Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mainstream astronomy (talk | contribs) at 20:06, 14 July 2007 (→Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability#Age of unreferenced). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

An important note on email: While I prefer that correspondence be carried on here, you are welcome to send me email using the "Email this user" link on the left. I'll try to respond to all constructive messages. Be aware that I reserve the right to repost Misplaced Pages-related email here at my sole discretion. If you don't agree with that policy, I can respect that. In such a case the answer is simple -- don't send me email.

Sorry I wasn't here to take your call. You can leave a message after the tone.

Tone

Memo Gonzalez

My bad. I just jumped on the fact that it left Hauptman's article and their claims out of the larger context, having just read a screed about it at the DI's media complaints division (evo news dot org). I've restored it with a correction and your other edits. My apologies. Cheers. FeloniousMonk 17:29, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

No prob. I think Hauptman's piece was either an op-ed or letter to the editor (he writes lots of letters to the editor) rather than an "article", but am having a little trouble tracking that down. A minor point anyway. Raymond Arritt 17:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Again, my apologies and thank you for being gracious and cool-headed, along with all your hard work. If there's anything I can ever help out with, please don't hesitate to ask. FeloniousMonk 19:30, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Would you be willing to talk to me?

Hi Raymond, I would really like to know what you think I did that was so bad on Talk:Global warming that warrants banning me. You quoted WP:OR, but I was asking for passages from peer-reviewed abstracts to be added. I hope you will please consider responding, as I honestly want to know what you think I have done wrong. --James S. → talk 04:36, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: Mucoid plaque

Arrghh. At least that diff makes the conflict of interest seem pretty obvious. That article should have been deleted; if I was feeling WP:POINTier, I'd renominate it. The "keep as an example of health fraud" is like red meat for an enterprising single-purpose account. Oh well. MastCell 22:31, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Nice userpage

Nice userpage. WinterSpw 04:13, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Copyright violation

• You are quite right that linking to a site infringing copyright is not allowed. But you have accused me that I "repeatedly introduced a copyvio (Google Video)"
• I would be grateful if you could provide some specific diffs showing that (a) a copyright violation was highlighted as a problem, and (b) that I subsequently repeatedly violated the wishes of the other editors with malicious intent. --Iantresman 14:14, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Abusive editors

Regardless of your thoughts above, I've just read your User page on Abusive editors, and could not agree more, having been the subject of numerous personal attacks myself. Such incivility is easy to spot, well-documented in policy, and the means are there to easily stop it continuing. But there does not appear to be the will to do so. --Iantresman 22:52, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Mongo Talk and Godwins Law

Thanks a lot, that was easy. I am glad that "I lost". --roy<sac> .oOo. 17:15, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

James Hansen

James Hansen is (a) poor and (b) possibly in the middle of an edit war. Are you interested? William M. Connolley 20:57, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, will have a look. I'm wading through a CCSP review and a bunch of other stuff at the moment. Raymond Arritt 21:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

new task force

Dear Raymond,
I have been looking over some of your contributions and think this new task force operates well within the area of expertise to which you have recently constrained yourself. I very much hope you'll come by to consider adding your name to the list and your skills to the project!
cheers
Cyrusc 06:43, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

You are being recruited by the Environmental Record Task Force, a collaborative project committed to accurately and consistently representing the environmental impact of policymakers, corporations, and institutions throughout the encyclopedia. Join us!

Christopher Landsea

Christopher Landsea / sourcewatch: are you sure about this? I'm sure SW is used elseshere William M. Connolley 16:48, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Hm. I've read elsewhere that wikis should not be used as sources since their contents are by design unstable. But then there's a category for "Wikipedia_articles_incorporating_text_from_SourceWatch" -- why have such a category for something that shouldn't be used? But then categories do not necessarily have any official status. But then... I'm confused. Maybe time to solicit outside opinions. Raymond Arritt 17:25, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I've always seen the issue as: Do not use sourcewatch as a reference/citation. (which is what i've gathered from WP:RS). But you can use as an external link, based on the following: when it provides additional (sourced) information, that is beyond the scope of Misplaced Pages (ie. not directly encyclopaedic). --Kim D. Petersen 17:45, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree: using it as a *source* might be dubious; using it as a link is fine. Sorry :-( William M. Connolley 11:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, no big deal. Just trying to Do The Right Thing. Raymond Arritt 13:12, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

No problem. We have to fake these little disputes every now and again to prove that there is no kabal William M. Connolley 15:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Does that mean that the meeting is off? --Kim D. Petersen 16:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Please remember to set your secret decoder rings to "active" before discussing official Cabal issues!--Stephan Schulz 17:05, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Twisting the knife

I don't believe I was twisting the knife, but pointing out fallacies in ScienceApologies approach to editing. No-one is "ganging up" on ScienceApologies, and no-one is making-up allegation against him. The consensus of editors have declared that incivility and edit warring on Misplaced Pages is not acceptable. I have to abide by policy, and so should every one else. --Iantresman 20:11, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, whatever. If your goal is to make yourself look petty and vindictive, you're succeeding. Raymond Arritt 20:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

• Congratulations, an ad hominem, so much for your own words on abusive editors. And this follows on from your accusations that I "repeatedly introduced a copyvio (Google Video)" which you have refused to, or are unable to substantiate. --Iantresman 23:37, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Here's yer copyvios. Doubtless by your lights this somehow "doesn't count." Raymond Arritt 23:56, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for that. The first example you gave, shows my moving a statement "(To evaluate the content...", as confirmed by my edit comment "Better formatting". This has nothing to do with alleged copyright violations.
• Your second example indeed shows my addition of the link to the video, however the talk page comments shows no concerns over copyright. If indeed copyright is an issue, then as I said above, the Google video link should not be included; but there is no reason to remove mention of the other film details. --Iantresman 09:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Your note

Hi Raymond, I'll take a look as soon as I can. Cheers, SlimVirgin 22:26, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

William M. Connolley

I answered your comment to me on William M. Connolley's user talk page, but William once again deleted my comment. You can see it here: --Britcom 01:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I promise that I will give your remarks the attention that is their due. Raymond Arritt 01:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I am sure that sarcasm falls under incivility. You may want to warn yourself about that since you have such a low tolerance for it. Personally though I enjoy your remarks and I don't plan to complain to the nanny. --Britcom 02:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Who, me? I'm just a simple, plainspoken midwesterner. None of this fancy-brand "star chasm" or what you call it. Raymond Arritt 02:55, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Dr. Arritt has some of that Minnesota nice in him too. ~ UBeR 04:05, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Steven Milloy / vandalism

Raymond, we had an enormous amount of discussion on the Steven_Milloy Talk page, trying to hammer out a consensus on the DDT section. I modified it to accomdate numerous objections: I deleted what MastCell thought was WP:SYN (though I still disagree with his opinion about that). I removed all mention of "triumph" or "vindication," though the WHO turnaround was surely both for Milloy. I changed "ban" to "phaseout," even though DDT was banned completely in over 100 countries. W/r/t the WHO's position, I gave up trying to summarize it, and just quoted their own position paper. I did all those things to accomodate the objections of other editors. Everything in the section was copiously documented with reliable sources. But how did you respond? You reverted/deleted the whole thing, without so much as even a comment on the Talk page. What are we to make of that? You are making it very difficult to assume good faith on your part. NCdave 05:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Your notes

I did see your talk posts to me. It's just with a busted laptop and various brush fires on-going, I can't properly get involved with something else like Steven Milloy at the moment. Thank you for the thank you re the Global Warming comments. I also agree that if the policy becomes too silly it will ultimately be ignored; we need to avoid that at least. The idea that I'm going to treat newspapers equivalent to abstracts in writing taxa sections on mammals (which I've been doing a fair bit of lately) is just so absurd on the face of it, that it's difficult to respond to. Marskell 15:44, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I've commented on SlimVirgin's pageWP:V but won't go any further because I can't risk irritating admins too much. My approach will be the same as in other walks of life; when confronted with a truly idiotic policy, I'll ignore it. Raymond Arritt 15:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Current policy proposal

Hi there, the current policy proposal Here should hopefully deal with your concerns. The sentence "Academic and peer-reviewed sources are highly valued and should usually be given most weight in areas such as history, medicine and science." in particular is an accurate reflection of how articles are actually cited at the moment and how we, as editors, assess the reliability of sources. However, as I'm sure you appreciate, more flexibility is needed in other areas and non-academic sources have their place in science articles as well, but as the new draft says - "The appropriateness of non-academic sources always depends on context and they should not be used as the sole support for extraordinary claims." Tim Vickers 15:12, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Tim, thanks for your response. I agree with the new draft but have refrained from commenting because I don't have any illusions that meaningful changes to WP:V will be allowed, regardless of any consensus in their favor. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised, but I'm not betting on it. One point is that it the draft must be grammatically and stylistically flawless or that page's custodian will torch us on semantics. I'd like to give it a bit of polish once the substance is agreed upon. Raymond Arritt 15:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

The issue of BLP and Michael Mann

We discussed this on the BLP Noticeboard and no one agreed with you. The Dutch science magazine I quoted is a reliable source and there is no reason Mann's misconduct cannot be discussed on Misplaced Pages. RonCram 16:51, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Milloy article

Hello. Given ongoing developments (or lack of development) at Talk:Steven Milloy, I'm strongly considering opening a request for comment on the conduct of User:NCdave. I find his approach, at this point, to be tendentious in the extreme, and I think that outside input might help move things beyond the impasse at which we seem to be stuck. As I realized when exploring this option, this would not be NCdave's first RfC; that would be found here, having to do with NCdave's tendentious editing on Terri Schiavo. In any case, I would be interested in your thoughts on the subject. MastCell 04:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

In my experience RfC produces a lot of venting but rarely has a useful result. It isn't a complete waste of time, as it brings the problematic behavior to the attention of others, but I am not convinced that the effort will be worth it in this case. Review of his Terri Schiavo RfC shows that he was engaging in exactly the same behavior that he has shown in the Milloy article (see e.g., here). If an RfC and two years more experience have produced zero change in his editing behavior, I doubt another RfC will matter. The sad fact is that Misplaced Pages has no useful mechanism for dealing with tenacious POV-pushers who simply try to wear everyone else down. Raymond Arritt 04:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you. However, I'm not sure how else to move forward here. I'm seeing a clearly tendentious editor, with a history of identical behavior on other articles, who's essentially on a single-purpose crusade on Steven Milloy at the moment. After extensive efforts, I'm despairing that any progress can be made via discussion on the article talk page. I think a community sanction proposal or ArbCom case might be an eventuality, but an RfC would at least establish that in the opinion of outside editors, his behavior is unacceptable. If that proves unsuccessful in improving his approach (as I'm afraid is likely), then at least I would feel better about pursuing more advanced steps in dispute resolution. If we don't address his behavior here, then it will recur. He'll get tired of Milloy, as he eventually tired of his relentless POV-pushing at Terri Schiavo, but at some point he'll pop up on another article with the same behavior. I think we should address it, through whatever less-than-effective means are at our disposal. MastCell 04:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello

Pleased to meet you, I'm sure.

Did you even consider the possibility of approaching me privately and asking me to discuss? and then perhaps trying to mediate? Or did you simply dismiss any possibility that I might believe that I have a legitimate concern?

I'd like to think that I'd have shown you the respect of approaching you first, before I went off to escalate the situation.

No hard feelings, just an observation. Perhaps we'll meet in mainspace and get to know each other some day. Peace.Lsi john 13:03, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

No offense, but what on earth is this about?? Raymond Arritt 13:07, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Your post (back on june 25) calling me a pest. You're welcome to ignore it (this post). I just wanted to say hello and toss out an idea that you might consider for the next time you are in a similar situation. Peace.Lsi john 13:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I just saw it (your post), so my post to you is a bit delayed. No worries. Peace.Lsi john 13:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Sheerness‎ FAC

Hi. I'm sorry to bother you, but as a LoCE member, I just wondered if you would be willing to have a look through the Sheerness‎ article. It is currently a Featured Article Candidate and needs a copy-edit for grammar by someone who hasn't yet seen it. Any other ways to improve the article would also be welcome. Thank you very much, if you can. Epbr123 17:45, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability#Age of unreferenced

I made a post to Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability#Age of unreferenced that you might be interested in. Jeepday (talk) 03:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Peratt

I just posted a message at Misplaced Pages Talk:WikiProject Physics about this matter. Peratt has become increasingly involved with David Talbott and the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies. I don't know whether Peratt is "legitimate" or not, all I know is that he has renewed animas with these people. --Mainstream astronomy 20:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)