problem, that it is causing continued damage, that this damage is serious, and thus it must be addressed. If this user rushes in, and is not already highly placed politically, forget it, the user is dead meat, because of the instinctive support. Sooner or later, though, someone with the understanding and means to address the problem will come into contact with it. Everything is recorded; however, there is currently a discussion on the speedy deletion guideline talk page about the deletion of indef blocked user pages. Some see no problem with that, but others -- rightly, in my view -- point out that this conceals editor history from all but admins, narrowly constricting the field of editors with the capacity to review prior actions to those who are also admins and who generally don't have the time to do what it takes to deal with a long-term issue like this, besides the problem of entrusting police review to the police. We could set up process for wider review of deletions that would be more or less like PROD, with some better-designed criteria to allow deletion of truly useless stuff in user space, but if any substantial segment of the editor community want to keep this stuff, it should be kept; preserving history preserves the rights of present minorities to eventually make their case to the community, and it actually takes less effort than deleting it. There is no storage cost issue. --Abd (talk) 20:42, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Emailed to you. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 18:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Abd (talk) 19:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

looooooong comments at Talk:Cold fusion

I have collapsed three of your comments, two for readability and the third one for readability and OR(*). People who want to read them can uncollapse the boxs.

• I'm going to intersperse, the bulleted, italic comments are mine, and I'll sign each paragraph. You are entitled to your opinion, Enric. I don't edit war over collapse boxes. I let others judge if my comments are worth reading or not. --Abd (talk)

• You say that you won't edit war and that you will let others editors judge on your comments, but you reverted two of my three collapsings.... Apparently you will only accept "'friendly' and selective collapse".... You also say "(...)Don't try to stop others from reading it, but efforts to organize what I've written into what should be on top level and what should be collapsed are just fine(...)" Putting all together actions and words, it looks like you are decided to have the last word on what gets collapsed in your comments and why, never mind what you state about letting other people decide.

• Also, I don't agree that my hatnote wasn't neutral. If you don't like to be told that your comments are OR, then you should stop writing OR, specially after several editors have asked you to stop the OR (myself, Phil153, maybe Noren, and others, I would have to look it up) Yeah, I know, you think that your level of OR is acceptable, but, when you have several people telling you that you are wrong on something, then it's time to realize that maybe you are wrong after all. (I bet that jed, and maybe Pcarbonn and other cold fusion proponents, are telling you off-wiki that your comments are very appropiate and that you keep going, but you should be taking their input with a sack of salt, after all the talk page comments of Jed and Pcarbonn paid an important role in getting them banned so they haven't exactly shown that they know what you can put on a wikipedia talk page and what you can't! I am not a wiki guru, but at least I manage to not get myself banned) --Enric Naval (talk) 21:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

• P.D.: and after me posting this message you still keep uncollapsing your comments ... --Enric Naval (talk) 17:21, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

(*) not just OR but also endless repetition of the same analysis of the DOE review ("one-third of the panel thought that" etc.), which was already beaten to death by Pcarbonn and Jed. Use some secondary source that analyzes the results, like the Scientific American , which ends with a quote from the principal deputy director of science of the DOE:

"When asked if this meant that nothing had changed since the last DOE review, Decker replies, 'I think that may be a fair comment'."

• Eh? That's fair? The report itself says that little had changed. However, changed about what? You've got to understand what the charge was, the task; ultimately it was to recommend or not recommend a special federal program funding LENR research. What they concluded in 1989 and what they concluded in 2004 seem about the same to me. However, the overall attitude shifted. Now, I haven't read the individual reviews from the 1989 report. Here is what the article from the Sci Am article you cited says that indicates the kind of consensus present:

Eighteen nuclear physicists, electrochemists and materials scientists reviewed research submitted by Hagelstein and his colleagues. In its December 2004 report, the DOE stated that when it came to whether the evidence for excess power was compelling or not, the panel split about evenly. When it came to whether nuclear reactions took place in the experiments, the report noted that two thirds of reviewers found the evidence unconvincing, one person found it compelling, and the remainder were somewhat convinced.

• That is pretty much the same as what the DOE report says, itself. This is the kind of information that was removed from the article. What was it like in 1989?

• I haven't seen a "vote" breakdown from 1989. However, one thing is clear to me: the 1989 report was far more supportive of "cold fusion" than it has been made out to be. If something in 1989 "killed" cold fusion, that report was not it. It recommended further research. The DOE does not recommend further research on N-rays or polywater. And as to 2004, a panel of the DOE would not be evenly split on the question of excess heat if cold fusion was "junk science."

• The 1989 report makes it to be a major objection that helium had not been shown. Since then, helium has been reported at levels consistent with the excess heat, in controlled experiments; and note that good measurement of helium turns negative heat results into confirmations of cold fusion, if no heat is correlated with no helium, which has been reported; this dismantles one of the major arguments against cold fusion on which the 1989 report depended.

• From the 2004 report, what the CF researchers were asserting:

1. “The existence of a physical effect that produces heat in metal deuterides. The heat is measured in quantities greatly exceeding all known chemical processes and the results are many times in excess of determined errors using several kinds of apparatus. In addition, the observations have been reproduced, can be reproduced at will when the proper conditions are reproduced, and show the same patterns of behavior. Further, many of the reasons for failure to reproduce the heat effect have been discovered.”

2. “The production of 4He as an ash associated with this excess heat, in amounts commensurate with a reaction mechanism consistent with D+D 􀃆 4He + 23.8 MeV (heat)”. :::3. “A physical effect that results in the emission of: (a) energetic particles consistent with d(d,n)3He and d(d,p)t fusions reactions, and (b) energetic alphas and protons with energies in excess of 10 MeV, and other emissions not consistent with deuteron-deuteron reactions.”

• In 1989, there was no claim of helium finding. In 2004, the claim is discussed:

The hypothesis that excess energy production in electrolytic cells is due to low energy nuclear reactions was tested in some experiments by looking for D + D fusion reaction products, in particular 4He, normally produced in about 1 in 107 in hot D + D fusion reactions. Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat. The detected 4He was typically very close to, but reportedly above background levels. This evidence was taken as convincing or somewhat convincing by some reviewers; for others the lack of consistency was an indication that the overall hypothesis was not justified. Contamination of apparatus or samples by air containing 4He was cited as one possible cause for false positive results in some measurements.

• Completely missing from this is the details on control. How much helium would be expected from the excess heat reported? What was found, and I believe reported to the panel, was that the levels of helium reported were commensurate with the level of excess heat reported. No excess heat, no helium above background. Excess heat, elevated helium. Even if the elevations are not far above background, this is where statistical analysis can show clear correlation and thus causal association as a reasonable presumption. I've seen data which is far more clear than the summary given above, I should look at what they were looking at. I should also check on the helium reports from the SPAWAR group, because the technique they use is very reliable for producing excess heat; much of the earlier work was plagued with difficulty at getting any result at all. But, suppose that you run 160 cells. Only 16 of them produce excess heat. Looks lousy, right? Maybe it's just bad calorimetry in those cases. (But that is actually very unlikely with some of the research groups). Okay, then in five of the sixteen you find helium. No helium in any of the cells with no heat. Is this a significant finding? Damn straight it would be! That would be a proof beyond reasonable doubt that the excess heat is a precondition for the helium finding. Further, suppose that we look at the 11 cells where no helium was found after they had excess heat, and we see that the excess heat from those cells was lower than from the ones where helium was found. This would be proof on top of proof, that the excess heat and produced helium are effectively measuring the same process or cause. (I just made up the number 160, to show that the total number of negative experiments was crucial in understanding the reported results.)

• The reported conclusion is quite unsatisfactory; it will be necessary to look at the individual reports and compare them to the raw data.

• So why did the 2004 DOE report say that it was basically the same conclusion as in 1989. Because it was! What was the conclusion? What was seriously wrong with the article for a time was that the conclusion was read and interpreted as a dismissal of cold fusion as being junk science. That wasn't true in 1989 and it wasn't true in 2004. The conclusion wasn't that cold fusion was happening or not happening, it was a conclusion that the evidence was not yet conclusive and that further research should continue, but not a major federal program. Which, by the way, is still quite a reasonable conclusion (though it might not be the best conclusion). Why? Because the goal of the DOE report was to determine this question of "major federal funding," not whether or not cold fusion was junk science. It is crystal clear that this wasn't their opinion as a panel, and the level of confidence that cold fusion was "possible" wasn't what their overall conclusion was based on. And, in fact, there is something we don't know. Who wrote this the following overall conclusion?

While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review.

• It's anonymous, apparently. What was similar, though? Both reports recommended further research. Both reports did not recommend a federal program, beyond normal research funding process. The 2004 report was pretty specific about what research was recommended. This was charge 3:

Charge Element 3: Determine whether there is a scientific case for continued efforts in these studies and, if so, to identify the most promising areas to be pursued.

• Please notice the summary response:

The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review. No reviewer recommended a focused federally funded program for low energy nuclear reactions.

• They were not asked if one should be recommended, so that's a comment representing the goals of the author of the overall review. I can say that I probably know more about the cold fusion research, at this point, than the author of the overall review, whoever it was, and I'm not at all sure I'd recommend a "focused federally funded program" at this point, but I'd definitely recommend certain targeted points of research. Enric, the panel was unanimous on that!

• Enric, is this even remotely consistent with claims that cold fusion is "pseudoscience" or "junk science" or even "fringe science." It's "fringe" because of the opinions of large number of scientists that it's fringe, but that phenomenon doesn't reproduce itself in a neutral panel. Is there some membership card that says "Scientist," and those with the card can vote on a topic, and the topic is "science" if, what, how many, vote that it is? Or it's "fringe" if more than what percentage vote for it to be such? No, we consider the opinions of experts, those with knowledge in the specific field, issued after consideration of the evidence. And this returns me to the question here, what is the relevant field? The panel consisted of experts in nuclear physics, electrochemistry (even though some CF research doesn't involve electrochemistry any more), and materials science. That's actually a pretty decent mix. I wonder if the one-third that considered the evidence for fusion strong were the electrochemists! Back to Enric. --Abd (talk)

See also Biberian 2007, which was an update on the state of the field:

"Seventeen years after the announcement by Professors Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann of the discovery of cold fusion in March 1989, the scientific community does not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme." (that's in 2007, so 3 years after DOE 2004

• Preaching to the choir, Enric. Note what this implies: that the "scientific community" rejects the conclusions of the 2004 DOE report. The "scientific community" rejects the peer-reviewed research, and, largely, denies that it even exists. ("Nobody was able to confirm Fleischmann's results") Are you aware of the implications of this?

• Sure, we should report this, but not as "science," but rather as "about scientists and the scientific community," and, in fact, we have plenty of reliable source analyzing the dysfunctional response to the CF announcement and what followed. (And the dysfunction has been on both sides of this debate, I'm dealing with it a bit from the other side. As an example, Hoffman's book on LENR is excellent, but some pro-CF activists have condemned him, for reasons that somewhat escape me. He is a true skeptic, one who is just as skeptical of premature rejection as he is of premature claims of proof. And he is very aware, and very clear, about the hazards on both sides.

And "Driving forces in physical, biological and socio-economic phenomena" from "cambridge University Press

"On December 2, 2004 the US Department of Energy published a report which says that evidence on cold fusion remains inconclusive."

"Responsible Conduct of Research" from Oxford UP, one of the authors being Shamoo (the guy from Undead Science), is from 2009 and , it doesn't even mention the DOE 2004 review, it just states that it's still in the same situation as in 1989.

• Largely, yes. Enric, you are beating a dead horse. The 2004 DOE report says that "evidence remains inconclusive." It also says that its conclusions were similar to 1989. Sure. What does "inconclusive" mean? It means that reasonable doubt remains for the majority of reviewers; one-third of them said that they were "somewhat convinced," with one of those simply being "convinced." Enric, most of what you are saying is obvious, yet you are presenting it as if it were somehow escaping me. What I conclude is that you don't have the foggiest notion what I'm saying. --Abd (talk)

And OMCV also told you his first-hand experience with cold fusion being fringe.

• Sure. But what is "fringe" and how does it affect Misplaced Pages coverage of a topic? See WP:FRINGE. It's actually not well-defined. But I know of no other claimed "fringe science" with as much evidence for acceptance as LENR research. Are you aware of any fringe science where a governmental panel of experts unanimously recommends further research? OMCV claims that he'd ruin his career if it were known that he is even talking about cold fusion, even though he's a skeptic. Enric, this tells us practically nothing about the science, but a great deal about society. (end of interspersed comment, back to Enric for the last paragraph)

Given all this (and I'm sure that a few more RS can be produced), and given that you all your analysis relies on your reading of the reviews, I think it's clear that you simply engaged in OR in that third comment that I collapsed. Please don't uncollapse it and start paying more attention to what the sources say. This is getting tiring. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I'll reverse my policy, Enric. OR is permitted on Talk pages if relevant to the process of working on the article. OR can suggest searches for RS covering the topic. I'd say this: start paying attention to what I'm saying, or don't read it. Don't try to stop others from reading it, but efforts to organize what I've written into what should be on top level and what should be collapsed are just fine. If the goal is comprehension for the reader and not suppression of discussion.

As to Pcarbonn and Jed, well, Pcarbonn was a good editor. I've read the ArbComm decision, he got a very raw deal, and eventually I'll do something about it, but it will depend mostly on Pcarbonn. If he wanted to come back, I'd assist, but my conclusion was that it didn't matter that much. That he was banned is our loss, and I don't know that it would be the best use of his time or mine or all the other editors who would get involved on both sides to try to reverse the ArbComm decision. And, Enric, please understand that I expect that if I took that task on, I'd succeed. Rothwell is an expert on the topic who tends to think that people who don't understand him (or who don't meet his expectations) are idiots. That's an occupational hazard for some experts. The points he has been making about cold fusion are generally right on, based on what I've found reviewing the literature, his points about Wikpedia and Misplaced Pages editors are somewhere between impolitic and ignorant. He knows the literature intimately; he actually edited a good deal of it! Dismissing someone because the person is a writer is ... stupid. And double dismissing him because his degree is in Japanese is, again, nearsighted, given that some of the most intense research published in peer-reviewed journals has been published in Japanese. Writers often become experts on the topic they cover; have you noticed that Krivit, that "fringe POV-pusher," as some have tried to have it, was invited to be on the panel at the ACS press conference? Why would these people pick some nutty loony-tune? Actually, I've talked to him and have looked over a fair amount of his work. He's a reporter, a serious one, a professional. But you know about the media, how biased they are. (Where someone is a true reporter, not just a hack collator of press releases and free information or shallow interviews, they often develop personal opinions about the topics they cover, becoming informed has a habit of doing that to us.) --Abd (talk) 03:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, let's see. Here I have two evaluations of the effect of the DOE 2004 review. One is your asessment here at wikipedia, and the other is the assesment of the principal deputy director of science of the DOE, as quoted by Scientific American. You will understand that I choose the second assessment as this guy was in a much better position to assess DOE's activities (including the hellium think, and the vote proportions). Also, for the purpose of writing the article, WP:NOR requires me to choose it, as being a published source knowledgeable in the field. Idem for Biberian, Shamoo, etc.

I am obviously not getting the point that you are trying to make. It appears to have something to do with ignoring what RS say in favor of what you think that they should say. From your comments above, you are planning to engage into full-fledged OR "The reported conclusion is quite unsatisfactory; it will be necessary to look at the individual reports and compare them to the raw data" which you will probably go and report in Talk:Cold fusion, WP:TALK be damned, and you make statements like "I can say that I probably know more about the cold fusion research, at this point, than the author of the overall review". That is... well... I think that you are deluding yourself on this matter. I'll just go and keep working in the article, and see if Phil153 makes that RfC he was talking about. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:21, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It appears to have something to do with ignoring what RS say in favor of what you think that they should say. No. My point. You are not getting it. However, maybe I'm not being clear, but if I try to be more clear, it takes more words unless I spend much more time, and I already spend too much. What I'm saying is that RS is RS, and peer-reviewed is peer-reviewed. Peer-reviewed sources take precedence over ordinary media. This is the problem: we have lots of media sources for CF being pseudoscience, or for "most scientists" considering it such. But we have little peer-reviewed sources that say that CF is pseudoscience. We have a blatant example that it isn't pseudoscience, a reliable source, the DOE review from 2004. We have the ACS scheduling a four day seminar on low energy nuclear reactions this year, with major media notice. I'd say that it is preposterous that they would giver this much attention to pseudoscience, just as it is preposterous to look at the SPAWAR work, with, what, thirty peer-reviewed papers done over the last twenty years, as pseudoscience. But at the same time, we have major media repeating old "facts" about cold fusion that are blatantly contradictory to what is in peer-reviewed journals. What has been happening for a long time is that peer-reviewed RS material has been excluded from the article with the argument that it's fringe, not broadly accepted, and would therefore be undue weight, but we don't actually have reliable source for that claim sufficient to impeach the peer-reviewed material. We also have reliable source for the fact that the field was warped by the events of 1989, by very sloppy work supposedly proving that cold fusion was not real, work that is still supposed to represent the "mainstream," when, in fact, there isn't any supposed mainstream publication taking place (i.e., the supposedly critical mainstream), or very little. What's been quoted as "criticism" has often been quite the opposite, simply misinterpreted by major media or by us. (Krivit wasn't criticizing the SPAWAR findings, Kowalski, while he proposed an alternate explanation than radiation, did not maintain that hypothesis in the face of the SPAWAR response, and seems to have fully accepted that the CR-39 effects are due to radiation.)

As to OR, no, I'm not intending to engage in "full-fledged OR." I'm discussing what I find in the sources, and this includes some level of OR as appropriate for such discussion, but do not mistake "Talk page OR" with what I would put in the article. The kind of OR that I do leads to searches for what may exist in reliable source, and helps organize the information. It's like using blogs. I don't neglect blogs when doing research for an article, even though I may not be able to use them as sources, because they will sometimes point to a source that doesn't show up in searches. Working with an article on a Canadian national socialist, I found references to newspaper articles that weren't googleable because they were behind subscription walls; I was then able to extract enough from those articles through targeted searches to source the article and save it from deletion.

As to my comment about my knowledge, you don't cite the exact place I said this, do you imagine that I remember what I write? Sometimes, yes, but I'm 64 years old, the brain works differently than it did when I was young. I think I knew what I was talking about there, but perhaps I was wrong. Consider the "principal deputy director of science of the DOE," and what he would know about cold fusion. My strong suspicion is that someone in that position would have spent perhaps a tenth of the time or less researching the particular field as I have, even though I've only been working on this for less than three months. (Yes, I knew about CF and did substantial research back in 1989, but, in fact, very little was known then.) If you think that something other than this is likely, you probably have a very naive view of what a bureaucrat like that would know. He may be an excellent scientist in some field, but once you realize that the DOE has long been dead-set against cold fusion, that in spite of the recommendations of the 1989 review, when Storms approached them with research proposals that were exactly what they had asked for, the door was slammed in his face, as it was with all such proposals, I think it isn't difficult to realize that the DOE would not be likely to put a cold fusion specialist into the position you suggest, and that the person there would probably be knowledgeable in other areas, not this one. The DOE spent one day in the actual review, which is really preposterous, given the complexity of the issues. Sure, there was time spent by individual experts preparing for that meeting, but to find consensus in a group like that takes time. They did not try to find consensus, they simply measured agreement on points, very primitive process, and with that, they were very substantially divided. With detailed discussion, they might have found far more agreement. Rejection of cold fusion by scientists takes place when there isn't adequate discussion, based on what I've seen of old reviews. It would be expected with any new field that challenges old paradigms. In short, Enric, I think I probably have a great deal more experience with the real world in these matters than you. Here, we are peers; if my knowledge is greater, it would still give me no right over you, it's still my job to seek consensus with you, but it is also your job to try to understand with something deeper than AGF, with an assumption that maybe I know what I'm talking about. Don't worry. I take responsibility for this, precisely because (I imagine) I'm older.

You have no obligation to read what I write, nobody does, unless I put it into the article. By all means, do what you said you would do. Keep working on the article. But if you want to know where we might head, yes, you can read what I write, it may give you a clue. There is lots of stuff that I know that I can't put in the article because it depends on OR of some kind or another. For example, I can look at lots of primary sources, including conference papers. It means something to me if an effect is confirmed in a conference paper even if it is never published in a peer-reviewed journal, and that will remain true as long as publication in this field remains very difficult. And I'll note that Storms cites lots of conference papers. He is the reviewer, and his publisher, by citing them! --Abd (talk) 02:34, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

(One thing, you talk about showing that it's not "pseudoscience", but what the RS support is "fringe science, disacredited field, and getting compared to pathological science").

I'll just say that WP:RS does not require sources to be peer-reviewed, that many of those sources are primary sources that are given very little importance at reliable secondary sources (or no importance at all, or even listing them into the evidence for pathological science!), that many of those peer-reviewed sources were found in the talk page to be of doubtful quality or to come from low quality journals, and that all of that justifies plentily why they are not in the article.

As an apart, your comments are way too long and fill the page, dwarfing the posts of other editors, forcing other people to wade though them in order to follow the discussions. It's unhelpful, it discourages people from participating, never mind what you say about people having the choice not to read it, and you keep resisting attempts to collapse your comment. (the page is now at 668 KB, I'm tempted to go and count how many KB correspond to your posts) And you indulge into excessive talk page OR. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

(One thing, you talk about showing that it's not "pseudoscience", but what the RS support is "fringe science, disacredited field, and getting compared to pathological science"). Enric, do you imagine that the first half of your claimed opposition conflicts with the second half? Why? It's not pseudoscience, as can be sufficiently shown to satisfy a Misplaced Pages consensus, in my opinion. Want to find out? DR is thataway. But DR starts in article talk, then user talk, then there are higher levels, involving more editors. Cold fusion is a discredited field. We have RS for that. Cold fusion has been compared to N rays and polywater. That's undeniably true, even if that isn't in peer-reviewed source beyond maybe an editorial. But we also have from reliable source that Cold fusion isn't pseudoscience. They are both true. I ask you on CF Talk today what your opinion is. Does it make any sense at all, from the 2004 DOE report and the context, including the unanimous and clear recommendation of the reviewers, that Cold fusion is pseudoscience? Read Hoffman's Dialogue. That was a neutral source, widely reported as being critical of cold fusion. I won't repeat what I've been told about Hoffman by at least one prominent CF advocate. Hoffman is very, very clear that this isn't pseudoscience, that there are workers in the field doing serious scientific work in it, and publishing. Just not in Nature!

I'll just say that WP:RS does not require sources to be peer-reviewed,

Once again, you have this habit of presenting the obvious to me as if you think it would surprise me or that it contradicts what I've said. What I've actually said is that we can and should use whatever is in RS, if it satisfies RS, it's notable. I understand that if you've been doing nothing but trying to maintain the article against POV-pushing, this may have escaped you, it often does. It is not our job to resolve conflicts between reliable sources, properly, we leave that up to the reader.

that many of those sources are primary sources that are given very little importance at reliable secondary sources (or no importance at all, or even listing them into the evidence for pathological science!) ... Listed where, Enric? Consider this: Whatever is listed and used in Storms (2007) has become usable primary source made notable by reference in a secondary source, the Storms publication. That is one huge pile of research, much of it accessible on-line. See, scientists writing reviews don't confine themselves to peer-reviewed studies. They can and do reference conference papers, self-published material from scientists or even non-scientists whom they consider notable, and even private communications. They are not Misplaced Pages, and RS, in general, need not follow our standards in what they write, just as we don't expect newspapers, RS for us, to footnote and cite everything they write in order for us to be able to use it.

However, if something in one reliable source contradicts other reliable source, or has not been confirmed by other reliable source, we attribute it, we don't exclude it based on our own OR and conclusion that one of these sources is defective. Enric, if this goes up to ArbComm, what I've been telling you will be sustained, my opinion. It seems to me that you are mostly rejecting it because you don't understand it, not because you actually disagree.

that many of those peer-reviewed sources were found in the talk page to be of doubtful quality or to come from low quality journals, and that all of that justifies plentily why they are not in the article. Okay, please point me to the RfC concluding that. You have mistaken the status quo, in an environment where true consensus was not pursued, but merely represented which side wore out the other, or managed to get the other banned, for a "conclusion." I don't edit war, Enric, you know and have seen that, and I don't edit war even when I'm certain I'm "right." You saw what happened with the whitelisted source in Martin Fleischmann. I pushed the edge of edit-warring there beyond my own normal limits, because I was so certain what the consensus would be if we went through real consensus process. Well, because of a certain tendentious editor, I needed to go through that process. Note, also, that it only took low-level steps in WP:DR. But it took a lot of discussion. That is frequently what consensus takes. That's why many organizations abandon consensus process in favor of voting. It seems more efficient. That can be short-sighted, but that's another story.

Waste your time counting the KB, Enric, if you want. What is the guideline that you are going to compare it to? Again, it would be a lovely topic for an RfAr. Before that, I imagine an AN report: "Editor writes 50 KB in one day." Of course, that just might get reframed to "Editor works hard to improve project, examines article issues in detail."

Collapse boxes are appropriate, sometimes, and I've not only consented to the collapse of some of my discussion, I've collapsed some of it myself. Other times it was not appropriate. Enric, don't take one side of a discussion and collapse all of it, except maybe to propose the collapse, it's an efficient way to make the proposal. If I don't accept the collapse, or, better, refactor my comment, collapsing part, let it go. You are totally free to collapse anything I write, but if you do it in a way that distorts what I've been saying -- and you did --, don't be surprised if I undo it. --Abd (talk) 14:39, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Jost one note: there is already consensus for not putting the "pseudoscience" category in the article, it was decided to put it in the "fringe science" category instead, see the RfC from July 2008 Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_17#Should the article be placed in the category of "pseudoscience" --Enric Naval (talk) 16:46, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I knew about the conclusion, but thanks for the link. As you may know, I only started following the article in January, as a result of discovering the blacklisting (which, by the way, opened up a huge can of worms. It turns out that, contrary to blacklisting guidelines, the blacklist is frequently being use to control content even when there is no linkspamming, and I discovered one major web site that is blacklisted because an editor started adding perhaps a dozenappropriate links. The antispam volunteers consider any addition of multiple links to a web site (exact level undefined) to be linkspam, shoot first and ask questions later, and if you ask questions, the strong presumption is against delisting, and, as you have seen, you have to stand on your head to get a whitelisting. But the second will be easier, and get a few, there is then some argument for delisting the whole site, or, in the case of lenr-canr.org, whitelisting the whole site (because the current blacklisting is at meta, not here); and when the whole site is whitelisted, it becomes more politically practical to request delisting at meta. We'll get there.

Now, if Cold fusion is pseudoscience, and you just came up with a pile of sources to show that, why not include it in the category? Don't worry, I'll answer! Because those are opinions, not the product of peer-reviewed and neutral research. What I've pointed to is (1) the DOE review in 2004, which is utterly inconsistent with the pseudoscience conclusion, even though it doesn't say, for sure, "the study of low-energy nuclear reactions is pseudoscience," (2) reliable source that neutrally examines how the "pseudoscience" judgment came to become common, and (3) reliable source that clearly rejects the label. So the category is controversial, the application of the label is POV, and categories should not be used to assert some POV. Now a category of "Research field alleged to be pseudoscience," that would be appropriate. It's verifiable.

But what about the "fringe science category." It's easy to understand a prior consensus on that, but, to me, the question is open. There is no crisp definition. However, see Misplaced Pages:FRINGE#Notability_versus_acceptance. Most of the discussion in WP:FRINGE assumes that it is difficult to find reliable source for the topic. There is then, beyond that, concern about WP:UNDUE. The issue I've been raising is how we determine due weight when the weight of publication in reliable source is toward theories that are considered fringe by many. It is essential that we approach this neutrally. From the guideline (emphasis added):

Ideas that are of borderline or minimal notability may be mentioned in Misplaced Pages, but should not be given undue weight. Misplaced Pages is not a forum for presenting new ideas, for countering any systemic bias in institutions such as academia, or for otherwise promoting ideas which have failed to merit attention elsewhere. Misplaced Pages is not a place to right great wrongs. Fringe theories may be excluded from articles about scientific topics when the scientific community has ignored the ideas. However, ideas should not be excluded from the encyclopedia simply because they are widely held to be wrong. By the same token, the purpose of Misplaced Pages is not to offer originally synthesized prose "debunking" notable ideas which the scientific community may consider to be absurd or unworthy. Criticisms of fringe theories should be reported on relative to the visibility, notability, and reliability of the sources that do the criticizing.

Misplaced Pages is also not a crystal ball: While currently accepted scientific paradigms may later be rejected, and hypotheses previously held to be controversial or incorrect sometimes become accepted by the scientific community (such as plate tectonics), it is not the place of Misplaced Pages to venture such projections. If the status of a given idea changes, then Misplaced Pages changes to reflect that change. Misplaced Pages primarily focuses on the state of knowledge today, documenting the past when appropriate (identifying it as such), and avoiding speculation about the future.

Now, Enric, how closely do I need to parse this for you? To provide some hints, I have bolded some of the text above.

If I choose to challenge the Fringe science category, I will delve into the details. For now, that is way on the back burner; but what has been done is to exclude reliable source on the basis that the research was "fringe," or that the journals were not of the stature of Nature. That position neglected that Nature withdrew from the field almost twenty years ago, so the "Nature position" is very old. Essentially, on this topic, today, what was in Nature is only of historical relevance. When we look at the research and publication that ensued, the questions raised by the negative results published in Nature have been answered. There remain many mysteries, but certain issues have resolved, among those working in the field, and, while they remain controversial among a more general panel like that involved with the DOE in 2004, with no clear consensus being found, the indications are more that this is what WP:FRINGE calls "emerging science." The LENR community is no small community. It runs conferences, it has its own peer-reviewed journal, but it also publishes in independent peer-reviewed journals. In spite of being underfunded, in spite of the weight of massive rejection based on institutional inertia (which is part of a story about the institutions, not about the science!), work is continuing, with very significant progress in the last few years. If you have made yourself truly familiar with this field, especially with the negative literature in 1989-1990, you will be aware of the significance of 100% replication (He, 2007 review), helium correlated with heat and at the appropriate levels to be the primary nuclear ash (many publications), and neutrons (Mosier-Boss, 2008). The only one of these three that hasn't been widely confirmed in specifics is the least important, but the most notable! That's the neutrons, of course. Quite simply, it is now well-known that the primary ash is helium, that the primary radiation produced is alpha particles, which is simply energetic helium, and that neutrons are a product of some rare side-reaction. But still devastating to the theory that low-energy fusion, aside from muon catalysis, is impossible!

Against the position outlined above, there is Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science#Fringe_science, which concluded: 1) In this ruling, the term "fringe science" refers to matters which purport to be science, or use its trappings and terminology but are not usually regarded as such by the general scientific community; and to matters which do not claim to be scientific but nevertheless make claims that are normally considered within the purview of science.

See also from this case:

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science#Prominence. Neutrality requires that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history, medicine and science.

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Fringe_science#Advocacy. Misplaced Pages is not for advocacy. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to state neutrally the current knowledge in a field, not to put forward arguments to promote or deride any particular view. In particular, conjectures that hold significant prominence must no more be suppressed than be promoted as factual.

So, Enric, what is the "current knowledge" with respect to Cold fusion? --Abd (talk) 22:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

The unnecessary length of your posts is becoming a "huge" (joke) problem (serious). You are defeating the object of communication, and your long posts are not of a benefit to the project as they are making it more difficult to understand what is going on and discuss anything on the talk page. They are becoming disruptive, though I hope that isn't your intention. Please write shorter, more concise posts. Verbal chat 14:47, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

The length of my posts is necessary. It's a well-known problem for writers, Mark Twain referred to it in a letter. "I'd write you a briefer letter, but I don't have time." I have a standard suggestion: If you think some is tl;dr. There is no obligation, no necessity to the project, to read long talk page posts. If I'm dropping a warning on your talk page, it's my obligation to be succinct or else the warning may later be considered ineffective. If I'm justifying a revert, and you ignore it because it's too long, and the reason wasn't otherwise apparent, you'd have a defense against edit warring. There is some usage of collapse boxes, which can make the conversation more accessible, overall, but it is, again, work to appropriately collapse without distorting. So, if you want to help, fix the problem. It takes work. Are you volunteering?

As to the object of communication, there are two types of communication: polemic and discussion. Discussion does not have a fixed goal, beyond some general mutually desirable goal. Polemic aims to convince, based on some pre-existing conclusion. My long discussions are just that, discussion. If you want polemic, ask for it, but don't complain if you are then excluded from being part of a consensus formed. Discussion is voluntary. Watch out for polemic, it can poison consensus, and do not confuse the two. You are not the first to do so. Skilful polemic is brief, putting strong pressure on a point or narrow line, like a knife. I know how to do it. It takes far longer, unless and until one becomes, perhaps, very skillful at making a certain cut.

One more point. I have ADHD, it's a very clear diagnosis, not marginal, indeed, I could be a poster boy for it. To require me to be succinct when discussing would be, effectively, to require me not to discuss. I could do that. But I'd much rather seek consensus, and that interests me much more than any possible POV I could push, which is just about what I'd be limited to if I don't discuss.--Abd (talk) 15:01, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

No, the length of your posts is not necessary. Your literary allusions, metaphors, similes, and other rhetorical devices do not aid understanding or add to your posts. Your posts are closer to polemic than to discussion, and are becoming disruptive. Work on them offline and redraft them if it will help, as you are not communicating effectively. For example, your digression about polemic and discussion could have been condensed easily into one concise sentence without any information loss. Another example is that there is no reason to bring up Mark Twain. Telling people to not read your posts is not helpful. I will be asking for more input on this if you continue to write essays and polemic on the Cold Fusion talk page, and to treat it as a forum for discussion and original research. Verbal chat 15:08, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

You are welcome to your opinion, Verbal, thanks for sharing. I don't tell people to not read my posts, but I write for those who are motivated to read. There are, what, six million registered editors. Not one of them is obligated to read what I write. If any one of them thinks that it doesn't belong on the Talk page, they are free to remove it without even reading it. I or other editors will then respond. It takes no longer to remove a long post than to remove a short one. It takes very little longer to scan a long post looking for the end and a response from another. I'm working heavily on Cold fusion at this point, and the vast majority of that work is off-line, researching, I've accumulated a small library, and am beginning to come to conclusions about where I think the article should go. Until then, I'm discussing what comes up. Yes, it's more than some editors are used to, but "some editors" are not used to editors who work hard on a topic. I'm not excluding them, they lose nothing from those talk page posts. I could take your post here as a warning, but I'm not at all clear what I'm being warned about. Is there a guideline on length? Show me so I can comply. However, above, you rudely dismiss and reject my comments. This is my Talk page, I can mention Mark Twain here if I want to. I will say this: your intervention here is not helpful. I've suggested how you could be helpful, but that would require that you become familiar with the issues at the article. It's impossible to judge if my discussion is necessary oar not unless you understand the issues; you have a personal standard of what is "too long," based on your own personal needs.

Verbal, I have over twenty years of experience with on-line discussion, starting with the W.E.L.L. in Sausalito in the mid-1980s. I've encountered the tl;dr objection many times. There is nothing wrong with tl;dr. What is offensive, though is tl;dr SO SHUT UP!

I just wrote something on Misplaced Pages Review, and quite a number of editors came back with tl;dr as if they were being smart and saying something that wasn't obvious. But I wasn't writing for them. Another wikipedia editor emailed me and thanked me for what I'd written. See, Verbal, I was writing for him, on the issues raised by the topic there, and for anyone else who cared to read. Not for the close-minded, knee-jerk, opinionated without knowledge, many who too often dominate conversations with their pithy witticisms that do nothing to resolve conflict. Want to help, Verbal? Wake up and start. Otherwise, please go away.

Until you provide a guideline being violated, your warning here is ineffective.

But to pick up on one possibly useful fragment from what you wrote, your digression about polemic and discussion could have been condensed easily into one concise sentence without any information loss. Perhaps you are better than that than I am. Could you show me? I'll note that this is classic editor-writer dispute, it could be an editor complaining that the writer doesn't do the editor's job. --Abd (talk) 15:48, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Something was said above that I should respond to. (I bet that jed, and maybe Pcarbonn and other cold fusion proponents, are telling you off-wiki that your comments are very appropiate and that you keep going, but you should be taking their input with a sack of salt, after all the talk page comments of Jed and Pcarbonn paid an important role in getting them banned so they haven't exactly shown that they know what you can put on a wikipedia talk page and what you can't! I am not a wiki guru, but at least I manage to not get myself banned)

That's correct. However, I once wrote that, if you are never blocked, you aren't trying hard enough to improve the project. I wrote that before I was ever blocked, and I got, from it, positive comment from Wikipedians far more experienced than I. That's obviously not to be taken literally, because some people do get lucky and do serious work without getting blocked; but more often, just as children learning to walk usually stumble and fall, learning to deal with serious conflict on Misplaced Pages without taking flak takes practice. (Actually, the flak is inevitable, it comes with the territory, but, with a skilled editor, flak usually does not result in loss of ability to fly.) There is one exception, and it's pathological. I.e., if you "work" on supporting a majority POV, you may get away with incivility and other offenses that would get any advocate of a minority POV, and sometimes any advocate of consensus NPOV, blocked quickly.

(1) Pcarbonn. Pcarbonn has said practically nothing to me, you can see almost all (all?) of our communication on his Talk page. He has no influence on my work. I regret his loss, and I consider that an error was made, but it would be disruptive at this time to pursue that. Several issues on which I'm working would prepare the way to address this nondisruptively. I will note that the major editor who battled with Pcarbonn was also, more recently, banned, and his behavior had long been totally outrageous, but was supported by a significant faction, and an ally of his succeeded in framing Pcarbonn's work as motivated by an outside agenda, which actually should have been practically irrelevant, if Pcarbonn's actual behavior satisfied guidelines. In the end, Pcarbonn's ban hinged on the fact that he wrote a quite good article for New Energy Times about his Misplaced Pages experience, framed as an admission of considering Misplaced Pages to be a battlefield. It's a battlefield, we should get over it. The problem isn't that -- which is simply a fact, Misplaced Pages is a place where factions battle -- the problem is behavior that violates civility and other policies, including edit warring. Editors who comply with policy, so-called "civil POV-pushers," we actually need more of, not less of.

(2) "Jed." I.e., Jed Rothwell. Jed is a notable expert on the topic, he should actually have an article, I've got plenty of source for it. But I'm not starting it right now, too much else to do. We occasionally correspond. I informed him of the He Jing-tang paper, which he was unaware of. His general comment is that Misplaced Pages is a waste of time. You have to understand that some editors here have an inflated view of the importance of Misplaced Pages to someone like him. He doesn't need us. But he knows the field intimately, and he voluntarily withdrew from editing articles in 2006, thus satisfying COI guidelines, confining himself to Talk. We should have encouraged this, not blocked him for alleged offenses. In reality, the only offense was incivility, and this is common among experts dealing with people who know much less than them about a topic, and particularly when these relatively ignorant people are themselves uncivil. It's possible to deal with a problem like this without banning the editor, usually, but what would have been needed to be done was not done. Rothwell was blocked improperly, which is not to say that proper process would have resulted in a different conclusion, except that proper process would have allowed alternate response from him. Instead, he was given no incentive whatever to comply with civility guidelines, he gained nothing by complying, and lost nothing from sanctions. He didn't need Misplaced Pages links for pagerank. His site is highly notable, referenced all over and in RS.

(3) Jed Rothwell has provided me with a list of peer-reviewed publications supporting excess heat. We probably should have this on the project, I'll put it up if I can. This is obviously verifiable. There are other, earlier lists in RS, so, really, what his list would contribute is text (not necessary to retype) and possibly a few new or otherwise missing listings.

(3) (other proponents). I've corresponded with one other proponent, whose conclusion for some time matched that of Jed Rothwell (waste of time). Much of the correspondence was cc'd between him, myself, and another highly respected editor. None of it was about article content or my Talk page posts; rather, it was about certain overall process issues that affected that editor.

(4) It seems that the vision you have of a Misplaced Pages editor is very, very different from what a classic encyclopedia editor would do. A classic editor would actively communicate with experts, would not just sit back and look in the books and magazines. It's impossible for a non-expert to soundly review and produce a balanced report without active consultation, because it is far too easy for a non-expert to judge the importance of assertions in publications. Overall balance where there is conflict is satisfied by communication with experts on all sides. So there is supposed to be some problem if I discuss the topic with a notable expert? I'm quite aware of Rothwell's limitations -- and I'm frank with him about them. I won't reveal what he writes, but some of it I don't take with salt, I don't take it at all. He's a human being, besides being an expert. We all are the former, for sure.

One more point. Our coverage of Cold fusion is quite deficient compared to what it could be if we actually seek consensus instead of battling to maintain some POV ("fringe" or "anti-fringe"). I'm doing what ArbComm's suggestions on this require. You are actively invited to be a part of that. Your choice. I do suggest that you try to imagine that I know what I'm doing. It's not like I have no experience! --Abd (talk) 16:25, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

And another. Enric, you wrote: You say that you won't edit war and that you will let others editors judge on your comments, but you reverted two of my three collapsings.... Apparently you will only accept "'friendly' and selective collapse".... You also say "(...)Don't try to stop others from reading it, but efforts to organize what I've written into what should be on top level and what should be collapsed are just fine(...)" Putting all together actions and words, it looks like you are decided to have the last word on what gets collapsed in your comments and why, never mind what you state about letting other people decide.

I only accept collapse that does not damage the conversation. "Accept" refers to initial action, not to "Over my dead body." I am far more disposed to accept "friendly collapse," but collapse from editors arguing tenaciously against what I'm saying isn't friendly usually friendly. Nevertheless, I'l accept it if it does no harm. A single revert isn't edit warring, it's a statement. (There are conditions where it is edit warring, but they don't apply here.) How do you get "last word" out of what I will immediately accept or not? You collapse my text. You might have noticed that much (Most?) of your collapses have been accepted, in whole or in part. But if I don't see it as helpful, I have the choice of saying, no, I prefer not, and it is silly to discuss something like this, at this point, and I do this with a single revert. If it goes beyond this, yes, discussion is crucial. You are discussing here, that's okay, indeed, a good thing. Better than edit warring! If you revert me, you are definitely making a repetitive edit, which is into edit warring, as would I if I reverted again. (It could be defined tighter, such that my first revert is the boundary, but I set it a bit higher on talk pages, since the presumption is that we leave other editor's talk alone, normally.) I take the initial collapse as a good faith attempt to improve things. But I should be able to say, no, I don't think so, without wasting a lot of time. Reverting at that point is efficient. "Letting other people decide" refers to the overall process. I write, you collapse. I accept or revert or, sometimes, refactor and rewrite the collapse header. Depends on how much time I have and how important the collapsed material is. If someone else thinks that, no, this is better collapsed, that other person can revert me, and I may accept it. I will not revert that collapse myself, but, depending on the circumstance, I might discuss it and might ask someone else to revert again, though usually I will conclude that it doesn't matter than much. After all, it is all still there. Collapse is a lot nicer than deletion!

Enric, I'm going to recommend something, I don't know if it will work with you, but sometimes it does. Please reread this entire discussion here and see if you are succeeding in assuming good faith and if you are attempting to find consensus, which would imply helpful criticism, not accusations. If you realize that your comments were not as appropriate as you might have thought, apologize. It's simple and it clears the way for further cooperation. We have already cooperated, but I don't think you are aware of my longer-term plans. There is nothing nefarious about them, but they are not what most editors might expect. You can ask what I'm doing any time. It's not secret. It's merely esoteric to some. --Abd (talk) 21:34, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

User:Abd/Cold fusion controversy

Per your request to my talkpage, I have userfied the page and its history to the above location. Do not distribute copies of this page's contents except in compliance with the GFDL, and if you wouldn't mind, can you just ping me when you want it moved back, or if you can't bring the page up to standard so that I can return the history to the right location. Give me a nudge if you need any other help. Fritzpoll (talk) 15:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll ask on your page about whether or not there was an attached Talk page with anything possibly of note. One reason I wanted to have this userfied was so that history would be attached, this is better than pulling the text off of the off-wiki location. I wanted the page basically for research, the material, in pieces, might be incorporated in a different article, probably with rewrite. But it is conceivable that it would go back into mainspace under some conditions. --Abd (talk) 15:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

wow, nice article, a bit POVish though :P Anyways, I have to thank you for the iniative since I found there a very interesting letter exchange with two editors-in-chief of Scientific American http://lenr-canr.org/AppealandSciAm.pdf.

One thing, you should clean up all those "ibid" from the text. They all just get mixed up when people starts shuffling text around and neglects to update them, and then someone has go look at the history edit by edit to untangle the mess and find when was that "ibid" initally introduced to see what it was making reference to, or look at all the sources to find the one that was being used (assuming that it wasn't deleted from the article at some point, which takes you back to combing through the article history). Seriously, the "ibid" were intended for static text in printed media, and not for wikis that anyone can edit. You get a fair percentage of people who don't know what "ibid" means, or that don't care about it. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Of course. But, hey, I just found out about this old article today. Much of it was written by Jed Rothwell, who is an expert on the topic, besides being cantankerous; he's used to editing technical papers (he does a lot of that in the field), but he wasn't a skilled wiki editor. (My opinion is that we should take special care with experts like him, they can be touchy; handling Rothwell as he was handled by some of us was pure poison in terms of taking advantage of his comprehensive knowledge of the field. "Fringe" is very much off the mark, even if the field is fringe. That is, he's COI and that's enough. COI editors are expected to have a POV, so getting upset because an editor who only edits Talk has a POV is really .... very much against how Misplaced Pages needs to treat experts in general. As to the article, I don't know if we should clean it up and get it back in mainspace (and face a likely AfD as a "POV fork," no matter how careful we are about neutrality, or even speedy deletion based on the old AfD) or start moving the details about the controversy into Cold fusion. As you know, I think that article can't bear what is available in reliable source. --Abd (talk) 02:00, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

RFC JZG3

Hi Abd, even early on you can see a clear feeling has emerged that you are beating the dead horse and a super majority of users commenting so far support my call for a topic ban on you. I would ask you even at this early stage to carefully consider whether you are prepared to a) respect the opinions of your fellow editors by withdrawing the RFC and B) agree to drop this crusade voluntarily. If not, please be aware that I will be raising the issue for community endorsement on an involuntarily basis if (as I expect) the weight of opinion remains where it is. Please think this through carefully. You are a passionate and committed editor. No-one wants to sanction you if you can just decide to stand back on your own, but please be aware that this crusade needs to end and it needs to end now for the good of the project. Spartaz 19:04, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Spartaz. There is no crusade, there is an RfC, entered and certified. You are seeing, in the RfC, an initial pile-on which is fully to be expected where the editor is involved. For reference this is now called Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/JzG 3. (I named it JzG3 to start because the previous RfC was named JzG2, but, of course, there is no user JzG3, nor one named JzG2).

I request that you point out to me where I've been carrying on a crusade, I've been mostly silent about this for the last month. The evidence of attempts to resolve the dispute shows considerable opinion that there is a problem, so I am merely raising the problem formally, with evidence, so that the community may consider it. What's the "dead horse," please explain? There is a very, very simple solution to this: JzG acknowledges that he has violated policy with respect to use of tools while involved, and assures the community that he will not do it again. Because this is the goal that RfC states, it would make the RfC moot, in effect, and I'd support speedy close under those conditions.

However, without that recognition from Jzg (what's so hard about it?), I have every reason to expect that, once the community's attention is distracted, the behavior will resume. It is important that he acknowledge the violation, because, if he can't recognize it, he can't know when to refrain and when not to refrain. This was clearly established with Physchim62 and Tango, they were desysoppped not because they made mistakes, but because they appeared to be incapable of recognizing them.

Anyway, thanks for asking. If I take any specific actions which you consider disruptive, or beating a dead horse, please let me know, the presumption is that I will stop unless others comment, to the contrary, that my behavior is appropriate.

So, as to that, have you read the comment by Coppertwig in the RfC? What do you think about it? --Abd (talk) 20:22, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

One more point. I'm trying to understand your point. The RfC asks a specific question, and the "supermajority" you refer to have not addressed that question. If this comes to a close, should the closing admin consider the responses of those who did not address the question? What I'm seeing, among those who addressed the question, is consensus that JzG should not act as he acted. So what is the position of the "supermajority"? It's not clear to me, beyond a diffuse "JzG good, Abd bad." --Abd (talk) 20:26, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

The "dead horse" is the notion that Abd's activities are "wasteful drama". This idea has already been considered and rejected here. At Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/User:Abd/JzG, Abd was told by many users that RfC was the appropriate forum, though Abd hesitated: "I had not intended to escalate to RfC so soon, and had requested that JzG suggest a meditator" and "I cannot promise to file an RfC because, I still hope, it will become unnecessary".

I note that Spartaz' statement includes "while I agree generally with Fritpoll's advice to Guy on how to avoid future complaints of thus type", which is in essence in agreement with the basic overall message of the RfC. I'm under the impression that in ancient Greece, if an accused person was found innocent, the accuser would be punished; I would hope Misplaced Pages is more advanced than that. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 22:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, man, but I have had a discussion at my talk page about my certification of the RfC, and it seems that I was mistaken: users who certify a certify a dispute are also endorsing the statement of the RfC. Now, your dispute with JzG is too much different than mine, my concerns are almost completely different, so I'm having to pull my certification. You'll have to ask someone else to certify the RfC, maybe Copperwig or GoRight, I don't know. Again, sorry for failing you :( --Enric Naval (talk) 01:08, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

No problem, Enric. Spartaz correctly reset the clock to start when he moved the RfC back to uncertified, I think this is exactly what I suggested on your Talk page. And it's all moot now, because Durova and Petri Krohn have now certified. They were the ones I'd identified as previously attempting, on JzG Talk, to address the issue of use of tools while involved. See, the blacklisting and edit warring at Martin Fleischmann and block of Jed Rothwell and all that were not the point. Those could all have been, in the end, correct in terms of outcome, but use of tools while involved is one area on Misplaced Pages where process policy is crucial. It's a bit like edit warring: it doesn't matter if you are right, violate 3RR and you can be blocked. I know what to do when faced with a tenacious IP editor reverting junk back in. I don't do more than a couple of reverts, if that, I go to RfPP and it's fixed in minutes. I've seen editors blocked for enforcing policy, many times. You don't enforce policy by violating another policy.

Now, as to your support of my ban, in the RfC, well, it's harder to take that in a friendly way. I've found your edits at Talk:Cold fusion lately to be problematic, you have been asserting things based on sources where the sources don't substantiate your claims. That's actually dangerous, and it has gotten editors banned. I'd suggest not doing it. This is my Talk page, not yours, so you can take this or leave it without hazard. It's a friendly comment, at least to some degree!

By the way, precedent I've seen in prior RfCs is that sanctions for one user are not determined through an RfC on another. There is good reason for that, though it can be frustrating sometimes. Actually, in theory, RfCs don't determine sanctions, but that one seems to be ignored. JzG's RfC cannot involuntarily desysop him, but it can pave the way to an ArbComm case which could.

Do consider one thing: look at the comments supporting the RfC, which actually address the issue raised, which is not "Is JzG Good or is Abd bad." It's deliberately a question so simple that some editors refuse to consider it, maybe because they don't like the obvious implications: "Was JzG involved with Cold fusion? Did he then use admin tools with respect to it or editors involved with it? Is this against policy?" There is no comment which explicitly answers these questions in the negative, though there are plenty of comments which ignore the question, but pile in to support JzG or to attack me, which is irrelevant. Those people are making it more likely that JzG will lose his admin bit. --Abd (talk) 05:44, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Wow, you got your RfC certified by Durova, not bad for being your first RfC :D

No, I don't think that I'm going to get banned for my interpretation of sources in Talk:Cold fusion.

I don't see how those comments could have an effect on JzG finally getting desysopped or not... The evidence and comments presented at an eventual Arbcom case should carry way much more weigth on deciding that. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:47, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

• JzG cannot be desysopped by any process short of ArbComm action, unless he voluntarily resigns, or there is emergency action from "above," which is very rare. Not sure what you mean by "those comments." The RfC lays out (1) evidence of involvement, (2) evidence that tools were use when involved, (3) evidence that Jzg was warned without response. The RfC itself is generally a prerequisite for ArbComm acceptance of a case. The RfC was narrowly composed on one single, simple issue, and, as expected, many editors have tried, and they tried (and sometimes succeeded in the short-term) to make it into a content dispute, or disruption, or some kind of vendetta. In fact, when I began this process early in January, and approached JzG with regard to his out-of-process blacklistings, I had no negative history with him, and on the contrary, he had been helpful to me. I was surprised at his intransigent response, most admins would have said, "Oh, you're right, I probably shouldn't have done that myself. What do you suggest? I can take it to a noticeboard." Then I started finding other problems. But the RfC doesn't raise those issues. An ArbComm filing probably would.

• I was dealing, slowly, with disentangling the web of damage from JzG actions. Doing it quickly is disruptive. You saw one small piece of that, the situation with the link to lenr-canr.org. It's one step at a time, which allows focus, allows clearing the table of distractions. But I also uncovered problems with the blacklist. Again, I did not attack or directly confront the blacklist process, but have dealt with several examples, the most notable being lyrikline.org, which is still globally blacklisted but which is not effectively whitelisted here (and in de.wikipedia). My concern, in the end, is not JzG, at all, but community structure that allows abuse to go on a long time without effective community response, when the abuser is popular. JzG could defuse the immediate situation immediately by acknowledging that he violated administrative policy, and promising not to do it again, and I have no plans to pursue him over any of the other stuff I dug up; you can see much of it in the histories shown in the RfC, but, notice, that the histories (in the collapse boxes) are complete, they aren't cherry-picked. What was brought up to the top level is, of course, but just to show the depth of involvement.

• I have never attempted to get an editor banned over a content issue, and, in fact, I don't recall any attempt to get any editor banned over any issue at all, but sometimes I've raised issues that resulted in a ban. For example, sock puppetry. For what I've seen of your editing, Enric, for it to earn you a topic ban would take far more than what you have already done. I'm concerned about several incidents now where you made statements, providing sources that either didn't support the statement, or which provided raw, literal confirmation but which, overall, implied the contrary of your assertions. This kind of thing can evince an intention to prove a point from sources, rather than presenting or aiming for NPOV from sources.

• Above and in the RfC you can see what I was up against. It was expected. And do you think I'd have filed the RfC, or, previously, compiled the evidence in the deleted evidence file, if I didn't also expect that wider consensus would support what I've seen? If I didn't expect significant support from respected and experienced editors? JzG and Spartaz and some others would like to believe that I'm on some crusade to support Rothwell. No, I'm on a crusade to reform the way that Misplaced Pages treats experts. Rothwell was uncivil, he's blunt and caustic, both in what he wrote here and off-wiki. But lots of experts are like that, they imagine that knowing a field well gives them some edge over those who have only casually perused a few sources. If that!

• With someone like Rothwell, I would rigorously insist on compliance with COI and civility policies, but I would always want to know his opinion of article text or sources, provided he expresses them in a professional way. And I would defend him against incivility in the other direction. The incivility I saw directed at him was worse than what went in the other direction. If you support his ban, you should consider the implications. Or do you believe in some double standard?

• The two other editors who had tried specifically and recently to resolve the dispute with JzG over abuse of tools were listed by me in the RfC. I did not know for sure if they would certify, but .... I know Durova, and considered it likely, and Petri Krohn, as I recall, was one of the few editors who noticed and questioned some of JzG actions with respect to Cold fusion, which brought my attention to the matter in the first place. I knew nothing of the history at Cold fusion. He, and some others, were pretty cynical about the possibility of doing anything. But policy is clear here, it's not marginal, and rules about use of tools while involved are crucial, for the protection of all of us. Today it might be Rothwell, but tomorrow it might be you, if you tangle with an abusive administrator or one of his friends. (One of the more chilling comments in the RfAr JzG filed, after my comment there, was one in which an admin appeared to have offered to block on behalf on JzG, and, in fact, he went ahead and did that, without any justifying incident. I see stuff like this fairly frequently, most of it I'm unable to do anything about, because of the level of disruption that would be involved. In the end, it was, in that case, moot, because Rothwell doesn't want to be unblocked, he doesn't care.) --Abd (talk) 01:00, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Your debate on User talk:Beetstra

Abd, you have been told by multiple people that you need to stop other people's time by your endless argumentative posts. Now, after all the warnings coming from the RfC, you have opened up yet another of those disputes at User talk:Beetstra. This is disruptive behaviour. I am now formally warning you: stop these excessive and time-wasting futile debates. If I see you continuing these, I will block you. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:55, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

It appears to me that Beetstra has consented to further discussion. I'd said that we were done. If Beetstra permits it, I will continue discussion with him. If not, I'm done there. I'm not going to edit the page again without his explicit permission. Beetstra and I have long been discussing some of these issues, and those discussions have resulted in agreements that have been useful for the project. I was surprised and distressed by his comments about banning me. Since we have been able to discuss and resolve issues in the past (including ones where he expressed irritation at first) I assumed we could do that again. As you know, I wasn't officially warned by the comments at the RfC, but I am now, by you. Thanks for the warning, it makes things clear and easier in certain ways, and you have also made your personal view even more clear than they were before, and that, too, is useful. --Abd (talk) 15:06, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to complicate things, but I consider Fut.Perf.'s warning to be without merit. There is an RfC in progress. Abd decided to discuss an issue arising from it, on Beetsta's talk page. Beetstra replied and discussion continued. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's just like this discussion on my talk page, and like many, many discussions where users decide to discuss issues arising from article content discussions or from other discussions, on user talk pages. It's often good to do it that way, so that the discussion doesn't take up too much space in the venue used by more people. Whether Abd posts to Beetstra's talk page should be pretty much up to Beetstra to decide. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 21:13, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Future Perfect at Sunrise, I apologize for the tone of my message. I was tired when I posted it; I considered it to be addressed "to whom it may concern" rather than either to you or to Abd; and I didn't stop to think how it would sound to you. It would have been better if, instead of "without merit", I had said something like "Future Perfect, I would like to gently suggest that you reconsider your warning." Abd, it wasn't intended as advice to ignore the warning. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 22:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

When warned by an admin who could block, I don't judge that it is "without merit" unless I have a critical interest that must be defended, immediately, for the welfare of the project. That's rare. It's up to Beetstra. He set this in motion by referring to the discussion in the RfC as if it were justification for a ban. I know Beetstra, he can be hot-headed for a short time. He generally cools down and does the right thing. Beetstra has been a great help in two ways: he's patiently worked with me to help me understand the blacklisting process, he whitelisted a lenr-canr.org link, lyrikline.org's English home page, and the University of Atlanta. The latter was problematic, though still correct, and, in fact, was the least important to me. Beetstra disagrees, still, on a number of important issues. But I've considered him a partner, which is why the "ban" stuff was shocking. There may be things going on that are not visible. I'm not exercised about it, I'm just dealing with it. It's been a good day, as far as I'm concerned. As soon as I think that this or that must happen, or this or that must not happen, I'd be dead meat. WP:Eventualism. Or, take two WP:DGAFs and call me in the morning. Thanks, Coppertwig, for all your support, it's deeply appreciated.

The rest of this is the rambling of a deranged editor on his own Talk page. Please see the warning at the top of this page and take it seriously. Do not read this unless you are prepared to digest it, otherwise parts of it may be destabilizing, you may not understand it and then project your own meanings onto it.

Abd, brevity is the soul of wit. It will change your life if you ever make an effort to understand the emotions and perceptions that cause you to be verbose rather than brief.

Yours in hope and Shakespeare,

Phil153 (talk) 00:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Phil, you may not like me verbose, but I'm pretty sure you would more strongly dislike me brief, and you may have more opportunity to observe that soon; for starters, consider the present RfC. When I'm brief, it's because I've spent hours honing the text, the image is appropriate. It becomes sharp, designed to penetrate when applied. This is my Talk page. Would you come into my room and tell me I'm talking too much? If so, go away. If you have something helpful to say, come back when you are ready for that.--Abd (talk) 00:30, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Re appreciating my support: I'm very pleased to hear you say that, because it's an honour to be able to be of assistance to you. I can see the direction you're headed: not as clearly as you can, but clearly enough to want to be involved. As I see it, your goal is to help make Misplaced Pages more cooperative, NPOV, organized, welcoming and efficient. In a word, your goal is consensus (a word that is dotted all over your talk page). My goals are essentially the same; but you have the insight to know how to move in that direction. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

My thoughts on this

--Dirk Beetstra 12:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll begin my response below, in subsections per topics, quoting. --Abd (talk) 13:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Groundrules and accepted background

Italics, or not indented, from Beetstra: I saw the above warning, and I think that some clarification of some points and thoughts is in place (I answered your e-mail regarding this issue). I think it should be restricted to the long remarks and some type of remarks. I would like to suggest you something there, to which I will come later on. Unfortunately I am afraid this will be a long remark, where I should maybe have followed my own suggestion (we can copy this to a specified page then). I hope you don't mind....

Abd, we disagree on certain basic things, and we have encounters in several areas.

Actually, Beetstra, to my knowledge, while we certainly have unresolved disagreements, we have no "encounters" in the sense of active disputes, disagreements where I'd have gone beyond simply continuing to discuss. Yesterday, I remarked that the closure of the lenr-canr.org delisting request wasn't "proper." But I never challenged that, and this isn't an attack, your decision was reasonable, and basically, the "appeal" of the closure would for me to file a whitelisting request. Before that could be done, I needed to prepare the ground, so to speak, by encouraging, in various places, examination of subissues. That's probably done, and the time may be ripe. So why was the closure "improper"? Because the blacklisting should have been examined on the merits, and if appropriate, if the blacklisting wasn't proper, then, given the meta blacklisting, the site should have been locally whitelisted, instead of starting a whole new discussion. I.e., a decision on the merits would have been "best." Because that decision was never made, JzG can then, as he has, claim that the matter was examined and my position rejected. He can make that claim about meta, but not about our project. Hindsight, Beetstra. Don't leave home without it.

First some points, generally regarding all cases where we both are involved in. Although we have to assume good faith, and we have to see merits and proper use, we should not forget:

1. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia
2. Information should be properly sourced.
3. There is a huge grey area between self promotion and improving the wikipedia.
4. imilarly, there is a huge grey area between sourcing and properly sourcing.
5. Although good faith is a good thing, there are editors, many unfortunately, whose main goal is to use wikipedia for their own goals.

The background is totally accepted and understood. We will need to examine how these apply to the specific situations.

Now some specifics on cases where we worked together.

Continued below. --Abd (talk) 13:30, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

University of Atlanta

newenergytimes.com

Beetstra wrote, above: Is newenergytimes.com spam? NO! However, it was added cross-wiki by an IP, user:76.126.194.190, in a way which looks promotional (most are the main domain added to the pages of Cold Fusion on a couple of languages). These additions were spammy , and if there were no other edits than that, then that certainly could have been a reason to blacklist it (though we tend to be more careful with it). Should it be on the spam-blacklist ... hmm ...

As will become clear, there are several web sites that are extremely valuable sources of information on Cold fusion. NET is notable and should -- and will -- have its own article (there is RS discussing the site.) Whether or not the links added cross-wiki were made by someone COI, it, quite simply, isn't surprising to see the site referenced or externally linked. As you know, I discriminate between the use of the blacklist to stop possible spamming, and making content decisions. I would say that if there is an article on Cold fusion, it should have external links or references to NET, lenr-canr.org, and possibly a few other sites. Those sites are devoted to the field, and are closer to neutral than not (NET would certainly cover major critical news). --Abd (talk)

The alleged cross-wiki spam is irrelevant; this site is not globally blacklisted, the only issue would be links here.

See my delisting request at MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#newenergytimes.com, and a draft article, to which I will probably add more sources before moving to mainspace, at User:Abd/New Energy Times. --Abd (talk) 15:48, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

It's possible that the article will be on Steven Krivit, the editor of the New Energy Times, instead. In reality, it should be a toss-up (one would be redirected to the other), but the problem is a paucity of focused reviews. The web site is known and recommended as a source of news related to Cold fusion and other new energy topics (including some hot fusion news), but there is only a little source that discusses it. There is more source mentioning Krivit as an expert. (He's a journalist, not a scientist, but writers often become experts when they cover a field for a long time, as he has.) --Abd (talk) 13:55, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The only expressed reluctance to delisting seems to be on the basis that "there isn't sufficient reason to take it off the list." However, it's been acknowledged that the reason for putting it on the list in the first place was weak to non-existent (there is a current RfC over that action itself, with general recognition that, at best, the admin should not have done it himself). Hence the comment of one editor about the use of blacklisting to promote a POV seems to be cogent: by blacklisting, the admin created a presumption of continued blacklisting, with, supposedly, a consensus being required to remove it. However, any admin could remove it under the circumstances; I have not been asking for that in order to give the blacklist volunteer admins an opportunity to police their own field, so to speak.

It appears that "sufficient reason" would mean some showing that the site is reliable as a source, which is a difficult issue, one which should be made in the context of an article, by editors familiar with the issues. Making this decision on a blacklist page (or on a whitelist page for a specific link or for dealing with global blacklisting) is a very, very bad idea, and I doubt that the community will sustain it. Such decisions may be necessary and appropriate where there is a fear of linkspamming, but no linkspamming has ever been shown for the site here on Misplaced Pages. Occasional arguably appropriate (whether sustained or not) placement of links or references isn't linkspam, and the blacklist was not designed and should not be used to inhibit editors from making those choices.

In arguing against this, Beetstra, you have confused newenergytimes.org with lenr-canr.org, which is mostly an archive of material published elsewhere. You argue that editors can cite papers without the link, which is certainly true, though that only applies to references and not to external links for further reading. New Energy Times, though, is largely new writing, by the journalist Krivit, based on his extensive travel and interviews and research. He appears to be supported by a nonprofit foundation to do exactly this, and the reporting is professional in quality.

Both sites were, at one time, external links for Cold fusion, and, given that both sites are widely recommended as places to find reliable information about cold fusion (critical material is included or covered), that was quite appropriate, and removal of the links I would tentatively ascribed to the constant "anti-fringe" pressure on Cold fusion. ArbComm has clearly indicated that POV is not to be excluded on the basis that it is "fringe," and blacklisting the two most significant sources of cold fusion information on the internet creates an imbalance.

In addition, there is the convenience link issue. There are many citations in Cold fusion now that cannot be easily read on the internet except at one or the other of those two web sites, same as with the originally whitelisted page for lenr-canr.org. Indeed, there is another, more recent paper by Fleischmann on the same topic as one whitelisted, that is more explicit and easier for a general reader.

At this point, instead of requesting specific whitelistings for newenergytimes.com, I went ahead to request a full delisting, because of the absence of reason for blacklisting in the first place. Because of the importance of this issue (there are *many* examples, as is effectively acknowledged by a comment on the blacklist discussion underway now), my intention, if the position continues to be maintained that content arguments are relevant for blacklisting in examples like this, is to proceed under WP:DR, which begins, gradually, to allocate wider editorial resources to the decision. The issues have become relatively clear by now, it may be time to empty the can of worms and take a good look at them; but that will not happen if there is no specific issue, such as the blacklisting/delisting of newenergytimes.com. You know very well, Beetstra, how defective the original blacklisting was, yet, it appears, the community of blacklist volunteers is defending it, and the basis of defense shows what's been recently called an "exclusionist" perspective. Small group of admins, acting cooperatively (as is normal), imposing a common editorial perspective, however diffuse, using tools. The *only* arguments advanced on the blacklist page against delisting are on content issues or are seeking content arguments for delisting (i.e., "links needed for content").

This is blacklist mission creep that has been allowed to cross editorial boundaries. Consideration of need was appropriate for whitelisting (or delisting) sites where serious linkspam had occurred. Not the case here. It appears that blacklist admins have been quite happy to increase their own authority and power without modifying the guidelines and blacklist instructions to reflect this, which could then be the subject of a community discussion. If the status quo remains, that discussion will occur, up to the level necessary to find true consensus and closure. --Abd (talk) 13:55, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Quoting you: "The only expressed reluctance to delisting seems to be on the basis that "there isn't sufficient reason to take it off the list." (emphasis added) is similar to your contraction of the lenr-canr.org issue below, at total improper, incomplete filtration of the. I have given way more thoughts and concerns in my posts. --Dirk Beetstra 15:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Are we now debating the debate instead of the substance? I'm not really interested in that. Issues of substance, in my view, examined below in detail: --Abd (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Was the original blacklisting improper? Should improper blacklistings be removed by default?

If a blacklisting is made by an involved administrator, and suspected of being made out of POV bias, and absent emergency, it should be removed, without prejudice against later addition by an uninvolved administrator (which could be immediate, but that administrator is then taking responsibility for it as an immediate, out-of-process blacklisting). --Abd (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

If it were not blacklisted, would it be?

These links were long used, they were relatively stable, particularly if we set aside the administrator's frequent removal of them from the articles. As there was no linkspamming, that, as a reason for addition, would not apply. (Linkspam is the *only* reason allowed by the guidelines, and it should be severe, not occasional possibly inappropriate links, and not addressable by means such as ordinary editing, blocks, or bots). From ArbComm decisions, "fringe" is not a legitimate reason to exclude links, in itself (but does come up in questions of balance, which would relate to overall balance of links and is a decision which cannot be made in isolation.) --Abd (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Is it possibly usable as source, convenience link, or external link?

Yes. Period. It was, accepted by consensus, as far as we can tell. I have not reviewed the entire history of the usage of these links. That does not mean that there are no issues to be resolved, that NET is a generic "reliable source," as, say, the New York Times would be. It's reasonable to assert that it has a bias, so the decision re usability of any particular reference or link must be made intelligently by editors seeking consensus and balance, and not by administrators not involved, using admin tools to enforce their own abstract opinions (or even specific opinions). --Abd (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Should content arguments be relevant to blacklisting decisions?

Only in one situation: If there is clear reason for blacklisting, this must be weighed against possible damage to content; inhibiting editorial freedom prevents true consensus from arising, makes it far less likely that a link, even if appropriate, will be used. In this situation, which assumes strong reason for blacklisting as described in the guidelines, then consideration of the probability that links to a site could be usable may become relevant. Most blacklisted sites, quite simply, have little visible usage, but a library of documents on cold fusion (lenr-canr.org) and a publication dedicated to investigative and other reporting on the topic (newenergytimes.com), without any reason for blacklisting other than doubts about article balance or alleged POV? --Abd (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

In other words, in blacklisting a site for linkspam, a showing of large-scale addition of links is generally provided. Sometimes a comment is made that the site doesn't seem to have appropriate use, though this is often dicta, or should be. I agree, to some extent, that a site is useless could reasonably lead to some preference for blacklisting, but that uselessness should be very clear and not controversial, and not the primary cause of the blacklisting, which would be linkspam.--Abd (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Lyrikline.org

Sometimes it is unclear what the goal of an editor is. See lyrikline.org. We assume that the editor that was placing his links was indeed 'trying to improve wikipedia', but unfortunately this was deemed otherwise, as, and I still argue that, the linkplacing was in a lot of cases inappropriate (placing a link to an English version of a page on a Farsi Wiki where there is of that document a Farsi version available, or placing a link to an English version of a page on a non-English wiki where there is no version of that document available in that language (noting here our external links guideline on languages!), etc. etc., then that at least shows that the editor was simply performing copy-paste and not taking local policies into account). You do however show that there are cases where the links do add to articles, and your latest edits show proper use, both as external links and as references (thanks for that!). However, it is in all cases better to avoid any form of, even suggestion of, a conflict of interest, and discuss first. If there seems to be a conflict of interest, or inappropriate ways of linking, then measures may be in place. They may be too fast sometimes (as editors sometimes do turn into discussing editors), but I have been involved in cases where an editor first made 10 socks (which were all warned, blocked, and reverted) before he understood and went on discussing. I haven't checked lately, but I think they is a good editor now. If there are suggestions of COI (even without proof of it!), then such accounts can be blocked (policies clearly allow that!). If there is COI involved, then that becomes only more appropriate. I want to note here, that we have some 'COI-editors' who are very, very useful in improving wikipedia, but I have also seen cases of editors who never got it, never.

I have called lyrikline.org a "posterboy for problematic blacklisting." I think there is a lot we could learn from examining this case and where it went astray. Which, of course, requires examining if it did go astray, and how and why.

We have plenty of links here which are to foreign language pages. Particularly with poets, if we have an article, and there is a site where recordings of the author exist in the original language, I'd argue that a lyrikline.org listing would be appropriate. I have now added, with no fuss, some links to German poets where there is no English translation. It's better to have a link to a German language page with resources like Lyrikline, even where there is no translation; the reader and see the original poem, translate it with Google, and hear it. As to a link added by IP to, say, the Farsi wiki to, again, a German poet. English is largely the language of the internet, people using Misplaced Pages who speak Farsi, many of them, will read English; and there is an English interface.

Conflict of interest is actually irrelevant to content. Sure, massive promotion might be reverted on site, but much very useful material comes from COI editors, routinely. COI becomes relevant when there is dispute, COI editors should stand aside and not contend, but advise from the Talk page.

The lyrikline blacklisting may have been appropriate because of the volume of links being added cross-wiki. You are right about "spammers" turning into helpful editors. True spammers won't do that. You have readily agreed that the term "spam" is inappropriate, but I'm coming to think that the term is useful. But not as it has been used. It should be reserved for spam! A single link is never spam. It may be unwanted, COI, POV, etc. But a blacklist is not needed to deal with a few links. And when we call someone a "spammer" who may honestly feel that what they are doing is helpful, we are building reservoirs of ill-will. I am first of all concerned about lyrikline.org here on en.wikipedia. Deal with the local first, at least one instance, before trying to fix global problems. I've started going down the list of User:Lyriker contributions, and adding the link to those articles. Consider it a kind of repair. When I hit articles with no English translation, I had to make a decision. I decided to go ahead; with at least one of these articles I'd placed a notice on the Talk page. No response. In only one place where I solicited comment on lyrikline.org was there even one comment. That was, I think, WP:WikiProject Poetry, and the response was positive. So I'm gradually escalating the links. At some point I might trigger some linkspam response, but I'll immediately stop. If I'm reverted, at this level it's not an issue. I'd revert automatic deletions by an anti-spam volunteer, after placing notice on the Talk page, probably, but not any revert by an editor on the merits. I don't see a problem there. I'd prefer to set up a system whereby permission is obtain to make mass additions, so that the time of antispam volunteers isn't wasted, not to mention my own time, but one step at a time!

The basic problem I see with the lyrikline.org blacklisting is that it's hard to undo. De.wikipedia requested it, denied. Why? The original linking stopped when Lyriker was warned. He was blocked anyway. Was there reason to believe that massive addition without finding consensus first was likely to continue? I learned about lyrikline when a whitelisting request was denied. As I recall, the argument was that the link was not necessary, that external links were never necessary, WP:LINKFARM and all that. This was an admin making a content decision, in fact. In the particular article the link was requested for, the link would have been a reasonable decision. Beetstra, for blacklist volunteers to be making content decisions is highly inefficient; they don't know the article and its particular needs, so they make snap judgments, and they don't have time to come up to speed, so they make snap judgments. That's bad process.

proposed solutions

So, the two considerations: one one side, develop tools and procedures to efficiently identify true linkspam, and to interdict, as well, massive inappropriate additions of links other than spam. Develop behavioral guidelines for volunteers to do this without "unnecessary roughness," fixing the problem that Wikiproject Spam seems to encourage a battlefield mentality. You know, if you need to block an editor, it's utterly unnecessary to add insult to the injury. Standard block notices should apologize for the inconvenience, and should continue to assume good faith, it costs nothing. AGF is not the opposite of clear enforcement of behavioral and content guidelines.

We regret to inform you that your account has been blocked for massive addition of links to Viagraforless.com to articles on migratory birds. Please be sure that links added are appropriate for article, there is a guideline, WP:WHERETOPLACELINKSTOWEBSITESSELLINGVIAGRA, that may apply to your situation, and if you feel that your block was inappropriate, reply with this template, blah, blah. To protect against inappropriate links, the site {viagraforless.com) may be added to the blacklist, in which case, while the list is active, it will be impossible for any editor to add links to that site. Any confirmed registered editor may request removal of the site from the list, a list of editors willing to consider requests from anonymous or new editors is at WP:WeEatSpamForBreakfast, where you will be welcomed and your request considered appropriately.

And then general community volunteers consider anonymous requests. The requests would be required to be in a format that would allow easy decisions. Known spammer IP would get tagged right away, might be automatically rejected.

Then there would be the delisting/whitelisting page, which should probably be one page. The blacklist page should be about additions only. Let blacklist volunteers add blacklistings with maximum efficiency. Let ordinary editors filter delisting/whitelisting requests and close requests. If there aren't enough volunteers, tough luck; those editors who want to add links where there has been some problem with blacklisting will have to scare up the volunteers. Really, if they are registered, autoconfirmed or whatever standard is set up, all they have to do is find another similarly registered editor to make an independent judgment. The judgment is just preliminary. Decisions go to a working page where they are reviewed by blacklist volunteers familiar with actual linkspamming, who can refuse to process them; but any admin could go ahead and delist or whitelist, in theory. Delisting is simple, whitelisting requires regex knowledge, which could be better documented with examples for common specific whitelist or blacklist complexities. If a blacklist volunteer has an objection to a delisting, that objection could be made at this time (or previously on the delisting/whitelisting page, but the idea here is to make it unnecessary for blacklist volunteers to follow the discussions on the other side; yet still have the opportunity to review approvals before they are implemented. All the requests from anonymous editors get shunted away from inundating blacklist volunteers, and procedures are set up where efficient whitelisting consideration takes place; generally, with registered editors, confirmed, the presumption should be that they should be able to get a specific link whitelisted quickly. And where registered editors think that a site has general usage, where more than one link may be useful, they should be able to request that with little fuss.

I can say that I think this would have resulted in very rapid addition of lyrikline.org to the whitelist locally, and that would probably ripple up to meta. With UofA, not so rapid, more resistance, probably, but still basically what we ended up with, with much less wasted time in discussion.

lenr-canr.org (we'll get to that!) would have been resolved by now. I ran a mini-RfC at Martin Fleischmann where I deconstructed the arguments raised about lenr-canr.org. That was focused on usage in the particular article, so it would have been more difficult to deal with the whole site, for general usage, but we'd have been there by now.

Disagreements will occasionally arise between the general editorial community, making decisions at the delisting/whitelisting page, but the conditions will have been set up for rapid escalation with issues clearly defined (that is, discussion at the dl-wl page, a decision there, followed by objection raised at the bl page, and no consensus there. So ... content RfC, standard process, and, once in a blue moon, RfAr.

If something like the lenr-canr blacklisting comes up, this would have taken us to RfC in January, and ArbComm probably the same month. Probably one-tenth the editorial time wasted pre-ArbComm. I say ArbComm because there are entrenched factions involved, dug in and committed to positions. We need to abstract the blacklist operation from this.

In reality, the original lenr-canr.org blacklisting should have been removed immediately because it was done by an admin with involvement, outside of process, just like a similar block would be undone if the involvement were discovered, properly, and only immediate necessity would justify a different response. (The addition could then be immediately asserted by a neutral admin, who then becomes responsible for it if it was an error!) As it was, a possibly bad blacklisting was set up, and wasn't considered removable without consensus to remove. That's appropriate, perhaps, though it would be better if consensus were required to keep up a blacklisting. But a presumption of status quo should not apply to blatant conflict of interest cases.

If a listing is removed because it was defective like this, and it was then taken by the same admin to meta, the result there would have been quite different. The meta blacklisting was dependent on cherry-picked or unsubstantiated evidence presented there, without notice regarding the conditions of the en.wikipedia blacklisting. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/Talk:Spam_blacklist/Archives/2009-01#lenr-canr.org. The admin involved has complained about forum-shopping, there was one if it ever existed! More about this below. (end post Abd).

I'd like to discuss follow up on whitelisting in a separate discussion. Can we try to discuss 'why blacklist' a link separate from that. I do agree that whitelist requests and de-blacklisting requsts should be judged differently, as times may change, editors may apologise their actions, and even, test de-blacklisting of 'not-entirely-useless-domains' which have been on the list quite long to see if abuse is manageable now, as some examples). It is however a different procedure. IMHO, blacklisting of perfectly valid links which are however uncontrollably misused to stop the abuse and 'force' discussion can be a necessity (we have to take Joe jobs into account here as well ... where blacklisting could be protecting the link until other measures can be found, or blacklisting of virus-infected sites of nontheless respectable organisations).

The immediate e-blacklisting of lenr-canr.org would need an answer to the question: was JzG in good faith protecting the Misplaced Pages from a site which enabled/induced/resulted in inclusion of, nonetheless properly referenced, fringe/biased/undue weighed material, or did he really, by blacklisting this site, damage the possibility of achieving a POV? I am not so sure as you are, here, see my section on lenr-canr.org below. --Dirk Beetstra 12:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Back to lyrikline.org

But, here, lyrikline.org. The decision not to allow removal or whitelisting was wrong, Beetstra, even if the original blacklisting was correct due to massive link addition. No showing was made of continued risk, and making content decisions, not only for one project, but for all of them, is pretty shaky. A blacklisting could be removed and reinstated rapidly; semiautomated link removal means that harm is transient, and just how much harm would it be if lyrikline.org links were added? That should have been weighed. There was no showing that any of the links were harmful. And probably most or all of them were useful or harmless at worst.

You have asserted secret evidence, was it about this? I can't imagine what would change the considerations here. If it were proven that Lyriker was, say, the director of lyrikline.org, or an employee, that would change practically nothing. It would mean that the editor was acting with COI, and would have been required to stop. But that doesn't indicate blacklisting the web site, which punishes not only the web site (actually, not good, this kind of disincentive is problematic) but also the editors who might want to legitimately add a link, the project because valuable content is inhibited, and, in the end, the readers, who may want links like this. --Abd (talk) 18:46, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

(quick answer to this section): No, lyrikline.org does not have secret information. It is simply obvious that lyriker and the IP are related (It is pretty sure that the Lyriker used the IP), and hence, that the account is related to the organisation that 'owns' lyrikline.org, and hence, has a conflict of interest. Nothing hidden about it. Is addition under a conflict of interest inappropriate? No, certainly not necesserily, but the question is 'what is the intention': is it to improve the encyclopedia, or is it to have links to your organisation? The first is fine, but any hint of the latter, even if untrue, should be strictly be avoided.

We keep having the dispute about, what is in the English guideline as 'Links to English language content are strongly preferred in the English-language Misplaced Pages. It may be appropriate to have a link to a non-English-language site, such as when an official site is unavailable in English; or when the link is to the subject's text in its original language; or when the site contains visual aids such as maps, diagrams, or tables – per the guideline on non-English-language sites.'. So if you link here to German version of the page on lyrikline.org, where there is an English version of the page available, then the latter link is strongly preferred. Of the cross wiki additions (outside of the English and German language wikipedia) all 'violate' that sentence (but rules may be different locally, and indeed some wikis don't have such a clause in their WP:EL (I don't see it in Italian, e.g.), but others do have similar clauses (Danish, e.g.)). That the additions were done in such a way does strengthen the feeling that some thought of promotion may have been the case. A similar case from my past here was with a similar organisation. They were adding their links left and right, warned for a COI (which was bloody obvious, and they was even in the marketing department) and some problems with their link (the site only worked on limited systems, simply excluding a majority of browsers). They did not acknowledge, continued. One can still argue that it is just a misunderstanding and an, albeit totally misplaced, attempt to improve Misplaced Pages .. until they started to put also their links to promotional wordpress sites ... their aim was NOT to improve wikipedia, it was to get their links spread around. As I always say, COI does not have to be a problem, but avoid it strictly until 'you know the ways'. --Dirk Beetstra 10:49, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Lenr-canr.org

Lenr-canr.org contains copies of information about cold fusion. The authors have given permission to post the information here, so copyright is not an issue (or minor, in case some cases exist where the copyright on a document actually is not properly transferred, but I presume that that document will be gone quickly).

This means, that lenr-canr.org only contains information for which it can get a copyright. I know for a fact the large publishing bodies in chemistry (ACS, RSC, Sciencedirect, Elsevier) have the copyright of the documents that get published by them. That copyright is not with the editors anymore, they even need to pay to read the articles in the journal. It is to me very, very unlikely that they will grant sites like newenergytimes.com and lenr-canr.org the right to publish them free of charge (maybe after being payed significantly for that, I recall that on one of the sites you can pay a significant sum of money to make your document publicly visible?). It is hence quite sure that these sites do not give a complete overview of a field, the references on these sites are 'chosen' (partially by the maintainer, 'I want that article, that is of interest for me', partially because it is impossible to get a complete overview (one might miss an article left and right), partially because they simply can't put it on their site), and hence, not necesseraly neutral. The total conglomerate of all possible sources is however neutral (or at least, as close as possible to it) ..

Is the site fringe .. well, the information that is there, is OK. However, it is probably not complete, and may have a certain preference. It may result (without the maintainer being able to do something about it, or intending it!) in a 'fringed' (do I conjugate correctly) view of the situation (I know that I am telling JzG now where to stuff beans, while this may not have been the thought behind the blacklisting!). But well, on the other hand, I can use information published in Science in a fringe way.

What I tried above to show with uofa.edu (a really small problem!), is that there are limits to solutions, and things around it. Blacklisting, semi-protection, and blocks are sometimes not a suitable solution, and one solution may still not solve the problem, as all three of them individually can be circumvented and cause just as much (or even more) disruption as it blocks, and in the case of uofa.edu even applying all three solutions might not be a total stop to the disruption (have I mentioned that one could create Univ. of Atlanta, University of Atlanta (Georgia)?). Have we met Grawp yet? The question is, what is the damage caused with which, and which is minimal? All three are dependent on the persistence of the parties, and the creativity of the parties.

As I said, lenr-canr.org contains a lot of information which is a copy of other information. In all cases, the original information should be used for reference, the copy can be mentioned (and can certainly be informative). Linking to both of them certainly is a good extension, but even a working link to the original is not necessery (if I say that 'lenr-canr.org was blacklisted on meta on the 10th of January 2009 by Erwin' gives everybody a pretty quick and accurate possibility to verify that, but it makes life so much easier if I say 'lenr-canr.org was blacklisted on meta on the 10th of January 2009 by Erwin'). But it should never mean that only the copy should be used or linked.

So do I believe that JzG was, by blacklisting this link, pushing his POV? No, the total conglomerate of information is always more neutral than a site which contains a lot of copies, and all information can still be used as a reference anyway. Is the site fringe? No proof. Does it contain fringe information? No proof. Can the site be used in a fringe way? Quite possible/Yes (possibility being true for every site, but we don't blacklist on possible abuse ..). And does it look like that was done in this case? Well, that looks like a yes to me. Was JzG involved? Possibly, though the question is if he was pushing a view or trying to stop pushing a view, and is a spam-fighter involved if he first reverts 100 link additions and then blacklists the site. However, does lenr-canr.org contain information of which it has the only easily accessible copy? Yes. So the solution has its problems, but as we saw, that is true for all solutions.

The information on lenr-canr.org can be read by everyone. The use of that site on wikipedia enables everyone to use that data (in fact, that is still the case). Does that result in a POV on the article? Possibly (though not necesserily!). Why? Because other information from other sources which is not available on lenr-canr.org can not be used by all users in the same easy way, that may result that Misplaced Pages following the view of lenr-canr.org, which is not necesserily a world-wide view. I don't think that is what we want, do we? --Dirk Beetstra 10:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

This is a novel argument, Beetstra: we should block a web site providing material, allegedly imbalanced, not because of their intention, but because of reluctance of authors or publishers to give permission for hosting, a reluctance allegedly affecting one side of some controversy, on the argument that an imbalance is created.

This is the real situation: there is very little recent material of high reliability that is anti-cold fusion. The vast majority of recent material in peer-reviewed publications supports the hypothesis of cold fusion, to the extent that the original reasons for widespread rejection have been totally dismantled, to the extent that, as an example, one of the most vocal critics (Park, author of Voodoo Science) has said that now he considers it a legitimate field. I'm reading Huizenga now, and basically, he got stuck in an original negative mindset; in fact, negative results, unless experimental conditions are exact, mean almost nothing for a difficult-to-reproduce phenomenon. Huizenga is aware, and makes the point repetitively, that CF was very difficult to find, contrary to the original effusive media reports. In fact, it took many years of work (albeit by underfunded and struggling researchers) to find conditions where it's reliable. Everyone was looking for neutrons, considered to be the sine qua non of the phenomenon being fusion.

What is now known is that whatever it is, it doesn't directly produce neutrons. The input is deuterium, which goes into a black box, and while there are plenty of theories as to what happens in that box, there is nothing to the point of general acceptance even by cold fusion researchers, a point Krivit makes. It may not be "fusion," except that if the input is deuterium and the output is helium and heat and/or radiation, fusion is an obvious hypothesis. And, contrary to what you will find in Huizenga or most of the critical material (which is generally old, before experiments showing this had been reproduced extensively), helium is produced in quantities such that the known energy released from D+D fusion accounts for the excess heat observed. And radiation is also observed, correlated with the excess heat as well.

Fleischmann and Pons originally reported radiation. That was apparently an error, and the kind of radiation they reported only saw scattered confirmation. But their heat measurements were solid, and the Fleischmann-Pons effect refers to anomalous heat. There is anomalous heat, massively confirmed; by 2004, even a likely biased review panel was evenly split on the question, half the panel being quite convinced about the heat, the other half considering evidence not conclusive. Looking back at Huizenga, why did he reject excess heat? Because the theory he was following said that there could not be such heat, it must therefore, be experimental artifact. Further, if it was fusion, radiation would be expected, and the radiation findings were, indeed, artifacts, and, besides, Huizenga points out, the level of radiation was totally inadequate to explain the heat. He was right.

The radiation was alpha radiation, which is simply high-energy helium nuclei. This radiation is very short-range in an environment like the electrodes and electrolyte of a CF cell, and none of it would penetrate the glass wall of the cell. That radiation was detected by placing CR-39 detectors immediately next to the electrodes; the earliest work doing this was, as far as I've, done in China and wasn't widely noticed. The SPAWAR group reported, peer-review published, massive alpha radiation detected with CR-39, some years ago. In March of this year, it finally hit the media. Neutrons. The evidence considered an absolute necessity by Huizenga, reliably detected. But very low-level. In other words, the early failures to find neutrons were based on the levels being very low, even undetectable using the methods employed. The error was in assuming that neutrons were necessary. The SPAWAR neutrons are almost certainly a byproduct of a secondary reaction.

I.e., black box produces alpha particles with high energy or other high-energy phenomena. High energy plus deuterium produces hot fusion, classical fusion, well understood. It is the neutrons from that fusion that the SPAWAR group is reporting, my theory is, in fact, what they also give as an explanation, without speculating on what hot fusion is doing in a cold fusion cell.

What I'm stating now is largely original research, i.e., an original review of the field based on my reading over the last three months. The issue of neutrons is very new, there hasn't been time for serious scientific review. I wouldn't dare to put my own research into the article. Krivit, however, has been widely quoted on this, and that can be in the article and, in fact, has been put there. Krivit is being quoted (I think it's still in the article, *I* might have removed it for various reasons), but his web site is blacklisted. Bad situation, Beetstra.

Cold fusion is quite an unusual field: the popular media is highly negative, widespread opinion among scientists not specializing in the field is also quite negative, though support seems strong among chemists and the opposite among nuclear physicists, there being quite notable exceptions in both fields. If we confine ourselves to peer-reviewed sources, preferring later to earlier (which is normal), the balance is strong, very strong, toward low-energy nuclear reactions being real, and there are a number of relatively recent reviews that treat this as a fact. The number of physicists who show, by their comments, familiarity with the recent literature, and who are very negative, is very low. If there is one. The vast majority of physicists concluded (largely based on media reports or early negative studies) that the field was bogus, and why waste time carefully examining work in a bogus field? --Abd (talk) 14:44, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Quoting you: "This is a novel argument, Beetstra: we should block a web site providing material, allegedly imbalanced, not because of their intention, but because of reluctance of authors or publishers to give permission for hosting, a reluctance allegedly affecting one side of some controversy, on the argument that an imbalance is created.". This is, again, a complete misinterpretation of what I said, just filtering out certain parts of sentences that fit what you want to hear me saying, leaving out arguments, and a absolutely not what I mean. --Dirk Beetstra 15:03, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

This is an open discussion, Beetstra, if I misinterpret what you intended, please, correct it. We hold discussions because we are not mind-readers and because we may misunderstand each other. So, please repeat what was important and different about what you were saying.

Here is what you wrote and on which I based my summary:

This means, that lenr-canr.org only contains information for which it can get a copyright. I know for a fact the large publishing bodies in chemistry (ACS, RSC, Sciencedirect, Elsevier) have the copyright of the documents that get published by them. That copyright is not with the editors anymore, they even need to pay to read the articles in the journal. It is to me very, very unlikely that they will grant sites like newenergytimes.com and lenr-canr.org the right to publish them free of charge (maybe after being payed significantly for that, I recall that on one of the sites you can pay a significant sum of money to make your document publicly visible?). It is hence quite sure that these sites do not give a complete overview of a field, the references on these sites are 'chosen' (partially by the maintainer, 'I want that article, that is of interest for me', partially because it is impossible to get a complete overview (one might miss an article left and right), partially because they simply can't put it on their site), and hence, not necesseraly neutral. The total conglomerate of all possible sources is however neutral (or at least, as close as possible to it) ..

You bring up the copyright issue, we do know or can reasonably assume that lenr-canr.org hosts many documents with permission of the publishers, and this includes material published by Elsevier; apparently they do, sometimes, give permission. I will certainly grant the possibility of selection bias through this phenomenon (selective permission, and, we may suspect, lenr-canr.org isn't likely to pay for a paper they consider useless), however, in fact, the negative material is almost all quite old, and is of less importance to the article on the present science. It seems to me that you were saying quite what I wrote as a brief summary, so .... please correct me, correct or explain your original statement better, or both.

There is, by the way, another archive, Rothwell refers to it, hosted by Dieter Britz, who is a skeptic. They help each other out, apparently, toward completing the bibliography in the field; Dieter also summarizes and categorizes papers, and Rothwell has strongly criticized some of Dieter's work. These are people, both of them, who seem to be intellectually honest, and don't want to "win" some argument by repressing evidence, but by examining it and weighing it and criticizing it.

For reference, http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf is very recent, compiled in the last few days. This is a document by Rothwell on publications in the field, his original draft of this was a list of peer-reviewed papers confirming the Fleischmann-Pons effect of excess heat from metal deuterides, which settled at 153. There are many more conference papers, not peer-reviewed. That was compiled in response to claims that the Pons and Fleischmann results were not confirmed, something frequently seen as an introduction to the media reports of the recent ACS seminar. It's a claim that has been repeated since 1989, when it was made before there had been sufficient time to confirm! By the time of the 1989 DOE review, there were some confirmations, but there may have been hundreds of groups working at that time, and the large majority of these groups did not find the Fleischmann effect -- no heat -- but they went ahead, some of them, and looked for radiation and nuclear ash, and, big surprise, didn't find any. They weren't creating the conditions for the effect, so they weren't seeing any evidence it was nuclear! It was easy to dismiss the early confirmations as being due to some as-yet unidentified artifact, quite a reasonable assumption, in my opinion, at the time, though any good scientist would realize, one would think, that negative results prove little, and that waiting and watching would be more prudent before forming strong conclusions. A few papers, in addition, reported finding specific errors in the P-F work, which as to radiation, were probably correct, but as to excess heat, were not. Those papers were published, and, if I've got the history right, the responses showing that the errors (such as alleged failure to stir the electrolyte) did not apply were, by that time, rejected by publication policy. We have a lot of reliable source on the rather scandalous history, particular from the sociologist, Bart Simon, Undead Science: Science Studies and the Afterlife of Cold Fusion.

http://www.chem.au.dk/~db/fusion/ is Dieter Britz's bibliography, and I'd certainly want to see it as an external link from the article, it is far and above the most useful web site operated by someone who claims to be "neutral" on cold fusion. Britz would be a notable exception to the idea that chemists and especially electrochemists are less skeptical than physicists, he's an electrochemist, according to Rothwell. Rothwell discusses Dieter's position at some length at the end of the Rothwell document cited above, and says, in particular:

Britz is the only electrochemist I know who has read the literature extensively and yet who does not believe cold fusion is real. The others agree with Gerischer, who wrote in 1991: “there is now undoubtedly overwhelming indications that nuclear processes take place in the metal alloys.”

This would be from Heinz Gerischer, Memorandum on the present state of knowledge on cold fusion. 1991, Fritz Harber Institute der Max Planke: Berlin. There is a translation of this at http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GerischerHiscoldfusi.pdf Gerischer was a skeptic based on the earlier research, but was apparently convinced by work which had come to light by 1991. Gerischer died in 1994.

OK, I'll say why it is a total misinterpretation of my input (why do I have the feeling that we keep on having this, Abd? Do our basic points of view really oppose so much. I am really trying to be clear). Simply: you base your summary on one part of a lot more what is said, not applying the rest.

You interpretation fails because I did not say (I might say: nobody did) that we should blacklist a web site because it is providing unbalanced (or wrong, fringe, or even explicit sexual) content. We (and I am including JzG in this) don't go surfing 'round the web finding sexual content, fringe sites, or whatever website we come accross for the purpose of finding websites which are possibly of no use to wikipedia so we can blacklist them. That is not how we spam-fighters work, but your filtration of my comments suggests just that (I am sorry if that was not your intention, but then please be more careful next time in interpretating other peoples comments). When do we blacklist? We blacklist sites when there has been abuse of sites (exceptions are the url-shorteners like tinyurl, which are blacklisted if we encounter them, even when they are used properly or not have been used yet, and sites which bring damage onto users (malware sites or hacked sites, most of these blacklistings are temporarily)).

If I read the ArbComm case on Cold fusion (comments regarding OR, POV and UNDUE), and see some diffs of involved editors, then that is just where some editors were using these sites for: pushing their POV or OR, and applying UNDUE weight, forms of disruption, users who actually get banned from the involved articles!

If a good site gets blatalantly and uncontrollably pushed for promotional reasons, it runs the risk it gets blacklisted, if a site is used primarily and massively to promote a POV, it runs the risk that it gets blacklisted, if a sex site does not get added to Misplaced Pages, or only once to the wikipage on the site, it will never get blacklisted. You seem to keep getting back to 'if a site is not bad, it should never be blacklisted', while many others say 'if a site gets uncontrollably misused, maybe blacklisting can keep the abuse under control'.

Regarding the rest of the comment: I am not disputing, anywhere, that these sites contains good information and with the copies that are there there are no copyright issues. I am still a bit worried about the reliability of it, but that is not the issue at hand, it was the abuse by certain editors. I really suggest that you address that part. --Dirk Beetstra 19:02, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The following is quite long. Beetstra, if you need abstracts, I'll write them, but not immediately. Let me know.

Thanks, Beetstra. You should understand that if I focus on only part of what you have said, it may not say much about the rest of your comment, but probably it means this: I agreed with the rest, or didn't understand it, or didn't care, and it did not seem important to disagree or to question you about it. In formal consensus process we might delineate, specifically, our agreements, and there are many. I was not referring, in my considerations, to only your response, but to another response on the blacklist page which was very simply content-based, probably "fringe." There was utterly no suggestion in my comments of seeking out fringe or whatever to blacklist it, only that once a page has come to the attention of blacklist administrators, there may be overreliance on fringe issues in determining delisting or whitelisting. Were there credible charges of serious linkspam, that would be quite understandable. We'll get back to that part, but it seemed to me that you had already conceded that issue with respect to newenergytimes.com, and we haven't seriously addressed it with lenr-canr.org.

The determination of undue weight at Cold fusion is a very complex matter, it is very easy to confuse someone who is asserting a scientific point of view with someone who is pushing a fringe POV, because, with cold fusion, the media and popular image of cold fusion is as rejected Bad Science, fringe, disproven twenty years ago, whereas in the peer-reviewed literature and published scientific reliable source, the matter is far less clear, and, indeed, there are serious reviews or expert opinion going as far back as 1992 that concluded the opposite. Once we set aside the framing generated by the media flap and the polemic coming from the anti-cold fusion writers, which was very successful politically, and look at the DOE reviews, they did not, in 1989 and 2004, treat cold fusion as "fringe," merely as a hypothesis which was "not conclusive," according to the majority, and they recommended further research, both years, something which would never be recommended with pseudoscience or serious fringe. As to active editors, Pcarbonn was literally framed, by JzG incidentally, and it's easy to understand how, there is a ready appearance here which is different from the reality. Pcarbonn was careful about compliance with guidelines, from what I've seen, and he was banned based on interpretation of evidence as showing an agenda to use Misplaced Pages to "correct" the general media impression. But what is the "scientific consensus?" With cold fusion, the question is actually very difficult, this isn't like rejection of global warming or rejection of evolution or polywater or homeopathy. What I've been finding is that it's quite difficult to find scientists who are knowledgeable about the recent research who haven't concluded that the evidence is conclusive. Yes, there is a catch in this. What if the rest of the scientists in related fields have concluded that the field is so bogus that it's not worth reading the papers?

But if we look at the people involved, the reputations and credentials of some of those who did or who are doing cold fusion research, and look at some of the work that has been done since the initial rejection, the "smart efficient ignorance" of such critics looks pretty shallow.

Rothwell asserts that he's only met one electrochemist who isn't convinced that low-energy nuclear reactions are taking place, and that exception is Dieter Britz, who claimed at one time to be "agnostic" on the topic, but who maintains a bibliography to support study of the topic. (It's the other major one, besides the one at lenr-canr.org, and they cooperate). So what is the "scientific consensus" if this is true? Apparently, it depends on whom you ask. Ask chemists, one answer. Ask physicists, a different answer. This is, properly, emerging science, where there is no settled and broad consensus, there is dispute. Our article should be telling this story, it's easy to find in reliable source, once editors know where to look. I bought six books to help me get more of a grasp of this field:

"Pro":

• Tadhahiki Mizuno, Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion, 1997, translation by Jed Rothwell, 1998.
• Edmund Storms,The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, 2007

"Con":

• Gary Taubes, Bad Science, The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, (1993)
• John R. Huizenga, Cold Fusion, The Scientific Fiasco of the Century, (revised 1993)

Neutral, or cautiously skeptical (my judgment):"

• Nate Hoffman, A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects, (1995)

Sociological study:

• Bart Simon, Undead Science: Science Studies and the Afterlife of Cold Fusion (2002)

There are more that I need to get, particularly Beaudette ("pro") and perhaps Parks (very negative, may have recently retreated a little, reported in New Energy Times, citing a Parks blog entry about the Mosier-Boss (SPAWAR) neutron findings).

I have never before spent anything like this kind of money to research an article for Misplaced Pages, but the topic is fascinating and I have some historical connections with it: I did a Mossbauer effect experiment as a junior at Caltech, so when I read Storms about possible biological nuclear transformation, I'm immediately very skeptical, what in the world is Storms doing with this nonsense, then when I see the Mossbauer effect evidence, which is highly precise, insanely precise, I realize the implications. I'm still skeptical, but at the point where I then ask, what about confirmation and, damn, it isn't that hard to run this experiment, how can I get the radioactive source and the gamma ray detection equipment and some of those bacteria? (I'm totally unprepared to do that kind of thing now, I'm a writer and political theorist, not an experimental scientist, but I can dream) And then, as well, in 1989, I saw the Fleischmann work and immediately realized the implications, and went out bought $10,000 worth of palladium. I still think it was a good bet; one does not always win good bets, or they wouldn't be called bets, but when good and clear confirmation did not appear, and no commercial applications, palladium prices, which had risen some before I bought and a bit after, settled back down and I lost a little money, not much; if I'd held on longer, I'd have made some money anyway. There is no clear proof either way, but it's quite possible that commercial applications are far away, still, or even impossible. We already knew that low-energy nuclear reactions were possible (muon-catalyzed fusion), but not practical, because it's too expensive (in energy and in money) to produce the muons.

Maybe one or more of the commercial projects that are underway -- and which have been underway for years -- will pan out, but it's quite possibly too fragile an effect to utilize commercially. Cold fusion, because of a lot of initial enthusiasm, got associated with scam artists and free-energy-for-everyone fringe, and once one has opened the door that classical quantum mechanics just might be wrong in its understanding of what's going on in condensed matter, the door was open for all kinds of theories, some of them quite likely usable in fruit cake, and suddenly very unusual experimental findings were being taken seriously. That's actually healthy, in a way, it's a brainstorming period, unless the associations cause people to throw out the baby with the bathwater, which they do. The most knowledgeable scientists in the field acknowledge that there has been a lot of bad or weak or poorly controlled research ... but also some very good and solid research, and tarring the good research with the brush used to tar the bad research is a bad idea.

So when I came across the blacklistings by JzG, I had no content opinion, I had assumed that cold fusion was dead. I was vaguely aware that there was still some research going on, but had assumed this was scattered, classic fringe, die-hard, garage experimentation with a healthy dose of scam tossed in. I was simply concerned about action as an admin while involved, and about blacklisting of web sites based on some POV, either of the web site or of the blacklisting admin, or even of some local consensus of admins. Bad idea, very, very bad idea, Beetstra, except in specific circumstances which did not apply and still don't.

The history of Cold fusion is a fascinating story, Beetstra, and we should be covering it in depth, and the "anti-fringe" wars have seriously damaged our ability to do that. What we've had, for example, is exclusion of text based on recent reliable source based on an editorial synthesis that it "contradicted" old RS publications from an allegedly more reputable journal. However, looking closely, there is no contradiction; the earlier results were negative and the later publications positive under different conditions. CF researchers now know that if they reproduce the conditions of the negative experiments, they will get negative results. Thus they are confirming those earlier experiments, not negating them. Except, of course, they are negating unwarranted conclusions. "I didn't see excess heat! Therefore Pons and Fleischmann were frauds, they caused this huge waste of time." (You don't see that in the papers themselves, but in other reports from the time, such as Mallove's account of the MIT fiasco.)

It's pretty frustrating, now, to read, say, Huizenga, with the benefit of fifteen years of hindsight. So many things about cold fusion are obvious now, and he doesn't seem to have considered the possibilities, but was very confident of his conclusions. He, like many, placed huge emphasis on the absence of neutrons or, secondarily, gamma radiation. Couldn't be fusion if there are no neutrons. The levels of neutrons detected, even if those detections were real, he would argue, is vastly lower than enough to explain the excess heat. Helium measurements were still quite controversial when he published. The whole field was confused by the publication of negative results (such as no helium) that were not correlated with excess heat. No excess heat, no helium. So if you run an experiment supposedly duplicating Pons and Fleischmann, and you don't want to do the messy and difficult calorimetry to detect the excess heat, but you are just looking for neutrons and helium or tritium, say, and you don't find any, you say, "See, doesn't work." But we now know that it was really difficult to get a classic P-F electrolysis cell to generate heat. Conditions that one would not expect to affect the results do, the batch of palladium matters.

(That fact raised lots of suspicions that pro-cold fusion researchers were just explaining away negative results, a very reasonable suspicion. But, then, methods were developed that didn't depend in the same way on batch. Manufacturing of palladium electrodes produces highly variable levels of cracking; cracks in the palladium cause it to lose deuterium much more rapidly, and so the critical levels of deuterium loading are not reached. Unlike early belief, what Storms calls the NAE, or nuclear active environment, is only at the surface of the electrode, and not more than maybe 25 microns deep. Surface conditions matter. Even with active electrodes, the reactions seem to be taking place in only isolated small regions -- the SPAWAR group produced video images of flashes of light, I think -- I haven't seen them. As an example of what might cause that, suppose that the deuterium lattice, under unusual conditions, enables muons to be more effective in recatalyzing fusion, but initiating such a reaction would then require a muon. Muons are generated at low levels from cosmic rays. So reproduction would be erratic and mysterious. Not a serious proposal, I think it's been ruled out, but I'm just pointing out that there could be quite reasonable explanations for the suspicious problems with replication ... and that's really moot now, because there are methods with reasonably high reliability, some papers are claiming 100% in recent years.)

Other early writers and skeptics such as Hoffman come out looking pretty good. Hoffman was skeptical, for sure, but also acknowledged that there were some anomalies, that it wasn't just a simple matter as easy rejection. He pointed out a number of experiments that seemed artifact-free, that did not seem to have a non-nuclear explanation. He pointed out that the calorimetry work, some of it, was being done by competent experts who knew how to avoid artifacts. Hoffman was taking the position of a scientist who doesn't reject without proof, but who likewise doesn't accept merely because of the absence of proof that something is wrong. He postpones judgment. He pointed out possible artifacts in various experiments. He avoided considering the anomalous heat evidence, because it, by itself, doesn't positively point to "nuclear," it merely points to "not ordinary chemistry," plus, of course, the possibility of some unidentified and repeated artifact.

He doesn't seem to be aware of portions of the experimental work that had been done by the time he wrote, it's possible that with more time, he would have come to different conclusions. Or not. His goal was similar to that of the DOE: was this worth immediately funding with large gobs of cash? The goal wasn't actually the science, as far as the research he was paid to do. It was making decisions about investment likely to pay off with useful energy production. It was the same with the Japanese MITI project, which shut down when it became apparently that this wasn't going to be easy. Even though I'm convinced, now, that there are low-energy nuclear reactions taking place in metal deuterides, and probably in some other condensed matter environments as well, that doesn't translate to practical applications, these could still be a long way away. If I were asked to advise the DOE, what I'd say might be quite what they said: focused grants for specific projects to establish the basic science. Not a Manhattan-scale project, not now. Fleischmann did say that it would take a project on that level to bring this to commercial success. Isn't that interesting? Is it in the article? Why not? (I think it's in reliable source, but my memory might be faulty on that). In order to justify that kind of investment, the basic science should be solid, as it was with the original Manhattan project, it wasn't merely based on a "Maybe, if." It was much more "How?" Hot fusion is getting huge funding, even though it's difficult, because the science is established and it is merely a matter of engineering. Very difficult engineering, to be sure. --Abd (talk) 21:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/JzG 3

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/JzG 3, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JzG 3 and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/JzG 3 during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Guy (Help!) 20:08, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Guy, you have seriously entertained me today. I really didn't remotely imagine you'd try that bit of wikidrama. I'm sorry for the distress that this may be causing you, and suggest one thing: Don't think about me and what a dick I seem to be, but read the RfC and ask yourself, "Was I involved?" -- given the number of edits shown and the clear POV demonstrated, and which has continued to be demonstrated, even through today? And "did I use tools when involved?" And "Is this allowed by administrative policy?" If you don't realize that the answers are Yes, Yes, and No, you are dangerously unqualified to be an administrator and if you don't resign, you will be desysopped by ArbComm. That's not a threat, it's a warning and a prediction. Obviously, this isn't something I could do myself if I wanted to.

And if you do realize those answers, then there is a simple response: Change your response to the RfC to "Oops! My bad. I won't do it again." I can't withdraw the RfC, it's too late, even if I wanted to, but it would greatly defuse the matter, and you might keep your admin bit, if you still want it. Last chance? I don't know. I think that if, halfway through the arbitration, Physchim62 or Tango had made that "my bad" statement, they'd still be administrators. Don't say I didn't try. --Abd (talk) 00:43, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Advice

Hi Abd. In your dealings with JzG, do try to avoid sarcasm. I know he's been rude to you, and that reflects poorly on him. On the other hand, if you are polite toward him, it will reflect well on you.

I know we disagree somewhat on this matter, but it does not impact my collegial relationship with you. Good wishes to you for springtime. Jehochman 03:38, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, Jehochman. That wasn't sarcasm. Every word was meant literally. Look at it again, try to read it that way. Anyway, yes, the spring is fabulous. I've written you an unfortunately long email. I consider disagreements as consensus in process. You can't really agree until you have explored the disagreements. --Abd (talk) 04:12, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

True. The crocuses are up already. Deer have eaten my tulips. Next we shall have daffodils. Jehochman 04:25, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. Abuse is abuse, whether it takes the form of calling somebody an asshole, or blocking them whilest engaged in a content disagreement. I for one do not see the point in a third RFC. If there is really something there, I'd go right to WP:RFAR and take care of it. ArbCom will directly hear complaints of serious admin abuse. That's what you're alleging. If things are as clear cut as you say, I think they'd hear the case. Jehochman 04:58, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't object. Yes, things are clear cut. My preference, on principle, is to give JzG an opportunity to reverse course. But as long as there is this cheering section telling him that he's done nothing wrong, that isn't likely to happen. Frankly, I don't understand that segment of the community. What do they think they are doing? Are they so naive as to think they are helping him? --Abd (talk) 05:13, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

They are going on reputation rather than facts. That's why RFC is possibly unproductive in this situation. ArbCom is more sophisticated than the peanut gallery. They can analyze evidence on its merits. However, now that an RFC is filed, you probably have to let it run its course. I don't expect Guy to publicly admit error, but he might become more careful going forward. If not, go to WP:RFAR next time. Jehochman 05:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Go to RFAR? Guy already brought his topic ban of Rothwell to RFAR and the arbs didnt see what the problem was. This dispute is officially moribund but Abd still can't see that (no disrespect to your motivations Abd but there is a clear consensus on this) so suggesting that they take it back to arbitration is well, not the most productive idea. Spartaz 07:53, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Spartaz, I don't think you read that RfAr carefully. It's cited in the RfC. The request was rejected, and properly. Carcharoth was explicit. They did not rule on the request. Yes, initial comment was favorable to JzG. Kind of like the RfC, in fact, and perhaps for the same reason. Yup, ArbComm is more sophisticated than the peanut gallery. When they follow process. Otherwise, they are just editors. Process, except to accept or reject a request, did not begin. --Abd (talk) 11:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I dislike RFC because it usually doesn't resolve anything. Guy's situation is not improving at all through this process. Once his habitual enemies jump on the bandwagon, he will never compromise in any way. (This is exactly the result they wish for.) It would be much more helpful if somebody he trusted were to speak with him about these matters. Misplaced Pages is not a game to see who we can get banned or desysopped. The rule is try to help people, or keep quiet. Jehochman 13:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• RfC can clarify the issues. It takes a good eye. In this case, you might note, there is practically no defense on the merits, there are two "defensive" positions. One is that the actions were good. That's debatable, but, really, the debate is inappropriate, because if there is any substantial segment of editors protesting (two willing to stick their necks out would be enough) there is no presumption that they were good. They were made. He got away with them for a time. Some editors approve, some don't. That's all we know and can assert. Oh, and it caused disruption, and the RfC is actually a small part of that. The other argument is that JzG did nothing wrong, this is a vendetta. Okay, let's assume this, that I'm a complete jerk and would like to see the editor die. Immediately. I should be infinite blocked, because I want to fill the project with links to lenr-canr.org (a limited goal, no more than one per article, more would certainly be linkspam, eh?). Now, what does this have to do with his behavior? He's an admin, part of the requirement for that is a thick skin, admins are going to be criticized and even attacked. They are respected to be able to respond without use of tools, and it's easy to do that. Put up a tab to report personal attacks, and press it instead of "Block." Before this, pick up a diff of the attack. Then a diff to the attack, done. I do this with page protection and it's usually granted within minutes. But, Jehochman, I'm not an admin and I don't report personal attacks against me. I'd be pretty busy! (At least at a time like this.)
• Beyond a rather vague claim, some have stated, that "JzG did nothing wrong," there is no defense on the merits. At this point, a standard close based on arguments rather than numbers would be to confirm the complaint. JzG was involved, he used tools. And this, then, if he does not resign, or otherwise satisfy the requirements (i.e., acknowledge error and promise not to do it again), it's fully ripe for ArbComm. A close based on the numbers would properly be "No consensus." But it doesn't matter, the RfC does not prevent going to ArbComm, though ArbComm will often be reluctant to accept a case with an ongoing RfC. The close is almost irrelevant except for informing the parties as to the level of consensus existing. At this point, there is clearly a dispute, without immediate prospect of resolution. That's not a bad finding, in fact, it isn't useless.
• It would be much more helpful if somebody he trusted were to speak with him about these matters. I've been begging for someone to do this. For months. Jehochman, does he have any friends who aren't caught up in the factionalism? This, alone, could be a sign of the problem. You mention the "habitual enemies." Suppose they didn't exist. JzG was not forced by them to take the actions he took while involved. My challenge of these actions wasn't as an enemy. I simply saw a sign of the dispute and investigated without prejudice. So what you are describing, Jehochman, is a sign of a deep problem that is unlikely to go away. If what you have said is really true, JzG, quite simply, cannot continue as an administrator unless he were on a short leash. (This could be done. The short leash would be immediately replaced with removal of the bit if strict behavioral rules were violated, and there would be short-process to make a determination of that. The simplest rule would be that the tools would not be used at all except in defined, pre-announced situations. This would allow preservation of helpful work in non-controversial areas, such as fighting true spam. Actually blacklisting, no, but proposing links, which is what he should have done in the first place, yes, and being able to see deleted contributions would be, I assume, helpful. --Abd (talk) 19:18, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• I've tried to gently drop clues. Did you notice? Has JzG done anything wrong within the last 30 days? Perhaps he has taken the point, even though he has not made a public statement. Check my outside view. There is a problem with the RFC in that it tries to force an apology. We never do that. The most you can ask for is an undertaking to follow standards going forward. Even forcing an admission of guilt is problematic. I understand that the rule is thus, and I will follow it should be an easy thing for any editor to pledge, and should be sufficient for our purposes. Could you reword that section? Jehochman 20:46, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I understand the issue (forcing an apology). However, JzG's reliability as an administrator has been impeached. The issue isn't apology, as such, it is assurance to the community that it won't happen again. There are two parts to the resolution. First, JzG shows that he understands the problem. He's not being prosecuted for a criminal offense, the issue isn't "guilt." There is no charge of bad faith in the RfC. Everything I've seen is consistent with the view that he believes he is acting in the best interests of the project. If he doesn't understand the problem, there can be no assurance that he won't do it again, even if he promised compliance, because admins act alone and often in ways that the commmunity never notices. It took weeks to notice the blacklistings and the IP block of Rothwell, the blacklistings were only noticed because, I think, somebody tried to revert JzG's edits and couldn't. (As was unfortunately typical, the removals were not discussed or mentioned on article Talk.) I didn't see the December blocks of Rothwell until I started looking for other examples of admin action while involved, so, naturally, I looked at the block log. Apology would merely be one symptom of understanding; further, I'd suggest, if he understood the problem, he'd recognize the damage that has been done, and while I understand it's difficult, I'd be concerned about an understanding that doesn't result in some kind of apology. Once understanding is established, the assurances that he will follow the rules is not a difficult step. If he takes that step without understanding, violation is practically assured.

I'm aware of the drastic dropoff in editing. Has he done anything wrong in the last 30 days? I don't know. He's been quite inactive. That may or may not be related to the pressure. I haven't been tracking him. His response to the RfC was pretty bad, I'd say. MfDing the RfC? What all this shows is a lack of the balance we expect from administrators. However, I will look at the RfC and consider restating the desired conclusion to try to make the pill less difficult to swallow. My goal is not to humiliate JzG. It's a little sloppy to change it now, but ... hey, IAR and all that. This whole thing could be over in a flash if JzG would find someone reasonable as a mediator, promise to trust that person's judgment on this, let the person negotiate for him, and then follow up. Bottom line, though, it's essential that he show understanding of why all this fuss arose, why experienced editors would be concerned and even his friends would be saying, well, of course, he shouldn't have done it this way.... but JzG has never acknowledged that he shouldn't have done it the way he did. And his response to the RfC is simply defiant and shows problems deeper than may be resolved with loss of an admin bit. He was eager to apply the Cold fusion arbitration to Rothwell (not to mention Pcarbonn; the Pcarbonn impeachment relied heavily on framing by JzG -- "framing" means the way in which facts are presented to create an impression). Maybe the SA arbitration should be applied to him. But this is really moot, right now. Admin bit. Use of tools while involved. I fear that nothing I can do to make it easier will be enough, but I'd love to be wrong. --Abd (talk) 01:42, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I know you're open to sometimes editing your comments in response to feedback, for example your edit to the "desired outcome" section of the RfC, which is why I'm hazarding this message. For almost all of your message to JzG, I can see that it's sincere advice, but specifically the bit about entertainment I'm not sure of the purpose of and I suggest that that part is unlikely to be taken by JzG in a positive spirit and would perhaps best be deleted. I'm also unsure what you're thanking him for, since it's my understanding that you would prefer an outcome that doesn't involve him losing his admin bit, so possibly the thanks part could be deleted along with the entertainment part, although I don't know how JzG would interpret a deletion of thanks; an alternative might be to explain what you're thanking him for, if such explanation is likely to be seen as something positive by JzG; otherwise the thanks may seem sarcastic or along the same lines as the entertainment part. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:10, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) The entertainment was a fact. I laughed, not a laugh of contempt, but a genuine laugh of surprise and wonder. If JzG was carrying on a bit of street theatre, I'd call the MfD brilliant. But, then, I do fear that he's serious, and he imagined that the community would support his MfD, which, then, is quite sad. There was no purpose to the comment about entertainment, it was simple honesty. This is my Talk page, consider it like my home. JzG, if he came to the door with a subpoena, would be treated with civility and respect, and I'd invite him in for tea or coffee if he had time. I do understand that it can be taken other ways, and I regret that, but at this point, redacting it would help nothing, the diff is being used as evidence of my nastiness. The thanks for the notice was simple courtesy, and, yes, if I deleted it, it would be, in effect, saying "No thanks." But that wouldn't be true. I thanked him for the notice, and I meant it, not as some kind of effusive gratitude, as if the notice was above and beyond the call of duty, but the way I thanked a police officer one time for informing me that a charge of child abuse had been raised with respect to me, and she wanted to talk with me about it. Look, I've had to deal with situations far, far more stressful than anything that could happen here, and I've navigated them with instinctive ease. The officer and I had a great conversation, the charges went nowhere, perhaps because (1) I did not become defensive but was fully disclosing, and (2) I already had discussed everything underneath it with two therapists (the child's therapist and my own), and both of them, per their legal responsibility, had already notified the responsible Massachusetts agency, which had already ruled "no abuse," plus more that I won't even mention, beyond saying that I gave the officer the child therapist's phone number and called the therapist and gave permission for discussion.

Becoming defensive and angry about people who complain is one of the most efficient ways to make a small problem into a large one. The woman who filed the charge was violating small-group confidentiality because she was, herself, quite disturbed, and unable to make rational decisions. She seized on the bad stuff from my own report, and completely neglected the other side I'd mentioned, which included everything the officer needed to conclude that her job was done. Because it affected other people, the officer revealed that there had been other complaints from the same person about another, I confronted the issue at the next meeting, not naming the complainant. But everyone knew, as I had when the officer explained her business. After the meeting, the woman came up to me and apologized profusely. When people cannot admit error, small problems become large ones and large problems become impossibly difficult. Consider that unfortunate woman. She may be sick in some ways, but she knew that she had screwed up, and that she could face that and apologize -- I'm sure that was not easy! -- is quite a hopeful sign about her future. --Abd (talk) 18:05, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration

Hi Abd, I realise that we are on contrasting sides of the RFC and that you will not therefore be particularly open to my input on this but I was dismayed by your suggestion on he RFC talk page that you might take this to Arbitration. Last I checked the most endorsed sections of the RFC were Guy's response and my section suggesting that you are beating a dead horse and are in danger of being topic banned from Guy and Cold Fusion. The RFC outcome is already clear. Essentially the community mostly accepts that Guy acted reasonably and that this should drop, albeit there is a thread of thought that I also partially endorse suggesting greater care to avoid the impression of admining under a COI. With respect to your side of the debate, and with due to respect to some of those endorsing sections, but I did notice that lots of editors endorsing are what me might call the "usual suspects" in that they already have well known and hostile entrenched opinions about him and many of the other endorsers are opposing sides of the debate to Guy. My reading is that the vast majority of uninvolved commentators are not supporting the anti Guy rhetoric. To read the RFC that this now needs to go to Arbitration now looks like harassment to me and a failure to understand or listen to the emerging consensus. You asked for community input and have got it - that the community does not appear to be endorsing your version of the dispute is not the point. RFC is for getting outside input and you should, in my opinion, accept that judgements and now let this go. Obviously, its always possible that the balance of the RFC will change but its been open long enough that the rough consensus is already clear. Spartaz 14:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

• I'm completely open to your input, and I hope you do not mind if I consider it thoroughly, agreeing with what I can agree with and delineating disagreements that may remain. That's what I do, I hope, in spite of the fact that some don't like it.
• Yes, if you look at numbers, what you say is what you will see. What happens if you look at arguments? Do we make decisions by numbers or by arguments? (My answer: both. And it depends. In fact, we make decisions through a hierarchical process which engages higher levels only as needed to find broad consensus, and while majority opinion may prevail at lower levels, and the minority may effectively decide that it's not worth taking it up the DR ladder, that right remains, and may be exercised later, as long as there are two editors signing on to a decision to escalate. And, if I'm correct, a single editor can still go before ArbComm (but is pretty likely to get a rapid decline to consider.)
• Your reading of the sense that what is consensus is that admins should avoid the impression of COI action is shallow. Yes, such impression should be avoided. But JzG did far more than create an impression of COI, there was the reality of COI and action clearly designed to support a POV and personal interpretations of policy, not supported by the editorial community active with the related and affected article. The links he removed were there by consensus, and they were not placed by a linkspammer, not by Rothwell, who did not edit articles since 2006. One was placed by Pcarbonn, but another was placed by LeadSongDog, who is a critic of cold fusion. We should avoid the impression of COI, true, but impression of COI can be defended. The reality of COI cannot. If two-thirds of the community thinks there is no reality, well, they believe something that cannot be supported by evidence, to the contrary. It happens.
• I would not have undertaken this process if I did not have reason to believe that there was substantial discomfort in the community with the violations of administrative policy, and the present RfC simply brings up one article and related actions. There are others, but in this one, the involvement was blatantly clear. I also know some precedents here, both ways. The sum: given that the RfC has been compiled and presented, and assuming some conclusion that does not represent a clear consensus on the points raised in the RfC, there is an arbitratable issue, and I expect that, with one possible exception, an immediate request based on the issues raised in the RfC, would be accepted, and would, unless JzG changes his course, in loss of his admin bit. The exception is that the RfC is still open, and it remains possible (though perhaps unlikely) consensus will appear. So ArbComm might prefer to wait. Your argument above appears to claim consensus for a closure which would not be accepted by those concerned about the behavior, though you have not proposed a specific closure, and Jehochman was a bit vague. Hence, if you are correct, then as soon as an independent administrator has so ruled, but consensus is not sufficiently broad to resolve the concerns, the door is immediately open to ArbComm.
• Do realize that one argument that has been presented to me (by Jehochman? I forget) is that I should just go to ArbComm, period. I.e., that the RfC is a waste of time, people aren't going to agree anyway. I disagreed, and said that the RfC, if nothing else, will clarify the issues and the nature of the division in the community. And that's a good thing. And what I've been saying is that if JzG supporters, by attacking me and by defending the content effects of JzG's actions in violation of involvement rules, as if those effects justify the actions, are simply increasing the probability of this going to ArbComm. Instead, if these editors prefer to see JzG retain his admin bit, they should help him to overcome his resistance to admitting error. That resistance is a fatal flaw for an administrator, we would never grant the bit to an admin if we knew the editor can't do this, and, for too long, we have tolerated admins like this. The goal is not to get rid of JzG, the goal here is to affirm the policy about admin action while involved. All the arguments made for JzG's continued admin status without the admission of error sought have been raised before. They failed, and admins lost their bits.
• My reading is that the vast majority of uninvolved commentators are not supporting the anti Guy rhetoric. That's right. Spartaz, I am not supporting the anti Guy rhetoric. That there is such rhetoric is unfortunate, but it does point out something: there is a certain level of serious discontent with JzG as an admin, and possibly as an editor, though I think most of the "rhetoric" is about admin behavior, the problem for these people is that an admin is behaving like this, when admins should be models of something quite different. That's not the issue before the RfC, but it may help to place the RfC in context, i.e., why it is important that the issue be faced, directly. Action while involved has been creating ongoing disruption, both below and above the level of wide attention. It is not just this RfC, those attacking me over this RfC are attacking the messenger. Much of this disruption is invisible. If JzG blocks some unknown editor abusively, we are likely to never hear about it, unless someone notices it and complains. Every administrator should be open to such complaints, and should deal with them with detachment, recusing quickly at the slightest reasonable doubt about neutrality. There is no shame in recusal, to the contrary. And all this has been covered in arbitrations before.
• As to the "usual suspects", sure. JzG has stepped on a lot of toes. You won't see an RfC like this about Fritzpoll, for example. I once warned him that if he stuck with a certain position, he was risking his bit, and I essentially got slaughtered over it. However, what I told him was theoretically true, but I had no prior knowledge of him, and the necessary condition for it to be true, that he'd stick with the point and defend it to the bitter end, quite simply would not happen with him. He'd respond, he'd admit error or recuse, etc., and what happened at that time was that he was functioning under diminished capacity because of personal or off-wiki conditions, and my long comments were simply more than he could handle, but he also felt that he couldn't just say tl;dr, he is far too polite, so he was stuck. And I knew nothing about the problems he was facing, yet an editor was suffering under an abusively-placed ban (Fritzpoll was not the abuser, but simply became a closing admin, after I pointed out that he'd been acting under the assumption of a community decision, when there had been none. No close.) Note, Spartaz, that ultimately my position was vindicated, the ban was lifted by Fritzpoll. You might also notice who granted me rollback, I didn't even ask for it. Now, as to usual suspects, I notice a specific constellation of editors calling for my ban, and, naturally, supporting JzG. I've seen these editors before; as an example, see the !votes in WP:Requests for comment/GoRight. Quite simply, many of the !votes aren't surprising at all, there are only two votes that were unsettling for me in any way. One is Fritzpoll, though I understand him pretty well, and he's the kind of guy who instinctively defends people, and the other is Beetstra, who is quite capable of and engages in "extended discussion" that tends to find consensus, so his considering my discussion of his comments on his Talk page as evidence I should be banned was truly shocking. And, guess what? He's still engaging in extended discussion with me on my Talk page now. His page or mine really should make no difference (except that it being on my Talk page proves it's not harassment from me). So I still don't understand that comment, and, I assume, we will ultimately get to it. It's not urgent, the RfC is not a political game to see who can get the most votes, and I don't feel there is any risk of my being banned, and if I was banned, I assume that there could be quite a bit of good come out of it, which might not be to the liking of the one who bans me. (That's not a threat, it's a warning, and the difference is that the consequences would follow without action on my part; after all, I'd be banned.)
• Please note: I have no opinion on whether or not it's better for me,personally, that I continue editing Misplaced Pages, and I would fully respect any ban or editing restrictions. In fact, any admin could at any time drop a note on my Talk page and say, "You are banned from editing such and such," and, aside from normal appeal from such an action, and without admin reversal, I'd respect it.
• I not only understand how this place works, Spartaz, I also understand, in some cases, how it should develop. Something that may not be obvious to you: I have over thirty years of experience with consensus process. I know how to do it, and I've seen supermajorities reverse themselves once discussion was complete. The process is famously tedious with large communities, but successful large communities channel the necessary discussion into small groups. We allow individual editors to make content decisions, when there is conflict between two, the two discuss it, and if they cannot find consensus, then larger numbers become involved. At the normal top level, a body of trusted editors makes decisions by vote, but that body normally recuses itself from making content decisions, but only behavioral ones, leaving operating consensus as the normal content decision process, and ArbComm's job is to make sure that the consensus process doesn't get warped.
• Spartaz, if you think I'm doing something wrong, and if you think that we are done discussing it, pick someone you think I might trust -- if you think my lack of trust in you is the problem -- and ask that person to intercede. I'd listen to anyone, but if you want more likelihood of success, Fritzpoll, maybe? --Abd (talk) 17:43, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry but there is no way I have time to give you a substantive response to this tonight and I'm busy all day tomorrow. I'll be honest as well, I'm completely disinterested in your ideas on how wikipedia should govern itself. I'll just leave you with one thought Abd, you don't understand how consensus in User RFCs work. By the time its got to RFC its no longer possible to reach a consensus by discussion and that is why User RFC's are set up as a straw poll - because by this stage all that is left to to gauge community support for each position. RFC is the closest thing to a vote that we have outside RFA/B and the community is sending you a very clear message that its going to be time for you to drop this after the RFC has closed. The thing is, you need to accept that too which is why I strongly suggest you find someone neutral (completely neutral) you trust to help you understand where the consensus sits because, I'm afraid, you clearly are not getting it yourself. I really hope that we don't have to find out which way the community will go if the consensus remains the same at the end of the RFC and you choose to ignore. If I have time to disgest and consider this further I'll come back to it in coming days and add more. Spartaz 18:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
    • At your leisure, Spartaz. You came here and you have made a request, asking me to consider it, and I have. If I have missed anything, you can raise it or leave it, it is totally up to you. You have no obligation to respond. While I mentioned thirty years of experience, that's said not to try to intimidate you but just to suggest that there might be more here than you see. I see RfC in a different way, because RfC is the first process where, routinely, rules restricting discussion arise, and it is more difficult to derail the process with tendentious argument over irrelevant points; rather, the process encourages delineation of issues, it moves toward the deliberative process that ArbComm will use. If you are correct, Spartaz, then if the RfC closes without the community clearly addressing the issues underlying it -- which isn't me and my alleged disruption --, and my position is idiosyncratic and unsupported, and I decide to go ahead and file the RfAr, there are several possibilities, one of which would be that I'd be topic banned or something even stronger than that. Another would be that the case would be dismissed as not worthy of consideration; in that case, if I continued to debate it, I'd, again, suffer some sanctions, I'd predict, less formally, by community process. On the other hand, please notice the support for the RfC, and the dissent, and reframe this as if it were a case before ArbComm. What, realistically, do you think would happen if I or someone else files? First of all, all the evidence here would be, effectively, placed in evidence there, with no further work required, if the RfAr remains confined to the admin COI issue, something I'd endeavor to do, I do know what the precedent is. If people want to make other complaints about JzG, that's their business, it's not mine. I will not venture to make any firm prediction about the outcome, but I will say this: I will fully respect whatever decision ArbComm makes, if it takes the case and rules, but I might leave the project with certain possible outcomes. I think those outcomes unlikely, but, Spartaz, if you are right, that would indeed be result. I have no crystal ball, just some ability to see what's coming down the tracks, sometimes.
    • If there is error in the evidence, now might be the time to point that out!--Abd (talk) 18:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
    • One more point: that I would "ignore" the results of the RfC is not an option for me. Ignoring it would mean that I'd continue to "complain" about JzG admin involvement, etc., in spite of an apparent majority. Going to ArbComm, however, would not be ignoring it, it would be following due process in the contingency that I disagree with the majority. The community does not have the right, by majority vote or even supermajority vote to prohibit appeal to ArbComm, or to create sanctions for appeal. ArbComm may sanction abusive appeal, so it would make that decision, not the editors who piled in quickly to !vote in the RfC, and who may not have the foggiest idea of the issues. Or may, but also may have an axe to grind, like those editors you mentioned who have a grudge against JzG. There is decision by vote, in practice, in RfAr and RfB, but not with RfC. Period. That you think RfC is decided by vote shows me that your understanding of Misplaced Pages process is seriously deficient. Or, more accurately, of how Misplaced Pages process is designed, because, yes, some admins seem to think, as you show, that !votes count, instead of cogency of argument. In reality, there is some proper consideration of votes, but arguments more generally control. I've argued that an admin should never close a discussion contrary to the administrator's own opinion, based on !votes alone, excepting clear snows, and that many abuses result when that happens. Well never say never, there are always exceptions that are possible if rare. But that's another story.--Abd (talk) 18:38, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

RfC talk page

Hello. This is a comment about your edits to the talk page of the current RfC on User:JgZ. Please don't post a summary title for a section that you did not create. You do not WP:OWN the talk page. You cannot presume to categorize the discussions there. Your edits seem disruptive at present. I wonder whether you could please leave the non-descript title "subsection" and not add further subtitles of your own? I wonder also whether you could also take this opportunity to remove the word "trolling" from one one of your contributions, which appears to be a personal attack. I do not intend to contribute further to the talk page. Many thanks, Mathsci (talk) 22:03, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

You added a subsection title above my comment, separating it from your comment to which I was replying. You are right, I don't own the page, what would make you think I thought so? I was surprised to see you remove my replacement of the non-descript title with one which simply introduced my comment as a response to your question. I already refactored the word "trolling" based on your request there, immediately upon seeing your request. "Trolling," as used there, was a synonym for "asked" which implies some level of impropriety; however, that's not necessary, so I replaced it with "asked."

As to adding subtitles of my own, we are all free to do that, so you can take a hike on that one. I left your "subsection" in place, using a lower level for a new subsection of my own that repeated your question. If that's biased, well, it would be your bias, not mine. I can categorize any discussion I like, with the goal of organizing it. WP guidelines actually suggest refactoring Talk, but it's rarely done. It's work. It should never be done to push a POV, and especially not to distort what editors have written, but rather to make clear the issues and help focus discussion. Expect to see a lot more of that. Like anything else, here, it's subject to consensus. If anything else I say offends you, ask. I often refactor stuff on request. I do that naturally, I didn't learn that from ScienceApologist, but it's one of the things he did properly.

As to abstaining from posting to that page, good move. I'm not quite sure what you were trying to accomplish there. The RfC has a tight focus, and, hint, it's not about my behavior, nor about cold fusion, nor, indeed, about the value of JzG's positive contributions, and I'm sure there are many. It's also not about desysopping JzG, which would, unless he consents, require further process, and my hope has been, all along, that this would not be necessary. The RfC is an opportunity to clarify the issues, i.e., what actually happened and what are the policy implications. JzG could have violated policy six ways till Sunday and that does not automatically desysop him. Because a desysopping recommendation is theoretically possible, though consensus on that would seem extraordinarily unlikely at this point, it's mentioned in the desired outcome, which I will quote for convenience as it stands now. Proposals for amending it are in order, and I will support proposals that I think could enjoy broad consensus. To answer one comment that has been made by you or by Hipocrite, I don't claim to represent consensus, I claim to be seeking broad consensus; narrow consensus (and in this case, 2/3 consensus that leaves 1/3 of the community dissatisfied on an important matter is still narrow) is highly inefficient, it causes conflict to be maintained, and articles become Sisyphus' mountain, and then there is the not-minor detail of participation bias.

The community affirms that action while involved is improper, and confirms that JzG has done this. JzG assures the community that he recognizes the impropriety, and that such actions will not be repeated, and he himself reverses, or consents to the reversal of any of these actions still standing in effect, by any other administrator. Alternatively, he resigns his administrative privilege or it is removed by further process.

The "alternative" resolution describes what will happen if the RfC does not find consensus supporting JzG, and a substantial segment is left behind, dissatisfied. So: JzG admits nothing, provides no clear reason why the community should continue to trust him with an admin bit, even though he has clearly violated policy (in the opinion of this segment). This situation has been arbitrated before with different characters. ArbComm has been very clear. What was described as desired outcome is what I can predict ArbComm will decide, if it goes to them, and hundreds of editors could pile on at this point and it wouldn't make any difference, unless those hundreds of editors represented the most thoughtful of editors, and they show that by addressing the issues. I.e., what carries the day is not numbers, but cogency of argument. I have no fixed positions on anything.

To summarize one important point: the RfC does not ask the community to decide about the admin bit, it is not asked to recommend desysopping. It's just asked about:

1. was JzG involved?
2. did he use the tools while involved?
3. is this acceptable behavior?

Is it so hard to answer those questions? The answers do not automatically desysop JzG, but if his friends deny that the very questions are important and relevant, they will be in a poor position to defend him against desysopping. --Abd (talk) 23:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

On topic

Put your remarks where they belong--on the optics talk page or on my talk page. Editors on Talk:optics are discussing the edit and whether it is allowed in light of SA's ban from en.wiki editing, and what can be used, if anything, in light of that ban. The point of asking at arbcom is to find out if there's an issue with using it, in light of the ban and in light of the discussion of the ban on the article talk page. Now, if the current arbcom showed a lot of ability or restraint or knowledge about their mission, not posting at arbcom would have been fine, but that's not the case--read some of their recent decisions, this one about SA in particular. Posting at arbcom was the correct and most direct route to settling the issue being discussed at talk:optics. No continued amount of discussion there or anywhere else would have handled it as directly as this.

Thanks for assuming I acted without all of the information then addressing me while ignoring all of the information. Don't worry, no need to respond, the usual reversion with an accusation of trolling will suffice.--KP Botany (talk) 00:50, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

KP Botany, beware of WP:ABF. I don't revert edits to my talk page with accusations of trolling, unless it has become so totally obvious and blatant that any response is a total waste of time. That's rare. I posted comments in two places: on SA talk, where I saw your edits there, as did another editor I respect very much, as uselessly provocative, but I left your notice of the AE request, and, in fact, gave it a section header, then I suggested to SA that there wasn't anything there that he needed to get exercised about. I then commented at the AE page, supporting the view that the edits here were not SA's responsibility, that he does not violate his topic ban -- at all -- by writing whatever his heart desires somewhere else. If there is "meat puppetry," the meat puppet is the one responsible. It's different from sock puppetry. I haven't looked at the Optics Talk page, but notifying a banned editor of discussions here is not necessarily a good idea, it can create an incentive to violate the ban. I knew where the AC discussion was going, it was totally a foregone conclusion. I think you have your answer. Misplaced Pages editors are free, providing they respect the licensing issues and copyright, to use content from elsewhere. In discussion at Wikisource, I think that the opinion was being expressed that an admin here could unblock SA and allow him to make that one edit, then reblock. In my opinion, that admin would then be responsible for the article, but the licensing would all be proper. Please remember, the goal here is the encyclopedia, and is never to punish an editor; we block or ban to protect the project, and when improving the project is helped by suspending a ban, as in this case, WP:IAR suggests allowing it. This is a far cry from allowing SA to edit articles, it's very pointed and specific. If the edit itself is controversial, no presumption has been created that the content would be kept, but it appears that SA's goal was to be the first banned editor to contribute an FA. I'm all for it. And SA might as well be a dedicated enemy of my work here (from his POV, not from mine). His friends are trying to get me banned. That ought to be a clue, KP. --Abd (talk) 01:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I have to admit

But the first bit of your edit sum made me LOL (in a good way) :-) Shot info (talk) 01:22, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Shot info. If you had removed Jehochman's comment, it could have been trouble, right? But I could do it without likely harm. Jehochman generally trusts me, I think. Given some of the contention there, though, I made it explicit: don't like my "bold" action, revert it, but, then, you will be responsible. My opinion is that the comment should not have been made there, we avoid debate within comment sections, or comments questioning the appropriateness of a comment; such matters should go on the talk page; if Jehochman really thinks a comment inappropriate, he could move it to Talk directly, the whole thing, but that's a tad rude. I removed it, but my goal was to assert the principle, not to demand compliance. And one of the whole points of the RfC is the importance of certain policies and guidelines and procedures, which are not to be casually ignored just because we like or dislike someone or something.

You know, if editors want to try to divert the RfC by attacking me, it hurts JzG in the end. I don't like that outcome, but do find the irony of it fascinating. Please, if you are one of JzG's friends, if that was an issue for you, consider looking at the substance of the RfC and helping him to understand it. It's not an attack on him, and if his actions look bad, well, maybe they were mistakes. We all make mistakes. They become truly problematic when we can't admit them.

JzG's friends are basically saying, "well, it was a mistake, but don't humiliate him by forcing him to admit it." That is one very dangerous position. The community will ultimately want to know that he won't repeat the error, and the only way to be confident of that, given the way that administrators work, is for him to acknowledge the error, and not just that he made a mistake (which could mean, really, "I allowed myself to get caught.") No, it should be about showing understanding of the policy. We grill admin candidates about stuff like this, and any candidate we suspected of having this problem with humiliation would not be accepted. The RfC is not about humiliation, and someone who will be humiliated by admitting an error cannot be an administrator. It's far too dangerous. --Abd (talk) 01:45, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

You know - not that I really want to go there, but you could have just said "thanks" (as the above could be an example of why you're not getting the support you need) - note I'm not a friend of JzG - but I view the RfC for what it is - if that isn't how you intended it to be, then bevity is your friend :-) Shot info (talk) 01:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Sure. But I'm "pushing" for people who might consider themselves JzG's friends to give him good advice instead of attacking me. So I took the risk. Bad bet? Well, good cause. I don't regret it. It's not about me, Shot info. The RfC itself was quite brief, but I'm afraid people read things into it that weren't there, and weren't intended to be there. --Abd (talk) 02:09, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

If you could be bothered to express yourself more effectively then people would be less likely to misunderstand your intent. Don't blame others for your refusal to communicate clearly. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:43, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I do not refuse to communicate clearly. I have limited time. It takes longer to write less. Go away, SBHB. If that's not clear, don't ask me. Ask someone else. --Abd (talk) 02:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

The other people (me, for example) also have limited time. It takes longer to read long meandering comments. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:33, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Enric, sure. If what I write is too long, please don't read it. If I want you to read something, it's my responsibility to craft it for you. I'm not usually crafting what I write for your personal needs, unless I'm in direct discussion with you. I'm writing for the community, and, indeed, only for some members of it, those willing to engage on deeper levels than are possible with brief, snappy text.--Abd (talk) 14:36, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

If I may chime in - I enjoy Abd's verbosity, but I agree much of it could be tightened. Firstly, usually (or probably always), his comments are coherent. Secondly, there should be nothing wrong with expounding and intellectualising a discussion, which usually makes for quite a few lines of text. On principal there is absolutely nothing wrong with screeds of texts so long as it is all coherent and relevant. Now, on the other hand if the long screeds of text are made maliciously, with long paragraphs that are completely irrelevant or incoherant and are done only to distract or detract then it could be a fair argument. But in this case I don't believe Abd's paragraphs, especially in the RfC itself are quite long enough / incoherent / irrelevant enough to be deemed malicious or unfair. However, I would say to Abd that there is a good point to be made here: if some of your potential concurrers find your verbosity too much, it would be detrimental to your case. I think it would be wrong to say "change your behaviour or who you are", but in the case of an RfC, consider tightening where possible. Just my 2c. Rfwoolf (talk) 09:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't think that in the RfC itself, there is any problem with screeds. I do tighten. One of the claims made in the RfC, by an editor with a clear POV clash at Cold fusion, is that I "resist collapse" of my comments. I have reverted maybe two collapses or so. I've accepted many, and I often collapse my own text. It's just bullshit. (Not your comment, absolutely, brevity is the soul of wit, but ... it takes much more time, Mark Twain wasn't just making a joke.) --Abd (talk) 10:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Three, actually. one (1st April), two (1st April), three (2nd April. I complained here.

And, yeah, you have respected one of my collapsings (so, one out of four), and you collapsed one discussion very correctly and you collapsed one of your own comments when posting them. That's one out of, hum, lots :p --Enric Naval (talk) 15:30, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

As I've said elsewhere, if anyone finds any of Abd's comments on any topic too long to read, you're welcome to ask me on my talk page and I'll probably be happy to summarize it. I'm serious: I enjoy summarizing Abd's comments, and prefer to be asked rather than trying to figure out on my own which comments to summarize.

I have in the past been asked to keep my comments short, and I've asked at least one other editor to do so. I often shorten my comments before posting, and I think it's generally a worthwhile thing to do since it probably saves others more time than the time it takes the original poster to do such shortening.

However, in Abd's case the situation is different. Abd has ADHD, and one of the characteristics of Abd's particular condition is that it's very difficult for Abd to shorten comments. Abd can do it, but it takes hours of work. Therefore I think it's a reasonable accommodation to Abd's condition to just let Abd write long comments. It takes less time for others to scroll past the comments if they don't want to read them, than it would take Abd to shorten them. And in my opinion, there are gems of wisdom in those comments.

☺Coppertwig (talk) 16:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Gee, I thought so too. I wouldn't bother if I didn't think so. People have come to me decades later and have said, "What you said changed my life," or "You were right, we just couldn't see it." Coppertwig took some flak for having summarized what I said, from someone who also complains about the length. This exposes, quite clearly, what's really going on. It's not the length, it's the projected (or possibly real) POV. Length is a cover. You don't complain about length from someone who is saying lots of stuff you like. I do often get friendly suggestions that I reduce the length, but, as Coppertwig noted, it is not all that simple. I have some choices: (1) Post as-is, which already includes some level of cutback. I do know how to use the delete key. (2) Cut down quickly, which involves deleting things that I thought were important enough to write about in the first place. (3) Rigorously edit, which takes lots of time, as I find ways to say what needs to be said more succinctly. I did it for the RfC, but, notice, there are still complaints about it. Editors will complain about what they don't like no matter what.

Editors sometimes delete, move to archive, or collapse my Talk text. I respond with several considerations: (1) how important is it? (2) what further response is likely, would, say, reverting it back lead to useless disruption? (3) Is there some way I can accommodate the editor's legitimate intent? I also, with increasing frequency, use collapse to give a kind of hypertext quality to my writing, with relatively brief introduction immediately visible, and then detail under collapse.

My basic advice to those put off by "walls of text" is to not read them unless they are interested. If it's important, they will get another chance to review any consequences, and maybe someone will summarize it (like Coppertwig, who is quite good at that -- I'm also good at it, by the way, I've been an editor professionally, but, hey, it's work). Or they can always look back at it, at leisure. --Abd (talk) 17:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but your long comments fill and overhelm the talk page. I added an image to show what I mean. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:59, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Damn! I did not think I'd been working that hard. I see that when I take a day's wikibreak, Talk on Cold fusion goes to zero. I never write completely off-topic (except in the view of some, others would say, no, this is on our work here). The article has major deficiencies. I've been discussing those, instead of firing salvos with edits that are likely to be deleted first time, just because. I'm looking for some guideline that prohibits too much blue text. Congratulations on your hobby of coloring in text, that must have been fun. Did you stay within the lines? May I play with your crayons?

I'll leave it in place, it's kind of pretty. It's the kind of thing I like to do for fun. But not to be nasty. The only reason I'd do something like that would be to prove that a person was involved in the article. I'm involved. Very involved, I've been reading tons and buying books, which I almost never do. Maybe it's a good thing I don't have buttons, I might fix the article and protect it against the mindless anti-fringe POV you've been pushing against all evidence in recent reliable sources, and then you could file an RfC about my use of tools while involved. That blue chart would be crackerjack for that. Maybe if JzG had actually discussed the stuff he did, there wouldn't have been a problem.

Seriously, Enric, go away, I've got stuff to do that actually improves or will improve the project, and plenty of RL stuff as well, like working to insure my family's survival. Further unnecessary posting here by you, without permission, such as formal warning that I'm violating the policy against WP:TOOMUCHWORK, if you can find it, will be considered harassment, which I think you can find if you look hard. If you don't like it, you presumably know what to do, see dispute resolution. --Abd (talk) 11:18, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you may have missed my comment earlier in this thread where I talk about reasonable accommodation for Abd's condition and where I offer to summarize Abd's comments on request. Nevertheless, if you explain to me (in civil, objective, neutral terms) in what way Abd's comments are problematic for you (what concrete costs are incurred, and how), I'd be happy to help brainstorm solutions. If you'd like to discuss that, I suggest using my talk page, since I have the impression such comments are likely not welcome here. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 02:34, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is just an encyclopedia

Just remember with all the time you spend in discussing conduct wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Its just a website. Dr. Blofeld 11:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

OMG, and all this time I thought it was a blowfish. Obviously, I need to adjust my medication, I've completely lost touch with reality. Fortunately, it's a wiki so any mistakes I make can be fixed by others with clearer vision. --Abd (talk) 13:59, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I think Blofeld was trying to be friendly. Sarcasm may be counterproductive here. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:08, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I did not take the comment as hostile. This is my Talk page, and my hope was that Dr. Blofeld would laugh.

Indeed the Bald One is laughing. The Bald One thinks you need a breath of fresh air and go have some fun! Go whale hunting or something or look for some blow holes. Dr. Blofeld 17:41, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

This is actually a typical way that I get into trouble with people in RL. Some of my social "habits" developed at Caltech, where everybody was genius level, and how I responded is how I would have responded to a Techie, i.e., a peer. Dr. Blofeld, if my response offended you, I apologize. I did see the comment as friendly.

Among friends, when one friend says the obvious to another, my kind of response would be common; there is an edge of criticism there, and, so the response contains an edge of criticism represented by sarcasm. Human interactions are extraordinarily complex, there can be many levels going on at once, and, classic phenomenon, I've seen it since my first days on The WELL, the written word is very low-bandwidth, compared to what takes place in person, where there are very high-bandwidth channels of communication open, and what could take volumes to write can be transferred in a glance. I also spend a lot of time with people, in person, discussing matters of depth, where honesty is greatly valued and mutual respect as well, and I've raised one complete family of five kids, and am now working on the second with two girls. One skill learned is not to tell people the obvious as if they did not know it, it's often ineffective in terms of modifying behavior because we have instinctive mechanisms defending us from outside control. There are far more skillful means of transferring experience, which, I can hear the sighs of relief, I will not describe now. On the other hand, if your goal is to change my behavior, rather than help me to expand my understanding and make better decisions on my own, well, I won't repeat the appropriate comment, at least not now. If we were in person, I'd say it and you would see that I was smiling and not about to attack you, and you would probably laugh, unless your own intent was hostile. --Abd (talk) 14:30, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

One skill learned is not to tell people the obvious as if they did not know it, it's often ineffective in terms of modifying behavior because we have instinctive mechanisms defending us from outside control -- this is food for thought for me. Also, related to this behaviour is the fact that I tend to explain things in a linear fashion and I sometimes have to state the obvious first before I can move on and expound on it. Sorry for tramping onto your talkpage discussions, but I find your comment interesting. Rfwoolf (talk) 14:45, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Stating the obvious as part of your explanation of your own ideas is quite different from commenting on obvious aspects of the behavior of others, with the goal of modifying that behavior. Indeed, stating the obvious can be a method of developing rapport, as long as it doesn't have the edge of an assumption that the other doesn't see it and needs to be informed by the wise one. Look, the basic rule of human communication is quite the same as WP:IAR. It's really about showing up and being present to the situation, the real person in front of you. It can be a slow process in writing, very tricky. A poet may be able to do it in a few words. --Abd (talk) 14:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikibreak.

I'm taking a wikibreak, probably short, to attend to personal business. I'll be checking my Talk page periodically and may do some work here in my user space. I also check my email about once a day. Though it may be tough, I do imagine Misplaced Pages will survive my absence for a few days. I can also hear the sighs of relief, and I'm glad to be able to brighten anyone's day. 'nuff said. Please remember, reading my Talk page is optional. --Abd (talk) 12:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Hounded off. Sad. I have been too, many times before. It is so terrible the way that editors treat other editors here, passively agressively pushing editors off wikipedia, in a million different ways. Ikip (talk) 12:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I haven't been hounded, Ikip. There is a noticeable lack of warning here, and no bans. Thanks for the thought, though. More later. --Abd (talk) 12:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I will trust your judgement and remove my comments to the talk page of the RfC. I have found on wikipedia that sucess in an RfC has nothing to do with the oratory skills, or influencing other people in the RfC, it has everything to do with stroking editors egos and building strong alliances before hand. So the crucial question I ask you is: Who has the stronger alliance? Your evidence is secondary. Ikip (talk) 15:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Your analysis is correct as far as it goes. In the short term, relatively small factions can create an appearance of strength. Local concentration of editors with some particular interest can make it appear that they represent consensus. We don't know the truth unless broad attention is brought to bear, in a place where evidence and arguments are clear and simple to review. However, when push comes to shove, lower-level but expanded process remains warped because canvassing is prohibited. There are ways around this, legitimate and otherwise, but typically the structures are not in place that would allow for non-disruptive expansion when a dispute is entrenched. Therefore, Misplaced Pages ownership created a high-level process as a kind of representative structure, ArbComm. So, provided that editors at a lower level have the stamina and sufficient support to survive earlier process, the "stronger alliance" could refer to the stronger alliance at ArbComm, if we are cynical about it. On the other hand, by the time they are elected to ArbComm, editors may have reached a level of maturity that they will be more likely to focus on fact. The deliberative process at ArbComm acts, to some degree, to filter out distracting arguments, and "me too" pile-on is irrelevant.

As to strength of "alliance" at ArbComm, there are probably lengths to which most arbitrators are not willing to go to support their personal content or editor-value POVs. I attempted to imitate ArbComm process in the RfC, asking for specific response to very narrow questions on the Talk page. I know what the answers to those questions are, it's not really a question! The effort was reverted, and there is, quite simply, no reason to contend with that at this level, one issue at a time, please. If editors want to prevent consensus from forming there, and being clear, then this simply sets up even clearer conditions for going promptly to ArbComm. I could do that already, because there are two positions that could be taken, both of which would indicate going to ArbComm, (1) There is no consensus, or (2) There is consensus that the actions were contrary to policy. There is a majority view which is that JzG should be given a pass, and I should be banned, but that's actually irrelevant. The RfC was not set up to determine if JzG gets a pass or not, but simply to solicit community comment and seek consensus on the questions of policy violation. RfC's cannot impose sanctions, so deliberating sanction or the lack of it is premature. First question, is there anything to forgive? But I'm on wikibreak, and even if I weren't, I'd probably still be waiting, to see if initiatives like that of Jehochman, and others that we might not see because they are off-wiki, bear fruit.

It is very important that the question be resolved, because if it is not, history shows that JzG and his supporters or those who benefit from his actions in a certain direction will claim victory, that the matter was raised here and rejected, and thus JzG will be given a free hand, even if he, for a time, avoids directly confronting the restriction that was suggested but not required. So what happens at the RfC should be seen in that light. Patience, Ikip. It might become relevant, the evidence you have, or not, I'm not predicting what an RfAr will look like. In the mean time, thanks for making that move to Talk. It certainly won't hurt!

Basic wiki principle: when some jerk editor demands that you do something harmless, do it (presuming it is also easy). Pleased jerks are less dangerous. It's quite clear that if we, at the RfC, had tried to base the matter on incivility, bad content decisions, and the rest, those who support his incivility but are happy that he said it rather than them, because it leaves them without visible responsibility, those who support his content POV, and who may thus think the actions are not bad, etc., will so clearly carry the day that the one filing the RfC is at serious risk. The saying is, "If you are going to shoot the King, don't miss." To mature revolutionaries who care about possible harm from any revolution, the time to act is when support is so overwhelming that action is not disruptive, the new order simply takes over. Most revolutions, unfortunately, take place prematurely, so there is bloodshed and massive social disruption, even reaching down through generations.

I see tons of stuff that is "wrong." But I act on very little, because it would take more than a small nudge in the right direction to fix, and my resources are limited. There are people who are following my usage of dispute resolution process and who claim to be learning from it. I hope so. It's excellent, if people understand it and take it one baby step at a time. This particular incident was much more rapidly escalated than I'd have preferred, because there was clear, blatant intransigence from the other side, but not only that, action to attempt to crush the very process of dispute resolution. The RfC was, as to timing, forced. In fact, I didn't meet the deadline, the evidence page was deleted, and I certainly could have challenged that, but ... no benefit beyond some technical satisfaction of having "won." I don't do that. I had the file, and, besides, the deleting admin, without being asked to do so, emailed me the deleted wikitext.

The process works, Ikip, if it is followed; in a case like this, it takes some stamina and healthy doses of WP:DGAF. I will, eventually, as just one member of the community, and thus with lots of help, fix the RfC process so that it is more likely to find consensus rather than be simply one more battleground in a case like this. Before that can happen, I need to have at least this case finished and resolved, most other activities have been suspended pending. ArbComm will resolve the case, I have no doubt. If ArbComm rejects a filing that I've prepared or signed on to, that will resolve it for me just as clearly as if they had resolved in favor of what I was asking for, and then I would decide if it made sense for me to continue to participate here. If I'm a rat, as many think, I nevertheless have enough sense to desert a sinking ship; while those left behind smugly say, "Good riddance to rats."

The process that would take down Misplaced Pages is under way, but it is not yet obvious to those who have only short vision. So far, things seem to be working, more or less; what they don't see is the trail of wreckage, the fouling of the nest, the reservoirs of ill-will and resentment and distaste being built up, and increasing burnout by administrators facing the increasingly difficult task of dealing with floods of linkspam and vandalism, and the much more difficult problem of POV-pushing in violation of guidelines, or even satisfying guidelines, but insufficiently restrained. I know the solutions to these problems, quite well, but it will take time, and what I don't know is how long it will take for the community to recognize the problem and see the need for action. The JzG case is minor, in fact, there are much more difficult issues ahead. JzG is not the worst admin we have, he was simply unfortunate enough to come to my attention at a certain time, and once I saw what I saw, and knew that I could do something about it, and effectively, I had the obligation. I could not predict how intransigent he would be, and though others warned me (the first thing I was told, within a day or so of raising the issue, was that I would have to learn how to eat worms.) And, indeed, not only was a can of worms opened, a whole aisle of them appeared, it could take me years to address all the issues, given the way that it must be done, unless others join in the effort.

The "effort" is nothing less than the precise and clear application of Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines, with careful attention, especially, to civility and avoidance of unnecessary disruption, and with full respect for the intention and deep meaning of WP:AGF and WP:IAR. I welcome all who wish to join this effort, regardless of POV. Indeed, what we need to develop and make solid is an environment where all POVs are welcome and respect and invited to participate fully in the formation of consensus. None of this involves pandering to fringe or extreme positions, but if we exclude the extreme from the process, the extreme will exclude us from influencing them, and so we will have continual battles with sock puppets, IP vandalism, etc. Include them, be sure to give them whatever is harmless to broaden consensus, and they will be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

You might notice my efforts to assist ScienceApologist, who might theoretically be opposed to much of my work. These are not merely political ploys to create some appearance. I'd rather have him be participating, and all that I would insist upon is conformance to behavioral guidelines, strict conformance. And I'm totally happy to accept the same for myself. --Abd (talk) 16:34, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

With the utmost respect, WP:TLDR It is absurd the way some editors approach your talkitive nature in the RfC, it shows how weak their factual position is, but again, the facts of the case are secondary.

Again, Who has the stronger alliance? I think this is already vividly answered in the RfC itself.

Hope you haven't walked away and are still around for the innevitable sequals. Ikip (talk) 15:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

No, hardly. "Stronger alliance"? You seem to assume that strength consists of numbers of editors ready to make an endorsement without an argument. Endorsements are fine, but they may represent little more than some "sectarian" affiliation. We do not make decisions by vote, remember? Now, if I assume that the !votes are somehow representative of what a knee-jerk response would be from the average editor -- which is quite unlikely, by the way, the average editor does not follow RfCs, the average editor hasn't heard about this dispute at all, inform them and they might be outraged -- what the RfC has done is to show a gap, a difference of opinion among editors on a matter of weight, that is not likely to be resolved by continued discussion short of ArbComm. I assume that the RfC will not likely close in a way which helps resolve the dispute, though, in theory, it could; what if the closing admin actually reads the evidence, disregards irrelevant comments, and comes to a conclusion that policy was violated and recommends appeal to ArbComm to address the issue? One chance out of three, my estimate, if it is a random admin. In that case, the admin in question might cave and admit what he did, because the opinion seems to be reasonably widespread that if this goes to ArbComm, the decision will not favor him. Quite a few also think that it will also go against me. Maybe. So what? I have to be willing to take that risk, to address the problems I see. I will respect the decision of ArbComm, in any case. I have run this process, so far, in such a way as to create minimal disruption, beyond not accepting the unacceptable; I suspect that ArbComm will recognize that. Or not. It will be in their hands, not mine.

See User:Abd/New Energy Times and today's delisting request In case you don't recognize it, this was originally a blacklisting by a certain administrator, and when the original delisting request was denied, I focused on other more urgent issues, allowing him to argue that the community had ratified his decision, even if it was a little unusual, as one of his supporters mentioned. Time to deal with the specific problem. He's not relevant, actually, I only pointed to the prior actions as necessary disclosure and for the convenience of any admin reviewing the request. We have blacklisted the two most notable web sites relating to Cold fusion, on very weak or even totally inappropriate grounds; my discovery of this opened up a huge can of worms, hence my very slow approach. So, watch. --Abd (talk) 15:40, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

User:Abd/Notices#Advice_solicited_re_likely_appeal_to_ArbComm

Comments welcome, here, by email, or at User_talk:Abd/Notices/Comments. --Abd (talk) 15:31, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

It's essential that people must be free to express their opinion that the policy should be changed. Therefore, merely stating that administrators should be able to use their tools while involved should not be in any way sanctionable. On the other hand, if an admin states something equivalent to an opinion that they think admins are allowed to use their tools while involved under the current policy, and also does so themself, that looks worse than if they merely do so. The latter could be interpreted as mistakes that they can have pointed out to them and that they will learn from; everyone can make mistakes.

I suggest that if you make an arbitration request about this, that it be expressed as a request about JzG only. If the arbitrators choose to broaden the case they will do so. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 16:19, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

New Energy Times article

Hi! Just as a suggestion, I think you'll be hard pressed to show sufficient notability for New Energy Times. It might be easier to show notability for Steven Krivit and to have New Energy Times redirect there, although I haven't seen any knock-down sources yet that would definitly meet WP:Note for him - it's simply that many of the refs for New Energy Times are simply mentions that he founded it, and thus are really about him more than the site. - Bilby (talk) 03:13, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I've been thinking so myself. At this point I consider it marginal. From a lot of reading in the field over the last three months, I know that the web site is, in fact, notable (by my own lights), same with Krivit, and I've been leaning toward an article for the latter instead. They really are interconnected, one is always mentioned with the other. But he's published books, articles. --Abd (talk) 10:55, 14 April 2009 (UTC) (For reference: draft article: User:Abd/New Energy Times. --Abd (talk) 10:55, 14 April 2009 (UTC)