User talk:Newyorkbrad

You're invited...

New York City Meetup Next: Sunday May 17th, Columbia University area Last: 03/29/2009

In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to meta:Wikimedia New York City activities, establish a membership process for the chapter, review the upcoming Wiki-Conference New York 2009 (planned for ~100 people at NYU this summer) and future projects like Wikipedia at the Library, and hold salon-style group discussions on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects (see the March meeting's minutes).

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and generally enjoy ourselves and kick back.

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Invite list.

To keep up-to-date on local events, you can also join our mailing list.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 22:13, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank You

Thank you for your input. Great idea on adding the hidden text to alert other editors - I've added it to the article. My apologies if I'm being overly sensitive to the issue; I can only say in my defense - I do take my reputation here very seriously. Not solely because I edit under my real-life name, but I suppose that does play a part in my desire to keep a good reputation as well. Thanks again for your input. ;) — Ched :  ?  04:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Truly trivial note

You recently asked about WP:TPG's "100 words" bit in the Abd/JzG case.

As the original author of the page, and, in particular, that bit of it, I can tell you right now what was meant: The dreaded WALL OF TEXT THAT NOBODY CAN READ BECAUSE ITS TOO LONG AND RAMBLING. I needed a guidepost for how long was "too long" when not doing things point by point, and 100 words was a crude estimate of when it was time to start thinking about trimming your text down. Note also that regular use of paragraph breaks helps alleviate the problem.

Just your bit of Wikihistory for the day. ^Thanks, _{Luc "Somethingorother" French} 22:12, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the information, which I was definitely not aware of, as well as for the confirmation that someone other than the parties reads what we write on the arbitration pages. However, your post contains 107 words. Please shorten it for greater conciseness. :) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:41, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, but isn't "concision" more concise than "conciseness"? (Yes, I recognize that the use of "concision" to mean "the quality of being precise" is—or at least was—disputed, as in The King's English...). 69.212.64.32 (talk) 21:04, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

An essay of yours gathering dust

This page has been gathering dust for almost five months now. Do you intend to blow that dust off in the foreseeable future? TML (talk) 05:52, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I hope to, and thanks for noticing. The delay stems from the fact that two major sections that were going to become part of that page have spun off in different directions. One was going to be some suggestions for improving our practice and performance in the area of BLP, which is certainly the major ethical and practical issue confronting the project today, as I have written about before in various places around the wiki. My thoughts there were sort of overtaken by the polls and RfC on flagged revisions and some other discussions, as well as by the fact that I lack a magic bullet or even a magic novel suggestion for addressing these issues. I've been refining my thoughts on these problems, in part through developing a talk I gave at a New York meet-up and hope to present in a revised form this summer at Wikimania, and will be addressing them further off-wiki through blogging within the next couple of weeks on an external site that attracts a group of contributors who are familiar with Wikipedia as readers but (as far as I know) don't edit here, aren't vested in our culture or the way we have historically looked at issues, and might be able to help me think through some of our issues and present thoughts for resolving them. So that piece of the puzzle is on hold for the moment, but I will return to it.

Another "suggestion for improving Wikipedia" that has spun off in a different direction was a desire to improve the information available about editing here provided to the younger group of editors. The policy at Wikipedia has always been that there is no minimum age for editing, or for becoming an administrator for that matter, and I strongly support the cultural norm here that editors are judged on the quality of their contributions rather than on their ages or other inherent characteristics. That being said, it struck me that there are certain things that the younger editors should be especially careful about, and there are a few types of mistakes that they make more often than some other editors and might benefit from being advised about. (This is not to suggest that all editors of a certain age make these errors, or for that matter that editors of other ages don't make these errors, but it is a generalization caveated as such, made without reference to any specific individual, and offered for what it's worth.) So my suggestion was going to be that someone draft a page captioned something like Wikipedia:Guide for younger editors. But in writing up what might be on such a page, the muse got away from me, and I wound up writing the page. I haven't posted it because my attention was drawn to the comments by one of our most respected administrators suggesting that there are reasons that minors (which includes a broader age spectrum than the group I am calling "younger editors") should not edit here at all. I don't agree with that, but I've taken some of the concerns expressed in that thread and worked them into the page. I expect to post that page on-wiki for comments.

Still, I need to write up my other suggestions and finish what I started (as well as the list project I was working on, which also has sat for a couple of months). Thanks for the push. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For impressively clear thinking, reasoning, and articulation. Dlohcierekim 01:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Recusal

Hi, Brad. A particular aspect of standards for recusal is addressed briefly here. Bishonen | talk 18:54, 7 May 2009 (UTC).

Thanks for the link. Commented there. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:03, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

The Matthew Hoffman case

I'm sorry, I've already reached my maximum level of tolerance for stupidity this month, and it's only the seventh. People arguing that images contemporary to the events should be immediately removed from Wikipedia articles because they use the styles of that period was quite enough to put me over.

The Matthew Hoffman case was a farce and everyone knows it. Please withdraw it, delete the damn pages, and replace it with an explanation of how the Arbcom fucked up big time.

And if you don't want to do that, please work with me to make agreed-upon wording for when I take my appeal to the community.

I'm sorry, I'm just not willing to deal with all this crap anymore. I WAS ATTACKED BY SITTING ARBITRATORS ABUSING THEIR POWER IN ORDER TO FUCK OVER SOMEONE WHO DID'T IMMEDIATELY DO WHAT THEY WANTED, BUT INSTEAD ASKED FOR MORE GENERAL ADVICE.

Everyone agrees that's what happensed, it's time the fdamn arbcom admit it and stop acting as if I wasn't the victim of some massive injustice and massive abuse by them, followed by them circling waggons to protect the Arboitrator who abused his power.

So, either do the ethical thing, or help me take my appeal to the community, but don't tell me "nothing can be done" when the Arbcom has only issued a not-pology and never accepted any blame for fucking me over. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:25, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll probably be calmer tomorrow. You may want to wait to reply until then. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:36, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Point of information

I got your message and I appreciate it, I can't reply easily due to issues with my ADSL connection and firewall changes at work. I'm typing this on the train on the way in for a very long weekend moving 200 people into my office.

Your comments are accurate and fair with one exception: unless I am going mad, I don't think I blacklisted anything on Meta. I requested blacklisting of one domain, this was reviewed and enacted by another meta admin - or that's my memory of it. The log pages are not easy to read always. Also I would note that I posted blacklisting and the topic ban for Jed Rothwell for review at the appropriate venues at the time; I do not really understand why Rothwell was not included in the original case, as he was always the major pro-CF advocate on that article. Subsequent debates endorsed these actions; Abd's main point appears to be that he wants some kind of "recusal" and he interprets that as taking no further action - as editor or as administrator - in respect of that article or dispute, as well as wanting those actions reversed. His main beef seems to me to be that every time he asks for the sites to be removed from the blacklist, I defend my judgment of their (lack of) merit and the problems around their past use. He appears to want this to stop, so that he can get the blacklisting rescinded without my input. All actions were posted for review, were reviewed (several times in several venues) and the conclusion seemed to be that the actions were right even if I was not the right person to take them - I accepted that at the time and have held to that, but that does not mean I am in some way bound to leave the article alone. I am still entitled to have and to express an opinion. I believe your comments make that point well. Thanks, Guy (Help!) 06:38, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

JzG did not blacklist lenr-canr.org on meta, he requested it, normally, and we can argue that it was granted due to his influence there, where he is an administrator, but he did follow process; the only thing I'd specifically fault about it would be that the arguments he presented were misleading and he did not notify them that his blacklisting on en.wikipedia was being disputed. None of which would be a big deal; shall we say, for Wikipedia, abuse as normal. (I do not mean to imply that abuse is the norm, but rather that, of the many administrative actions taken, a few are those of admins who are involved, and some of these do not represent what consensus would decide if it becomes aware, and the only problem is that of a certain inertia, where what was done may be presumed to be normal and proper; this assumption is usually correct, which makes it all the more difficult to deal with the few situations where it isn't.

JzG did post a post-facto note re the blacklisting of lenr-canr.org. Not for newenergytimes.com, except to say that NET seemed to be also a problem. He didn't say that he'd actually blacklisted it. What JzG has consistently not mentioned when bringing up Rothwell is that Rothwell is COI and only edits the Talk page. As a COI editor, he is expected to have a POV. He's an expert on the topic, having followed the field as a writer (and supporter of cold fusion research) for many years, he's known for it. There is nothing wrong with being an advocate; Rothwell did, I'd say, need some guidance with regard to good Wikipedia etiquette, but he had some very bad examples in front of him for a long time. He did not act in isolation, nobody did.

Recusal rules require abstaining from administrative action while involved. The best interpretations require recusal when the administrator can expect that an action can reasonably be seen as action while involved, but JzG had and expressed strong opinions about the content of the article, and displayed incivility toward those of different opinions, including Pcarbonn and Rothwell. I have no idea why he thinks I want him to take no further action as an editor.

JzG now has no current negative impact with respect to the blacklistings. I have no problem with his presenting his opinion, it is, of late, of little harm at most. The blacklistings are in process of being reversed: newenergytimes.com is delisted by consensus and administrative decision supporting that. For reasons that probably have to do with a certain inertia I've observed on the blacklist pages, it's not been possible yet to get lenr-canr.org whitelisted, more than the original link that is now used at Martin Fleischmann; Stifle just denied a general delisting request and declined to rule on a specific page whitelisting request, it's still pending. There is another pending request by Enric Naval (a "skeptical" editor) for a page at lenr-canr.org. [added in edit: both individual links have been whitelisted]. I.e., the normal process is working.

Blacklisting decisions are unlike any other similar decisions. Someone will request delisting, there may be no discussion, and an admin, one of a small handful of regulars, will usually decline. Or there is some discussion where someone will present long compilations of evidence that mean nothing to a non-specialist. The pages aren't widely watched except by blacklist volunteers, who tend to be somewhat prone toward exclusion and to confirmation of past actions even when there is no ongoing risk of linkspam. And general arguments like "it's a blog" are used, there was a big flap recently over the blacklisting of readwriteweb.com, and it was delisted after a decline to delist, because readwriteweb.com published a blog on it.... and comments poured in, and it was delisted with some admins grumbling about canvassing, but nobody to actually block for it. (Linkspamming? Probably not, probably the routine use of links to a highly notable site, with editorial management. Some "blogs" are reliable source. Blacklisting is done without regard to content, usually, it's done by noting how many links have been added and if there are lots of them, the ready assumption is "linkspamming." As Beetstra has acknowledged many times, good links, reliable source, meeting WP:EL, can result in blacklisting, and properly so, and he's correct. If there are many of them being added, and there is no specific guideline.)

My plan is to whitelist specific pages as needed -- that's what the blacklist admins say to do -- until such time as it's realized that there wasn't any reason for blacklisting lenr-canr.org in the first place. There was no linkspam, just an editor (JzG) deciding that the links weren't appropriate and then, initially, using his tools to make sure they stayed gone, since he'd taken them out many times and they just kept coming back. Big surprise: editors link to sources on the top two web sites on the topic of the article. (Sure, some of those links were inappropriate, some were debatable, and some were clearly acceptable. JzG's opinion, contrary to consensus, was that none were acceptable.)

As to review of the Rothwell blocking. You may have seen some of this. JzG blocked Rothwell IP Dec. 18, same time as he blacklisted Rothwell's web site. He then blocked, late in December, another IP that wasn't Rothwell's but he claimed it was Rothwell. The only similarity was POV. He did not notify anyone of these actions. I forget exactly when it was that he declared the topic ban on Rothwell. He did it by announcing it on Talk:Cold fusion. It was not the result of a normal discussion with close. There had been an earlier discussion, I think at AN/I or AN, where a skeptical editor requested a ban, there was very little discussion, and no close. JzG had commented in that discussion and would have been not the person to close it in any case. Rothwell, about a month after the 30-day block, started commenting again. (From later communication, I think that Rothwell had been entirely unaware of the block.) After some days, JzG blocked Rothwell again, asserting block and topic ban violation. At this point several editors questioned the ban. Where had the ban been determined? The question was raised at Talk:Cold fusion and on JzG talk. Jzg, in a move which, I must say, astonished me, went to ArbComm to request a confirmation of his block. He did not disclose his involvement, though, in my opinion, anyone sensitive would have suspected it, from his vehemence. He was asking ArbComm to confirm the ban of Rothwell under the theory that this was properly covered by the Pcarbonn topic ban. During the process another editor appeared who started adding Japanese sources on cold fusion, a fairly strange case. JzG wanted that included too; the upshot was that he wanted to be able to ban anyone with a pro-cold fusion POV, under the Cold fusion arbitration, and we saw the previous month that he had blocked an IP as Rothwell based on alleged similarity of POV. JzG was asking ArbComm to topic-ban anyone with a clear pro-cold fusion POV, based merely on the POV and not behavioral violations other than "POV-pushing." I.e., expressing a pro-cold fusion POV in Talk.

I saw this as extremely dangerous, so I posted a comment, noting what I'd seen about his involvement. I received a request from a reputable editor to provide evidence, so I did. That was the evidence file, presented before RfAr (linked from my comment), and it was effective, there were numerous comments referring to action while involved. The initial comment supportive of JzG's ban stopped, and, properly, the RfAr/Clarification was rejected as immature. JzG, however, took the sum of comments there as confirmation that he'd acted quite properly and, indeed, stated that support for his action had been unanimous, which it certainly was not.

My opinion is that Rothwell was treated very badly, over a long period of time. He's highly opinionated and has been working in a highly contentious and controversial field for many years, but what happened to him on Wikipedia has convinced him that Wikipedia is a total lost cause. Every few emails I get from him, he tells me I'm wasting my time. He doesn't need Wikipedia, his site is very high in Google returns on the topic, he's recommended as a place for further information in reliable source all over the place. I'd rather have had his advice on Talk, just as I prefer to have the advice of User:Kirk shanahan, one of the rare skeptics with recent publication in peer-reviewed RS. And I'd prefer to see experts in general be encouraged to help with articles. On Talk.

Experts almost always have a COI! And they are normally opinionated. How we treat experts is very important!

JzG is welcome to edit Cold fusion, and the only problem is that, as an editor, he's been quite willing to edit war and to argue tendentiously to justify the edit warring. But that's a problem that's not hard to deal with. It just takes patience and building consensus, it doesn't require ArbComm, or at least I doubt that it would. --Abd (talk) 08:09, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Question about the Abd / JzG case

Hi Newyorkbrad, I am hoping you will answer a quick question for me on the Abd / JzG case. Looking at your finding of fact on the nature of the dispute, you refer to three areas. Are these the only areas where the arbitrators will consider evidence? I ask because I think there are grounds for findings on Abd relating to disruption other than his zealous pursuit of DR. However, I have yet to see any post that really puts forward the evidence in a concise and coherent manner. I am willing to put in the effort to try and present such evidence, but only if there is any point in so doing. Obviously I am not asking for any sort of guarantee as to the weight that any such evidence might be given, nor as to whether any sanction might follow. But, if Abd's behaviour and editing in relation to cold fusion and the case more broadly - where JzG is uninvolved - is outside the scope of what the arbitrators will consider then there is no point in my putting in the effort to prepare the evidence. Thanks, EdChem (talk) 07:45, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd be fascinated to see it. I don't think it's related to the JzG dispute at all, but, though I tried to ask ArbComm to keep the case very narrow, which would have saved a whole lot of fuss, my motion was ignored. Others, such as Mathsci, have asserted that I'm POV-pushing at Cold fusion, proxying, and generally writing too much, whatever they can think of, but you've been pretty cogent, maybe you see something the others have missed. --Abd (talk) 08:09, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Newyorkbrad, any chance of a response? Thanks, EdChem (talk) 02:05, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I was off in the real world most of today (seeing 1776 with some family in New Jersey); I'll reply to this and other posts during the day tomorrow (Sunday). Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Responding now. I'm not sure exactly what types of evidence about Abd you are referring to. We are pretty far along into the case, approaching the voting stage, so I don't know how receptive my colleagues might be to a whole new category of evidence. My own inclination is that the evidence might be useful if it relates to serious and recent misconduct, but not otherwise. However, despite my having put together some proposals on the workshop, Stephen Bain remains the designated drafting arbitrator in this case, and other arbs may have some thoughts as well. So my suggestion is that you post to the workshop talkpage (and maybe e-mail the committee mailing list drawing attention to your post) with a general idea of what you are referring to, so as to potentially draw some feedback. Sorry again for the delay in responding; real life does get in the way sometimes. :) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:26, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

FYI, from your friendly, neighborhood "Nazi"

If you don't find this interesting or funny, sorry to have bothered you. -- Noroton (talk) 17:44, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Return of Anonimu?

Hi,

from the range of edits and writing style of User:PasswordUsername, I get a nagging suspicion that he might be a reincarnation of User:Anonimu. Even the names have significant semantic field overlap. Also, for a new user (PasswordUsername has been rather eager, but his first known edit dates from late middle of April), [1] would be somewhat unusual -- but very much in spirit of Anonimu's approach to his talk page.

Who should investigate such a case? Checkuser is obviously powerless, as many months have passed since last known Anonimu edit was made. I remember Moreschi was good at style analysis but he appears to have burnt out :-( Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 21:23, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I never really knew much about Anonimu at all. Perhaps someone who watches this page will have a better sense of what to look for; if not, maybe a post to Arbitration enforcement or SSP would be the best thing. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:28, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll take your advice in account when pondering what to do next. Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 21:32, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I've initiated a thread at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Possible return of Anonimu. Hopefully, some of the regulars will have useful suggestions on how to proceed. Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 08:15, 11 May 2009 (UTC)