User talk:Apostle12

Rosebud Denovo

You removed reference to Rosebud's killing because you suggest it had nothing to do with the Park, yet Park activists blamed Chancellor Tien for allowing the University to go ahead with construction plans (volleyball court, etc.). Rosebud was one of many outspoken critics of Tien. Her being in his house with a machete was directly related to people's park, far from having "nothing" to do with it.stan goldsmith 04:16, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seems pretty tenuous to me. It's true that Rosebud linked herself with those who called themselves "Park activists." Yet she broke into Tien's house because she was deranged, not because her actions had a rational connection to any cause associated with People's Park. Her killing by an Oakland police officer had to do with the fact that she lunged at the officer with a machete; once again, her killing had nothing to do with People's Park.

What I have noticed is that the Park seems to act as a magnet for quite a number of imbalanced individuals. They spend time in the Park, and their "cause celebre" seems to be proving that various authoritarian structures (the University, the campus police, the Berkeley police) are evil.

Perhaps you can find a source that addresses this issue and work it into the article in some rational way. Otherwise it seems largely irrelevant. Apostle12 08:25, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your points don't make sense. On the one hand you suggest that she "links herself" to the activists and on the other you say she had nothing to do with the park besides being crazy. As a person who knew her I can say that she was instrumental in organizing protests about the park and a major player in the protest movement surrounding the park in the early 90s.

Using your logic one can say: well the marches and riots in the 60's were just crazy people running amok for no reason, just because they were near People's Park or "linked themselves" with park activists doesn't mean anything.

What is the difference between linking yourself with a movement and being a part of it? And where do you get your information that she was "imbalanced" - this seems like a pretty heavy judgement call on your part. Same goes for the rest of the park activists, many of whom were and are still Berkeley students, many of whom are active in the Berkeley government and run businesses in the city, far from being crazed lunatics who think that the cops are satan. They have a purpose and your removal of that purpose diminishes them to something that you can assert your power over, i.e. nothing more than crazy people.

If you want to maintain that you are being neutral you are just kidding yourself. stan goldsmith 20:06, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you would benefit from reading the link, "What Really Killed Rosebud?," which appears at the bottom of the page.

I used the word "deranged" to refer to Rosebud, which I think is a mild term considering that: she had a long history of violent conflict with authority; she had been committed to mental institutions because of her threats and violent behavior; she had left Oregon because "there weren't enough protests" there, traveling to Berkeley specifically to seek out violent conflict regarding People's Park; and, shortly before her death, she and her boyfriend were arrested with explosives that they intended to use to blow up Chancellor Tien's house. Her shooting, after she lunged at an armed police officer with a machete, seems clearly to have been "suicide by cop." And she voiced exactly that intent, in a note penned before the event, where she declared her willingness "to lay down (her) life" to protest the building of some volleyball courts.

Yes, "imbalanced" is judgmental word. I'm happy to stand by its use as appropriate in this context. Apostle12 08:16, 11 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Robert Altman

You removed the Robert Altman (photographer) pictures from the Hippy article. Permission to use this copyrighted work in Wikipedia articles were granted by Robert Altman, on September 3, 2006. Do you have information which superceeds that? --Salix alba (talk) 00:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hippie influence on the visual arts

Thanks, Apostle; I was beginning to think I was the only one in the discussion besides our aristo friend the Bus Stop! --Orange Mike 19:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to help resolve this argument. I appreciate the brevity of your comments, and I've asked Bus stop to follow your example.. Please also remember not to bite the newbies. And, try not to engage in personal attacks. —Viriditas | Talk 00:25, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

People's Park article

Hey there -- got your note. See the discussion of People's Park to see some examples I pointed out. Maybe that will help, and we can start an ongoing dialog on how to bring this page up to par! Thanks

Guess I'm dense, but I do not understand why you consider parts of my ediing as biased: in my mind (probably the problem!!), many of the people involved in the "Bloody Thursday" incident were upset and confused. about why the police had fenced the park. People gathered in Sproul Plaza to find out what was going on, and to share their feelings of confusion. So I think of them as 'citizens' and not 'protestors' because they were peaceably exercising their Constitutional right to assemble. When Dan Siegel spoke he was not inciting people to protest -- he was saying that the citizens should go to the park.

As I understand 'loaded' words (I'm thinking of S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action here), 'citizen' is more value-neutral than 'protestors,' a term that suggests a purpose not necessarily inherent in their actions. Also, I am puzzled by your comment that I 'insist' on injecting bias. In my mind, I was suggesting alternative, less loaded language.

Pepkoka, I presume? Please use four Apostle12 21:57, 4 March 2007 (UTC) to sign your comments.[reply]

You are correct that the students who gathered in Sproul Plaza were merely concerned students and other citizens. At some point, however--perhaps when the fire hydrant was opened and the first bottles and rocks were thrown--it became a protest. And it is legitimate to call those who chose to involve themselves "protestors."

Haven't yet had time to read comments on talk page. Will do that soon.Apostle12 21:57, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the article on People's Park is much stronger these days: more info and overall, more objective. I was initially thrown off by the assertion that Mike Delacour was the Father of People's Park. I have never seen that in print, and from my recollection he was considered a poseur, so thought I'd throw in my own recollections as well. I'm actually really pleased with the current article. As a young eyewitness to these events, I was aware at the time that I did not fully understand what was going on, but I knew it was quite a story!! The current version seems much closer to reality, imho.

only onther question: why is there no link to Rabbi Michael Lerner? (it's the same guy). Pepkoka

Last two sentences of introductory paragraph in "Hippie" article.

Apostle12 -- In the "Hippie" article there is no source to back up the assertion that "Hippie opposition to The Establishment spread worldwide through..." That is a broad, sweeping statement. I don't think it should be made at all. I tried previously to change that statement to a lesser statement. I just wanted it to say something to the effect that the "culture," or the "philosophy," of the Hippies was expressed, or "spread," through the various means cited. But it has been changed back to "Hippie opposition to The Establishment spread worldwide through..." Again: I don't think such a grandiose claim should be made here. But if you are going to make that claim, it needs a source.

I have additional problems with the use of the term "visual art." I don't think it is the correct term to be used here. That phrase includes much more than what is implied here, or what is provided with a source here. A narrower term or phrase is called for, so as not to create the misleading impression that hippie culture had much of a bearing on "contemporary art," because it did not.

All that I am saying is in reference to the following two sentences, which I take objection to:

Hippie opposition to The Establishment spread worldwide through a fusion of early rock, folk, blues and psychedelic rock. To a lesser degree, hippie culture was expressed in literature, [11] the dramatic arts, [12] and many aspects of the visual arts, especially film, [13] posters advertising rock concerts, and LP album covers. [14] [15] Bus stop 19:28, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Meese Commission criticism

Please take it to the Talk page if you really need to debate this assertion. edgarde 05:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work!

Good job on your latest edits to the hippie article concerning the music scene. You are really dealing with a brand new article, a subpage of psychedelic music. There's no immediate hurry, but I would start contemplating the creation of a new article (I can help out with the correct name if you want), and adding a summary paragraph or two to the hippie article with a link to the main topic. Again, nice work. —Viriditas | Talk 12:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Several issues

Hi. Yes, I think we need to source everything in the article (it's policy, see WP:ATT), and if we don't, someone else will request it; it's the only way the article will ever meet featured article status. Ideally, the lead section should already reflect sourced material in the body of the article. —Viriditas | Talk 10:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I am not questioning the need to source material.

The phrase, "though the hippie movement itself extended far beyong the U.S." seems to me to be just a summary of ALREADY-SOURCED material--quite a lot of it within the "Hippie" article itself.

When a general statement merely summarizes already-sourced material (the existence of hippies in other parts of the world being well-documented), you have in the past defended the inclusion of such material (the Manson section, for example). Apostle12 07:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Manson section is a summary of a subarticle. If the summary does not represent sourced content in the subarticle, there could be a potential problem. I recall adding or helping to source material in the past. If the lead material in question is already sourced in the body of the article, why hasn't a citation been offered? —Viriditas | Talk 08:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose I could start. There is just so much....Apostle12 08:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Use WP:WIAGA as your baseline. I don't see any justification for the NPOV tag, and I've asked the editor who added it to explain, but I've received no response. —Viriditas | Talk 09:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hippie

You have to be kidding? Please look at the talk page for why the hippie article is POV, and it's because it is US centred, as has been made clear. We are an international and not a US encycliopedia, yet the article still reads as if it were part of a US encyclopedia after the many changes I have made. SqueakBox 20:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All the issues that have been raised on the talk page have been addressed as they came up. All sourced material regarding global hippiedom has been added. Please add more if you wish; it will be welcomed. Apostle12 22:11, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But your aggressive comments on my talk page are not welcome. The issues are being raised on the talk page though unfortunately Viritidas is being so aggressive it makes it very hard for long time editors like Codex and myself to participate. i suggest you criticise his false allegations before starting to attack me, SqueakBox 03:38, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have never attacked you. Apostle12 04:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In response to the comment you left on my talk page, I did not remove a single thing from the Hippie article. I corrected the formatting and improved the wording and order of the first section. In fact I even added content, such as the alternate spelling. I organized similar topics together instead of having them scatttered somewhat randomly, and I moved the footnotes to the ends of sentences, as per proper formatting style.Spylab 20:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The alternate spelling has been there for years. Why do you imagine that you added it? What you deleted, specifically, is the important concept of interactive development of the hippie ethos on both sides of the Atlantic. And you added the unsourced idea that "hippie" was used "sarcastically." Perhaps you mean "pejoratively"--in any case the massively rewritten lead kinda sucks friend. Apostle12 06:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The alternate spelling was not in the first sentence before I added it.[1]

It was only buried much, much lower in the article, but it must be in the first sentence, because that's how many people spell the word. I absolutely did not delete the concept of interactive development of the hippie ethos on both sides of the Atlantic. I moved it so it was next to other sentences about that same topic. I'll paste it here in case you don't want to read the actual article:

By 1968, self-described hippies had become a significant minority, representing just under 0.2 percent of the U.S. population.[10] The hippie culture spread worldwide through a fusion of rock music, folk, blues, and psychedelic rock. The hippie ethos influenced the The Beatles and others in the United Kingdom and Europe, and they in turn influenced their American counterparts.[11][12] [13] Hippie culture also found expression in literature, the dramatic arts, and the visual arts, including film, posters advertising rock concerts, and album covers.[14][15] [16] [17][18] Eventually the hippie movement extended far beyond the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, appearing in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and many other countries.[19] [20] [21] [22].

I also did not add any statement that the term was used sarcastically. Some other editor did that. I suggest you actually read the section and pay attention to who is actually making specific edits, and not to revert the first section to a lesser-quality version that is full of formatting errors, disorganization, and poor, unclear writing style. For example, your preferred version of the first sentence:

Hippie or Hippy refers to a subgroup of the 1960s and early 1970s counterculture that found its earliest beginnings in the United States, becoming an established social group by 1965 before declining during the mid-1970s.

is grammatically incorrect, sloppy and very confusing. However, my version:

A hippie (sometimes spelled hippy) is a member of a specific subculture (often described as a counterculture), that began in the United States in the 1960s, spread to other countries, and declined in the mid-1970s.

is grammatically correct, more clear, and says what your version is actually trying to say. Also, footnotes belong at the ends of sentences and topics should have some kind of organization and logical flow, instead of just plopped on the page in a somewhat random fashion. Spylab 10:59, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Points taken. The alternate "hippy" spelling was there in the first sentence for years, then somehow disappeared rather recently. I mistakenly assumed this occurred during your rather aggressive editing.

My quibble about "began in the United States" and the interactive nature of the development of hippie culture on both sides of the Atlantic remains, however. "Found its earliest beginnings" was a recent compromise, since it refers to the '60-'64 period. However there needs to be some way to bring in the fact that interactivity during the '65-'66 period (also part of the beginning) was important. Simply saying that it "began" in the U.S. has not satisfied many critics.

Did do some clean-up and minor re-organization. Apostle12 17:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

I responded on talk about including the tune. If you can find a good cite or two that does not self-reference Wikipedia, we can add it back in. I'll keep looking, too. —Viriditas | Talk 20:33, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to find something. Not too important, though probably best not to lose it. Apostle12 23:19, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re; Dylan turning on the Beatles

I'm sure you've met Diamond Dave (no not David Lee Roth, but the SF Diamond Dave) and are familiar with his claim that he turned Dylan on; Any idea if it is true or not? If you haven't met DD, you really should. Interesting character. —Viriditas | Talk 09:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually this is new information for me. Somehow the name "Diamond Dave" resonates, however I don't think I've met him. What is his connection to the whole scene, and how might I meet him? Apostle12 16:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I'm sure you've met him. See [2]. I haven't been in the bay area for a long time, but he was active as a radio DJ on a local station (the one connected with the John Coltrane Church, I'm sure you've heard him on the air) and with the Rainbow Family. His daughter, if memory serves, was/is a popular musician. For some reason, I used to run into him in the Mission/Noe Valley all the time. He's an institution. —Viriditas | Talk 20:24, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your policy additions to WP:OWN

Hey, I forgot to tell you some time ago that I agree with the changes you proposed on the talk page for WP:OWN. If you have any interest in revisiting this issue, let me know as I would like to help you add them to the policy page. —Viriditas | Talk 07:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, V. I'm going out of town for a few days and will take a peek as soon as I return. Apostle12 17:16, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just returned and had a chance to look over the changes I proposed on January 26, 2007. So glad you agree with them, especially since they relate to our own personal history; I am very grateful that we have become collaborators, and I thank you for being willing to help.

I'm not sure why these changes encountered so much resistance. Perhaps the Jungian reference was too obscure, though I think it useful. In any case, if you would like to formally offer your support on WP:OWN (Talk)--along with any changes you might prefer--that would be much appreciated. Apostle12 22:43, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since it is your idea, I think we should work on it in your user space first, revise and refine the text, and then propose it on the talk page. I'm going to move it to User_talk:Apostle12/sandbox for now. —Viriditas | Talk 06:30, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bringing Hippie to Good Article status

Although I would like to work with you to elevate Hippie to FA status, I think we should bring it to GA, first. Please take a look at WP:GA so you can see what needs to be done. Let's get this show on the road. —Viriditas | Talk 05:20, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am serious about editing, though perhaps not as directed as you are. I did look over the "Good Article" guidelines and the comparison to "Featured Aricle." I guess I'd just like to play with it...do a bit here and a bit there. Apostle12 05:31, 23 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing will be lost. Getting "hostile" over unsourced material is just silly. Choose a section to start with on the talk page and I will personally help you find sources. Tell me where to start, and I will guarantee nothing we can source will be lost. Do you want me to start with sexual attitudes? —Viriditas | Talk 20:58, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, starting with "Sexual attitudes" sounds fine.Apostle12 06:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I just noticed that Spylab recently combined all the festival information in three run-on "paragraphs." I only noticed it because I was going to add a quote to the Burning Man section. (Stewart Brand said recently that Burning Man was a fulfillment of everything we--meaning hippies--were trying to do with the Acid Tests and the Trips Festival.) Not too pleased by Spylab's editing. What do you think?Apostle12 07:53, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it works. Is your concern that you are losing the section headers? The trick is to use the ";" in front of text without the headings. It gives you headers without the headings. —Viriditas | Talk 11:27, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sexual attitudes

Hippies regularly flouted societal prohibitions against interracial dating and marriage.

The first part can be sourced, but the second part about dating and marriage will be more difficult.

They were early advocates for the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws that the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional in 1967 (Loving v. Virginia), but which remained on the books in some U.S. states until 2000, albeit unenforced.

Where can I find a source for this?

With their emphasis on Free Love, hippies promoted many of the same counterculture beliefs that found early expression in the Beat Generation.

That seems reasonable and easy to source.

Co-habitation among unmarried couples was the norm,

Not sure where to find a source for this.

open relationships were common,

Should be easy source if true.

and both Beats and Hippies advocated for legal and societal acceptance of most forms of consensual sexual expression among adults.

Should be easy to source if true, although the legal part will be difficult.

With regard to homosexuality and bisexuality, the Beats had demonstrated early tolerance during an era when homosexual expression of any sort was still punishable by stiff prison sentences.

I'm not sure if that is true. I mean, this sounds like a generalization from Ginsberg and Kerouac alone.

Hippies generally espoused the same tolerant attitude. Many hippies, as in the movie Woodstock and the photo were casual about open nudity.

How many Hippies were naked at Woodstock? Are we talking about full nudity, or women taking their shirts off. —Viriditas | Talk 11:27, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm taking this to Hippie/temp. —Viriditas | Talk 12:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tag of photo "Neal Cassady" article

What on earth is the problem with this photo? It's been up for years with no objection whatsoever?

Seems overzealous to tag it. However, please inform how tag can be removed, as it would be a shame to lose it. Apostle12 15:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The way to remove the tag is to ensure it has an IN DEPTH fair use rationale, see [{WP:NFCC]] and WP:FURG for more information.

Sfan00 IMG 15:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

hippies

is it true Hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons, opposed the Vietnam War, and promoted the use of psychedelic drugs to expand one's consciousness. why don't these prove that hippies were against a lot of things the U.S. government were for. Were not hippies against the U.S. government. If hippies sold out they would become like all other americans? Some hippies did use violence.

Vietnam: There was never a declared war between the U.S government and Vietnam. The war was between the two Vietnams. Didn't hippies protest U.S involvement in Vietnam and not Vietnam fighting Vietnam. The hippies were protesting the U.S.'s involvement. not the war. VIETNAM CONFLICT.

Drugs: weren't the drugs hippies used illegal.

William Colby Article

Hi, I see you removed the link to 'The Franklin Coverup'. The thing is that the article about John DeCamp also links to it, so I'm not sure why you feel it is wrong. Do you feel that the John DeCamp article also wrong? Or is it that you feel that the link to 'The Franklin Coverup' shouldn't redirect to The Franklin Coverup hoax? There seems to be extensive discussion of if it really was a hoax on Franklin Coverup Hoax. so I would say leave the link in and let people decide for themselves. --Shimbo 10:22, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I would submit that linking DeCamp's book title 'The Franklin Coverup' to an article called 'Franklin Coverup Hoax' is also inappropriate. DeCamp certainly does NOT consider it a hoax, and the evidence he provides is rather convincing. The fact that some consider it a hoax might be mentioned, but letting people decide for themselves would involve mentioning the title of DeCamp's book without direct prejudice. Apostle12 07:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Daniel Moore

You're right, as I added a subsequent talk page comment that explained its removal, here. Do you think a separate section, branching out to a new article, say Culture of the Hippies is required? I think it may be a good idea. —Viriditas | Talk 20:53, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've commented on the "Hippie" talk page and intend to add a section discussing Floating Lotus.

Culture of the Hippies sounds somewhat overblown to me, because the movement proper lasted such a short time and I see culture as something that develops, and becomes deeply rooted, during many generations.

However there was such a thing as "hippie culture" and, more specifically, a "hippie ethos." Hippiedom was, after all, an idea--something along the lines of:

"We are each conscious creators, and we can choose to re-fashion the world we live in along more loving, compassionate lines. We must not be limited by the societal, governmental and cultural structures we create--such structures are often antithetical to the essential, moment-to-moment practice of loving one's fellow man. Life is a banquet and most poor folks are starving (quoting Auntie Mame)."

The remarkable thing about the hippie phenomenon was that this idea did indeed take root, to the extent that contemporary Western culture would hardly be recognizable had hippies never existed.

I have attempted in the past to add information regarding the beautiful, central idea of the hippie ethos from works authored by Stewart Brand, Stephen Gaskin and others, sourcing same as best I can. Perhaps you might better tolerate the addition of such information in the section you propose.

What exactly to call it? I am open to suggestion.Apostle12 20:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dunites

During the 1930s and 40s, the dunes were the home of a group of free thinking people including mystics, nudists, artists, writers, and hermits who identified themselves collectively as the "Dunites." Among other activities, the group published a magazine, which they called The Dune Forum. The Dunites believed that Oceano Dunes was one of the centers of creative energy in California.[3]

Dunites? This is the first I've heard of them. How about you? Can we connect the dots to the Beats and the hippies? —Viriditas | Talk 07:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check this out: [4], [5], [6]. Neat. —Viriditas | Talk 07:57, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're not going to believe this. I just discovered that one of the leaders of the Dunites, Gavin Arthur (born Chester Alan Arthur III) was not only friends with Neal Cassady,[7] but was a practicing astrologer who helped choose the date of the first Human-Be-In.[8] —Viriditas | Talk 08:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what I think: the hippies have always been here. Call them whatever you want, bohemians, Der Wandervogel, beatniks, whatever. I think we need to view them as part of a greater community of free-thinkers spanning millenia rather than as an isolated phenomenon in one decade. Obviously, each generation will express this joie de vivre in the language and clothing of their time but the underlying ideas remain the same. —Viriditas | Talk 08:23, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possible addition to the legacy section

I have a reference to École nationale de cirque being related to the hippie movement in some way, either attracting hippies or being influenced by hippies. Do you have any information about this? Now, wouldn't that look great in the legacy section! —Viriditas | Talk 07:24, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cirque nouveau was allegedly established in France in the 1970s. I'm thinking that we should be able to find some kind of relationship between the hippie counterculture and the rise of the new circus art form. —Viriditas | Talk 07:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You may be right about a connection. I wish I knew more; definitely worth pursuing, and it would look great in the legacy section. Apostle12 07:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Two requests

Need your help expanding examples of hippie vocabulary in both hippie and the etymology articles
User:Brasswatchman has some questions about Charles Manson and his relationship with the counterculture and The Beatles that I think you can better address than I can. Please see: User_talk:Brasswatchman#Re:_Manson.

Thanks. —Viriditas | Talk 03:13, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the original question asked by Brasswatchman. If you could address it on his talk page, I would appreciate it:

Can anyone give me or point me in the direction of any information regarding the cultural implications of the Manson family murders? There's the suggestion in this article, linked to in the Charles Manson article, as well as in Wikipedia's hippie, that the murders marked the end of the counterculture zeitgeist. I'd like to know more about how Manson affected popular culture; also, does anyone know if the Beatles ever commented on how Manson used their work? Thank you for your time. --Brasswatchman (talk) 04:32, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Your recent edits

Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot (talk) 02:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hippie comunities for inclusion

In addition to Haight-Ashbury, Barry Miles lists the following hippie communities in his book, Hippie (2004):

I'm wondering if you can help add a brief mention of them to the Hippie article and expand upon them in History of the hippie movement. Thanks. —Viriditas | Talk 05:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

9/11

Hi,

you might want to look at the list I (we) are compiling at: Talk:9/11#NPOV / missing_facts. I appreciate any addition or criticism you can make.  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (talk) 14:05, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether your interested; The list was not welcome. However, now I am trying to have a discussion on what I believe is Wikipedia's using Circular reasoning in a so-called NFSM-loop. Interested? See Talk:9/11#NPOV / missing facts (2) and especially Talk:9/11#back to the heart (2) -- no-one has replied, yet, though.  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (talk) 21:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moving page

In your recent attempt to move Franklin coverup hoax to Franklin child abuse allegations, you somehow managed to delete the article instead. I suggest you ask for help on WP:RM, since an administrator will have to complete the move now. In the meantime, I restored the text at the original title. --Russ (talk) 14:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I really screwed up. Sorry for all the trouble.Apostle12 (talk) 21:11, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your recent MKULTRA edits

Hi Apostle12. Thanks for the good additions to the MKULTRA article, but making so many different edits makes it difficult for people to follow changes. Editing a version of the page in a sandbox in your own userspace might work best for you. Bartleby (talk) 15:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll try that.Apostle12 (talk) 21:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikifun

Thanks for the sympathy :D I never intended to come back to this issue, but there it was and I couldn't help myself. This time I have no illusions. The editor who proposed the change this time is relatively new, like I was when I did it. I got involved initially just to give him some moral support because I expected him to get the same drubbing that I got. Fortunately, whether we win or lose this time, the bullying tactics are much less intense, so hopefully he won't be dissuaded from going on to become the great editor which I believe he will be. ireneshusband (talk) 08:20, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

npov debate

Hi Apostle12, are you interested in looking into the npov debate which is on Talk:9/11#Heart of NPOV (3) ?  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 14:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

9/11 sourcing

I'll reply at my page. Good idea.  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 21:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to know how tables work, you can mail me. Or do you need something else?  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 23:36, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm working steadily on User:Xiutwel/911 questioning paragraph draft, but I expect I will need some weeks to complete it. I also plan to go through the entire 9/11 talk archives (joined in my userspace) to see whether someone else has already done part of the work. I am not demanding you help me with it, but it helped raise my enthusiasm, when I saw you contribute! So if you could try and add a link once a week, that would be great ! Please note that when you click edit, and then preview, you get to see ugly table instructions, which work out fine only AFTER you have saved your edits. Just replace "sources" or "discussion" with the things you want to add. (I added your source already.)  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 14:22, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring on 9/11 conspiracy theories

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on 9/11 conspiracy theories. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions in a content dispute within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution. Ice Cold Beer (talk) 06:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You have been reported to WP:AN3RR. Ice Cold Beer (talk) 06:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear! I AM terrified. And what of those who have also reverted? Have you warned them (and yourself) as well. Apostle12 (talk) 10:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose was not to terrify you. I am just trying to inform you that you have violated Wikipedia policy, which was stupid, because I forgot that you constantly ignore Wiki policy. Ice Cold Beer (talk) 17:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I might partially agree with you, especially the self-assessment. It is, however, not true that I "constantly ignore Wiki policy." Apostle12 (talk) 21:12, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not revert-war anymore, Apostle12 ! Revert only once, and take it to talk after that. I have a question for you: you wrote on the talk page: "actually it was another editor who originally added it; I only restored it" — I cannot find that edit, can you provide a link or a timestamp for me? Thanks !  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 23:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think I found it now, was it the RxS cleanup action of January 28? I've taken that to talk.  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 00:35, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe you're at 3 reverts again.... — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe you have miscounted, A.R. Edits and re-edits don't count. Besides you have a tag team going on in this article, as you well know. Apostle12 (talk) 21:14, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Norman Mineta

Dear Apostle12,

I would welcome any improvements you could make to my proposal at Talk:9/11#Norman Mineta testimony issue !  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 06:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

a link for "some members merely"

Would it not be better to give an example of a notable subgroup, who do so? E.g. pilots for 911 truth, perhaps?? I am not sure !!  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 23:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I looked over the site and decided to add it. Apostle12 (talk) 00:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments about whistleblowers

Your comments on those pages are not helpful. Wikipedia talk pages are for improving articles not discussing personal political or other opinions that are marginally related to a topic. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:34, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry. I just noticed that the comment was not added by you merely restored by you. In the future please don't do that. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:37, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I have a right to restore something that was wrongly removed. I restored it to protest Haemo's high-handedness, which apparently you agree with.Apostle12 (talk) 04:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your opinion about Hameo is irrelevant. The material does not belong on the talk page. See WP:TALK. Restoring disruptive content to make a point is covered under WP:POINT. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted you again. I strongly suggest you do not restore the content unless you want to get blocked. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:43, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the future, please do not visit my talk page. Thanks. Apostle12 (talk) 04:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

request your input in a consensus survey re 9/11

Dear Apostle12,

At Talk:9/11#defining consensus I started a survey to get a better picture on how editor's opinions are varying with respect to the following statement:

"The current form of the 9/11 article is at odds with the WP:NPOV policy, and the proposed inclusion of the fact that Michael Meacher alleges the US government of willfully not preventing the attacks, would make the article better, in stead of worse.

I would appreciate it when you could take a look. — Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 17:09, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration

I have named you as an involved party at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#9/11 conspiracy theories. Ice Cold Beer (talk) 22:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/September 11 conspiracy theories

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/September 11 conspiracy theories/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page.

For the Arbitration Committee, AGK § 19:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Apostle, please note the banner above, there: I think protocol requires you to make subsequent statements elsewhere. Cheers, — Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 03:07, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/September 11 conspiracy theories

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. Further to this, any uninvolved administrator may, on his or her own discretion, "impose sanctions on any editor working in the area of conflict (defined as articles which relate to the events of September 11, broadly interpreted) if, despite being warned, that editor repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process." The full remedy is located here.

For the Arbitration Committee, Anthøny 15:52, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate accounts

Hi. Please take a minute to read WP:SOCK#LEGIT and Wikipedia:Username_policy#Using_multiple_accounts. Most users who use alternate accounts will label the primary account with {{User Alt Acct Master}} and the secondary account with {{User Alternate Acct }}. Viriditas (talk) 08:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure how this happened, as this is the account I thought I was using. Must have been when I was locked out a while back and inadvertently logged back in using the other name and password. My mistake, and thanks for bringing it to my attention. Apostle12 (talk) 08:20, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need more citations

By February 1966, the Family Dog became Family Dog Productions under organizer Chet Helms, promoting happenings at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium in initial cooperation with Bill Graham. The Avalon Ballroom, the Fillmore Auditorium and other venues provided settings where participants could partake of the full psychedelic music experience. Bill Ham, who had pioneered the original Red Dog light shows, perfected his art of liquid light projection, which combined light shows and film projection and became synonymous with the San Francisco ballroom experience.

Anything you can dig up about this will help. Viriditas (talk) 02:40, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your help adding sources to the "Revolution (1968–1969)" section is also appreciated. Viriditas (talk) 02:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Coinintelpro

I'm not threatening to delete again immediately, but in general, I certainly will delete again until the editors of this page get their collective act together. Did you read Talk? I mentioned explicitly that the source is spurious. I will certainly re-delete that passgae in 24 hours, unless the sourcing is corrected.. and will continue to check for more substandard sourcing. I will also copy these remarks to article Talk. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 04:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll need to find a copy of the biography in question to resource this passage. Meanwhile, why not just add a "dubious" tag or ask for better sourcing? Deletion seems a poor way to improve quality, since much of value simple disappears into the ethers. I take it you have no specific information that the passage in question is spurious, only that the source is does not meet standards. Better sourcing, not wholesale deletion of a valuable passage, would better serve our readers. I have a busy week ahead, and 24 hours is not sufficient time. Why so hair-trigger?Apostle12 (talk) 06:50, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oops just now noticed this post. Hair-trigger because this talk of "spreading rumors" is, if unverified, seedy conspiracy-theory drivel. If properly verified, it is gist for an article... I'm sure you think I'm some sort of POV-pusher. I wouldn't blame you at all for thinking it. But that is not the case. :-) Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 04:37, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cointelpro deletions

Hi Apostle12. The facts may have been well-documented... somewhere.. but they are very poorly documented in the article.. in fact, they are not documented at all. Have you ever written a research paper? The shoddy nature of the refs I deleted is... as obvious as could be. But I'm getting nowhere with you folks; I'm just gonna start checking everything. No more deletions, no more talk, just fact checking. Then when the fact checking is done we'll return to other things... Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 22:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ling.Nut. Yes, I have written several research papers and one non-fiction book that was carefully footnoted. Time constraints make it difficult to maintain strictly professional standards when editing Wikipedia articles, and I might argue that to do so would detract from the "cutting edge" quality of the information one finds here.

Personally I limit myself to deleting obviously incorrect and disproven information, while I have learned to tolerate information that is merely without adequate sourcing. Where sourcing seems inadequate, I take a "where there is smoke, there may be fire" attitude, and I try to search out adequate sourcing. To accomplish this, it is often necessary to take on whole new areas of research, which I find personally gratifying and which allows me to improve Wiki articles and expand their breadth beyond what might have been possible had they contained only "for sure" information and sourcing. As time moves forward, it is remarkable the extent to which articles improve, though some editors find this "Wild West" approach disconcerting--especially those in academia. The big "plus" is that people actually READ Wikipedia, unlike most academic tomes that simply gather dust after they are published; Wikipedia is ALIVE! Apostle12 (talk) 01:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I stumbled onto this whole COINTEL thing by some accident or other; maybe via AWB. In the past I have spent more than a little time dealing with issues revolving around WP:ETHNIC. If I had a dollar for every time some goofball slipped spurious information after a legitimate-looking cite, I could probably buy a VCR... If you wanna help your COINTEL article, then find Churchill's sources and quote them directly, espcially if they are "blue chip". Churchill is a poster boy for some folks; he is anathema to others. Why beg for POV doubts to be cast on the article simply to provide a name-check for a personal hero? Ditto probably for Chomsky, though to a lesser degree... I really do plan to vet the whole article and it really will take weeks. You may be pleasantly surprised; I may end up improving it. ;-) Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 03:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have no doubt you will improve it, and I look forward to your contribution. Keep in mind that a great deal of the article has been carefully vetted and is rock solid as is, having been based directly on the Church Committee report. The section we have been dealing with in these discussions is "edge" material, and it rests on considerably squishier ground.Apostle12 (talk) 08:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit to MKULTRA

Hi,

Regards this edit, could you discuss please?

The external links section is far too long and duplicates unnecessarily (as well as some of the links being dead I believe). WP:EL states taht we are to keep external links to a minimum, and that's not it.
The invocation of satanic ritual abuse and the extreme abuse surveys is a violation of WP:UNDUE in my mind - SRA is seen as a moral panic by mainstream authorities, and the extreme abuse surveys are not sufficiently mainstream in my mind to justify much of anything (they're pretty much the POV of the very few who believe the SRA panic was anything but the false memories from unethical therapy and coercive questioning of children).
Cathy O'Brien also isn't that reliable a source, and it would again appear to place undue weight on the reality of a fringe theory

The undo also reveerted the formatting of some bare links into citation templates. Thanks, WLU (t) (c) ^{(rules - simple rules)} 19:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi WLU,

I can understand your frustration. My concern is that your "trimming" of the external links section was far too severe and made unavailable material that many might find useful in the further refinement of this article. I believe any deletions should be done on a case-by-case basis, clear duplication being a legitimate reason for such deletion.

Sorry about reverting the formatting of the bare links; that was unintentional.

Re: the "Conspiracy theories" section, the title of this section says it all--the historical reality of MKULTRA, which is not a conspiracy theory, has attracted conspiracy theorists of various stripes. Some of their claims may be legitimate, however all such claims reside on the fringes. I think it is important to at least make reference to the most common of these conspiracy theories in order to differentiate such theories from what we know to be true about MKULTRA.

One part of your edit especially concerned me; you said (I am paraphrasing) that there is no evidence supporting Teeter's claims, which claims are not limited to his raising the "Manchurian Candidate" issue, but which question many of the circumstances surrounding the Robert Kennedy assassination. In fact, considerable hard evidence (recovered bullets, forensic discrepancies) casts doubt on Sirhan Sirhan's guilt, and Teeter's point of view has gained traction during recent years.

You also deleted too much of the People's Temple material for the remaining information about sealed records to make sense; why include reference to sealed records without a relevant antecedent to tie this fact in to the "Conspiracy theories" section?

In conclusion, I simply found your scalpel too blunt. Many fine editors have worked to refine this very controversial article, however I admit that this section is probably the last to be polished. I would simply ask you not to destroy the body of the "Conspiracies theories" section as you contribute to its refinement. Apostle12 (talk) 21:34, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair 'nuff. I'll revisit the EL section and delete on a case-by-case basis. I'm not sure what you're talking about regards the People's temple, I can't find any mention of either word in the diff comparison and my only edit regards sealed records was to put in a citation template with a link to the NARA.

The page should be about what can be verified in reliable sources about MKULTRA, and any popular speculation should be treated very carefully. The Extreme Abuse Survey, two pages of which were recently deleted (here and here), seems an extension of the satanic ritual abuse moral panic, and O'Brien's statement seems an extreme claim that should be sourced to someone other than O'Brien, who isn't a researcher to my knowledge. Pretty much any claims against satanic ritual abuse should not be treated as truth.

The statement about Leo Ryan is unsourced and can be removed without recourse lacking a source per WP:PROVEIT.

Would you object to my edit to the wording of the Sirhan bit "MK-ULTRA plays a part in many conspiracy theories given its nature and the destruction of most records. The lawyer for Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, has claimed that the MK-ULTRA project was responsible for controlling Sirhan's actions at the time of the murder." It reads better to me. Do you have a reference for the evidence regards Sirhan? A statement or summary regards the evidence reads better than the rather equivocal statement about the lack of supporting evidence. However, like all WP:FRINGE, WP:REDFLAG and WP:UNDUE issues, all this has to be negotiated quite carefully. I've a book regards the CIA that I'll look into it for MKULTRA, I think there's a cople pages in it. WLU (t) (c) ^{(rules - simple rules)} 23:48, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hola, may I say it's been a pleasure to work with you the past couple days on MKULTRA (my last big conspiracy theory page was a huge acrimonious mess, bleah). I notice your use of Citation templates seems slightly sporadic, have you seen some of the tools available? There is the Google scholar autocitation, a google-style search engine and reference generator. Useful when the article doesn't have a pubmed number (old, social sciences or humanities) but the citation template isn't as neat and it does not fill in ISBN or pubmed numbers. Also hasn't been working lately. There's also the ISBN searchable database, whic you can use in conjunction with Diberry to find ISBNs, and generate citation templates. And pubmed/isbn Diberry's template generator, incredibly useful, uses the pubmed number or isbn to automatically generate a citation template for you; the most useful if you have a pubmed or ISBN. Somewhat messily you can also use it to generate citation templates for web pages (best with pubmeds though). There's a couple more that are much more awkward to use. Also a comment - the spacing of some of your edits is sometimes a bit off (i.e. extra or no spaces between words and punctuation, spaces between a word and a footnote). I can't really criticize because I make an enormous number of typos but also appreciate when others point out my mistakes so I can fix 'em. Hasn't worked with typos yet, but keep hope alive. WLU (t) (c) ^{(rules - simple rules)} 01:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think we are improving the article. Regarding the citation templates, I am not really up on their use. I manage to provide the required information, however I have been relying on others to correctly format that information. Yes, spacing has become a problem, especially during these past two weeks--I tipped over a can of lime soda, and it landed square on my laptop's keyboard causing mechanical problems, especially with the spacer key. The problem is slowly fading, and I am shopping for a new laptop, but much of the time when my thumb hits the spacer key nothing happens. I do go back and correct what I can see, but my corrections are imperfect.

I would prefer slightly different wording for the Leo Ryan section, which I plan to introduce once I'm finished here. Generally I see your changes as an improvement, however there is actually some controversy as to exactly who fired on Leo Ryan, Jackie Speier and the others; some observers contend that the shooters may not have been members of People's Temple, since they assumed perfect military formation prior to the shooting; Meier is one such. For that reason it may be preferable to return to more ambiguous terminology that endorses neither the official story nor more conspiratorial versions of the shooting.Apostle12 (talk) 04:47, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the word "continuing" may be important since the Jonestown event occurred after the "official" end of MKULTRA--of course, at least one retired CIA man has come forward and said that the experiments continued under other monikers. Apostle12 (talk) 04:53, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Citation templates are just a handy way to ensure all the information needed to source a reference is in place and standardized - one of the concerns being the print versions where you can't click on the hyperlinks. If you've ever known the pain of referencing for academic papers, it takes the guesswork out of them - you can insert any argument in any order and it'll automagically produce the appropriate italics, spacing, punctuation, order and whatnot. They're not hard to use, and particularly for books the diberri/ISBN trick is a great help and timesaver. If you know about the spacing, it's not a big deal and I'll try to watch for it so the mistakes get corrected (with the request that my many spelling mistakes are similarly corrected, natch!) The page specific stuff I'll address on the MK talk page. Incidentally, you may be interested in, or not, this essay, that pretty much distills everything I learned in my first 10,000 edits to a handy and hopefully funny package. It talks about citation templates and some other useful stuff (like Popups, which are great, and Hodgepodge, which is better). You've more experience than the primary audience it's aimed at but you never know and a lot of it has stuff that surprised me when I eventually found out. WLU (t) (c) ^{(rules - simple rules)} 14:09, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll dig into it.Apostle12 (talk) 17:08, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Undent. I revisited my talk page recently and wanted to make sure this was addressed - did you want further changes to the page, or are you OK with what's there now? I think the current wording is adequate. 00:08, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's fine.Apostle12 (talk) 00:16, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MKULTRA sock

Hola,

This is what makes me suspect it's a sockpuppet. User:Raorino is a sockpuppet of the indef-blocked User:ResearchEditor, per this RFCU diff. I could do a diff-by-diff comparison if you'd like, but it should be pretty easy to see.

My total objections are "some claim" is weaselly, the single sentence is weak, doesn't say much, does not elaborate. Carol Rutz, if you look into her claims, is pretty nutty fringe stuff. I did a bit of research on her a while ago. The statement is also not justified by the news.com story, which mentions children exactly twice, nonspecifically, about non-crimes (testing acid on them - not called a crime in the news story, makes it WP:OR in my mind). Fidelity Publishing appears to be vanity press - check out who wrote "A Nation Betrayed" and who the contact person is for Fidelity [9]. that makes it self-published as far as I'm concerned and therefore a nonsource. Also, have a look at the Secret Weapons summary. That looks pretty WP:FRINGE for me, not by a well-respected publisher in my mind. And my overall largest objection, even were it not a run-around of an indef block, would be that even such a tiny, pointless sentence is simply undue weight on essentially Carol Rutz' opinion, with no real merit, evidence or respectable sourcing. What do you think? It's an extraordinary weak and vague claim sourced to sources that I don't have a lot of respect for, topped off by an edit by a blocked editor with the same POV and the really nutty sources sanitized. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 00:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point regarding Fidelity Publishing, which is owned by Carol Rutz, has one employee (Carol Rutz) and whose gross receipts during 2007 totaled $52,000.

I think you go too far, however, in dismissing testing LSD on children as a "non-crime." Such testing is criminal on its face, whether or not anyone uses the word "crime" and whether or not anyone is successfully prosecuted criminally.

Normally I don't favor use of the word "some," however in this case its use is an attempt to keep the issue on the table without giving it undue weight. I would favor eliminating the questionable sourcing for this exceedingly modest sentence. And I would favor seeking out better sourcing.

It has become obvious to me that anyone who publicizes government crimes against children is immediately targeted and labeled a "nutcase." John DeCamp's experience with Paul Bonacci in what became known as "The Franklin Coverup Scandal" comes under this rubric. DeCamp is hardly a nutcase (practicing attorney in good standing, former state senator, reliable family man), but extreme pressure has been brought to bear to keep his story fringe--especially among "reliable" mainstream publishers. Sometimes such information has either to be self-published or completely disappear. Apostle12 (talk) 06:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also note the contributions of this single purpose, throwaway account - the exact same statement, the exact same sources Special:Contributions/Nmpras. I'd like to revert on site. Shall we continue this discussion on the talk page? I've a couple comments that are not really specific to this editor about the sources. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regards crime or non-crime of giving LSD to kids, I think yes it's morally reprehensible, but so would giving someone thalidomide. Now. My greater concern is the weight given to the sources - there's verifiable information about MKULTRA, but Carol Rutz, the source for both her published book, but also in the Australian's news story. She's a dubious source, I think she also thinks she was abused by President Ford and Clinton (and Hillary too). Super dubious. As for the "secret weapons" book, I don't know how much weight I'd put on New Horizon Press. They claim to be a publisher of "true stories" but it looks more like pop culture, true crime (i.e. sensationalism) and pseudoscience. This isn't a scholarly volume, I don't know what their fact checking reputation is, and look at the review by publisher's weekly of the specific volume [10]. For me it's another nutter satanic ritual abuse claim, dressed up in a cheap new suit, with again no proof (see for instance, the Hersha's disclaimer that no documents were found to support their claims). I'd like to delete the statement for the myriad reasons, but it's also reasonable to ask for input from the Fringe or reliable sources noticeboards. At this point the best claim for the statement is from The Australian, and given their source, I'm inclined to dismiss it. That it's coming from ResearchEditor is also an enormous red flag that this statement is undue weight. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

re Peoples Park

Hello. I took the liberty of undoing your reverts of "O.R." on the Peoples Park article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=People%27s_Park&curid=532547&diff=274880476&oldid=274621138 as I see it that it is a matter of interpretation of what is seen in the references. I appreciate your efforts in contribution to the article. Care to discuss your views ? Peace, rkmlai (talk) 09:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments. Do I know you in real life ? Here is a Pic of me: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502607289

I don't believe we have met. Did you also participate in building People's Park?Apostle12 (talk) 07:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I actually felt that that last edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=People%27s_Park&curid=532547&diff=279666342&oldid=279658325, before you reverted it, was ok, except the "herded" part. Would you be willing to reconsider it as a compromise ? Peace, rkmlai (talk) 21:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that you would like to see something different than what exists at present. The "herded" part was obvious O.R., however the editor also introduced grammatical errors--the edit seemed quite poorly written to me. Perhaps you could come up with something more polished for consideration by the various editors. Apostle12 (talk) 05:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dellums

This is what I found. "There were a couple of families whose wishes were that the mayor not speak," said Dellums spokesman Paul Rose. "And the mayor adhered to their wishes." [11]Geo8rge (talk) 17:00, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I have updated the article with this new information and much better sourcing.Apostle12 (talk) 23:12, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good article

Please help bring hippie to Good Article standards. For an example of what a good article looks like, please see Brook Farm. Viriditas (talk) 03:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hippie

There is no original research in Hippie article, but finding information with respect to Australia, NZ and Canada is more difficult than you can imagine.

A lot of material is either not on the web, or so obscure that even finding its name is difficult

There is a Horizon Pacific TV movie from the early 1970s that shows NZ Maori hippies, but to find its name may be impossible.
Eating Media Lunch has a few snippets of the NZ hippie movement, but citing YouTube vids is difficult.

For Australia, the task is equally as bad.

For Canada, separating the imperially imposed US hippie culture from the locally evolved one is difficult -- as the border was very porous at the time.

Remember, I am trying to put what applicable stuff I do know in hopes of others posting cited material.

The US hippie culture (much like the US as an imperial power) has the tendency to exterminate the locally evolved equivalents.

I know some Hungarians (where one of them lived in the USSR for a while at Uni) -- and they knew of no hippie culture in the whole of Eastern Europe or the USSR. However, the lack of this culture in the USSR and Eastern Block is poorly documented on the web. Yet, any Eastern European historian (including the most totally incompetent and out of touch ones) will tell you that the hippie movement did not exist there.

If you can place some tags in this article to request selective deemphasis of the US content, that would be nice. I don't know all the tags for doing this. As things stand now, the jackboot of the US hippie culture content is crushing any attempts to cover the movement's global evolution.

"The jackboot of US hippe culture"? Really...! What we editors choose to write about may stem partially from personal knowledge and experience, however we must discipline ourselves to limit what we include in the Wikipedia article based on our ability to provide sourcing. Whether a source is on the web or not is irrelevant; lots of sources included in the article consist of contemporaneous newspaper articles, books and so on that have no web presence. The qualifying factor is whether or not the information appears elsewhere in a creditable source, otherwise it constitutes "original research."

The only example I know of regarding the impact of hippie culture in Eastern Europe was during Prague Spring in 1968's Czechoslovakia. Before the tanks rolled in from the Soviet Union, "San Francisco" (..."If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...you're sure to find some gentle people there...") became a kind of uniting theme song. When the tanks rolled in, the Soviet "jack boot" certainly crushed the budding idealism of Czech youth.Apostle12 (talk) 00:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citation templates

Hi,

Regards your recent edits to MKULtra, I'm a big fan of citation templates, which includes a {{cite news}} option for newspapers. The reasons I've seen for including them include standardizing pages to a uniform citation, and also to help readers of print versions access the sources the page is based on. If you were citing pubmed articles I'd point to diberri's template generator, and if you work with books a lot, it has a version for ISBNs that works quite well [[12]. Just thought I'd mention it. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 16:40, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, WLU. I really should educate myself better on this issue.Apostle12 (talk) 18:31, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to ask me if you have any questions. Diberri is certainly very handy for building citation templates around ISBN and pubmed numbers but less useful for {{cite web}}. If you are "dipping your toe" so to speak, you may try turning on Reftools in your Special->Preferences->Gadgets tab. I remember the arguments so I fill them out by memory, but the tool itslf is handy as a prompt for what is available within the citations. The MKULTRA page I've done a bit in the lead, but the docs are old, funny and the page itself has a long history, which makes it harder to fit in to templates. The only advantage citation templates give is a uniform appearance to references without having to remember where the periods, italics, bolds, etc. go. Some people prefer to code them by hand with italics and bold using apostrophes. Personally, I like the templates. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 19:03, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

TV Interview

Dear Apostle12,

I am looking for Wikipedia contributors in the San Francisco area to interview on camera on Thursday, June 25th. If you are potentially interested in doing this, please contact me.

Thanks.

Lookingforcontributors (talk) 18:20, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

English

I screwed up in trying to fix someone's fix of someone's fix at the BART shooting article. Funny stuff. Thanks and nice catch!Cptnono (talk) 05:45, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. Sometimes we get lost in the verbiage and lose sight of the obvious. :) Apostle12 (talk) 05:49, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bay of Pigs Invasion

Hi, I'm chasing down a citation that you added to this article on 31 Oct 2008, that reads http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/jg/archive/2000/crimesoimmense.pdf I've never been able to locate the source, and all I get from Google is all the plagiarized stuff on other sites. Can you help me put a good citation in its place?, MTIA, PeterWD (talk) 14:46, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Paperclip

Hi, not sure what to do about him, but I reverted to the earlier version of the sub-topic since although perhaps he made it more readable, he also as far as I can tell made it less accurate. My guess is that he either eventually will get himself blocked, or will learn to edit properly. In the meantime we will have to clean up after him. Please keep up the good work.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 23:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Disruptive editing

Your edits to the "Operation Paperclip" article during the past day truly were over-the-top. They probably constituted the most disruptive editing I have ever seen on Wikipedia--you obviously have an axe to grind, you introduced extensive O.R., and your prose is nearly impossible to read. I will be taking the necessary steps to get you blocked until you can constructively engage with the other editors. Meanwhile your edits have been reverted. Please abstain from doing further damage to this, and other, articles. Apostle12 (talk) 05:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Apostle12:

Greetings, and thank you for the argumenta ad hominem; Oscar Wilde was correct. I apologise for not communicating with you ’til now, but . . . I have been reading the sources for this entry, and have replaced most of the facts you suppressed — especially because you ignored my original reply to: Be specific and give examples of the errors, misrepresentations, and whatever else you define as disruptive editing. So, I have been restoring the facts you obscured from the record: For example, Operation Paperclip originated as an Anglo–American matter, but suddenly . . . the Earth tilted right and the Brits fell off and disappeared . . . and only John Wayne drove the jeep, spoke German, saved the day, and he alone returned (helmet chin strap unfastened) from the mission . . . and the facts be damned . . . ’cause they don’t fit the Good War Disney version, wherein we (the US) hired German, not Nazi scientists. If you disbelieve me, read “The scientist” section of the entry.

Lie to me, lie to Jesus, but do not lie to yourself — especially on the Internet, where most of these facts are available, for example, the “They are Nazis” discussion correspondence (by other editors in whose name you spoke), that you IGNORE, because you conflate “Nazi” and “German” and so misrepresent the historical record, contradicting your contributions, by the way. Oy vey! Consider this, when Nazi apologists say: “Certainly not everyone was a Nazi” . . . might one, as the reader of the Operation Paperclip entry, not expect “certainly” to be substantiated with a fact and a citation, rather than a discourteous, dismissive cool-guy, in-crowd reversion? I guess there are some things we just don’t talk about, eh?

Apostle12, as an editor, do you ever speak for yourself, or shall you always hide behind Authority (the Second person plural, really!?), rather than intellectually defending your point of view with facts? If you disbelieve me, please review your earlier correspondence to me, notice, please, your Article Owner’s anger manifest as personal attacks, NEVER do you address the matters to hand. Why not? It’s easy, cite the title, the chapter, the verse, and the page number; no fuss, no muss, just brain work, and your hyperstension remains stable. Character assassination is unnecessary and unmanly — especially when you practice the editorial rules you preach. Ist das nicht so, mein Herr?

The substantiated (cited) expansion work I have done is so that the Operation Paperclip encyclopædic article answer the elementary “Who? What? Where? When? and Why?” questions to the subject; by the way, when did Operation Paperclip end, the entry does not (yet) answer that elementary question, can you? I ask you, the Article Owner — because another editor already did — and neither you nor your shadow deigned to provide that FACT, substituting, instead, more attitude than ability.

I have been, and continue, reading the cited sources, and your factual suppressions are impressive. I ask directly: Are you a Nazi apologist? Based upon the discussion page correspondence, I must ask: Why are you and pal(s) suppressing the references to “Nazi scientist”, given that “Nazi scientist” appears in many of the titles of the sources? Are those professors wrong, and only you correct? Please, let me know.

When I replied, you stooped to argumenta ad hominem, rather than step up to communication. Operation Paperclip occurred in an historical context, the Second World War, not a vacuum; pray tell, was that fought solely by the US? Be a sport, please remember that verifiability is the watch-word here, not what I say, not your obscurantist, White Hat–Black Hat interpretation of world history — just the facts with substantiating citations. Given our twenty-first century remove from the matter — i.e. most everyone is dead and everything done — why are you afraid of the full disclosure of the historical facts? The story is true and fascinating, why lie with weasel words? Everyone’s hair was mussed, there are photographs, really.

If you are what you claim, a history aficionado, then surely, might you not survive publication of already-published facts? Given your THREATS to banish me . . . because I disagree with you, might you not, at least, be specific and give examples of error, misstatement, and misrepresentation? I ask this minimal editorial courtesy because I do not know you to insult you, as you have insulted me, over a history article. The edition I expanded is supported by VERIFIABLE American and British sources cited; please read them, rather than CENSORING facts, names, and dates that discomfit you.

I await you reply to the matters in hand, ’til then, you have my

Best regards,

Mhazard9 (talk) 08:50, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As with your edits, this reply is quite baffling. You seem to imagine that I am a Nazi apologist who wishes to suppress information; hardly, and quite the contrary. You also seem to imagine that I wish an America-centric, "John Wayne" flavor to prevail; again, quite the contrary.

For quite a number of days I worked to help incorporate in some coherent way the factual information you introduced into the article. You would not engage on talk, so yesterday I kept my edits extremely short, explaining each with the reasons they were important to preserve the meaning and flow of the article.

The above is total nonsense. No one is "lying with weasel words." No one is "CENSORING facts, names and dates" that discomfit. Apostle12 (talk) 16:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Operation Northwoods

Please explain why you restored the information regarding Kennedy's conflicts with the CIA to the Operation Northwoods article.

I posted in the talk page on December 9, 2009, that Northwoods was not a CIA plan, and thus Kennedy's conflicts with the CIA were almost certainly the result of the ill-conceived Bay of Pigs plan, not Northwoods. That post has been met with utter silence for over a month, so I went ahead and deleted the section on the CIA.

If you disagree with my assertion, please explain the relevance of the CIA to Northwoods in the talk page. I'm not even sure what you disagree with: are you saying Northwoods was a CIA plan (in contradiction to everything the article currently says), or that Northwoods was somehow relevant to Kennedy's purge of the CIA even though the Joint Chiefs submitted the plan?

The only connection I see between the CIA and Northwoods is that Lemnitzer suggested using a duplicate of a CIA plane to stage a fake shootdown of an airliner by Cuba. Are we seriously saying that Kennedy was thinking: "Lemnitzer suggested using a CIA plane for an illegal and unethical plan; that's one more reason to fire the leadership of the CIA?"

Pirate Dan (talk) 14:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I restored the following paragraph:

"Kennedy also took steps to bring discipline to the CIA's Cold War and paramilitary operations by drafting a National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) which called for the shift of Cold War operations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Department of Defense as well as a major change in the role of the CIA to exclusively deal in intelligence gathering. Kennedy was notably unpopular with the military, a rift that came to a head during Kennedy's disagreements with the military over the Cuban Missile Crisis, shortly before the presentation of Northwoods. Personally, Kennedy expressed concern and anger to many of his associates about the CIA's growing influence on civilians and government inside America."

Of course you are correct that the failed Bay of Pigs invasion influenced Kennedy's decision to clip the CIA's wings. However I think you may be ignoring other factors that influenced his decision. While not primarily a CIA plan, CIA Director Allen Dulles participated in conceptualizing the Northwoods proposal, and he made sure the CIA would play a prominent role if the plan became operational. Kennedy thought the growing influence of the CIA was dangerous, and the Northwoods proposal was clear evidence of just how dangerous. Kennedy decided SIMULTANEOUSLY to reassert his control over the military and to write an executive order (NSAM)restricting the CIA to intelligence gathering.

I believe this paragraph should remain in the article.Apostle12 (talk) 07:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I see that your edits to the article include a mention of Dulles contributing to the Northwoods plan. That would certainly justify reinstating the material I deleted. But, the assertion that Dulles contributed to Northwoods ought to be sourced. I'll take a look and see if I can find such a source. Pirate Dan (talk) 13:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, sourcing should be added. I'll have to go back over previous reading to find something appropriate, and any help you can provide would be appreciated. Thanks for inspiring the clarifications I added to the article. Apostle12 (talk) 19:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have searched for some sources, and not only do I not find any reliable evidence that Dulles contributed to Northwoods, but I believe I have found conclusive proof that he did not contribute, and furthermore, that Kennedy's NSAMs turning paramilitary responsibility over to the Joint Chiefs were before Northwoods, not after. Here is my entry on the talk page, which I think should lead to a consensus that Dulles's fall and Kennedy's turn in favor of the Joint Chiefs cannot be attributed to Northwoods. Pirate Dan (talk) 21:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Options

Hi the only advice I can give is to suggest you try the dispute resolution process:

E.g., if he/she is visibly messing up the article, for example inserting obvious POV, try using

Wikipedia:Requests for comment

or if you have a dispute over a specific issue use

Wikipedia:Third opinion

if the editor displays incivility in communications with you, use

Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts

You could also use make yourself aquainted with the available message templates

Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace

I've noticed that some very "productive" editors (in terms of time devoted, not in quality) are but sockpuppets of banned users. Try checking the edit history to see if there is a crossover pattern with a known sock-puppeteer. When you have enough evidence you could go to.

Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser

Better advice on how to proceed can probably be found if you explain the issues at

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard

cheers --Stor stark7 ^Speak 16:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. From his/her missive, I suspect the editor in question is just a truly imbalanced personality. If he/she returns, I'll follow your advice. Apostle12 (talk) 21:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

MKULTRA rewrite

I had a look at the section and had a go at rewriting it - have a look.

What issue are you having with the referencing? Is it just the generation of citation templates? I would suggest simply getting the isbn off of amazon or Google books an plugging it into Diberri's template generator. If that's not the issue, I may still be able to help if you let me know the problem. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:43, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

HI, I just wanted you to know Im not just relegating it the conspiracy section. Im just saying there is alot of conspiracy theories out there. Some that seem quite plausible. But what you are talking about is an act of war. Although I don't see the french invading us any time soon, I feel there should be more of a source then some guys book. believe me, If it was valid the press would be all over it. they live for this stuff. If we get more of an independent source then someone who is profiting off the sale of thier book, Im all for adding it to the main article. But it is still a theory at this point. ergot poisoning is another theory. Its not proven conclusively either way and would be speculating.. didn't the french launch any sort of investigation when the entire town was tripping? Ill grab the book if its in my library and take a look. sounds like an interesting read anyway. -Tracer9999 (talk) 18:57, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Tracer9999, and I appreciate your perspective. Regarding Pont-St.-Esprit being an "act of war," I don't think so. Please keep in mind that we conducted similar experiments here in the United States during the late 1940s, one of which had to do with spraying an aerosolized mixture containing a rather rare baterium over the entire San Francisco Bay Area; many illnesses, hospitalizations, at least one death from pneumonia were documented as a result of that experiement. And we were hardly shy about dosing U.S. civilians and military personnnel alike with LSD and other substances without their knowledge or consent. Our intelligence people played it fast and loose in Germany, Italy and France during the late 1940s and early 1950s; I happen to know this because my uncle was part of various operations. DeGaulle was incensed about our activities in France (I suspect they knew all about the true nature of Pont-St.-Esprit), which was a major reason behind his decision to eject American troops by the mid-1960s. John Grant Fuller wrote the first book about Pont-St.-Esprit, DAY OF ST. ANTHONY'S FIRE, intially arguing it was caused by ergot poisoning. His book was considered definitive for decades, however he came to believe that what happened at Pont-St.-Esprit was intentional, and before his death he concluded that the ingestion of massive doses of LSD were likely involved. The ingestion of massive doses of LSD is especially likely given that Albarelli's sources report that the LSD was administered both by aerosolized spray (which Olson was involved in) and by tampering with foodstuffs; doses in the milligrams would not be unlikely under circumstances of multiple dosing. Fuller knew from the beginning that there had never before been such a widespread and severe case of ergot poisoning, however he could not have known that LSD might have been involved when he wrote his book. So I think the CIA's Project SPAN ("Pont" means "bridge" or "span") and its connection to Pont-St.-Esprit is highly plausible, though difficult to prove conclusively, like much of the rest of MKULTRA. Apostle12 (talk) 19:32, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Wikipedia:Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. Courcelles (talk) 04:51, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Courcelles! I'll need to learn the ropes in this new role. Apostle12 (talk) 07:19, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Space Race references

Hi there Apostle:

As you know, I am currently completely re-writing the Space Race article (which will likely end up being segmented into four or five separate articles). If I say that a source is not going to be referenced, you can assume with a 100 percent accuracy that I will not be using it. I'm rewriting the article, not the people that previously wrote it. In many cases I added the books, but after going over them, realized that they did not apply to this time-period. Give me some slack, as I am doing serious research on this subject, though if Asif Siddiqi were to start writing (are you viewing this???), then I'd obviously defer to him, Burroughs or Schefter. Otherwise, this article was written by people that couldn't cite works properly, and who's prose was not really ready for prime-time. I have two FA articles under my belt, and I believe I can get this back to FA status. I am asking you to cut me some slack, and not just revert or summarily edit my work. What I really need is copy-editing, because I will always make typos, errors of omission, allusions that aren't in the text, etc..... It might be a week before I spot one of my grammatical or stylistic errors, because as I read the article, I fill in the errors with my own corrected text, even though that is not what is written. If you can correct those kinds of mistakes, I would be most grateful to you.

All the best, Abebenjoe (talk) 03:48, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, your approach does seem a bit high-handed. When you say, "I'm rewriting the article, not the people that previously wrote it" you are assuming ownership, which I don't believe is legitimate. Of course I do participate in simple copy-editing, but to be told not to do more seems out of line; when it comes to writing an article, I favor a collaborative approach, which I believe is the Wiki way. If your edits are good enough, they will stand on their own merit. Apostle12 (talk) 09:05, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there

It might seem high-handed, but the books that were deleted did not have any citations attached to them, hence why I criticized your edit. In one case, in particular, it was darn near impossible to find, even with a nation-wide inter-library loan, which means that the book, that dealt with female astronauts, fell into the "not" reliable category for a reference. In other cases, like the Yeager and Wolff books, the information that they might contain, is already available in the more scholarly and post-Cold War books and articles already listed, so they do not need to be there, and they were not cited at all in the article. I stress post-Cold War, because only in 1989, and really after 1991, did the former Soviet Union's space program become known, as the archives were opened for all that wanted to see them. Probably the two or three books that trump either Wolf or Yeager in terms of the American program are Charles Murray's book on Apollo, Burrough's This New Ocean, and Chaikin's A Man on the Moon.

As for ownership, well, usually it takes one writer to cohesively structure an article, then collaborate with other editors to fine tune it, which is how I have been able to get other articles to GA and FA status. Of course, the edits most be "meritorious":) I look forward to collaborating on the article with you.--Abebenjoe (talk) 16:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the copy-editing. I do disagree with some of your choices, but that is to be expected as rules of style are interpretative, not written in stone. Besides typos, my writing style is sometimes criticized for using commas too often, which is a stylistic choice, not bad grammar. As well, I tend to write in passive voice, not active voice, which again, is not grammatically incorrect, but stylistically may not be considered the best possible alternative for writing a sentence or paragraph. To me, this is where the collaboration comes in, once basic facts are agreed upon.--Abebenjoe (talk) 16:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of comments: I would criticize your use of commas not just on stylistic grounds, but because some of your choices are actually incorrect--if one were to read certain sections of your prose, including pauses wherever commas appear, much meaning would be lost. The passive voice is problematic because it fails to convey who did what to whom; such imprecise writing compromises the ability of the reader to understand what is going on. Because of this inherent problem, precise writing demands use of the active voice whenever possible. Apostle12 (talk) 04:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Let's try to figure this one out. If von Braun and the ABMA team orbited a satellite in September 1956, the USA would not have felt the need to further compete with the Soviets. The biggest favour the Soviets ever did to the American space program was to beat them, not once, but twice to two important firsts: first artificial satellite, and then the first human in space. If the Americans orbited the first satellite, Korolyov would not have had a leg to stand on, sort of speak, with Mr. K., because the R-7 was almost a year away from its first successful launch. If anything, Yangel would have gained favour, and Alan Shepard likely would have been the first person in space, and the first moon-landing likely would have occurred in the 1980s or even 1990s. The project Apollo that occurred in the 1960s, could not have happened without the public humiliation the United States endured due to Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1. That's why the Space Race would have been over before it began. Also, again contextualizing this with the times, most Westerners didn't consider the Russians to be able to build a proper refrigerator, let alone launch an Earth orbiting satellite when they announced their intentions in 1955. The Americans did not know that Korolyov existed, for if they did, von Braun would have been allowed to have launched a satellite as soon as he could. That's why both his failure to orbit a satellite is crucial, just at Korolyov's ability to manipulate the Soviet system in the late summer of 1955 was so crucial for The Race to actually occur. As you can probably infer, the R-7 was a terrible military rocket, due to the extremely long time it took to prepare it for launch, especially if combat conditions were considered, but it was a superb space launcher, arguably the first and best that has ever existed, as Korolyov intended. So the question remains, how do we project the sense that if von Braun did ~~not~~ launch a rocket into orbit in 1956, that, in effect, the Americans would not have taken the Soviets seriously, because they only did it after them? It is highly unlikely the United States would have put 5% of its annual 1960s budget towards the space program if they were already leading, in some way.Abebenjoe (talk) 04:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your perspective, which I think has merit. But isn't it a bit O.R.? Do we have a "reliable source" for this line of thinking? If so I believe we should present it as an opinion held by some experts in the field. In any case, I think it would need to be more carefully written to convey accurately all that you express above--the existing version is an opinion stated summarily as fact.

Can you agree that whatever we write needs to refer back to the specific date on which the opportunity was lost, when Von Braun was not allowed to launch a satellite using Jupiter-C? Apostle12 (talk) 04:21, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I like the way you worded it now. P.S., what is O.R.? Siddiqi, Schefter, Hall and Burroughs would be reliable sources to agree that the Eisenhower Administration would not have created NASA without the external pressure that the Soviets added by being first into space.Abebenjoe (talk) 05:14, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I figured it out, a little late, but no, I don't think it would be Original Research (O.R.), as it was well documented, that the Eisenhower administration did not take the launch of Sputnik seriously, at first, and only reacted when the media-storm that followed forced it to take a position. As I will try to demonstrate in further iterations of the article, Eisenhower essentially wanted the Russians to be first, so that he could then employ spy-satellites at will. Looking back with a fifty-year perspective, he was right, and the hysteria that was promulgated by the media and Lyndon Johnson, were unwarranted. There was no "missile-gap", nor "bomber-gap" as the leading Democrats in Congress were proclaiming at the time. Only with recently declassified documents, does it become apparent that "Ike" knew what he was doing. He weathered the storm, but in reality, the Soviets played into his trap: he wanted them to launch first, so that any spacecraft orbiting the Earth was like a ship in the open seas, governed by the rules of the sea, i.e. no national sovereignty beyond a certain, well-defined point. Sputnik forced his hand, but if von Braun was first in 1956, the likelihood that spending on space programs, beyond spy-satellites, would have been unlikely. The beauty of Sputnik, is that it, in many ways, demilitarized space. Eisenhower only saw space in military terms, starting with his reactions to a 1954 Rand report. Sputnik allowed for things like Project Score, and the possibility that space could also be a civilian preserve. Sputnik forced Eisenhower to put primacy on the civilian aspects of space exploration over military interests, even though he allowed for the military to continue research into how to utilize space for their advantage. This isn't quite explained in the article, as it currently exists, but eventually this will be worked into it. Far from being a blunderer, Eisehower allowed the Soviets to give it their best shot, and then facilitated the United States to get the focalizer they needed to jumpstart their research and development programs dealing with rockets and micro-electronics.Abebenjoe (talk) 06:26, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well said. In so many ways Eisenhower was a great president. Apostle12 (talk) 14:43, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for noticing me, I will clarify. Dominictroc — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dominictroc (talk • contribs) 06:28, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Franklin Coverup Hoax

I've discussed your recent edits [13] here, feel free to discuss them. Thanks. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 14:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well I've taken it to WP:RSN. Here: [14] Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Frustration

I gather you're frustrated by the process at Franklin child prostitution ring allegations. Taking a break from a contentious article is a good idea. I'd note that the article is a good candidate for mediation, which I think could help editors make progress. When you're ready to look at the article again, I suggest pursuing it. Will Beback talk 21:58, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My frustration is not with the process; it is with the intractable narcissm of Phoenix & Winslow. I do not understand why Wikipedia does not sanction such editors. Apostle12 (talk) 22:59, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Personal attacks, such as comments like this[15] do not belong on article talk pages. If you believe that an editor is engaged in unproductive behavior then there are several appropriate ways of addressing it. An WP:RFCU is the main one, followed by a request for arbitration. However those are long and difficult, and sometimes result in sanctions for everyone involved. it's better to try to move away from personal issues and towards gaining consensus on content. Again, I suggest that mediation would be helpful. (Mediation focuses solely on content issues, not behavior.) Will Beback talk 23:09, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct, of course, and the comment has been removed. I do think Wikipedia needs some sort of generic hot button, something signifying the equivalent of "ASSHOLE ALERT!!!" Each editor might be allowed one A-Alert per year to be used at his or her own discretion. On the receiving end, if an editor were to accumulate a sufficient number of A-Alerts (from a number of different editors, not just one), he or she might be branded accordingly. Such rating systems work well for E-Bay and other wiki enterprises.

Sometimes it seems to me that Wikipedia favors survival of the most obnoxious. Apostle12 (talk) 08:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

That actually sounds like a good idea but I think it would break down when editing articles like 911 where even NPOV editors are accused of being conspiracy theorists. For example have a look at my user page where I mention and give links for a ban I got for editing 911. I challenge anyone to prove that it was warranted and not solely an attempt to shut me up lol. I loath reporting problem editors and have only done it once when I had no other choice. I prefer to work with them using common sense arguments but Phoenix and Winslow is approaching the tipping point. I have scrupulously avoided straying into conspiracy with the Franklin article and I'm hoping that the CN discussion will allow the article to move forward without having to argue every single minor point. Wayne (talk) 09:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Phoenix and Winslow is digging a hole for himself by his ownership of the page. I suggest you dont antagonise him by making edits before discussion in talk so we can get some sort of consensus. That way we should be able to move forward while leaving the edit warring to him alone which he wont have any grounds to defend. On the content front, I have been looking into the Webbs and have a good timeline on what went on and how it relates to the article (without the garbage you usually find along with it) but a lack of reliable sources is a problem. Wayne (talk) 03:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Let's just discuss the article in a reasonable way and see if P. & W. will follow our lead. Apostle12 (talk) 03:36, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your note. Editors are free to create RfC/Us. However, if a second editor who has tried to resolve the same dispute doesn't endorse it within 48 hours of its creation it will be deleted. While he asserts that the dispute also covers the 9/11 attacks, he doesn't present any evidence so I don't think that's a valid definition. Moving forward, I again suggest mediation. But since that suggestion does not appeal to anyone then there are RfCs. A content RfC deals with a specific question of content while a RFC/U deals with user behavior. There are specific rules at WP:RFC/U. That may be a logical step in the dispute resolution process. Will Beback talk 23:04, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note that RfC/Us can cover the activities of all parties. If you have evidence of the other user's disruption you may present it there. Will Beback talk 23:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Will. Unfortunately I don't have the time, or the heart, to make this dispute a full-time job, and that is what it's turning into. Makes me want to quit editing Wikipedia altogether. To paraphrase the famous quote about pornography, I know disruption when I see it. However don't know what constitutes its formal definition; I think I would need that to move forward.

Already this article has taken days/weeks out of time spent with family and friends. In the rest of my life I assiduously avoid individuals like Phoenix and Winslow; yet on Wikipedia it seems their intransigence is given free rein. Really quite a shame. Apostle12 (talk) 23:37, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. A RFC would take up too much of my time atm as my brother has been in hospital for almost three months and I spend up to six hours a day sitting with him. My prefered work on Indigenous articles is suffering badly. It is such a shame that uninvolved admins cant take action without a RFC as it is easy to recognise where the problem lies. Wayne (talk) 02:09, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was just reading Phoenix and Winslows talk page and noticed this. Phoenix and Winslow not only canvassed but discussed the RFC long before he filed it. It is quite amusing as the "massive disruption" Mongo claims is probably that he almost always loses content disputes with me which may be why he is so hostile. Can you believe that he has dropped sanction warnings on my talk page even if the edit I made on a 911 page was only a grammar correction, I'm guessing just incase I slip so he can jump immediately as you cant ban an editor for an edit made before being warned. I had a look at my editing history and found I have only made three edits to 911 articles in the last 18 months...they must be really scared of me lmao. Wayne (talk) 21:12, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just made an interesting discovery. Bryant was never used as a source in the Franklin article until Phoenix and Winslow first introduced him in an edit he made here. Wayne (talk) 13:24, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wish we had had more time to research earlier. Phoenix and Winslow continually accuses us of frequently removing mention that Owen was sentenced for perjury as proof of our bad faith (see here for example). I had a look and the only removal was this instance by you where Phoenix and Winslow had added an edit implying she instigated the hoax and duplicating what was already in another section. However, this is the page after your deletion showing that even more detailed coverage in the Perjury Conviction section remained. Sometimes I wish editors had to pass an IQ test before being allowed to edit. Wayne (talk) 13:53, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that Phoenix and Winslow first used Bryant should be highlighted in RfC. You are correct that no one ever removed material in order to imply that Alisha Owen was not convicted of perjury. It was the radical heading, obviously including wording from the grand jury report to further indict her, that was removed for its obvious bias.

I believe it is a mistake to assume sincerity here. The intent is to obfuscate, distract, and attack. This forces defensive engagement. Phoenix and Winslow will use any tactic he thinks might work to keep the facts of the story out of the article. Apostle12 (talk) 17:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have compiled a list of diffs regarding Phoenix and Winslow's ownership behaviour (and diffs for our behaviour). As you have no registered email, click the 'email this user' tag in my toolbox so you can send me your addy if you dont mind me having it. I will mail you the list of formatted diffs for use (I may be afk for a few months later this year) if we eventually need to take out a RFC. Wayne (talk) 18:05, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I visited your user page and tried to find the 'email this user' tag, however couldn't locate it. How can I find it?Apostle12 (talk) 18:12, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Left hand side of my User and Talk page is a box labeled toolbox. It should be listed after "logs". If not then it may mean your email has to be registered as well. You should register as it goes through wikipedia and the sender cant see your real address, unless you reply. Quote:The form below will send a single e-mail message to this user. Your e-mail address (as entered in your user preferences) will appear in the "From" header of the message so that the recipient will be able to reply directly to you. The message is sent as plain text: wiki markup will not work. Users may have a dedicated email address for Wikipedia correspondence. Wayne (talk) 18:24, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I found the toolbox, however there is no option that says "email this user." You may be correct that I would have to register my email, which I have decided not to do. The real issue is that just maintaining this article has turned into a full-time job. I wish I didn't (for some reason) care, because I truly can't afford the time. I'll continue to contribute in minor ways, however I need to draw back. Thanks for your involvement; I do think the issues involved with Franklin are important. Apostle12 (talk) 19:31, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BTW..This not canvassing lmao. I'd rather it never go to any noticeboard but it will save you doing the research if I'm not around. Wayne (talk) 18:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Apostle12: On your last TP note to WillBeback, you posted a raw HTML link to what you apparently thought was a Noticeboard comment, when that comment was "item 13" on the page. Archiving and other comments shifted things around (plus your link opened up an edit window!). I lined-thru & corrected the bad link with one pointing to the entire Franklin Noticeboard section (per WP:RTP non-contentious/technical edits), but in the future using a "diff" link is more-precise (and usually preferred). See Diffs & Links for more info. Cheers! — DennisDallas (talk) 15:44, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

MONGO has admitted that he is in email contact with Phoenix and Winslow which I suspect will lead to offsite collaboration. Now we have the exchange on the Talk page today. After I argued against the use of a pejorative descriptive on the grounds that it was not supported, Phoenix and Winslow edited two unrelated articles (without supplying refs) to support the use of the pejorative in this one. That speaks volumes regarding his agenda, especially as I searched for a RS to support his edits and couldn't find any apart from extremist websites. I also looked at the articles Talk pages and noticed that the descriptive had been previously added to Tarpleys page twice over the past four years and removed both times for being both perjorative and POV. Phoenix and Winslow will claim it is being kept out by Larouche disciples though lol. I suggest we keep it on the Talk page and refrain from editing the article for now and I'll look at what course I can take to address the problem. Wayne (talk) 17:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can you believe that Phoenix and Winslow has posted I suspect Bryant has added material to one article or both, in his "archived" [OWH] versions, to lend support to the fringe theory. And he accuses me of pushing conspiracy theory. Wayne (talk) 18:21, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I noticed this as well. Here is what I wrote to Phoenix and Winslow on the Franklin talk page:

As for Bryant, I have accepted that we are not using his book as a source; much of what he writes about is corroborated by multiple sources that have been deemed reliable. You seem inappropriately suspicious of Bryant, even suggesting (to Mongo) that he might have altered the Omaha World Herald articles he published in his book--I cannot imagine an author hoping to get away with such a stunt. Perhaps you are inappropriately suspicious of Bilby as well. For someone who purports to disdain "conspiracy theory," you seem rather prone to this sort of thinking yourself. Apostle12 (talk) 03:17, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Will Beback's comment that the documentary may not have been aired because it was defamatory got me thinking. I had a look if anyone has given a reason for it not being aired and found many claims. Neither Yorkshire TV or Discovery channel officially commented on why which makes defamation unlikely, but the most credible claim is that it was not aired because the interviews (adults describing sexual abuse as children) could be seen by some as child pornography. As such it may be best not to supply a link to the documentary itself in the article. I also discovered that the video leaked was not the complete documentary and that there are two versions. The original was updated and expanded by victim rights groups. As I only have dialup I cant download either so have never seen them but thought the expanded version may be of interest. Let me know if the new version is a legitimate update or is pushing a conspiracy theory line in which case I would not support mention. Wayne (talk) 04:39, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the links; I'll check them out ASAP. Apostle12 (talk) 06:29, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Neither link has video, only audio; didn't listen to much of it. Strange. I have seen the video. Apostle12 (talk) 06:34, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a link to the video I have seen. It still works, and it is worth watching. Apostle12 (talk) 06:39, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Must be in a video format your comp cant use. Wayne (talk) 07:54, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The French Wikipedia. Wayne (talk) 17:39, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You may find this humourous. I was reading reviews of Bryants book and found this: Wikipedia actually has a pretty good summary of the original scandal. Wayne (talk) 05:39, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To me it seems more tragic than humorous. The current stub, however, is laughable.

What I find a bit shocking is that they completely erased the article history, which contained a lot of valuable information. In my experience with Wikipedia, this is unprecedented. It is as though it never existed. Very high-handed. Apostle12 (talk) 05:45, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree although I believe some of the editors are acting in good faith. The same book review also made the comment that before Trine Day accepted the book for publication it was fact checked and vetted by lawyers. Also, most of the profits from the book go to child abuse charities. Wayne (talk) 05:51, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which review did you read? Can you provide a link?Apostle12 (talk) 05:54, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It was an independent review with interview so not a RS but the link is here. There is an aphorism in the legal community: "a good prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich" so I looked it up and found this which to my mind reduces Grand jury weight. Wayne (talk) 07:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You might like to do a search in the University of California publication: North western reporter; Cases argued and determined in the courts of Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin. I know the 1994 issue has the Owens case so I'm hoping other issues will have reported the other Franklin court cases. Some other info I've found but cant check, the whitehouse callboy scandal is linked but while the Craig Spence page does mention it, the Craig J. Spence article doesn't. The TV show America's Most Wanted did several episodes about the Franklin Scandal and their own investigations confirmed some of the claims made by Owen, Bonacci etc which were passed to the FBI. They eventually dropped the case, according to the shows producer, because it was hurting their relationship with the FBI. The book Congress and Other Cesspools may or may not be a RS but it does provide alternate sources and it carries copies of newspaper articles and interviews with Franklin victims in the chapter "History of political sex scandals". Wayne (talk) 18:43, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See FYI. Wayne (talk) 05:27, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Wayne...looks good.Apostle12 (talk) 06:21, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Notice

The conduct of WLRoss (talk · contribs), currently being discussed at RFCU, is also being discussed here. You may participate if you choose to do so. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 16:14, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:3RR

Just a friendly reminder....not to violate the 3RR rule...

material readded by you
material readded by you...that material seems pretty controversial since you and Wayne have been adding it and myself and at least one other editor have made one edit each to remove it...take it to the associated talkpage before reverting again.--MONGO 18:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This gets pretty confusing, since you reverted, then reverted your revert, then reverted again. The existence of the Bryant book has been a feature of the article for years. Then another editor removed it, Wayne added it back, then someone asked that it be included only if it's relevance to the storyline could be established. We had avoided mentioning the content of Bryant's book, however the request for storyline relevance demanded some content addition. I have no intention of continuing to revert reversions; though I did it in stages, my reversion was a single, not a double. Apostle12 (talk) 18:33, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Franklin child prostitution ring allegations

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Franklin child prostitution ring allegations and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

Thanks,

It seems that the Arbitration has been declined. However, I was going through my documents and found an old copy (two years?) of the article from before Bryant was used as a source. It has 20 references including seven for the NYT, one for the W/Post and six for the OWH. As the OWH articles are not online I will need to check them to make sure they match content. The article can be reconstructed pretty much to what it was before the page was deleted. I also did some research into defamation. As long as the source is reporting on a legally constituted investigation or court case, the text is legally protected from defamation (BLP) regardless of what it says. This puts to bed violation of BLP claims. Effectively, defamation doesn't apply to the article as long as the claim is in the source and the source is reporting on the Grand Jury, Bonacci case or Franklin Committee. Wayne (talk) 09:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good find on the references, and I am sure the article could be reconstructed, especially if one were to purchase some of the more relevant OWH articles. One could, for example, read the OWH articles online, determine exactly which ones are most relevant to a fair exposition of the facts, buy those on the OWH website, and proceed from the articles themselves.

Regarding BLP and defamation, that has struck me as bogus from the beginning. Likewise the issue of "weight." These were just excuses, and there will never be any way to satisfy those whose intent is to destroy the article; they don't want this story told, period!

As I mentioned in my arbitration statement, I just don't have the heart (or the time) to re-engage at present. If you do, go for it!Apostle12 (talk) 17:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed in a few online venues (Peer-to-peer, Internet Archive) that copies of the documentary have removed and in some cases replaced with at least one different version. Some comments indicate that the newer version has been "watered down." Now I learn that the entire Wikipedia article has been deleted and replaced. Is there any way to communicate privately with people who may know something about that? My questions are mostly unrelated to the Wikipedia article; I found this talk page as part of my independent research. 94.222.190.111 (talk) 10:29, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your observations are correct. Not only has the Wikipedia article been "stubbed," the entire history of edits has been deleted. Even discussion about the edits is unavailable. In my experience with Wikipedia, this is unprecedented. Just prior to the removal of the article, it had finally arrived at a point where the Franklin story was being told with fair accuracy; obviously that was a threat to some well-placed people.

One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to realize that freedom of the press in the United States is a carefully preserved illusion. If a story strikes too close to home (as the Franklin article certainly did), those involved in telling it will be marginalized. This applies to all media, including Wikipedia. Apostle12 (talk) 15:22, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I read somewhere in WP discussion that admins can see the old history. Also, some people have personal archives, no? I'm not so much looking for the true story as I am for signs of a systematic changing of the story across various Internet sites. I know that goes way beyond the scope of WP, so maybe some quick private communication is in order. If you, or other people, would care to briefly discuss it, how would we go about it? 94.222.186.160 (talk) 22:16, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also noticed that the WP article Fake news, an important article about public relations techniques that pass themselves off as genuine news, has been deleted and replaced with a redirect to News satire. 188.102.1.153 (talk) 12:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Franklin child prostitution ring allegations

This message is to advise you that the Arbitration Committee has declined a request for arbitration relating to Franklin child prostitution ring allegations, to which you were listed as a party. To read the comments made by individual arbitrators in relation to the request, see here. For the Arbitration Committee, AGK [•] 20:06, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oakland

Hi Apostle, You may or may not be the one to ask but...with some participation/guidance from one or more other active editors, I would like at some point to bring the Oakland article up to GA standards. It has a lot of potential, but also quite a bit of challenges, particularly with article length (there is just too much material in it right now). Any thoughts?--Chimino (talk) 23:57, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the article has good potential; quite a few of us have worked for a long time to get it into shape, though I still spot things that bother me and wish I had the time to do more. One thing I might share is that some of the editors are sensitive to sweeping changes; you may get significant resistance if you want to delete a lot of material. I agree that some sections are bloated, however you might best proceed by discussing major revisions on the talk page before proceeding. Glad you are on board!Apostle12 (talk) 00:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Will do, thanks!--Chimino (talk) 02:06, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Black Panther Party

None of your sources appear to mention the BPP in connection with the increase in crime. What you've written is original research, and you've been here long enough to know that it's not permitted. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 06:05, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct that the first sentence of this paragraph crossed the OR line, although the rest was accurately sourced and pertinent. To some extent I was responding to the OR introduced by editor Allstarp. I will need to pull the precise page numbers from Pearson's "Shadow..."; at the moment I don't have my full Panther library easily at hand. Please consider this paragraph a work in progress and help me improve it. Thanks. Apostle12 (talk) 06:36, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Stray text

No problem. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 01:43, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Update

For your attention. I have commented on the editors Talk page. Wayne (talk) 16:49, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did I miss something? Looked for your comment and didn't see it.Apostle12 (talk) 22:26, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It was P&Ws Talk page I left the comment on. Wayne (talk) 00:42, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It continues, this edit on the talk page by an editor asking for advice in good faith was reverted. Check the rediculous reason given. Wayne (talk) 02:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

9/11 conspiracy theories

Hi I see you raised similar thoughts to mine on this article some time back. I agree with what you wrote and see that others have made the same observation over time, but to no avail. I don't know if this is OK to do (contacting like-minded individuals to reach a consensus on a contentious article) or if you are still interested? But if it is OK, I wonder if I could ask for your involvement on the discussion page under Article neutrality and accuracy - the introduction [[16]]--Mystichumwipe (talk) 15:36, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quan

I thought you might get a chuckle out of this. The final line is particularly telling...--Chimino (talk) 15:39, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I hear lots about Quan, some from confidential sources, that indicate she is perhaps not well-qualifed for the mayorship and lacks personal balance. I trust she will be a one-term mayor and that someone better-qualifed will replace her. Apostle12 (talk) 17:45, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. In your recent article edits, you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Hippie (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added a link pointing to The Farm

Virginia City, Nevada (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added a link pointing to The Charlatans

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

NewsTrust

I noticed you wrote most of this article. It's now listed as an orphan. I added information on the site's transition. Not sure how much of the site is going to be there after the end of the month, so you may want to edit the article now, if ever...--Beth Wellington (talk) 19:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for adding information about recent changes. Will be sorry to see NewsTrust go. Apostle12 (talk) 20:19, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Apostle12. You have new messages at Malik Shabazz's talk page.
Message added 20:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

Affecting a movement

In answer to your question on talk, I'd try emailing them at one of their websites or joining a social media and searching. But, there are no leaders. --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:13, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed

All you need is Love. SergeWoodzing (talk) 10:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	Thanks so much for editing the article on Tamalpais Valley. Much appreciated! Fabrice Florin (talk) 19:13, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Fabrice!

Dispute resolution survey

Dispute Resolution – Survey Invite

Hello Apostle12. I am currently conducting a study on the dispute resolution processes on the English Wikipedia, in the hope that the results will help improve these processes in the future. Whether you have used dispute resolution a little or a lot, now we need to know about your experience. The survey takes around five minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist in analyzing the results of the survey. No personally identifiable information will be released.

Please click HERE to participate.
Many thanks in advance for your comments and thoughts.

You are receiving this invitation because you have had some activity in dispute resolution over the past year. For more information, please see the associated research page. Steven Zhang ^{DR goes to Wikimania!} 02:22, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Apostle12. You have new messages at User talk:Malik Shabazz/Talk.
Message added 02:25, 13 May 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

1RR at Shooting of Trayvon Martin

Just a note/reminder that Shooting of Trayvon Martin is subject to a 1RR rule, meaning that no more than 1 revert per 24-hour period is permitted. I haven't counted up your edits/reverts, but given how rapidly you're editing, adding, and removing material, please be aware of that restriction. MastCell ^Talk 21:45, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added quite a bit of material, which Editor Isaidnoway repeatedly removed. In one case I engaged in collaborative editing with Isaidnoway; I edited, he reverted, I changed my edit, he reverted, I made a final change. In only one case did I actually revert Isaidnoway; that is when he butchered my additions to the "Public response" section.

Perhaps Isaidnoway needs to be reminded of the 1RR rule. Apostle12 (talk) 05:21, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

The Barnstar of Diligence

Just wanted to thank you for your pushback on the biased editing of The Shooting of Trayvon Martin article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin). I knew they were full of foolishness when they refused to let the full audio of the witness statements be added to the article.

The pro-Zimmerman slant is appalling. It's fine that people have their personal position, but to omit so many pertinent issues (like Zimmerman's police record, and other things) doesn't provide a balanced view of the situation. I'm disgusted that the editors over there are trying to rewrite history, and I appreciate you standing up to that nonsense. NoamZinn (talk) 20:13, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, however I don't perceive any "pro-Zimmerman slant." Personally I am supportive of Zimmerman's right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. And I am supportive of all efforts to learn the truth about this tragic intersection of two young lives. Mostly I have been appalled by the tendency of those who call themselves "pro-Martin" to rush to judgment, trash Zimmerman's rights, and even to threaten his life. When Al Sharpton publicly called Zimmerman a "murderer," I considered that the height of irresponsibility. Our system operates under the "assumption of innocence" principle, and I see too little respect for that in the black community.

I agree that Zimmerman's record should be public knowledge. I think it should also be public knowledge that Martin was suspended from school several times, attended a high school until 2011 where violence was rampant and had adopted a pseudo-gangsta personna that belies any attempt to represent him as an angel.

Both young men were human, and both young men possessed virtues as well as faults. If it turns out that Zimmerman shot Martin for any other reason than justifiable self-defense, I will condemn his actions that fateful night. If it turns out that Martin attacked Zimmerman, beat him up, and threatened to kill him, then I think Zimmerman was justified in shooting Martin, however sad it certainly is that he lost his life. Apostle12 (talk) 22:19, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What about the omission of significant information? It makes sense that all pertinent information be public. Furthermore, the lack of certain information is an editorial in and of itself. That entire article lacks balance. If the character of Martin is called into question, then so should Zimmerman's. Why are his previous arrests not mentioned? Where is the rest of the pertinent information on the timeline? A balanced piece would state ALL of the facts available. "This person did this. That person said that." The personal opinions of the editors should not as apparent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NoamZinn (talk • contribs) 00:37, 28 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But Martin's character isn't called into question. I don't agree that the entire article lacks balance. (Do you want to retract your Barnstar?!)Apostle12 (talk) 01:04, 28 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

BLP request

Could I ask you to please refrain from gratuitous, off-topic WP:BLP violations like your last sentence here? I get it - you despise Eric Holder, but article talkpages aren't platforms for you to vent your animosity toward him. This isn't the first time this has come up, and it contributes to a more partisan/polarized and less constructive talkpage atmosphere. Can I ask you to work on restraining yourself a bit more? MastCell ^Talk 19:26, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you misunderstand. I do not "despise" Eric Holder; rather I believe his lack of leadership and his actions--in the New Black Panther voter intimidation case and, especially, by tolerating primary employees within the justice department who promote differential enforcement of the civil rights laws--disqualify him to serve as our U.S. Attorney General. Because Eric Holder tolerates anti-white racism within the U.S. Justice Department, I find myself regretfully unable to maintain my respect for his professionalism; there is no personal "animosity" involved.

I do believe Eric Holder's demonstrated racial bias is relevant as it relates to events that have transpired in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. Why have the New Black Panthers not been prosecuted for calling for vigilante action against Zimmerman, in particular their offer of a $10,000 reward for his "capture?" Why was Spike Lee not prosecuted for tweeting what he thought was Zimmerman's address? I see no other possible motive than Lee's complicity in vigilanteism of one sort or another. Why have Sharpton, Jackson, and others not been put on notice by the U.S. Justice Department for inflaming racial tensions that obviously endanger the Zimmerman family, in particular by calling Zimmerman a "murderer" before he has even been tried?

In short, I disagree with your assessment that my comments were gratuitous, off topic and a violation of WP:BLP. I did not voice hatred of Eric Holder or impugn his character; rather I criticized his pattern of inaction when it comes to leading the U.S. Justice Department in defending the civil rights of non-Black Americans. My criticism is directly applicable to events associated with the Trayvon Martin shooting.Apostle12 (talk) 20:09, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, saying that Holder "doesn't care a whit about the civil rights of non-black Americans" is an accusation of racism, and impugns his character. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise, so let's not bother.

Secondly, I think you're rather badly misunderstanding the purpose of article talk pages. They are not a venue for you to voice your personal criticism of political figures, no matter how well-founded or relevant you consider your personal viewpoint to be. If an independent, reliable source has criticized Holder in connection to the Trayvon Martin case, then it would be appropriate to discuss that source at Talk:Shooting of Trayvon Martin. It's not helpful to add your personal derogatory opinion of Holder to the mix, and in fact it's a WP:BLP violation.

The "right" way to edit a Wikipedia article is to find the best available reliable sources and accurately reflect their content. The "wrong" way is to start with a bunch of deeply held political/ideological beliefs, hunt around for sources that can be used as a lever to force those beliefs into an article, and then resort to spouting your personal viewpoint on the talkpage when no suitable sources can be found. The more controversial the topic, the more important it is to edit the right way and resist the wrong way. MastCell ^Talk 20:40, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can't agree that I "start with a bunch of deeply held political/ideological beliefs, hunt around for sources that can be used as a lever to force those beliefs into an article, and then resort to spouting (my) personal viewpoint on the talkpage when no suitable sources can be found.

However, like everyone, I do have opinions. And I see your point about the way I voiced my opinion that Eric Holder "doesn't care a whit about the civil rights of black Americans," however well-founded that opinion might be.

(Are you aware, for example, that credible witnesses from within the Justice Department have quoted officials working directly under Eric Holder who maintain that the intent of civil rights legislation is not to protect white Americans and are therefore averse to pursuing civil rights violations against whites? When Congressional subcommittes informed Holder of these statements and questioned the Justice Department's differential enforcement of civil rights legislation, especially "hate crimes" legislation, Holder took no action against those involved.)

I am not committed to any particular ideological viewpoint. My rightist friends insist that I am a liberal, while my leftist friends consider me a conservative. Apostle12 (talk) 21:11, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Retreat at Twin Lakes photo

I was just wondering if there was a reason why you removed the Twin Lakes photo or if it was just a mistake. You removed it here. Psalm84 (talk) 04:44, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, didn't mean to remove it. A mistake for sure. Sorry! Apostle12 (talk) 06:43, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just fixed it. P.S. Hope you will put the football stuff back in, despite HiLo48. Apostle12 (talk) 06:46, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad to see it back. It breaks up the page a little. I do favor including that part about him playing football there, too. Maybe enough people will also want it in there. Psalm84 (talk) 12:04, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dispute Resolution IRC office hours.

Hello there. As you expressed interest in hearing updates to my research in the dispute resolution survey that was done a few months ago, I just wanted to let you know that I am hosting an IRC office hours session this coming Saturday, 28th July at 19:00 UTC (approximately 12 hours from now). This will be located in the #wikimedia-office ^connect IRC channel - if you have not participated in an IRC discussion before you can connect to IRC here.

Regards, User:Szhang (WMF) (talk) 07:00, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

August 2012

Comments like this, where you insult other editors' contributions, is both petty and uncivil. I could elaborate on my credentials to show how inaccurate it is, but I suspect you were just shooting your mouth off to dissuade me from editing. You've been here long enough that I think you ought to know better by now. Don't do that. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 22:19, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was looking at the edits themselves, not your credentials. The lede became barely readable after your editing, and much of the meaning was lost. All in favor of edits that enhance clarity--yours didn't. Apostle12 (talk) 03:07, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, so "you should hone your writing skills" really means "that particular contribution was poor." Can you see the problem with that sort of combative hyperbole? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 17:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

COINTELPRO

Hi Apostle. Going to be honest: the flat reversion of my edits on the COINTELPRO article made me not want to continue working on it at all. I was frustrated to see that neither you nor Kafziel made any changes to it after all that smoke over the POV tag. The article really could be a lot better, and I recognize that most of the work to be done is on 1945–1970; however, as you know, "COINTELPRO" is simply one name that was applied to work that the FBI was doing long before. So maybe we could more accurately restore some of that intro text in a "background" section. Regardless, I hope we can both do some good work on the rest of the article. Peace, groupuscule (talk) 20:58, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry you found my reversion discouraging. I encouraged you to create something more concise, especially concerning Garvey, because your detailed account amounted to undue emphasis given the Cointelpro topic. Such long-past events really had little to do with Cointelpro. Also, you eliminated concise references to Cointelpro antecedents during the FDR and Truman administrations, which immediately preceded the inaugeration of Cointelpro in 1956.

Cointelpro was unprecedented in terms of its broad scope and Hoover's intense focus on those he deemed subversive. Garvey and the others can certainly be included, however the mention needs to be brief so that the focus of the article is not lost. Similarly, examples of FBI repression subsequent to the end of the Cointelpro program need to be brief; your edit deleted them entirely.

My intent in reverting was to encourage you to pare down what you wrote, and refine it, as per the suggestion in my edit summary, not to discourage you from contributing to the article. I thought you might prefer to to this yourself rather than have me take a stab at it.

I still plan to work on the article; in particular I want to provide more bulletproof sourcing for the fact that Fred Hampton was assassinated and Geronomo Pratt was intentionally framed for murder by the FBI and local law enforcement working in tandem. This will take time, however; I lack that at present. Apostle12 (talk) 01:23, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)

Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.

In this issue:

Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
Research: The most recent DR data
Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
Proposal: It's time to close the Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard. Agree or disagree?

Read the entire first edition of The Olive Branch -->

--The Olive Branch 18:49, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Fact Checking in the New York Times

I hadn't realized that the New York Times fact checked its letters, but it appears that they do. Thanks for setting me straight. Francis Bond (talk) 00:35, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to discuss your recent edits to "White privilege"

Hi,

I would like to cordially discuss your recent edits to the article White privilege on the talk page: Dispute over "alleged" and other mitigation language.

Looking forward to an exciting and productive discussion!

UseTheCommandLine (talk) 06:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Look forward to it. Please see the article's talk page. Thanks. Apostle12 (talk) 08:15, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

November 2012

Your recent editing history at White privilege shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

To avoid being blocked, instead of reverting please consider using the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. See BRD for how this is done. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. Legoktm (talk) 07:59, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We have taken our dispute to the article's talk page, which I welcome. Thank you for the reminder. Apostle12 (talk) 08:16, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of Dispute resolution discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute in which you may have been involved. Content disputes can hold up article development, therefore we request your participation in the discussion to help find a resolution. The thread is "Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#White Privilege". Thank you! EarwigBot ^{operator / talk} 20:59, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your Edits at User talk:Marie Paradox and Talk:White privilege

If you want to explain why you felt that my recent edit to white privilege deserved the response that you gave on my talk page, I would like to listen. FWIW my thinking was that since other users are more likely to object to "comprised of" than "comprising" and you seemed to think that it was wrong to simply say "groups of people of color", I would make an edit that avoided "comprised of" while still including a conjugation of "comprise". I saw it as a win–win; I assure you that I meant no offense.

Anyway, the main reason I am posting here was to let you know that I felt surprised and hurt when you called me a "jerk" and said I was passive–aggressive on my Talk page. I would like you to approach me as one of your fellow editors, here to join you in making the best encyclopedia we can. I would also like you to keep conversation in Talk:white_privilege focused on topics related to improving the article as opposed to making it about me. I have found that when I reach out to my fellow editors in a spirit of compromise, amazing things can happen; I hope you have the same experience, if you have not already.

-- Marie Paradox (talk) 06:51, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Apostle12, I agree with Marie Paradox that this comment is inappropriate. And I'm sort of perplexed by it; I thought we were doing an OK job of civilly disagreeing about a difficult topic. I don't understand why this "comprised" issue really touched a nerve. (By the way, I personally have no idea what is the correct use of "comprised", in this context or anywhere.) Don't we have bigger fish to fry? I can understand how you felt slighted by the invocation of "Standard English" to change your edit. At the same time, we've probably all summarized edits much more rudely than this.

As far as "white people head-up-the-ass syndrome" (which originated from a discussion three years ago), this is (in my view) an empirical reality symptomatic of white privilege (although the phrase itself may not be encyclopedic nomenclature). Social privilege allows you to spend more time with your head up your ass. See also "reverse racism".

Lastly: it's really hard to tell if someone is being "passive–aggressive" over the internet. Love, groupuscule (talk) 09:52, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Simply chiming in here to say that I agree with the above statements. I thought Giraffedata's edits were interesting and useful once i looked at their talk page and their rationale, and could certainly understand making a sort of crusade about small issues of grammar or spelling, since I've done similar things. Marie Paradox was clearly trying to take both perspectives into account in making her edits. The message you left oh her (making assumptions about gender, apologies if this is incorrect) Talk page was, in my view, very much a violation of WP:NPA. -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 15:03, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad discussions like this exist, because without them it would be hard to see how others perceive my edits. While I can see how it might have come across that way, I did not intend to go on a "crusade", and I certainly did not want anyone to feel "slighted". Apostle12, I am a descriptivist; I think Standard English is highly overrated. (I took one of my first forays into academic discourse on racism at the time when "Ebonics" AKA African American Vernacular English first received national attention.) I seldom change articles on the basis of what is the norm in Standard English, and when I do, it is more in the interest of doing as the Romans do than anything else. Of course I alone bear the responsibility for my edit summary, and from now on I will try to leave comments that will not come across as curt.

And, yes, UseTheCommandLine, I am a "she". Thank you. ^_^

-- Marie Paradox (talk) 16:04, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The crusade i was talking about would be Giraffedata's -- have you seen his/her user or talk page? very interesting. -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 18:49, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, I had missed that. Thank you for pointing it out to me. Very interesting indeed! -- Marie Paradox (talk) 19:11, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, interesting; I certainly won't use "comprised of" so casually in the future.Apostle12 (talk) 19:55, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The issue here is not "comprised" or "comprised of."

I reject the terms "reverse discrimination" and "reverse racism." There is only "discrimination based on race" and "racism;" as a multi-racial person, I am opposed to both.

In my opinion, Groupuscule's defense of Marie Paradox's previous use of "white people head-up-the-ass syndrome" as "an empirical reality symptomatic of white privilege" is as indefensibly racist as her original comment.

I have noticed that self-described "people of color" often attempt to give themselves a pass when it comes to embracing racism. I reject such attempts.

When I am being polite, I call people who embrace racism "jerks." Apostle12 (talk) 17:05, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Apostle12. You have new messages at Marie Paradox's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I have posted over at Marie Paradox's Talkback page as well.

(I am unsure how to effectively respond or support statements when this sort of thing goes back and forth between different editors' talk pages. If there is some guidance i'm missing, i would appreciate a link to it.)

-- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 20:20, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Apparent Canvassing at "White Privilege"

Hello. It appears that you have been canvassing—leaving messages on biased users' talk pages to notify them of an ongoing community decision, debate, or vote—in order to influence White privilege. While friendly notices are allowed, they should be limited and nonpartisan in distribution and should reflect a neutral point of view. Please do not post notices which are indiscriminately cross-posted, which espouse a certain point of view or side of a debate, or which are selectively sent only to those who are believed to hold the same opinion as you. Remember to respect Wikipedia's principle of consensus-building by allowing decisions to reflect the prevailing opinion among the community at large. Your invitations have the appearance of canvassing to me because of the expressed viewpoints of the users you targeted, the nature of their contributions to the article (one of the three had been temporarily banned for a 3RR violation, and another had contributed little to the talk page besides an assumption of bad faith, and none had made significant use of the talk page as a means to find consensus), and the way you presented recent disputes to them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marie Paradox (talk • contribs) 07:47, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was perfectly transparent in my attempt to contact three editors, and I posted this information on the article talk page. I do not know the opinions of these editors, only that they are in favor of including a broader base of material than has currently been allowed in the article. My intent is to make the article better by improving its NPOV. These editors have in the past indicated they became discouraged by the intransigence of the current editors, especially Marie Paradox. Now Marie Paradox is objecting to my attempt to contact them; my reason for doing so is to encourage them to re-enter the discussion. The article as presently configured is hardly neutral.

Please do not act as though my "canvassing" was done in stealth or with ill intent. My motives are sincere and I have been direct. I do believe Marie Paradox has shown distinct WP:OWN tendencies; this pattern needs to be broken so that other editors can legitimately influence the article. Marie Paradox accuses me of contacting "biased users." How ironic! Apostle12 (talk) 09:32, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is a disgrace. I don't believe it to be "canvassing", he was simply trying to involve more people in the discussion and was unaware of their position on the topic. It say otherwise is just untrue and Marie Paradox clearly doesn't want neutral articles on the White Privilege, and I feel has an agenda to serve. Why feel threatened by more input Marie?? 87.232.1.48 (talk) 22:07, 20 November 2012 (UTC)Adam[reply]

Adam, why did Apostle12 invite three editors who not only oppose the scholarly consensus on white privilege but also have little or no history of working to build a consensus in the article? Why did he not solicit the advice of Malik Shabazz, who has been contributing to the article longer than I have? Here is my answer to these questions: I do not know. The operative word in the heading of this section is apparent. If I had sent out an invitation that was limited in such a way that it was unlikely to lead to productive dialogue and likely to bring in an unbalanced crop of returning editors, I would want to know about it, especially if it was unintentional. And I would then make an effort to invite three editors who have different viewpoints or have a history of interacting with their fellow editors in a civil manner and in a manner conducive to building consensus. Adam and Apostle12, if you want "more input", why cut off your noses to spite your faces? Why not turn this into an opportunity? -- Marie Paradox (talk) 01:30, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How do you know these editors "oppose scholarly consensus?" Perhaps these editors have merely become entirely discourageed by the intransigence you demonstrate at every turn. If we were somehow to encourage their return to editing, I believe we could count ourselves lucky. Malik Shabazz needs no such encouragement; I was looking for fresh voices, fresh ideas. Your last sentence makes no sense to me, Marie Paradox; hardly an anomalie when reading your posts. The "civility" you refer to, and apparently claim for yourself, seems to me but a thin veneer to mask devotion to your own point of view. That is hardly "consensus-building." Apostle12 (talk) 09:36, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at both their history of edits and what you posted on their talk pages, it seems pretty clearly canvassing to me. Have you looked at WP:CAN?. shall we add this to the running tally of the ways in which your editing has been disruptive? Need I again note that despite all of these violations, both clear and not-so-clear, your fellow editors have encouraged you in your search for reliable sources of criticism, and civilly offered you help in your endeavors? -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 10:10, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I never reviewed their edit history, only the fact that they objected to the absence of any criticism of "white privilege theory," which renders the article lacking in NPOV. I have no idea what specific criticism they wish were included. My intent was to encourage their return to editing, and I deny that constitutes "canvassing"--they may, or may not, agree with my point of view. I also deny that my editing has been "disruptive," even though some of you disagree with me and consider it so. I note that almost all of what I added to the article by way of criticism of "white privilege theory" has now either been eliminated, or rendered toothless, using the timeworn tactic of claiming undue emphasis (e.g. Steele, whose criticism of "white privilege theory" goes far beyond the short quote now consigned to "Education") or simply by asserting that the sources I offered were "unreliable," yet offering no proof of same. I consider these tactics to be truly "disruptive," and they harm the article immeasurably. Apostle12 (talk) 18:57, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If the criticisms are as widespread as you claim, it should be trivial to find examples. you have produced less than five, several of which had been used before and removed for various reasons (as i understand it).

The fact that you singled them out for previously objecting to the absence of a criticism section makes abundantly clear that this was in fact a clear WP:CAN violation. There are clear and specific guidelines for soliciting the help of other editors on the WP:CAN page -- have you found the time to take a look at it yet?

-- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 19:13, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

UseTheCommandLine, are you serious?? There are no criticisms of "white privilege"? and you claim he was canvassing, yet appear here out of nowhere to purely take the side of Marie Paradox in this and just force your opinions on people. Come on! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.232.1.48 (talk) 21:55, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

PLEASE END THIS TIRESOME DISCUSSION. I AM LITERALLY SICK OF THE ENDLESS ACCUSATIONS AND INSINCERITY OF THE EDITORS INVOLVED. LEAVE ME ALONE. YOU WIN. I WILL NOT REVISIT "WHITE PRIVILEGE" SO DO WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT WITH THE ARTICLE!!!!

ANY SUBSEQUENT COMMENTS WILL BE SUMMARILY DELETED. Apostle12 (talk) 07:58, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' Noticeboard

While I only mentioned you in passing, and my intent was mainly to request help in dealing with the new/ip editors from today at White privilege, i think that because I mentioned you and potential issues with WP:CAN, I should post the following notice, as required at WP:AN/I

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by UseTheCommandLine (talk • contribs) 03:18, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Upon further reflection, there are a number of characteristics of the new editor at White privilege that remind me of you. If I am wrong I apologize in advance, but I have filed a request for an investigation at WP:SPI -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 06:42, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for apologizing in advance. I will expect a more full apology when you discover that I have never used sockpuppets and never intend to. Apostle12 (talk) 07:20, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Still no real apology?!Apostle12 (talk) 11:11, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

RFC/U discussion concerning you (Apostle12)

Hello, Apostle12. Please be aware that a user conduct request for comment has been filed concerning your conduct on Wikipedia. The RFC entry is located at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Apostle12, where you may want to participate. UseTheCommandLine (talk) 21:48, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Apostle12. I thought it was only fair to let you know I have certified the RFC/U. -- Marie Paradox (talk) 23:00, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the notification. Apostle12 (talk) 08:59, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

RE: MKULTRA question

I apologize for the lateness of my reply. I haven't signed into Wiki for a while. I appreciate your reply on my profile page. I guess the whole thing seemed so important, so elaborate that I felt the article lacked enough explanation to make it...for the lack of better words, make enough sense to justify the magnitude of what they had done. Thank you for sharing the link on the radio program. I am listening now. I would love to know more about why MKUltra happened. It was so extreme in its methods, and some of the accusations are pretty devastating and alarming that I feel that there is a great deal more behind this whole issue than we have yet been made aware of, as to why they did this so drastically, so brutally. Likely, they knew (or suspected) that foreign governments had similar projects underway. I am not sure, but I wish I knew more about this and I hope that more is yet exposed.

Greg. Neurolanis (talk) 22:28, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of Dispute resolution discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute in which you may have been involved. Content disputes can hold up article development, therefore we are requesting your participation to help find a resolution. The discussion is about the topic Huey P. Newton.

Guide for participants

If you wish to open a DR/N filing, click the "Request dispute resolution" button below this guide or go to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/request for an easy to follow, step by step request form.

What this noticeboard is:

It is an early step to resolve content disputes after talk page discussions have stalled. If it's something we can't help you with, or is too complex to resolve here, our volunteers will point you in the right direction.

What this noticeboard is not:

It is not a place to deal with the behavior of other editors. We deal with disputes about article content, not disputes about user conduct.
It is not a place to discuss disputes that are already under discussion at other dispute resolution forums.
It is not a substitute for the talk pages: the dispute must have been discussed extensively on a talk page (not just through edit summaries) before resorting to DRN.
It is not a court with judges or arbitrators that issue binding decisions: we focus on resolving disputes through consensus, compromise, and explanation of policy.

Things to remember:

Discussions should be civil, calm, concise, neutral, and objective. Comment only about the article's content, not the other editors. Participants who go off-topic or become uncivil may be asked to leave the discussion.
Let the other editors know about the discussion by posting {{subst:drn-notice}} on their user talk page.
Sign and date your posts with four tildes "~~~~".
If you ever need any help, ask one of our volunteers, who will help you as best as they can. You may also wish to read through the FAQ page located here and on the DR/N talkpage.

Please take a moment to review the simple guide and join the discussion. Thank you! CarrieVS (talk) 11:15, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Questions for you at DRN case

Hi. I'm a volunteer at WP:DRN. I've posed a couple of questions for you at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Huey_P._Newton.2C_Talk:Huey_P._Newton. If you could reply, that would help the case get resolved. Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 17:58, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Statements on Talk:Huey P. Newton

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 05:33, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Behavior at Talk:Huey P. Newton

just so you know, i interpret the following [17] [18]

as personal attacks, schoolyard though they may be. Please do not expect me to tolerate hostility of any kind. You may perceive me as "dogging" you, but I have found little willingness on your part to compromise despite many extensive conversations about content issues. As has been so often the case, we often find ourselves at an impasse, which gives me little recourse other than to ask questions about policy simply because I do not know myself how to proceed. -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 19:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The way to proceed is to talk to me like a person, demonstrating a willingness to honor my concerns and engage in the process of compromise so that we can work together to develop an article that tells the whole story of Huey Newton - his highest thoughts and ambitions as well as his significant shortcomings. It is no accident that the Black Panther Party soon foundered under Newton's leadership; even Panther admirers (Austin) acknowledge this fact and attempt to include both the good and the bad when writing about him.

As it stands you seek to eliminate anything that appears to paint Newton in a negative light. And when you don't immediately get your way on content, you file grievances of various sorts, just like a schoolyard tattletaler. Fortunately the editors who man the various noticeboards are astute and spot your intentions immediately, just as they did yesterday on WP:BLPN. It was clear to them yesterday that you were brandishing various policies in an attempt to block the inclusion of material you do not favor.

If you recall, exactly the same thing happened at White privilege. Even though I have not been active in editing that article, the necessary qualifiers you so adamently blocked me on eventually found their way into the article, inserted by various editors who saw the same thing I did. At one point you even went so far as to accuse me of sockpuppetry (BTW still haven't heard any apology on that) because you couldn't believe so many other editors shared my objections.

In short, talk; don't bluster. And the tattletaling is really annoying. Apostle12 (talk) 12:39, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Accusation of wikilawyering

My reading of WP:LAWYER is that a wikilawyer is one who quotes policy out of context, or uses it as a cudgel. I have asked for clarification. In fact, I stated that if you would not ask for clarification of the policy, I would. That does not seem to me like wikilawyering, unless one interprets "having policy discussions in a way that prevents me from immediately making my preferred changes" as "wikilawyering". Contentious changes, as you seem to be fond of making, to my mind require high degree of discussion and reference to policy, which you appear not to be fond of. Characterizing opposition to one's changes based on existing policy as wikilawyering actually, to my mind, creeps up to the line of violating WP:AGF, as the term itself would seem to imply bad-faith.

For the record, the reason I asked for clarification, and urged you to do so, is because i was suspicious of Amadscientist's clear declaration, and thought that if that were the existing policy, that it might need to be changed. That interpretation does seem like it would be needlessly restrictive.

And in case it needs to be restated, I am perfectly happy to work with you at any point, should you decide that you wish to do so. -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 23:02, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilawyering is "....when a person superficially judges other editors and their actions by jumping to conclusions and slapping labels while brandishing Wikipedia policies as a tool for defeating other Wikipedians rather than resolving a conflict or finding a mutually agreeable solution."

Among the Wikipedia polices you brandished just yesterday:

WP:NORUSH

WP:DEM

WP:ENEMY

WP:CHILL

WP:PANIC

WP:TIAD

Not to mention ongoing insistance on your personal interpretations of WP:BLP and WP:RS, unless of course such interpretations were officially rejected on various noticeboards. Please look in the mirror and ask again, "Is it possible I am involved in wikilawyering?"

For the record, you NEVER in any way indicated that you were suspicious of Amadscientist's "clear declaration" regarding WP:BLP, nor did you express even a thought that the policy "might need to be changed," nor did you express any opinion that Amadscientist's interpretation was "needlessly restrictive." On the contrary, you fully endorsed Amadscientist's restrictive interpretation as a means to eliminate material from the Huey Newton article whose inclusion you do not favor--as always anything that might cast a negative light on Huey Newton's life and character (his criminality, his thuggery, and his involvement in various murders). You only abandoned your position when multiple editors called Amadscientist's interpretation to task.

You write "I am perfectly happy to work with you at any point." Well, the way to do that is to stop brandishing Wikipedia policies, speak reasonably, and demonstrate through action that you are willing to compromise on wording and inclusion. Give and take, as I said before. Apostle12 (talk) 12:13, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Did you notice at all that some of those were not policies, but essays? -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 16:11, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Here's another essay I particularly like: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick Apostle12 (talk) 18:23, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oakland, California

You have been edit warring at Oakland, California for quite a long time. I have seen your attempt to resolve the issue on the talk page, but that does not make edit warring acceptable. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:19, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Every couple of days I, and other editors, revert an unnamed editor who continues to go against consensus by changing the main photo. That editor refuses to engage on talk. I don't call that "edit warring." What else would you have us do? Apostle12 (talk) 09:42, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed that the editor in question just got blocked for 60 hours, so we should get a break here. Apostle12 (talk) 09:46, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What is your justification for describing your preferred version as having "consensus"? I see that, in a talk page discussion, three editors supported it, while five supported the other one. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:40, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm...perhaps you are correct. However your 3-5 breakdown is not so clear, since one editor is unnamed (Binksternet says his IP is located at SF City Hall). Several people, me included, spoke more than once, and offered differing opinions (I liked #7, for example, until its flaw was pointed out). Frankly I was following Binksternet's lead with his "consensus" comments; shouldn't have parroted those comments without doing some empirical analysis. As it stands, I get 3-3 when considering just the two photos. A draw. How do you suggest we proceed? Apostle12 (talk) 17:59, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

TM: deletion of information

We have been trying to summarize some of the sections that were previously laden with too many details, while still retaining a historical perspective. You have to look at the whole paragraph in context and not just single out that one sentence. The sentence before the one about the "reports" of break-ins, specifically states that "crimes committed included eight burglaries, nine thefts, and one shooting". So, we are telling the reader that there were crimes committed in that neighborhood, and not just "reports". The incident of the home invasion that was referenced in that paragraph doesn't say that Zimmerman called the police or that he witnessed anything. It doesn't make any sense to single out just one of the many crimes that were committed and include it, when we don't know if this specific crime had any bearing on Zimmerman's decision the night he observed Martin, and the RS isn't making that connection either between this one single crime and Zimmerman's suspicion of Martin the night of the shooting. Zimmerman wasn't suspicious of Martin because of this one incident, but rather the cumulative effect of all the crimes being committed in the neighborhood, and that is what the RS is making it's point about, "the atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood". It's like the lady said that was interviewed for this article: "There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said. "That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin."

Furthermore, we have entered the trial phase of this incident and you can bet that the defense will bring up the previous crimes being committed in this neighborhood as part of their defense strategy to justify Zimmerman's suspicion of Martin, and that will be included along with the rest of his defense of his actions that night.-- Isaidnoway (talk) 06:31, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

ANI notice

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. MastCell ^Talk 17:43, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration enforcement discretionary sanctions warning: Race/ethnicity and human behavior

The Arbitration Committee has permitted administrators to impose discretionary sanctions (information on which is at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions) on any editor who is active on pages broadly related to Race and intelligence. Discretionary sanctions can be used against an editor who repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, satisfy any standard of behavior, or follow any normal editorial process. If you continue to misconduct yourself on pages relating to this topic, you may be placed under sanctions, which can include blocks, a revert limitation, or an article ban. The Committee's full decision can be read at the "Final decision" section of the decision page.

Please familiarise yourself with the information page at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions, with the appropriate sections of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures, and with the case decision page before making any further edits to the pages in question. This notice is given by an uninvolved administrator and will be logged on the case decision, pursuant to the conditions of the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions system.

This relates to the ANI discussion concerning you, which is about conduct by you that is within the scope of the discretionary sanctions provision at WP:ARBR&I#Editors reminded and discretionary sanctions (amended), that is, "the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed". Notably, you may be sanctioned under that provision if you conduct yourself contrary to the principle enunciated at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Noleander#Bias and prejudice. Sandstein 10:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was on a wikibreak, and am going back to it right after this.

I have filed a request for arbitration enforcement regarding an edit you made to Black Panther Party, "restoring" content that was extremely contentious when it was used over at Huey P. Newton. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 06:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You do not need to reply. I have closed the request as not actionable. Sandstein 10:59, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ANI discussion

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 05:20, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of Request for Arbitration

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Race and politics, Apostle12 and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

Thanks, -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 17:47, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please trim your statement at arbitration case requests

Hi, Apostle12. I'm an arbitration clerk, which means I help manage and administer the arbitration process (on behalf of the committee). Thank you for making a statement in an arbitration request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Race and politics, Apostle12. However, we ask all participants and commentators to limit the size of their initial statements to 500 words. Your statement significantly exceeds this limit. Please reduce the length of your statement when you are next online. If the case is accepted, you will have the opportunity to present more evidence; and concise, factual statements are much more likely to be understood and to influence the decisions of the Arbitrators.

For the Arbitration Committee, Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 09:30, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you're trying to link to a statement on a talk page, your best bet is a diff - that will then avoid archiving, etc. For the link you removed from your statement, try this diff. Best, UltraExactZZ ^Said~ Did 15:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Gender

It occurs to me, I actually don't know which gender pronoun you prefer. For a while i tried very hard to use "their" when referring to someone whose gender I did not have a clear indication of, but I guess I saw so many other folks refer to you as "he" that i dropped my guard. I apologize for the oversight. Do you prefer others to use specific pronouns when referring to you? If so, which ones? -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 08:23, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No preference. Thanks for asking. Apostle12 (talk) 15:31, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your statement in the Apostle12 RFAR

Hi. In your statement as it currently stands, at the fourteenth paragraph (if you discount the collapsed, hidden content), you say "I have been the first to edit these articles in defense of vandalism, racist attacks or other distortions that discredit those involved". Unless you meant you were defending the actual racist edits or vandalism, I think you meant to say "in order to defend against vandalism, […]". Also, please add a signature to your statement, so that readers can navigate to your userpage (and then to your contributions) more easily. Thanks! AGK [•] 23:18, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have edited the statement to clarify that I have edited the article "to defend against vandalism, racist attacks or ther distortions that discredit those involved." Have also added signatures - didn't realize these were necessary in the dedicated statements. The date of my signatures may be confusing, however; is there a way to fix those, since the statements have remained unchanged (except for the revision you suggested) since they were added last Sunday/Monday, May 6? Apostle12 (talk) 04:16, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've edited your signatures so that they are post-dated to the approximate time you added the respective paragraphs. That should be sufficient, and is certainly much better than adding a signature dated today. Thanks, AGK [•] 10:38, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I appreciate your help. Apostle12 (talk) 18:08, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration case "Race and politics" opened

An arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and politics. Evidence that you wish the Arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence sub-page, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and politics/Evidence. Please add your evidence by May 21, 2013, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can contribute to the case workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and politics/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 01:48, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am probably the last person on WP you want to speak with right now

But I did see your recent edits at the help desk.

From my perspective, it would be far better if you were to change whatever behavior ArbCom agrees is problematic (if any) than if you were to leave entirely. It would also be better (from my perspective) if you were to provide greater detail for whatever criticisms of my (or others') behavior that you do have. My goal is not to see you gone, but to bring these issues to the community for resolution, and my behavior is just as much in question as yours here.

I am sorry that it has come to this. It has been a drain on my own editing and psyche just as it has been on yours.

For whatever it's worth, I have some ideas for addressing what I see as failures of the current dispute resolution model on WP; although I believe in the value and model of WP, I also think the mechanisms for settling disputes do need work, and from my perspective they have failed you just as much as they have me. I can even imagine a time where we both might work productively on such a project, perhaps.

In looking at your edit history I have noticed you make references to children and grandchildren, and an active family life. If you do leave, I hope that doing so gives you more time to spend with those close to you, and to tell your stories in a way that is more accepted and appreciated. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 02:12, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but after months of your constant harrassment and "go for the jugular" attitude, this is too little too late. From the beginning I've told you what bothers me about your behavior, so if you really want to know it's all there.

Regarding changing my own behavior, I have already committed to doing that, yet your attacks continue.

You refer to my children and grandchildren and "tell(ing) (my) stories in a way that is more accepted and appreciated:" perhaps you can appreciate that this comes across as more condescending than sincere. I can tell you, however, that one of the newer stories will be about you - perhaps you can guess the title.

I'd rather not see you here on my talk page. In fact your tracking of my inquiry on "Help" and following me here registers as just another example of harrassment.

Apostle12 (talk) 08:31, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your Arbitration evidence is too long

Hello, Apostle12. Thank you for your recent submission of evidence for the Race and politics Arbitration case. As you may be aware, the Arbitration Committee asks that users submitting evidence in cases adhere to limits regarding the length of their submissions. These limits, currently at 1000 words and 100 diffs for parties and 500 words and 50 diffs for all others, are in place to ensure that the Arbitration Committee receives only the most important information relevant to the case, and is able to determine an appropriate course of action in a reasonable amount of time. The evidence you have submitted currently exceeds at least one of these limits, and is presently at 1573 words and 22 diffs. Please try to reduce the length of your submission to fit within these limits; this guide may be able to provide some help in doing so. If the length of your evidence is not reduced soon, it may be refactored or removed by a human clerk within a few days. Thank you! If you have any questions or concerns regarding the case, please contact the drafting Arbitrator or case clerk (who are listed on the case pages); if you have any questions or concerns about this bot, please contact the operator. On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, HersfoldArbClerkBOT^(talk) 06:00, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Motion regarding Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and politics

Resolved by motion:

In his evidence submission to this case, Apostle12 (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log) stated he is immediately retiring from editing Wikipedia:
This will be my last submission. I have decided to place a "Retired" notice on my user page and scramble my password, thus tendering my resignation

Apostle12's conduct was a substantial part of the present arbitration case (Race and politics) and hearing this case in Apostle12's absence would serve no purpose. The committee therefore resolves that:

The present arbitration case is suspended for two months (from the date this motion passes).

If Apostle12 returns while this case is suspended, arbitration proceedings will resume.

If Apostle12 does not return to editing before two months have elapsed: he will be indefinitely prohibited from editing any page relating to "race and politics", broadly construed; and this case will be un-suspended and closed.

Apostle12 is directed to inform the Arbitration Committee if he returns to editing the English Wikipedia using any account.
Apostle12 (and all of his accounts, if he has created one or more others at that time) may be indefinitely blocked by any uninvolved administrator if he violates the prohibitions in points 3 or 4 of this motion.

For the Arbitration Committee, Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 02:28, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this

Reminder:

Dear Apostle12,

I have been asked to remind you that if you do not return to participate in the arbitration case by 25 July 2013, you will be topic banned and the case closed inline with point 3 of the above motion.

For the Arbitration Committee

Seddon ^talk 20:41, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and politics closed

The suspended arbitration case regarding Race and politics has now closed in accordance with the motion for suspension and closure. The following remedies have been enacted:

Apostle12 is indefinitely prohibited from editing any page relating to "race and politics", broadly construed.
Apostle12 is directed to inform the Arbitration Committee if he returns to editing the English Wikipedia using any account.
Apostle12 (and all of his accounts, if he has created one or more others at that time) may be indefinitely blocked by any uninvolved administrator if he violates these prohibitions.

For the Arbitration Committee, Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 20:18, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification motion

A case (September 11 conspiracy theories) in which you were involved has been modified by motion which changed the wording of the discretionary sanctions section to clarify that the scope applies to pages, not just articles. For the arbitration committee --S Philbrick (Talk) 19:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:21, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

white privilege

Notice of Neutral point of view noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.