User talk:Abd

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WELCOME TO Abd TALK

File:Brain 090407.jpg

Before reading User talk:Abd

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 User talk:Abd

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 Slime mold (see illustration).

Caution is advised.

Cold fusion mediation

I have been asked to mediate the content dispute regarding Cold fusion. I have set up a separate page for this mediation here. You have been identified as one of the involved parties. Please read through the material I have presented there. Thank you. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, this looks like a good spot to comment on your (transmogrified) reply to my (transmogrified) observation about CF hypotheses. Consider the Pythagorean Theorem; there are lots of ways to prove that. If some amateur happens to come up with a new one and posts it in a blog, and it is indeed a valid proof, do you think it is any less worthy than a different proof that happens to be 2000 years old and widely published? Good Logic is completely independent of the place where you find it. So, if there happens to be a CF hypothesis that makes logical sense to most readers, and it happened to get published in New Energy Times instead of Physical Review, what difference does it make? AND, if certain other hypotheses are given "first billing" and described as coming from a mainstream peer-reviewed source, then in what way would this one be receiving "undue weight" if it is simply listed with a bunch of other hypotheses, ALL of which happened to be published in non-mainstream sources, and the Wikipedia article says so!? V (talk) 06:08, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I see I missed this edit. V, you are an SPA. That can mean a lot of different things, but one of them is that, without broad experience with Wikipedia, you may not understand why the policies and guidelines are the way they are. First question first. Someone comes up with a new proof posted in a blog. Could also be a mailing list, and I know many actual examples that I'd love to be able to use. However, you've missed something very important: the process by which an encyclopedia that is verifiable and that is written by anonymous editors (mostly), who aren't required to be experts, comes to be put together and to improve. Two basic standards must be satisfied for inclusion here to be stable: it must be verifiable and it must be "notable." We have interacting standards for both: for something to be notable, it must be mentioned in a published source, with an independent publisher, meeting certain standards. The publisher, by publishing it, stakes reputation and investment on the fact being of interest. We use that to determine notability. Without an objective standard, there would be no boundary. With a different structure, more could be possible, but it would take a very different structure; for starters, verified identities for a class of editors who could verify notability of something not in ordinary RS.

The issue is not whether or not a fact is "worthy." Lots of very worthy stuff isn't notable.

The exact boundary varies with the article and the fact, but Cold fusion is tightly watched by anti-fringe editors. There are probably hundreds of theories that have been advanced as to why Cold fusion could happen. Which ones do we pick? Bottom line, we won't pick it from a blog. What about New Energy Times? Well that decision is a little more difficult. NET is a publication with journalistic standards, in what is written by Krivit himself as the product of investigation. What we do is to (indirectly) link to the web site, through a See also to the article on NET. There are four really notable web sites we should be linking to; we indirectly link to two through See alsos, and we should also link to lenr-canr.org and the Dieter Britz bibliography. If I knew of a web site with the best criticism of cold fusion, I think of linking there too. We should have a Further Reading section for books on the topic. As matters stand, though, the minimum would be that the theory has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. And probably it's necessary to have a secondary source to establish sufficient notability. There is a lot of early theoretical work that was way off, for starters, nobody advances those theories any more. In a single article on the overarching subject, most of this probably doesn't belong. In a history of cold fusion as a science, and as a social phenomenon, a history of theories that have been advanced would be interesting and a minimal listing with reference of a theory that is only found in a peer-reviewed journal could be possible. What about Conference papers? Well, we don't know, from Conference papers, sometimes, if the theory is considered serious by anyone except the author. And we need more than that.

So what about that new proof of the Pythagorean Theorem? What are we going to say about it? What could be done, if the proof seems sufficiently interesting, is to link to the page as an external link. Lots of stuff like this is linked in practice. Note that if the proof is controversial, it probably couldn't be done. Wikipedia, by linking, is implying validity (for something like this). So how do we verify that the proof is valid? There are mathematical proofs with flaws in them that people not familiar with the specific math will miss. So we'd want the proof validated by experts. That's what happens when an expert writes about it in some other publication (or, at least, we've gotten closer to that). Doing this through editors would involve validating expertise. Want to open that can of worms?

Look, we have enough trouble, right now, sourcing attributed comment about theory to independently published academic material. Pushing for linking to NET ... right now, way ahead of what would be possible. Or way behind, I'm not sure which to call it. And this is not about disrespect for NET, it's an extremely valuable publication. However, it has low inclusion standards sometimes, Krivit will publish both sides of lengthy correspondence with someone on the fringe of the fringe, sometimes. What's good there is excellent, and it could be that we could use some of it. But with caution, and we'd need consensus. --Abd (talk) 02:15, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Abd. Sorry, maybe this is a nonissue. At the mediation: while perhaps your comments can all be considered relevant, it's usually best to comment on content directly and avoid saying things about editors. I suggest that you consider deleting this part: "An editor inserted "life sciences journal," and we should ask why. The editor who inserted it has generally declined to participate here; so I will speculate as to the reason: he wanted to make it appear (and, I assume, believed) that Naturwissenschaften would not be a place to ordinarily publish research in chemistry or physics." Maybe there's nothing wrong with that. However, I'm not sure it's necessary. Perhaps we should let editors speak for themselves. The following part sounds fine to me, although it's also commenting about an editor: "in what he must have thought would be a reasonable compromise". I'm not so sure about this part: "but apparently the editor who had removed it still considers the removal preposterous." Again, maybe it's fine; but I have no idea whether the person would agree with it. (Besides, I think you said "removed" when you meant "added".) I think the mediation is supposed to focus on content. Maybe Cryptic will edit your comments (or maybe not). I almost went ahead and edited them but decided to post here instead. At least, if you were to delete those parts your comment would be shorter. Cheers, ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:29, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

That wasn't meant to be about the editor, but about the reason why an editor (legitimately!) might want that information in the article. The editor is free to speak for himself, and I certainly wouldn't argue with him. Basically, without some rationale, why are we discussing it in the first place? LeadSongDog considered the removal preposterous, in his comment declining participation. I thought of adding the comment that "This is not an allegation of bad behavior," i.e., that LSD need not think he's being accused of anything improper (more than being mistaken! -- and this is a wiki, we are allowed to make lots of mistakes). Look, that was the AGF explanation. The not-so-AGF explanation would be that he wanted to discredit the report entirely. It's true that I could leave this for someone else to allege, but, actually, I'm aiming for efficiency. I'll note that there was no response to the Talk page discussion I put up. It was brief, and to the point. Maybe it will be so here as well, and then it's done.

If I wanted to discuss editors, I'd have pointed out the implications of LSD holding on to an impression that he was faced with an editor making preposterous edits, but apparently not being willing to discuss them or specifically address the concerns. But that is not for that place. Nevertheless, multiply that impression by many editors with a similar impression, you can see how the situation gets entrenched and inflamed. --Abd (talk) 01:42, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Banned from editing Cold fusion and its Talk page

I have concluded that the following ban doesn't exist. Administrators do not have authority to issue page bans without the consent of the editor. They may block for violations that justify a block, and they can unblock if the editor accepts a page ban, but they can't unilaterally impose a ban. I'd wondered why WMC wouldn't log the ban, and I realized, eventually, that it's because there is no provision at WP:RESTRICT for logging such individually-declared bans; a unilateral ban is nothing more than a declared intention to block the editor if the editor does what the admin is warning against, and editing a page is not an offense in itself, unless the community or ArbComm have established a ban. No offense was alleged. Hence a block would have been illegitimate, hence a ban is unenforceable without violating block policy, and an unenforceable ban does not exist, and this is the most efficient approach, far better than going to a noticeboard or ArbComm to appeal a nonexistent ban. It's easy to appeal a block, there is an unblock template. There is no unban template.

CF

I've banned you from CF and its talk page. Please don't post there again William M. Connolley (talk) 20:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, Bill. Apparently you neglected, in your haste to remove my comment acknowledging the ban and promising to respect it pending resolution, to notify Hipocrite of the ban. I've responded to you on your Talk page, with this, permanent link for ease of reading. I do recommend considering accepting what I suggested; I'll wait a bit before appealing this to give you a little time to consider, but the only troutslap that I got from ArbComm in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Abd and JzG was over waiting before escalating, so I won't wait long. --Abd (talk) 03:31, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that we were on first name terms, let alone diminutives. H will, no doubt, read the CF talk page in due course. You should not have assumed haste or neglect William M. Connolley (talk) 10:38, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the presumption of the propriety of civil familiarity, Mr. Connolley. I simply wonder why you formally notified me and not him, if you were acting neutrally. Looked like haste or neglect to me, no matter how you slice it, but now I see that may be incorrect. I appreciate your frank response, it helps. --Abd (talk) 13:04, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Having watched this unfold, I think he is re-notifying you here because you edited the talkpage after his initial announcement of the ban - at least, that's how the sequence looks to me. Fritzpoll (talk) 13:32, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course. He's notifying me here because I requested such formal notification, as is really necessary for a ban to be in effect, not because I needed the notice -- I acknowledged the ban at the Talk page in question -- but because he hasn't notified the other editor and seems to be refusing to do so. Hence he has really, pending further notification, only banned one side of a dispute, clearly the side he disagrees with; he's called for my ban from cold fusion before. Hipocrite wasn't notified in any way except by this, today, which is still indirect. Sucks, Fritzpoll, since you've popped in. I haven't objected to his notifying me here, I requested it. How closely have you been watching this, FP? --Abd (talk) 13:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah - I was just referring to the fact that you were implying a lack of neutrality because he's posted here and not to Hipocrite's page. What I was saying was that he has posted here as a followup warning for not respecting the talkpage ban, which Hipocrite has yet to "violate". Thus the initial notification was neutral to both of you, and the followup was necessary because you continued posting to CF talk. I did e-mail William to suggest listing it at WP:RESTRICT, but that's the extent of my involvement thus far. As to how closely I've been watching, I've got CF watchlisted, as I often do with potential flashpoints, but I've doubtless missed something Fritzpoll (talk) 15:44, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

FP's interpretation is correct. He's notifying me here because I requested such formal notification is wrong William M. Connolley (talk) 15:57, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Distinction without a difference. The post that WMC followed up on, here, was a request that I be formally notified, here, even though I acknowledged notice of the ban there.

A ban can't be violated that doesn't exist, a ban doesn't exist until receipt of notice is clear, and there is no clear evidence that the ban exists for Hipocrite. I created that evidence, deliberately, for myself by responding to the ban notice, in the place it was given, and I considered that an act of cooperation; until I created that evidence, I hadn't been notified, so I wasn't banned, I could not have been blocked for a violation. Then I was notified here, as I had also requested. WMC's motive is not really relevant, the effect is the same regardless. In spite of my request, Hipocrite hasn't actually been notified. There is no actual notice of the ban on Hipocrite Talk, so, unless Hipocrite acknowledges the ban in some way, it's not enforceable, and an unenforceable ban doesn't exist. There is now an indirect notice on Hipocrite talk, placed by User:Enric Naval, that might serve, for now, though it will become difficult to follow in short order, it won't be intelligible, it doesn't mention "ban." It's anomalous that the normal practice of notifying an editor of a ban through notice on the User talk page, where the user will receive a notification with the first page view afterwards and until it's looked at, has been bypassed in favor of a notice on the article talk page, where the editor might easily not see it and edit either the article or another section of the Talk page, perhaps after an absence for a few days, and when I see anomalies, I look for explanations, and it's not difficult to imagine one here. --Abd (talk) 02:31, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Withdrawal of consent to ban from Cold fusion

William M. Connolley did not accept my offer to waive claim that he was involved and not neutral; in addition, reading WP:BAN and reflecting on ban policy in general, I've concluded that an administrator has no authority to unilaterally create an article ban without the consent of the banned editor. An administrator may block for disruption, edit warring, or other offenses, and may waive a block for a user who has voluntarily accepted a ban, but may not impose a ban. The ban William M. Connolley attempted to impose was not based on any stated offense, and a block would not have been sustained. The ban was not based on any ArbComm sanction, nor had there been any community discussion establishing it. I have therefore informed William M. Connolley that I consider that the ban does not exist, so that he may not continue to depend upon my acceptance of it. --Abd (talk) 04:26, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

WMC has responded on his Talk to my notice there, see [1]. I've been exploring how to pursue DR with minimal disruption. Taking the issue to a noticeboard or to ArbComm, when my position has become, based on discussion off-wiki with other editors and exploration of it, would be necessary if there were something more than a possibly empty threat. If I'm disruptive, any admin can block, the ban adds nothing to that. Had a basis other than IAR been alleged for the ban, WMC's position might have been stronger, but appealing a block is a routine process, should he block me, that might involve no more than one neutral administrator. Therefore the most efficient way to deal with this is to defy it. I will not, however, edit Cold fusion or Talk:Cold fusion just to make a POINT. I do, however, have a suggestion (brief, hah!) to make there that could recover a few week's work, which should enjoy consensus based on the available evidence, so I might edit a little later today.

WMC has been questioned by others on the basis for the ban. He alleged no basis that satisfies WP:BAN. To interpret the ban as existing would then require possibly disruptive process to challenge it, when what has happened is only that an admin, known to be hostile to my work, has declared an intention that, to carry out, would require a serious violation of block policy. It is far more efficient to deny that the ban exists and let him prove otherwise than to debate it. WP:IAR, indeed! My favorite policy. At my RfA(2), I was asked what policy was most important. I replied "Rule Number One." Some didn't like that answer, but ... it was correct. I wasn't saying that I wouldn't follow rules and guidelines, in the spirit of them as well as -- usually! -- the letter, that is an entirely different question, and it wasn't asked. --Abd (talk) 11:20, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I think Connolley's actions in this case should be reviewed by another admin. This would be a simple solution, I think. Offliner (talk) 11:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

It has been mentioned here, where the ban basically made the thread die down, because the issue seemed resolved. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 13:29, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

That discussion was not begun as a review of the ban, and the incident that occasioned it (a misunderstanding) was apparently resolved. However, the report was becoming a coatrack for general complaints about me, with an amusing occasion where an editor who is clearly involved in conflict with me altered my comments, removing a collapse box from my original response, thus causing the appearance of a "wall of text," which then attracted complaints about that, etc., whereas, in fact, I had carefully presented the core of the response outside of collapse, then extended comment only for those interested in background, in collapse. I did not contest the ban there, and it was not decided there, it was merely mentioned. The ban was not reviewed there. The ban was not logged. It does not exist.

Offliner, you are correct, and I could ask for review of WMC's threat to block, which is the only real action here. I would rather allow him to back off and not carry out that threat. I attempted to negotiate a settlement, he was intransigent. Others attempted to intervene, he blew them off. The least disruptive course for me was to declare the ban void. It's not supported by policy, and this is not merely my own opinion, it's the considered opinion of others. If WMC blocks me, the unblock template that I put up will efficiently attract review by an uninvolved administrator. I respect WMC's right to attempt to impose this ban, but I've determined that the least disruptive way to deal with it is not to escalate, but to reject, as simply as he rejected attempts to compromise. No. There is a procedure for establishing bans; he did not follow it, and, when challenged, he did not justify the action except with general assertion of policies without any showing of specific application. What behavior justified the ban? Unstated. If he believed I should be banned, he had the same recourse as any other editor, a noticeboard or RfC. Admins don't have "ban" buttons. If they did, then we would have an "unban" template. --Abd (talk) 14:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think some independent review of the matter is in order as Offliner suggests. If wikiepdia user WMC had prior involvement with Abd as Abd is alleging, then the legitimacy and the propriety of this ban is called into question per the recent Arbocm ruling with respect to "Abd and JzG". I am not taking a position either way on these points but there seems to be enough confusion in this area the the entire project would benefit from such an anlysis, IMHO.

The fundamental question, in my opinion, is whether Administrators have been granted the authority to unilaterally ban (especially indefinitely) individuals without direct Community Consensus for such action. That was my primary concern in the case of JzG banning Jed Rothwell, and now this case with wikipedia user WMC banning both Hipocrite and Abd becomes a second example which raises the same issue. (These are only two examples that I happen to be readily familiar with, and my point is a general one which is not directed specifically at either JzG or WMC.) Just some food for thought. --GoRight (talk) 16:12, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The answer to your second-paragraph question is, by longstanding custom, yes. Admins can unilaterally ban an editor from a topic or set of topics. Faced with someone consistently editing in violation of policy, an admin can a) block them from editing Wikipedia entirely, or b) ban them from a subset of articles as a softer and more targeted solution to the problem. Option b) actually stops well short of exercising the full range of administrative authority. If the ban is inappropriate or unfounded, then the usual means of appeal are available - one can take the matter to AN/I, and any block applied as a consequence of violating the ban can of course be contested by the full range of means. MastCell ^Talk 22:06, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Semantic issue. BAN doesn't refer to an individual ban. However, an admin can certainly threaten to block an editor if they commit an offense. An admin can conclude that an editor's participation on a page has become disruptive, and can threaten to block the editor if the editor edits the page again. This is a ban, of a kind, but a true "ban" is, as described by the policy, a "social construct." It's not the action of an individual, though it may be enforced, exercising discretion, by an individual.

Editing a page, however, is not an offense unless the edit itself is disruptive or otherwise contrary to policy or guidelines, and "disrespect for administrative privilege" is not an offense at all. The basis of a ban, like the basis of a block, must be protection of the project, as determined as necessary by an uninvolved administrator. To declare a ban without any evidence or charge of misconduct is entirely outside of "longstanding custom." My conclusion is that, yes, an admin may threaten to block if an editor takes a certain action, but this doesn't establish the "community construct" of a ban. We log bans at WP:RESTRICT so that enforcement of a ban becomes a community activity, not simply the responsibility of a single administrator. I'm distinguishing between a ban as described in WP:BAN and a more informal and loose definition that corresponds to WMC's "Do that again and I'll block you." He obviously was referring to my response acknowledging the block notice. However, that edit wasn't disruptive, the only "violation" would be the technical violation of his ban, and "violating WMC's declaration of ban" isn't a violation of policies. Not yet anyway!

I was considering taking this matter directly to ArbComm; I'd come to think that this would be the least disruptive approach, because going to a noticeboard, from experience, was likely to result in substantial waste of editor time arguing about what would probably be mostly irrelevant. There are arbitratable issues, and a basis for bypassing the lower levels of DR in this case. I could be wrong about that, ArbComm might have bounced it, but it's clear to me that there are remaining issues, unresolved from past arbitrations, that will probably require a return to the Committee.

I would not have been going to ArbComm to contest a ban; I came to see that as utterly silly. I wasn't banned, my editing was not actually restricted. I would be going to, once again, raise the issue of administrative recusal, on the one hand, or of long-term violations, by many editors, of the ArbComm finding in RfAr/Fringe science. But it would likely be seen as a ban appeal.

However, I realized that there was a far more efficient approach. Instead of appealing a ban which, by some arguments, doesn't exist except as what might be an empty threat, why not simply disregard the ban? This would be less disruptive than appealing the ban to a noticeboard; from prior experience, it's likely there would be no real consensus at the noticeboard, just as there was no consensus at RfC/JzG 3. Why not keep the matter between a few editors and administrators who choose to involve themselves, and only escalate if a serious matter develops that needs it. If I'm blocked, I can prepare evidence and put up an unblock notice, thus soliciting a neutral administrator. I can pursue the whole panalopy of WP:DR, but now with a very tight and specific incident and issue, with tight evidence, at least initially.

Bottom line: if I disrupt Cold fusion, that would be blockable. If I'm not disrupting a page, simply editing the article or the Talk page, in good faith, seeking consensus, is hardly a blockable offense even if an admin has threatened to block me for it. There was a content dispute between myself and WMC, over which version to revert to. WMC chose to threaten to block me if I continued to work for consensus; consensus had already been found, in spite of his contempt for it, and the last step was to actually propose the edit and find a neutral admin to implement it. He has never justified this action, he defends it only as IAR, bottom line, and seeks to justify it post-facto by asserting that the article is improving; however, from what we can see from the polls, while article quality has improved a little since unprotection, it has actually declined compared to the May 31 version; that could be quickly remedied. We could be back to the May 31 version in a flash, check diffs between that version and the changes made since unprotection -- most of them are good -- and end up with the best of both worlds; plus the material Hipocrite edit warred (not against me!) to keep out can be considered, specifically.

I have no intention of arguing tendentiously in this; what I might do is to formally organize consensus process in a manner similar to what I did at Martin Fleischmann; though I have no intention of duplicating or bypassing the current informal mediation. Consensus is its own proof, consensus is what I seek, and I've been quite successful at predicting it and facilitating its manifestation.

Thus I'm not in the position of planning and preparing an RfAr, a major undertaking. Instead, I will continue working with the mediation, and with the article, and with other Wikipedia projects. If WMC, or anyone else, chooses to create disruption over this, it won't be my responsibility. --Abd (talk) 23:56, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Obligatory ANI thread

See need review of the topic ban of two editors from Cold Fusion. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The reading of no page is obligatory here, ever. You've made your position clear, Enric. Too bad. --Abd (talk) 04:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Errr, since I'm not supposed to be posting here, I just make one short comment to clear the misunderstanding and I won't post more here: that section title is an insider joke about how every dispute in Wikipedia winds up having an ANI thread, as if it was obligatory to make one (when it actually isn't). --Enric Naval (talk) 16:57, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Enric. I see, and appreciate the joke. However, you did, there, make your position clear. So I should mention that if I talk about the obligatory ArbComm filing, it will be about a group or faction of editors who stood behind ScienceApologist and attempted to defend his behavior, who maintained and advocated the kind of [User:Abd/Majority POV pushing|majority POV pushing]] that resulted in SA's ban and ArbComm's ruling in that case, and whose agenda has been made abundantly clear, and who should be judged by the same standard. We have worked together, Enric, at various times, but that filing and its radically distorted presentation of evidence, framing the problem so that neutral editors would support your goal if they don't investigate too deeply -- typical AN/I problem -- demonstrated to me that you had a higher loyalty, one to a cause which must be seen it its true light, and ArbComm, by the nature of this problem, is probably the only venue where this can be examined, the faction is too large and too determined.

You could dissociate yourself from that, though it could now be difficult. If, on review, you think yourself free of blame in this, by all means, stick to your guns. But, beware, when you take up those guns, you take on personal responsibility.

I lift the ban of you from this page (and did not consider your notice above to violate that ban). I do so in order to open a door for you, not to bait you, and I mention ArbComm to give you an opportunity to reflect and prepare.

By the way, that essay started as a bit of a rant. By the time it's used, the rant aspect will be removed. You are welcome to attempt to improve or balance the essay. The example of cold fusion was the occasion for the rant, just as I used that example in commentinng in the Workshop on RfAr/Fringe science. The principles are general. --Abd (talk) 11:20, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know that I've granted your request to close the discussion there. Cheers. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 04:37, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll check it out. --Abd (talk) 11:21, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Good. Thanks. I attempted to avoid the issue being confronted at the AN/I scale; indeed my claim that the ban was void was intended to simplify the matter without escalation, because it left me with nothing to appeal, and left WMC with the same rights as before; however, as we saw, the attempt led to its rapid consideration, because of larger issues. I consider this, overall, good, even though it was short-term disruptive (not my rejection of the ban, but that being taken to AN/I, triggering a premature consideration with one-sided evidence). Presenting the evidence there was, in context, unlikely to do anything more than trigger more useless debate, because of the long-term unresolved issues, issues that AN/I cannot possibly resolve.

I've been reviewing the history of the overarching dispute, which has raged since long before I rather naively stumbled into it with what led to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Abd and JzG. One of the advices that ArbComm gave me in that case was to make sure that documentation was compiled to make the matter clear, before proceeding up the ladder of dispute resolution. You are an apparently neutral administrator. I will need to prepare evidence for an ArbComm filing based on what came down in this incident, but connecting this with patterns of behavior on a larger scale, and focused on the larger issues. That evidence will include what would be needed to make an informed judgment on the relatively minor detail of my ban. I'm not going to argue the ban now, and I appreciate, again, your action in closing a discussion that could have accomplished nothing but more disruption if allowed to continue. I will provide you an opportunity to review the evidence before going to ArbComm, and, at this point, rest assured that I see your action as positive and friendly, and you have no specific obligation to put any more effort into the matter. And I won't be dumping a tome in your figurative lap. It has to be tight for ArbComm, so it will be even tighter for you. Regardless of what you do at this point, there has been such support expressed for the ban that, absent a decision by a neutral administrator lifting the ban or an ArbComm ruling, I will respect the ban, which is now a community ban, and not edit Cold fusion or Talk:Cold fusion. A number of editors referred to this as a "topic ban," which it wasn't, and I will continue to participate in the mediation effort that was begun, or with other work related to cold fusion, such as extending the number of whitelisted pages available for use as convenience links at Cold fusion. You did not explicitly state a conclusion with your close, but, in the absence of clarification, I will take it as confirming a community page ban, period one month. It's unfortunate that no adequate rationale for the ban was stated, but you need not trouble yourself to state one, and, indeed, it may have been wise to avoid it. Thanks again. --Abd (talk) 13:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

A number of editors referred to this as a "topic ban," which it wasn't... Abd, the ban WMC imposed was a page ban, as you have suggested, but the ANI discussion certainly did contemplate a community-imposed topic ban, by which you would have been bound. Heimstern Läufer's original close did describe your community ban as a topic ban, which is why I went to ask that the close be clarified. Comments made at User talk:Heimstern make it clear the intent was to maintain the original WMC ban, and the close was modified to remove the ambiguity. The support for the ban was very strong, the authority of the community to impose it through ANI discussion is indisputable, and there is no longer any basis on which it can be disputed. A future ANI discussion could choose to remove the ban, of course, and that is the only practical avenue of appeal available. Your comments above indicate a strong desire to prepare a case for ArbCom, but if I might offer some friendly advice... remember that ArbCom has generally been very reluctant to alter community imposed bans - in some cases declining to consider them, in others (like Bluemarine) imposing an ArbCom ban to run concurrently with the community ban. In short, if you are planning to prepare an RfAr you should look for an issue that is worth them considering - your community-imposed ban is not such an issue. EdChem (talk) 13:57, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, EdChem. Enric Naval's original report called it a topic ban; editors simply continued with this. Do you realize, EdChem, that I have acknowledged this as a community ban? I could appeal my ban to ArbComm, and I'm relatively confident that they would lift it, but, as I note elsewhere, that is a relatively minor issue. The issue is related to, indeed fundamental to, enforcement of RfAr/Fringe science, and many editors, whose names should be familiar to you from, say, edits to Cold fusion, being named as parties to the mediation, and commenting in the AN/I report and related pages, such as WMC Talk, argued strongly against the position that ArbComm took, supported editors who violated policies, clearly, because of the "good work" that these editors were doing "defending articles against fringe POV," they rejected the ruling when it was issued, some defied it openly, and, clearly, it hasn't sunk in.

Please notice, I'll repeat it. I acknowledge the community ban and I will not debate it, beyond discussing it on my Talk page or as invited by other users on their Talk pages, and I've specifically requested those who would support me -- and who would have !voted accordingly in the AN/I report, I'm totally confident -- to abstain from that and avoid disruption over useless debate. The issues here are issues that can only be resolved at ArbComm, so argument against the ban (as well as argument for it) can only increase disruption, unless it's part of or preparing for an ArbComm filing.

As to the detail of my ban, if ArbComm is chary of reversing a community decision, it could be arranged that the matter come up for debate by the community again; but probably debate before ArbComm should be adequate. Remember, it's not !votes that count, but arguments. A faction may muster a lot of votes in a short time, but, in the end, multiplicity of votes doesn't increase cogency of argument, and the number of editors who vote in anything here is tiny compared with the vast body of editors, and one of the tasks of ArbComm is to protect that large body when it can't protect itself.

Had I been interested in an overall review of the ban at AN/I, I'd have (1) requested it myself, I would not have rejected the ban as I did, (2) I'd have compiled evidence and argument that should have been conclusive, but this would have taken days, (3) I'd have made sure that the debate remained open at AN/I until the editors who would support me became aware of it. As it is, the report only attracted editors expressing opinions that they had already expressed before, plus a few who may have been neutral and who, I can surmise, !voted without waiting for contrary evidence to arrive. This is a classic AN/I problem, and, for that reason, I'd take AN/I entirely out of the loop as far as community bans are concerned, I'd probably require RfC to ban someone beyond "pending review." That is, AN/I should be able to issue an injunction prohibiting behavior seen as disruptive, but should not rule on the matter, it doesn't have the process.

I'd urge you to review Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JzG 3, where there was pile-on for proposals to ban me, and where two-thirds of those voting appeared to not support the claim of the RfC: action by an admin while involved. Remember, the evidence there was totally blatant and obvious, the issue should have been open and shut. JzG had acted while involved. Whether that would result in deysopping or not is a separate question; JzG has done yeoman service for the project, and ArbComm pays attention to that. I proposed desysopping, but only on a general principle: we can't be confident that an admin won't repeat an error if the admin never shows an understanding of the error and an intention not to repeat it. JzG never did that, so, by this principle, he should have been desysopped. I didn't propose an unconditional desysopping, and, as I recall, it was "pending assurances from JzG that this wouldn't happen again." But ArbComm made a different decision, and, overall, for all I know, it may have been the right decision. Perhaps he assured them privately. Probably useless, though. JzG had burned out, and we were simply seeing symptoms of it. He stopped editing entirely. --Abd (talk) 15:11, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Based on the comments above and at User talk:Heimstern, I believe you have missed the point of my actions and my comments. Whether you recognise it or not, clarification that your community ban is a page ban and not a topic ban is actually desirable. EdChem (talk) 20:03, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

It could be, but there is a basic Wikipedia principle: don't resolve a potential dispute until it actually arises. There is a closing admin to whom questions of import may be addressed. To try to get a resolution on the question of page ban vs topic ban could be more disruptive than any actual issue arising. I pointed out, in the RfAr, prominently, that the original ban had been incorrectly called, in the report, a topic ban. Nobody contradicted that. I have, myself, used "topic ban" a number of times, referring to this, it was mere sloppiness. WMC was explicit, when asked, not that it was ever unclear, that he'd issued a page ban, not a topic ban, and the votes were "endorse," not "endorse and extend." Here is the point. Until it matters to someone, there is no issue. If it matters to someone, they can raise it. I'm certainly not going to claim that the ban was actually a topic ban. Is someone going to make that claim? Are you making that claim? Who would you expect to make that claim? From whom did you expect "wikilawyering"? In other words, why is it desirable, as you claim? Explain why, and I might change my opinion! --Abd (talk) 22:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

(Hum, I was just trying to get up-to-date-with the recent discussions and when I was reading your comment I realized that I hadn't made you aware of my request to Heimstern for yet another clarification on the closing, this time about the length, so you could have the occasion to comment about it. Sorry for that, next time I'll warn you inmediately) --Enric Naval (talk) 23:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Why must you know these things, Enric? Is there something worrying you? I must say I'm a bit wary of questions about details of a decision without disclosing the nature and practical relevance of the concern. Heimstern has been pretty clear that his intention was simply to confirm the original ban, and he doesn't need to make any decision at this point, because, given the circumstances, it's moot now and it would only become an issue in a month; he gains nothing by deciding now, and asking him to decide now would be asking him to do one of several undesirable possibilities, perhaps:

1. try to divine the intentions of the !voters who were not, overall, clear on this, an unclarity typical of the whole affair, with details like the reason for the ban being left almost entirely unstated, so each !voter made their own conclusions about that, largely unstated,
2. make an independent decision which, if I'd allowed the discussion to remain open, would have had a proliferation of arguments on both sides; he's free to make that decision, but I would then, possibly, want him to examine evidence that wasn't presented at AN/I precisely to avoid disruption. He could, however, make sure that the process was not disruptive: he could, for example, ask for an email submission, which he could put up or not, at his choice. (Admins can make decisions based on private evidence, I've seen it many times.) But it would take quite a bit of time for both of us.
3. confirm the original ban but leave WMC in place as the banning admin, i.e., interpreting the !vote as merely a confirmation of WMC; the effect of which would confuse the identity of this as a community ban or the ban of an admin who was confirmed by a community discussion, and it leaves in place and maintains as relevant the issue of involvement. If the ban decision was made by him as advised by the community, WMC's involvement becomes irrelevant to the ban itself, but only to possible later judgment of his action under recusal rules.

Instead, I argue, he has some better possible choices.

1. Do nothing, make no decision until the smoke has cleared and there is a need. That someone is complaining about unclarity about length, he can ignore as moot at this point, he gains nothing by deciding now, and it would establish a need to investigate, which he can avoid by relying simply on WP:SNOW.
2. Fix the length at 30 days, thus avoiding a generally undesirable situation, an indef page ban, particularly one without a stated cause. Divining the cause would require quite a bit of synthesis; rather, if he wanted to fix a term based on reason, he'd need to ask for and review evidence, because the evidence presented was certainly thin and the basis vague. I'll note that WMC didn't request the discussion at AN/I, you did, while attempting to present the issue as a conflict between two other editors (myself and WMC) when that alleged conflict was not escalating and was not causing disruption. I really recommend avoiding debate about this at this time; all this comment here would not exist if you were not raising these questions. Here is a basis he could state for a one month ban, or it could justify a shorter one: Regardless of fault or cause, it's clear that a substantial number of editors believe that the participation of Abd at Cold fusion is problematic. Given that Abd is willing to accept a 30-day ban, nobody actually called for longer than that, and without making any decision on the underlying merits of the ban, I agree that debate over this is disruptive at this time, and, to avoid unnecessary debate, I'm setting the length of the ban at the original suggested length, one month.

Ultimately, my suggestion to him is that he spend no more time on this than necessary; however, if he becomes interested in why I was banned, and perhaps why I shouldn't have been banned, I'd recommend that he discuss this privately with me (and any others he chooses), so that it does not become one more example of debate spreading out when it's not yet in the place where a final decision can be made.

My motive in rejecting the ban itself was to avoid debate. If I was rejecting the ban, no longer was there any need to argue about it with WMC. I did intend to edit the article later in the day, but so what? If what I was editing was a problem, WMC would have blocked me or would have gone to AN/I for assistance. (Simple, the first one, but the latter would be more proper, given the charges of involvement). If it was not a problem, he could decide to block or not. Blocking for non-problem edits could have caused some trouble for him, but that would have remained his choice to make, facing the real situation. My goal in editing would not have been to taunt or provoke him, but simply to work on the article. And I would almost certainly have not edited the article itself, only Talk, since I truly am aiming for minimum disruption. I think I was intending on adding diffs to the poll I'd begun, to make very clear that the !votes reported from the other poll were accurately reported. Claiming that there was dispute over the validity of the polls was actually preposterous. Editors expressed themselves in two different places, that's all.

Then my motive in not responding with full evidence at AN/I was twofold: first of all, I didn't have time. Second, when I saw the SNOW voting, it was clear that a certain "faction" was going to turn out in force, and that this would sweep along some fraction of otherwise involved editors, it had started to do that. If those editors had investigated and produced solid evidence, well, this would all be very different, and I'd be taking up knitting (voluntarily!) (I might anyway). But they did not. I saw that no matter how this went, if it continued, there would be no resolution and it was going to end up at ArbComm in any case.

From the beginning, some Cold fusion POV hasn't been my goal, my goal has always been clean Wikipedia process that generates real consensus, and my participation in a single article, no matter how much effort I put into preparing myself, no matter how much I spent on the resources, no matter how (relatively) knowledgeable I'd become, wasn't worth the disruption of continuing, since it should all be moot in a month anyway. Rather, whatever disruption will occur will take place before ArbComm, where it will be contained and some real benefit may ensue.

Durova, who certified the RfC/JzG 3, advised me that I should probably avoid editing Cold fusion, because, she believed, I'd become too involved. I respect her own decisions with regard to that, she avoids editing articles where she has a strong POV, but I disagree with the overall principle; my own view is that we need all POVs represented at articles, and that what is important is cooperation and willingness to seek consensus. When I accepted the ban as it was appearing, I credited Durova with the principle of accepting an unfair result in order to avoid disruption; I did, in fact, learn that from her. I was warned by many that I'd probably be banned from Cold fusion if I went ahead with the "prosecution" of JzG. So I was quite ready for it. But these people thought that the ban might come from ArbComm, which didn't make a whisper in that direction. I think some editors were quite unsatisfied with that, and so .... we see what happened. What do you think, Enric? --Abd (talk) 00:45, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to know a) when you will resume editing the pages b) if the resuming was subject to you showing some improvement in editing during the ban (*).

The reasons? Basically, since the ban no longer puts conditions on you, I'm worried that you wind up rationalizing that it was all somehow someone else's fault. Because then you won't make any change to your own behaviour. And one month from now we'll be again like before the ban.

(*) (you were already told that you could show improvement by contributing to the mediation process) --Enric Naval (talk) 03:03, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't agree that my editing behavior was improper, so I rather doubt that you'll be satisfied! What I know is that my behavior can upset a significant number of editors, and most particularly, editors who, themselves, are engaging in misbehavior, often subtle and unrecognized. It's very obvious to me why I was banned. It's not exactly your fault. If there is a reservoir of unexpressed, and unexamined opinion, easily formed as a knee-jerk reaction to a situation, opinion that, to shift, would require detailed presentation of evidence and argument, and someone brings up the question, it's likely to snow with this knee-jerk response. Who caused that? If the question was necessary, bringing it up would be a cause, but it's a catalytic cause. It's also catalysis if it's brought up without necessity, but, then, the one bringing it up is more implicated. I didn't take the matter to AN/I, and WMC didn't take the matter to AN/I. You did. So, indeed, you are responsible. I'm responsible for my edits, which are confronting the actions of a minority of editors who are focused on certain issues, and they show up in numbers, almost as if coordinated. You can see this at RfC/JzG 3. That apparent majority vanished at ArbComm, it was unable to find support there. I knew that if I appealed the ban to AN/I, the same result would have taken place. So I didn't. Rather, I kept it at stage 1 of WP:DR. Stage 2 would have taken place if I'd acted contrary to the declared ban and WMC had enforced it by blocking me. The block would then be reviewed by a *single* administrator, and I'd have made sure that this admin had the necessary evidence to make a sound decision. It might have taken days to prepare this evidence. It would have been simple and relatively non-disruptive. Instead, we got an AN/I ban, and many of these, I've seen, get reversed, even if they snowed. That's because editors there will opine and !vote based on knee-jerk responses and little or no evidence. What, exactly, was I banned for? WMC didn't say, and the only argument he's ever given isn't specific, or is result-based, i.e., allegedly, the article has improved, though it's actually easy to show regression from the overall effect of his intervention.

As to the mediation process, I was participating before and I will continue to participate, and the process I was engaged in when banned was designed to determine consensus on version to revert to, and it succeeded in showing that, effectively and efficiently. No, Enric, this isn't going to look good, but I'm not interested in continuing to debate it here. It will be debated at a time and place when real resolution can take place, so that it's over. I have no fear of neutral and careful judgment, indeed, I seek it. --Abd (talk) 15:37, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

*sigh* Well, i already explained you what I thought, and I still think that you should reflect on why you were banned and try to change your behaviour, and it's unlikely that discussion here changes your mind. So, yeah, let's not continue to debate here (consider this topic closed, I'll comment on the poll issue now as a different topic). I guess that, at some point in the future, this will end up in Arbcom, who will take some decision that will (hopefully) decide the matter. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. My plan exactly. --Abd (talk) 02:35, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Link Request

I've proposed an edit (see bottom of CF discussion page) that may need a reference. I think you were the one who found the vote-breakdown of the 1989 and 2004 DOE panels. We can mention the decrease majority vote in 2004 if we have that reference. If you can dredge up the link and put it here, I can copy it to the discussion. Thanks! V (talk) 13:48, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Look at the report that we cite for 2004. It describes the reviewers as being evenly split on the issue of excess heat, but get the exact language, it's important. Half thought the evidence convincing, the other half, as I recall, considered it not conclusive. "Not conclusive" could actually mean, in a court case, "We think he's guilty but the proof is missing," and, remember, because low energy nuclear reactions are very much not expected, that proof should be extraordinary. That other half could even think, this is probably real, but the evidence isn't conclusive. But, given the deeply entrenched opinions of some physicists, in particular, probably some of them really think the whole thing is bogus. It's clear from some of the actual comments that some were not giving it deep consideration, because they didn't understand the evidence, as I showed in Talk page discussion of the internal inconsistency of the 2004 report, they were responding to old issues that had actually been addressed and missing it completely.

Then we have a statement about the origin of the heat being nuclear. Now, if you don't think there is excess heat, you certainly are not going to conclude that it's nuclear! There was one reviewer who was convinced it was nuclear. The rest is reported a bit vaguely, but I think it comes up with a net result that evidence for nuclear origin was "somewhat convincing," was the view of one-third of the reviewers, including the one that was clearly convinced. And two thirds were not convinced. Which is a far cry from "thought this was pathological science."

The overall conclusion of the anonymous author of the overall report that the conclusions were much the same as in 1989 must be taken as referring to the overall resulting recommendation. Every reviewer considered research to resolve the issues was to be encouraged. No specific federal program was suggested, but specific project funding through existing programs. This was the same as in 1989. The DoE was not trying to make a determination about basic science. It was trying to determine if funding -- perhaps massive funding -- should be provided. The possibility of the application of cold fusion to practical power generation has yet to be demonstrated. It is entirely possible that the fragile nature of the Nuclear Active Environment could never lend itself to significant power generation, and until there were better demonstrations of the reliability of the effect, I would agree with this funding conclusion, or might shift it a little toward modest funding, because of the reasonably possibility that a way will be found to harness the effect. We are not ready for the Manhattan-scale project that Fleischmann said he thought would be necessary to resolve the basic science and then solve the engineering problems. I did a totally rough calculation, and, assuming that the Arata results with nanoparticle palladium could be scaled up, I might be able to heat my house with perhaps $100,000 worth of palladium at today's prices. That's about 500 ounces of palladium, which would be highly processed, so the price would be even higher, and today's prices are almost as low as they were in 1989. They've been five times that high. Collapse of the auto market for catalytic converters, the main application. Now, would I want a $100,000 home heater? Maybe someday. Probably not. Using fusion in place in the sun is easier and cheaper and not so easy to steal.

Now, as to 1989. We don't have vote reports. However:

Taubes, p. 422 refers to Dale Stein as having been on the 1989 DoE panel and having been [Nobel Prize-winner]] Norman Ramsey's only allies in his desire to soften the panel's stance on cold fusion.

On p. 303, Taubes lists ten members of the panel, including Huizenga and Ramsey, but doesn't list Stein. On page 309, he notes a panel member, Barry Miller. So we are up to at least twelve members. Taubes reports Ramsay, who was pushing for the panel to note a number of things: that the lack of theory to account for cold fusion might mean nothing more than a failure to find the correct theory, that they should not declare cold fusion does not exist because they could not. Taubes notes that Ramsey had at most three allies on the panel. With others, Taubes attributes the inclusion of softening language in the report to Ramsey's threat to resign as co-chair.

Krivit, writing in the ACS LENR Sourcebook, claims that "only one member of the 1989 panel was willing to entertain the validity of the discovery." Norman Ramsey. Nobel laureate and professor of physics at Harvard University. Huizenga, the co-chair of the 1989 panel (and apparently the driving force) is presented by Taubes as having been highly skeptical from the outset, as I read it, and became what Hoffman calls "an intensely anti-cold fusion warrior." For whatever reason, the 1989 panel was clearly very strongly negative; report was as moderate as it was only because of the threat of Ramsey to resign, which, as a Nobel Prize winner, would have been damaging to the reputation of the panel.

It's patently obvious that something shifted between 1989 and 2004. The 1989 panel was convened in a rush. Little of the confirmation work had been published. Nobody really knew how to get the effect to appear reliably then. But by 2004, reliability was way up, and the demanded nuclear ash had been found and correlation with excess heat reported (which cuts through claims of calorimetry error, unless the error is somehow associated with helium artifact, which I've been unable to imagine could be the case, and for this to take place across multiple research groups using different methods is ... not likely.) --Abd (talk) 17:07, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I might be able to find links for some of the 1989 stuff, or I could provide exact quotations. Krivit is explicit about one member sympathetic, and he identifies the member as Ramsey -- and we have lots of evidence that Ramsey was sympathetic. As is typical of Taubes, he tries to impeach Ramsey with speculations of why he could have been so foolish. He attributes, in one place, Ramsey's sympathy to his friendship with another Nobel Prize-winning physicist, the one who resigned from the American Physical Society over rejection of his papers on theoretical explanations of cold fusion without submitting them to peer review, Julian Schwinger.

It's quite a story, actually, with lots of reliable source, as history. Why aren't we telling this story? I can tell you why, but I'll let you guess. --Abd (talk) 17:13, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, regardless of the story, thank you! V (talk) 20:22, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

From your comment at Talk cold fusion, I'm not sure that you understood that the positions of the reviewers in 2004 was described, in summary, in the report. Those who want to suppress the real nature of that review have long pointed to the last section, the overall conclusions, as if it negated what's earlier. The whole report should be read, and the conclusions of the last section, when it says that the conclusions were similar to those of 1989, is about the funding recommendation. It should be noticed somewhere, as well, that the DoE followed neither recommendation. From 1989, we know fairly well why not: it's because every funding that was being considered was referred to Huizenga, who was utterly convinced that cold fusion was totally bogus, before the review ever began.

This is clear: the 1989 panel overwhelmingly rejected cold fusion, and the report was as mild as it was because the co-chair, the Nobel prize winner Ramsey, threatened to resign if the report wasn't softened. But the report in 2004 was far more favorable, if you read the entire report. To take a conclusion that the "overall recommendation" was similar, based on what would have been the main concern of the DoE (funding), and use that to imply a similarity between 1989 and 2004 that really doesn't exist, on the basic science of the matter, is highly misleading. You can argue from the 1989 report, and from the absolute rejection of funding proposals, the rejection by the American Physical Society, and other facts, that cold fusion was roundly rejected in 1989. From the 2004 report, the opposite conclusion must be drawn, not that cold fusion is real, necessarily but that there no longer is a wall of rejection, and that informed opinion was far closer to balance. And now, I'd say, the mainstream is accepting that research in this field is legitimate and that there are, at least, open questions to be resolved: look at the quality of reports of continued rejection, it's low. A physicists at Rice provides some canned comments that could have been made in 1989, no sign that he's actually read the paper.

We cannot say that cold fusion has been "accepted."

However, in hindsight, we can look at the reasons given for extreme skepticism. For example, branching ratio is under discussion right now. Branching ratio is unique for each possible reaction. If the reaction is d + d fusion, there is an expected branching ratio. Early on, researchers and theorists were proposing d + d -> He4, but that isn't expected to be common from the branching ratio of d + d fusion. And where were the frigging gammas?

Okay, very simple and logical conclusion: probably what was happening wasn't d + d fusion! That's not the only possible nuclear reaction, you know. The Be-8 hypothesis could be summarized, perhaps oversimplified, as d2 + d2 (molecular) fusion. If what Takahashi calls the Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate (TSC) forms, he's done the math using what I think are accepted methods of prediction, it will fuse, 100%, and the product is Be-8, which is highly unstable, it decays in a femtosecond or so to two energetic alpha particles (helium nuclei). The *result* in terms of products and energy is the same as d + d fusion, but it gets there by a different process. The branching ratio objection disappears. That ratio was based on an assumption: if the energy was nuclear, it must be fusion, and since the only stuff likely to fuse in there was deuterium, it must be deuteron fusion, which has an expected branching ratio, which isn't demonstrated.

It was very narrow thinking. The Be-8 hypothesis also answers the problem of conservation of momentum. It predicts a nuclear ash, helium, which is found. It predicts the ratio of helium to excess energy that is found. It predicts that it will be a surface phenomenon -- if I'm right about d2 (the molecular form only exists at the surface, inside the lattice, the deuterium only exists as free deuterons. Because energetic alphas can cause secondary fusion reactions, it predicts elemental transformations, which are found.

It predicts Bremsstrahlung X-rays, which have been detected. It predicts low levels of neutrons, from secondary fusion.

My opinion is that the article can't be improved significantly while dedicated skeptics are sitting on it. What I experienced was rejection of the most reliable sources on the topic, in favor of weak sources, and the root of this is editorial POV that cold fusion is bogus. I think there is little probability of success on improvement, at the article, as long as the basic problem isn't confronted, and it's a systemic problem, not confined to Cold fusion, in fact, the effort at cold fusion is based on a misunderstanding, for cold fusion isn't clearly fringe science any more. It's utterly unlike, for example, other battlegrounds for this group of editors: homeopathy, chiropractic, where, at least, they have general scientific opinion right. It should be realized that these editors don't agree with the Fringe science arbitration. Some of them very strongly disagree, and have been sympathetic to ScienceApologist in the worst of what he did. (Paradoxically, I've been a little bit active in supporting ScienceApologist in his efforts to make significant contributions to Wikipedia while blocked.) The problem isn't SA, exactly. The problem is what I've called Majority POV pushing. These editors mistake majority POV for NPOV. They will claim that they are only trying to keep an article balanced, but MPOV pushing isn't about merely making sure that the mainstream position is clear, but about seeing that minority opinion is excluded as much as possible or only included by quoting criticism or framing every possible statement from a fringe POV with "This is rejected by most scientists." Often without proof of that, which would require some definition of "scientists." With cold fusion, we see peer-reviewed secondary source, the gold standard, ordinarily, being rejected in favor of weak media reliable source, not based on specific research but only regurgitation of old material, as passing mention, all in the name of WP:UNDUE. It's quite obvious what's going on, and because my time has been freed up by the ban, I'm putting the picture together, documenting it. For this article to move forward, the general editorial behavior must be addressed. ArbComm addressed it generally, and banned ScienceApologist, but SA was merely the most visible, blatant representative of the MPOV faction. And they haven't taken the hint. --Abd (talk) 03:19, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Blocked

I've blocked you for 24h for editing at Cold fusion in violation of your ban William M. Connolley (talk) 13:10, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, dear. That method of dealing with a minor correction to an article under ban was cleared with an arbitrator in the SA ban case. Actually, I was in a rush this morning and didn't do a whole-article edit to accomplish it, so something is still broken with that link. This wasn't a point violation, the edit clearly acknowledged the ban and it was self-undone. Please unblock, I'll wait a little while before putting up an unblock template. --Abd (talk) 13:14, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Given the sum total effect of his two edits are zero[2], is this block really needed? I don't know the details of the ban but it seems that no ill intent or effect has occurred. Chillum 13:18, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) The original AN/I confirmation of the ban: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive544#need review of the topic ban of two editors from Cold Fusion.

It was just three days ago that Abd said (his own bolding, mind, just up this page),

"I will respect the ban, which is now a community ban, and not edit Cold fusion or Talk:Cold fusion."

His words and his actions line up poorly. 'Not edit' means 'not edit'. He has been told – several times – that his ban is likely to be lifted if he demonstrates the ability to interact productively with other editors in mediation, and he has fully opportunity to talk about the cold fusion article in that venue. Unlike a topic banned editor, Abd has an appropriate venue in which to discuss this article on Wikipedia. Is it really necessary to go back to the community to confirm that 'Yes, we meant it when we said emphatically that he shouldn't edit this article?' TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:48, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not necessary. I'm banned, I accepted the ban, nolo contendere, and I'm now conducting myself as a banned editor. I'm now also blocked, and, while WMC probably shouldn't have been the one to do this, for the moment I'm assuming he had the right, and I'll provide the evidence requested below. Calm down, please.--Abd (talk) 14:06, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

For reference: [3][4]. When ScienceApologist was banned, he made a series of spelling corrections, more or less daring anyone to block him. Nobody took the bait. Another user then started complaining about every single correction to Arbitration Enforcement. The argument of most of the community was that these edits were harmless and not to be taken as ban violations. However, such edits complicate ban enforcement, because it becomes necessary to look at each individual edit to determine if it was "harmless" or not. So I suggested that SA do what I did in this case, acknowledge the ban in the edit summary, and intention to self-revert, then actually revert the edit. This allows any other editor to fix the article with a single undo, very efficient. Verbal did do this, but complained about a POINT violation and suggested I put the correction on my Talk or in the ongoing mediation. That is far more cumbersome for everyone. That's why I cleared this method with an arbitrator before suggesting it to ScienceApologist. I've suggested it to another topic-banned editor and he used it at least once. SA strongly rejected the suggestion, and that may have been a piece of why he was eventually blocked.

I have been cooperating with the ban, and requested that debate over it cease, this was a matter unlikely to be resolved short of ArbComm. I was quite surprised to be blocked by WMC over this. Hopefully, he will reconsider. --Abd (talk) 13:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

That method of dealing with a minor correction to an article under ban was cleared with an arbitrator in the SA ban case - if you can point me to the diff where an arb clears it in your case, I'll unblock William M. Connolley (talk) 13:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. However, this was not for "my case," since I wasn't banned at the time. I'll post the diff. However, I'll also note that the community has been very clear that bans aren't intended to apply to harmless edits like this one, that's why SA's edits, much more provocative and ultimately intended to weaken the ban, didn't result in blocks, he was ultimately blocked for an obvious intention to defy and disrupt. --Abd (talk) 13:55, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

[5] Notice that this is a response to arbitrator Carcharoth suggesting that ban-violating spelling corrections be ignored (which was actual community practice with SA's repeated corrections, except for Hipocrite repeatedly raising the issue at Arbitration Enforcement and being rebuffed. Carcharoth replied, I agree. The self-reversion is a good idea. --Abd (talk) 14:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

WMC, you've had a hour to look at Carcharoth comment that, together with the community's clear practice, confirmed at arbitration enforcement in the SA ban case, led me to think there was no risk of being blocked over that edit. Are you refusing to unblock? --Abd (talk) 15:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

So, here we had an ArbComm-banned editor editing articles covered by the ban to make harmless spelling corrections, so there is ample precedent that these kinds of edits are ignored except by someone making a POINT, and then a proposal for a method that should answer all remaining objections to these edits, when they are truly non-disruptive, approved by an arbitrator for the SA case. So, indeed, I expected not to be blocked, even if an admin was unaware of the arbitrator opinion. --Abd (talk) 14:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

You shouldn't be surprised. There was a clear ban on any edits to the article and talk page, you chose to ignore that restriction. "It was easier" just doesn't wash. Shell ^babelfish 13:56, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The method I used was designed to be used by any editor, including completely blocked editors, who could do it through IP. I've argued that an edit like this, if actually harmless at worst, shouldn't even be considered a block violation. It shows cooperation with the ban and allows a blocked or banned editor to make a useful edit, while leaving behind no mess to clean up. "Easier" means "easier for the rest of the community to use the information." Not "easier for me," it meant I had to make two edits instead of one, which required that I wait for the page history to load so I could undo it. Thanks for expressing your opinion here, Shell. It helps. --Abd (talk) 14:02, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Has this ever been formally approved by the community as a way to allow topic-banned editors to continue to suggest changes to the articles? (I doubt it) As such, why would you risk being blocked by trying to create a new community process by picking it up by its bootstraps? –xeno^talk 14:25, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Xeno, there was a clear community position that ScienceApologist's spelling corrections were not to be considered ban violations. His ally, Hipocrite, took this to Arbitration Enforcement again and again, and the community yawned, even though, in that case, from pattern of behavior and declared intention, disruption and defiance were the actual motives. So I had that precedent, I was not blazing new ground. What I did that was sort of new (it's been used before) was to declare the ban with the edit, and intention to self-revert, then self-revert. This has been discussed a bit before, it was suggested to ScienceApologist in the view of the community, including some editors who have opined here, and there was no objection that such edits were still ban violations. I did not believe that I was risking being blocked, but, clearly, I did not factor for the intensity of the feelings of others.

Further, if being blocked is what it takes to make a clearly constructive edit, not controversial in itself, and, if mistaken, harmless, because already reverted, then I'm willing to pay that price. It's a small one. I did not make this edit to make a point, and I did not foment this discussion, my response to WMC was brief and to the point. And, I assume, WMC will end this, and the rest of you can go do whatever else it is you do besides harass Abd. Presumably it's more useful. --Abd (talk) 14:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not here to harass you, but since you feel that way, I'll leave you to it. –xeno^talk 14:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

My apologies, Xeno. That wasn't intended to refer to you. It was the plural and general "you" and didn't include at least three editors, I should have been more careful. WMC, for example, is not here to harass me, he's simply following process. --Abd (talk) 14:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying Abd. FWIW, I don't see this process as a particularly good idea; where does one draw the line on what's a simple CE and what might be a continuation of the past disruption? But this is something to be discussed centrally. Best, –xeno^talk 14:59, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand the objection, Xeno, but the alternative should be considered before rejecting the idea. The alternative is to block based on harmless edits. The community has actually de-facto rejected that, in the case of SA, though he was a highly disruptive editor. Self-reverted edits are of no effect unless someone restores them and, as with any reverted edit by a banned or blocked editor, any editor can revert them back in if the editor is willing to take personal responsibility for the edit. I'm confident that the community -- or ArbComm -- will approve of this process, and it doesn't complicate enforcement. For example, self-reverted reverts don't count for 3RR. Because there is nothing left behind, except in history, only a truly disruptive edit would even need attention. What happens, in fact, it happened with SA, is that "harmless" edits can be slowly escalated until the edge is found. But self-reversion removes nearly all the damage from this. If that edit of mine had been an IP edit, would someone be filing an SSP report over it? They'd be laughed off the page. The "violation" was purely technical, not substantial. The only disruption arose from complaint about the edit, not from any difficulty enforcing the ban. The self-reversion made WMC's task easier, not harder. If he wanted to take a strict position, sure, he could block me. Or he could quickly glance at the edit and conclude that this wasn't disruptive in any case, and it's gone, so nothing to do. Or he could have made other choices, none of them difficult. I do know what would have happened if SA had been blocked for the spelling correction he made to Cold fusion. It would have been all over the noticeboards, there would have been major disruption. Hipocrite reverted it out based on the ban, since nobody else was taking the bait with these edits; I reverted it back in, and Hipocrite hauled me to AE over that and other nonsense. Here, the only disruption, really, is on my Talk page, and it isn't WMC causing that, nor is it me. This spun out because other parties, uninvited, started opining here on this, when the evidence wasn't in yet. --Abd (talk) 15:38, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

As someone uninvolved in the related dispute(I don't really know what it is), blocking someone for a harmless edit that he then self reverted seems somehow wrong to me. Even if under a ban, surely the reason for that ban was to avoid disruptive edits, not to prevent simple corrections. It is possible some aspect of this dispute that I am not aware of gives justification to this. How is this block preventative instead of punitive? Chillum 14:06, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The ban was intended to prevent disruption, the block is now enforcement. Rarely is an editor banned from an article and its talk page, but the disruption was extreme enough that a community discussion at ANI upheld both. An editor without Abd's history of wikilawyering his way around policies and disruption, probably would be given more leeway. Shell ^babelfish 14:13, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This debate, spanning three (four?) pages is evidence of the disruption, caused by the edits (both useless) made by Abd against his page ban, which was endorsed by the community. It will hopefully prevent him (and any others watching) from making similar edits to a page while specifically banned from that page. The differences with the SA situation outnumber the similarities, and the continued wikilawyering by Abd is disappointing. Verbal chat 14:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, as long as this is getting scrutiny I suppose I will just leave it up to those knowledgeable about the issue at hand. Chillum 14:17, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments here, Chillum. I'm requesting that this not be taken to a noticeboard, because editors like those above will simply pile in, when the underlying dispute is not going to be resolved, clearly, at a low level. At this point, WMC has suggested that if I provide support for my position, he'll unblock, which is the minimally disruptive resolution of this particular incident. --Abd (talk) 14:26, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if you agree that Ban enforcement must be simple, or bans can be disruptive? William M. Connolley (talk) 14:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. That was my argument for the method I suggested (and, here, used). It respects the ban and makes it very easy to enforce. Most banned editors won't bother, actually, and these edits call attention to themselves; they will only be used by editors who are actually trying to remain helpful. If disruption had been my goal, I would have made the harmless edit without self-reverting, and then you'd have been in the position of a hapless administrator trying to enforce an AC-imposed ban, based on spelling corrections, or worse. I was arguing that this method should be actively promoted with banned editors, because it can build cooperation if taken that way, and then, "harmless edits," not respecting the ban, can be seen as actively disruptive, as they were in the SA case. That's why he didn't take up the suggestion, and dismissed it with extreme contempt. --Abd (talk) 14:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec)I think that comparisons to what SA did are unfortunate for a number of reasons, the most relevant being that the Arbcomm ended up revisiting the case and he ended up with a lengthy ban. The project is worse off for not having him around, just as it is worse off for not having Abd around. As for the block itself, it does not seem unreasonable given Abd's acceptance of that page ban. Hopefully it can be resolved quickly. Guettarda (talk) 14:29, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I have to disagree. It doesn't seem to have simplified things in this case. It replaces the simple test "has Abd edited the page" with "what are the nature of Abd's edits to the page" William M. Connolley (talk) 14:52, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

A self-reverted edit can be identified as such in seconds. The self-reversion, at first impression, resolves any question of exact nature. It is really a suggestion, and, as noted, I could make suggestions in other places where an editor might take it up; this kind of edit simply makes a suggestion in a place where it can most efficiently and easily implemented (*much* faster, and an undo pulls up the whole page, in this case Verbal could have quickly verified that the link worked). Doesn't make the edit right, but it does require another editor to take responsibility for it, making disruption far less likely. WMC, this was approved by an arbitrator, as a general technique. That doesn't necessarily make it right, the community could decide otherwise, but that seems unlikely to me; in the SA case, with an extensive edit where SA was blocked, it turned out that an arbitrator had given permission, but the SA case was complicated, because he really was trying to create disruption. WMC, the argument you made here is the argument I made against SA's "harmless" edits. The technique of self-reversion was developed to address the enforcement problem. Basically, the banned editor self-enforces through reversion. There is, then, no emergency. Should an editor abuse this to, say, post a personal attack, that will, I'm sure, be noticed, and self-reversion would be no protection, for a banned editor, against a finding of disruptive intent. Normally, though, when an editor promptly self-reverts an edit which violates a policy, we don't consider it a violation in the end. --Abd (talk) 15:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Guettarda. Yes, I'm banned. I truly did not consider self-reverted, non-disruptive edits, to be ban violations, and I show why I had that opinion above. The edits themselves actually prove acceotance of the ban, and were simply an efficient way to suggest a change, such that it could be quickly implemented by any editor willing to take responsibility for it. (As actually happened, quickly.) This lengthy discussion was not necessary, WMC is considering the evidence I presented to him, and continued consideration of this is only necessary if he rejects the claim.

By the way, Verbal, are you sure that the fix I suggested with those edits really did solve the problem? I haven't verified it, because of all the fuss here. I hope you did. --Abd (talk) 14:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

It appears that it didn't fix it. When I made the change, I was editing just the section, which doesn't allow checking that the link works. I was in a hurry to leave, and I assumed that the edit was going to be checked anyway. In reverting, the whole page comes up in the edit window, and a reference can be previewed, I think. References with these templates are tricky, it has often taken me a few edits to get it right. I thought the error was obvious, though. Apparently I was wrong. Now, suppose I'd made the suggestion (where? I can't edit the talk page, and this isn't an issue under mediation). It would simply have been more work to find out if it worked or not. With what I did, Undo and Preview the page before saving to check it, and done, one way or the other. Highly efficient, and harmless if wrong. --Abd (talk) 16:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, next time just make a suggestion in someone's talk page, like Hipocrite did[6], or post in the mediation page. You don't need to make any self-reverting edit in defiance of your ban when a simple suggestion will be enough, and you don't fill the history of the article with edits which someone else will have to repeat anyways. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

P.D.: By the way, congratulations in finally deciding to carry on your plan to make a constructive edit in defiance of your ban in order to see if WMC blocked you, so you could then present your evidence to the neutral admin reviewing your block, and so you could force WMC to prove the existance of the ban. The "but I self-reverted" detail is a master touch that I would have never thought about. No, seriously, I am impressed by that detail.

P.D.D.: And, also, I think that banned editors being allowed to self-revert should be considered case-by-case to test the method before making it a standard rule, and that the banned editor making suggestions in his own talk page (like User:Peter Damian did while waiting for his un-ban) or in the talk pages of other users would be a much better method. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Enric, that intention you diff to defy the ban, i.e., to act as if it did not exist, wasn't manifested at all by the pair of self-reverted edits that got me blocked. That was before I acknowledged the community ban. The opposite: those edits acknowledged and cooperated with the ban. As to making suggestions on talk pages, I can't do it in any place where I'd be sure someone would see it, the suggestion that I take this to mediation (Verbal's idea) is preposterous. Gunk up a mediation page with a small error correction? That's not what mediation is for. No, this is the reality: I saw the note about the error on Talk, and I looked at the reference. There was what looked like an obvious error, so I started to fix it. Then I thought, wait, I'm banned. Ah, I know what I can do. Harmless corrections are not supposed to result in blocks, the ScienceApologist case showed that, abundantly, even with many such corrections. But I suggested self-reversion then, first to Carcharoth, on his Talk page, which is widely read, and then to ScienceApologist, and mentioned it in a later ArbComm action. Nobody ever objected, so I assumed this was acceptable.

The idea that I would document the correction on a Talk page somewhere else, causing much more trouble for myself and creating more trouble for someone else as well (perhaps many such editors, as the later ones go to the article and see if the change has been made), is silly. I wouldn't bother for a spelling correction!

I really did not imagine that I'd be blocked. And if you can't accept that, well, it does reveal a lot. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 17:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, for the next time you will be aware that you shouldn't make any edits to the pages you are banned from, not even self-reverted good-faith best-of-intentions gnomish edits. Because now you know that those edits have a high chance of getting you blocked and of causing lots of disruption and drama. I suggest considering the alternative paths to make suggestions for the article that have suggested by me and by other editors. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

No matter how right I think I am, I act to cause minimal disruption. I would certainly not repeat this kind of edit unless the community has approved it, given the reaction that appeared here. I'm quite confident that the community will approve it, and that's why the arbitrator approved the idea, but that confidence doesn't mean that I'll do it again.

Still, on the substance, you haven't thought this through; I've been thinking about this problem for months, and I've suggested it to a banned user, and he did it, no problem. To me, there is great value in this incident, because it shows the attitude and approach of a certain set of editors, and the more visible and obvious this is, the better. However, I did not make this edit to test WMC or anyone, I actually thought, from prior experience, that this would be no problem; I also offered to defend ScienceApologist, vigorously, against charges of ban violation if he did this. Nobody ever opined, in those discussions that this would be a problem. And he wasn't blocked for making spelling corrections. If what he did was acceptable, what I did was even more acceptable, because it left behind no mess. You may argue that this gunks up article history, but it's already gunked up with plenty of errors and revisions of spelling corrections, and, to me, the issue is the value of editor time. This method of proposing a minor change is far more efficient for the other editors, -- not quite for me, though, yes, it would take much more time to describe a spelling correction and where it is than to create an edit showing it. Basically, I wouldn't bother. You'll see, soon enough. --Abd (talk) 17:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to make things clear, the "Committe", as a whole, most certainly does not approve of this method to circumvent a topic ban— and any edit to a page from which one is banned may lead to blocks of increasing duration. I strongly disapprove of your attempts to skirt and stretch the limits of your ban in this way, as this does not demonstrate a willingness to correct the problems that led to your sanction in the first place.

In the meantime, you'll have to direct your good faith efforts to improve the encyclopedia to some other area. — Coren ^(talk) 17:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Coren, this edit wasn't a "circumvention" of a ban, it acknowledges the ban and cooperates with it. I did not plan this, and, from the explanations above, you can see that I expected that nothing would happen, that this was acceptable. So, I was wrong. ScienceApologist did these spelling corrections over and over, without self-reversion, and still wasn't blocked for ban violation because of them. An editor went to Arbitration Enforcement, repeatedly, complaining about these spelling corrections, and was basically slapped down, and it was quite clear that the community didn't want to block editors, banned or not, for making spelling corrections. But it complicates ban enforcement, which is why I suggested self-reversion, which does address that problem. As to the problems that led to my ban, I asked that discussion at AN/I be shut down precisely to avoid the kind of useless debate that I've been advised to avoid by ArbComm. I've never specifically been informed as to the basis for that ban, still. Different editors seem to have different opinions, and the large majority of them expressed those opinions long ago, the AN/I debate wasn't based on any evidence worthy of a ban. But I accepted it to avoid disruption, and the idea that I'd deliberately provoke disruption by making a harmless correction, well, that's not how I operate. I proposed self-reversion as a general method of dealing with the ban enforcement complication created by harmless edits, when I had no idea that I might use it myself. Nobody objected, and the suggestion was quite visible. --Abd (talk) 17:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

By the way, on AN, Coren, you refer to an ArbComm ban. I wasn't banned by ArbComm, but by WMC, originally, and then by a community discussion, closed by User:Heimstern, a neutral administrator. I've been assuming that Heimstern was the maintaining administrator for this ban, not WMC, for involvement has been alleged. I've also asked for this not to be challenged at this time, because this bus is already headed for ArbComm for reasons that will become obvious, and, until then, it's only disruptive to debate it. As matters stand, I'm blocked for 24 hours unless WMC unblocks or recuses, and he's done neither, and that is relatively harmless, compared to, even, the AN report that's just been opened entirely without my knowledge or notification. And the debate here, engendered by some editors piling in here, already clearly involved in long-term dispute with me, stirring it up. --Abd (talk) 17:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Nowhere does Coren refer to an Arbcom ban - he states a "committee" view on circumventing a topic ban via your method. Please provide evidence Coren was referring to an Arbcom ban or strike the comments. Minkythecat (talk) 17:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

[7]. The reference was to a comment "on AN," and I just wanted to make sure Coren understood this. --Abd (talk) 17:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, and Coren gave the view for an Arbcom initiated topic ban. Should that be the general rule? Debatable. Not a debate to be triggered by pointy, wikilawyering. Minkythecat (talk) 18:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Heh. Re your "No, this is the reality: I saw the note about the error on Talk, and I looked at the reference. There was what looked like an obvious error, so I started to fix it. Then I thought, wait, I'm banned. Ah, I know what I can do...." So the error was noted on the talk, for everybody to see, and everyone could have done the job. But you decided that you had to make the edit, but when you thought about saving, you thought 'wait, I'm banned' .. Still you decide to do the edit and revert yourself. Now, my question is, what would you want to accomplish with this edit? You knew you could not leave your edit there, you could perform the edit and self-revert (what you did), but then you could not tell on the talkpage that you actually made the example edit, you could have brought it to mediation, but as telling on mediation that there was an (already noted) error that you could not repair does not make sense, linking to your do-undo couple also does not make any sense there. To which venue would you have wanted to bring this then? Or were you waiting that someone else on the talkpage would say 'YES, look, like this diff by Abd, that is what should be repaired!'?

Abd, you behave in this case like you are the only person who knows how to edit Cold fusion. If it was already on the talkpage, any editor could have done it for you, and you could have asked practically anyone to do it for you (all it takes is a note on a willing editor). But as you even note in the do-edit that you were going to undo, it makes it clear that performing this 'example edit' does not make any sense in any way .. at all. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:19, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

What's going on?

I am not understanding your behavior here, Abd. You were banned from contributing to the Cold Fusion article and then you edited there a few times. I've seen this discussion go on over the past few months, and thought the ban was clear. I have no connection to the matter, but just would like to understand your point of view on this. If it isn't too much trouble, could you explain your viewpoint? - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 18:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I do explain it above. I had no intention to violate or "push" the ban. Some months ago, when ScienceApologist was ArbComm-banned from fringe science articles, he made a series of spelling correction edits to articles covered by the ban. Except for one editor, nobody complained, no admin blocked SA for these. The editor who complained, complained repeatedly at Arbitration Enforcement about the minor edits, and each complaint was closed, with increasing noises that this was disruptive. Clearly, the community did not consider harmless edits to be disruptive. However, I realized that such edits were a problem, because they complicated ban enforcement. So I asked an arbitrator, Carcharoth, about self-reversion as a means for a banned editor to make such harmless edits without complicating ban enforcement.[8] There is a long related tradition that edits which violate policy, if left in place, but which are immediately reverted by the editor, will not ordinarily result in sanction. Carcharoth thought it was a good idea,[9] and I suggested it to ScienceApologist, who rejected it, a rejection which was probably due to his harmless edits being intended, in fact, to complicate enforcement. The idea was mentioned in several places, including before ArbComm, and nobody made negative noises about it -- except perhaps for SA and some friends of his, who thought the proposal preposterous, because these were harmless edits anyway, why should he revert at all?

See Arbitration/Requests, where I made the suggestion, then [10], and a followup at [11]. As well, see [Arbitration/Requests, where this was again mentioned. permanent link to full discussion at Arbitration/Requests. At no point was any opinion expressed that self-reverted edits would not resolve all major issues about "harmless spelling corrections." From the prior routine acceptance of such edits, and the rejection of the complaints about them at AE, I concluded that the community had no sentiment in favor of blocking for minor helpful edits, regardless of a ban. And then self-reversion was an answer to the remaining problem, the complication of ban enforcement. I see here that, now, there is different opinion being expressed and, as would be typical, I won't challenge that opinion, I will respect it pending some resolution by the community or ArbComm. And I'm not asking for that now, because, given the constellation of editors involved, I see no possibility to resolve the issues that have been raised by my ban and block at a low level; therefore, unless WMC recuses, I'm not even putting up an unblock template, because the fuss isn't worth less than 24 more hours of editing time lost. I may change my mind on that.

I will, however, note this comment by Verbal, who has rather loudly complained about my minor edit. Apparently it depends on whose ox is being gored. That just a hint at what's been going on, so that what ensues will not come as a total surprise.

To repeat about the current incident: because of the history above, I honestly did not expect to be blocked for that edit. Now that I've seen the reaction, I will not edit those two pages again until my block is lifted or the community makes some decision allowing harmless self-reverted edits by banned editors. --Abd (talk) 21:10, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Re the diff you link to. In what way did your edit improve the project? I assumed good faith with your edit in restoring it, and then realised that was a mistake as your edit made the problem worse, if anything. SA was banned from nearly every page in his interest area, you have been banned from one for a very short time for continuing disruption. SA is still improving the project. I didn't complain "loudly" and I'm getting a bit bored by your baiting. You were banned from one page and edited that page while banned. Take me to arbcom if you want. Verbal chat 21:24, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

SA was banned from many pages and, knowing he was banned, edited many of them. You apparently thought this was fine. I certainly wasn't banned for trying to fix links, and I'd made link errors before, the method being used at Cold fusion is a tad arcane. My edit didn't make the problem worse, it merely did not fix it. Two pieces of general advice: do not revert back in the edit of a banned user unless you are sure it's okay. Harmless here, but another day it might be a problem. And be careful about what you ask for, you might get it. --Abd (talk) 21:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The SA situation was very different to your situation. I have done nothing to warrant sanction (unlike you) and have nothing to worry about from arbcom. Stop making ridiculous threats. You are banned from editing two pages. That means no edits to either page. Simple. You also have several methods by which you can suggest edits without touching the page. I find it hilarious that you are criticising me for assuming you knew what you were doing, and extending good faith. Please stop. Verbal chat 05:45, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion

Abd, it might be for the best and your own piece of mind if you simply took all the pages involved in your endorsed topic ban off your watchlist, so you're not tempted to touch them further. It would be a shame if a talented editor ended up heading for indef ban territory, and no one sane wants that. rootology (C)(T) 18:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Not a problem, Rootology, thanks for the suggestion, though. Don't worry about indef, I'm not. I developed the procedure I used here for the ScienceApologist case, and cleared it with an arbitrator, it was mentioned on ScienceApologist talk, which was heavily watched at that time, and before ArbComm, and it's been used by another banned editor with no problem. I was quite surprised to see the block this morning, but any fuss about this wasn't raised by me, nor do I support it. --Abd (talk) 21:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Ban: reminder

There seems to be some confusion amongst some parties about the terms and applicability of the ban I imposed on you and H [12]. Please note that whilst the ban was, in my opinion, broadly in line with community consensus now and then it was nonetheless imposed by me. Nor has it been superceeded by any subsequent community ban.

Your edits today, and comments such as I wasn't banned by ArbComm, but by WMC, originally, and then by a community discussion, closed by User:Heimstern, a neutral administrator. I've been assuming that Heimstern was the maintaining administrator for this ban, not WMC suggest that you don't understand the terms of the ban, although I thought my original wording was clear enough. I suggest that in order to avoid more pain you seek clarification should you be in doubt.

You should note that the end of the ban was not clearly specified. Indeed, you should assume it remains in operation until I have reviewed it. As of now, I haven't seen anything in the way of constructive edits that would encourage me to lift it William M. Connolley (talk) 20:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, WMC. As you know, I questioned your right to issue a ban on my editing of Cold fusion because of involvement in dispute with me, not only long-term, but over that article, pending when you banned me, about your editing of the article under protection. I had thought you might welcome the opportunity to recuse yourself, given that the community had determined a ban, but it appears that you don't agree. That's fine, you have the right to do that. But you do realize, I hope, the consequences, and I'm probably not the one to explain them to you, you have a long history of disregarding my advice. Thanks for being clear, it helps. --Abd (talk) 21:20, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

You will know that I have rejected you assertions of involvement [13]. Nothing has changed since William M. Connolley (talk)

Yes, I know that. Wasn't it clear that I know that? Your rejection on your Talk page made that clear, your action blocking me today made that clear, it was even more clear when you did not respond to evidence that showed, clearly, why I believed that what did wasn't a ban violation. And it was clear when you asserted your continued control over the page ban, even though the closing admin at AN/I asserted, on request (not from me!) that it was a "one month" ban. It's abundantly, redundantly clear, undeniably so. And now you have confirmed it again. You want your thumb on this user. Right? --Abd (talk) 01:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Wrong William M. Connolley (talk) 07:43, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that was wrong. You don't want to have to bother dealing with this user, and the fastest way to do that is to declare a ban without explanation, or push a block button. You'd rather not have your thumb on the user, you'd prefer the user to be gone, or to behave the way you want. --Abd (talk) 13:33, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

You still don't get it

Abd, if you are still waiting for standards to be applied equally here, you obviously don't get it. On Wikipedia it's not what you do, it's who you know, and more importantly, whose POV you sympathize with. SA can make spelling edits on pages where he's banned, and his allies will support him and criticize those who will block him; when you do something similar, those same editors will block you for it. That's just the way Wikipedia works, and why it should not be trusted for controversial topics. If you can't learn that lesson, then your stay here will be short.

So forget about cold fusion, even if it's somewhat weighted to the skeptical (which I tend to think it is, though I'm far too uninformed on the topic to make a definitive statement one way or another). It's really not that important in the grand scheme of things. You tried to fix a problem, you failed, now move on and don't give them the rope to hang you. ATren (talk) 22:52, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, ATren. I do get it. I'm not waiting for anything. I'm acting to change the situation you describe. I can't lose, ATren. Please meditate on my favorite page: WP:DGAF. If the situation you describe can't be changed, then I should stop wasting my time with a project that is doomed to fail. The community will make the decision, not me, not you, and not, for example, William M. Connolley. What I'm doing is making sure that it is the commmunity that is deciding, not just a few editors who already had axes to grind, putting together a show that then drags along a few basically neutral editors who don't realize what's going on, and that the community has the information on which to make that decision, and that it has the means to make the decision. There is only one way to do this at this point, given the power of the faction of editors involved; my long-term concepts for Wikipedia would distribute this and make it much more accessible, but it looks to me like the present situation isn't hopeless. Because there is still ArbComm, and it has taken clear positions on what is happening here. --Abd (talk) 01:17, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

-- Serenity Prayer

*Dan T.* (talk) 02:17, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

And God, if I can't have any of that, a friend in the cabal will do. :-) ATren (talk) 03:03, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

What happens as a cabal begins to unravel is that the less extreme members smell the coffee and back down, seeing the writing on the wall, to blend my metaphors. What it takes to do this, generally, is a carefully facilitated deliberative environment, which is a lot of work, and that's one reason why it doesn't happen here much. In the long run, though, it's necessary, for that work can generate true and stable consensus, whereas the quick fixes, especially blocks and bans, just postpone and perpetuate conflicts. Consensus is an essential element in the theory behind Wikipedia, for the only way to judge NPOV, in the end, is through consensus, it is impossible for an individual to authoritatively judge NPOV, unless, somehow, the individual has managed to avoid forming any points of view, which is more often associated with ignorance and incapacity to understand than with an actual and balanced understanding.

There are individuals who have points of view, but who also understand NPOV and who are therefore able to help form real consensus, because they can understand all sides, though not as well as those attached to a side, usually. Short of that, editors with a POV, if they are civil and willing to participate in real communication, remain quite valuable. Because of my own POV, I may not detect unnecessary POV imbalance that favors my POV, I may easily imagine that the text is neutral; thus, to find stable NPOV text, I must trust editors who have different points of view, that there is some reasonable basis for their objection. And then we work together to find something that will enjoy maximized consensus. And this can always be open to improvement.

If we want a truly neutral project, we must seek maximized consensus. That doesn't mean compromising basic values in order to appease extremists, but it does mean that we don't immediately assume that a minority opinion is to be rejected out of hand. It means that as the same time as we are firm against corruption of our reliability and verifiability policies, we are open and welcoming to editors with divergent points of view, and we invite them to join in our process. If we have documented the rationale behind article text-as-it-is, we can invite these editors to review this and its history, and to point out anything that was missed, and editors with a POV sympathetic to the new editor can help the editor understand why things are the way they are, or, alternatively, advocate changes that will, again, broaden consensus.

Until we understand the value of maximized consensus, we will continue to experience disruption over persistent conflicts. If this is not addressed, we will continue to burn out editors and administrators, we are fouling our nest, building up reservoirs of ill-will toward Wikipedia, contempt for our reliability and accuracy, and for the neutrality of our administration, and on and on, all the while believing that it's just trolls and POV-pushers who are at fault. --Abd (talk) 16:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

How about:

• Keep It Simple, Stupid.
• Keep Coming Back, It Works.
• This Too Shall Pass.
• Easy Does It.
• First Things First.
• One Edit at a Time.
• Live in the Now.
• Turn it Over.
• If Consensus Seems Far Away, Who Moved?
• We are Only as Sick as Our Secrets.
• More Will Be Revealed.
• No Pain, No Gain.
• Let It Begin With Me.
• To Keep It, You Have to Give It Away.
• Faith is Spelled A-C-T-I-O-N.
• Get Off The Cross, We Need the Wood.
• Don't Take Yourself So Damned Seriously.
• Slow But Sure.
• Be Nice to Newcomers, One Day They May Be Your Mentor.
  

--Abd (talk) 02:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

This too shall pass... like a kidney stone. *Dan T.* (talk) 03:27, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

And won't we feel better when it does? It hurts for a little while, then it's over. --Abd (talk) 11:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't fully agree with Atren, but he does raise one point that you might want to ponder, so I'll amplify it: this process has thrown up the fact that you have remarkably few friends on wiki, in the sense of people prepared to speak up for your point of view. The few that have spoken somewhat for you have done so weakly and conditionally, and have been careful to restrict themselves to appearing as advocates for process. In turn, those people that have done this themselves have few friends. The contrast with SA is perhaps instructive. I believe that the fundamental reason for this is that SA made a large number of constructive edits that many people agree with, even if he fnially managed to overstep the bounds. I don't see that in your editing history William M. Connolley (talk) 09:17, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

You've missed something, Dr. Connolley. Sure, you don't see that in my history, and it is often because I do most of my work in Talk, building consensus where there has been conflict. It was happening at Cold fusion until Hipocrite began blatantly disrupting it with long-term edit warring and incivility. He knows how popular his action would be with editors like you. However, long-term, I've been quite successful, with "causes" that, at first, because of the shouting of the mob, seemed like dead horses. JzG was warned, within a day or so of my discovery of his abusive blacklistings, that he could lose his bit over this. Now, JzG was very popular; I'd say he escaped desysopping for one reason: the prior warning in the last AC hearing he faced was a general one and not directed specifically at him. Atren was right, and, again, you don't realize that I've known this since I became active on Wikipedia.

But I also know how to deal with it. If I were simply opposing a majority, disrupting process, etc., it would be one thing. But I'm actually favoring what, when it's tested, is a largely silent majority, and I've been learning to do it with minimal disruption. It only looks like a minority because those who are highly motivated to control Wikipedia to their taste show up preferentially. Your ban made that obvious. I'm not going to bother documenting it here, I'll do that later, but remember RfC/JzG 3? Two-thirds of editors commenting there opined that JzG had done nothing wrong, and approved calls for me to be banned. ArbComm ignored those calls and proceeded to the substance. JzG had violated policy, and he was admonished. Fifteen editors supported your ban, there. However, ten of those had previously voted to support a ban for me in RfC/JsG3. And of the five left, only one was an early voter. It's the mob, Dr. Connolley; the AN/I report was, like your ban itself, remarkable in being conclusion-oriented rather than evidence-oriented.

So what about my friends? Why didn't they show up? Well, for starters, I asked that the discussion there be shut down, because with that much snow so quickly, there is no way that the matter could be resolved short of ArbComm. If we are going there anyway, why debate the matter in a forum that can only inflame the situation? I also asked supporters in email to not join the fray. Why haven't I put up an unblock template? My sense is that probably I'd have been unblocked if I did; you had a chance to make that decision yourself, if you had wished to avoid further process. But you are utterly confident that you will be sustained.

I'm not so certain. However, I'm a long-time veteran of organizational conflicts, and as with other pioneers -- and I am a pioneer -- sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. It could seem that I'm staking a lot on a small thing, but that's what I did with JzG. Those small things are wedges that open up an issue and make it clear. Blacklisting is not to be used to control content. ArbComm doesn't make content decisions, and it may take a long time before that is a reality instead of an ideal. But, little by little, we are getting there.

I didn't put up an unblock template because wasting the time of even one administrator to gain a few hours of editing for me personally wasn't a positive trade, and the time to put up an effective argument that didn't compromise the situation in some way wasn't available. With a longer block, you'd see a template.

JzG blacklisted lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com. The NET blacklisting was the most blatantly POV, it was lifted during the RfAr/Abd and JzG. Lenr-canr.org is tougher, because it's meta blacklisted, and meta process is more impenetrable, so it's necessary to do whitelisting here first; when that is done, there will be, I predict, sufficient basis that the global blacklisting will be lifted, I simply want it to be an easy decision there before I raise it again. A series of links have been whitelisted, and that process should soon be complete. Out of many pages, with one page, sufficient appearance of copyright violation appeared that I withdrew it. I didn't cherry-pick the links to be the best, rather I presented them in alphabetical order by author from the bibliography of the article. I don't fight battles that I expect I will lose, Dr. Connolley. But it often looks like I will, or even that I have, to people like you.

As to people like me, you are aware, I believe, that I have a firm ADHD diagnosis. One of the classic characteristics of people with ADHD is that we fail to sense, adequately, informal social pressure. You reacted to my edit to Cold fusion with an assumption that it was provocative, and that is, in fact, quite a normal response. Any "normal person" would have "known" that this would cause a disruption. I'm not normal. I didn't know it. I was not doing what SA did, testing the limits of the ban. I simply saw the change, started to make it, remembered that I was banned before I saved the edit, remembered all the clear precedent with ScienceApologist that the community -- including you, Dr. Connolley -- dislikes sanctioning harmless edits even if they do technically violate a ban, remembered my own argument that such edits do cause a problem with ban enforcement, but also my suggested solution that had been very publicly proposed with no opposition being expressed, remembered that I'd suggested this to another banned editor and he had successfully used it (though with a more complex edit than I'd have suggested), and, so, quite naively, story of my life, I made the edit with a self-revert. It wasn't done to test your resolve or to make a point, it was done, quite simply and straightly, as an effort to improve the article in a small way.

People like me, historically, have been condemned to death for "corrupting the youth," for heresy, imprisoned, exiled, and murdered. I'm not complaining. I understand why we are so unpopular, sometimes, and even sympathize with it, but, long-term, we prevail, those of us who didn't get stuck on some truly monstrous cause, as some of us do. We are the change agents in the social organism; if we are allowed to run the place, we will typically wreck it. We are, properly, advisors, not executives, and societies which reject us even in that role, historically, die, because they cannot adapt to changing conditions. Balance, Dr. Connolley. It takes patience and tolerance, and administrators who burn out, as you have, lose those qualities, assuming they ever had them, and, for that reason, until we have mechanisms in place to rescue them and value their lengthy service and put it to better use, desysopping becomes necessary, and we will see more of it, I predict. JzG has completely stopped editing. Maybe he will be back, I certainly hope so, but I also see why that might be quite difficult for him. When he started to burn out, he became grossly uncivil. When that was sanctioned, his frustration was channeled into direct action while involved.

You've been quite uncivil, but not in such a gross way, probably because, for a long time, you've acted with the tools and, because you've picked targets that were in a minority as to POV, you could get away with it for a time. By definition, these editors have relatively few friends, except among those who recognize the problem with suppression of minorities.

This is my Talk page, Dr. Connolley, you can expect frank opinion here. What I've described or claimed here will mostly be documented with clarity, sufficient to punch through the noise, as I did with JzG. You had very ample warning, this won't take the five months that it took for me to address the JzG problem. You see, I do respond to criticism. I didn't drag this dispute all over Wikipedia, as I did, to some degree, with JzG, hoping that one of his friends would notice it and give him some good advice. I made one attempt to recruit someone who might intervene and warn you, publicly or privately, and you saw the result with TenOfAllTrades. I didn't take this to a noticeboard, others did anyway. I acted simply and directly with respect to your declaration of ban, causing minimal disruption except as others decided to disrupt. I conclude, Dr. Connolley, that, like JzG, you don't have real friends here. Real friends, when they see me doing something they think improper or unskillful, give me advice, in public or in private, and I listen. Much focus was placed in RfC/JzG 3 over me, but I had extensive off-wiki cooperation in putting that together, I don't act alone, and I'm not alone now. You have done a great deal of damage, and it's time for it to stop. --Abd (talk) 11:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

building consensus where there has been conflict - I don't think many other people will recognise that description. My sense is that probably I'd have been unblocked if I did... you are utterly confident that you will be sustained no (IMO) and no. people with ADHD is that we fail to sense, adequately, informal social pressure - don't understand. There was an explictly written ban. I don't see where informal social pressure comes in. You reacted to my edit to Cold fusion with an assumption that it was provocative - no; I reacted to it as a simple obvious violation of the ban. People like me, historically, have been condemned to death for "corrupting the youth," - sounds like the Galileo defence to me William M. Connolley (talk) 13:09, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

They won't see it for sure if they only look at evidence presented by those who very much oppose actual consensus. The issue about historical treatment of Galileo, etc., isn't a defense. Socrates was actually corrupting the youth, by asking questions that exposed the obvious. Gandhi actually did break the British salt laws. However, many editors at Wikipedia have assumed that WP:IAR was for everyone, to their wiki-doom. This is useless, here, WMC, unless you want to continue posturing. If you are right, then ArbComm will surely see that, and my intention is for this to be quite efficient. Because of the forces arrayed, it could get messy, but that's intrinsic here, given the unresolved situation (the big one, not my ban, which is trivial by comparison) and I think it likely that ArbComm will take some effective steps toward long-term resolution. The issues are much bigger than any single user or administrator, nor was prior ArbComm ruling adequate to fully address it; there is now clearer evidence to present. --Abd (talk) 13:40, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I should explain one point in detail. "There was an explicitly written ban." Sure, and I'd explicitly accepted it, even saying that I wouldn't edit the articles. But WP:IAR is based on an understanding that no written, highly specified rule can apply to all situations; this is the common-law principle of Public policy. I saw self-reverted edits, not disruptive in themselves, as not violating a ban, and because they don't leave a trace in the article, only in history, they weren't "editing the article." Where does ADHD come in? A normal person would know that some editors would consider the edits a violation anyway because of the political situation, even though those same editors obviously did not consider, some of them, SA's spelling corrections to be ban violations (along with many other editors not politically aligned with SA or even on the other side, as I came to be). In other words, I assumed, habitually, and quite wrongly, that the community response would be rational. Literally, Dr. Connolley, I was shocked that you blocked me. You can say over and over, as others have said, that I shouldn't have been shocked. But I was. It was not expected. Believe it or don't. On the other hand, once I was blocked, I could certainly understand why, both from a neutral perspective (neutral editors would be likely, absent prior clarifying discussion, to differ on this) and from a political perspective (this already inclined to prefer my absence from the project will tend to agree with it, no matter what reasons are presented), I was blocked. I am not stupid, just inattentive. That's the "Attention deficit" part. Had I anticipated that I'd be blocked, I would not have made the edit, period. --Abd (talk) 13:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

But WP:IAR is based on... - if you're invoking IAR then you're outside established law; you shouldn't be surprised by what happens subsequently. Or rather, you can be surprised, but it won't help (you've said, above that I'm not complaining, though whether in this context I'm not sure). I assumed, habitually, and quite wrongly, that the community response would be rational - I believe that the response has been rational. We can disagree on this, if you like. But you should then be aware that your and our judgement of what is rational is different. unless you want to continue posturing - you get an allowance of a certain measure of impoliteness, in recognition of the fact that blockee's are often unhappy with their situation. But I don't care to be accused of posturing; if you continue in that vein I'll drop down to minimal-interaction and cease offering oh-so-helpful advice. BTW, notice that blocks are (all together now) preventative not punitive. Had your response to the block been "oops, I won't do that again" I would have unblocked you. I still could William M. Connolley (talk) 15:29, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

WMC, you invoked IAR when asked to justify your ban. So, indeed, you should not be surprised at what ensues. I did not invoke IAR to justify a disruptive action, but only to point out that rigid, narrow interpretations of rules, where technical compliance is paramount and the substance is ignored, are generally rejected by the community. I was shocked, but, on reflection, not surprised, i.e, post-facto I certainly understood it, perhaps even better than you, since I'm compiling evidence on the overall situation. I'm telling you what I thought. The report above about what I thought is accurate, and no amount of post-facto rationalization changes that. You may cease offering advice, I did not ask for your advice, and I don't trust it; I definitely would not want to follow your path. I recognize the danger I'm placed in from what I do, and consider what I do to be an essential element in our overall process, worth the risk. The community will agree, or not. ArbComm will decide if I'm, overall, useful or not.

I did write that I wouldn't do that again, yesterday, it had no effect on your response. I'm off the block now, what, exactly, are you suggesting you could do? Block log annotation? Why?

The status quo is that you have banned me and claim continued jurisdiction over the ban, and you have denied involvement. The ban has been confirmed by a community process with a neutral close. There are possible arbitratable issues here, but no need to arbitrate unless an actual challenge is raised, and I have deliberately avoided raising any community-level challenge. That's why I did not appeal to AN/I over your ban, and why I did not even put up an unblock template over your block. I am banned from editing Cold fusion and the talk page thereof, and the length of the ban doesn't need to be determined now. I did not deliberately violate the ban, but that's moot now, unless your action comes up for review, which isn't happening at this point (well, the AN report, filed by an independent editor, is still open, I should ask for a close). I assume you have no problem with the status quo, so, unless you have something useful to accomplish here, how about going away for now? --Abd (talk) 15:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

unless you have something useful to accomplish here - that raises the question of what is useful. I shall intrude on your patience this one time with non-essentials, and after that return only if essential, leaving misrepresentations uncorrected, unless you invite me otherwise. I did write that I wouldn't do that again, yesterday, it had no effect on your response - alas, I did not see that, there is rather a lot of to-and-fro here. I would suggest that, should this unhappy situation ever re-arise, you make any such statement more prominent. WMC, you invoked IAR when asked to justify your ban - an easy mistake to make, but nonetheless a mistake. You are probably thinking of [14]. That was merely a (successful) attempt to deflect a fishing question by pointing out what the user concerned purported to believe. Subsequently [15] I was clearer, though perhaps still not a model of clarity, when I said I'm using common sense. I might make up a process if you forced me to. So far, no-one has forced me to William M. Connolley (talk) 18:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

There's a definite goose and gander situation at play when Abd and Science Apologist are treated differently for their technical violations of bans. *Dan T.* (talk) 17:22, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Abd and ScienceApologist were treated the same way at bottom. Both chose to challenge their bans by violating their letter while, arguably, upholding their spirit. In both cases, sanctions were ultimately applied for gaming the system. Granted, it took ScienceApologist a little longer to reach that point than it did Abd. If you're the sort of person whose first reaction on stubbing his toe is to shout: "Ow... the Cabal put another rock in my way!", then I suppose you see cabalism at play. If you're a cynic, then perhaps you understand that no form of adjudication in human history has been free of inconsistency and capriciousness, so it seems foolish to expect Wikipedia's ad hoc processes to prove exceptional. If you're a pragmatist, then maybe you think that we actually learned something from the handling of ScienceApologist - namely, that we didn't do him or ourselves any favors by cutting him so much slack - and that we are applying those lessons and learning from past experience. If you're the sort who believes that our mission is to create a serious, respectable reference work rather than a Utopian, egalitarian social community, then perhaps you view the handling of Abd and ScienceApologist as reasonably congruent with the site's goals. MastCell ^Talk 17:58, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

MastCell, you have drastically misunderstood the process that led to SA's site ban. He was site banned because he was deliberately, as shown by a pattern of edits as well as declared intention, trying to disrupt Arbitration enforcement. As part of that process, I suggested self-reversion as a method for him to make those harmless edits without complicating ban enforcement. He rejected that vehemently, and that rejection was, in fact, an additional clue as to his disruptive intent and may have added weight to the arguments for his site ban.

I made one edit with one character removed, and self-reverted, acknowledging the ban and therefore explicitly respecting it, whether I agree with it or not. This is not remotely similar. SA wasn't blocked for making spelling corrections. I was. Enough. This is to be documented at this point, not debated except in limited fora, and even there, less is more. DTobias, please don't poke the bears. They can make quite a ruckus.

As a result of the discussion at AN, another editor who had used self-reversion to effectively and nondisruptively make a suggested edit to an article under a ban, is now prohibited from doing that. It was working, and mindless literalism is now preventing it. Because of the flap over my edit -- entirely unexpected, based on history -- I'm not doing it again unless the community finds a consensus permitting it, or ArbComm does, it might have a chance to do it incidentally. --Abd (talk) 18:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

To be very explicit, your edits here are now considered harassment, MastCell. Please don't edit here unless you have an essential notice to provide. The cause of this: your description above of my action yesterday as a "choice to challenge" my ban. I have repeatedly stated that I did not believe that the null pair of edits were a violation, nor did I expect that they would be taken as such. To make your assertion, you must hold the opinion that I'm lying. I don't welcome that on my Talk page, so retract it or go away. --Abd (talk) 18:22, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying that you're lying. I'm describing the way your actions may appear to some outside observers. That appearance may not match your intentions. Such situations are not uncommon, particularly in online environments, and bear no specific implications toward your character. However, I have no wish to annoy, harass, or insult you, so I will post no further here. You remain welcome on my talk page if you have anything you'd like to discuss. MastCell ^Talk 20:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, MastCell. Look, you did state the action as a "choice" to "challenge," which indicates intention. I think you should actually apologize for that. Absolutely, my actions may appear as a challenge, that's not controversial. I get a tad suspicious, though, when the appearance is claimed to be the reality, over and over, as it has been. Sure, it could look like I intended to challenge, if one doesn't look too carefully. Wouldn't it be odd to challenge it by acknowledging it with a self-reversion? I'd say these editors haven't thought the matter all the way through. SA didn't self-revert, you can be sure, and he rather violently rejected the suggestion because, indeed, his motivation, his "choice," was apparently to challenge. If I'd wanted to challenge the ban, I'd simply have made a harmless spelling correction, as he did. That would be much more of a challenge. Back to your original comment, SA was not upholding the spirit of the ban, because his declared intention was to disrupt and discredit it. I had no such intention, nor did I repeat the actions. If WMC had unblocked quickly, once I made a reasonable claim to have not intended to violate the ban, backed with expressed support for the idea from an arbitrator, and all the other evidence showing plausibility for my claim of belief that it wouldn't be a problem, no problem with his block, in itself. Until the policy is established, if it is, it's a bit of a risk, but I still say that if someone is blocked for ban violation, and the edit turns out to be actually harmless, and it was self-reverted (or even simply harmless), the block should be lifted until and unless it appears that the actions are provocative and intended to disrupt enforcement. Further, if an admin enforcing a ban thinks self-reverted edits are a problem, they can warn. Normally, the editor has traded a good edit for the time of an admin to warn them. Not a bad trade, it should be quick. However, self-reversion really should solve the enforcement problem, because it's effectively self-enforcing. (I have a problem with WMC being the one to make that block decision, but that's an entirely different matter.) --Abd (talk) 22:34, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't my intent to question your honesty or personal integrity. To the extent that my comment came across that way, I apologize unreservedly. I think we agree that your actions "may appear as a challenge", which is what I was getting at. If you feel that I'm making a superficial or careless reading, then I can accept that. I certainly don't mean to upset you - I'm just trying to explain the view from my perspective. You're free to accept it, reject it, or - if you feel I'm being unfair or just annoying - ask me to leave and not darken your talk page any further. I can accept and respect any of those responses. MastCell ^Talk 23:12, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll take what I can get. Thanks, MastCell, have some tea. Or do you drink coffee? --Abd (talk) 23:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps better to draw upon a wider range of examples. It's a little unsettling to see how often one individual's name has been raised here even though he hasn't been participating in this conversation. Durova^Charge! 20:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

topic ban vs. page ban

Abd, "topic ban" is a very vague term that can mean anything from "don't edit page X" to "don't edit anything that remotely has anything to do with X" up to "don't even discuss about topic X". That's why, in the latest Arbcom cases, the topic ban remedies make a painfully detailed list of what is and what is not covered by "topic banned from X", and what sort of pages are included.

People are used to saying "topic ban" even for someone who is banned from one article but not from its talk page. That's basically because every article covers one topic, so for most topics a topic ban would cover only one page. I find it good that you want to correct them to clarify that they should say "page ban", but notice that some of the persons already know the extent of the ban, and they might get irritated if you keep insisting in that they type every time "banned from editing cold fusion and its talk page" instead of simply "topic ban". I humbly suggest that you ask them to use "page ban", and that you don't push them if they refuse and they want to keep using "topic ban", since that's not exactly the way to make friends with editors. Just my humble suggestion. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:11, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

If you note the contexts, people have implied that I should respect the "topic ban" and that therefore I should edit in other areas. Now, I'm not an SPA, by any means, but I have been focusing on cold fusion, and I have a lot of work remaining, which I've spent five months preparing for. Much of it doesn't involve editing the article or the talk page, but requires that I read the article and the talk page. "Topic ban" implies staying away from the whole topic, and there was some confusion at first as to whether or not this meant I couldn't participate in the mediation. I only bring up, for the most part, the topic ban/page ban distinction when it's relevant to this presumption that I'm supposed to stay away from the entire topic.

The majority of the people involved, Enric, are way beyond my worrying about making friends with them. They have actively pushed for my ban for a long time, as have you. I don't consider someone who is trying to get me excluded to be a friend, unless I have reason to know that they are doing it for my benefit, and even then I might tell them to bug off. And I don't get that here, Enric, with respect to you, that your concern is for me. No, I think you have other motives, and it's not for me to tell you what they are. Hipocrite did reveal his, once he thought he was safe, that the community would approve. I can tell you this. The community will not approve, once it becomes aware. --Abd (talk) 01:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

On your first paragraph: ah, but that's a different question. That's the question of several editors who have given you advice to start editing on other areas to demonstrate that you aren't only interested in cold fusion, and to learn more about NPOV and other policies and guidelines by seeing how they are applied in other areas. Myself, I have learned a lot by editing in topics that didn't interest me at all beyond getting their articles out of the sorry state in which they were. So, I also give you that advice if I haven't given it already, the advice that you spread your editing to other topics. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:11, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Enric, I have extensive editing experience here, unrelated to Cold fusion. I was also an editor, professionally, in the past. I don't think I need to establish my credentials. I would not have objected to a ban from editing the article, because my general interest is not, usually, articles directly, it is finding editorial consensus based on careful consideration of arguments and evidence, which, when there is long-term dispute, takes much more discussion than some editors like. My goal is a stable cold fusion article, which will, probably, in the end, require a series of articles, there is far too much reliably sourced material for one article, and past efforts to fork, properly, were shut down by you-know-who.

To edit an article on a science topic can take a lot more knowledge of the science than the average editor has. I cleaned up, yesterday, a bit of work that you had done on a fusion-related topic, where you had reworded a source. It was really bad, Enric, you had no idea what you were doing, making blooper after blooper. I haven't review the article to see what was there before, and your attempt to fix it may have led to improvement, especially after some review, and after review of my edits, etc.

I have now spent five months researching this field; I had the science background to generally understand the material and its significance. I can understand Shanahan, for example, though he doesn't make it easy. I see your work, and it certainly seems to be intended as helpful, but you really don't have an overall picture of what the science is and what's important. As you might recall, I tried to explain to you what "association" meant, between two different results. Instead of understanding it, you simply asserted reliance on the wording in a source, which was, as I later showed on Talk, a blatant error in that source, easily seen because it's internally contradictory, i.e. the source contradicts itself. You have never shown that you understand why experiments that correlate helium measurements with excess heat measurements are far more powerful and important than experiments which simply find helium or simply find excess heat, and the example you have insisted on in the article not only does not show association, looking at it, I'd conclude that there was no association, when the underlying data, the primary source and quite a bit of secondary source review on the topic shows the exact opposite: helium is strongly correlated with excess heat, and not at any random relationship, it's at the expected heat released when helium is formed from deuterium.

This is exactly what the 1989 DoE review claimed was missing, that kind of evidence. And the 2004 DoE review overall conclusions were reached by someone -- we don't know who -- who missed the very powerful evidence given in the review paper, and wrote conclusions that demonstrated this conclusively. It's not about disagreement over the science, in this case, it's about a conclusion that states that something is in the report they were reviewing, that isn't there, and that ignores what was there, as if it didn't exist. This summary conclusion was probably the work of a single individual. It wasn't reviewed, it may not even have been edited. Yet you insisted on this over the much stronger sourced information on excess heat - helium correlation from quite a few reliable sources. And this data hasn't been contradicted. It's been largely ignored, that's true, but the ignorance has been vanishing, there is increasingly review and peer-reviewed publication in the field, but we have a collection of editors who are strongly holding on to views they committed themselves to when it would have been more defensible. --Abd (talk) 15:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Response to Kim

I have removed your most recent post at the cold fusion mediation. There was nothing inherently disruptive about the material you presented, and I would not be surprised or upset if you were to reuse it in other parts of the mediation. However, to post 5kb of rambling text after I had specifically asked participants to state their opinions plainly and clearly (which Kim did) is disruptive. Please make an effort to allow the other involved editors to quickly weigh in on such occasions. Thank you. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:22, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

No problem. It's there in history if it's needed. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 23:36, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Outside view

Hi Abd, I've been vaguely following what's been going on here on your talk page, having added it to my watchlist awhile back when you had come to my page to make some helpful suggestions regarding a content/NPOV dispute. I don't have any involvement in the cold fusion debate, but I do think it is good that editors try to make sure that even the most controversial issues cover all sides in a way that lets readers form their own conclusions. It would nevertheless seem to me that your editing style has led to conflicts which are not tending towards resolution at this time; that does not mean you are wrong (I express no opinion on that), but nevertheless it may be counterproductive to continue editing in this topic area until things cool down a bit. Maybe take a voluntary break from the subject for a few months? Just a suggestion, feel free to take it or leave it. There's plenty of other areas of Wikipedia that need work, and the world won't end (hopefully) if the cold fusion article is less than perfect for a little while longer. —Whig (talk) 14:57, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Right now, it's moot, I'm banned from the pages for a month. Long term, I should clarify something. Five months ago, I was totally neutral on the topic. Because of a problem I encountered with a POV blacklisting, I started paying attention to it. I read sources and eventually bought most of the major books on the topic. I invested a great deal of time becoming familiar enough with the subject that I could understand what had been happening with the article. There was one other editor who had that level of understanding of the issues, and he was topic-banned in December of 2008, for a year. A series of editors, some of whom are openly in defiance of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science, have been suppressing and removing reliably sourced material on the basis that it's "fringe," going way beyond what would be legitimate in keeping the article balanced, while adding negative material from much weaker sources. To counter this requires a knowledge of the sources and the field, or it's quite hit-or-miss. We have had participation with the article, over the last few years, by two experts in the field, other than our editor banned last December: One is very well-known, is published and mentioned in reliable source. Not necessarily suitable as a Wikipedia editor, definitely COI, but extremely knowledgeable, he edits cold fusion papers for conference publication and for peer-reviewed publication, as is happening increasingly. He's been banned, not for disruptive editing, but for "POV-pushing" -- which, as a COI editor, he'd be expected to do. The other editor is a critic of cold fusion, who is known for a narrow criticism he's made, and has published under peer review. He is nowhere near as generally knowledgeable as the expert we banned, and he strongly pushes his POV. Both of these experts are uncivil, it's a common problem with experts and Wikipedia. But we have differential enforcement. It's a serious problem; our article is now quite warped, overall, and anyone who sees what is going on and tries to protect the article and improve it from reliable sources will run into serious opposition, as I did.

Sure, I could do something else, and I do have other interests here, big ones. But I made a major investment in this topic, which should not be wasted, so, instead, I'm pursuing dispute resolution to the next appropriate stage, which, given the depth of what I've encountered and can document, will be ArbComm; that's why I haven't contested the ban, why I asked that discussion of it be shut down though my friends had had no opportunity to comment, why I did not even put up an unblock template for a 24-hour block based on a harmless attempt to correct a typo on Cold fusion -- and a spelling correction of the same article under ban by another editor was actually taken to Arbitration Enforcement and was roundly rejected by the community as unworthy of attention. Selective enforcement is a crackerjack way to get rid of editors you don't want while trying to keep ones you like. And it has to stop, and, at this point, there is only one way. It takes time to put together an RfAr, that's the only reason for delay.

My goal, lest it concern you, is not some POV, but an informed consensus. --Abd (talk) 15:18, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I understand what you are saying and agree with your goal of improving coverage of all sides of this topic, and furthermore recognize the perceived unfairness of the situation. I doubt that ArbCom will want to be involved in overturning a temporary topic ban. You are certainly free to exhaust whatever process you think appropriate but you shouldn't expect anything to change overnight. I strongly encourage you to limit your wordiness; I know you've received this advice from other people, and you have reasons for writing the way you do, but it does not aid in efficient communication when you cannot make your points concisely. Please feel free to come to my talk page to discuss anything about this, I'm maybe someone who at least has no conflicts with you past or present and perhaps I can be helpful. —Whig (talk) 15:57, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

NRCPRM2026

Listen, I am a single purpose account in that my single purpose is to bring this communities attention to Mr Salsman’s activities. If you have dealt with him as I have (minus the workplace harassment) then you know just how relentless and deceptive he is.

Salsman has a serious mental defect, and that’s not meant as a nock or low blow, he is a truly disturbed person and needs help. That’s why we banned him from the RadSafe list serve (even with his repeated attempts to get back on there). RadTek (talk) 14:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

This isn't about Salsman, RadTek, though you may have correctly identified a Salsman sock. Usually he doesn't drop two socks on the same article, but maybe he's changed his MO. I've very aware of Salsman, when I first became active on Wikipedia, Salsman attempted to get me blocked for edit warring against his sock and a COI IP editor. I've identified several of the socks in the past. The problem is that you have made shotgun charges, against possibly innocent editors, based on thin evidence, and not only at WP:SSP, but all over the place, and we don't allow that. Do not call an editor a sock puppet, outside of legitimate debate at WP:SSP. Do not bring outside disputes, no matter how much you might think them relevant, here, unless you are able to prove not merely truth but also necessity. We can see the edits, and if they are against consensus, they will be, on such a highly-watched article as Depleted uranium, noticed and directly addressed. I'm going to formally warn you on your Talk page; don't repeat it, or, I predict, you will be blocked. I am not an administrator, but I know how to report patent misbehavior.

I have no dog in the DU race, no opinion on the content of that article, which I have not followed.

If you aren't blocked, and wish to contribute to the DU article, you should consider that you have a COI and you should not make any controversial edits to the article, you can be blocked for it, but you can make civil and helpful comments on the article Talk page, as well as looking for non-COI editors who might help you. But be careful. And calm down. You damage your own cause by making unnecessary personal comments about Salsman. --Abd (talk) 15:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

For others' information: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Nrcprm2026#Report_date_June_18_2009.2C_21:29_.28UTC.29, and RadTek (talk · contribs), who filed that report but did not sign it.

Points taken, thanks. RadTek (talk) 15:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Known blackout of CF publishing in prominent journals.

"It is irritating to see, in discussions on this, claims that "if the research was good, it would be published by Nature (journal)," or other widely-respected journals that are known to refuse to even review papers in the field. We have reliable source on that refusal, it's well-known. Is this covered adequately in the article?" - I think that may be a valid question. What sources do you know of in this regards? --GoRight (talk) 15:35, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, let's start with Hoffman, A dialogue in chemically induced nuclear effects, American Nuclear Society, 1995. Hoffman is a skeptic who is unconvinced, as of publication, that nuclear phenomena are taking place, but he does not address in detail the calorimetry work, stating that much of the work has been done by workers familiar with calorimetry and how to avoid artifacts. His book focuses on specifically nuclear effects other than excess heat. Hoffman is a very good source because he does not confuse "unconvinced" with "bogus." In other words, a genuine skeptic.

However, he states this, pp. 11-12:

The University of Utah scientist's rush for the commercial opportunity violated the moral sense of many physicists. In addition, funding for classical hot fusion was undergoing devastating funding cuts and many scientists, shattered from seeing their life's work dissipating in the funding cuts, blamed the "cold fusion" crowd. Many scientists unused to electrochemistry or low-level nuclear measurements started doing quick-and-dirty experiments. Scientists competent in these fields hurried through experiments in order to confirm or deny the initial results. In October 1989, a "by invitation only" meeting in Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute and the National Science Foundation with the hopes of initiating a quiet dialogue between scientists that were beginning to disagree publicly via press conferences. One of the invitees, Moshe Guy, from Yale, and a Dr. Parks from the American Physical Society loudly branded this concept of a closed meeting as antithetical to science and began a campaign to prevent the NSF from participating in any future scientific meetings closed to the press. They gained much support for their position, and that very useful meeting became an oft-cited example of a bad thing perpetrated by EPRI and the NSF. Nature magazine, considered the elite scientific journal, quickly took a very strong anti position, publishing poor experiments that showed negative results while rejecting poor experiments that showed positive results. One experiment by an East Coast conglomerate of national laboratories did an electrolysis with only ten percent of the cathode covered by electrolyte. Nature published the negative result but neither the authors nor the magazine published a subsequent correction when this unmentioned electrolyte coverage condition was pointed out to them. In other experiments, results involving cathodes completely coated with impurity rather quickly after electrolysis initiation would be presented in the pages of Nature as proof nothing was happening during long periods of electrolysis. Several years had to pass before enough of the experimental difficulties could be defined sufficiently to prevent false-positive or false-negative data from being the dominant result of "cold fusion" experiments done by workers unfamiliar with palladium-hydrogen experimentation.

And he goes on to discuss Fleischmann's work, with he apparently considers careful with respect to excess heat and "unsound" with respect to nuclear measurements, which were outside Fleischmann's normal expertise. He discusses Taubes and Huizenga, covering how they covered cold fusion. I'll come back with more. --Abd (talk) 11:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Next, Simon, Science studies and the afterlife of cold fusion, Rutgers University Press, 2002. This text seems to be the most detailed review of the history of the affair undertaken by a relatively neutral observer, who is interested in the contrast between apparent closure in 1989-1990 and the facts of ongoing research and publication. pp 180-

In 1989 ... the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) identified cold fusion as the topic with the largest number of associated publicatins out of all scientific disciplines, but after 1990 cold fusion was nowhere to be seen on the charts of ISI's Science Watch newsletter.

The decline in publication rates is reflective of closure processes.... Rates declined as scientists stopped their experiments and abandoned the controversy in 1990, but in addition the decline reflected decisions by journal editors (such as John Maddox, then editor of Nature) to reject or stop reviewing cold fusion articles. While the decline as steep and seems indicative of a quick end to the controversy, it is important to note that the publication rate has never dropped to zero, and a small handful of articles continue to be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals each year. With these data, we see evidence of life: a positive rate of publication sustained over a number of years. Yet the rate has been in decline from peaks of over a hundred articles a year in the early 1990s to twenty-five articles in 2000. Data like these have lent support to the claims of the skeptics. Here we do not see life after death, just the dying gasp of the few remaining scientists blindly holding on to their belief in cold fusion. From another point of view, however, the publication data indicate not death or even life after death but rather research settling into a rather normal pattern for a small field. In terms of the overall ecology of science, CF research is simply finding its niche, with a few journals publishing a couple of dozen peer-reviewed papers a year. From this perspective the high rates of the early 90s become the anomaly. The media configuration of cold fusion in 1989 resulted in an unsustainable level of scientific attention that has finally died down, leaving the core group to simply get on with its research. Even though it is too soon to make a judgment on this, the publication rate may support the idea that some normalization of CF research has taken place.

The cold fusion articles that appear tend to be published by a small cluster of specialized journals....

He names Journal of Fusion Technology (a journal related to applied research in conventional nuclear fusion), the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Il Nuovo Cimento, and, to a lesser extent (as of his writing), Journal of Physical Chemistry, Physics Letters A, the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, and "a number of Japanese and Russian physics, chemistry, and engineering journals."

Note that Naturwissenschaften is a departure from this, being an old and respected multidisciplinary journal, with access to the highest quality review resources, through the Max Planck Society.

There is much more detail of high interest in Simon, it's a gold mine. He covers the alternative communication resources of the cold fusion researchers, such as the Vortex-L mailing list, where subscribers include many of the most well-known researchers in the field as well as, way back and continuing, skeptics like our own Kirk Shanahan, and Infinite Energy magazine.

Storms (2007) reports the 1989 ERAB (U.S. Department of Energy) review from the point of view of a scientist who took the report at face value and proposed research along the lines that the review had explicitly suggested. p. 12:

The proposal was rejected just as later submissions by other people were rejected. In general, rejection is based on the belief that the claims for anomalous energy and nuclear products are impossible and are based on bad science, hence not worth funding.

This "official" document has also affected the attitude of editors of many conventional scientific journals. These journals play an essential role in science, because they allow ordinary researchers to learn about and to understand what is being discovered. For some strange reason, ordinary scientists do not consider any information to be believable unless it has survived the peer review process provided by journals. Apparently, they do not consider themselves competent to make this evaluation for themselves. Consequently, when papers are rejected, most scientists ignore the information even though it might be easily available from non-reviewed sources.

Most people attempting to publish anything about the subject continue to have a similar experience, and editors sympathetic to the field have even been encouraged to quit. Even Julian Schwinger, a Nobel laureate, was so outraged by the way the APS treated his papers, he resigned in protest. An editor pays no price for rejecting a good paper, but can be severely chastised for publishing a paper considered poor by a few outspoken critics. The entire system of publication is skewed in favor of the passionate skeptic who opposes a new idea.

Storms then goes on to discuss George Miley, the editor of Fusion Technology, confirming what Simon says about Miley refusing to respond to pressure to stop publishing papers. (By the way, Miley eventually agreed to insure that at least one reviewer of each paper to be published was a hot fusion researcher, in addition to other competent reviewers, this is reported by Simon.)

As to publication rates, to flesh out what Simon wrote about frequency, you might look at the analysis by Jed Rothwell of lenr-canr.org, based on papers in the Dieter Britz database, available at http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf. --Abd (talk) 15:16, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious: when Hoffman (about 80 kb above) refers to "a Dr. Parks [sic] from the American Physical Society", he is presumably referring to Robert L. Park? I don't really get the focus on Nature; it's one journal, albeit a prestigious one. Surely some other journal, Science or the like, would be more than happy to scoop its competitor if a serious breakthrough was being censored? Or are all of the editors of prominent journals biased against cold fusion? Of course, it doesn't help that virtually every fringe belief in history has been promoted with the claim that it's being suppressed by a conspiracy of the scientific establishment - it's worth a free 40 points on the Crackpot Index. Even if we accept that cold fusion is truly a victim of such suppression, the boy has cried "wolf" a few hundred times too many. MastCell ^Talk 18:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I've written a fairly long response, but I'll put it below; for now, yes, I assume that this is Robert L. Park, of Voodoo Science fame. I checked Simon, he has the mispelling; it's not in the index, I think it didn't get checked. Publishing has gone to hell in the last thirty years, ever since I stopped working in it.... Coincidence? Well, your call! --Abd (talk) 22:46, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

This ignores the fact that we know there is on-going research being conducted within reputable organizations, SPAWAR if nothing else, and we see where they are either (a) choosing to publish for whatever reason, or (b) are able to publish at all. Do you honestly consider the SPAWAR group's work to be kook fringe, unscientific, and unworthy of publication? If not then some other force is obviously at work here to keep their research out of the anti-CF crowd's favored journals.

And there is no crying wolf here. These papers ARE being published, and in peer-reviewed journals. They just aren't the journals that some here want to consider as the only valid journals to use. Why? Only they can say for sure but I don't believe that it is a coincidence that the apparent editorial positions of those journals just happen to be aligned with the favored POV of the anti-CF proponents. --GoRight (talk) 19:03, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I just have a different (I would argue more realistic) view of editorial motivation, I guess. An editor's overriding goal is to sell copies and get people reading the journal in question. Some famously flawed research has been published in high-profile journals because of its "shock value", and because it draws people to read the journal, even if only to trash the article in question. An article convincingly describing a purported advance in cold fusion would bring a ton of readership to any journal that published it. Most editors will err on the side of publishing "provocative" or controversial findings with the rationale that, even if they are unsound, they are a useful contribution to scientific debate and discourse (recent examples include Andrew Wakefield's publication in Lancet, and Enstrom and Kabat's controversial paper on the harm(lessness) of secondhand smoke from the British Medical Journal).

Balanced against the appeal of provocative papers is the need to maintain a certain reputation for scientific rigor, without which a journal is just an expensive blog. The editor's job is, in part, to resolve the tension between those two competing interests of the journal. If cold fusion papers aren't being published, then I suspect it's because the editors reviewing them concluded that the value of pulling in readers with a controversial topic is outweighed by the lack of scientific merit in the work.

Look, I conduct research at a reputable organization. I wish all of my work would be published in Nature. But it's not. While there is obviously a human and political element to peer review, I'd feel silly blaming a conspiracy. Anyway, truly solid science will make a mark whether it's published in Nature or Naturwissenschaft or wherever. If it intrigues other scientists, and if they can replicate the claimed findings, then it will proceed. If the papers are unconvincing, or if the results can't be replicated, it will die on the vine, as do 99% of all scientific ideas. MastCell ^Talk 19:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think your view is more realistic, MastCell; it's, in fact, phenomenally naive. Editors aren't primarily motivated to sell the journal, they are primarily motivated to keep their jobs and to advance to better jobs. A publisher might make a decision to publish something provocative, if an editor makes that decision, without the publisher signing off on it, it could be hazardous to the economic future of that editor. In any case, we have reliable source on the situation. You've ignored a major part of what's been reported: papers in this field are rejected without review, it's not that they can't pass review. Senior researchers who have had many papers published suddenly can't get anything through the process.

What you haven't factored for is major pressure on editors. You've wished for Nature. My guess is that, with respect to the peer review, it's just as hard to get published in Naturwissenschaften. Both are multidisciplinary journals. Both are very important to their publishers.

But this is all really irrelevant. I was asked about sources for the claim that there was suppression of publication, and I provided two reliable sources. I provided a third source which is the observation of a senior scientist working in the field, I can understand that you can readily dismiss that as victim mentality. But not the other two. And not the clear pattern in actual publication. There is a huge amount of reliable source on the general topic of the history of cold fusion, and we are using hardly any of it. There is a huge library of peer-reviewed publication, and quite a few peer-reviewed secondary sources, and they are actively removed from the article when they are asserted; and weaker sources on the skeptical side are asserted against them when they are left, or in their place.

I don't think you realize, MastCell, how little actual scientific source (i.e, peer-reviewed secondary source) there is on the skeptical side. Scientific consensus is not the "general opinion of scientists," but the shared knowledge of experts who are familiar with the state of research. There are many who would be experts, if they were familiar. Do their opinions count?

Storms makes the comment that he considered the 2004 DoE review doomed, because what was scheduled was one day to present the information. He claims that it's impossible to come to an understanding of the status of the field in one day. I'd agree. We have the individual reviewer comments from 2004, and it's clear that some of them really didn't pay attention to the material presented to them; they contradicted the facts presented, not cogently, but as if the assertions in the review paper did not exist.

I'm not at all about trying to make Wikipedia "lead" in this. We follow, and with scientific articles, we follow the balance of peer-reviewed and academic literature. MastCell, this balance strongly favors cold fusion. If I'm wrong, well, surely, if we simply proceed, incorporating in the article what is available from the strongest sources, i.e., peer-reviewed secondary sources, we'll see that. Problem is, to counter the general impression of this body of research as being positive, you'll have to synthesize rejection from the early primary sources and their conclusions. Rejection was not a scientific phenomenon, it wasn't a scientific conclusion, through normal process. It was a social phenomenon. So what do we do with this? It's a sincere question.

My personal compromise has been to continue to claim that "most scientists" reject cold fusion, even though that's not what the weight of publication shows, but I think we need to start qualifying this better. How do we know that "most scientists" still reject CF? Or do we insist that "mainstream scientific opinion" be based on actual evidence, actual samples? The 2004 DoE review is the closest thing we have to such a sample: 18 experts. Unfortunately, they are anonymous, and the editor who compiled the overall document and wrote the conclusions is anonymous, it's actually not a strong source. But it's the best we have.

Half the experts, presented with a review document and a bibliography, we don't know how much attention they paid to it, and a few clearly didn't pay much, considered, according to the summary editor, that evidence for excess heat was "convincing." The other half thought that it wasn't "conclusive."

On the question of nuclear origin for this heat, there was more skepticism. However, one-third of the reviewers thought that the evidence for a nuclear origin was somewhat convincing.

Now, to really understand this, one needs to be familiar with the field. First of all, the core claim, at the very beginning, was excess heat. There were, by 2004, an overwhelming number of confirmations of excess heat. Hoffman, writing in 1995, didn't even bother to examine excess heat evidence, he focused on the nuclear evidence; Hoffman does say that most of the research was being done by people expert in calorimetry and familiar with how to avoid artifacts. Someone who doesn't accept excess heat at this moment is probably rejecting excess heat because of the implications, not because of specific knowledgeable criticisms of the excess heat measurements. There are many easy assumptions a critic can make, and it would take much time to show how each of these assumptions might be reasonable for some of the work, but not for the overall body of it; that's why a short review time was quite a problem for Storms (who was there). Such a skeptic may say, "Well, that looks good, but I've seen stuff that looked good before, I'm not buying it, there must be something wrong here."

Now what's often been asserted is that if there were convincing evidence of nuclear phenomena, other than heat, this would be accepted. MastCell, looking back at the experimental evidence, there was convincing evidence of nuclear phenomena before Hoffman, in 1995, but Hoffman remained skeptical at that time because there wasn't sufficient confirmation; he acknowledges that certain experiments seemed artifact-free. By 2004, the situation was still a bit ambiguous in some ways, if one ignored parts of the evidence, such as the heat-helium correlation, which some of the 2004 reviewers clearly did, and the overall editor got the evidence dead wrong, practically backwards, in the summary. However, by now, it's not ambiguous, and the SPAWAR publications, which were confirming earlier work and some of which has been confirmed, with numerous peer-reviewed papers, have essentially sealed it. We now know why the early work was so problematic, why many researchers were seriously frustrated in their efforts to replicate the experiment and, especially, to find the neutron radiation that everyone expected must accompany deuterium fusion. This is my understanding, MastCell, some of it is in reliable source, but, problem is, we have a contingent of editors who reject reliable source because it appears to support cold fusion, and is therefore fringe.

The basic fusion process Fleischmann found, looking for the boundary between quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics or quantum field theory (did you know that this is what he was looking for, and thought that it probably wouldn't be detectable experimentally; he was lucky?), doesn't generate neutrons, it generates hot alpha particles. Those particles can't penetrate far, their energy essentially turns to heat, though some of these particles can cause secondary fusion reactions, elemental transformations, the range of effects that have been reported -- and which seem so easily kooky. They will cause, through these secondary reactions, a low level of neutron radiation, only about ten times background. That's what SPAWAR reported in Naturwissenschaften in 2008, but SPAWAR had previously shown the necessary evidence for the alpha radiation, and that's been found by others as well. The early researchers missed it because it was so unexpected; but I've seen a Chinese paper that showed CR-39 radiation detection from a cold fusion cell in 1990, this would be alpha radiation. I knew to look for this because Hoffman mentions it and discusses it in 1995.

I'm not the one to make the decision about what goes into articles. Those decisions must be made by consensus, the broader the consensus the better. We can't report that "neutron radiation has been confirmed," unless we carefully attribute it and qualify it. Has this been accepted by the "mainstream"?

How do we know? We know that there hasn't been significant independent review, that's why we cannot report this as fact, in my opinion. But we do have some indications that this isn't a "fringe" view, either. The ACS three-day seminar in March. The media notice of this and the SPAWAR research reported there. The publication of the ACS LENR Sourcebook; the ACS is about as mainstream as a mainstream organization gets. Ah, but what about the physicists? Isn't cold fusion physics?

If the physicists who rejected it are right, it isn't physics, it's chemistry. But the chemists say that it isn't chemistry. Who are the experts? Well, first of all, it's not all physicists rejecting it, by any means. Hagelstein is a physicist. In China, the researchers publishing on cold fusion seem to be mostly hot-fusion physicists. Robert Duncan (physicist) was asked by CBS Sixty Minutes, the venerable documentary program, to review the field for them. He was skeptical, but he agreed to read the literature, visit some researchers, and provide an opinion. He was shocked to discover that "they were onto something," and he said as much, and he's now spoken on cold fusion before a major energy conference in Michigan, and held a seminar recently where most of the major researchers came and presented papers. He reported, after his appearance on CBS, receiving irate phone calls from other physticists treating him as some kind of charlatan. His speech before the energy conference, sponsored by his university, and on-line as video for a few days, mysteriously disappeared, all reference to it removed (it wasn't just a broken link!). It's pretty obvious what happened, it's the same thing that happened for years to anyone vulnerable, like the editors of journals: pressure. Lots of pressure. There are huge sums of research funding at stake, careers at stake, investment in opinion at stake. Simon talks about the editor of Fusion Technology and the pressure he faced when he insisted on publishing quality work in the field (the journal serves the traditional fusion community). If you imagine that these political considerations don't affect publishing, well, MastCell, that's why I consider your comment naive. I was told that Duncan had been assured by his university that they would back him up, but my guess is that things got a little hot there for a while. In the end, the video returned. I know that at least one reporter was trying to reach Duncan to find out what happened, but Duncan didn't respond, apparently.

I think we have a problem if we insist that a field be evaluated, that "mainstream" be judged, by scientists who are not familiar with the research! What we see from the 2004 DoE review is that, when a panel of experts is informed, even only fairly shallowly, there is far from a consensus of rejection, there is very substantial acceptance.--Abd (talk) 23:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

"While there is obviously a human and political element to peer review, I'd feel silly blaming a conspiracy." - See, but this is part of the problem. You wish to push the point off as being an absurd conspiracy theory. The trouble is that no one is claiming a "conspiracy" nor is one required to see the effect being observed. All that is required is for the field to have at some point had so negative a view that they editors at the higher profile journals no longer even entertain them.

"If cold fusion papers aren't being published, then I suspect it's because the editors reviewing them concluded that the value of pulling in readers with a controversial topic is outweighed by the lack of scientific merit in the work." - And this might even be true ... but it assumes that they are not being dismissed out of hand WITHOUT even being looked at. I can't definitively say this is happening, although some of the references Abd provided seem to suggest that it could be, but the reality is that other journals ARE publishing these papers and peer-reviewing them so not everyone believes the science is junk. That much should be obvious.

"Anyway, truly solid science will make a mark whether it's published in Nature or Naturwissenschaft or wherever. If it intrigues other scientists, and if they can replicate the claimed findings, then it will proceed." - I completely agree. But is this not a description of exactly what we are observing? A few scientists remain intrigued and conduct research using funding that they managed to pull together, and they publish the results where they can.

"If the papers are unconvincing, or if the results can't be replicated, it will die on the vine, as do 99% of all scientific ideas." - I also agree with this, and I agree that this is the way this should work. But we obviously haven't reached the point where this field has yet "died on the vine", would you not agree? But being able to get something published in Nature or the other more favored journals should NOT be considered the litmus test for signs of life.

You say you work at a reputable organization and that not all of your work gets published in Nature. I am not surprised, this is probably true of everyone. But if you instead published your work in Naturwissenschaft do you feel that it is any less valid or deserving of recognition based simply on that fact? That's what the anti-CF crowd wants to say here, is it not? --GoRight (talk) 20:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that if a publication of mine challenged the general understanding of How Things Work, then it would be subject to scrutiny wherever it was published. Furthermore, I wouldn't expect Wikipedia to make a big deal of it until it had been accepted by the Powers That Be - it's not Wikipedia's role to be on the leading edge. I suspect the bar is a bit higher for "cold fusion" papers, both because of the extraordinary nature of the claims and because of historical debacles like Pons/Fleischmann, but that's how it should be - and I don't see any evidence that editors are rejecting papers without looking at them. That would be extraordinarily foolish - not impossible, I guess, but highly unlikely.

I think the idea of cold fusion is very much alive. I'm not a physicist and I have no knowledge of the topic beyond that of a layperson with an expensive general education, but I think there's a good chance that we'll see a successful demonstration in our lifetimes. Whether the current claims of success are valid is a separate matter, and one I'll leave to the physics community and the good people at Talk:Cold fusion.

It's not so much that Nature is the only acceptable journal, or that Naturwissenschaft is unacceptable. It's the issue of mining "positive" publications from the primary literature and presenting them in a way that misrepresents the overall state of expert opinion in the field. It's very easy to do that, especially for someone with a modicum of sophistication, and my concern is that when one relies on cold-fusion true believers for a synthesis of the literature, the result is not really neutral, encyclopedic, or reflective of the actual weight of expert opinion in the field. Just my 2 cents. MastCell ^Talk 20:38, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

"I think that if a publication of mine challenged the general understanding of How Things Work, then it would be subject to scrutiny wherever it was published." - Of course it would, or rather it should. But out of hand rejection is not "scrutiny", it is "non-scrutiny". I also challenge your premise, at least for the paper being discussed. In what way is merely reporting the results of a scientific experiment challenging anything? It is merely a data point. Until someone proposes a theory to explain the results I don't really see that as challenging how things work.

"Furthermore, I wouldn't expect Wikipedia to make a big deal of it until it had been accepted by the Powers That Be - it's not Wikipedia's role to be on the leading edge." - A reasonable position to be sure. But what is your definition of "making a big deal?" Is merely reporting the fact that the paper was published making a big deal? I don't think so. That's all that's being discussed here, right?

"Whether the current claims of success are valid is a separate matter, and one I'll leave to the physics community and the good people at Talk:Cold fusion." - I would argue so are those who want to include the paper. It's not like it wasn't peer-reviewed. As I stated earlier I doubt that Naturwissenschaft was using biologists to peer-review a nuclear physics article. Until we have some evidence to doubt the quality of their peer review process I see no reason to take the position that the results are not being looked at by people with appropriate credentials to comment on them.

"It's the issue of mining "positive" publications from the primary literature and presenting them in a way that misrepresents the overall state of expert opinion in the field. It's very easy to do that, especially for someone with a modicum of sophistication, and my concern is that when one relies on cold-fusion true believers for a synthesis of the literature, the result is not really neutral, encyclopedic, or reflective of the actual weight of expert opinion in the field." - A reasonable concern but I don't see any evidence that this is the situation with the Cold Fusion article. Do you have any? Given the level of visibility it has received and the (seeming) numerical superiority of the anti-CF crowd I can only assume that if the article is skewed it would be in the negative direction, not the positive one. I certainly don't see any evidence that Abd is advocating in favor of a skewed article. He has consistently indicated that he is working towards a properly balanced article.

Nor is anyone "relying on cold-fusion true believers for a synthesis of the literature". All of the material is being thoroughly reviewed by Wikipedia editors and debated ad naseum, is it not? Not one thing has been taken at face value. But using the "true believers" as a convenient source to quickly find the relevant references to the most current research is not at all unreasonable. It is merely being efficient. --GoRight (talk) 21:17, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

MastCell, you are a researcher, I assume. What would you do if you find experimental results that you can't explain by existing theories? You go over the results, trying to find something wrong, but you can't find it. I'll tell you what I think: this issue, when actually faced, separates real scientists from technicians. Sure, there might be an artifact you missed. But if you dump the experimental results, even though you have personally confirmed them -- this wasn't just one unexplained anomaly -- without finding out what actually happened, or sharing it unexplained, you have taken the road of professional safety over the road of exploration and discovery. Fleischmann thought he found evidence of deuterium fusion. He was wrong. It wasn't deuterium fusion, not just like that. It was something different, something unexpected. Nobody is sure what it was, though there are some strong candidate theories now. I appreciate you sharing your opinion; but I'd claim that low-energy nuclear reactions have already been demonstrated, and convincingly, for those who are willing to look at the evidence. I've read the comments of serious skeptics, and I have their books (though I still don't have Park); they demonstrate, every one so far that I've seen, a lack of knowledge of the field.

There is evidence that papers that appear to be on cold fusion -- we have very specific evidence in Simon -- are rejected ipso facto. Okay, an example from Simon (2002), about a paper that was, indeed, submitted for review (pp 88-89):

In one case, a reviewer wrote the following about a paper that was eventually rejected for publication:

It is the type of manuscript we saw in March 1989, but definitely not the definitive piece of work one can expect in 1994. The authors start from a biased point of view and only reference previous works, almost all discredited, which make claims for tritium production in the electrolysis of D2O with Pd cathodes. They do not cite any of the work that shows no tritium production.... WHERE ARE THE NEUTRONS? As a former member of the Editorial Advisory Board of [this chemistry journal] I would be offended to see a manuscript of such dubious worth published in [this chemistry journal].

In his comments, the reviewer identifies the paper in terms of cold fusion and its discrediting, referring to a version of cold fusion that requires neutrons as a definitive test of competence. The author, who was not looking for neutrons, received this review and in his reply tried to dissociate his work from cold fusion so that it might stand on its own merit:

Please, accept the fact that we examined the behavior of the Pd/D and not the Pd/H system; thus, no need for light water experiments. If possible, dissociate yourself from the notion that we have attempted to proved "cold fusion" (i.e. there is no need to know WHERE ARE THE NEUTRONS?) and consider the data only in th econtext presented, i.e., you should have read what was written and not what you thought to be our intent. It is quite obvious that you started from a biased position and ended in the same position

Exchanges like this one have not been uncommon, assuming, that is, that authors are able to get their papers considered for review in the first place.

I do know that I've seen many on-line exchanges, reading blogs on the topic. There is, obviously, a powerful well of anti-cold fusion opinion out there, but it's not knowledgeable, certain mantras are repeated over and over, and since these people see others saying the same thing, it must be true, right?

It was never replicated.

153 peer-reviewed papers showing excess heat from the Pd-D system.

The more accurate the measurements, the less visible the effect became.

The more accurate measurements, if the effect occurs at all, show it more clearly.

They were so stupid, they didn't stir the electrolyte.

Fleischmann claims that the bubbling rapidly mixes the electolyte with small cells; this objection was based on a false positive experiment from Caltech where failure to stir did warp the calorimetry.

They didn't even know how to measure neutrons, so why should we trust their calorimetry?

They were not nuclear physicists, but Fleischmann was the world's leading electrochemist and calorimetry was within his expertise.

Where are the neutrons? If this was a nuclear reaction, there would be lots of neutrons.

Not all nuclear reactions produce neutrons. The P-F effect doesn't produce neutrons except in very small numbers as secondary reactions. Whatever it is, it is not simple deuterium fusion.

The excess heat is only a tiny percentage of the total power input.

In some experiments, excess heat is greater than the total input energy. Some experiments involve no input energy at all. In some, it is small, but well above possible error.

Cold fusion is theoretically impossible, that's been proven.

Not. There is no violation of basic laws of physics involved. There are a number of theories that don't involve any new physics, just unexpected consequences of previously unstudied conditions.

If they were doing good work, it would be in my favorite journal.

Not if your favorite journal has an editorial practice of rejecting CF papers without review, or if the reviewers are hostile to the very idea of cold fusion.

Where is the cold fusion home water heater? After all, they've had twenty years.

The effect may depend on difficult-to-maintain conditions not easily scalable. Practical application has no bearing on the reality of the science, we don't reject muon-catalyzed fusion because practical application doesn't exist.

There are no measured nuclear reaction products. Where is the ash?

Helium. Present, at about 25 MeV/He-4 excess heat/helium found. No excess heat, no helium. Tritium, where it exists, is probably from a secondary reaction.

They were too stupid to use light water as a control.

Fleischmann did use light water, and found that "it wasn't a suitable baseline." Apparently he found a small amount of excess heat. Others have reported similar results, where the experiment was of sufficient sensitivity.

They tried it with light water and found excess heat, which proves that this wasn't a nuclear reaction.

There is a certain amount of deuterium in light water. Alpha radiation found in copious amounts with heavy water is found about three orders of magnitude down with light water.

Cold fusion was proven to be pathological science in 1989.

In 1989 work that had taken the world's foremost electrochemists five years to develop failed replication in a few months by people not expert in the techniques, plus many of the necessary conditions were not well understood even by Fleischmann then, it took another ten years before conditions for reliable replication were known. The original excess heat results were never actually shown to be artifact, there were only unproven speculations about that, or simple assumption that it must be wrong, because of all the above problems. The real pathology was in the premature rejection based on shallow evidence.

Oh, why do I bother? Thanks for dropping by to chat, MastCell, have some more tea.--Abd (talk) 01:00, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the shortcomings of peer review, and if I had a nickel for every time a reviewer took me to task for something I had already explained clearly in the manuscript, I'd be rich. Well, richer. That's life. You didn't ask or answer the only question I have: Why have the cold-fusion brigades failed to convince the mainstream physics community? If I had a finding, and I was convinced it was real, but my peers couldn't replicate my results and didn't believe my arguments, then I'd seriously have to consider the possibility that I'd missed something. My sense is that a substantial portion of the cold-fusion community has skipped that crucial step of self-skepticism, and jumped right to True Believerhood, where any explanation is more likely than the possibility that they could be fundamentally mistaken. I am quite familiar with the roles that bias and preconceived notions play in the scientific process, believe me, but I also know that bias, prejudice, or feudalism alone cannot explain the failure of the cold-fusion types to make headway in the mainstream physics community. It just doesn't work like that, in my experience. MastCell ^Talk 05:43, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

You can't convince people if they don't listen. Individual physicists can be and have been convinced, but physicists are human beings like the rest of us, and we are heavily programmed to function in societies, and think too far outside what your peers think, you can be in serious trouble. If you'd really like to understand what happened, I do suggest reading Undead Science, by Simon (Rutgers University Press, 2002). Many of the people you find who are now considered "believers" in cold fusion started out as skeptics, but, for whatever reason, they happened to become familiar with the evidence. Robert Duncan's story is only unusual in that his "conversion" was very public. There are quite a number of media reports where some actual investigation was done, and, you will find, they are far more positive than reports that just regurgitate old news from the files. The "sense" you report is an easy conclusion that more or less assumes a lack of self-skepticism, but I find far more evidence of this lack in the vituperatively anti-cold fusion crowd. Basically, there is a huge body of experimental evidence now, with researchers all over the world, at prestigious institutions, publication rate rising since a nadir around 2005 or so.

Bias alone can't explain it? MastCell, are you a conspiracy theorist? Sure. There are and were vast sums of money at stake in hot fusion research. If you are an expert in the insanely difficult problem of confining hot fusion, and research shifts into chemistry labs, there goes your institution's funding and your career. The physics community, with the famous APS meeting in 1989, created an appearance of authoritative refutation, and Fleischmann's error with the neutron measurements made him look incredibly sloppy. (How easy it was for him to make that mistake, I don't know, but others made similar mistakes.) The publication in Nature of "negative replications" which really showed nothing more than "we couldn't do it," by "reputable researchers," and with response shut out, the difficulty of replication, the variety of anomalous findings once researchers started looking where nobody had looked before, all of it conspired to create a picture of total bogosity. It wasn't until about 2006 or 2007 that research groups started reporting 100% repeatability. Standard F-P electrolytic loading of palladium requires very special conditions. Normal processing of palladium produces metal with microcracks, and those cracks prevent high loading ratio. The effect is at the surface, or within a few microns of it, though, so why is loading ratio important? I can guess, but the point is that the process was actually quite complex, not the simple stick-some-palladium-rods-in -heavy-water and hook them up to a battery that it looked like. "With a simple table-top apparatus, sustained nuclear fusion has been reported..." Complicating all this was the legal situation. The University of Utah insisted that they announce without waiting for normal publication, by press conference, for patent legal reasons having to do with competition with Steven Jones' group (which, it turned out, wasn't really a serious competitor). Then, because patents hadn't been issued, experimental details were kept secret, it was really quite a mess and, if you read Simon, you'll see there was plenty of misbehavior to go around. Once cold fusion was firmly established as junk science, which happened within a year or so, researchers were deprived of the normal resources that allow research to proceed. Graduate students who helped with the research found that they were warned of zero career prospects. In one well-known case, an assistant to Brockris found his PhD thesis was rejected because of the disrepute of the field, he had to do something completely different to get his PhD.

Once the wall of reflexive rejection is built, it can be quite difficult to dismantle. As far as I can tell, what happened with cold fusion is not the norm in science, you may never have experienced it in your field. But it does happen, and Simon is interested in it as a social phenomenon, which it is. It's not about the science. Given one day to convince a panel of 18 experts, Hagelstein, Storms, and others were apparently above to totally convince one. They were able to convince them all that further research was warranted. They were able to convince one-half that the excess heat was real. They were able to convince one-third that nuclear origin for it was likely. This is very close to the acceptance you think that they should be able to find. If there is that level of understanding among experts that this is worthy of investigation, in 2004, from a relatively brief exposure to what is essentially a new field, we know little about it, once the experts are exposed to the research, how can we continue, as some of us do, to claim that there is "no controversy." An arbitrator opined that, you know. Dicta, and the arbitrator was simply pointing out that his or her personal opinion didn't matter.

There is controversy. The "mainstream," if we insist that mainstream scientific opinion in a field be confined to those who know the field, not those who might know and understand it if they learn about it, i.e., who have the education and experience but not the specific knowledge, has actually accepted cold fusion by now, because the work moved on after 2004, some of the old questions, still relatively open in 2004, have been answered by more recent work. But there are a lot of scientists out there, who certainly think of themselves and mainstream, and who generally are, who have never become familiar with the research, because they formed conclusions long ago. You don't waste time studying a field which you concluded, years ago, was a complete mistake! I think we need to be very careful with this topic, and that's my point. Simply assuming that there is a mainstream view, as shown by media sources from years ago, and neglecting the weight of publication in the strongest sources, and excluding sources based on "fringe" arguments when the publishers aren't fringe, gives us an impoverished article, and does not serve our readers. --Abd (talk) 12:10, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Just FYI, GoRight wrote, "I doubt that Naturwissenschaft was using biologists to peer-review a nuclear physics article." But in fact this sort of thing does happen from time to time, where an author writes and the author's peers review, work outside their shared specialty. For example, the paper:

Vincent Fleury, "Clarifying tetrapod embryogenesis, a physicist's point of view", The European Physical Journal: Applied Physics 45 3 (2009) 30101, DOI: 10.1051/epjap/2009033, Abstract with pointer to full paper

was given a very critical review by biologist P.Z. Myers in his "Pharyngula" blog. Fleury responded in the comments but was there also criticized by some other workers in the life sciences. --Wfaxon (talk) 00:55, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Heh, fair enough. An entertaining example, thanks. I will admit that it could happen if the paper is sufficiently related to both fields of expertise. I still doubt, however, that such an occurrence is the norm.

It is also worth noting that in your example the paper in question actually had a biological aspect to it, so having a biologist as a potential reviewer isn't that much of a stretch. In the case of Cold Fusion there is none. Probably the closest analogy in that case would be using a Chemist to review this particular Nuclear Physics article since those appear to be the too closest disciplines at play (or at least those are the two disciplines who have people involved in the field). --GoRight (talk) 01:40, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Your comment rm: why

I've removed this [16]. I've already pointed out to you today what reality is William M. Connolley (talk) 16:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

WMC, seeking consensus is my policy. It's quite apparent it isn't yours. Enjoy. It all helps. --Abd (talk) 16:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Worth reading Jimbo

I've been trying to make this point about editors with fringe views, running into flack, and here it is from God Jimbo: [17]. This seems to have been lost on some editors and administrators. Jimbo is proposing that it's possible to find consensus among holders of majority views and holders of fringe views, on the critical point of undue weight and how we present controversy. It's been my experience in other organizations and contexts that this was so. Holders of fringe views very much don't like being shut out entirely, but they know that their views are not accepted by the mainstream. --Abd (talk) 23:53, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Just FYI

User:Ncmvocalist is NOT an administrator, see [18], he just likes to play one on RfC's and noticeboards. --GoRight (talk) 02:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow! Cool. Thanks. Closed discussion with a ban. Not able to enforce it. No wonder. --Abd (talk) 11:36, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, NYScholar has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Go on, smile! Cheers, and happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hello, Abd. You have new messages at NYScholar's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Your comments at User talk:NYScholar

I just wanted to thank you for them, as they pertain to me. This has all ballooned fairly quickly: until a couple of days ago, I don't think I'd ever heard of NYScholar. Then, through a question at WP:MCQ, I found myself examining a debate on image use policy in which he/she was involved. Through that, I concluded that NYScholar was badly misunderstanding a number of elements of image and copyright policy, so I looked through her/his contribution history to see what experience he/she had with the subject. There I found that NYScholar has been consistently disruptive on image copyright issues, which is why I decided to propose the topic ban that I did. Before I proposed the topic ban, I contacted NYScholar's former mentor, User:Shell Kinney, who said that her experience as mentor had been unsuccessful and that she did not see how to make NYScholar improve his/her behaviour. While Shell did not (and still has not) endorsed or opposed either a topic ban or a general one, I know that she has a history of working patiently and effectively with problem users, and I put considerable stock in her comments on NYScholar.

Meanwhile, some co-editors of NYScholar's on Harold Pinter told me that the problems with NYScholar extended well beyond merely image issues; I said that I didn't have time to evaluate their claims, but that if they wanted to propose a topic ban of their own we might as well do it in conjunction, which we did. The next day, I had some time to review their claims, and concluded that NYScholar's involvement with Harold Pinter was problematic beyond repair, so I endorsed that ban. Then I decided to look more deeply into NYScholar's overall editing history (to this point, I'd only looked at her/his involvement in Pinter and copyright issues), which is when I found what was, to me, an inescapable conclusion that NYScholar is not capable of working in a collaborative environment like Wikipedia.

I say this not to convince you of the merits of the ban; I don't expect that I'd be successful, and I trust you've looked into the background yourself in any event (besides that, I appreciate your role here as patron saint of lost causes - it's good to see somebody advocating for the downtrodden, even if I'm the one who has trod them down). Rather, I want to make sure that you're aware of the process I followed, in case you're going to continue trying to pour oil on troubled waters. Cheers, Steve Smith (talk) (formerly Sarcasticidealist) 00:32, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

mmm.... interesting metaphor, "oil on troubled waters." Whether that's a good thing or not depends on the presence of ignition sources, eh?

Steve, I know you fairly well. I think that if you reach out to NYScholar, this whole thing could be rapidly quieted. Ordinarily, you'd be prevented from closing the discussion on ban at AN, because of involvement, but if NYScholar would agree, and I might be able to persuade him, you could do it. (i.e., "Editor has agreed to voluntarily comply with a ban, as supervised by me.' Alternatively, any other admin might agree to this.) I trust that you would be fair. And if you weren't, in my opinion, well, then we might have a dispute and we could solicit an individual to mediate between us. As you know, WP:DR works, especially between editors who actually are working in good faith, and the noticeboards aren't part of it.

I'm not actually intervening on behalf of the downtrodden, but only on behalf of those who have significant contributions to make, and I'm tentatively convinced this is the case with NYScholar. The existence of prior disruption is no proof against this.

It's apparent to me that if NYScholar is to continue to contribute, he needs, to boil it down to the essence, an editor. He's a writer, and it is believable that he's an academic. He's, shall we say, "of age." As am I, I just turned 65. I can understand and identify with him. If I weren't already in quite enough hot water myself, I'd offer to "mentor" him. I know how to deal with the verbosity. But, right now, that kind of intervention, with the virtual cabal that I'm facing, would bring him more trouble than help; my experience has been that, now, when I advise an editor, they mass to dump on the editor. Someone like NYScholar, to be useful here without disruption, must be carefully, how shall I put it? "Assisted." That means strictly, with clear boundaries, but with sympathy. I need the same thing, actually -- it's part of the ADHD package --, but my own special interest (long predating Wikipedia) has been organizational structure, which requires an understanding of how people work. I don't think he has that kind of experience.

I see the problem as a generic one. Experts are not uncommonly like him. And they not uncommonly are banned. This, to me, is the crucial question: suppose Wikipedia were a print publisher. Along comes a writer like NYScholar. Would we decline to publish his work, assuming it was in our field of interest? My opinion is that the decision would depend on the availability of a good editor. A good editor would filter out the dross and preserve the gold. Most writers need editors, and the relationship between editors and writers is famously contentious. A good editor, though, will develop rapport with the writer; writers can be quite difficult, even arrogant, but out of the tension and work of a good writer and editor, truly great work can be published. A difficult editor gets fired immediately, and properly so, for great damage can be done. A publisher who fires difficult writers, though, would probably be eliminating much or even most of what would otherwise long endure from their activity.

For a standard publisher, the editor interfaces directly between the writer and the publisher. The editor and publisher are primarily concerned with serving (and attracting) the readership. Writers may not have those concerns in the same way. For Wikipedia, the kind of editor I'm thinking about would be interfacing between the writer and the community. An editor at a publishing house may have freedom that our editors here don't have, the political considerations at a publisher may be limited to dealing with as few as one publisher or manager. It's more complex here.

What I've seen in the discussion over the last day is that NYScholar is quite ready to accept a mentor, and the prior two "failures" weren't failures, they were efforts that did not continue. What I'd like to see come out of this is a mentorship with a cooperating administrator. The mentor advises the administrator, for, as well as specific topic bans or other restrictions, NYScholar may need protection. Thus, because, for efficiency, there must be rapport between the administrator and the mentor, as well as between the mentor and NYScholar, the mentor should be someone acceptable to both NYScholar and the administrator. Note that a closing admin for a ban could decide to turn the supervision over to another admin. This concept of there being a personally responsible administrator supervising all bans is quite important, it's often missing with "community bans," leading to much more disruption than necessary, and loss of potential valuable content.

So, practically speaking, fast conclusion: site ban for NYScholar, but not a block. Closing admin specifically restricts NYScholar to edits seeking a mentor, that is, edits to user talk pages only or project pages where NYScholar can seek help. Closing admin specifically praises NYScholar for his work and intentions, and makes it clear that the ban is simply to avoid disruption, it's not about blame or punishment, and it's temporary, until better working arrangements can be developed. It should be very clear that the goal is to enhance NYScholar's work, not to stop it. I have the sense that NYScholar would cooperate and voluntarily limit his editing pending. If not, of course, then he could be blocked and negotiations limited to his talk page. (He should also be given guidance on solicitation.) In the interim, NYScholar may also make self-reverted edits to propose changes, or may otherwise edit specific pages as specifically permitted. The supervising admin doesn't have to handle this personally, it can be delegated to any editor satisfactory to the supervising admin. (I.e., "you may edit any page as permitted by So-and-So or a mentor acceptable to me."

Self-reverted edits are a means I invented as a way for editors under a ban to make useful contributions. They were originally proposed when ScienceApologist was making spelling corrections. The clear community consensus at that time was that small non-controversial edits like this did not violate the ban. I cleared the proposal with an arbitrator before making it to ScienceApologist. It was considered "insulting." I.e., if they were good edits, why should they be self-reverted? The reason is that such edits complicate ban enforcement. Since SA's purpose at the time may have been precisely that (there was other evidence of this), the problem wasn't that self-reverted edits were ban violations, but that they weren't! Nevertheless, when I was banned from Cold fusion, and made a self-reverted edit to it, I was blocked by an administrator who had, with ScienceApologist, opined that any admin blocking for an edit like this was an "idiot," or something like that! Apparently, it does indeed depend on whose ox is being gored. And other editors, some of whom had similarly expressed an opinion about such harmless edits before, piled in to opine that the purpose of bans was to stop editing, so why would we allow self-reverted edits?

But the reason for it is quite clear: it allows someone who has been considered disruptive to make an edit which requires no response at all. If nobody assists, the edit is moot. I don't know how the database is stored, but self-reversion may not increase storage space to any significant extent. When I proposed such edits, I suggested that the original summary include "will revert per ban." And then the reversion summary says "self-revert per ban." Anyone can quickly check to verify that this was indeed a self-revert, and attempts to game this would quickly be detected and the editor prohibited from any edits. The alternate suggestion, that such edits should be proposed in Talk, was rightly rejected as far too cumbersome in the Science Apologist case, and that was a valid objection. To describe a spelling correction on an editor Talk page? Who then has to find it and make the change? Taking up much more storage space and much more editor time, both for the banned editor and for anyone deciding it was a good suggestion? If nobody notices the correction, the banned editor can then suggest it to any editor with a single diff, and the editor can hit undo on that diff, having reviewed it, and is done.

What self-reversion does is to demonstrate compliance with the ban, and I saw it work with another banned editor, where his edit proposed through self-reversion was largely accepted by an editor who had been active in banning him. It's a shame that this editor was, because of the flap over my own block, warned not to do this again. When I proposed self-reversion to him, it's clear that it helped him to accept the ban, which was originally intended to be temporary. It was closed by a non-admin, no longer readily available; my opinion is that ban discussions should never be closed by a non-admin, unless the decision is not to ban, clearly. Even then, it would be better if the closer could reverse the decision based on new evidence, which would suggest no such closures by non-admins.

My opinion is that the noticeboards should never make enduring decisions. RfC would be better, and the process there starts to resemble deliberative process; a good RfC is, if necessary, the basis for an RfAr and can make the RfAr less contentious and more easily decided if good evidence has been compiled. Handling Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Abd and JzG was made much easier by the preceding RfC/JzG 3. Where, by the way, two-thirds of editors commenting called for me to be banned. Even though ArbComm essentially ratified my entire case, and did nothing more with me than give me some good advice. It confirmed my position on use of the blacklist, even though some of those same editors continued, afterwards, to oppose it (unsuccessfully, by the way). It confirmed that JzG had violated recusal rules, and confirming those rules was my original goal. They have claimed and will claim that ArbComm refused my "real goal," i.e., to desysop JzG, but, in fact, that was never my purpose, and desysopping was on the table only because the big stick must be visible. JzG has made yeoman contributions to Wikipedia; unfortunately, the result of that case seems to be that he's stopped editing entirely. Burned out, I'd say. We need to look at that as well.

In a way, experienced administrators, long in the forefront of battles, become like experts: they should be advising, not directly acting. We need to build efficient advisory structures, that filter advice, suppressing noise and amplifying the signal, passing it on, as do all intelligent processing systems, like the human nervous system.

There are some deep problems in our process and community, and I'll be before ArbComm again, probably in less than a week. One little piece at a time. --Abd (talk) 14:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank You

Hello, I know that you have deleted the comment you left, but I would like to thank you anyway. It was kind of you to take the time to make sure that I wasn't worrying, and I appreciate your words. I'm not worried: I know that the checkuser cannot possibly find anything when there is nothing to find, so this will all be over soon :). And again, thank you Micromonkey (talk) 14:20, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see you have added in the case against me. I can understand why of course, but still, thank you Micromonkey (talk) 14:27, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are welcome. There is no animosity involved in my comment on that report, and I might even be somewhat sympathetic to you as to content, but there are ways to accomplish what is legitimate about your apparent goals, other than what you have done. You are welcome to email me about this or to ask here. It's also quite possible, I'll acknowledge, that you are not Macromonkey, in which case you should probably explain, if you can, how the remarkable coincidences appeared. Note that even if checkuser comes up negative, it would still look quite suspicious. As to how long it will take, maybe a day or two. It all depends on when a clerk and checkuser get to it. I predict that a clerk will approve the case, and then we will see what checkuser says. Meanwhile, as long as you don't edit disruptively, you are free to edit. If you focus on the same topics as Macromonkey, you might be blocked pre-emptively. Good luck. If you do make some good non-contentious contributions, and even if you are Macromonkey, it might help for later. --Abd (talk) 14:51, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Wall of text

Greetings! I have removed your most recentaddition to the mediation page (as well as the relevant comments) for several reasons:

• Editors expressed that it was overly lengthy and difficult to follow.
• The introduction to a new issue should present the bare minimum in terms of personal commentary so as to prevent other editors (including myself) from becoming biased before even becoming familiar with the material. More details and commentary can be added later in the discussion when they become relevant.
• As I noted when Enric Naval proposed the patent issue, I would like to keep the mediation page to one open conversation at a time. The second Naturwissenschaften discussion is indeed close to being closed, but I would like Hipocrite to have a chance to weigh in. Although I can understand your desire to move on to other discussions, it is my decision when to archive/open discussions.
• In regards to which discussion to have afterward, I would like to allow the patent discussion to resume. Discussions should, out of respect to those who post them, occur in the order in which they are posted. The second Naturwissenschaften discussion occurred because it was so closely related to the first.

If you would like to post and edit a shorter introduction to your issue, feel free, and I will put it in a collapse box for safe keeping :) --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts. I will also review what I wrote; however, none of it was unimportant. I will see what can be done to meet those concerns, but I disagree with your approach. I'll watch; there had been no activity on your part, so I was moving to the next most important issue, and the Be-8 theory was indeed high on the list. Hipocrite has had plenty of chance to weigh in. I find your action above discouraging; it's your right, but it's also my right to withdraw from active participation in the mediation, should I so choose. "Wall of text" as a description of that section betrays, to me, an approach to Wikipedia that may be incompatible with mine and others. Asking me to refactor would have been fine. You could have collapsed that section pending, without removing the material. Total removal was beyond the pale, as far as I'm concerned, I put a lot of work in that, and if there is something wrong with presenting evidence at the outset, well, it's beyond me. Good luck. I'm going to transfer what I wrote to my Talk page here.

Your decision to only allow one topic to be discussed at a time is highly inefficient; I've done on-line deliberative process for about twenty years, and the ability to handle multiple "motions" at once compensates for the otherwise glacial pace within each "motion." "One at a time" is standard deliberative process face-to-face, for very good reasons. Closing one at a time would also be good, and you can certainly focus in that way yourself, but shutting down the process on all meant that I spent a week waiting for ... nothing. The article issues will move on and the mediation will never catch up. My prediction. --Abd (talk) 21:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

All of what you wrote is still available in the page's history, so in terms of courtesy or efficiency, there really is no difference between collapsing it and deleting it. I chose to delete it because the only responses were those requesting that it should be refactored, and because I assumed that in the process of refactoring it, it would change dramatically, so there would be little point in keeping it. As I stated above, you are welcome to post a more manageable presentation of the issue and I/you will put it in a collapse box. You are welcome to even repost the original statement and work on it within the collapse box.

In response to your position on multiple discussions, please keep in mind that I am human. The mediation tends not to be a smooth gradual process, but instead one of spurts and sudden explosions of conversation. With that in mind, when discussions separate and become unfocused, as has already happened several times within the Naturwissenschaften discussion, I find it very hard to keep track of every thing that is going on. It is also important to keep in mind that the conclusion of one discussion may very well impact the nature of future discussions. This means that if they are taken one at a time, we have something definitive to work off of, whereas simultaneous conversations would refer to each other, making it very hard to follow for those who aren't actively/consistently participating. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Wiki-Conference New York Update: 3 weeks to go

For those of you who signed up early, Wiki-Conference New York has been confirmed for the weekend of July 25-26 at New York University, and we have Jimmy Wales signed on as a keynote speaker.

There's still plenty of time to join a panel, or to propose a lightning talk or an open space session. Register for the Wiki-Conference here. And sign up here for on-wiki notification. All are invited!
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 03:10, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Abd. I noticed you signed up for a panel at the conference. I'm wondering what is: "Scalable fractal cooperative advisory structure, informal (exists) or formal (proposed)." I think WP is massively too large to function as it did when much smaller. That is, some of the process and structures that worked well in it's infancy don't appear to scale up well. — Becksguy (talk) 06:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Big question. First, it's important to understand how Wikipedia process breaks down; there are two basic causes, and they are related: noise and inefficiency. In the early days nobody cared that the labor invested in an article was far more than would be invested in traditional publishing, because the labor was "free." But it isn't free, in fact; Wikipedia burns out editors, eventually, but when new editors were still pouring in, it seemed like the problem was these editors, perhaps they just couldn't adapt to new conditions, tighter policies and guidelines, perhaps they simply moved on to new interests, as people will do.

Wikipedia faces issues that were faced by certain kinds of traditional organizations long ago, and solutions were worked out, but this "technology" was not particularly understood by those putting together the project. Much of what was done before was independently developed, in theory. In practice, the theories break down because they require consensus, and consensus is expensive, short-term. Consensus organizations are famous for burning out members who are tired of the "endless meetings" that can be involved. On the other hand, when groups are small, it's possible to develop high levels of consensus and group unity; traditional organizations that have succeeded typically place most of their function in small groups, with representative structures that deal with overall policy; overall group unity is maintained by the use of supermajority rules for elections of representatives; in the best-known of the "starfish," Alcoholics Anonymous, election procedures guarantee substantial minority representation, and at all levels, discussion will continue far beyond that necessary to obtain a simple majority or even a supermajority, because group unity is consindered so important.

The result of these practices, and other aspects of the AA traditions, is a high level of agreement across the entire fellowship, without any top-down dominating structures (every AA group is independent and self-supporting). While occasionally, extensive discussion is needed for what might seem to be minor issues, the overall result is high efficiency, because settled issues really are settled, not merely a "victory" for one side.

(By the way, I'm not a member of AA, I've studied this kind of organization for about thirty years.)

On Wikipedia, controversies arise. How are they resolved? Ideally, a consensus is found, but sometimes this consensus is a result of mere numerical superiority, is imposed on a substantial minority, and the set of editors participating may be highly skewed. Even where the local majority is truly representative of an overall majority, if a minority perceives this as unfair and as not considering their point of view, they may become disruptive, long term, either within the structure or from without, as vandals, sock puppets, etc. It's been my contention that WP:NPOV isn't an absolute, it is relative, and the only way to measure it is the degree of consensus obtained. 100% may never be possible with a group as large as the community, but we could go far higher than we do. When this is proposed, some seem to assume that this requires compromising Wikipedia policies and guidelines, but, in fact, the reverse is true. I find it fascinating that Jimbo wrote about some of the principles behind this back in 2003; it's never really been implemented in a deep way, because the understanding is not widespread.

Wikipedia has no process for readily translating local consensus to project-wide consensus, or, in fact, the reverse; sometimes we get what appears to be a project-wide consensus, often through an ArbComm ruling, that has little effect at the local level, because editors are either unaware of the rulings or actively disagree with them, not believing that they were fairly represented.

WP:PRX was proposed in 2007 and rejected immediately without any understanding. The WP structure worked from the beginning, but it was really beyond scale almost immediately, but for various reasons it was still *usually* functional, as it still is. PRX would have set up a mechanism for editors to designate what was called a "proxy," for lack of a better term; in the European work on this, what has been called a proxy here was called an "advisor." The system will work best if the proxy is the editor whom the "client" most trusts to make reasonable decisions, should the client be distracted or otherwise unable to directly participate. While it could be predicted that some editors will be named by many, the establishment of a proxy-client relationship is consent to direct communication (proxies shouldn't be considered effective unless accepted, which is consent to communication, I'd propose, so there are natural limits to how many clients a given proxy can serve, and we would see very popular proxies suggest to their clients that they name, instead, another client of the popular proxy.

PRX did not change any process, and, far from being a method to make decisions by voting, rather would be a way of documenting and estimating, at the discretion of whoever is making a decision (such a closing admin), the level of consensus that would be found if the discussion became broad. Discussions actually becoming broad is insanely inefficient; traditional deliberative bodies avoid that like the plague, delegating most decisions to relatively small committees.

PRX would be voluntary, but, I'm sure, participation would bring such advantages that most established editors would participate; it takes practically no effort and involves what already occurs: editors who trust each other communicate directly. I haven't described much how it would work, but delegable proxy structures should, in theory, allow rapid communication between the "top," i.e. a relatively small number of highly trusted and influential aditors, and the "bottom," i.e., the entire editorial community, in both directions. If I have an idea, or a complaint, and I don't know how to suggest it or resolve it directly, I can ask my proxy about it. If my proxy agrees with me, the idea can then move up the hierarchy to the next level, where the same thing can happen. On the other hand, if my proxy doesn't agree with me, I'll have an explanation of why from someone I trust. If I still disagree, I'm not shut out of the structure, I can go to any other editor with a different proxy, and I can examine the proxy table to find someone who might be a good choice. So information is amalgamated and filtered until it reaches a level where a resolution is possible.

The "organizational structure" which PRX would create, from the bottom up, is a fractal. It should be self-similar regardless of scale.

One of the possibilities if we have PRX in place, or that might even cause it to be put in place, is the "standing election" of a Wikipedia Assembly, which is something many members of ArbComm have wanted, it has not been known how to do it without setting up new bureaucracies and other problems of standard democratic process. If we consider proxies as delegable, and measure "proxy rank" by the number of editors who would be represented by a proxy if nobody else participates, and we designate the top N proxies as "members of the Assembly," we have chosen a representative assembly, without holding an election as such. The problems of scale in democracy are not problems of voting, except for the difficulty of voting by the uninformed. The problem is noise; if an assembly has too many members, deliberative process breaks down, which is why direct democracies, such as the New England town meeting uniformly convert to elected assemblies beyond a certain scale. However, it's possible to allow direct voting but only restrict "floor rights," i.e., the ability to "address" the assembly. As with any deliberative assembly, the assembly would have sovereignty over its own process, and it could thus self-regulate. To be "represented" on the "floor" of the assembly, one simply needs to identify a sympathetic member of the assembly, someone with a "seat," and convince that person that an matter should be considered. The default would be one's own proxy. An assembly formed through continuous election as described would, in theory, be highly responsive, yet debate would be kept within small numbers, chosen to be maximally representative.

If it's understood that the goal is consensus, not mere majority rule -- which would be disastrous for Wikipedia -- many of the obvious problems people suggest wouldn't arise. Sock puppetry is one of the first objections that's really easy to dispose of: the last thing a puppet master wants to do is name the relationship! When PRX was proposed, the creator of the page named me as his proxy; we were immediately checkusered.... Rules for an assembly "election" could only provide "voting" rights to editors which meet certain standards; new editors could name a proxy but it would not affect proxy rank until conditions were met (autoconfirmed, min. edit count, time since registration, or other standards as found to be necessary).

What this is about, Becksguy, is setting up communications structures that resemble those of a biological nervous system. Human societies already do this in informal ways, and sometimes in somewhat formal ways, but, to my knowledge, a formal delegable proxy system has never been attempted on a scale anything like that of the Wikipedia community. WP:PRX was set up to be an experiment, not even as a proposal as developed as I've outlined here. We do need to solve the problem of how to develop intelligent decision-making on a large scale, and the traditional solutions mostly involve abandoning basic wiki principles. However, the basic idea of forming a representative assembly like this was invented by Lewis Carroll in about 1884; it's now called Asset voting. --Abd (talk) 15:25, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I should know better than to ask you a big question ☺. You have provided some absolutely fascinating and compelling thoughts, but I need some time to digest all this. I have seen some of your writings before, including Rule 0 and proxy, so it's not entirely new. Thank you for the response. More later. — Becksguy (talk) 20:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Erase

Dear Abd, I've erased your inappropriate comments from Wikipedia talk:Banning policy.[19] Wikipedia talk:Banning policy is not a place to discuss about the community ban of NYScholar; it is a place to discuss about how to ameliorate the Wikipedia:Banning policy page. Have a nice day! AdjustShift (talk) 20:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Discussion is deeper when examples are before us. I did not restore the comment, but placed a diff to it so that those who are interested can read it, avoiding an argument over whether or not it was appropriate for you to remove a comment like that. Have a nice day yourself! --Abd (talk) 21:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but please remember that Wikipedia talk:Banning policy is a place to discuss how to ameliorate Wikipedia:Banning policy page. AdjustShift (talk) 22:04, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

That's correct. This is actually a generic disagreement, AS, and it seems we have different views. I claim that in order to intelligently edit policy, we must understand it and how it's being applied, and we can't do that without discussing cases. So we don't just discuss proposed text, but situations. The cases are not raised to try to resolve or promote some resolution with the case, or to debate the case, but just as examples of what's happened, and any debate would be over the relevance and various aspects of the case as they relate to policy.

In the case involved in that discussion, you claimed that you were implementing a community consensus, and you cited !vote counts and percentages, in a striking deviation from what I've ever seen before. (75.86%?, later, 73.33%.) Yet Wikipedia:BAN#Community_ban describes the community ban process:

If a user has proven to be repeatedly disruptive in one or more areas of Wikipedia, the community may engage in a discussion at a relevant noticeboard such as the administrators' noticeboard.[1] Topic or site bans may be implemented by a consensus of editors who are not involved in the underlying dispute.

In your exacting specification of the percentages, you totally neglected the "editors who are not involved" issue. When involvement in dispute with the editor is considered, as I showed at [20], there was no consensus. If your own conclusion from the evidence or arguments is considered, it was just just about evenly divided.

In a wondrous piece of wikilawyering, you quibbled with "topic or site bans may be implemented by a consensus of editors; but that sentence is in the context of a noticeboard discussion. Administrators may declare bans unilaterally, based on their power to block, but that's not a "community ban." It's an administrative action, and, in this case, an indef block, implemented on your presumed personal conclusion, given mixed advice by the community, that the block will benefit the project. That is your right and, indeed, your responsibility. No claim has been made that your close was unreasonable, though my opinion is that what we have here is, in fact, an administrative ban, declared by you, not a community ban, because the process for a community ban, which requires a consensus as described, was not followed, and you showed no sign that involvement was even an issue until this was raised by me. This is not an argument that the ban itself was improper, only part of your alleged basis for it is improper, and only if it isn't moot would this dispute be anything more than a discussion on principles, which you are free to drop. And, in fact, you are encouraged to drop at this time. You'll note that I haven't taken this to your Talk page.

Certainly your decision can be justified, but is it the decision that would have maximized consensus? I don't think so. I think you could have made a decision that would have satisfied every editor !voting, probably including NYScholar. That would be the real meaning of consensus, and that many of us don't seem to believe this is possible is one of the reasons why Wikipedia process gets stalled in loops. In any case, you could still make that decision, I believe; and I'm not asking you to make it yet. The time to make it would be if and when it comes before you.

If it comes to pass that all this is not moot, what I'd expect from you would be a willingness to consider arguments for an unblock, under conditions which would be stated or negotiated at that time.

AdjustShift, I don't push things like this (beyond some level of abstract and theoretical discussion, particularly with friends like Steve) unless I think there is a basis for expecting confirmation by wider consensus, which includes ArbComm. --Abd (talk) 22:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Your note

Fair enough. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. My position, actually, is that if we can set up a decent, manageable, efficient intermediary between free editing and topic or site ban, we might "restrict" much more easily, thus avoiding the long battle that you suffered. It either would have worked, and everyone would have benefited -- including NYScholar -- or it wouldn't, in which case it would have quickly turned into a true site ban without all the fuss, having clearly failed through lack of cooperation. Instead, we had a long-term mess.

It's really pretty simple: admin closes a discussion with a restriction instead of a site ban. The initial restriction can be effectively a site ban, but the editor is allowed, possibly, a few things: first, to edit their entire user space, not just the talk page. This allows work, for example, on drafts. Second, the editor is allowed to make limited edits seeking a mentor, on user talk pages or project pages. Third, the editor is allowed to edit the talk pages of users with their consent (I won't give details, but it's quite doable). And lastly, the editor may be allowed to make self-reverted edits proposing changes to articles; and likewise Talk page comments (if the ban covers Talk pages). These edits, if considered useful by any other editor, may be reverted back in. If consent has been given by the banned editor, they can be refactored, summarized, referred to in history, etc.

The point is to contain, while still taking advantage of the banned editor's interest in and familiarity with a topic. It won't work with truly disruptive editors, but little would be lost. NYScholar's style was offensive to many editors, hence something had to be done about it. I've now spent many hours reviewing NYScholar's contributions, and I must say that it appears that I'd disagree with your conclusions that this editor was useless. I see a great deal of value there, and the ownership problems are connected with that value; many editors who work long and hard on a topic become quite opinionated about it, and it's quite reasonable that we might even consider them WP:COI when that happens.

However, my proposals about NYScholar, which were made as part of my original vote Opposing the community ban (I supported a topic ban), and which enjoyed some nice noises from Steve, who proposed the community ban, were not based on a conclusion that this editor was, overall, useful; but I operate on the rebuttable presumption that all editors are useful. If it's possible to prevent the problems that you experienced, Jezhotwells, would you change your mind about the ban? Suppose you saw a reasonable edit to an article you are watching, made by NYScholar, and self-reverted "per ban," would you consider it and revert it back in if it seemed useful to you? You wouldn't be obligated to, for sure, you could simply disregard all edits with "NYScholar" on them, if they were immediately reverted. (Otherwise, if it wasnt' reverted, there was a ban, you could point it out to AN/I. There is some disagreement in the community, but there is some opinion that self-reverted edits don't violate bans, unless the content is so outrageous that its transient existence is in itself disruptive.)

What would you think if there were a proposal presented that would provide for reliable supervision of NYScholar? --Abd (talk) 00:35, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure that there is any way of ensuring "reliable supervision", but I will look at any suggestions that are put forward. I think it is pretty clear that mentorship wouldn't work. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:46, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

While mentorship was tried twice, there wasn't overall supervision; mentorship broke down for reasons that were not entirely NYScholar's fault, and nobody was minding the store. The concept I'm proposing takes two involved editors, at least: a supervising admin, who doesn't do much but be available to quickly warn/block if agreements are violated (or simply to maintain precise ban conditions at WP:RESTRICT, in which case any admin could block if needed), and a mentor, who takes more responsibility than mentors normally do. Still, most of the work would be done by the banned editor. And means would be explored to develop cooperation with other editors. I believe it can be done, though I can't be sure that conditions are right in any particular case. I saw enough of NYScholar during the ban discussion to consider that there was a possibility. Thanks for your response. --Abd (talk) 00:55, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

WP Talk:BAnning policy

Please stay on topic in the discussion of improving the banning policy. The discussion is not about the justice of the ban on NYScholar but it is an attempt to clarify some points in the banning policy by improving the wordings. Your discussion of the banning of NSYcholar belongs elsewhere.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:52, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

In order to understand how the wordings might need improving, we need to know what was unclear. The case shows that, which is the only reason it was being discussed. After all, starting the section, you titled it Wikipedia_talk:Banning_policy#Banning_of_User:NYScholar. There is no attempt being made in my comments in this section to prompt a review of that ban to try to undo it, there is no claim that the ban is "unjust." Rather, there are claims, to which I responded, that bringing up the example was only an attempt to challenge the ban, which it wasn't. For the time being" I agree with the ban, though it would be much better if we had a truly neutral close, I'm beginning to suspect, from evidence which is inconclusive so far, that there was private communication about the ban, and AdjustShift seems unwilling to examine the deficiency in the decision, which doesn't challenge the ban conclusion, but only implementation details, including timing and blocking. Rather, my concern is the process issues raised by that ban and by the justification of it by AdjustShift, who clearly neglected the "involved editor part," and who continued to neglect it by trying to explain away the obvious interpretation of the policy as silly or preposterous and by continuing to cite a number of editors that doesn't reflect involvement analysis. --Abd (talk) 16:13, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

The concerns you adress here are not relevant to the discussion at the Banning policy page. You seem to be of the opinion that AdjustShift did not follow policy when closing the banning discussion - if so this should be discussed at the Village pump or at ANI - the question at WP:Banning policy is how to make the wording of the policy clearer - not whether or not it was followed in the specific case. it is right that our concerns have a certain overlap because you need to know what the policy actually says before you can determine whether AdjustShift closed the discussion according to policy. However at talk:banning policy we need to stick to the topic of wording the banning policy - not to determine whether it was applied in accordance with the existing wording by adjustshift.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:09, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

If I'm brief, some editors don't understand. If I explain in detail, it's tl;dr and editors make assumptions about what I'm saying that aren't supported by a careful reading. I'm not appealing the close, I have stated no intention to appeal the close. The close with a ban, I've said again and again, was a reasonable close, though not optimal. However, the closing admin has shown, both in original comments and in subsequent discussion, a fundamental and important misunderstanding of ban policy. The admin has claimed to be following ban policy. Others have noted a failure to follow the policy, which does not mean a bad ban, it means that a defect in understanding the policy has been demonstrated, if these other editors, including myself, are correct. First issue: what is the policy? How was the case being discussed -- at your instigation, Maunus -- different from what policy would suggest? Not following policy does not equal a bad decision. Whether or not to appeal the ban is an entirely different issue, and it's perplexing to me that AdjustShift has put such effort into defending a decision -- it's not just at the policy talk page -- when the decision has not been challenged, in itself. All that has been done is to use it as an example for discussion. It's been useful for that, clearly. So WTF is your comment here for?

AdjustShift clearly believes that policy was followed and that the discussion at WP:AN properly established a community ban. I clearly believe differently. The goal of the discussion at WP talk:BAN is what the policy is and how it would have applied to the instant situation, and specifically if any changes in wording are needed. I believe, as do some editors who have opined, that the wording as it is actually covers the matter and that AdjustShift's interpretation is bizarre wikilawyering, converting a "may" in the description of what makes for a community ban based on a discussion into such a ban into an implication that there is another kind of community-discussion based ban, which is highly dangerous and actually innovative.

There is, indeed, another kind of community ban, where an editor has been repeatedly blocked for behavior, and no admin is willing to unblock; such a ban is established even if there was no discussion at all. The edges of this kind of ban are a bit ragged, and the usage of the term "may" in the guideline is reflective of all policy: we are intensely aware of WP:IAR and so policies that are actually quite strict and clear may be worded with a bit of weasel.

All this is very much on the question of what the policy is and how the page should be worded, and I wouldn't be participating there if not for these considerations. And if you don't understand that, well, if you have a dispute with me, there is WP:DR. I don't see that you do, in fact, and this is just wasted noise, over a triviality, whether or not some specific pieces of text are relevant to the Talk page. What I've seen there is that the arguments I made in those allegedly irrelevant comments have been picked up and repeated by other experienced editors.

Unless you have some clear business here, Maunus, please go away; I will revert further comments from you unless you can show some value to them. --Abd (talk) 19:19, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a dispute with you, I am not here disputing - in fact I am very sympathetic to your views and I am the one who has been defening the those of your points that are relevant to the banning policy. You ask "WTF my comment is here for". In short It is there to offer you a piece friendly advice which which I believe may help show that AdjustShift is wrong about his interpretation of the banning policy's current wording being very clear and we (you and I) are right about it not being sufficiently clear. My advice is simply that you try to show more clearly in your posts how exactly your points relate to the policy. As you will see if you read the discussion I am the editor who has found your points to be correct and I am the one who has defended the relevance of your contributions to the discusision. I am merely asking you to help me by making your points more clear by relating them directly to the policy instead of to the specifics of the NYScholar case. We are on the same side here. ·Maunus·ƛ· 19:34, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, okay, but it seems that this is happening splendidly right now without further effort on my part. I do not agree, however, that the policy is unclear as it stands, and I was a tad surprised that AdjustShift resisted the suggestion that perhaps his close emphasizing "73.33%" of the vote was a problem. I originally became concerned when he implied that the close wasn't his decision, that he was "uncomfortable" with it, but it was the community's decision, which he felt obligated to implement. And that is a very dangerous conception of administrative authority, one which I've long struggled against, I was indef blocked last August over exactly this issue, with a bad ban based on an AN/I discussion, that I was actually in the process of challenging, but only in the first stages. Technically I was blocked for "personal attack," but, as later discussion developed, that was a misunderstanding, etc., etc. The admin in question has become a strong supporter, in fact. Check and see who granted me rollback privilege..... He was simply under stress at the time and didn't have the energy to understand the issues I was raising. It all got escalated way too quickly, and a banned editor took full advantage of the opportunity to inject some serious disruption, and the community fell for it, as it not infrequently does at a noticeboard. --Abd (talk) 19:45, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

ANI discussion about topic bans

Just for the record, I started this discussion in YOUR defence, so you comments here are way out of line. Have a nice day. Socrates2008 (Talk) 10:33, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, please, in the future, don't take something to a noticeboard in my defense without asking me! There existed a whole group of editors ready to pile on to do anything to push me closer to a site ban, they've been screaming for my head since I RfC'd a very popular administrator, in the RfC itself. They were far more muted before ArbComm, which roundly ignored the complaints about me and instead confirmed my charges. And "advised" me to, next time, escalate more quickly. The noticeboards aren't really a part of dispute resolution process, discussions there, if over anything resembling controversy, tend to devolve into shouting matches or ABF pile-ons, I avoid the noticeboards unless I have a simple, uncontroversial emergency.

I will refactor my comments as soon as I can get to it. Do consider, however, something doesn't quite compute here yet. You made statements about my intentions with PJHaseldine on the talk page you cite. They didn't exactly look like AGF statements to me.... Please understand that there were two or three matters taken to noticeboards in as many days, over me, with poor results each time. Same editors, typically, I'll be dealing with that....

My intentions with PJH were purely to help him be a positive contributor without problems. Was there a problem with his self-reverted edits? Or was it useful? He actually made, the edit I looked at, a larger and more significant edit, all in one, than what I had in mind proposing it to him, but anyone could have said to him, whoa! break that down into smaller edits and I'll look at it..... --Abd (talk) 12:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Socrates2008, this is what you wrote, to which I replied with the comment you objected to:

The only reason there's any ambiguity around making edits while blocked is a direct result of your attempts to encourage blocked editors like user:PJHaseldine to test the limits of their bans in the hope that you can thereby introduce new policy. If you succeeded in this quest, I fear this would give you a license to test the limits of people's patience at the Cold Fusion article even further. Your rallying and lobbying to introduce a complicated exception mechanism to the blocking process does not have general acceptance in the community, so I suggest you drop it now. Socrates2008 (Talk) 23:16, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I take that as a hostile post. I would not encourage anyone to "test the limits of their bans." Self-reversion was developed and intended to allow banned editors to propose edits more efficiently, precisely to avoid problems with ban enforcement. What has been said about them, you might note, is that banned editors, if they notice something, are advised to suggest changes, but the suggestion has been to propose the change in article Talk (if the editor isn't banned from Talk) or on another editor's Talk page, or by email. Which is far more cumbersome, both for the banned editor and for the editor who might make the actual change. In the discussion of "harmless edits" previously, the argument was strong, there was clear consensus, that editors should not be blocked for harmless edits, even if banned. This wasn't an abstract policy discussion, this was a real case of a real banned editor. And, in fact, that editor was testing the limits of his ban, was, quite obviously, seeking small changes to make. He had a declared agenda to disrupt arbitration enforcement, and still the commentary was that an editor shouldn't be blocked for making harmless edits. And that someone who complained about it repeatedly should probably be sanctioned.

I proposed self-reversion in that context. It was not intended to be used to test ban limits, and it really doesn't test ban limits, for it is quick and easy to see that an edit has been self-reverted; and if an admin blocks an editor by mistake, who is banned, it's easy to undo. (I suggested that the intention to self-revert be declared with the edit, so that bad timing doesn't result in such a block, i.e., before the editor can self-revert.)

Shortly after this, PJH was topic banned. There was no supervising admin, that's one of the problems. I suggested that he use self-reversion if he saw corrections to make. It wasn't intended to push or test anything; at that point I believed that the community had a consensus on harmless edits, simple, easy to verify corrections. A self-reverted edit, even if controversial, isn't harmful -- unless it was true, provocative vandalism or incivility, which would be an offense in itself, needing no consideration of a ban to sanction.

When I was then blocked for a one-character correction, attempting to fix a reference error, it was by an admin who had opined, in the other case, that blocking for harmless edits was "stupid." So I knew that he had considered the issue. I believe he was aware of the proposal for self-reversion, as I recall, he had even commented on it and, for sure, it wasn't to condemn the idea as a ban violation; rather it would have been to claim that it wasn't necessary. If the edit was harmless, it shouldn't be self-reverted!

It was truly a surprise to me, as I wrote in the AN report you filed. I had no intention to test or provoke the admin. Had I realized that he would block, or even that he would protest or warn, I wouldn't have made the edit. There are other complications with the topic ban, but they aren't important for this issue; for this, I'm assuming that the ban was legitimate, and, whether it was legitimate or not, I had promised to honor it. I believed that self-reversion specifically honors a ban, it accepts and works with a declared restriction.

The purpose of it is not the convenience of the banned editor. The purpose is improvement of the project, which should take precedence over petty and literalist interpretations of what a ban is.

The editors at AN claimed that a banned editor's input isn't wanted. First of all, with PJH, that clearly was not the case. He was considered COI, and the input of COI editors should be highly valued, they tend to be experts. He wasn't banned from Talk.

In my case, while I was banned from the article and talk, I was not banned from the topic, very specifically, I was encouraged to continue working with the mediation on cold fusion, which meant that I had occasion and need to continually refer to the article and to talk: editors discussing the ban at the policy page demanded that I should take the article off my watchlist so I wouldn't be tempted to edit it. Basically, it's clear what happened. And it's not about good policy. One of the things I may ask ArbComm is for a statement on self-reversion. In the prior case, it was an ArbComm ban that was being tested. That's why I asked an arbitrator about self-reversion. In the present discussion when my ban was the occasion, an arbitrator claimed that ArbComm had no policy allowing such edits, which was quite correct. An arbitrator's opinion had merely been asked, and, because it was consistent with what the rest of the community was saying at the time, it was not thought necessary to consult the Committee as a whole. Typical Wikipedia SNAFU.

Given your comment above, and that the section in question has been closed, I'm not modifying my response there, and, as to your intentions, I'm simply puzzled. It doesn't look to me like you went to AN to defend me, as you now claim. It looks like you went there to tighten restrictions on PJH, and you saw me as improperly encouraging him. That I conclude from the comment I quoted above, and it's consistent with your original comments on AN.

However, I'd be happy to change my mind. Please answer the questions I asked above about PJH's self-reverted edits. Were they a problem? --Abd (talk) 16:41, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

For the record, I'm not taking sides with anyone. I initially supported your point of view, and felt that the your block for a self-reverted edit was overly harsh and inconsistent with the treatment dealt to other banned editors. However after watching this unfold, it's apparent that there's not general community support for your mechanism of self-reverted edits, so I no longer share your view. Lastly, given your strong desire to change policy, the advice you've been giving PJH does not come from an uninvolved and neutal editor. My advice to you would be to get more involved in editing some articles, and less involved in Wiki politics. I'm taking this page off my watchlist now, as I don't feel it's a productive use of my time at WP to discuss this further. Good luck. Socrates2008 (Talk) 23:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

For the record, as well, whether you read this or not, Socrates, at the time that I advised PJH about self-reverted edits, I believed that self-reversion was not a ban violation, and that the community consensus, while not expressed clearly in favor of this on policy pages, had not opposed it, you might notice that the original discussion on Wikipedia talk:Banning policy long predates my block, and there was no negative opinion expressed there, only positive.

My last comment there was dated March 22, 2008, and there wasn't any negative comment about self-reversion until June 16, after I was blocked. In other words, I expected that it would not be a problem for PJH. And it wasn't, until I was blocked and you took the matter to AN. There was nobody proposing that he be blocked for a self-reverted edit (or had you proposed that?). I didn't see you complaining about the edits as ban violations, until you had a basis for it in my block and the response to that, which was, shall we say, a tad biased.

Given the prior responses, I do still consider the community is likely to accept this position, when I'm not the issue, for lots of reasons I won't go in to here. As to my involvement with wikipolitics, I am something like three times the age some young adult Wikipedia editors. The structure of consensus communities like Wikipedia is my long-term interest, it's far and away above individual articles in importance to me, and, through my work, other editors, who would have been banned or highly discouraged from editing Wikipedia, have been, instead, productive editors. However, it might be noted that I'd become active editing a contentious article, and that's what I was banned over, not "wikipolitics." Nevertheless, my prior political positions were definitely a major factor in the situation with my ban and block, and that's easy to show, and it will be shown, shortly. ::::Understand, Socrates, that before I was banned, two-thirds of editors commenting in an RfC I filed over an admin who had used tools while involved -- similar to the present situation, in fact, except that I was in the first situation utterly uninvolved with either the admin or the main article in question, and I am involved with Cold fusion, now, and continue to be, with encouragement -- called for me to be banned for disruption, whereas, when it went to ArbComm, they basically shut up and ArbComm amply confirmed my positions. I do not frivolously take disputes to ArbComm, and I won't do it unless I expect to be confirmed and it is important. Sure, for political effect, I could do some more RCP, but I do edit articles when I have something to contribute; in the case of Cold fusion, I investigated it as part of the case in question (that led to the RfC), and became interested in the topic, since I have the science background to understand the sources, which, unfortunately, many of our active editors don't. What I found was quite surprising, and that reaction is becoming fairly common; for example, you might find and watch the CBS Sixty Minutes video that features Robert Duncan (physicist). He, too, was surprised when he had occasion to take the time to research the topic. I bought most of the major books on cold fusion (if I set aside the one book that I consider neutral, half of the books I bought were skeptical), and I read them, and I've read every day in the field for six months. I was banned, in fact, when I'd turned from discussion to actually editing the article and it was starting to be effective. Now, what do you think? Should I and Wikipedia toss that in the trash, or should I put what I now know to use, consistent with our guidelines and policies, which are excellent if followed. It's when they are not followed, by editors and administrators who think that they know better, but who don't, that we have problems. Good luck. --Abd (talk) 00:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Wiki-Conference New York panel

It would also be good if you folks could make some preparations among yourselves about how best to work together on the Quality and Governance panel. I'll be sending you all an e-mail on this soon.--Pharos (talk) 17:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I hope I'll get to see a video, or transcript, or summary or something.

Abd, you may be interested in this announcement: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Advisory Council on Project Development convened ☺Coppertwig (talk) 22:11, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Ban, reviewed

I've just reviewed your edits following the ban [21] I imposed. My conclusion is that nothing much has changed in your editing patterns. The walls of text, the unhealthy over-interest in policy above actual edits, all remain. So the ban remains, to be reviewed in approximately another month. If you think the state of the CF mediation indicates an earlier review is deserved, please let me know William M. Connolley (talk) 20:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I do assume that you will read my response, so you will know that I claim this:

• You were involved in long-term disputes with me over various issues, but specifically:
• You edited Cold fusion under protection, contrary to expressed consensus at the article Talk page, indeed with contempt for consensus, and you, by your edit summary, expected that it would be controversial.
• You were involved in a content dispute with me, over that edit, at the time that you declared me banned from the article and its talk.
• You did not give any reason sufficient to justify a ban, but only WP:IAR.
• Not by me, the ban was taken to AN/I and was confirmed there, but not by a "consensus of uninvolved editors" as required by WP:BAN, the discussion being badly contaminated by an initial pile-on of involved editors. (I accepted that and asked that discussion be shut down to avoid needless disruption.)
• The closing admin for that discussion, when asked (again, not by me), set the ban length at one month. Therefore whatever community ban was established by that discussion has expired.
• You blocked me for making a self-reverted harmless edit to the article, when previously you had declared that blocking a topic banned editor for making harmless edits was "stupid," and when the edit was not intended, clearly, to challenge the ban. Had it been so intended, it would not have been self-reverted, which acknowledges the ban.
• You continue to insist on your right, in the presence of multiple charges of involvement, to determine, unilaterally, when the ban ends.
• Even though I do not recognize the legitimacy of your taking this position, I will not violate the ban without discussion before the community.
• This may be your last opportunity to avoid all this going to ArbComm as an active ban requiring attention, where, of course, evidence will be provided. I'm quite happy for ArbComm to judge my editing behavior. I need to know, in fact.

The mediation has been going well, thank you very much. As I would have expected, my content positions are being confirmed, so far 100%. --Abd (talk) 21:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I confirm that I have read what you have written and disagree with large portions of it William M. Connolley (talk) 21:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. You will have, of course, ample opportunity to express that, if it's not moot, no need for us to argue now. --Abd (talk) 21:55, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case

Hello Abd, I hope you're well. I notice that your statement on the arbitration requests page is over the 500 word limit. You're actually currently on over 1,200 words. Can you cut it down to 500 ASAP? Many thanks, Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 17:42, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Give me a little time, I'll cut it down later today. It was too heavy on the evidence, I'd say. Thanks.--Abd (talk) 17:47, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

By the way, how do you measure word count? I'd appreciate knowing it. Is it assumed from character count? --Abd (talk) 17:48, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I see word count needs some work.LeadSongDog come howl 18:01, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks Abd. I always use this online word counter - I've never had any trouble with it personally - the only thing is you have to make a small allowance for things like headers and signatures. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 18:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Cool. I've been experimenting with a technique to use to generate ready hypertext instead of using collapse. Write a full examination of something and save it, with a subsection header. Then get a permanent link to that section. Then edit the document deleting the full examination and leaving only a title or short summary, and place the permanent link with it. Much better than using separate evidence files, etc. Last time I used an evidence file before ArbComm, it was MfD'd after the case was rejected (which was my desired outcome, in fact, but it was a little irritating that the evidence, which had been useful, was ultimately deleted.) This way, the material is there unless someone actually deletes revisions.... So I simply deleted most of my request! It was already really boiled down, I spent more than a full day editing it, but it probably, as I wrote, presented too much evidence for an RfAr, but one never knows what the arbitrators might need to see. In this case, it helps that so many editors piled in to oppose, which effectively shows the depth of the dispute, so I don't need all those words!

We'll see if it worked. I've been doing this with responses to editor statements; often a brief statement by an editor can be dense with issues, so a full response will be much longer than the statement responded to. So, again, I write a full response, then replace it with a link to history. I may take the entire collection of responses and delete them, creating hypertext two levels deep. Or not. Depends on how much ends up being there.

I'm below 500 words now, according to your tool, thanks. --Abd (talk) 18:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Proxying for banned users

This is patently unacceptable. If you proxy edit for a banned user again, I'm going to block you. Raul654 (talk) 19:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Mmm.... Raul, can you please explain to me the difference between "proxying for a banned user" and making a decision that an editor, on their talk page, might prefer to see an edit? Was that edit disruptive to the Talk page involved? What did restoring it do to cause a problem? I did nothing for the benefit of that user, so I wasn't "proxying" for the user, I was acting on behalf of GoRight, who certainly should have the final say in this. Could GoRight have reverted that edit back in?

I can see this may warrant some attention. I wasn't necessarily ready for it, but sometimes life takes over. You refer to this user as "banned." Can you point to a discussion where this was determined? I looked at one point and couldn't find it. Likewise I couldn't find the disruptive edits that would have led to checkuser and the block and reversions. Maybe I just didn't know where to look. --Abd (talk) 20:33, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I really don't care one way or the other whether the edits are reverted, but can we not wikilawyer about "blocked" vs. "banned" in this instance? An editor who was indefinitely blocked, whom no admin has ever seriously considered unblocking, and who has created over 300 sockpuppets to push his one-note, unencyclopedic agenda is banned. If we can't get that far, then there's no point in discussing the rest. MastCell ^Talk 22:26, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

And that makes them an unperson, or perhaps a Suppressive Person, and they need to not only be treated like they never existed, but any ideas they hold must also be vigorously suppressed... too bad if a banned user happens to think that 2+2=4 or that the Earth is round; you're not allowed to express this idea because that would be Proxying For A Banned User, and it's a cardinal sin or an act of treason. *Dan T.* (talk) 23:01, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I've rarely heard or read such stupid nonsense. Removing a user form our community for a time or forever are the only tools of enforcement we have. If a user has been blocked - and Scibaby has been blocked for good reasons - we insist that he or she stays away. This has nothing to do with suppressing ideas - you or I are free to express them. We just don't want to have anything to do with the user anymore. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Dan T. and Stephan Schulz. The policy does not forbid repeating information which came from banned users, but editing at the direction of banned users, and says users can repeat information if they take responsibility for it. For example, I volunteered to help move ScienceApologist's optics draft article to Wikipedia when he was banned; I believe it was not against the rules since it was for the purpose of improving Wikipedia, not in response to a request from ScienceApologist. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:48, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that the policy you reference appears to be in regard to article content: ".. unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them." Abd is interpreting that as holding for talk page comments. Personally, I understand why we'd allow someone to take responsibility for a reliable and verifiable statement made on an article page. It would be dumb otherwise, as it would suggest that because a banned user made the claim, we can't use that claim in the article, even if it was independently verified by another user. But talk page comments are opinions. Abd cannot claim responsibility for someone else's opinions. - Bilby (talk) 23:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Dan, I specifically said that I don't care about these particular reversions, and I don't think that we need to be dogmatic about the proxying thing in general. No practical harm is done by leaving one opinion about RealClimate on someone's talk page. On the other hand, if we can't even agree that this particular user is banned, then it seems to me that there is no common ground at all from which to start. MastCell ^Talk 00:09, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I would prefer to see clearer processes for banning users. I think banning users should involve at least as much process as deleting pages, e.g. discussion for a certain number of days, closure by an uninvolved admin (with blocking obvious vandals being analogous to CSD). Also, I think bans could be tied more closely to specified undesirable behaviour, so that on the one hand a person can easily become unbanned as long as they follow the rules, and on the other hand people can't get away with repeatedly breaking rules as much as they do now. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:15, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/ADHD#Final_decision

Discuss

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above.

For the Committee MBisanz ^talk 00:10, 14 July 2009 (UTC)