Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light/Evidence

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Evidence presented by Tim Shuba

Brews ohare's incivility, disrespect, and bad faith toward others

• "probably four or five editors who cannot tie their shoes steamrollering a flatly incorrect statement into the intro."
• "There is no consideration for sources, logic or whatever: you just have to round up a lynch mob and away it goes."
• "simply subject to sneers from the civilized persons pretending to be editors."
• "dealing with completely intransigent editors suffering from both idée fixe and groupthink, and no concept of sources."
• "It's probably tendentious of me, but I attribute this to a lack of desire to really engage the issues (and the brain) and instead a preference for adrenalin and artful put-down."
• "A number of them are incapable of thought, and the rest are uninterested"
• "It is a really disgusting display of mob rule. The only reason to remove it is vendetta, I am afraid."
• "It was a bit of an eye-opener to find that some cannot understand plain English, and that some want only to attack me personally, nevermind the topic."

Tendentious editing by Brews ohare

These are just ones involving me. The pattern has gone on for months with others.

• Baiting me to get involved in an obsessive argument. Compare before and after my article edits to see that Brews ohare's "commentary" did not address anything I changed. I did not alter the first paragraph in any way.
• Purposefully misrepresenting my comment by changing indenting levels and position, thereby altering context. See my original context. Yes, I certainly did undo this gross abuse by the "page owner", as explained in my edit summary.

David Tombe has repeatedly brought his own original research into discussions

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Concerns from others about David Tombe's original research

• "This is a difficult situation, because Mr. Tombe backs off when administrators put a foot down hard, but he does not ever seem to get up his goal of inserting his version of the truth (which is not even a notable fringe view as far as I am aware) into centrifugal force and related articles."
• "I suggest you submit your physics reasoning to a physics journal, so that after it is published we can use it to explain to the readers of the wikipedia how David Tombe overturned basic physics"
• An editor inserting a section heading to indicate that the contributions are Davis Tombe's original research

What is really going on with David Tombe

In part of a longish rant to Jimbo Wales' talk page, Dave Tombe wrote, "I have therefore attempted to introduce specialized knowledge back into wikipedia in areas that I have done alot of research in."

As regarding physics articles, this statement refers to nineteenth century theories. In particular, the period of "the old real physics", before "the new nonsense physics" of Einstein's theory of relativity. Most of David Tombe's contributions to physics article have this extreme fringiest of the fringe motivation (since the word crank can be incivil, I will endeavor to use euphemisms, though I admit to having used it freely when I first commented about David Tombe). Here are some examples of the kind of "specialized knowledge" we can expect to be introduced.

• "It is likley that Einstein misunderstood Maxwell's equations."
• "Einstein on the other hand appears to have totally failed to grasp anything that Maxwell said at all."

Please arbitrators and other uninvolved interested parties, find an acquaintance who is conversant in physics and ask about these quotes. They are utterly preposterous, show no expertise whatsoever, and bode ill for anything but the attempted introduction of disruption and pseudoscience into the encyclopedia. Many of the recent arguments in the speed of light article center around this 1983 definition, and this undoubtedly leaves outsiders bemused. Well, the theoretical reasoning (there are other reasons) for this definition is solidly based on Einstein's theory of relativity. As such, it is antithetical to David Tombe's extreme minority point of view. In his words, "[t]his most important chapter of scientific history has now degenerated into the abominable post-1983 new physics that is summed up in the lead to the vacuum permittivity article."

David Tombe's participation in physics articles is the epitome of what needs to be addressed within the context of the intent of the arbcom pseudoscience decision.

Evidence presented by Dicklyon

Brews edits super-aggessively to push his idiosyncratic points of view

Brews attacks one article at a time, totally dominating both the article and the talk page if he doesn't get his way; he almost never gets any support from any other editor in these disputs. When he directed his attention to Wavelength starting June 10, I stood up to him, and it was a painful four weeks, with support from User:Srleffler; I even got blocked once for edit warring, though not for 3RR. It's hard to illustrate the problem with specific diffs, but his edit stats there tell the story: wavelength stats and the corresponding talk page stats.

The pattern has been repeated on various other articles, but probably none with numbers as big as what we currently see on speed of light: [9] and [10]. By editing as much as all other editors combined, he makes collaboration and compromise impossible. He keeps insisting that people address his points, even when they've done so many times before and tired of it.

See also stats or histories for articles and talk pages at Centrifugal force, Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame), Electromotive force, Matter (wow! 479 edits, against second place of 89 on this one!), Wave, Frame of reference, and many more. Most of the dominant edit counts indicate edit wars, though they're also somewhat inflated by his rapid-fire style of expanding articles with ever-increasing complexity and bloat.

I give Martin Hogbin a hard time sometimes for being reluctant to understand and compromise with the Brews point of view, but he's the only one really working to fend him off, too, which was my role on Wavelength, so I can't really fault him too much given the situation that Brews puts him.

As another example, here in 112 consecutive edits, he rewrites and bloats Electromotive force, focusing on one use of the term and adding unsourced assertion that other uses are "confused". When I noticed and tried to fix it to represent other points of view in a balanced way, edit warring ensued as he dug in to defend his particular POV. He summarily removes sourced information that doesn't fit his POV as "confusing material and incorrect statements"; it just keeps on like this, on any article where his POV or editing is challenged.

No other editor supports Brews ohare's idiosyncratic points of view

OK, Count Iblis and David Tombe sometimes do, but other than that, the evidence is overwhelming that Brews's points of view are idiosyncratic. He can't often find a source that shows anything like his POV, so he cites multiple sources and lengthy arguments that amount to WP:SYNTH. Many editors push back, and none support him, except that Count Iblis came along with his theory that we should ignore sources are argue from first principles instead. Obviously this is completely contrary to WP:V, and is what Brews is pushing, too; but since it's never possible to win an argument with Brews, this would require at least an unbiased referee; this is what WP:RS is supposed to help with, so we can't go that way.

Again, it's hard to cite diffs, but if Brews can point out any editor that both supports him and subscribes to wikipedia policy, I'll eat my hat.

It's not that Brews is always wrong or incivil, just that he's single-minded about getting his way on an article, no matter how many editors push back with good reason against his bizarre and complexifying style. Make him stop. Dicklyon (talk) 05:09, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Brews ohare's contributions do more harm than good

For example, in 10 days last November (this net diff), Brews expanded Capacitance from 10 KB to over 28 KB, largely by the addition of the wonderfully complex and idiosyncratic section Capacitance#Capacitance and 'displacement current'. The article was desparately in need of a cleanup and simplification of the lead before he touched it, and it remains so; but this new main section, the first section after the lead, is wonderfully inappropriate and such a great illustration of what he like to do, that I'm just glad I stumbled upon it. Unfortunately, nobody else has worked on that either; but now that Brews has added his stuff, anyone who tries to clean it up will likely face an edit war.

In Speed of light, he was not content to put his junk in a section; he continually pushes to influence the lead, and even the first sentence of the lead with his unique POV; sometimes like here he buries his idiosyncratic unsourced complexifying asides in footnotes. This kind of complexlity and bloat is not an improvement to the article; it's not clear who he thinks he is helping, but it seems to me that he has zero empathy for actual readers.

I tried for several months to talk with Brews about the problems with his editing style and contributions, culminating in my rather negative assessment on his talk page at User_talk:Brews_ohare#Your "record of contributions to Wikipedia" in which I tried to get him to understand this his record of contributions was not so positive as his self-assessment of it. See my other comments on his talk page leading up to that time, including polite inquiries that he ignored. He seems to think he and David make a net positive contribution to the centrifugal force articles; I'm not so sure there are others who would agree, just because they turned this set of articles into such a huge bloated mess, in spite of my work to at least have one summary-style article at Centrifugal force; I had a hard time keeping up with the bloat there, but I think finally did get it back to a summary-style article so that the typical reader could be shielded form Brews's contributions. Dicklyon (talk) 18:10, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

There is very little disagreement about the speed of light

As far as I can tell, the only substantive disagreement is whether there are two different concepts called the speed of light; Brews says there are, that the speed of light that is the defined value in SI units is not the same thing as, or is conceptually distinct from, the "real, physical speed of light". So far, as far as I've been able to find, he hasn't produced any source that represents this point of view. Not being allowed to say so directly, he pushes it subtly by the wording and positioning of every bit of the article that he can. Everthing else seems to be understood and agreed by all, in spite of Brews repeatedly asserting that nobody understands him or the issue. For examples, search for "real, physical" in Talk:Speed_of_light/Archive_8 and Talk:Speed_of_light/Archive_9. In Talk:Speed_of_light/Archive_9#The_numerical_value_299_792_458_m.2Fs_is_not_measured_in_SI_units he expounds at length on his "two different meanings" idea, but nobody buys it; his sources are all OK, but they don't support the interpretation that there are "two different meanings", or even that the detailed meanings before and after 1983, due to subtleties of what the standards organizations chose to do, deserve more than a brief comment in a section. It seems clear that everyone hears and understands his point; but it's his idiosyncratic interpretation of sources, not something that any reliable source actually says; nonetheless, he dominates the discussion and the editing to try to get wikipedia to represent this weird POV of his. If he were restricted, for example, to no more edits in a day than the most active other editor, his influence would be easy to control, his edits would be more coherent and thoughtful (unfortunately possibly also longer) and the problem would probably go away. Dicklyon (talk) 18:36, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by David Tombe

Responding to Tim Shuba's statement

Despite all that Tim Shuba has said above, I have not been putting original research into the articles. My major contribution to the speed of light article was in the history section. It passed the consensus and remained there for a few weeks until Tim Shuba deleted it. Here is the content material in question [11] as removed by Tim Shuba. I wrote most of the middle paragraph beginning with Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Rudolf Kohlrausch in 1856, down to Maxwell's 1865 paper. With the exception of a few modifications relating to Maxwell's 1865 paper that were made by Martin Hogbin, that paragraph is essentially mine. So why did Tim Shuba remove it? That is perhaps the most crucial aspect in the entire history of the speed of light. It relates to how James Clerk-Maxwell showed the linkage between the measured speed of light and the electic and magnetic constants (nowadays referred to as the electric permittivity and the magnetic permeability). I have expanded on this issue in a series of articles that are published in an on-line journal entitled 'The General Science Journal'. There was actually a wikipedia article page about that journal until Tim Shuba had it deleted about a week ago.

Why I chose to support Brews ohare in this dispute

Until last month, I knew absolutely nothing about the decision to re-define the metre in 1983 in terms of the speed of light. When I investigated the matter, I discovered that Brews was absolutely correct. The metre is now defined as the distance that light travels in a specified fraction of a second. That means that in SI units, the speed of light is then defined in terms of itself, and so it immediately loses the connection with the physical speed of light and becomes a mere definition with an arbitraily assigned number. It means that in SI units, the speed of light is beyond measurement and it is therefore important that the article introduction clearly makes a distinction between the new SI speed of light on the one hand, and the physical speed of light as is expressed in other systems of units and which can be measured. My involvement in the main article in relation to that issue was minimal and I was not involved in the edit war. Instead, I went to investigate the knock-on effect that this new definition would have on the electric permittivity, and how Maxwell's discovery in 1861 would be written up in the textbooks in the context of the new 1983 definition. The experiment in question was still in my 1979 edition of 'Nelkon & Parker'. I brought up the subject at WT:PHYS. An editor Headbomb tried to tell me that since 1983 we can no longer put a ruler across the plates of a capacitor and measure the distance. He told me that instead we will be in fact merely calibrating the ruler. I considered this to be total nonsense and I made my opinions about it clear on the speed of light talk page. An editor called Physchim62 then ran to AN/I to complain that I was engaging in disruptive editing, and I got promptly page banned without any apparent investigation into the truth of the allegation. Meanwhile, Christopher Thomas, who was the only one who seems to have understood my argument at WT:PHYS came along and maliciously presented the WT:PHYS thread as evidence of disruptive behaviour. Since then, I have been to the science library and confirmed my suspicions, that since 1983, the capacitor experiment that links the electric permittivity to the speed of light has disappeared from the textbooks. I did find one exception, and that was the 1995 (seventh edition) of 'Nelkon & Parker'. This then goes full circle to the bit in the history section that Tim Shuba deleted. The main question that needs to be asked at this hearing is, 'Why did Tim Shuba remove that edit? In doing so, he removed a vital chunk from the chronology in the history section. I questioned him about it on his talk page and all I got in return was double irony disguised as humour. And whatever the answer is, you'll find that it is the exact same reason why he and certain others don't want Brews to elaborate on the significance of the 1983 definition of the metre. That's why I've suggested that the article be handed over to Steve Byrnes and semi-protected for six months, with a voluntary withdrawal of all the disputing parties. David Tombe (talk) 09:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Brews_ohare

Scope

It appears that this inquiry is headed toward a review of mainly my own activity on WP from day one, and not an investigation of the situation at Speed of light. I consider that to be an unwarranted change in focus of this examination, and it is not the examination I anticipated when I wrote my summary position on the initial page, nor the one requested. This is Case/Speed of light. If a career-long examination of all my activity on WP is to be made, I would like it to be done with that objective stated at the outset, and with opportunity to review my activities in depth.

Specific issues

My attempts to insert a sub-subsection into Speed of light have been resisted by reversion without comment and generalities not related to the actual content of the submission.

My views on the 1983 definition of the speed of light were supported by Steve, but drew a barrage of criticism from many based upon not what was written, but what people imagined was written. For example, Finell took the opportunity to chastise me for bringing the subject up at all and accused me of "spewing pseudo-scientific nonsense all over WP" (a substitute for specific critique of specific statements), TimothyRias read into it a treatment of general relativity that was amazingly off-topic (GR is not involved at all), and Dicklyon interpreted it as "idiosyncratic synthesis", even though the entire thing is sourced at every point. None of these adverse comments would have occurred had only the authors restricted themselves to commenting upon the actual specific statements in the article, instead of critiquing their own imaginary generalities about what was said, and relying upon other editors' statements. I do not wish to pursue this matter on Speed of light, but I would like to avoid this kind of vague criticism based upon erroneous generalities wrongly associated with the actual material under review, and violation of WP:NPA.

Editor Tim Shuba's mistaken view of my activity on Speed of light

Editor Tim Shuba made what amounted to a major rewrite of Speed of light ending approximately here. I mistakenly concluded that the page now met his approval, and referred to it as "his" page. His response was heated and from that moment on it was downhill. He reverted my edits on the talk page with the Edit summary "undo dishonest editing by Brews ohare. I never answered him. More tendentious editing". I was amazed, as I never entertained an intention of embroiling him in existing disputes if he did not wish it, and certainly did not expect this violent reaction.

Editor Tim Shuba has linked to a number of my comments made on other editors' Talk pages, where I was complaining to those editors about my treatment by others on Speed of light. None of these comments was directed at the editor to whom I was speaking, and none appeared on Talk:Speed of light. If Tim Shuba wishes to troll for such remarks on other user pages and take the complaints personally, that's his business.

Editor Dicklyon's complaints are unrelated to Speed of light

Dicklyon loves the word "idiosyncratic". He tries to support its use by citing statistics, which seems to me an impossible connection. He marvels over statistics of my editing of Matter (he says: "Wow! 479 edits"), without any comprehension that this large article was completely rewritten, sources found, and new figures drawn and added. It has survived basically unchanged since, a big improvement over the disorganized debate over definitions that prevailed there previously.

He also wishes to extend the subject of this inquiry far beyond Speed of light to every occasion upon which he disagreed with me. On the Main page, Count Iblis provides a summary of a typical sequence in those interactions. An example is Electromotive force, where it took repeated citations and explanation to get across that emf is not a voltage, except in certain fields.

As Dicklyon says about his criticisms of myself, it is "hard to cite diffs" to support his arguments, so he will content himself with vague allegations and no specifics whatsoever. He says "it's not that Brews is always wrong or uncivil" but that he has a "bizarre and complexifying style". As an example, he points out the "wonderfully complex and idiosyncratic section Capacitance#Capacitance and 'displacement current'", which is a pretty simple series of quotes from Maxwell's papers intended to give a little historical background. He has not contested anything said in that section, and I recall no argument with Dicklyon over it. More generally, my complexifying style is a consequence of subject matter that happens to be more subtle than Dicklyon thinks necessary, and he cannot accept sources and arguments that require a nuanced view or exhibit deep roots. They are, he says, "bloating" the article. These problems have appeared on other pages, most notably Wavelength.

On Speed of light I don't believe there is much evidence of disagreement between us. I supported his efforts to rewrite the lead on several occasions, and do not recall any disagreements. So Dicklyon is arguing here ostensibly on behalf of other editors on Speed of light, but in fact because he is annoyed by my interactions with him elsewhere.

Support for D Tombe

There is no question that D Tombe has some views that are not widely shared. Nonetheless, D Tombe can articulate very reasoned and balanced commentary, and my own discussions with him at Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) resulted in virtually all the examples, figures and explanations that did much to improve that page, and similarly the examples on the Coriolis effect page. It also led to identification of the meaning used in the Lagrangian approach, a topic very reluctantly accepted by Dicklyon after weeks of persuasion. These discussions also led to the article Centrifugal force and absolute rotation spun off as a separate article using material from Centrifugal force in a good move by Dicklyon.

I appreciate D Tombe's support in trying to refocus the actions on Speed of light in violation of WP:NPA and WP:Talk to focus instead upon specific commentary concerning specific statements made, and not upon imagined generalities. Brews ohare (talk) 16:17, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

General remarks

What has to be done to fix the editing atmosphere at Speed of light is outlined on the Workshop page.

Evidence presented by Christopher Thomas

Peripheral involvement in threads with User:David Tombe

Since David Tombe has chosen to accuse me of malicious behavior as part of his statement of evidence (diff), I'm responding here. A typical summary of his accusations towards me would be the latter half of this post(signature).

Here are all of the edits that I've made related to these threads. There aren't many:

• At the WT:PHYS thread:
  • Attempted to clarify for Mr. Tombe what the basis of the dispute with his statements was: [12][13]
  • Request for more comments at AN/I: [14][15]
  • Other editing: [16]

• At the AN/I thread:
  • Drawing attention to Mr. Tombe's talk page behavior, in response to requests at AN/I for evidence of disruption and of people trying to mentor him: [17][18][19]
  • Brief responses to Mr. Tombe's accusations: [20][21]
  • Other commentary: [22]

I decided to refrain from further involvement, as continued participation in the threads did not seem likely to be useful. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 20:49, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

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