User talk:Kiefer.Wolfowitz/Archive

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Afghan documents leak and child prostitution

Hello, Kiefer.Wolfowitz. You have new messages at Talk:Afghan War documents leak.
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More politics: Libertarian, social-democratic, and neoconservative

Re:Advice

I would be hiding under the guise of age if I did that, Kiefer. I don't want to make my fellow contributors think I am someone I am not. I am forthright and honest about my age, and I feel it would be a lie for me not to be. I think being open and honesty about it is the right thing to do. :)

And for the record, the page is vastly smaller than a previous revision I will not list here. I will likely seek help on removing these previous revisions (I was not aware it could be done aside from vandalism), but I do not think my page is overly controversial. Thank you for you're advice, I greatly appreciate it. :) Toa Nidhiki05 22:08, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Toa!

Thank you for writing me, and thinking about my suggestion. I think the people at the page will be quite helpful if you would ask for anything.

I hope that you are enjoying contributing to Wikipedia, and that you shall continue.

Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:20, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

"Libertarian socialism": A contradiction in terms, or great bustard?

Like a tennis amateur, E. P. Thompson's forehand smash was lethal to his academic left, in his polemic against Louis Althusser and Perry Anderson, "The poverty of theory". However, his backhand was feeble against his right, particularly in the objectionable "Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski": in it, Thompson compared himself to a great bustard (pictured).

Thanks... by the way, that comment section on lib. socialism has been dead for about a year. :P Toa Nidhiki05 22:33, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

“To leave error unrefuted is to encourage intellectual immorality.“ Karl Marx (quoted in 'The Poverty Of Theory' by E. P. Thompson.).

;) (My friend Toa describes himself as a conservative with libertarian leanings, so I tease him a bit ....)

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:41, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see... Anyway, thanks for the advice and I look forward to work with you at some point in the future. I'll also be sending a request, so thanks. :) Toa Nidhiki05 22:50, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

DSOC

Hey K-Wolf, I'm not understanding the "Self-Pubished Sources" flag on DSOC. Did you run that up or did somebody else? Is it in reference to using Harrington's memoir? Carrite (talk) 01:23, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Hej Tim!

I think that I added that; perhaps a secondary tag would have been more accurate. (An autobiography, no matter how accurate, should be supplemented with secondary reliable sources, if possible; two reliable sources are mandatory for possibly contentious statements made about living persons.) I cannot find anything false in Michael's memoirs, and therefore I did not remove or challenge any statement citing it as false.

I mentioned previously that I have tried to find sources to supplement my references to Horowitz's memoir of Kahn, even though she carefully documents everything (or states that it is her personal opinion based on 30 years of friendship).

Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 05:39, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the tag.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:41, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Action: Gertrude Hillelfarb

Don't miss the action at Gertrude Himmelfarb‎. Rjensen (talk) 20:24, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Not my favorite author, but the author of one of my favorite review sentences, about Paul Johnson's The Intellectuals---namely, "This is not a serious book". It may have been written in National Review, which I received as a joke after I had sent Dissent (magazine) to a friend.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:49, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

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I tried ...

I copy-edited the Signpost article about Wikipedia Foundation's vetoing of a trial.

My version

Foundation overrules community consensus on autoconfirmation trial

Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Möller stopped English Wikipedia from conducting a trial of a policy requiring that new articles be created by autoconfirmed editors.

In a bugzilla thread, English Wikipedia editors disagreed with MediaWiki sysadmins over a proposed trial for barring non-autoconfirmed editors from creating articles. The proposal to require autoconfirmed status had gained many supporters in a widely publicised Request for Comment. However, the proposal was blocked by Wikimedia Foundation staffers and developers.

The proposed trial would changed the mechanics of article-creation, in which currently a large portion of articles created by new editors were swiftly deleted and their authors reprimanded. The proposal was to barr new editors from creating articles and rather to funnel them through the Articles for Creation and Article Creation Wizard processes. The proposal aimed to reduce pressure on new page patrollers, to irritate fewer new editors, and to improve the quality of new articles.

The proposal was vetoed by Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Möller, who said, "Creating a restriction of this type is a strong a statement of exclusion, not inclusion." "It will confuse and deter good-faith editors." Möller agreed that Wikipedia needed to improve the atmosphere for new editors and to provide a "friendly, welcoming and understandable experience". He suggested three steps:

1. simplifying the actual workflow of new article creation and reducing instruction creep
2. experimenting with alternative models to provide new users with safe spaces for new article development
3. connecting new users with experienced mentors faster.

Möller and the developers suggested that English Wikipedia address the problems facing new editors by working with ArticleCreationWorkflow project at MediaWiki.

Their suggestion was criticized by English Wikipedia editors. The initiator of the bug report Snottywong wrote that "ArticleCreationWorkflow doesn't discuss any real solutions to the problem, so I will not be contributing there". The Foundation staff were criticized for unilateralism, incivility and a patronising tone, by some editors.

Volunteer developer and long-standing English Wikipedian Happy-melon wrote,

There *is* a separation of *cultures* here, and it's something that an awful lot of members of the wiki communities do not appreciate. The developers and (separately) the sysadmins/WMF form their own separate communities with their own goals and practices; and those goals and practices, while closely matching those of enwiki or whereverwiki, do not necessarily precisely align. There is nothing unrealistic, or wrong, with enwiki having goals which are very slightly different from those of the WMF as a whole, or for their requests to not be ones that the Foundation feels bests fits with their own strategies.

After the veto by the Wikimedia Foundaton, English Wikipedian and developer MZMcBride made a list of incidents where Wikimedia systems administrators had rejected configuration changes.

Status quo ante belles artes

If it is reverted, then somebody should remove the word "English" from this Wikipedia! ;)

Where was George W. Bush when he is needed to copy edit?!!!!?!!! ;)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 00:02, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Foundation overrules community consensus on autoconfirmation trial

Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Möller, who intervened to halt the implementation of the Autoconfirmed article creation trial, which was seen as striking an unwelcome exclusionary stance.

In a heated altercation between English Wikipedia community members and MediaWiki sysadmins in the course of a bugzilla thread, a proposed trial for barring non-autoconfirmed editors from creating articles, which had garnered significant local consensus in a widely publicised Request for Comment, was thwarted by Wikimedia Foundation staffers and developers. The trial had been motivated by the perceived ineffectiveness of prevailing article creation mechanics, whereby a large portion of articles created by new editors were swiftly deleted and their authors reprimanded. By barring new editors from creating articles and funnelling them through the Articles for Creation and Article Creation Wizard processes, it was hoped to ease pressure on new page patrollers, alienate fewer new contributors and ensure a higher quality of new articles. After reticence to implement the trial from sysadmins and an intemperate reaction, Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Möller after acknowledging the stated intentions of the initiative, put the boot down firmly on the petitioners' hopes:

However, we believe that creating a restriction of this type is a strong a statement of exclusion, not inclusion, and that it will confuse and deter good faith editors. Instead of trying to address many different issues by means of a simple but potentially highly problematic permission change, we believe that in order to create a friendly, welcoming and understandable experience for new editors, we need to apply an iterative, multi-prong approach, including but not limited to:

• simplifying the actual workflow of new article creation and reducing instruction creep
• experimenting with alternative models to provide new users with safe spaces for new article development
• connecting new users with experienced mentors faster.

Möller and the developers attempted to redirect efforts to the ArticleCreationWorkflow project at MediaWiki in the face of strong resistance from the English Wikipedia community members, with the initiator of the bug report Snottywong commenting "ArticleCreationWorkflow doesn't discuss any real solutions to the problem, so I will not be contributing there". Charges of unilateralism, incivility and a patronising tone were levelled at Foundation staff as it became evident the report would not result in implementation. Volunteer developer and long-standing English Wikipedian Happy-melon attempted to bridge the growing divide with an entreaty for perspective:

On the other hand, there *is* a separation of *cultures* here, and it's something that an awful lot of members of the wiki communities do not appreciate. The developers and (separately) the sysadmins/WMF form their own separate communities with their own goals and practices; and those goals and practices, while closely matching those of enwiki or whereverwiki, do not necessarily precisely align. There is nothing unrealistic, or wrong, with enwiki having goals which are very slightly different from those of the WMF as a whole, or for their requests to not be ones that the Foundation feels bests fits with their own strategies.

In response to the incident, English Wikipedian and developer MZMcBride assembled at Meta a list of instances of Wikimedia systems administrators rejection of configuration changes. The firm insistence of the Wikimedia Foundation to pursue its own vision of sustaining and developing the Wikimedia projects in defiance if necessary of the wishes of the core community of its flagship project – and the chief source of its funding – is an indicator of how far the organisation has grown in its brief history, and is sure to raise the hackles of those who conceived of it playing a primarily supportive role to the local communities.

Shapley–Folkman lemma at FAC

"In geometry, the Shapley–Folkman lemma and the Shapley–Folkman–Starr theorem study the Minkowski addition of sets in a vector space". I think you're going to struggle finding reviewers for this article, but just let me say that lemmas don't study anything: that's what mathematicians do. Malleus Fatuorum 22:33, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Malleus, for both the caution about reviewers and the warning about anthropomorphizing lemmas. I shall be happy if I receive further copy editing suggestions like this. Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:38, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I'll endeavour to apply my limited mathematical knowledge to the rest of the article, but you might want to give User:Geometry guy a nudge. Malleus Fatuorum 22:42, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Malleus!

Geometry Guy has already been very helpful. He may prefer the splitting off of the "SF-Starr theorem" from the lemma, to improve the accessibility of the article. (I lack the energy to do rewriting of 2 artices.)

The calls for A-class review elicited no edits or comments from the economics and mathematics projects, but the previous GA review received many helpful comments.

IMHO, the biggest flaw of the article is the animation of the non-convex consumer preferences, which has been taken from another article; it is encumbered by extraneous information from the other application.

The double use of User:David Eppstein's illustration is unconventional but (I believe) helpful for readers.

Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm just trying to gee up the troops, don't expect too much from me. :-) Malleus Fatuorum 01:07, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

You are doing a great job as a catalyst!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 01:10, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

[1] You give me too much credit. I'm reading and trying to understand at the same time; I just figure that if I can't understand then nobody else will either. What about that for arrogance! :lol: Malleus Fatuorum 22:31, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Malleus,

I am delighted that you have again contributed to the article, especially because it is challenging for you---just as it was for me when I first tried to read mathematical economics (via the New Palgrave)---and I want to acknowledge your help.

I try to give credit to editors for their suggestions, following the example of kind editors like ThomasMeeks.

Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:08, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I'll get to the end of the article one day soon I hope, but I'm disappointed that other FA reviewers have not yet followed my lead. Malleus Fatuorum 23:56, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Be patient. Protonk's efforts are still in-coming. :) A few dedicated and talented reviewers will be very helpful in improving the article. I am pleased with the suggestions.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:59, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Mathematics and Wikpedia

• Why is it do you think that so many are afraid of mathematics, and mathematics articles? Malleus Fatuorum 02:16, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I participated in an interview with the Mathematics Project this year, which I'll link, which has more experienced editors, most of whom are much better mathematicians than myself. You should read that first, then this. (I am usually long-winded at first draft.)

It helps to have good graphics, at least for geometric-inclined readers (e.g. me). The Shapley-Folkman article benefits from David Eppstein's two illustrations, which outclass anything else in world literature. Nobody has even dreamed of creating explanatory graphics like David's. I am surprised that I haven't seen people citing the article yet. (I tried, but my article citing it has been held up in review for more than a year!) It has the best survey of applications; particularly the links to econometric journals should make it essential reading for M.A. students at good universities---or at least at Stanford! ;)

I would not say that people are afraid, but rather than many people are nervous and humble (unless they are young Americans, who have the world's highest positive response to the statement, "I have mathematical talent"!).

Compare mathematics and music: I was reading a bit about your countryman Robert Fripp and reflecting on my ignorance of music, particularly the basics of music appreciation, particularly the musical theory that should seduce any mathematical scientist. Music is even more human than mathematics. Our ability to dance in groups is unknown in other species, I've read. Yet I have not read anything, because other interests and activities were more habitual/interesting/pressing.

Thus, it is a question of economics and of interest. If people understood that they could make better decisions for themselves, particularly to provide for their families, or to make medical decisions for their families, better, by understanding a basic course in statistics, then I think enrollment would increase, at least among mature adults. Young people are probably more motivated about income and idealism (saving the world). I became seriously interested in mathematics because I wanted to understand economics, courtesy of Reaganomics; I learned from economists that statistics was the most important skill to have.

Wikipedia's own Richard Gill, acting in the real world, has helped nurses unjustly tried for murder, because prosecutors committed and judges accepted crazy statistical testimony. Mathematics is important in real life, particularly in criminal justice, business, and military affairs. I think that understanding the basics of probability are essential to proper reasoning. There should be no shortage of examples that make statistics and mathematics come alive. (I can say that I have used examples of fire-department statistics, which grab U.S. audiences, once I mention 9/11 and some personal ties.)

Another example of the importance of incentives and opportunities. In the communist countries, mathematics attracted people because it was relatively free from Communist BS and unless you were Jewish and in the 1970s (or under Stalin's time) was relatively meritocratic. The USSR and Poland had great books written and inspired by Kolmogorov and Banach---and Kolmogorov was like the Bach of mathematics, so that their mathematical civilization was very inviting and inspiring. Even now, students in Eastern Europe know that science is an excellent way to obtain good jobs in Western Europe or the USA, which is another explanation of why they have such good students.

Boxer: "I will work harder":

One of the best writers of our time is the German poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger. He has written a pamphlet Drawbridges Down!, calling on mathematicians to write for the public (even if they have to lie a little ...); he has also written a book for children, The Number Devil, which is entertaining. The Wikipedia Project interview discusses the difficulty of writing for the public.

I would say that the U.S. and increasingly Sweden have been crippled by the anti-academic and anti-intellectual Schools of Education, which hobble our high schools, particularly in mathematics. It is like Plan 9 From Outer Space. We are surrounded by intellectually dead people. It used to be that Swedish gymnasium teachers had a Master's degree in one subject, and had written a B.A. thesis in another. (French gymnasium teachers must have a something like a Master's degree.) Now, Americans and Swedes can get accreditation by taking watered down classes like algebra for teachers. How can students get inspired by teachers who don't know their subjects? (I was lucky to have caught the end of New Math and to have been taught by teachers recruited with post-Sputnik initiatives.)

We need teachers who are intellectually alive and interested in mathematics. But now, it is hard to imagine the best students taking bachelor of education degrees, which they need to get hired by public schools in the U.S. (If they take a B.A./B.S. and later get accredited, they will not get hired because their union contract makes them entitled to higher pay.)

That is my short answer! ;)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 03:16, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Further comment. I think some of the leading project members write what is obvious for them off the top of their heads. (I do the same in statistics, usually, and just give the general references I read when I learned the stuff.) Many of our mathematicians have interests in algebra and mathematical logic, and have been influenced by something called category theory, so they write articles that are hard for reactionary (set-theoretic) mathematicians (or mathematical scientists like me) to understand. If they had more time, they would be able to write simpler articles, but they are usually writing what they consider to be trivialities in the most natural (i.e., category theoretic) way. This makes it difficult to understand some topics, usually in Ph.D.-training-level mathematics. However, most of our articles are quite accessible, and our editors take great pains to write inviting articles on topics of interest to the public or to undergraduates.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 03:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that about hits the spot. I hardly ever edit in areas I've worked in, because the pain of trying to find citations for what you and everyone else in field knows to be true is just too much hassle. Malleus Fatuorum 00:56, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

"Mathematicians are like lovers ...": "Give 'em an inch, and they ask for a mile"

The article Tom Kahn would benefit from a good article review. (It is not yet as polished as the SF lemma article.)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 00:44, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

FAC nom formatting

FYI on how to format FAC nominations: [2] Karanacs (talk) 15:06, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

"The road to wisdom": "To err, to err, to err"

"The road to wisdom": "To err, to err, to err"

Sorry for over-emboldening. If it is any consolation, I did even more blunders, which were egregious because they were premature blunders, on the FA-scheduling page, where I had no business being.

Thanks for the help! Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Almost everyone who tries to nominate at the FA-scheduling page messes up. No worries. Karanacs (talk) 16:00, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Starr's result

Hello-So, rather than going to the original research, here's a question I have about Starr's result: Does the good behavior of the approximated economy come strictly from the number of consumers, or is it required (as in simple results about the core) that the consumers are clones? CRETOG8(t/c) 18:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

This is a good question, which applies both to the results of Shapley & Folkman and of Starr. You might guess that non-cloning would be essential, if you had read a (sloppy) remark in the otherwise good c. 1983 Econometrica paper by Whitney Newey and Soeren Bloemqist, on "nonlinear budget sets": It states that "averaging over characteristics" was "implicit" in aggregation, suggesting that non-cloning be essential.

On the contrary, the propositions (and their proofs) make no assumption about the identity or non-identity of the summands, and it is interesting that everything holds even when all consumers are identical! Troeckel has a very clear statement about that. (It seems paradoxical that economics obtains more informative results by special cases of general theorems ....) You should look at the illustration in Mas-Colell's 1987 "Non-convexity" article, which shows a semigroup of sumsets: I tried to explain it on the talk page. Give me a minute and I'll cut and paste it here.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

• Mas-Colell, A. (1987). "Non-convexity". In Eatwell, John; Milgate, Murray; Newman, Peter (eds.). [[The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics|The new Palgrave: A dictionary of economics]] (first ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 653–661. doi:10.1057/9780230226203.3173. (PDF file at Mas-Colell's homepage). {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); URL–wikilink conflict (help); Unknown parameter |newedition= ignored (help)

The best image would illustrate the set

S = 1/2 ( [0,1]×[0,2] ∪ [0,2]×[0,1] )

and then

$S_{N}={\frac {1}{2^{N}}}\sum _{1\leq n\leq 2^{N}}{S}\qquad (N\geq 2)$

for N = 0, 1, 2,3, ∞.

A translate of this set appears in Mas-Colell's article on non-convex sets (etc.).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:58, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Someday, this will take some serious thought! (...and I need to convince my university to pick up Palgrave.) CRETOG8(t/c) 19:08, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

You can read Mas-Colell and Starr's New Palgrave articles at their homepages. You don't need a subscription. Starr's book used to be available in draft form at his homepage. Enjoy  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

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RFC/U discussion concerning you (Kiefer.Wolfowitz)

Hello, Kiefer.Wolfowitz. Please be aware that a user conduct request for comment has been filed concerning your conduct on Wikipedia. The RFC entry is located at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Kiefer.Wolfowitz, where you may want to participate. As requested, I will now ask a sitting arb, and one of your prefered administrators to confirm whether there is a basis for this RfC. Worm^TT · (talk) 18:37, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

My suggestion was that you ask somebody with greater ability and experience to draft an RfC that would focus on a few behavioral changes, for me (as you should do for any other person in an RfC). Your credibility would be greater if you were being conservative in your paraphrasing, rather than distorting User:Carrite's comment about my contempt for Busky's book. Have you bothered to read the pages I flagged as poor scholarship yet?

I find it humorous that you, who could not even be bothered to source properly the trivial bacon festival, are rapping my knuckles like a school marm about my acknowledgment that I had reused content ("canibalizing"), which I have acknowledged doing in many articles with edit-summaries. Of course, I can do better and perhaps I have slipped a few times.

Even if you have a respected Wikipedian involved with your RfC, I shall certainly have no time for it until December, as I noted before.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:58, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Kiefer, I have endorsed the basis of the RfC, so let's have no more of this "someone with greater ability" crap please. I suggest you get over there and respond to what's being raised - as I said previously, in my experience it never comes out well for the editor who attempts to ignore the issue. Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:29, 8 October 2011 (UTC)