User talk:Arthur Rubin

Write a new message. I will reply on this page, under your post. This talk page is automatically archived by MiszaBot III. Any sections older than 28 days are automatically archived to User talk:Arthur Rubin/Archive 2007 . Sections without timestamps are not archived.

Status

Retired

This user is no longer active on Wikipedia because of hostile editing environment.

Beyond Mathematics (but inside it!)

Hi, Mr. Rubin!

The subject of this does not refer to reply anyway. (...)

►►►From your user page Wikipedia Babel₃:

• I am not a native speaker of English, but I do appreciate its elegance;

• Salutations from Rondônia to California!

• My current user's time zone is UTC-4: but we are on perfect syncronicity...

• I use to observe Nature offers saving Life.

• I am only a dilettante mathematician, while you are a in fact one: my respects!

1. About this, I must say that both Mathematics and I/me have adopted one another (is this correct, vernacular English?);
2. You are a Erdős number 1 class! This certainly is merit to both you and Paul Erdős, of course!
3. For anyone: "No matter if your Erdős number is quite near infinity. What matter is how near you are of yourself number!".

• I have seen that Wikipedia has gained a lot of good things from your wiki-trouble, as at WikiProject Mathematics as at other themes;

• I am a very interested student on Informatics, including — not only — logics and programming.

• I have seen you are so much dilligent and vigilant about your vernacular. (its & it's are different things, no doubt!...) And other zealous observances more you have declined at your customized Wikipedia Babel₃... Despite of no exclusion to every tribal human culture expression — however, so do I!

• No matter if anyone is skeptic (what is this?)... if that one believe in it!

• I do not believe in God: I know God by means of Jesus Christ in this elegant and ingenuous manner...

34. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

35. By this shall all [men] know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. [Gospel according to John Apostle, Chapter 13]

• I am "young at a longer time" enough to had [dis-/]assembled and used many type of typewriters. Good!

• Looking for neighbour as the same to me means looking for... God!

Have a nice weekend!

EgídioCampos, 2007.02.09, 20:00 UTC.

• Note: The above comment was written by me, despite of his accidental diconnection, then remaining as User IP:200.101.69.132. EgídioCampos

— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:00, 9 Februrary 2007 (UTC)

Regarding only being able to submit a site once to dmoz

The page I sourced clearly has listed:

Step Two Do a quick search in the directory at dmoz.org (the home of the Open Directory) to be sure your site isn't already listed. This saves everyone time.

The assumption is that, if the site is found, one would save everyone time by not submitting because you could not be listed more than once. I can modify the language, but the difference is semantics. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.40.53.133 (talk) 05:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

BTW - still figuring out how to use this and for some reason I couldn't respond on the actual page. I'm referring to DMOZ - Other alleged abuses have occurred at the executive level, with company management leveraging the link value from ODP to accelerate new privately funded projects. Although site policies suggest that an individual site is submitted in only one category [11][citation needed], Topix.net, a news aggregation site operated by ODP founder Rich Skrenta, has more than 10,000 listings.[12] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.40.53.133 (talk • contribs).

Well, although the FAQs are down, the actual policy is that a site may only be suggested once* (actually, once in Regional, and once in a topical category, per language the site is in), but that editors may add the site and subsites to additional categories if they find it appropriate. I'll see if I can find a cite. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 07:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Found it: http://dmoz.org/help/submit.html#multiple

“ You should submit your site to the single most appropriate category that is directly relevant to your site's content. Please only submit your site one time. The ODP editors reserve the right to use their editorial discretion to determine which category or categories your site will ultimately be placed. ”

— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 07:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Respectfully Arthur, I think an error is being made due to semantics. On the same page I cited it also asks that a url be submitted only once. In fact, it asks to not "submit the same URL more than once. Example: http://www.dmoz.org and http://www.dmoz.org/index.html". If you take at the Topix urls submitted throughout the directory (you can see this through my first source link)they are all subfolders of the same url - which seems contradictory to the policy. Again, we can debate the language all day long - but the facts are that the submission policies clearly outline 1 url is to be submitted per site, thousands of Topix urls have been submitted and accepted into DMOZ (it's not just that editors have placed the topix.net url in multiple categories) and the coincidence that this seems to be an exception made for the former founder of the organization and his new private venutre should be noted. I'd be happy to rephrase the statment, but I believe the statements made are supported by documentation on the site.

Actually, the topix sites weren't suggested; they were added by an internal process. Some DMOZ editors (OK, to avoid any possibility of violating DMOZ confidentiality, I) have suggested that that wasn't a good idea, and future automatic processes should be proposed for comment by other editors, rather than being done by fiat. It still may be an indication of improper activity (I cannot say more), but the facts are not quite as you describe them. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:03, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Arthur - again - this is becoming a conversation of semantics. Shall I change the original wording to say that DMOZ has added, through internal processes, thousands of links from the directory to privately funded projects of management? I appreciate you driving the discussion here, but would like you to help suggest how the information can be communicated through wikipedia - as it is both accurate and of note. Shall I source this conversation? Thanks in advance.

Well, it's complicated. In general, sites should only be suggested once, to one category (with the caveat noted above, and, in some bizarre cases, sites which have two completely unrelated sections may be suggested to both categories.). What is a site is a complicated matter (for instance, geocities, although it has a single domain, probably should be considered to have each "user" as a separate site.)

As for topix.net (within the last couple years), cnn.com (a long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far, away...), and a few other sites, perhaps it would be best to combine the note with the following sentence about Rolling Stone magazine. Following "...not be repeated", a new sentence such as "Some news sites, including (cnn.com) (associated with the parent company) and (topix.net) (associated with the founder, Rich Skrenta) have had many of their pages added by automated processes, leaving the perception that the site is used to improve the page rank of related projects." (I'll let you develop the correct phrasing. If references are needed, you can reference one of the search results for the count, an appropriate FAQ for "automated processes", and your favorite anti-ODP site for the perception." — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

And you may not source this conversation. Probably only DMOZ FAQs, newsletters, and http://resource-zone FAQs should be considered adequate attribution for "official" ODP policies. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:26, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Make sense. I've enjoyed the ongoing dialogue.

Deletion Review

I saw you insightful observation on Jimbo's talk page last night, and wandered by your userpage while responding to it. There, I noticed that you say you are keeping an eye on deletion review. I'm currently the primary closer of deletion reviews, and don't recollect seeing your username there. If you still have interest in this area, could you swing by and opine more often? The number of regular participants is currently probably between 10 and 20, with the number of frequent opiners in the single digits. More regular participants would increase the health of the forum. I've had to relist several discussions the past couple days because they didn't have enough opinions either way to close them. GRBerry 15:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Apologies; I really haven't been keeping up with Deletion Review lately. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey Arthur...

Your recent edit to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) was not quite a revert, but you did remove the link to the 90125 article. Why did you do that?--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 19:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

You could read my edit summary, but 90125 is a redirect to 90125 (album). There's also an apparent convention that years with 5 digits or more have a "comma", making 90125 not being a proper year. See, for example, Year 10,000 problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

School pranks

Please stop deleting content from school pranks? I went and found a book specifically to deter this sort of thing, yet you just now deleted a large swath of pranks AND reference to that book! Frotz 02:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

If you check the history, I changed the reference to a citation. If you actually check and confirm the other pranks are referenced in that book, you may add a citation to that reference, and I'll leave them alone. Unreference pranks may not be listed in the article. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Whoops. Sorry. I guess I got to the article before you added the citation. I'll add more pranks from the book when I get some time to do so. Frotz 05:57, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

A pity

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Ombudsman&curid=1547386&diff=113717537&oldid=113527316 Midgley 21:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Ombudsman's constant return to autism epidemic, read with his unaltered comments on the process etc look to me like tendentious editing on a medical topic. The article is interfered with, thereby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Cesar_Tort_and_Ombudsman_vs_others#Ombudsman_placed_on_Probation

Midgley 12:34, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Gentzen

I've made a brief remark concerning a revert you did in the article on Gentzen. Could you respond on that talk page? Thanks. Francis Davey 12:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

NaN

Take a fucking chill pill. I was searching on Wikipedia under "Not a number" to do some research, and noticed that the article did not exist, so I created the article and redirected one of them to the other. I wasn't aware if there's a debate about the naming issue on the talk page, and I don't see why it'd matter so much. Wikipedian06 08:10, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

NaN debate

I read the talk page. Where the fuck is the debate over the "Not a number" namespace? The article didn't even EXIST until I added it, so there could not possibly have been a debate about it. Wikipedian06 08:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If you wanted to rename NaN, you could have done so. Now, the history would be broken if your version were left active. (For what it's worth, if you didn't know about NaN, why were the articles identical? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Paul Turner

I have no idea about the referee but the rugby player is described as "Welsh international rugby union player" which would make him notable according to our criteria for sportspeople. Why did you tag him for speedy deletion? - Mgm|^(talk) 13:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

User:Stevenson-Perez

I notice you have also encountered the edits of User:Stevenson-Perez. I've posted some comments on the user's Talk page. - David Oberst 19:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Information is one of the articles I monitor to make sure that Fisher information doesn't improperly dominate Wikipedia. However, Stevenson-Perez is, shall we say, interesting. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Domain kiting

Listen, you may think you're hot stuff here (judging by your claim to being important and etc. on your user page), but you can't get away with threatening to block another editor because he's following Wikipedia policy and you happen to disagree with what he's doing... Domain tasting, whether you like it or not, is the more common name, and Wikipedia:Naming convention policy makes it clear that articles HAVE to go by their most common name. Furthermore, I did NOT copy and paste that text of the page, the other article was already there, so the version you keep trying to use is a Wikipedia:Fork file, which also breaks policy. Your kind of aggressive threats and postuiring simply to try to prevail with what you want to do against policy is unacceptable behavior, and it's disgusting that an admin would take such ridiculous actions. I have again restored the redirect to domain tasting, as even the article in question says ICANN and other registrars and groups use that term and that domain kiting was just the term coined as a neologism by the CEO of GoDaddy. That's the way it needs to stay, and do not threaten me with an abuse of admin power, because that simply doesn't fly. I'm not impressed by egomaniacs trying to throw their self-perceived weight around, especially when it breaks a number of the rules for how Wikipedia is set up to work. DreamGuy 20:48, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, you also said I should discuss it before taking the action, and I *DID* put the discussion on the talk page, and nobody else is talking there (not that they can say anything, as policy is clear on this point), so for you tell me I need to discuss it first when it's YOU who isn;t discussing it is yet another indication of your being unreasonable on this matter. DreamGuy 20:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

AND you even say in an old discuss on the talk page "'domain tasting' could mean something different, even if it is the preferred term in the industry -- YOU ADMIT IT'S THE PREFERRED TERM, SO POLICY SAYS WE HAVE TO USE THAT TERM. That policy has been around for years and years. As an admin you should really familiarize yourself with the policies you are supposed to be upholding. DreamGuy 20:58, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

{{uw-block}} ...

• Your creation (not reversion) of the article at domain tasting is out of process.
• There was a previous failed attempt to move the article from domain kiting to domain tasting. (I didn't close it, but there were no support !votes. The oppose !votes were a bit questionable, also.)
• If you were to propose the move on WP:RM, I might support it if you give reasonable arguments. (Or it could be we need to fork, as there are two related concepts which might separately be named.)
• As for it being the perferred term, it must also not be wrong, which is disputed in this case. See the KiB discussions elsewhere. It's clear that kB is the preferred term, but it's wrong.

— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Listen, you just gave me a "last warning" where you threaten to block me for FREAKING FOLLOWING WIKIPEDIA policy on this issue. You are abusing your power as an admin to try to win in a difference of opinion. This simply will not fly. I will not be intimidated by some person on a power trip absuing his position like this. Say whatever the hell you want, you aren;t getting away with this. DreamGuy 05:55, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, you used a block template above in your response. I don't know if you really did block me and I was just not online when you did so, but you simply CANNOT use those powers in edit conflicts. If you think you have a LEGITIMATE reason to block me, standard procedure is to get some admin not involved in the situation to do so. Your actions during all of this are an amazing abuse of power. Furthermore, your claims that I did not revert the article an that I created a new article by copying and pasting is an outright lie, and you should know this as you can see the page history and because I already told you this. You really, really need to rethink why you are at Wikipedia... to create an encyclopedia following the policies created by a group of people working together, or to abuse the system in order to try to win in dispute for which you otherwise have no support. You should resign as an admin, or take a vacation until such time as you are willing to act responsibly. DreamGuy 06:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

911 template

You might want to consider adding Template:Sep11 to your watchlist. Tom Harrison ^Talk 12:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:45, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Notability of Uładzimir Zylka

I've explained why this person is notable and why this article shouldn't be deleted at Talk:Uładzimir Zylka. BTW number of Google search results can be small in this case, because of Belarus' language nature. There are many different variatons of this name's transliteration. Best regards. Visor 14:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

to the rescue of a one-liner

I was hoping you could move Nephology (to be deleted) back to Nephology for me. Rebroad decided that this was too short and should be merged with Cloud and then moved Nephology to Nephology (to be deleted) so that he could move Cloud to Nephology. When he found out that he couldn't make that move (which ironically, he would have been able to if he'd had it speedy deleted or even Afded), he went to the talk page at Cloud (a first for him and moving) with this comment,

"Hi. Since this article is studying clouds, would it seem reasonable to rename this article to Nephology, with Cloud redirecting to it? Or perhaps rename the cloud disambiguation page to Cloud which would then include a link to Nephology"

And his logic is making me think that I need to assume even more good faith then I have been because I'm really now thinking that he wasn't trying to vandalize the person article and that all of his bizarre page moves have just been that--not vandalism. Anyway, he's right--the article's been a one-liner for forever, but it should be put on the stubs in urgent need of attention list, if I can ever find that page again, not move and double-redirected, and not instantly deleted. But I can't put it on the stub list or do anything until it's not called (to be deleted) so I was wondering if you could move for me.

And if you understood all that, you're either very clever or drank just the right amount of coffee. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   07:41, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Moved back. I'll "delete" the (to be deleted) links once WikiProject Weather catches the move. (And it was changed to a redirect to clouds, which I believe to be wrong, as it seems to be really the theory of cloudy substances, not necessarily in weather....) Or perhaps I'm confusing Nephology with Nephrology. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Yah--what he'd tried to do was move Nephology and then move Cloud to Nephology which would have worked only he made an edit on Nephology first so then he couldn't move Cloud and then the whole thing just got left like this. I've reverted to before he tagged it and I've listed it at requests for expansion, so some good will hopefully come of this mess. Any chance you could delete Nephology (to be deleted) though? That was actually Rebroad's intent anyway!

And you were right about a bad redirect. Rebroad got the study of and the actual thing a bit confused. Nephrology, by the way, is the branch of internal medicine dealing with the study of the function and diseases of the kidney. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   04:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it was nephelometry, that I was confusing it with. As for deleting "to be deleted", I'd prefer to wait until Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Meteorology articles by quality log records the move back, which should be in about 22 hours. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 06:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Not the nephelometry part, that flew a little over my head, but the deleting part. Deleting the page earlier wouldn't cause problems though would it? Since it's just a bot record of changes? Miss Mondegreen | Talk   12:47, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

page move

Hi Arthur! Thanks for the link. However, that wasn't a warning. It was a user making a polite request to not move the page. All users are entitled to make polite requests at any time they wish to! --Rebroad 18:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Archimedes Plutonium

That page serves no encyclopedic purpose. I think it's inhumane to maintain it.--CSTAR 20:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protection

This article needs semi-protection:

• Gettysburg_Address

It seems some school kids are having fun at the article's expense.-- Fyslee (collaborate) 21:05, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Langan

Hi. I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the references accessible on Langan's website have again been removed, by user 151.151.21.103. As you know, these are published and legitimate secondary sources which happen to be made available on the website (excluding the CTMU Q&A which I did not add back to the entry). There are no reasonable grounds for excluding these links. I would like to appeal to you to intervene on the Langan talk page, to indicate that no useful purpose is served by this disruptive behaviour. The same user is also arguing for the re-inclusion of the lawsuit material. I know that you and I have been in conflict over the editing of the entry, but I believe that an intervention by you may help to settle things down in relation to this entry. And it is my sincere belief that the hostility which Mr Langan attracts is out of all proportion to his importance. If the entry can achieve stability without much further ongoing conflict, I think it would be best for all parties. I hope you will look favourably on this request. Thankyou. FNMF 00:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. L's web site may not be used as a source for articles about L, even if he really did copy them correctly, because he could change them at any time. megafoundation.com (or .net, or whatever) may me used as a source for what L said. I'm not really happy about the removal of the lawsuit, but it does seem a reasonable interpretation of policy. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I am disappointed at this response. If Langan changes the links, they can be removed then. There is no evidence he wishes to do so, or would wish to do so. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this line of reasoning wishes to continue conflicts in relation to this entry for no good reason. I appeal to your better judgment to reconsider whether it is really in anyone's interest to continue with a dispute about links to articles which nobody contests are themselves legitimate sources. FNMF 00:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, the situation you describe is the situation for all links all the time. Whenever links change or go dead, they can be removed or altered. The entry in question receives more than enough scrutiny that were Langan to introduce such changes, they would be found out in quick time. To act in advance of such changes, without evidence there is any intention to make them, is unjustified. And, honestly, why would he change them? These are the articles and interviews in which he features. He has posted them because he is happy to have them read by the public. If they are legitimate sources, which is not contested, then nobody else should have a problem with them being accessible either. Again, please reconsider your attitude to this question to avoid unnecessarily prolonging this matter. FNMF 00:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

His website is not a WP:RS, so it can only be used as a reference to things that he said, not for things said about him. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Your willful insistence on confusing Langan's website with the utterly legitimate secondary sources accessible there is very disappointing. I note that no attempt to address my arguments was made. I am at a loss to understand why you and others are so determined to prolong this dispute. It appears that your lack of objectivity continues unabated, and I am forced to conclude that my offer of thanks for helping to enable the entry to settle down was premature. FNMF 01:22, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I still see no reasonable arguements that you've presented. No person's archiving of news articles about himself should be referenced as a reference, but possibly could appear as an link. And neither your argument nor Jimbo's for removing the legal dispute are consistent with the policies and guidelines, although Jimbo has been known to make up policies as he goes along. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Re: Your edits to Christopher Michael Langan

As an administrator it might be best to step back and perhaps consult an univolved administrator with regard to the inclusion of acceptable links in the article. Similar types of links are ubiquitous throughout Wikipedia and do not violate any policy. --NightSky 14:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Please desist from engaging in edit warring and vandalism in relation to this article. You are displaying a clear intention to disrupt this entry. FNMF 14:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

They did violate policy, in that a personal web site was only supposed to be used for assertions about what that person said, rather than about anything else. That policy seems to have been lost in the absorbsion of WP:RS into WP:ATT, so I'm not wrong. I apologize. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Domain tasting/kiting

Hi. I'm just posting to let you know that I've asked User:DreamGuy about possible ways to address the edit war that appears to be going on over Domain tasting and Domain kiting. Our conversation is at User talk:DreamGuy#Domain tasting.

I wonder if I could request that you refrain from any further reversions on that article until some talk page discussion occurs over just how the content there should be handled, whether in one article or two, and if one, under which title? It seems that there's some support for two articles, and some support for one article at two possible titles. It would be good to get these issues sorted out, perhaps via a content RfC, before any more reverting goes on. Thanks for understanding. -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll give DreamGuy one day (24 hours) to revert himself and edit the domain kiting article, or I'll revert and protect the redirect. The current copy at domain tasting started as a cut/paste move, and should be merged into domain tasting or deleted before any edits are done. I'm not that interested in the article; I think I first noticed it because of a previous fork war, so I don't think it's improper for me to lock the article in what I believe to be the consensus position. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:06, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow, is there any way I could convince you not to revert and protect the article, whether or not DreamGuy self-reverts? Aren't we supposed to always protect m:The Wrong Version? IMO, it's more important for us as admins to set an example of discussing before reverting than it is to have the article in the right place right away.

I won't reverse any admin action you decide to do, but I would warmly urge that you refrain from using your admin buttons to control the article. Please consider helping facilitate a productive discussion instead of reverting. Let's show DreamGuy that we're not taking a "side" "against" him; I think he might have that impression now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 14:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I think there's an existing concensus that the name should be domain kiting, after a move war and two failed Wikipedia:requested moves, neither of which had any arguments presented in favor of the move. I don't understand why no arguments were presented in the first RN, but the second was because no one except DreamGuy seems to have cared, and he was too busy reverting to actually present arguments. However, I'll defer reverting until some discussion occurs. The first question, though, is whether domain tasting should be deleted or history-merged into domain kiting. We need to do one or the other to handle the content fork issue. In either case, we need to set things up so that DreamGuy can move the article, rather than cut/paste move it. I'm willing to wait for another concensus if we can arrange it so that there is only one article history. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm thinking I'll work on the histories today, and clean up some of the mess left by so many cut-and-paste moves, forks and reversions. Some of it needs merging, whatever else happens. I probably ought to set up the talk page discussion, too, or maybe do that first, and get an idea of what needs to be where before moving anything else. -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:55, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but DreamGuy removed your attempt at warning him from his talk page, which seems to be his habit with anything even slightly critical that appears on his talk page, instead of leaving it as a proper record. See his deletion of your warning. He has also removed a polite warning I left after I saw multiple blatant violations of Wikipedia policy in his edit summaries one night (see diff, which only listed a small sample). I know it's allowed to remove blatant attacks and vandalism from your own talk page, but DreamGuy seems to treat any questioning of his actions as a blatant personal attack. I'm a bit worried, as it seems that he has repeatedly been a magnet for criticism, but persons are left to sort through old versions of his talk page to find even mild criticism of his actions. At first glance, one is given the rather deceptive impression that nobody has ever become irritated with him. Is whitewashing your reputation like that allowed? Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 23:58, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I realize it's not to me that the question was addressed, but as far as I understand, yes, removing warnings from one's talk page is certainly allowed. You can be sure, when someone removes a warning you left them, that they have read it. Those potted template warnings are actually not very effective in getting a productive discussion going. If you're dealing with a content dispute, your best option is to engage the other editor in open dialogue, if that fails, or if it's a more general behavior problem, then a user RfC may be appropriate. That's my opinion, anyway, proferred because I happened to be in this thread already. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:37, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I concur that policy is that a user can remove warnings from his talk page. As he doesn't think he's doing anything wrong, that's to be expected. However, the {{uw-move4}} is also in the edit summary, so it can easily be seen by a reviewing admin that I, at least, think there was a problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 04:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Help Resolving a conflict

I have read the pages about this on wikipedia and I have came to you because you seem to be a person who knows how wikipedia is supposed to work and are most likely 100% neutral on this matter. I am involved in a rather intense edit war with two other editors of the article Miriam Rivera. In the last days the user User:Jokestress has quite reasonably asked for the article to be backed up with more reliable sources. Well I found them and that seems to have placated her. She has acted in 100% reasonable way in all of this. The problem arises in that she has asked in the spirt of resolving the conflict we were having other people who are not 100% neutral it seems to comment on the matter. These being the user User:Longhair and the userUser:Alison in particular who have not bothered to justify anything that they have done. Longhiar being an admin seems to feel no need to discuss anything and I feel is abusing her powers. Is there anything you can do? --Hfarmer 03:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

TV Tome

Please see this diff. Matthew

Could you weigh in at ANI?

I was hoping you could weigh in at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#repeated unwarranted warnings being left on my talk page.

I woke up to a lot of messages from Rebroad and continued to get them and they continued to get more confusing and to attack me more. I think/am hoping that there's a lot of miscommunication. He seems to be under the impression that I'm not differentiating between policy and opinion, which I didn't understand until he said, "How can you say "the topic will not be discussed more in the Cloud article than it already is"? As usual, you are trying to dictate policy based on your own opinion. This is now your 3rd (at least) warning regarding your repeated practice of doing this."

To me it's obvious that that is a statment based on my opinion and that wiki policy is nowhere in the galaxy, but that didn't come accross.

At any rate, this has gone to WP:ANI and since you were around for some of this whole mess, I'd appreciate your comments there. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   18:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

That was no attack

Hello. That edit was no attack and i have proof of the same if interested contact me. Coolbunny 02:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Unsubstantiated warnings

Recently you posted a warning on my discussion page against reverting content and adding uncited material. You also implied I am engaged in edit warring. I find this warning and these claims to be wholly unsubstantiated and inconsistent with WP:AGF.

If you can identify specific edits by me (e.g., by id number) that violate policy or demonstrate a failure to recognize or attempt to reach consensus, I welcome you to identify them to me so I can make a good faith effort to address the deficiencies and correct any mistaken action that I may have made inconsistent with WP policy.

Absent such identification, you have given me no reason to conclude that your warning does not represent an unhelpful and unwarranted action that is entirely inconsistent with my very detailed and courteous requests for additional discusssion, consensus, and substantiation from reliable sources for all materials contributed to Wikipedia articles. Respectfully submitted. dr.ef.tymac 17:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Reverting 4 times in 24 hours is prima facia (sp) evidence of edit warring. You've clearly done 3, and your last edit was arguably a partial revert. I might add that your 8 changes in the last 24 hours having been reverted by 5 different editors suggests that you don't have concensus. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:26, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Respectfully, although I appreciate your efforts at maintaining article integrity, and your subsequent discussion and follow-up with me on my talk page, I would like to address to some points that I think merit consideration.

1. Prima facie evidence does not equal conclusive evidence, reasonably informed people can see things differently. Prior discussion helps clear that up. Direct discussion is what I had been requesting from square zero.
2. I did 2 "Undo-style" reverts, both of which were preceeded by express (yet unmet) requests for input on the discussion page. I can respect that might not have been appreciated. Nevertheless, clearly defining "consensus" seems next to impossible if there is no direct discussion upon which to establish it, no?
3. You seem to have applied an expansive definition of what constitutes a "revert" (as opposed to a "change" or an "integration" under WP:CON). That's fine, but it seems that would warrant an even closer careful scrutiny and greater effort to first discuss and verify and determine good faith, and not initiating first-contact with warnings and threatened blocks.
4. Your terms: "suggests you don't have consensus" (above) seem to conflate support for a contributor with support for the contributions themselves. This does not seem entirely appropriate in this instance.
5. "8 changes reverted by 5 different editors" I'm not sure that's entirely correct. At least two of the contributions were uncontroversial mundane clarifications that (so far) remain uncontested:

• changed "image" to "video" [1]
• changed "hit by a plane" to "hit by a Boeing 757" [2]
• [2007-03-25T08:41:05] This one was potentially controversial, but I indicated it as a "propose rewoding of caption," (sic) directly requesting feedback, and not for the purpose of "warring", it was reverted by a user who has yet to address the issue in discussion.

1. Most ironically, the main point of contention was the content of one particular image caption. Prior to my recent contributions, the caption had no mention about doubts with the video, but now, in the current version of the article, it does. Does that mean my efforts have led the way in a "change" of consensus? To this day I do not know the precise answer to that question, because the discussion page is still parked with unmet requests for clarification on that precise issue.

Like I said previously, thanks for your efforts at discussion. Although we may not have identical views on all matters, I am always willing to consider and respond to concerns from other contributors. Regards, dr.ef.tymac 18:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Barrett v. Rosenthal

The above-entitled arbitration case has been closed and the final decision published at the above link. Ilena (talk · contribs) is banned from editing Wikipedia for one year and is banned from editing articles and talk pages related to alternative medicine, except talk pages related to breat implants. Fyslee (talk · contribs) is cautioned to use reliable sources and to edit from a neutral point of view. He is reminded that editors with a known partisan point of view should be careful to seek consensus on the talk page of articles to avoid the appearance of a COI if other editors question their edits. For the arbitration committee, Thatcher131 12:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Talk Stephan Barrett

I just wanted to let you know you forgot to sign before that bot gets there! ;) --Crohnie 19:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I think my moves back and forth prevented the bot from finding it, but it's signed now. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Peano axioms up for A-class rating

Hi Arthur. You're probably aware that the mathematics WikiProject has set up a process to grant articles that deserve it an A-class rating at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating. Recently, our article on the Peano axioms was nominated. Unfortunately, there are no comments from anybody who really knows logic, so I was hoping that you could have a look at the article, see whether there is anything there that would embarrass us, and leave a comment on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating/Peano axioms. Thanks. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 08:17, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Quickie on ordinal numbers

Thanks for fulfilling my previous request. As a reward, here is another one ;) But I hope this one is really easy for you.

User:GregWoodhouse alerted me that real number contains the sentence "In fact, the cardinality of the reals is 2^ω, i.e., the cardinality of the set of subsets of the natural numbers." Should this really be 2^ω and not $2^{\aleph _{0}}$ ? I don't understand ordinal numbers, but ordinal arithmetic says that ordinal exponentiation and cardinal exponentiation should not be confused, and that in fact 2^ω = ω. However, this sentence has been in the article for over a year, many people must have read it, and as I said, I don't understand ordinal numbers, so I'd like to check before changing it. Thanks again. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:16, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not speaking for Arthur here, but the issue is just that the notation 2^ω can be used either to mean cardinal exponentiation or to mean ordinal exponentiation, and except in contexts where it clearly is supposed to be ordinal exponentiation it is read to mean cardinal exponentiation. It couldn't hurt to change the article to say $2^{\aleph _{0}}$, since that is unambiguous. CMummert · talk 15:22, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll confirm (and why are you monitoring my talk page?) 2^ω looks better typographically, though. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to step on your toes. I left some comments here in January and never took it off my watchlist. Normally I would ignore it but Jitse's edit summary hooked me. CMummert · talk 15:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps that paragraph should have a {{main|cardinality of the continuum}}, or some other appropriate template pointing to that article? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I reformulated it to get rid of $2^{\omega }$. There is a link to cardinality of the continuum, but it's a bit hidden. Using the main template is a good idea, but I fear it might be a bit too conspicuous in this situation. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:14, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Explanation?

Um, I was wondering why you blocked me? I didn't unblock myself - I'm not sure who did, there appears to be something wrong with the logs - but the only thing that might be problematic that I can think of is that when I blocked two separate users, for entirely valid reasons, I put "April Fool's" as a reason. DS 22:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)