Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:19, 7 August 2006

Welcome!

Hello, Michael C Price, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! 

You did very nice edits on Many-worlds interpretation! Welcome to wikipedia! --DenisDiderot 10:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks DD -- glad you liked it. Thanks for the links. I'll probably confine myself straightforward textural edits for the near future whilst I get the hang of the metatools.--Michael C Price 12:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

IQ societies

Michael, you, together with user:Promking seem to have become the voice of those who are against the deletion of many of the articles. May I make a suggestion? Userfy them, and work on them until they would pass muster. An article like Giga is not going to stand on its own; it is a prime candidate for brief mention in a parent article. An article like Hoeflein (pardon the spelling) may well be able to, if it is properly filled with accounts or information that show notability. Further, if significant improvement is made to the article during the AfD, that is grounds for asking people to reconsider their opinions. My prime goal here is to make Misplaced Pages better according to the currently accepted rules and guidelines. You know my opinion of rap vs. IQ from the other discussions. Also, I would have had a different opinion on the run-of-the-mill public school than others, but wikipedia is run by consensus, and that is the current consensus. I'm sure you have heard of Nomic; Misplaced Pages, to me, is a living example thereof, and this is a particular case. Misplaced Pages would be better off with articles on these topics that meet its standards, but some of these, to me, just do not. -- Avi 00:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Apologies

My apologies for deleting the talk page text. Next time, I'll simply post my snarky comments beneath. Esrever 00:48, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

That's what I normally do.  :-) --Michael C. Price 06:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

AfD's etc.

I do not have a vendetta against High-IQ societies per se, although my Mensa membership leaves me with dubious of most of them. My goal is to make Misplaced Pages a better place overall, in accordance with the policies and guidelines in force at the present time. My instinct, as I write on my user page, is I'd rather no data than garbage/inappropriate data, but I am not going to throw out things on principle. Although I haven't undergone analysis recently ( :-P ) I do not think I am motivated by any sense of jealousy or spite, even though I know the results of the only accepted standaed test I took do not make me eligible for Prometheus etc. (I think my sigma was around 3.68 or 3.69 or something like that, I have to check. We dummies don'r have as good a memory as you geniuses :-P ). Researching these AfD's I have come across a lot of interesting data, such as the discussions of 24, 16, or 15 points of IQ per SD, that mega paper comparing various tests, the various College Board reports on the SAT, recentering, and correlations with g and intelligence, etc.) In my opinion, FWIW, these are all things that should be in the High-IQ article, and the various individual society articles should discuss their particular spins on them. You and those with whom you associate are in an excellent position to enhance Misplaced Pages in that regard, please do so. While walled gardens are items to be uprooted, truly notable information should be kept and enhanced. Thanks. -- Avi 17:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually I only just scrapped into Mensa on the standard tests (I do better on untimed ones, and you might be surprised how well you and a lot of folks around here would do on them).

I am rather taken aback that you are explaining that you don't have a vendetta going -- I assumed you'd seen my apologies to you and Byrgenwulf on that score on various talk pages, although I most definitely think that that is a motivating undercurrent for some contributors.

Where we disagree is that I would rather almost any bad data be kept because it can be tagged with warning notices and be used as a basis for future expansion and correction. --Michael C. Price 17:22, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I must have missed that edit, thank you, I do appreciate that. On the second topic, you may enjoy this, it has lead to many a bloodbath and userbox deletion crusade: meta:Conflicting Misplaced Pages philosophies. Bon appétit -- Avi 17:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Many worlds interpretation

Hi. I have been looking at the article on the MWI, and while it is undoubtedly comprehensive, there are a number of quibbles I have with it...but rather than jump in headlong and start uprooting long-standing content (much of which is of good quality), I have left a message on the talk page there, outlining the first of my quibbles. I thought I should point this out to you, since it seems you have a bit of an editing history there and are an afficionado of the theory judging from the blurb on your userpage. Byrgenwulf 15:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I have just started answering your question on the MWI talk page. See over there shortly. Have you looked at universal wavefunction as well? --Michael C. Price 15:17, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Mega Society

You may. Within the argumentation of the debate, the most significant point raised by those who supported the article was that a new draft was available. The article is not protected, so this may be posted at any time and (assuming it is not substantially similiar to the older version) it will be judged anew on its merits. This is good news for you.

The bad news for you is that it is well-established practice within Misplaced Pages to ignore completely floods of newer, obviously "single-issue POV", contributors at all our deletion fora. I'm among the most "process-wonkish" of Wikipedians, believe me, and even process-wonks accept that these sorts of voters are completely discountable. Misplaced Pages is not a pure democracy; though consensus matters, the opinion of newcomers unfamiliar with policy is given very little weight. Your vote, that of Tim Shell, and that wjhonson were not discounted. The others supporting your view were. I promise you that it is almost always true that, within Misplaced Pages, any argument supported by a flood of new users will lose, no matter how many of the new users make their voices known. In the digital age, where sockpuppeting and meatpuppeting are as easy as posting to any message board, this is as it should be for the sake of encyclopedic integrity. It is a firm practice within Misplaced Pages, and it is what every policy and guideline mean to imply, however vaguely they may be worded. (I do agree that our policies, written by laypeople mostly, could do with a once-over from an attorney such as myself; however, most laypeople hate lawyers, so efforts to tighten wording are typically met with dissent.)

If your supporters were more familiar with Misplaced Pages, they would realize that, invariably, the most effective way to establish an article after it has been deleted in a close AfD is to rewrite it: make it "faster, better, stronger." This is, in fact, what you claim to have done with your draft. Good show. Best wishes, Xoloz 16:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)