User talk:FellGleaming

I routinely clean out my talk page, consistent with WP policy.
If you wish to keep a copy of something you post here, please copy it to your own page.

About Me

I am a U.S. citizen, though I have lived in Europe and Asia, and at present (April 08) have visited over 50 different countries. I am also a regular pelagic sailor, though I recently sold my 40' Ketch and am now again on dry land.

I am (was?) an avid spelunker, though its been a few years since I engaged regularly.

New article

I thought you'd be interested in the stub article Comparisons of life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions Simesa (talk) 17:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Please

I'm sure I'm just misreading your intentions, but please look at this from my perspective. 1. I start editing Friends of Science last night. 2. Before I even finish fixing up the article (you put back "suspicious of claims of global warming", a very loaded statement), you start throwing away my changes. 3. You show up out of the blue at Lake Mead and start accusing me of intentional misrepresentation of a source and not being connected to reality. Please tell me I am being overly sensitive, as I really don't know what I could have done to offend you.
I left you a reply at Talk:Lake Mead, hopefully the new version will meet with your approval.
Thepisky (talk) 21:17, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You haven't offended me at all; I think your new changes to the Mead article are fine. Regarding FoS, I believe your language was not extremely neutral, and uses more words to convey less information. Do you not believe that FoS is verifiably suspicious of AGW claims?

BTW, I have a discussion going on the lede changes at FoS, and would appreciate any input you may have. Thanks. FellGleaming (talk) 21:24, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Hello

Hi. Having just come into contact with you as an editor I have enjoyed our debates. If we both stick to your ideals on sourcing standards then that should make for better articles. I have appreciated your neutralisation of the language in several cases but I certainly think you have gone over the top with some of the sourcing debates. Just because you don't like a source should not be a reason to remove it, however, better sourcing is always a bonus. Polargeo (talk) 08:06, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words (and also for the criticism; it helps me to improve as well. ) I hope you agree the new version of the article is much improved. Whether or not a claim is true, if a reader clicks through to the source and sees something that appears unreliable, they're not going to accept the text. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 08:11, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Partial restoration of text

Hi, I restored the important part of some text you deleted in Nuclear reactor technology. I agree that the last half of it had no place in the article. Please review? Simesa (talk) 11:31, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks; I just don't feel that union composition and workforce makeup are aspects of the reactor technology. This information belongs more in an article on nuclear plant operation. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 12:54, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Are you good with ref`s?

If you are and have a minute could you take a look here for me please [1] I`m stumped :-) mark nutley (talk) 17:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Kudos

After reading (some of) the Anwar Awlaki talk page, I commend you for keeping such a cool head. I definitely agree there's a substantial amount of POV problems, and I'm going to see how I can possibly contribute. Fell Gleaming^(talk)02:26, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It's good to have help. --causa sui (talk) 05:34, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

RFC

Given that it appears you are soliciting others to assist you in something regarding my comment, I thought I should note that I waive the 2 certifier requirement for you to file an RFC regarding my conduct towards you until May 15, 2010, Noon EST. Hipocrite (talk) 17:49, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Don't you think you should really be a bit more mature? You're getting far too emotionally upset over minutia. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 17:52, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

What is immature about making it easy for you to seek wider community input? Hipocrite (talk) 17:55, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll assume that's a good faith question and answer it. You're trying to climb the Reichstag, rather than improve the content. The goal is "cooperation, collaboration, and compromise", remember? If you have issues, why not attempt to discuss them calmly and rationally, rather than these incessant confrontational attempts? Fell Gleaming^(talk) 18:00, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I have issues. You've three times misrepresented sources in the past three days - you're certainly aware of this. When confronted with this, you've made further innacuracte statements - you're certainly aware of this. I want you to stop. Which part of my statement above do you find incorrect? Hipocrite (talk) 18:02, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

While I applaud the precision of your selection of cognomen, the fact remains that the only person who agreed with you regarding your initial claim was soneone who didn't properly read the diff properly, and thought I misplaced quotation marks. The rest of the community disagreed. As for your third example, as soon as evidence was presented that I was wrong, I immediately and openly acknowledged my error. Why don't you try doing the same? Or if you're unable to do that, just move on and stop this pointless bickering. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 18:09, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

If you stopped doing it, I wouldn't have new examples every single day. If you stopped doing it for like, two weeks, I'd probably stop following your contributions checking all your references because then I'd see that you had reformed. With regards to your "immediately and openly acknowledged my error," that's another example of a further innacurate statement - you were shown evidence by Polargeo at 10:44, 16 April 2010 ("both came from the unpublished draft paper. Neither are from the actual paper."), requested to show your evidence for your quotes by me at 12:54, and only admitted that your quotes were fabricated at 16:18. I know "immediate," and that's not it. Also, don't be a dick. Hipocrite (talk) 18:15, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

And once again, the insults begin. If there truly was a systemic problem with my edits, you wouldn't be failing to get traction as you are. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 18:18, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I alledge I'm not failing to get traction. Every admin who evaluated your pattern of behavior after the first incident (all one of them), has found a substantial problem. I'd like to avoid filing a User Conduct RFC after the request ends, so I'm hopeful that you're taking on board what I'm saying even though you have gone full-defensive mode (again) with the false statements about what you did and did not do. Hopefully there won't be any evidence after this talk page discussion of you misrepresenting sources (as you now apparently admit you have done at least once). Hipocrite (talk) 18:21, 16 April 2010 (UTC). With that, I grant you your section, below. Hipocrite (talk) 18:22, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

All one of them, eh? You might want to google the term "statistical universe". Cheers :) Fell Gleaming^(talk) 18:24, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

This is how to file an arbcom request about an admin. Since there currently is no admin review board, complaints about admins generally have to go directly to ArbCom, although sometimes they will request that an RfC be done first. If you're requesting ArbCom review of an admin's actions, you need to show that the account in question was actually abusing administrative privileges, not just violating policy as a regular editor. Cla68 (talk) 12:13, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

page heading

I suppose I should remind you that "I routinely clean out my talk page, consistent with WP policy. If you wish to keep a copy of something you post here, please copy it to your own page." is not actually correct advice. Nobody need keep such a copy, because all the material anyone has every posted here is available permanently for all the world to see in the edit history. Yes, it's a nuisance needing to go back to it, but it is all there--all anybody need keep tract of is the diff of the edit involved. 23:07, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you; I realize that, but I haven't updated my talk page header in years. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 23:11, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Result of enforcement request

An enforcement request concerning you at WP:GS/CC/RE has been closed with the following result:

FellGleaming is warned to exercise basic due diligence in reviewing the content of sources before making assertions about them. He is warned to be scrupulous in his representation of sources and his use of purported quotes from them. He is further required to respond directly to the substance of future concerns about his use of sources and quotations and avoid aggressive posturing. These are final warnings and further violations may result in sanctions.

More detail on the probation can be found here, as can instructions on how to appeal the sanction should you wish to do so. MastCell ^Talk 03:48, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

David S. Miller

See [2] for a reference. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 11:59, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Please don't delete others talk page comments

Your recent post [3] deleted other users posts. Please use care when posting. I've restored the part you removed. Vsmith (talk) 14:52, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry

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

BTW, if you would like to delete that entire new thread on my talk page (you comment contains a link), be my guest. Greg L (talk) 17:40, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Mediation?

Hello. I made a post over at Talk:Anwar al-Awlaki asking if the involved parties (that's you!) would be willing to submit to mediation. Will you please reply? Thanks, --causa sui (talk) 19:18, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Arbcomm

Good grief, you must be desperate if you're asking MN. So I'll take pity on you. If this is about that one block on you that you regard as bad - then forget it. You haven't been through due process (have you?) As a bare minimum you'd have had to have brought it up on ANI and got some sympathy there. And even if you had, arbcomm are very unlikely to care about any one block. And people know that, so if you were making those edits in the hope that people would notice and be worried - don't bother William M. Connolley (talk) 20:55, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Why would I dispute a block from two years ago? This is about a current personal dispute with an administrator. But I do appreciate the advice. Could you detail the ANI process for me, or point me in the right direction? Fell Gleaming^(talk) 20:58, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I think I mixed you up with AQFK, who was going around getting quite miffed with his recent block. Or maybe it was someone else entirely. Err, so what is the issue you wish to raise? That matters a bit; WP:ANI is for actual incidents that require intervention; WP:AN would be more for issues of general concern. The best thing would be to have a look at what is there. However, I didn't participate greatly at either, even when I had my bit. Or the alternative would be some species of RFC on a user; again, it would depend quite heavily on what the problem is William M. Connolley (talk) 22:05, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

By the way, if you're willing to chat, I'm sincerely curious why someone like you is willing to hitch their wagon so adamantly to such a falling star. The problem isn't the "basic science" any longer; it's what the public believes they've been told about that science. Even assuming the IPCC sensitivity estimates are accurate (a point I'll defer for now), in a decade, have you seriously thought about what the court of public opinion is going to do with anyone associated with this?

Though my degree in the sciences, my true love is comparative history. And I can tell you this with certainty, when the hypothesized calamities fail to appear, the public is going to demand their metric ton of flesh, no matter how many graphs Time and Newsweek runs.

A Schmidt or a Ruedy doesn't have much choice at this point. But you -- you have options. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 21:13, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm generally happy to chat. I left Climate Science on a professional level not because I in any way thought it was a "falling star"; if anything the opposite: as various people have said: we have all the science we need, from a certain viewpoint. As to what the public have been told: depending on what exactly you mean by that, I think the scientists hands are clean, unlike the media's. In a decade, we'll have a decade's worth of warning. I fully expect, at some point, the media to turn on the scientists and say "but why didn't you warn us *properly* so we believed you?" but such is life William M. Connolley (talk) 22:05, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Surely you're not suggesting you truly believe that the actuality of future events is going to match -- much less exceed -- public perception of how they believe those events have been sold to them? Fell Gleaming^(talk) 23:22, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

The scientist's hands are clean but the media has certainly overhyped several claims on the immediate consequences of warming, but that is sensationalism for you. Now the media is overhyping any errors they find because that is the latest sensational story. However, these errors whilst not good have actually been very minimal in the scope of the overall picture. So someone puts in the wrong number on himalayan galciers in the IPCC report, this error was spotted by scientists who actually agree with most of the IPCC report, not the hordes of skeptics who are desperately trying to say "they got it wrong". An error or two in a report does not invalidate the major conclusions of a report. We would stop doing any form of science at all if that was the case. Polargeo (talk) 09:30, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

As PG has said. If you want to talk about the science then that is great. But if you want to talk about "public perception of how they believe those events have been sold to them" then this is meeja stuff, and I doubt we disagree very much. Science got global cooling right, and the media got it wrong. It looks like that will repeat with global warming but this should be no great surprise - the meeja get many (perhaps most) things wrong when those matters involve subtlety William M. Connolley (talk) 10:00, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully we don't disagree much on estimates of climate sensitivity (though I think the paleoclimatic record alone makes clear that hypothesized positive feedbacks are being overstated). Our primary disagreement, however, is almost certainly in the analysis of effects. A 2C warming over 100 years is going to be a very good thing all in all -- for mankind, at least. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 21:50, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

(ps: you're going to have to give up edits like this [4] if you want to chat William M. Connolley (talk) 10:00, 19 April 2010 (UTC))

You have a source for the "whose only post of any note is ...x" claim? Fell Gleaming^(talk) 21:50, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

MN is a delicate flower, so I'll note [5] here William M. Connolley (talk) 21:42, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

"Inappropriate statistical methods"

"The Oxburgh report found (and reported) evidence of...inappropriate statistical methods used by the CRU." (FellGleaming, 22:21, May 18, 2010)

"Although inappropriate statistical tools with the potential for producing misleading results have been used by some other groups, presumably by accident rather than design, in the CRU papers that we examined we did not come across any inappropriate usage although the methods they used may not have been the best for the purpose." (Report of Lord Oxburgh's Scientific Assessment panel)

(emphasis mine)

I think you have misread the report. The Panel appears to say the opposite of what you say it said. --TS 01:21, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Formal warning.

Your latest comments on Talk:Fred Singer are out of line. "I think the Singer talk page is an entirely appropriate venue to discuss a pattern of tendentious edits to that article" is wrong. Will you please sit down and read WP:TALK and WP:NPA? Specifically i would point out #4 in Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks#What_is_considered_to_be_a_personal_attack.3F.

If you have griefs about an editor - then the correct venue is to gather evidence (in private) and to start a user-RfC, an enforcement request etc. It is not acceptable to cast aspersions on other editors in article talk-pages. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 07:46, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but the policy states a personal attack is, "Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence." It further states: "Serious accusations require serious evidence." The evidence was given. There is a years-long pattern of tendentious edits to that page, made for the specific purpose of attempting to punish Singer for his views. Nothing could be further from the spirit and letter of Wikipedia policy. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 14:23, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

You are not going to let up are you? No, You didn't give evidence. You asserted something based upon assumption.

But no matter what - accusations/evidence and other things of that manner have no place in article talk-space. If you do not trust what i'm saying - go ask some administrator that you trust. Because if you continue down this alley - then it is going to turn out badly.

You should also try to at least make a semblence of adhering to WP:AGF. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 14:28, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

If you want to promote this into a venue where I collect and present even more evidence of a long-standing tendentious pattern of intentional distortion of BLP entries of all individuals who have criticized global warming, then it very well may turn out badly ... but not in the way you think. Regards. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 14:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Please self-revert

The CRU hack page is under a 1RR restriction. This edit is a revert, since it removes material that has been edit-warred over in the past. This edit marks your second revert in less than 12 hours. Guettarda (talk) 15:12, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi, you have misread the diff. I removed nothing in that first edit; I simply moved the Norfolk investigation line downwards as part of a restructuring. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 15:16, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

No, I didn't misread the diff. The material was removed from the opening paragraph. Where it was moved is beside the point. Guettarda (talk) 15:22, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

That's a unique interpretation! By that logic, even inserting a space into the lede is "removing material", since it pushed everything else downward one character. I removed nor reverted anything; and the statement is still in the lede, for that matter. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 15:25, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

April 2010

Please do not attack other editors, as you did here: Talk:Hockey stick controversy. If you continue, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.

This [6] just made you take responsibility of a personal attack. Since you have been made aware of the Probation - and what is worse you have already been made aware of Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation/Requests_for_enforcement/Archive4#Comment_refactoring (i did so here[7]) - you are stepping way over the line. Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:25, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I reverted a change you made improperly. No Wikipedia policy grants you unilateral rights to adjudge remarks a personal attacks and remove them, except in rare cases where an editor's personal information is being compromised. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 00:01, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

That is a very novel interpretation of policy. And of course it is not uni-lateral - by reverting me - you took responsibility of the personal attack. That btw. is noted in the comment refactoring enforcement request, as being disruptive....iff of course i am correct in it being a personal attack - do you disagree that it was a personal attack? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:10, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see the basic for your claim. Your link begins with, "Based on the discussion above I propose the following extension...." Was this proposal effected into actual policy? Fell Gleaming^(talk) 00:18, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Replication error

Here you make a claim that you may have seen on some blog somewhere. Please note that the biographies of living persons policy applies to talk pages, too. In general, avoid repeating contentious claims about living persons as fact. Even if your personal interpretation of an email is that it supports your opinion, be circumspect and recognise the distinction between claim and established fact. And between "auditing" (which requires access to original data) and scientific replication (which does not). Tasty monster (=TS ) 23:41, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but there is no BLP violation in that particular statement; in the context of the discussion, is it certainly germane. Further, your statement as to replication is also incorrect. There are many classes of research which cannot be replicated without access to the original dataset(s), especially in the earth and medical sciences, in which experimental reproduction is impossible. A researcher is always ethically obligated to divulge their methodology and, except in cases where the experimental data can be easily and exactly replicated -- the dataset as well.

Hope that clears things up for you. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 00:27, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I understand (but don't agree with) your response. You hold that by proposing to withold a data set Mann was trying to stop somebody replicating his work. Do you understand that, even if it is your personal opinion, it may not be stated as fact?

Separate from that concern, it is my understanding that Mann has been cleared of professional misconduct by a duly appointed body charge to look into the content of the emails. If that is correct, your decision to represent your opinion as established fact becomes even more of a problem. Tasty monster (=TS ) 00:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I hope you're joking with this. An "investigation" that contacted only two people, both supporters of Mann -- and they cleared him only of destroying data.

Futhermore, he is still being investigated on integrity of conduct charges. That report isn't due out yet. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 01:11, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not joking, please take this seriously. You don't respond to my point above about your representation of your opinion as fact.

You state that an investigation into Mann's conduct has not yet reported. If that is so, surely you should wait for it to report its conclusions before making contentious statements of fact that amount to attacks on the integrity of a living person through the medium of Wikipedia? Tasty monster (=TS ) 01:29, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Asking what Mann has to hide is not a statement of fact. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 01:31, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Now you seem to be changing the subject. Do you understand that the problem is the statement of your opinion (that Mann stopped others replicating his findings) as fact?

As an aside I'd also add that asking a rhetorical question like that (asking what Mann has to hide) certainly is problematic, even though it is not a statement of fact. Engaging in advocacy like that on Wikipedia isn't good conduct at all. But I want to emphasize that this is just an aside.

Please address the principal complaint, that you shouldn't be stating your contentious negative opinions of Mann as fact anywhere on Wikipedia. --TS 17:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Global warming controversy‎

Hello, sorry about my reverts. Your edits followed that one and I honestly thought it was from the same user. I clearly should have checked before reverting. My apologies. --McSly (talk) 01:53, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

No problem whatsoever. I appreciate the apology. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 02:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

AN/I: Abuse of sysop tools, and failure to follow consensus – Causa sui

Hello. This is to let you know that there is now a discussion at AN/I regarding an issue that you commented on here.--Epeefleche (talk) 06:12, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Breaking the terms of the warning given to you in sanctions

So you were warned about misrepresenting sources and yet you just keep doing it over and over again. You typically defend you position until it is spelled out to you with quotes exactly why you have misrepresented the source and at that point your modus operandi appears to be to change the argument or counter attack. This is just shockingly poor. If I hadn't personally opted out of CC sanctions I would be taking you there right now with a whole list of diffs. I advise you to change your ways and quickly. Polargeo (talk) 20:53, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

And I advise you to stop the threats, or there'll be two RfEs submitted. Your tendentious quibbling over phrasing isn't going to bear up, I used the exact figures from the source. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 21:08, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Bingo the counter attack. I knew I could rely on you to prove me right. You are getting very predictable. I will not report you to anywhere, that is not what I do. I was simply warning you that others might if you don't sort it out. If you don't wish to take my warning (not threat) then you cannot say I didn't try. Polargeo (talk) 21:17, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

← You appear to be ignoring the warning you were given and continuing in the previously identified problematic behaviors - both in questionable use of sources and in aggressive posturing when your use of sources was questioned.

• You haven't responded to this query, which raised an instance where your representation of a source is diametrically opposite to what the source actually says. You are under no obligation to respond, and the claim in question was on a talk page, not an article, which are mitigating factors, but it hardly inspires confidence.
• This discussion is concerning, in that you've made very questionable use of a source in articlespace, and responded with aggressive posturing when called on it.

Please take the time to civilly and concretely address the substance of the concerns raised about your use of sources at Talk:Effects of global warming on Australia. Given your previous conduct and the warning you were given, you're skirting sanctions at this point if you aren't willing to take these basic steps. MastCell ^Talk 22:22, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Diff 1: I did not misrepresent a source. I made a statement on a talk page. There was no source given, nor was there even an edit to the article. Isn't that the reason talk pages exist? To thrash out any potential disagreements about whether a fact is valid or not. The statement as I presented it was certainly not valid for inclusion in the article, which is why I didn't simply insert it in the first place.

Diff 2: I've already answered this on the talk page. The values I gave were exactly from the source. I agree that the statement could be better worded to say "without any further anthropogenic warming, and I have twice presented that as a compromise position without (as of yet) receiving a reply. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 23:12, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

In the first case, you did of course cite a source (the Oxburgh report), and you did so in a way that misrepresented its content fairly dramatically. If you recognize that you made an error, then no one will think less of you for correcting yourself. Quite the opposite; it might help repair any damage to your credibility that the initial error caused.

In the second case, you deeply misrepresented the values you took from the source. This isn't a gray area - it's a simple matter of claiming that the source says something that it clearly does not, and then responding aggressively when questioned on it. I'm glad to see the improvement in your tone over the course of the talk-page thread in question. MastCell ^Talk 23:56, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Please stop

This[8] is precisely the sort of misrepresentation of sources for which you recently were sanctioned. Are you seriously arguing that the U.S. Geological Survey web site is a "blog"? Please refrain from these types of edits. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:51, 21 April 2010 (UTC)