User talk:ජපස

I have a simple two to three step process for refactoring comments that seem to anyone to be uncivil:

1. You need to provide a specific reference to specific wording. A diff or link is a good start, but you need to quote exactly what part of the wording is uncivil and why. Is it an adjective? A particular phrase? etc. (For example, "I thought it was uncivil when you said 'there are dozens of isochron methods' here.")
2. You will need to be abundantly clear as to how exact wordings is perceived by you to be uncivil towards you personally and why you consider it to be uncivil. (For example, "When I was being persecuted in the Maltese riots of 1988, the favored phrase of the police as they shot us with their water cannons was 'There are dozens of isochron methods!' The phrase still haunts me to this day.")
3. Provide an alternative wording that provides the same information without the perceived incivility. This is not necessary step, but would be helpful. (For example, "Instead of saying that phrase, could you just say 'Scientists use a large number of radioisotope ratios to allow them to date rocks.'? This phrase does not carry the loaded baggage that I associate with the wording you wrote but seems to have the same meaning.")

Once you provide at least information relating to the first two steps, I will usually immediately refactor. The third step is optional.

ScienceApologist (talk) 20:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Woodward effect AFD

Just FYI, I updated myself from Delete to Keep. I'm not asking you to change your mind, but to just review the new sources. It could still go either way, and I have no preference in any event. It's a fairly big shift in material for an article of the size, so I just want to make sure you see it. I don't know if it's a shift in value, and am up in the air on that (like you can see from my comment). rootology (C)(T) 22:09, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

civility

Hey. Do you have a question as to what incivility is taken to be on en.Wikipedia? This isn't a trick/snarky/threatening question. Gwen Gale (talk) 22:10, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Random question

Hey Sci, sorry to bother you. I was wondering what a Gianoplumb is? Or maybe someone else watching this knows and could drop me a note? Feel free to delete this if it's in any way bothersome, I was just curious and I hate to miss out on good asides and interesting references. You certainly have some devoted friends who stick up for you. Happy Holidays. ChildofMidnight (talk) 23:19, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

User:Giano+"Visions of sugarplums danced in their heads"+"plumbing the depths" = Gianoplumb.

That's what I thought, but I wasn't aware that you and Giano's paths had ever crossed or that you were even aware of one another. I didn't don't totally get the plumbing thing either... hmmm... I'm still not sure I do. Are you siding with him, or against him? Are you saying that endless discussions with Admins are like getting into the depths of plumbing work and only lead to trouble? Oh well. I'm slow. Nevermind. I'd like to see the two of you work together though, but would it be on a science article or classical architecture? Hmmmm... And here I thought you weren't going to be around until the new year. An early Christmas present?  :) Thanks for responding. I appreciate it. I've been told curiosity killed the cat, but I mostly prefer dogs, so hopefully it will all work out okay for me. Take care. Thanks again. ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Merry Christmas SA. I hope Santa brings you some good stuff. Or that you enjoy whatever holiday or science festival you celebrate this time of year. Take care. ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Is this: Chronic endothelial injury hypothesis a subject that interests you? ChildofMidnight (talk) 02:58, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Not for any reason I can currently see. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

What subjects are you interested in? On new page patrol I run across a lot of random stuff. Are you mostly after alternative medicine and skeptics? ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Although I monitor some of the more popular alternative medicine topics, I am more interested in credulous content in general rather than any one specific topic. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Credulous or credible? :) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:34, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Credulous. The credible content stays and I have little to no interest in it not being an expert in it myself. Note that this only applies to (alternative) medicine related articles. On other articles where I have some expertise in the credible content, I therefore become interested. ScienceApologist (talk) 05:36, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Aha, I get it now, credulous it is. I have stuck to psychiatry articles mainly thus far WRT interacting with such material. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that (as in, I'm sorry you have to deal with the credulous amateur attacks on psychiatry creeping into our encyclopedia that does not particularly care for WP:EXPERTs). If you ever need any help with the credulous anti-psychiatry types (and they are legion -- and well-funded), let me know. It's somewhere on my to-do list between searching through the massive number of WP:PARANORMAL articles and trying to rewrite UFO according to the few sources written by actual observational astronomers. ScienceApologist (talk) 05:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much SA. I'm speechless. I'm sure I'll come up with a reponse in time, however, so enjoy the silence while it lasts. :) ChildofMidnight (talk) 07:24, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

		Merry Christmas!
		Template:Sound sample box align right Template:Sample box end ජපස, here's hoping you're having a wonderful Christmas, and here's also hoping that all your family and friends are well. Lets all hope that the year coming will be a good one! If we've had disputes in the past, I hold no grudges, especially at such a time as this. If you don't know I am, I apologise, feel free to remove this from your page. Come and say hi, I won't bite, I swear! It could even be good for me, you know - I'm feeling a little down at the moment with all of these snowmen giving me the cold shoulder :( — neur ho ho ho(talk) 00:11, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Seasons Greetings

Wishing you the very best for the season. Guettarda (talk) 06:21, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Kudos

Thank you for doing it this way this time. Eventually the community will hopefully tire of civil POV-pushing and general promotion of undue credulity, but until then ... meh. - Eldereft (cont.) 09:54, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Gazimoff 00:52, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The Electric Universe of Juergens-Velikovsky/Scott/Thornhill

Thank you for your message. With the lapse of time since the ruckus at "Plasma cosmology" over a year ago, I was wondering whether anyone would see my comments or how long discovery might take. Alas, I am NOT a "cosmic electrician" or otherwise specially qualified in electromagnetism and therefore need the back-up of those who are, such as Tom Bridgman, Tim Thompson, and others who were active on talk.origins in the mid-'90s evaluating the outrageous claims of David Talbott (and see, too, the Pensée entry linked to his bio) who is the titular guru at kronia.com and thunderbolts.info. BTW: Scott's book The Electric Sky was reviewed in The Observatory in August 2007 by editor David Stickland, who though skeptical was basically clueless.

Talbott objects to the "Criticism" section of his Wikipedia entry, and is currently trying to pressure me to modify it to his specifications. Were this section to be subjected to a full-blown editorial review, I am sure much would not measure up to Wikipedia standards on various grounds, but to the best of my ability all the content for which I am responsible is true, regardless Talbott's self-serving quibbles. But, one of the trickier grounds is "verifiability" BECAUSE very little concerning Talbott's activities is verifiable with widely available public sources. MOST of his activity has been on his own moderated fora (kronia-list, kronia-talk, thunderbolts, etc.) and earlier his two and a half year sojourn on talk.origins, which generated alot of material, but not much has survived the transitions to archiving at dejanews to googlegroups. The most substantial published criticism of Talbott's mythological work is Leroy Ellenberger's "An Antidote to Velikovskian Delusions" in Skeptic 3(4), 1995, but it is no comprehensive, scholarly critique. The original version was posted to talk.origins in early 1996 with a much expanded version available at <http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html>. The initial version of Talbott's bio entry was nothing but hagiography as though he was the next best new thing in "comparative mythology" when his 1980 book The Saturn Myth was panned by non-specialist reviewers and remaindered with Doubleday NOT even making back its author's advance and no one in academia has embraced his nonsense. In contrast, Sitchin's 1976 The Twelfth Planet is still going gangbusters--mentioned just for sake of comparison.

As an example of what could be an issue in editing the "Criticism" section is the sentence about Grubaugh's "polar configuration" model being disproved by two astronomers: Victor Slabinski (in Aeon 3:6, 1994) and Tom Van Flandern (talk.origins, Dec. 1994--but not archived). Talbott in his weirdly delusional way claims these disproofs were overturned by subsequent work by Bob Driscoll and Bob Bass; but this simply is NOT correct as the "howler monkeys" (e.g., Tim Thompson, Paul Gans, Wayne Throop, Karl Hahn, Robert Grumbine, Burch Seymour, Richard Harter, et al.) on talk.origins made perfectly clear in 1995-1996 (but never accepted by Talbott). Well, I've gone on too long here; I am sure you get the idea. It would not be so bad were Talbott simply the proverbial lone crackpot Velikovsky wannabe, such as John "Angiras" Ackerman or Donald Patten or James McCanney. But Talbott has serious funding from several wealthy retired entrepreneurs with Velikovskian roots, the most notable being A. Bruce Mainwaring, UPenn 1947 & Penn Trustee, whose $7,000,000 got his name on the new wing of Penn's University Museum. Mainwaring underwrote the stipends for Velikovsky's summer assistants in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as funding recent activities of Alfred de Grazia and Anthony Peratt [expeditions to catalogue and document petroglyphs allegedly motivated by stupendous auroral displays headed by Marinus Anthony "Rens" van der Sluijs (webmaster for mythopedia.info), reported in Fortean Times no. 233, 2008]. And so it goes.... Phaedrus7 (talk) 23:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC

Thank you for your feedback. Let me comment on your points: 1. David Talbott: I believe his "notability" merits an entry by virtue of his Pensée work promoting Velikovsky in 1972-74, whose resulting public acclaim arguably produced the AAAS session in San Francisco in Feb. 1974 where Carl Sagan famously confronted Velikovsky. And I guess one cannot discount his gadfly activities on the neo-Velikovsky catastrophism scene. He has groupie-defenders every bit as tenacious as those who guard the entries for Carl Sagan, Zecharia Sitchin, Gunnar Heinsohn and Velikovsky. In 1998 his plan was to gather the various neo-Velikovskian entities under the umbrella of Mind Exploration Corp., a.k.a. WholeMind, using the proceeds from a million dollar unregistered stock offering whose prospectus was on the Web. This evidently was not successful, although in early 1999 the WholeMind brand was used on a range of advertisements in Atlantis Rising no. 19 (accessible via google.com search) after Mel and Amy Acheson ran their "Thunderbolts of the Gods" article in no. 18 pushing Talbott and Thornhill's "electric universe"/mythology stuff. If anything might be done with the Talbott entry, I'd suggest a healthy reduction similar to what happened recently with the entry for Alfred de Grazia whose initial text was so detailed (e.g., that his lover in the 1980s was killed in a shark attack at Nevis Island in the Caribbean) and unsourced that it had to be an autobiography, which in any event was uploaded by his wife Ami de Grazia. Talbott has been a guest multiple times (with Thornhill) on Art Noory's and Laura Lee's late nite radio programs. If you have not already, take a look at "Worlds Still Colliding", about the Velikovsky scene today, written for eSkeptic in 2001 to accompany David Morrison's "Velikovsky at Fifty" in Skeptic 9(1) whose narrative ends in 1985 and thereby misses all the neo-Velikovskian action <http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velstcol.html>. Talbott has been able to finance international conferences whose attendance approximates 150 drawing international big names as speakers who get a free ride: Nov. 1994, Jan. 1997, Sep. 2000, July 2001. Name speakers include (not counting the usual V'ian suspects) Halton Arp, Victor Clube, Zecharia Sitchin, Tony Peratt, Rupert Sheldrake, Tom Van Flandern, Ralph Abraham. In 1997, Sitchin got his $12,000 appearance fee and Richard Hoagland cancelled his appearance because of his policy of not being on the same program with Sitchin. 2. PARITY: Glad to learn of this policy, whose existence seems to have eluded some editors I've interacted with. 3. Peratt: He is a strange bird. In 2000 he spoke at Talbott's conference even after being informed of its Velikovskian flavor, unlike at least one other speaker who cancelled upon getting this news. However, Peratt has not, to my knowledge, embraced any of the Velikovskian tenets attending Talbott's interests, such as errant planets, the "polar configuration" and the "electric star" model of Juergens/Thornhill/Scott. He's there just for the plasma physics (and possibly the ego rewards of being "famous", not to mention the financal support from Mainwaring for the expeditions to document petroglyphs) and ever since I told him about V-connection in 2000, he has declined to reply to my email, fax, and phone messages seeking clarification of the nature of his association with Talbott/kronia.com/thunderbolts.info. My hunch is that he is the honcho at IEEE Trans. Plasma Physics. As for the petroglyphs, they ARE an interesting puzzle insofar as they are found on Easter Island which was uninhabited at the early time Peratt dates the super-solar wind that blew for up to centuries producing the stupendous aurora that motivated the petroglyphs (which ARE found worldwide). But, the Greenland ice cores contain no [10]Be signal attesting the presence of this super-solar wind blowing for centuries. However, Patrick McCafferty and Mike Baillie provide a possible mechanism for producing transient super-plasma streams impinging on Earth in The Celtic Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology (2005) when they discuss what would happen when a post-perihelion comet on an Encke-like orbit would pass close to Earth, as they believe happened in the 6th century A.D. Well, I hope this info on Peratt has been interesting for I just learned on a quick check that Peratt's Wikipedia entry was deleted in July 2007! Furthermore, IF Peratt's entry was deleted, it makes one question the validity of one for Talbott! And I must say that the possession of a bio entry in Wikipedia can be a bit strange. The British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier now have stubb bios, but Clube is the more prominent member of the team and Napier got his entry first, whose content focussed on his science fiction writing! And then there are the hagiographers who delete as much information critical of their hero as they can, as has been the case with Carl Sagan. Phaedrus7 (talk) 00:17, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Ed Poor subpages

As a note, if you don't base your argument in the deletion policy or the userspace guideline the closing admin will probably ignore your comment. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:49, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

A (regretfully non-existent) barnstar

If there was a 'Barnstar for Unintentional Humor', I'd give you one for your Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Veljko Milković (2nd nomination). Some of the Serbian sources are a riot (though admittedly that may have been accentuated by the awkwardness of automated translation). Keep up the good work. :) Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 05:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

3rd Stone

I think you've made a mistake here. As you know, I'm not a fringe supporter, and this was not a bad little magazine. Authors like Ed Krupp are no where near fringe, although of course some of the writers, eg John Michell, were. And it clearly has enough mentions/citations to be notable. How about withdrawing the nomination? Thanks. dougweller (talk) 08:18, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

AfD Bilocation

thanks. I think that antics like that really are a net detraction from your work here, and had you simply put that big bold withdrawn at the top the first time, you'd have avoided a bit of wikidrama. I support your decision to withdraw, and your religiously focused version of the article, but not the tantrums you dispaly in some of these situations. ThuranX (talk) 09:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it would be great if there were simple instructions on the page for that situation; there aren't. Simply put, ' Given new evidence, I'm reconsidering my position, and withdraw the nomination'. Science changes all the time as a result of new evidence, you're entitled to change your positions accordingly. ThuranX (talk) 09:05, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

tantrum. Deletions and edit warring instead of just writing 'I WAS WRONG'. It's not hard to do, but you would rather blank, delete, and hide things than just say it. It's a tantrum. I tend to support your efforts, but the more you flip your shit, the harder it gets to take you seriously, and the harder it is to bolster your efforts with my voice, because it starts to reflect badly on those who support you, cause you act like this. ThuranX (talk) 09:11, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, thank you for finally making a good choice. Asking with the help template's probably the best way, and I look forward to the answer myself. Thanks for calming down enough to ask. Now if you'll excuse me, I still have a long list of your AfDs to review. ThuranX (talk) 09:21, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

{{helpme|How do you "properly" withdraw an AfD? I've been here for 4.5 years and I had no idea it was such a formalized process.}}

My general opinion is that it depends on the circumstances. If the nomination was an error ("I thought X applied, it doesn't"), I think it's fair to close it and withdraw. I'd say it's probably also okay to withdraw when it's a SNOW keep--you can't possibly be accused of a conflict of interest in that case. When consensus is up in the air, I think the appropriate step is to make a big note at the top saying you wish to withdraw it because of XYZ, strike the deletion rationale in the post, and let someone uninvolved come along and decide whether to close of leave open. That's just opinion, but I think it's fairly well supported by general practice. Please replace the {{helpme}} if this hasn't been helpful. // roux   09:44, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Your AfD spree

Just a heads up; your AfD spree is being discussed on the Administrators noticeboard. The original reported should really have informed you. --Blowdart | ^talk 09:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

He did inform me. I removed it. ScienceApologist (talk) 09:40, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Artw

Hi.. I don't really want to get involved in the actual dispute (I only posted the links at ANI because I felt that ArtW should have, as he instigated the complaint. FWIW, I think a couple of them are kinda pointy, but the rest seem to be run-of-the-mill AFD stuff. Unlikely to result in consensus, maybe, but most of your AFD noms are borderline cases anyway, so that's par for the course. I try to stick to obvious deletions; it's better for my blood pressure). It looks like a couple of the people posting at ANI are sprinkling large helpings of CLUE in the vicinity; hopefully that will have an effect. It might be worth posting to ArtW's talk, saying simply why you were trying to withdraw the noms. Up to you of course. // roux   09:54, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

A cat to ease all of your troubles		Happy New Year!
		Hey there, ජපස! Happy new Gregorian year. All the best for the new year, both towards you and your family and friends too. I know that I am the only person lonely enough to be running this thing as the new year is ushered in, but meh, what are you going to do. I like to keep my templated messages in a satisfactorily melancholy tone. ;) Congratulations to Coren, Wizardman, Vassyana, Carcharoth, Jayvdb, Casliber, Risker, Roger Davies, Cool Hand Luke and Rlevse, who were all appointed to the Arbitration Committee after the ArbCom elections. I am sure I am but a voice of many when I say I trust the aforementioned users to improve the committee, each in their own way, as listed within their respective election statements. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to update the 2009 article, heh. Best wishes, neuro(talk) 00:59, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

New Year's resolutions

If I'm not mistaken, I believe you revised your user page operations protocol slightly. Is this a sign of big changes for the new year? I'm looking forward to hearing about your resolutions. :) As for me, I've already adopted the "Everything's mine in '09!" motto, so you'll have to come up with your own. Cheers! ChildofMidnight (talk) 03:43, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Estonian mythology

I admire your skills in fighting poorly sourced material, and appreciate the high level of referencing in science related articles. Wikipedia would greatly benefit if you could use your skills outside the area of science.

Here is an example of poorly sourced material. The article Estonia, in the section Soviet annexation (This used to be "Soviet occupation", but they cannot have two sections with the same name.) you will find the following:

“ Most of the Estonian Defence Forces and the Estonian Defence League surrendered according to the orders believing that resistance would be crushed and were disarmed by the Red Army. Only the Estonian Single (Independent) Signal Battalion stationed in Tallinn at Raua Street continued to resist. As the Red Army brought in additional reinforcements supported by six armoured fighting vehicles, the battle lasted several hours until sundown. There was one dead, several wounded on the Estonian side and about 10 killed and more wounded on the Soviet side. Finally the military resistance was ended with negotiations and the Single (Independent) Signal Battalion surrendered and was disarmed. ”

The same section on the "Raua Street Battle" is also included in the article Occupation of the Baltic states. While most of the other "occupation" material is totally unsourced, the Raua Street incident has a source, an Estonian language web page of the Signal Battalion of the Estonian Defence Forces. I have been looking in vain for any other source on this incident. It is not mentioned in any books on the history of Estonia. I have even been through the printed newspapers from the week, no hits. Besides that, the Wikipedia text misrepresents the web source. If the incident did happen it is equally likely that the ten dead "Soviets" were in fact Estonians and the armoured fighting vehicles those used by the Tallinn police.

Now, I dare you to try remove the poorly sourced material. The page is heavily watched by true believers, and even you would have a hard time demanding verifiability. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 09:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

P.S. - Naturally the story about the "disarming by the Red Army" is without any factual base. The voluntary Estonian Defence League was disbanded by the Estonians and the Estonian Defence Forces remained fully armed, being reformed as the (Soviet) 22nd Estonian Rifle Corps. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 10:07, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. In the main article Estonia, the section quoted above is not only unsourced, but also WP:UNDUE. In Occupation of the Baltic states the paragraph starting with "Most of the Defence Forces of ..." should go first. -- Maybe, if this works out, we will end up with the list of causalties. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 10:50, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Soviet mythology

From what I've read I can tell that the "Raua Street Battle" (in effect, an incident) did really take place. The Estonian batallion had (formally) disarmed, but when the intruding Soviet personel (not Estonian communists, but namely Red Army troops) started to 'confiscate' personal belongings of the Estonians, then resistance began, using arms hidden in caches. I don't have a good source at hand now, and I don't need one at the moment. I don't regard Petri Krohn as a constructive contributor in the topic of Baltic history. He is an author of a die-hard estophobic blog, that paints all Estonians as Nazis, Fascists and what not. Besides, Krohn's history of Wikipedia editing shows that he is just a soap-boxer, not interested in any research.

In fact, I dare to say that mr. Krohn is quite a typical example of a 'believer' of pseudoscientific theories. Considering an older edit conflict: no arguments will help, no scholarly sources can prove anything to such people, instead of that, soap-boxers enjoy straw man arguments [1], childish namecalling ('my opponents are Nazis and Holocaust deniers!', 'ethnofascists' etc) and similar lines of 'argumentation'. After all, what's the use to look at sources [2], [3]... for the POV-warriors, like all good pseudoscientists, just 'know better'! As Goethe has wisely said,

Durch Heftigkeit ersetzt der Irrende, was ihm an Wahrheit und an Kräften fehlt.

--Pan Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 11:17, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

yes, I can agree with leaving it out right now, I haven't read this thing in detail. I just wanted to notify you that User:Petri Krohn and User:Roobit are clearly pushing marginal POV. --Pan Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 15:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

It's so marginal, in fact, that alternate history would be an appropriate description. 62.65.238.142 (talk) 18:48, 1 January 2009 (UTC)