Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:30, 12 October 2013

About Tumbleman

The name 'The Tumbleman' comes from the title of a story I wrote over 10 years ago and has stuck with me ever since. I am a wiki enthusiast, public speaker, media and technology professional, and developer of a collective editing platform for the purposes of online negotiation and problem solving. Of keen interest to me are online mediation platforms, collective problem solving platforms, and online dialectics for conflict resolution.

Point of View on Misplaced Pages

Misplaced Pages is one of the most impressive collective platforms in the history of the world. It needs help! When possible, I enjoy engaging in the 'talk' debates and RFD process to insure that reason, logic, journalistic integrity and objectivity is expressed and editors are without bias.

Intention as a Misplaced Pages Editor

I am here to do a little field study for personal exploration into online resolution disputes collective editing, especially in consensus building platforms that rely on consensus rather than vote. I am fascinated, geek out by on the concept of 'wiki wars' where two ideologically opposed editors have to find consensus. I hope my stay here provides help to both wikipedia and my own work into collective editing platforms. My focus is primarily on the conflicts that arise when editors are faced with maintaining a neutral point of view with subject matters that have proven to be controversial historically. Although some suggest that objectivity may be a fleeting illusion, pure objectivity, or neutrality as wiki refers to it, is essential to distinguish in any collective editing platform. So my focus is more on the back end process that editors have to engage with and face.

Philosophical/Ideological POV

Agnosticism.

Case Study in Wiki editing and mediation: Rupert Sheldrake Biography page

Currently I have decided to focus on the biography of Rupert Sheldrake as a case study in online wiki mediation. I am agnostic as to Sheldrake's theories and admittedly have no qualifications one way or another to accept or refute them, I am intrigued by the reactions to them from both the scientific community as well as mainstream culture from an ideological perspective. I found the TALK section to often be a war between two sides of the issue regarding Sheldrake, both having various levels of bias. For me, this represents a wonderful opportunity to show the value of pure unbiased, neutral, or objective reviewing when addressing contentious biographies or issues. What makes this a perfect case study for me is the issues regarding Sheldrake are very well documented and sourced, and considering it's science, easy to distinguish inside of a NPOV.

To any editor of the Sheldrake page who visits here, rest assured I have no ideological agenda, one way or another, regarding his theories and am not seeking to promote or condone them, rather simply listing the debate and historical record around them so they are framed within a NPOV and of course written within WP Good Article Criteria. which the page is sorely lacking.

This is an admirably clear and concise statement illustrating WP:NOT — most especially WP:NOTCASE (which specifically mentions case studies) and WP:NOTSTUPID. You are engaged in an experiment using a wikipedia talk page as the platform and wikipedia editors as the experimental subjects? If so, what you are doing is contemptible. It surely violates policy on what article talk pages are for and arguably violates ethical norms about human experimentation without informed consent. David in DC (talk) 02:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I think D-in-DC has been a touch harsh, but in substance he's absolutely correct: if you want to be an editor here doing what all editors are supposed to do (improve WP) and along the way write something up describing your experience, that's fine. But when you start right out saying that your purpose here is to do some research on the rest of us, or on WP as an abstraction with the rest of us helping out as free labor, you're dead in the water from the very start. You may think that, because you're so sure you have some absolute neutrality on the article subject, you can be a genuine editor and carry out your research without tension between those goals; that's fundamentally impossible for many reasons, not the least of which is that we all have a point of view, and while most of us strive for complete neutrality few of us achieve it -- and even those who arrive at that state of perfection have no way of knowing they have done so. What's most worrisome is that you appear to be some sort of researcher, but don't understand WP well enough to have realized how unacceptable this is. EEng (talk) 03:25, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

David in DC, EEng, Sorry this was a noob move. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. After reading this I see what you mean. What I wrote above are my personal reasons and curiosities, I thought being transparent about them was in the spirit of WP. So I realize I need to clarify. I have no other 'agenda', no write up, field report, documentary, etc etc. I find the debates Rupert Sheldrake generates fascinating and am very interested in improving the NPOV on the page. That is all I am doing and will be doing. I personally 'geek out' on collective editing at large, and I think that confused things here. I will clarify this above and appreciate any advice you can give me in doing so. The Tumbleman (talk) 03:40, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

We all look forward to your contributions. EEng (talk) 04:12, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

It's hard to ask for more, absent Doc Brown's DeLorean or Mr. Peabody's Way-back machine. Thanks for you good reply. I'll close with my favorite Teamster salutation:
Keep the shiny side up and the rubber side down.
David in DC (talk) 11:11, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

We should all be mindful that what have sometimes been called Sheldrake's "theories" are in fact only his "hypotheses". In other words, all this morphic resonance stuff is hypothetical. Lou Sander (talk) 23:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Olive branch

I still can't tell if you're really serious or just doubling down. In any case I've removed the dispute on my talk page and I'm ready to be done with this. I welcome you to end this as well. Or if you like, I'll restore my talk page and we can continue. Vzaak (talk) 19:27, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I accept your olive branch and I can assure you I am quite serious about my role maintaining a WP NPOV. I did notice that you took your page down, I undid it without viewing this first so please feel free to take it down once more. If you remove your page, I shall remove this page, and we can return to a purely NPOV conversation on the Sheldrake page when I get back to editing. Sound fair? The Tumbleman (talk) 19:30, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Vzaak for your honorable resolution to this issue and I look forward working with you again maintaining WP NPOV. See you on the page! The Tumbleman (talk) 19:44, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Be more careful in your editing of talk pages not to harm other people's comments

I dont know what you were trying to do here but you messed up a number of other editors comments. I am going to revert back before that fiasco. Please be more careful. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

thanks for keeping this editor straight. multiple tabs issue + @ work, will be more careful. The Tumbleman (talk) 20:56, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

October 2013

Your recent editing history at Rupert Sheldrake shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

To avoid being blocked, instead of reverting please consider using the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. See BRD for how this is done. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:55, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

IRWolfie- (talk) The page in question is in violation of BLP and NPOV, and any actions I took were in response to edit warring from agenda based editors on the page and were done so with the full understanding that WP policy WP:BLPREMOVE supports my actions. the page is both in WP:BLPN and in ANI.

I am not responsible for an edit war on the sheldrake page, indeed I have brought the concern to WP:BLPN. If I personally made reverts yesterday they were done with WP:BRD and WP:BLPREMOVE If I my actions were anything other, then they were mistakenly so and I am willing to correct them. I am taking two days off from editing and TALK regardless. The Tumbleman (talk) 15:30, 12 October 2013 (UTC)