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please email me if my attention is required, Abd is hiding under a rock is taking a short wikibreak and will be back on Misplaced Pages soon.

Alternatively, I may not be back at all, more than occasionally, I have no crystal ball, and real life beckons invitingly.

>Notice to IP and newly-registered editors

IP and newly registered editors: due to vandalism, this page is sometimes 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 Dog vomit slime mold (see illustration).

Caution is advised.

Clear skies

Link to the paper mentioned above, removal of lenr-canr.org from blacklist courtesy of Beetstra on meta:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEstatusofcoa.pdf

This was a long time coming!

Notification of my last RfAr request?

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Amendment#Request_to_lift_sanction:_Abd-William_M._Connolley

It's looking pretty grim right now. ArbComm appears to consider the offense of clear and strong argument on an article talk page -- one article -- more important and more worthy of a ban than an administrator previously admonished by them for using tools while involved, repeating that, with the same action during the case, and consistently and tendentiously raising rejected arguments about copyvio, and banning users by presenting highly deceptive arguments at AN, while defeating the sense and intention of many ArbComm decisions.

All that matters is how long an argument is. Write too much, ban!

This was my problem with this RfAr. Yes, I could have presented a shorter request. However, I already spent a day writing and boiling down this one. I realized that I just didn't have the energy to go further, to put another day into further condensation for political effect. I don't gain a thing from being able to edit Misplaced Pages on the topic. I don't gain a thing from being unbanned except for a possible ability to help out occasionally on a topic where I've become expert; I'm COI, so I couldn't do anything controversial with the article anyway. Why should I bother?

So I just filed the damn thing. If ArbComm doesn't want to look at it -- it's dense with information about the situation, and the purpose was clear -- if they just want to imagine that "the editor didn't change," which is preposterous, they can certainly do that. I stopped editing that Talk page, almost entirely, before being banned, because it was useless if the article was owned, as it was.

They don't care if the article is owned. They passed General Sanctions, but the only application was to ban me, based on about a month of discussion that the banning admin acknowledged was "not a problem, in itself," when another editor at the same time continued a long-term pattern of tendentious editing, removal of reliably source material, without any seeking of compromise and consensus, previously banned for this and then recently indef blocked for the same, but on other articles, and the admin previously sanctioned for use of tools while involved continued his prior campaign against old enemies (I'm only one of them!), etc., etc. They don't care! All they care about is that they don't have to read the complaint, and look at the evidence, too much work! And they are not interested, my experience, in how the structural problem of too much to read could be addressed.)

Experts are always interested in their topic! What do they expect?

In any case, this will leave me freer, if ArbComm ignores the implications, as it seems they are wont to do. I will have exhausted due process, which I had not done before. I respected the first ban, and had respected this second one. With due process exhausted, my compliance becomes no longer a matter of obligation, I have nothing to preserve, no quid pro quo. I've rigorously avoided disruption other than related discussion on an article talk page. I do not know what I'll do, and ... I wouldn't say if I did.

I'll say this, though. There are promises implied in "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit," and "the sum of all human knowledge," and there are obligations that arise naturally. Because the defacto process at Misplaced Pages compromises neutrality, which is essential to the understanding and realization of human knowledge, and because Misplaced Pages is standing in the crossroads, it becomes an enemy of human knowledge; many others have concluded this before me. I was holding out, and this may be why I left it for so long to appeal the latest topic ban. I did not want to conclude that.

Misplaced Pages has not seen what would happen were I to treat it as a battleground -- as has been claimed about me and others. I rigorously followed policy and respected blocks and bans, even when they seemed preposterous to me. At the end of the road, however, there is no road, no confining path, I can move in any direction, unconstrained by expectations.

I have my work at Wikiversity, which has been quite successful, for what little has been done. An extensive discussion with a user with a knowledge of physics there, at subpages of v:Cold fusion might seem to have been much hot air, but it led to a recognition of a lacuna in the experimental evidence on cold fusion, and there was a study done by an expert in response, which means that discussion led to the advance of human knowledge. (The expert is a skeptical one, by the way, but he concluded that the objection being raised to certain excess heat measurements was bogus.) While there were other reasons to consider this, independent verifications of results and experimental controls, this was an i that had not been crossed and the t dotted.)

Which is more important, extending human knowledge or writing encyclopedia articles about it in an extraordinarily inefficient way?

Wikiversity is not like Misplaced Pages. Content conflict is handled there in a highly inclusive way, just as it is in academia, overall. Wikiversity is not an encyclopedia, where there is a setup for conflict on every page on a controversial topic. Content controversy is rare on Misplaced Pages -- can't agree on a resource? Just create another one, linked overall in a neutral superstructure. Wikiversity allows subpages in mainspace, like Wikibooks, which helps, but Wikiversity also allows original research. Come on over and take a look, stop by v:User talk:Abd and I'll show you around! Cold fusion skeptics are quite welcome! --Abd (talk) 21:11, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Blocked

As you well know, you are currently banned from "Cold Fusion articles, talk pages, and related pages, interpreted broadly", per Arbcom enforcement (and your appeal against this sanction looks certain to be unsuccessful). Your renewed editing relating to blacklisting/whitelisting a certain Cold-Fusion-related site ( etc) is in breach of this sanction, since the discussion is directly related to that topic area. I am therefore blocking you, for two weeks. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:45, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Unblock request

Abd (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

The edits were not in the prohibited area, which is clearly specified as a ban from CF-related pages. However, Georgewilliamherbert, who declared the extended topic ban, had allowed me to discuss cold fusion, non-disruptively, on user talk pages, respond to questions, etc. In this case, GWH expressed concern about the whitelist edit, and therefore I agreed to stop, pending clarification from him. I have no blocks before this for CF topic ban violation, they were all about the so-called MYOB ban, so there was no "renewed breach," as claimed in the block log. My edits to the whitelist/blacklist page were not disruptive, and I avoided raising content issues, specifically because that could violate the sense of the topic ban. I was being careful. This was about copyright and blacklist policy, not cold fusion. This block is unnecessary. --Abd (talk) 15:36, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Decline reason:

Abd is topic banned for 1 additional year from today's date from Cold Fusion articles, talk pages, and related pages, interpreted broadly, under the General sanction remedy in this case... as logged Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley#Log_of_blocks.2C_bans.2C_and_restrictions here. Len-canr.org is pure Cold Fusion resource. There is no wriggle room here. Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

discussion of block issues

(I said I wouldn't comment, but I really hate inaccuracies.) "no blocks before this for CF topic ban violation, they were all about the so-called MYOB ban"? oh, dear friend, that just doesn't compute. Your 18 June 2010 block entry is marked as "topic ban and restriction violation", and, in the edit that caused the block, you wrote "will self-revert per ban on cold fusion, MYOB ban does not apply (...)".

Comments by the admin who imposed the topic ban : "The point here is that this is a topic ban. It's not a "you need to be extra careful there", (...) If you notice a BLP problem or other serious policy problem, pointing it out to people neutrally is a slight topic ban violation, but can be done in a harmless manner. I would like to generally discourage your doing it again, but the one you did earlier was appropriate for the encyclopedia and harmless. Engaging in followup discussions would be a topic ban violation. (...) Your efforts to wiggle around a bit here indicate that you think you can make positive contributions, that perhaps you need to be careful but that you can do so constructively. The topic ban is already past that point. It's pretty much a finding that we think that at the moment, any contribution is likely to be problematic, and that you need to stay away from the topic. (...) unless reviewed by them or a community board and overturned, please don't touch the topic area." This doesn't seem to allow "occasional non-contentious comment on user talk pages, with consenting users," as you claimed in your agreement to stop.

(@Abd. I received your email while I was writing this comment.) --Enric Naval (talk) 16:14, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Enric. I'd forgotten about that one. As you may know, I consider and have advocated that self-reverted edits like that don't violate topic bans unless they are totally disruptive in themselves. I still think that, by the way, and, if I'm totally banned here, I'd use self-reverted edits, there is no way to stop it. I've suggested self-reverted edits to other banned editors, and they worked. Good content has been created that way, and editors have been unblocked, having shown a history of good edits, as well as cooperation with a ban. Self-reversion is cooperation! You might notice that you just helped me by taking back in content from a self-reverted edit I just made yesterday. I had no topic ban there, but the content was from someone who was COI, a personal friend, and I wanted to be careful.

In other words, Enric, the only reason the cold fusion topic ban has been effective is because I've cooperated, carefully. That edit that I self-reverted, which I was blocked for, wasn't actually a ban violation, unless you interpret the ban to be, not a page ban, from pages on the topic, but from any kind of discussion of the topic anywhere. But I was being careful. That (a total ban on mention, anywhere, of the topic and anything related to the topic) is not what ArbComm had declared, and as to the renewed ban, that's not how GWH had interpreted it, until after the edits involved. Which is why I stopped, immediately. Fortunately, my brief edits had raised enough fuss that the blacklisting was noticed. If I had not made those edits, my guess, the site would still be blacklisted.

Bans don't work unless the banned editor cooperates. If they don't cooperate, or at least go away, you get years and years of Scibaby-type socks, and probably a lot more that isn't recognized, a huge wasted effort. For what gain? Bans work where there is an open path provided to conciliation and cooperation.

A short-term block doesn't change my stance of cooperation. Indef or anything longer than a month probably would, if not lifted fairly quickly. The 1-year renewed topic ban was on the edge, for me. In other words, there are limits to my patience, as well. If it's interpreted to prohibit non-disruptive talk page discussion, on non-cold fusion pages -- which would include this page! --, as Future Perfect implied by his block notice, then I'd say that's it. Too far, too much. And I won't necessarily appeal to ArbComm again; at a certain point it's a waste of time, mine even more than theirs, and it would be much easier to just do whatever the hell I want. I've worked with seriously banned editors, covered by global locks, -- to re-integrate them and return their relationship with the community to cooperation -- and I know what it takes to truly stop an editor. It's impossible, in fact. You can just revert the edits and apply range blocks, and even then it doesn't work, it just causes collateral damage. And no gain. --Abd (talk) 16:43, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

About the decline by Stephan Schulz. He should know that I'd consider him involved. He should not have declined, he should have left this for a neutral administrator. I answered the argument he gave in my unblock request, the ban is not a ban from any mention of cold fusion, but from pages which are about cold fusion, broadly construed. Say, Martin Fleischmann, and I was able to make a non-disruptive edit to Stanley Pons, under a BLP exception. That page was covered by the ban, that's what "broadly construed" refers to. Pages broadly construed. Not edits broadly construed. If I had been banned from any mention of anything related to cold fusion, anywhere, I'd not have cooperated from the very beginning. ArbComm doesn't normally do that kind of ban without specific need. I'll consider whether or not to put up another unblock template. Please, administrators, if you have been involved as an adverse party in the long-term conflict here, which started, not with cold fusion, but with Climate Change, don't decline my unblock request.

By the way, the effect of this ban interpretation simply means that I'd move to off-wiki communication, wouldn't it be better if my suggestions are made on user talk pages, for transparency? If the suggestions harass, sure, don't allow that. But there was no harassment. Just some mention of CF, as to user talk. No mention of CF in the case of site whitelist requests, which was pure process helpfulness, no disruption was expected, notice where the fuss came from. --Abd (talk) 17:26, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm fine with additional reviews by other admins. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:30, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Stephan. I'd prefer that you revert your decline, so that the unblock template will attract neutral admins, rather than me putting up an additional request. Because I've edited this section, making it not so simple as just a revert, I'll do the work, but will self-revert. You can then quickly restore the undeclined request if you choose. That should do no harm. I'm trying to keep this simple.

Stephan Shulz's decline reason:

Abd is topic banned for 1 additional year from today's date from Cold Fusion articles, talk pages, and related pages, interpreted broadly, under the General sanction remedy in this case... as logged Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley#Log_of_blocks.2C_bans.2C_and_restrictions here. Len-canr.org is pure Cold Fusion resource. There is no wriggle room here. Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

--Abd (talk) 17:56, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Your link if you choose to undo your decline: . Unless some idiot edits that section, it should work. (Seriously, folks, I edited the section to add a note not to edit it. Oops! I undid it.) --Abd (talk) 18:11, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I prefer to stick to standard procedure. I'd suggest you do the same to avoid unnecessary complications and potential misunderstandings. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:20, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'll stick with your interpretation, that's the status quo. However, "standard procedure" would not have had you decline, for reasons I already explained. Good luck. You'll probably get away with it, you have so many times before. Enjoy your project. --Abd (talk) 18:28, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll let this sit, see if anyone notices, for a time, before putting up an unblock template. I obviously requested unblock, and I requested an involved admin to revert the denial, I've done enough for today. I'm not in a rush. --Abd (talk) 02:38, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The issue: scope of "broadly construed."

My topic ban reads: Abd is topic banned for 1 additional year from today's date from Cold Fusion articles, talk pages, and related pages, interpreted broadly, under the General sanction remedy in this case...

This was as declared by Georgewilliamherbert. The original ban read:

Abd is banned from the cold fusion article, any content related to cold fusion, and any talk page discussion related to cold fusion for one year.

GWH declared the new ban under General Sanctions, he could have banned any editor regardless of prior history. The ArbComm ban, despite what I've written above, does read like a very general prohibition of any discussion related to cold fusion, and I did interpret it strictly. (I'd forgotten this.) It bans all discussion. GWH's new sanction does not mention discussion, it's a page ban, as I read it. That is, it covers all pages related to cold fusion, and it's preposterous to consider that all Misplaced Pages pages become related to cold fusion because something related to cold fusion is mentioned on them at some time.

Nevertheless, I interpreted the ban to prohibit disruptive discussion, regardless, so I was careful to avoid cold fusion topics except for user talk pages, where I expected it would be allowed -- i.e., not offend the user! In the case of the whitelist/blacklist pages, the connection with cold fusion is quite indirect. I came across abusive blacklisting of lenr-canr.org before I ever had any interest in cold fusion, and my arguments there made no reference at all to the topic of cold fusion, they were purely about copyvio, the topic is irrelevant. My whitelist page request was pure process, non-disruptive, mere cleanup, and should not have been controversial in any way. The blacklist page comment and request was more difficult, but I was pursuing the fulfillment of a prior ArbComm decision, having noticed a repetition of what ArbComm had previously noted as a problem.

I made many edits after GWH's ban that would fall under the very strict interpretation ("all discussion" rather than "all edits to pages, pages that relate to cold fusion").

• . The bold edits were to the talk page of the admin declaring the ban.

The complete discussion with the admin. Re-reading this, I see that he was ambiguous. I.e., he eventually stated:

The point here is that this is a topic ban. It's not a "you need to be extra careful there", it's an enforceable request that you stay away from the topic, where the community and Arbcom have determined your contributions have a significant chance of becoming problematic.

That reads as a total ban from the topic. However, what did he have in mind? He wrote, then:

If you notice a BLP problem or other serious policy problem, pointing it out to people neutrally is a slight topic ban violation, but can be done in a harmless manner. I would like to generally discourage your doing it again, but the one you did earlier was appropriate for the encyclopedia and harmless. Engaging in followup discussions would be a topic ban violation.

this does allow some "wiggle room," even on pages that we all agree would be under the ban, but he hadn't answered my very explicit question about user talk pages. And then he wrote:

Edits to articles - of any type, even self reverted - is a topic ban violation. Again - the point is that we've reviewed and found that your contributions tend to become problematic.

He's thinking about articles and article talk pages. The context was that I was making many edits to user talk pages, nobody was complaining, nor did he. I'd asked explicitly for clarification on this, and he did not clarify. Had he clarified that user talk pages were covered, I'd have appealed to ArbComm right then. That was too far, beyond legitimate, and basically useless, since I could email users instead. I have, indeed, emailed users on this topic. Nobody has complained, and no user complained about my edits to their talk pages.

GWH did not complain, yet, about user talk page comments. He did express some concern about an edit to the whitelisting talk page, recently (I stopped the list of edits before the recent edits, since they did arouse some comment.) Notice that before, two involved users had asked GWH about my edits to talk pages, it started the discussion with GWH. He had not replied to them.

Self-reversion

Since, on other WMF wikis, I've seen self-reverted edits be successful in calling attention to problems, while still respecting the right of the community to ban, since self-reversion was proposed here (and originally supported) as a non-disruptive way for banned users to make contributions while leaving behind no mess needing clean-up, I'll be explicit that if legitimate on-wiki ways of making non-disruptive suggestions are closed, I'll resort to independent action. I have not generally used self-reversion because something reasonably easy was allowed, it seemed: suggestions to involved users. I can do the same thing more efficiently, from my perspective, with self-reverted edits.

As I've demonstrated many times, self-reversion reveals a great deal about an editor and about the community. It makes it clear whether or not a ban is abusive or is legitimate. Truly disruptive editors don't self-revert, that I have also shown with extensive experimentation on this (with other banned editors). If I self-revert and am sanctioned for it, with account and range blocks, I'll escalate. That is, I'll no longer disclose the ban and no longer self-revert. Self-reversion is a quid pro quo, a way to cooperate with a ban, and only if it is used to wikilawyer truly disruptive editing and claim it's okay, does it require any attention at all. If nobody pays attention to the edit, it's done. That's what was so crazy about my block for a self-reverted edit to an ArbComm case page. It was gone, and, as it happened, nobody paid attention to it, except for a highly involved editor who then complained about the ban violation.

I'd like for it to become visible who objects to my non-disruptive edits. Self-reversion was proposed because it does not complicate ban enforcement. The editor enforces his or her own ban! Sanction self-reversion, you'll get the natural response. The editor will not stop editing, they will stop identifying themselves and self-reverting. It was difficult to even get banned editors to self-revert, they didn't understand why they should revert a "perfectly good edit." That, in fact, was the earliest opposition to the self-reversion suggestion. It was from a banned editor, who had many friends, and the objection was that self-reversion wasn't needed, that bans didn't cover, supposedly, spelling corrections or other harmless edits. But, unreverted, they do cause harm: complication of ban enforcement. It's easy to notice self-reverted edits; the way I've described it and have suggested it and implemented it (as an admin facilitating a return to cooperation of a banned editor) was that the edit is identified, and includes a notice of self-reversion, and is then promptly self-reverted -- which is very easy to do, and very easy to verify, if anyone is concerned.

Yeah, I think I'm right. Big problem, I know. ArbComm really doesn't like it. But the world likes this, the editorial communities that have seen it like the results. So, maybe it's time for demonstrations here, if a handy excuse is presented. --Abd (talk) 19:31, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Edits under ban

I will list here any edit, ongoing, that I have made that could be considered to be under any ban, with the strongest possible definition of the bans that I can imagine. I will continue this reporting as long as feasible. I believe that all these edits are utterly and obviously harmless, at worst, and helpful at best, and therefore take no responsibility for unnecessary fuss that anyone might make over them. I may sometimes sign these edits as IP but will log in to confirm them within a reasonable time.

• The edits below revert edits made under an alleged ban; therefore any user could have reverted them. I'm just cleaning up my own alleged mess, to the extent I can.
• Since there had been no response to my request on the blacklist page, and since this may have been considered a ban violation, I have reverted it. --Abd (talk) 01:51, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
• No response from user. Self-reverted. --Abd 02:12, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
• No response from user (to latest post). Self-reverted. --Abd 02:17, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
• No response from user. Self-reverted. --Abd 02:28, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
• No response from user. Self-reverted. -Abd 02:28, 1 May 2011 (UTC).

I'm having fun, by the way. Thanks, Future Perfect. The Future is Perfect. --Abd (talk) 02:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• . Found Miszabot archive failure due to site blacklisting during discussion before archive. Self reverted "per block." No ban violation. Check and revert back, anyone? --Abd 19:42, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
• null pair removal diff. Untelligible text in Cold fusion, checked source, quote source to make it clear. Self-reverted per ban. --Abd (talk) 20:36, 1 May 2011 (UTC)