User talk:Milomedes

Welcome!

Hello, Milomedes, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  -- Longhair | Talk 04:31, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Userboxes

This user believes that spoiler tags are a valuable service and do not censor information.

Talk: List of Groups referred to a Cults

Thank you for emerging as the voice of reason on the discussion page. I would like to complement you on a very sensible proposal. cairoi 14:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. It's always nice to have one's efforts appreciated. • It's an intellectual and social challenge to comment the talk page, which is where the real action is. As I think you mentioned to another editor, it's a tough crowd, and I wouldn't be surprised if no more than a tiny useful change results from our collective effort. :) Milo 21:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

I just logged in and saw the barnstar. Very kind of you. cairoi 06:24, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

WP's better topics

There's no doubt that Wikipedia handles some topics better than others. I have some ideas on that point, if you'd care to drop me a line. Cheers, -Will Beback · † · 12:11, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Apology

Milomedes, I want to offer a belated apology for the way I reacted to you awhile back (on Cult I believe). It was not how I want to behave. Tanaats 17:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

If you feel the need, I accept, but I felt ok with how we parted. I'm also comfortable with the centrist cult-topics edits you've made so far.

As caroi told me when I arrived, this is a tough crowd. And, I would add, not for those who are thin-skinned.

I think contemplation of the ancient Eastern philosopies of balance are useful and appropriate here. Acting in full accordance with them though... well, maybe I'll do better in my next karmic cycle as a cookie recipe editor. :) Milo 09:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Cult topic centrism

I personally define cult topic centrism as:

1) Editing from Principle, hopefully resulting in consensed rules;

2) educating global citizens' unfounded biases (95%+ of cults are good enough);

3) being reality-based pro-reporting for global citizens (cults do exist, citizens want reporters to document cult vs. citizen social problems, and citizens mandate governments to watch cults for infractions — to prevent infractions from progressing to crimes. (See unofficial translation of the Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France (French Report), 1995);

4) practicing proportional critique toward cult-referenced groups on a legal entanglements continuum, ranging from:

A) mere competitive dislike by major religions,

B) to annoying but legal door-step fundamentalists,

C) to legally infractious group actions like mass begging,

D) to undue influence, financial, and sexual abusers,

E) to non-violent felons,

F) to the 10-some infamous destructive cult disasters.

Milo 09:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC), 04:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Wisdom shown should always be rewarded

		The Wiki Wiffle Bat
		Milo, I award you this barnstar for going where no man or woman dared to go: List of groups referred to as cults in government reports [1]. Thank you, for your kind/wise well thought out words and the spunk to state them! Wikipedia can be most rewarding when someone reminds us to be respectful while discussing the points. PEACE TalkAbout 02:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

wow, thanks, TalkAbout. That's really nice of you to post this Wiki Wiffle Bat template. I'll treasure it. :) Milo 03:08, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

request for advice and/or consensus about "New Thought Music"

Hi Milo - A link to "New Thought Music" appeared today in the New Age music see also section. After some research I removed that link, and explained my reasons here: Talk:New Age music#reasons for removing unrelated "See Also" link New Thought Music. I'm writing to you about it now though because I think the "New Thought Music" article itself is misleading. There is no genre with that name anywhere in generally accepted musicology and it fails WP:MUSIC and WP:Notability. I'm wondering whether or not to propose removing that article from the music genre category and merging the text into the main article about the New Thought Movement where it would be more approriate, as it's the message not the music that makes it what it is.

The website NewThoughtMusic.com [2] includes this statement:

The purpose of the NewThoughtMusic.com site is two fold:

1. To support the growth of music ministry in our communities
2. To promote the best of New Thought Music as an outreach function

That's the same website that I quoted on the New Age music talkpage:

Since it is this universal spiritual philosophy that is the common thread, virtually any style of music could be construed as New Thought. What is important is the intention encoded into the music, not the stylistic form itself. So, it is possible for us to find examples of "New Thought Music" in folk, jazz, classical and even in existing popular repertoire (Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, James Taylor and many others).

Here is another website promoting this idea: [3] where they state:

Help shine the light of New Thought music to the world by experiencing the transformation this music can bring first-hand. Support New Thought artists by purchasing their music. Offer one of our Tribute CD’s to a friend or family member not familiar with this music. The Tribute CD’s provide a variety of artists and musical styles, and each song has a positive spiritual message for all faiths.

Visit the Itoi Ministries website www.itoimusic.org for more information on the New Thought Songwriters Tribute and the PosiPalooza! Concert Tour and help us change the world, one song at a time!

I thought you would be interested in this both regarding the musicology aspects and also regarding your work with the list of cults articles. I'm not saying these related groups are cults, though they might be seen that way, and even if they are, I don't have anything against cults in general as a principle unless they behave badly. The topic of music genres is already complex and we don't need a non-existent genre confusing the topic even more. The thing that's bothering me here is the claim of this as a genre while at the same time saying this form of music crosses all genres, as long as it includes their spiritual message. A positive spiritual message is fine with me, but the article seems to create extra confusion in the musical genres which is what I want to clear up.

What do you think about this? Would it be best to ignore the whole thing? Or work on merging that stub into its main religious movement article and out of the music genre category? I don't have an agenda on this in particular other than that WP music genre articles should be about music and not about religion (just as Gospel genre articles focus on the music, not the religion). I'm not sure whether to, or how to, proceed on this, so I'm hoping you can offer some clarity. Thanks for your help... Parzival418 06:19, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Too much material here for me to deal with definitively — maybe you also.

The idea which floated to the top is, have you listened to several of these promoted artists to hear what they might have in genre common? For example, if they are mostly chanters, then they might be able to hold together a genre in a way analogous to rap.

The more cynical view is that genre is as genre sells. What is the industry buzz, if any?

I read WP:MUSIC and searched for the word "genre". It refers to "notable genre", but doesn't define it, so I think you should re-edit your post and strike-type that guide. It may be a lot of work to validly research WP:Notability for a genre. Without that research, I don't think you are in a position to decide on a merge proposal. Then you'd need to communicate a lot with the current editors. They might invoke philosophy that would take even more time to learn, to reasonably decide whether it was applicable.

On balance, I personally would ignore it.

I'm not sure whether the New Age music article can justify a New Thought music link, given that New Thought music depends on "intention", which may be lyrics, while New Age is almost totally instrumental. Obviously, some New Age instrumental 'intends' to promote New Age spirituality, so that could be why the link was added. Possibly an important factor is that the two philosophies (according to the New Thought article) barely cross over. Milo 08:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I've taken your advice and re-edited the talk page to remove WP:MUSIC. I didn't use strike edit because I changed the rest of the sentence and the result looked confusing. I did however make note of the re-edit in my second signature there on the talk page.

Yes, I have listened to a bunch of songs I found on those websites and no, they do not hold together stylistically - only the lyrics as far as I can tell give it any identity. As far as industry buzz - I did look for that and was unable to find any references at all in any industry publications. There are one or two artists that the New Thought websites claim have been noted in the industry, but they don't provide references. It seems those may be country or gospel artists, perhaps noted within those established genres, who happen have some positive lyrics and are part of a New Thought congreation. But from the music industry POV, they are not considered "New Thought" artists because there's no such genre outside of the New Thought Movement ministries, at least not that I could find.

I'll go with your suggestion to ignore the article. Thanks again... Parzival418 09:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

(reset) Here's a nice development - The IP editor who had placed that link accepted the comments and removed the music-genre-stub template from his article, diff. I think his article does have a place in the music category, now that it's not trying to be a genre. It's good to see positive consensus in action... Parzival418 23:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you...

... for the diff link on the talk page of LOGRTACIGR. That was thoughtful of you. Smee 03:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC).

Talk:Post-Ambient

(Copied from User:CambridgeBayWeather - Archive of Post-Ambient talk at Ambient?)

You deleted Post-Ambient with the following edit summary "08:02, 24 April 2007 CambridgeBayWeather (Talk | contribs) deleted "Post-Ambient" (PRod:No references or sources... No real content... not notable... no consensus to keep...)".
I have no significant disagreement with your summary. One user wanted to do research for sources, as he said the Post-Ambient concept was under discussion within the related music community. He can still do that research while the article is deleted. However, I think it's useful to archive that article's talk page whether or not the article or concept gets revived.
As an admin I think you have acccess to the deleted material. I suggest that the Post-Ambient talk page should be archived as a subpage at Ambient, and I would (boldly) do this if I had access. (Please reply here if desired) Milo 16:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I've restored the talk page. Because the whole thing was deleted under WP:PROD it can be restored if anybody asks any admin so if you need that back then no problem. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 18:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

(Copied from User:CambridgeBayWeather - Archive of Post-Ambient talk at Ambient?)

Ok, thanks for undeleting only Talk:Post-Ambient. I didn't know that the useful talk page could be undeleted separately from the unencyclopedic article. Milo 00:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem and as it says at Wikipedia:Proposed deletion#Contesting after deletion "Articles deleted under this procedure (using the {{prod}} tag) may be undeleted, without further discussion, on a reasonable request." So if the rest of the article is needed let me know. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 00:57, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Yo yo yo

Hey Milo. Just from watching your stuff on the list thing, you seem to be pretty level-headed. I would kinda like to see you pitch in in the Great Commission Association article if you're interested. Gatorgalen 13:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

How kind of you to say so. A couple of days ago I might have said yes, but real world issues are pressing me. I'll be lucky if I can occasionally dip into my regular edits. Milo 22:28, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Solidarity

There's been talk about the coordination and co-operation of the anti-spoiler side. That may be an exaggeration, but it's painfully clear that we can shout into the woods all we want without getting anywhere without laid-out goals and viable alternatives to the present spoiler policy, not just criticisms of it, however justified they may be. I'm open to suggestions, and feel free to reply to any that other people make on my talk page.

In the meantime, here's a symbol. Please keep it on your talk page, or even put it on your user page should you get one; if we get it on enough pages, it might just count for something. Please remove it if you don't want to show it. And if you've got a better picture, be my guest and use it. --Kizor 16:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok. I never thought I'd have a userbox. I'll move this one up to this talk page top where it fits nicely to the right of the Contents box. Milo 18:32, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Milo... what do you think of this: [4] and this: [5] ?

Good point I hadn't thought of that. Milo 08:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me, plain text spoiler notices are better since they don't advertise their presence for editors not involved in an article. --Parzival418 _Hello 18:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I did think of that in the inverse — they are against plain text because they want central control. Milo 08:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Follow-up On second thought, I've decided to disengage over there. The positions there are too entrenched, it's not a real discussion where people are listening to each other, it's territorial. Take a look if you want, but I'm not going to continue arguing the point, because, well... what's the point to that? And by the way, at least one of the editors on that topic is watching your page and posted a link to this section. I assume my page is on watch as well now, since I've been fairly vocal on that discussion for a few days and edited the guideline page a few times. I truly don't understand why some people dislike the spoiler notices so much, something that seems to be a simple and non-disruptive service to readers. But I'm not going to make it a "cause", I'm winding down my involvement with that topic. Have a good day.... --Parzival418 _Hello 19:05, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The debate seems to be winding down with none of the big issues resolved. It appears not to have been worth my effort. I think I need to spend a lot less time editing. Milo 08:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I know what you mean, I'm disappointed with the process too and considering reducing my editing as well. It was a downer seeing that stuff happening on a guideline page that's not just a regular article but will affect so many other editors.

I hope you stick around though even if you're editing less -- I'm just about ready with a new spacemusic article that has lots more references and plan to post it soon. --Parzival418 _Hello 08:32, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting the "spoiler" definition in a dictionary I don't routinely use. That nicely nailed down an annoying loose end in my spoiler tag philosophy, and I have made reference to it in a post. Milo 02:15, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

You know, the whole spoiler tag issue is one where I think the underlying issue was not important to the pro-spoiler people as much as it was them proving their manliness by bullying other editors into submitting to their edits that have, on the whole, made Wikipedia a worse internet resource. Samboy 23:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Space music

Spacemusic RfC position

Hi. Could you update your position on Talk:Space music#Request for Comments? I want to make sure your view is accurately represented. Thank you. —Viriditas | Talk 00:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for asking, will do.

Spacemusic genre distinguished in 100 words

"Almost any music having a slow pace and space-creating sound images could be called spacemusic". Spacemusic was named in 1973 by Hill and Turner on "Hearts of Space" radio. USA spacemusic is defined by the contemplative uplifting HoS segue formula, avoiding depressive, spooky, atonal, or noisy "dark music". Spacemusic genre intends for foreground contemplation, especially with headphones. Spacemusic is not a type of ambient music, but both genres share many compositions. Eno's 1978 album defined background music named ambient. When sound images are faint, spacemusic becomes indistinguishable from background melodic ambient, but much ambient is not foreground imagery contemplative.

Milo 01:21, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a good source for, "Almost any music having a slow pace and space-creating sound images could be called spacemusic"? —Viriditas | Talk 09:25, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

That's from the second half of footnote 1 in the Space music article. The source is Hearts of Space website: "What is spacemusic?" http://hos.com/aboutmusic.html Milo 23:56, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. We should add that to the article. —Viriditas | Talk 02:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

article updated

Hi Milo, when you have a chance, please take a look at these links:

• article snapshot as updated, prior to newer edits
• viriditas talk page
• space music talk page regarding article update
• space music talk page regarding history section

Thanks... --Parzival418 _Hello 00:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi again... I had included the fusion section of your version of the article in my update listed above. But I had to add an unreferenced section tag to it since there are no references. After considering further, I decided to remove that section since it's the only part of the article that didn't have references. Here is the new link:

• update without fusion section

I like that section and want to include it, but we need to find some references first or it will get deleted anyway. You're welcome to add it back in if you want, I just didn't want the lack of references in that section to be a source of difficulty with the rest of the article at this point. --Parzival418 _Hello 02:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

John Tesh

I'm not familiar with his music, but I did get a chance to meet him and his family about three years ago when he was here in Hawaii. He's one of the nicest, most polite people I've ever met. —Viriditas | Talk 12:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Your comments invited

Hi Milo - I saw your edit summary on Space music about moving the list to follow the references about the relaxing genre and atmospherics but the edit seemed not to "take" and just looked like a null edit. I think there might have been an edit conflict glitch since I was editing the history section at the same time - maybe it would be good if you review your edit in case it needs to be re-applied. I thought of putting the list there myself but could quite make the wording work clearly which is why I put it where I did. I think you have a good idea on that though.

I replied to various comments on Viriditas' page and the SpM talk page too. I'm getting ready to sign off for the night, have a good one... --Parzival418 _Hello 09:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The edit was a Dummy edit. It's just a way of communicating via the edit summary.

Yes, it will take some thought to make such a long sentence flow with the genres toward the end — em dashes can sometimes fix such sentences.

You've done a lot of good work - certainly more than I can do with real world time pressing.

Your selection of the (Hubble?) space photo brought the article to life. Thank you :)

It would be nice to find a way to connect the photo of the tensegrity tower as a second example of space-on-earth and ideally with a reference to visualized space music. As I understand Hill's architectural thinking, he typically looks for musics which sonically model precision placement of identical-repeating modular components. One way to approach this would be to search for well-described music-structure complaints about repeating-element New Age/Space music from non-fans. Milo 11:09, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments about my work. I think I need to slow down on the editing too, likewise for real world time pressures.

Yes, the photo is from Hubble, but also a composite of others. Here's the full description from the Commons page:

Messier 82. Composite of Chandra, HST and Spitzer images. X-ray data recorded by Chandra appears in blue; infrared light recorded by Spitzer appears in red; Hubble's observations of hydrogen emission appear in orange, and the bluest visible light appears in yellow-green.

If you have the time, check out the full resolution image, it's truly amazing. One click gives you a screen size image, then there's another link to a huge one that you can scroll around inside.

The tensegrity tower would be a good image too. That tensegrity article you linked to a while ago was very interesting. Viriditas pointed out that we need to caption images to show clear relevance or the image may be removed. Good idea to search "complaints from non-fans" to find the descriptions, that's funny that what the non-fans don't like is part of what makes the spacemusic work so well. I'd like to help with that but I won't have time for a while.

I did figure out a way to change the sentence to move the genres to the end. I think I got the meaning to work in the way you suggested. Please check it out when you have a chance. --Parzival418 _Hello 19:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

"You have new messages (last change)"

Hi Milo - I see you've been busy on Spoiler Alerts, (wow, what a discussion that's been, eh?!)... I've been mostly helping out with WQA lately, that's been quite an education about how people and policy get along together. The WQA page is more lively and effective lately with the new organization and there are several other editors helping out which is cool. They started on the "pay it forward" idea after I modified the instructions and some seemed to like it and continued to help. It's good to see those alerts not just going fallow so much, though there are still too many to keep up with.

Anyway, I wanted to check in with you since you didn't reply about the new laughingsocks last week. I think gp is on holiday, and I have not been editing SpM since the prior notes (I think it's good now, though I don't make any assumptions about smooth sailing in the future ). Viriditas wrote that he was going to make some improvements but I haven't seen any changes there lately. I did add a proposed info-box on the talk page - do you think that's a plus for the article, or better without it since it's really made for more formal "genres"? Drop me a note if you like. Oh, and I changed my user name to get rid of those pesky numbers that people so often got wrong... Best Wishes... --Parsifal _Hello 06:59, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh by the way, your post tonight at Taxonomy of the spoiler debate was right on, well done.

On a related topic, you may want to check out the archiving bots post at the Village pump --Parsifal _Hello 07:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

"your post tonight at Taxonomy of the spoiler debate was right on, well done" Thanks, It did seem a lot like a well-glued summary piece. I'm way busy in real life, but I can almost do talk:spoiler on autopilot, and no one will notice (or care) when I stop posting.

I did look at the SpM infobox, didn't notice anything objectionable, but it seems like asking for debate trouble since SpM is a collective 'something' with components of up to 30 genres. My present feeling is to go along with what you think best. I have some problem with the top displacement of the space picture by the info box. Surely there is a way to put it under the picture?

You've raised the SpM standards so much that anything more that I could do at SpM will involve heavy research for which I lack the time and other resources.

Also since Viriditas has taken such a hard line on the Notable artists format I'm losing interest. He's wrong on the embedded lists issue, but has been otherwise so helpful that I don't feel like pressing it further.

Note that once again a passing editor contributed to the list (Tomita), as many others have over time, so I know it works as a feature in it's present format.

I haven't been to WQA for a long time, glad things have improved.

Yes, I wondered about your difficult username, I hope I got it correct most of the time :) Milo 07:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting busier in real life too and it's getting harder to find time for WP. The SpM research took longer than I expected. Thanks for your compliment on that, much appreciated.

I agree with you about the Notable Artists section. I noticed the drive-by contribution and feel that those are positive. I'm thinking about ways to keep it and somehow remove the tag. I don't really understand why Viriditas doesn't like that section - though I agree with you that he's been very helpful so it doesn't feel good to push about the list. Somehow though, that information needs to stay in the article, either changing to prose, or adding a chart with albums - both options too much work for me right now.

On the infobox, something was bothering me, which is why I put it on the talk page instead of right into the article. I think you're right that as soon as it goes into the article, it can become a target of edit wars over the individual elements of the infobox. Also, the space picture really works in the lead of the article and if there is an infobox, it will be hard to get agreement that the space picture can stay at the top. I think I will retract that infobox proposal.

Have a good evening or morning, whatever time zone you're in... --Parsifal _Hello 08:18, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi again - by coincidence, Viriditas posted a note on my talk page about the infobox last night, after I posted my comment withdrawing the infobox from the SpM talk page, though I don't think he had seen my comment there yet. I've replied to Viriditas about it on my talk page here and hope I expressed it clearly - you are welcome to comment as well if you wish. --Parsifal _Hello 18:27, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi - just wondering, do you still have Viriditas talk page on your watchlist? Not a big deal, but there's some recent activity there.

On a different topic, how about that spoiler talk page? Think that'll still be going on in five years? I bet we have hideable spoiler tags long before then. I like the way IMDB does it - I added a description of their method to IMDB#Plot-related features and spoiler warnings. How fast will the spoiler-search-bot find that edit? --Parsifal _Hello 06:08, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikivacation?

Milo, just when I am between projects, shucks, missed your sharp wit and funny ways. Say, my condition must be getting better as I got a 4 during the summer. Yes, going back to school to see if I can learn a thing or two. Have a good vacation, catch a wave or two. I am feeling like I need one too. left the .0 out on purpose:-)PEACETalkAbout 08:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your appreciation. Congratulations on your 4!

I eventually became a 4 grad student, but one couldn't have predicted that from my earlier grades. :))

Milo 15:11, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Is all not ambient?

Ref HoS #10 Is All Not One? HoS #55 Is All Not Two?

MIlo, please take a look at the talk pages of both GP and Viriditas. Check the histories to find the most recent parts of their communications. I haven't responded yet because I've been simply not replying at all to the insults and accusations from GP. But now it looks like some participation in that discussion may be needed, unfortunately. --Parsifal _Hello 18:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I see the ambient blob is on the ooze again, and appears to have engulfed Viriditas (aieee!) who has now been replaced by an ambient pod person. (hehe, I wonder if there ever was a real GP?)

I see ambient is going to take over not only "space music", but "spacemusic" as well, under the guise of "beatless ambient". While the recent changes in an ambient perception of space music are reasonable to acknowledge, and indeed to divide the article, the revisionism of classifying Spacemusic (classic) as ambient is Orwellian light. It's something like saying that classical was subsumed by electronic as a genre after Carlos' "Switched on Bach".

BTW, I note that this weeks's HoS #815: VIHUELA, a mostly-acoustic Spanish-Moorish pre-guitar flamenco-like soundscape, is anything but beatless.

I did some research on how ambient became a genre-engulfing monster. The root of this macro bogosity seems to be Eno's micro discovery while immobilized in bed that all music is ambient^(threshold) if it is faint enough. I don't know who began to claim without clear limit that some/most/all audible music is also ambient, but commerce is the usual suspect. Given the chutzpah of ambient^(threshold), the 'all is ambient' notion could have stealth evolved from ambient^(beatless) being similar to space music, ambient^(noise) being similar to industrial music, and ambient^(house)... um, dunno, maybe some kind of drugged cross-association with the ambient^(beatless) being played in the chill room.

Even the nominal ambient community seems to be getting tired of 'is all not ambient?'. Here's an Hypnos.com ambient discussion that appears to terminate the credibility of Prendergast's "The Ambient Century":

Poster oenyaw writes: "my problem is that [Prendergast] tries to expand the definition of ambient music to include almost everything. Personally, I don't think I consider Led Zeppelin as ambient."

Poster jbrenholts writes: "pendergrast even included dylan as ambient. whew!

Poster Scott M2 writes: "Yet not a single mention of Steve Roach or Robert Rich ..."

Poster Bill Binkelman wrote: "There are simply too many types of ambient music nowadays to form a cohesive and even relatively all-inclusive definition. Plus, many fans can't even agree on what constitutes ambient. You have the beat versus non-beat debate, the instrumental versus vocal debate, the acoustic versus electronic debate, and the "it's too pretty or it has nature sounds so it's new age" vs "no, it's just got a melody and or field recordings" debate. Trying to come up with any kind of description of a type of music that inclu[d]es such diverse works as

Soma (ethno-tribal)

Sub Rosa ("classic" ambient)

And the Stars Go With You (spacemusic)

gently down the stream (glitch)

Blood Machine (fractal groove)

Stalker (dark ambient)

china radio sunshine (electronica)

Trans Ukraine (chill out)

Astoria (drone)

Mysticism of Sound (collage/experiemental)

Touch (downtempo vocal)

...well, there ya go. It was a lot easier back in, say, the mid to late 80s (and even then it wasn't easy)."

By analogy I'm reminded of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) episode in which they lampooned bad sci-fi writing where ordinary terms were pseudo 'spacified' by merely adding the word "space" to it. Thus a bowl became a "space bowl", even though it was just an ordinary bowl. This in contrast to "space music", a music that has extraordinary psychoacoustic spacial effects.

Ambient has done something similarly lampoonable to an "ambient bowl", for example, by pointlessly attaching its name to dance music which bears not the slightest relationship to Eno's and Satie's genre. (Hm, suppose rave dancers wore an ambient bowl as a dancing hat, maybe the sonic effect would justify the name? :) Milo 03:38, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Once again, your turn of phrase has given me a good laugh!

It's disappointing that Viriditas has been engulfed, and surprising considering that the engulfement was preceded by so many angry and extremely uncivil comments from GP. Viriditas has 40,000 edits. Hopefully, those edits will attach like antibodies to the references and come to the rescue allowing him to see that the references are not actually part of the ambient blob itself. Well, in other words, that the references mostly don't say that space music is ambient; they say many things and that's only a small part of it.

For your watchlist: a Viriditas sandbox page where they are collaborating.

It seems to me that for this process to work fairly, the link to the sandbox should be presented on the article talk page along with the questions it's supposed to resolve. I assume GP will read this message on your page; but aside from that, I think we should mention to Viriditas that the process should be brought out into the light. Do you agree about that? --Parsifal _Hello 04:12, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I suppose, but my impression is this is just not going to be fair. One problem is that Mr. 40,000 edits knows less than he thinks he does, and I've noticed that he gets unpleasant when he's challenged. He's had previous community problems with WP:Own charges possibly related to that. That makes him and GP a bad combination.

Already I see they are trying to disqualify quotes as "primary research". There's nothing wrong with quotes from primary sources as long as they are descriptive, meaning any person who visits the sources can verify usage in the article without special knowledge of the subject.

If the primary source says "I sing falsetto", the article needs to read like: 'In a personal letter posted on his web site, Jack Daniels says, "I sing falsetto" ' — and not just 'Jack Daniels sings falsetto', because no journalist has checked facts as to whether known basso Jack was drunk when he wrote that. However, even if Jack was drunk, the descriptive statement remains correct and verifiable that Jack did say that.

Out of courtesy I backed off this issue the last time, but unfortunately, this time I think it's going to be necessary to go the mat. It's just too critical to let him wrongly remove scarce sources.

Doing as you suggest for Space music while hoping for the best, plus something else simultaneously — what do you think about splitting off Spacemusic (classic), in which only old Eno-style ambient need be considered? Milo 06:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand and concur with your notes above (though I have a question on the last point about the splitting of the article). I've read the histories of some of the community problems you mentioned. And I agree about the importance of the sparse references and that use of primary sources with appropriate wording is acceptable when necessary. This is such an obscure topic that very few people have ever written about it, though it has enough listeners to have an article. Regarding a split-off article for spacemusic classic; that could be effective, and I'm willing to try it, but I have a couple concerns - that it may end up being more work without solving the problem on the current article, and, that it may make the whole situation more confusing. But maybe I'm not clearly understanding what you're envisioning; would you elaborate a bit further?

Regarding the sandbox page they're working on, there are some entertaining comments by GP there; he seems to feel comfortable making his pronouncements when there's no need for debate, though mostly incorrect, filtered through his POV. What procedure do you recommend? Shall we ask Viriditas to post the sandbox link on the article talk page? Shall we comment on that page as the comments are being entered? Or would you prefer to wait until they present their "masterpiece?" --Parsifal _Hello 08:08, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

"post the sandbox link on the article talk page" If Viriditas wants to work only with someone especially invited at his user page, I'm inclined to respect that arrangement since I'd want the same courtesy.

"comment on that page as the comments are being entered?" Likewise, as a matter of courtesy I think it would be better to observe, quote, and comment on the article talk page. It will also get more publicity on the talk page. That's something of a middle path between being intrusive, yet letting him know before he invests too much work that certain things aren't acceptable.

GP's little essay on removing sources amounts to violation of WP policy on fully describing controversies. It's such blatant POV pushing that one approach would be to quote it in other places where editors might be shocked.

"would you elaborate a bit further?" I notice that among Ultrared's art-writing essays, there were references to the "death of ambient". While that might be gothic hyperbole, I noticed that in the Hypnos.com ambient discussion, oenyaw said he "bought a disc with the word ambient in the title and it turned out to be ele[c]tro-dance music." Obviously he was fooled into buying music he did not want. That's exactly the kind of thing that could kill "ambient" as a marketing label. A name that means everything, means nothing. The problem therefore is to disambiguate the useful name of classic spacemusic from the useless name of new-ambient-is-everymusic.

"may end up being more work without solving the problem on the current article" That may be so. Ambient could take years to be fully discredited and collapse, so it may not be possible to solve the problem on the current article. There may not be any good solution if the music marketing magazines haven't noticed and reported what's happening. At 0.1-0.5% market share, they may not much care. Milo 04:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

courtesy. yes, of course, I was suggesting we might ask about posting the link, not just go ahead and do it.

better to observe, quote, and comment on the article talk page. I concur about this. Not sure when/how to begin though. My time is more limited nowadays, so I need to stay focused. I'll debate when needed, but prefer to avoid extra debating when possible. The spoiler project page taught me the futility of that. (Off -topic digression: Wow, what a scene! - hopeless in the short run due to imposed non-consensed enforcement, though I expect the optional-hide/show-by-preference-setting method will happen in the next few years. Every web page will be so easy to personalize, it's hard to imagine that feature being omitted in the long run. And the idea that when something is not new, it can't be spoiled?! --everything is new to someone young enough to just be discovering it, or someone older who's been too busy working...)

Hypnos.com - interesting thread, thanks for the link.

Ultrared - strange source - they seem ultra-collective and political; they don't use author names on any of their articles.

disambiguate the useful name of classic spacemusic - I understand your goal with this, but I wonder how it can be done. Would we have one page titled "Space music (classic)" and another page titled "Space music (ambient blob)"? --Parsifal _Hello 07:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I found and added to the article a cool quote of Stockhausen actually using the term "space music" to describe his own work; and also that Miles Davis studied Stockhausen's music and some of Miles' work has been called "space music" too. Davis in 1982: "...I listen to Stockhausen and Ravel. " --Parsifal _Hello 07:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Good work! :)

I can now see a way out of the ambient is everygenre mess by documenting the history of how that notion came about. The story is found among the pages at Music.hyperreal.org that are already Space music article sources. The useful news is that ambient^(everygenre) is already much further into decay than I had been led to believe by old sources, which I have found a way to date.†

"Would we have one page titled..." "...and another page titled..." Yes. Maybe "Spacemusic (classic)" and "Space music (new ambient/chill)". By Google test { "new ambient" music } has 37,000 hits and { "ambient chill" music } has 220,000 hits. Lloyd Barde's Notes on Ambient Music is also an (older) source on the name "new ambient".†

New ambient^(ravemusics) is so radically different from old ambient^(background) that separated articles are necessary, since they are different stories of different generations. A post-ambient concept is also starting to make some sense in terms of successor fragmentations, but there may be no sources, nor even be discussed in those terms.

The many hits of "ambient" with "chill" tell me that "chill" is a genre name, and will lose ambient (or has already among the in crowd) the way rock lost roll.

Based on the wealth of historic content, logically the current article would be renamed "Spacemusic (classic)" and the new article would take up with the story of Jimmy Cauty and The Orb in 1989, followed by his locally acclaimed album "Space" that apparently started the trouble with ambient genre-takeover of space music.

Cauty's album is evidence of a new path, possibly unrelated to classic HoS spacemusic, as it took place in UK, and out of range of USA public radio's 300-station success of Hearts of Space. It's not obvious that Cauty had ever heard of HoS (though by 1989, more likely than Eno in 1978), but apparently raves with chill rooms were a global phenomenon, certainly in UK as well as USA.

According to Chris Melchior in Ambient Music, Beginnings and Implications, ambient "everything" peaked in 1995, and he quotes a Mike Brown in 1997 who says, "Ambient continues to be a catch-all at the end of the century, although as a genre it has become hopelessly fragmented...".

†According the Internet Archive index page for Barde's Notes on Ambient Music, Barde wrote this analysis prior to April 17, 2001. We are now seven-some years further along, so Ultrared may have been serious; ambient "everything" may well be "dead". Milo 06:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well done analysis; I've started reading through those links and there's a lot of interesting information there. I agree the ambient blob needs to perform meiosis; new ambient(ravemusics) & old ambient(background). Regarding the evolution of the ambient blob, there was an intriguing comment in one of those links that I had not thought about before but makes a lot of sense - that in the chill rooms at the raves, they played old ambient(background/environmental), but the rave-techno-house music in the main rooms was so loud that it was heard in the background in the chill rooms, together with the environmental ambient music. That combination created a new kind of music, a blend of the ambient/chill music of spacey ambient backgrounds together with dance-loop beats. Then, when that mix was made in studios, away from the raves and the stimulant-enhanced pulse rate, chillout music evolved like slowed-down rave music mixed with ambient, ie, ambient dub, etc...

I was aware of the ambient component of the chillout music, but this new point is interesting, the thing that makes it chillout music instead of dance music is that the beat is coming from the other room in the distance, and the ambient sounds are more present locally; that changes the "pushy" dance beat to a background pulse as part of the ambient environment.

But how does splitting Ambient (Eno/Satie/Environmental) and Ambient (Enhanced/Chillout/Loud dance music in the other room) apply to space music? Space music in many cases is too "present" to be used in a rave chillout room, because it wouldn't mix well with the drum beats from the other room, and other factors - ie, because spacemusic (classic) is not Ambient (Eno/Satie/Environmental). I've seen, in the sources, and in general current usage, space music almost always used as either Space music (classic), or as Space music (historical), [ie Miles Davis/Grateful Dead/Pink Floyd]. It's possible there are people using Space music to refer to Ambient (Enhanced/Chillout/Loud dance music in the other room), but I haven't seen that anywhere, so it seems like if there was an article on spacemusic (ambient blob), the article would be almost empty. I suppose there could be enough material to make a fork article about spacemusic (electronic). But those seem more like WP:SPINOUT than true disambiguation; in other words, spacemusic as a term and an idea has had an ongoing evolution from Stockhausen, Miles Davis, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, etc... to the 1990's electronic forms, to more recent digital workstation formats, and the addition of other genres to blend the programming, like the native flutes or celtic, as found in the HoS shows.

So, what would be the other side of the disambiguation if spacemusic (classic) separates the HoS-related usage? I've seen it used to refer to spacemusic (electronic) but very rarely seen it used to refer to spacemusic (new ambient/chill); usually if someone refers to that music, they just call it ambient. It's hard to see the need for an article about spacemusic (new ambient/chill), since the ambient music article already covers that topic; it would just be a stub; there are so few references. Another split could be spacemusic (music genre) vs spacemusic (psychoacoustic programming); it still seems unclear though. Other than that there is someone who doesn't like the term space music and edits to absorb it into the ambient blob, I think the article has been working pretty well and aside from Wikipedia issues, does not need to be split. Music genre classifications are challenging as a topic in general, and it seems that on Wikipedia they're extra challenging because people have such strong feelings about those topics.

I'm not averse to disambiguating spacemusic; I'm just having trouble visualizing how it could be split, because one of the forks would be pretty much as the current version is, and the other fork or forks would be almost empty. On the other hand, disambiguation is needed even more on the Ambient music article. That's a bigger job because the people who like Ambient (Enhanced/Chillout/Loud dance music in the other room) also feel some sort of "connection" with Brian Eno's initial naming of Ambient (Eno/Satie/Environmental), and if we try to separate that, more ambient pods will likely be activated. But that's the core of the ambient (everygenre) issue. --Parsifal _Hello 04:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

SpM references

Following up your note on my talk page - did you have a chance to read my reply about the SpM references? (and the note about the Ambient Century book?) Just wondering if you're satisfied with the version of the article per GP's change. I notice that his edit caused the middle of the first paragraph to almost completely duplicate the middle of the second paragraph, including the list of references (plus there's the very good Star's End reference that he omitted completely). --Parsifal _Hello 07:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

"the note about the Ambient Century book?" (referring to) Parsifal (08:23 3 October 2007): "have you heard of a book called "The Ambient Century" I was puzzled by this since I commented on Hypnos.com discussions of that book in this thread Milo (03:38, 17 September 2007): "... appears to terminate the credibility of Prendergast's "The Ambient Century". Since you have confirmed its lack of connection to space music, I think it should be removed from the "Further reading" section.

I checked and didn't find any misquotation in your Star's End quote, so GP's complaint doesn't make any sense. The "broad range of genres" you reported as consensed by five editors, so that's covered. Not sure if the rest of his complaint about sources has been covered.

I hope this helps. I need to go on wikivacation to deal with urgent things in the real world. Milo 03:50, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

About the Ambient Century... duh... I kept thinking the info looked familiar when I read the book, but I forgot that your page is where I saw it before. Too much typing, not enough sleeping I guess! I removed the book from "further reading" per your suggestion.

Thanks for confirming the Star's End quote. Have a good wikibreak. --Parsifal _Hello 04:50, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the reversions on SpM, who knows what you'll find when you get this note, but tonight GP reverted - in one edit - both your reinstatement of the history info, and, my reinstatement of the stars' end reference (used in 6 places), and the word "broad" re range of genres, in the intro.

I had also added around the same time, the words "psychoacoustic" and "spacey" to the second paragraph, but I did not interchange the paragraphs and restore the "selection of songs" version of the intro as it was in the version from last week. He has so far not reverted the second paragraph changes, but there was an EC so I don't know if he saw them yet.

Then, I re-added the stars' end reference he kept deleting, as a separate edit, so it's clear it's not a content change. I did it separately last time too, but it seems he's just pretty much reverting whatever I add, so who knows if he even noticed that.

I have not yet though, re-added the word "broad" to the intro regarding "broad range of genres", and I've not yet restored the Pythagoras info he removed twice. I'm being careful because although I've been doing only occasional reverts, I've been doing a lot of edits and I don't want anything to be misunderstood. So the current open items are: to re-add the word "broad" & the Greek history info. If you want to do one or both of those, that would be cool. Of course, by the time you see this, things may have changed again.

(The Pythagoras stuff is interesting, there's more in the sources I haven't had time to review in detail.... he ascribed some healing qualities to music too, according to his contemporaries. I have a few more references on that, but my Wikitime has limits. I'll get to them eventuatlly.) --Parsifal _Hello 09:15, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

PS. take a look at GP's & V's talk pages for recent entries. --Parsifal _Hello 23:00, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

short reply...

Hi - Thanks for your note - have to make this short - time management issues.... Meanwhile, re your "PS"... , at the timestamp of this message, the word "broad" is missing from "broad range of genres" in the intro, even though it's strongly supported by the references. The star's end reference I re-added last night, as it was just a reference and not a content change, GP's not reverted it; we'll see if that changes. The Greek stuff is cool too (and not OR, it's of historical interest), but less important than the intro. I'll reply to the rest of your note as soon as I can make the time... Have a good one... --Parsifal _Hello 06:34, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

PS. GP comment and my reply, on new SpM editor's talk page --Parsifal _Hello 22:03, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

PPS... Does HoS program Space Music? --Parsifal _Hello 03:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

PPPS... further on HoS --Parsifal _Hello 07:44, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Safety

"Obviously I can safely look at the page for a film I've seen, or for a book I already know I won't want to see. But for anything in between those categories – any anime, computer game, film, book, or TV series that I might or might not want to see, as well as for random characters like the Dread Pirate Roberts where I might not be able to remember what fictional work they're from – Wikipedia is no longer safe for me to use."

-Alex Churchill (emphasis added)

Hey, Milo. I'm wondering how you might integrate this use of the word "safe" into your general thesis that the word "warning" is misappiled to spoiler tags? Ethan Mitchell 19:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't able to find the quote on the web, so I'm not certain of the context, including exactly which Alex Churchill this is.

"Spoiler alert" and "spoiler warning" are the two most popular web forms of describing upcoming spoilers (see statistics below). The profit-hyped use of "alert" and "warning" to imply "danger" also falsely imply that spoilering disappointment is dangerous. Mr. Churchill is rhetorically inverting these popular false-implications of danger to a direct expression of safety.

However, once inverted, "safe" is a slightly broader term than are "warning", and "danger". At M-W.com "safe", the first meaning word refers to "harm", but the second word is "risk". At M-W.com "risk", the first word is "loss", referring to financial loss, and the second word is "injury".

My reading of M-W.com is that Mr. Churchill is using "safe", formally incorrectly in reference to spoiler notices.

I posted the following Google search on 19 August:

"...there are 765,000 of "spoiler warning" (49%), a suprising 762,000 of "spoiler alert" (49%), and 14,000 of "spoiler notice" (0.9%)." | "...827 instances of "spoiler caution" (0.05%), possibly a UK-influenced usage." [total of 1,541,827 hits]

In a Google search on 7 November:

There are 729,000 hits on "spoiler warning" (46%), 857,000 on "spoiler alert" (54%), and 2,820 on "spoiler notice"(0.18%), 732 for "spoiler caution" (0.05%). a total of 1,589,552 hits.

Total hits are up 47,725; "spoiler warning" down 36,000; "spoiler alert" up 95,000; "spoiler notice" down 11,180; "spoiler caution" down 95. The hit count changes from 8/19 to 11/7 probably say more about Google web crawls and searches than they say about changes in rhetorical usage. With only two data points, it's not possible to decide whether "warning" or "alert" is more popular.

However, based on the total number of hits, I previously drew the conclusion that possibly a million fans of narrative suspense exist externally to Wikipedia, and that possibility remains a reasonable one, including that they collectively do not approve of the removal of 45,000 Wikipedia spoiler tags in May 2007. Milo 07:14, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

yes, it's a barnstar

		The Socratic Barnstar
		I, Parsifal, hereby award this most rhetorical of barnstars to Milomedes, for the dependable and unique excellence of his concept-English focus-devices, memorable utility words, and arguments both deep and entertaining at the same time. --Parsifal Hello 08:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Milo, I know you like a blank user page and probably have no use for a barnstar, but after reading your response to Melodia's meltdown, and various other of your (non-GP, non SpM) debates, I wanted to express my appreciation for what I've learned from your unusual and intriguing approach. I don't know if you've studied the techniques or made them up yourself, but I've never seen anything like it; you make logical points that often that take some thought to apprehend but then seem simple and clear once they are apprehended, and somehow, right there in the midst of the rhetoric, humor is lurking in the next turn of phrase.

I'm taking an extended wikibreak due to time management issues, so I won't be on-wiki as regularly as I have been. You were the first person to post on my talk page in March, and I'm sure you recall what the issue was. I will still edit and check my talk page and watchlist when I can, but I don't know how often. SpM and related topics of course, will have my attention when I do. In the meantime, I have some insights about Wikipedia I'd like to discuss with you, but in email, not on-Wiki (and Gene, since you are reading this, no, you are not what's on my mind here)... My email link is active and you are certainly welcome to use it, though I am aware that you have told others you don't use email, so if you choose not to, I understand and no problem.

Best Wishes,... --Parsifal _Hello 08:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

For knocking some sense into me at Wikipedia talk:Spoiler.  :) Your latest comment did me in.  ;) Cheers, Iamunknown 23:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Um, ok. I'm glad you have a sense of humor. :) Milo 01:40, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

unsourced

So much for Wikibreak, eh? Actually, I am limiting my time compared to previously, though I need to scale back more.

I guess I should post the following on the talk page, maybe I will later, but for now I just wanted to let you know why I didn't add the footnotes you requested. They are all there in the history section, and they can be collected if needed, but I didn't add them because the first part of that sentence was pure OR, that the usage of the term is limited to artists who used the term themselves (even with the 8 commentator exception).

It may be a true fact, or maybe not, I don't know. I've been surprised at how many sources I found already about space music before HoS. But I have not been able to find even one source discussing the historical use of the term, or whether or not it was used before a certain time. If we were writing about "Rock and Roll" we could easily find sources like that. But in this case, we don't have them, so the only way to include that statement would be to toss WP:V out the window.... well, IMHO that is. --Parsifal _Hello 03:24, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

PS. a little something for your watchlist... --Parsifal _Hello 05:40, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Logical fallacy

I've responded at Talk:Space music, but in the form of a question. I don't understand what Gene is getting at any more than you do. We'll just have to see what he says. Postmodern Beatnik 22:49, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Request For Comment opened at WP:PW regarding spoilers and sources

[6]. As you were previously involved in a debate at WP:PW over spoilers and sources, you may wish to comment at the link. Thanks, Davnel03 21:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Could you perhaps

Specify an email address? If you don't want to, please email me at TheHybrid72@gmail.com. There's some info I'd like to give you, but I'd feel uncomfortable posting it on the wiki. Peace, The Hybrid T/C 07:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Have some love

TheDJ has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy editing! I give you a smile instead. Like those a lot more. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Annie Oakley: I did it because....

(Copied from User:Clay4president2)
Hi, I don't know why you added "Category:People from Pinehurst, North Carolina" to Annie Oakley, the superstar sharpshooter (1860-1926). She was from western Ohio, and AFAIK, the only other place she had put down significant roots was Cambridge, Maryland. Perhaps there is a wrestler by that ring name? If so, that person should be added to Annie Oakley (disambiguation). (Please reply here if desired) Milo 06:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

the Pinehurst, North Carolina page claims that she was a notable from that city. I was going merely on that citation. Clay4president2 (talk) 01:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

(Copied from User:Clay4president2)

According to Dorchester County Public Library Annie Oakley biography, she is indeed a notable of Pinehurst, North Carolina, as well as several other places. Reportedly, Annie and Frank performed and lived for a number of years in a Pinehurst hotel after they sold their house in Cambridge.

The category problem seems to be that she is not from Pinehurst, which I usually understand to mean a place where one is born or grows up. Milo 04:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

(Note User:Clay4president2 removed the category 00:55, 6 February 2008)

Cult

I added the text you asked for on the talk page. personaly I believe it would realy help drive home the point that what makes a cult a "Cult" is hard to interperate, however I will leave it up to you on what infromation to add, and how to add the information.Coffeepusher (talk) 22:06, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Great work on "Christian cult"

Great work on the "Christian Cult" article. You really whipped it into shape. --Editor2020 (talk) 03:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: Deleted redirect Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Christian cult

Thanks for pointing that out, I'm not sure why it showed up red for me. I've restored the redirect. east.718 at 18:02, February 18, 2008

Notes and References compromise

A solomonic decision. Works for me.--Editor2020 (talk) 01:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

L ron hubbard

thank you for the rewrite of the sexual section of cult. unfortunatly as it stands I don't think it belongs in this section. the Church of scientology didn't start untill the publication of Dianetics...which was in 1950, while the plural marrage that you referanced was in 1946. So although he was technacly a paligamist for a year, he wasn't "using his position of power for sexual gratification" as the intro of the section talks about. I am not against the addition of L ron into this section, if a source can be found (There are many rumors about "sex with kids" later in his life...I just havn't found any sources). I personaly think it should be deleted as it stands, what is your opinion?Coffeepusher (talk) 14:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

You have a good point. That makes this a secondary reference suitable for use after a first tier ref can be found. I found a lead suggesting a source to a first-tier ref in the Corydon and Hubbard, Jr book.

I'll do a 'temporarily delete and save for secondary use when post-1950 ref is found' edit summary. Milo 22:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The new entry only implys sex... "hot pants" etc, and only gives the same slant on discription that an anti-catholic publication would give to say alter boys (exept they don't ware hot pants, but rather "dresses"). If a solid source or accusation can't be found, I am wondering why L Ron should be included in this section. I understand that it is in vouge to critisise Scientology, but this entery comes from a one page source from a critical publication that is obviously slanted standing beside enterys that have been verifyed by multipal sources with better credibility. If this is the only source fo this information, it is questionable at best.Coffeepusher (talk) 22:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

My most recent edit was entirely about not biting good-faith-edit newbies. Yes, the entry does not work on topic, as I wrote in my edit summary addressed to the anon. 209.128.98.90 put in the entry and wrote:

"Cult 06:19, 23 April 2008 209.128.98.90 (Re-added line about Hubbard with ref. The reference mentions he was in a plural marriage with 3 of his followers, and that's what this section is about - so please don't remove the reference!)"

Yet 209.128.98.90 had obviously made several serious errors in reading A Piece of Blue Sky, one of which you already had pointed out (that there was no mention of "slept with" in the sexual sense), and there was also no marriage with 3 of his followers. Checking his/her contribs, 209.128.98.90 seems to be making a serious attempt to contribute usefully, though s/he's still what one might call a cub editor. So rather than offend hir by simply removing the material, I rewrote it to match what the ref actually said, and pointed this out to hir in my edit summary:

"Cult 08:08, 23 April 2008 Milomedes (Sexual gratification or plural marriage by leaders: Hi 209.128.98.90 you've provided some good item leads, but you got the Blue Sky ref's facts wrong; see my rewrite for how it doesn't work here.)"

As for the source, I didn't RS vet it because I didn't intend for this entry to be retained long term. It does appear to be a book chapter, and professionally published books about Scientology are particularly well-vetted before publication, as lawsuits and threats of them have been frequent and publicly documented.

The basic principle of Reliable Source, is that the more people who critically examine a manuscript before publication, the more likely it is to be reliable ("Publications with teams of fact-checkers, reporters, editors, lawyers, and managers..."). Books issued by established for-profit (not vanity) publishers, and authors with at minimum a lack of significant fact-check criticism (check professional reviews archived at Amazon.com), are minimally considered WP:V Reliable Sources. The more experience, credentials, or credibility an author has increase reliability above the minimum.

So I've done my part to be cooperative with 209.128.98.90 by demonstrating a quality-referenced factual rewrite. Since the corrected entry doesn't progress the section subject, how do you think the next step should be handled so that 209.128.98.90 believes hir contribution has been fairly disposed? Milo 05:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I really admire your way of bringing the ip into wikipedia. I have some stuff to learn. The source is evidently reliable (it is cited by many critics, however its publisher is questionable) but as I have stated I belive the entery, as it stands, shouldn't be included (I am gathering you are on the same page right now). I will respect the IP, and send a message to them, directing them to this conversation and ask for their input. when I was a newcomer a well respected member did the same for me, and I appriciated it.Coffeepusher (talk) 19:00, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

its been 10 days, and I havn't heard anything from the IP. I propose the section gets deleted, because the only mention of sex is baced on a plural marrage prior to the creation of scientology, and the reast of the entry only imply's sex through well chosen language. If you have any objections I would appriciate your input, otherwise I will go ahead and delete the entry on monday.Coffeepusher (talk) 03:59, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

We did the proper things, so deleting it is ok with me. Since s/he left a note in their edit summary, you might mention our efforts to discuss it with them in yours. Milo 04:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

List of groupts.../NOR

One editor keeps adding an OR tag to List of groups referred to as cults. I think that it's legitimate for editors of a list to agree on criteria fro the list without requiring a source as a basis. For example, the criteria of "List of lawyers" excludes lawyers who are politicians (thought that seems to have been ignored). List of African American jurists requires that entries be self-identified as "African-American". "List of important publications in sociology" has a lengthy criteria, with no apparent source for any of it. And so forth. Since the issue at the "List of groups..." seems to be in a deadlock I think it wold be helpful to seek additional viewpoints. There's now a noticeboard for "original research" issues: WP:NORN. While I think that list criteria don't need sources, if there are sources for the criteria then that would help make the case. Do you think you could marshall the relevant source for a brief submission? I'm thinking of posting something in the next few days. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Orange Papers

I understand the criteria for external sources. However you may want to reconsider your support for orange papers. I understand that any site that clasifies another group as a cult is contriversial and apt to fail the criteria for reliable sources, and that the inclusion of these voices can be helpfull to the article. But Orange Papers blatently misrepresents studies to push his point of view, and for that reason falls into the...second criteria I think...for links that should not be included. You can also check the Alcoholics Anonymous talk archives #6, where there is a large discussion over inclusion of articles. The "Orange" sub note and some of the discussion that preceded it offers some insight into what happens when you cross check his conclusions to the origional studies. The Cult article is contriversial enough, I think that if we include this link it will damage the credibility of the article itself, especialy when there are reliable sources that are critical of AA that are available.Coffeepusher (talk) 19:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

This is an interesting editorial problem, and I welcome your input on how to solve it.

The central problem is how to reveal that just like other cult-referred groups, AA has cult apostates, not mere uninvolved critics typical of reliable sources. Orange Papers frequently refers to AA as a cult, "Orange" mentions attending many meetings, and I think shows criticism rising to the level of apostasy. Yet Orange Papers does make an attempt to reference these criticisms, and I formally cited two reliable sources that Orange Papers provided about AA Midtown Group, showing that AA can become locally unpopular (Washington DC meetings booted from churches).

It isn't necessary to endorse Orange's views of AA which are beyond the cult topic. As for disendorsing them at the external link, I did search Talk:Alcoholics_Anonymous/Archive_6 but didn't notice much besides a complaint about Orange's website section having someone else's misrepresentative AA study. Maybe I missed it, but the discussion about Orange did not seem pointed or extensive. It seems like it is Lemanski who is being criticised, and that Orange merely cited and followed Lemanski's lead. Is that enough to disendorse the entire large set of Orange Papers?

AA is very important as a lead-featured article counter-example, because it breaks the public's stereotype of what populist cult must be like: a heretical religion, and/or a systematic mind-controlling group exploitation. This is an NPOV breakthrough to years of vaguely-expressed but persistent complaints against Cult's systemic bias against cults. AA may well be the only known group that has been scientifically studied concluding sociological cult status with mind-control features, scientifically studied concluding beneficial membership, yet popular with the cult-disliking public, as well as being a non-fan cult regularly recommended by cult-averse psychological professionals.

I think Cult is becoming somewhat less controversial than it was two or more years ago. This article has become much better referenced, and the subject's difficult-to-explain homonymic conflict over definitions is slowly becoming more understandable. However, controversial articles are typically edited in circles, so this may be a temporary lull during which centrist editors should work together to balance the conflicting POV's in their proportional weights. This provides the best chance for Cult to become non-controversial, if that is possible. Milo 21:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with the inclusion of AA in referance to a cult, and I do believe that we could glean some referances from Orange to encorperate them into the article. However I do not endorce the iclusion of his link, because it is highly selective in what he referances and thus is not a good canditate for external links. you can see a rebuttle at this link for agent orange (it was in archive 6...and I was involved in the argument, so I probably read the conversation differently from an outsider). I understand why you are trying to answer the question "The central problem is how to reveal that just like other cult-referred groups, AA has cult apostates, not mere uninvolved critics typical of reliable sources." but an external link to Agent Orange implys an endorcement of the content...which is why #2 of external links to avoid cautions against including links that distort content. My solution is delete the link, because it dosn't fall under the criteria of good external links. (incert Snowball fallicy in logic argument here)... and the earth spirals into the sun. we can definatly search for a reliable critic, posibly from the Ratonal Recovery website. However the inclusion of unreliable links to prove a point usually takes away from the point beeing made. My takeaway from orange is that since his argument can't be made without distorting figures and studies it appears his conclusions must be wrong, and anyone who uses his figures just don't know how to fact check. now that isn't necisarily the case, but if his arguments are the ones used to prove the point...wellCoffeepusher (talk) 21:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the Agent Green link. I didn't notice it at WP:AA archive 6. I find it very helpful.

Agent Green does make your point about Orange's distorting of figures and studies, though accusing Orange of lying strikes me as a distorted charge of hir own. "Orange will not admit that AA has helped a single one of them" isn't lying. Furthermore, Orange does imply an intended commitment to facts per both Orange and Green, and Green compliments Orange's huge amount of reading and thousands of pages website.

I haven't read much of Orange, but based on Green, Orange doesn't seem to have written overt "factually inaccurate material" or "unverifiable research". Rather, according to my reading of Green's analysis, Orange seems to have drawn hir own faulted summary conclusions based on poor scholarship of scholarly sources. Green is being harsh on Orange's massive research efforts, since Green agrees "It's hard to find objective opinions, even in the research world" and "AA is simply a tough topic to research".

Of evidence toward cult apostasy, Green discusses how "AA often provokes extreme reactions.", "If AA helps them, they swear by AA for the rest of their lives.", "If AA harms them, they become angry critics.", "Q: Are all AA members abusive cult extremists, like Agent Orange says? A: No. Q: Are some AA members abusive cult extremists? A: Yes.", and "By his obsessive anti-AA stance, Orange may be turning away desperate people whom AA might be able to help."

As I understand it, Wikipedia does allow external links to POV sites for various good reasons (for example the KKK website), and disendorsement of a useful external link is permitted: "Add comments to these links informing the reader of their point of view."(Wikipedia:External links#Avoid undue weight on particular points of view)

So I suggest a solution to the problem is to link to both Orange and Green, draft like so:

• The Orange Papers - Massive referenced site keynoted with angry cultic criticism of Alcoholics Anonymous by ex-member "Agent Orange". Some of Orange's conclusions may distort the referenced AA-effectiveness studies.
• The Effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous - "Agent Green's" referenced site strongly disputes Orange Papers' "obsessive anti-AA" conclusions, and that only some members are "abusive cult extremists, like Agent Orange says".

Milo 02:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I like that pairing. it would frame the contriversy accuratly, and allow people to draw their own conclusions. I have taken care of the edit.Coffeepusher (talk) 13:54, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Maika na wawa chinuk?

Maika kamatax naika nim kapa chinuk wawa. Maika na wawa chinuk? Chee Chahko (talk) 14:42, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Reply re archiving

(Copied from user Cirt) == Too many archive repair cooks ==

Please, I wasn't done working on the solving the archive problems when you jumped in and moved false Archive 1 to Archive 2. I thought of that but that creates an Archive 1 that is too small, which makes later research more difficult by requiring extra page searches.
I was working on the proper fix which is to empty Archive 1 then put the missing material in it. Now there is a new problem of a ghost archive 2 that will screw up future archiving to 1.
Also redirects can really mess up the history of fixes. The early history was lost that way of Purported Cults, Destructive cult, List of cults, List of groups referred to as cults (not exactly sure, LOGRTAC history is inaccessible now; I think the original list was in Cult) when Ed Poor went on self-styled rampage of title changes that others objected, then self-reverted with back and forth redirects.
And - articles that are worked on with long fallow periods in between should not be automatically archived. Rather they should be manually archived by work era. Milo 03:18, 24 July 2008

At 160 kilobytes long - Archive 1 is already large enough. And I fixed the counter so new archiving will go to Archive 2. I think that fixes everything. Cirt (talk) 03:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Mizabot is currently set to 250K archives. That means the first archive is only 160K, and all the rest will be 250K. That creates the extra search that I've had to waste time on elsewhere.

And I strongly object to automatically reducing the talk page to one thread between editing eras. (I and others went through a long and bitter debate on this overarchiving issue for a completely unrelated article). It means that newcomers typically don't see the complete previous work session and may start the same debates again. Milo 03:46, 24 July 2008

Each archive does not have to be the exact same size, and surely 160K was really quite long. And as far as how big to have the talk page be between editing eras, I suppose that is up to the consensus on each talk page for each article - but I think setting a good chunk of time like one month, or three months, is entirely appropriate. If a discussion thread has zero new posts or activity for over a month, then it probably is not being actively discussed. One can always refer to the archives at that point, and new users can be pointed there to read up on prior discussions as well. Cirt (talk) 03:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

In any event, looking at WP:ARCHIVE (which is not policy) there does not seem to be any set uniform standard relating to archives and archiving, even that page states: The decisions when to archive and what is the optimal length for talk pages are made according to the Wikipedia policy of consensus among the editors on each particular talk page. Cirt (talk) 03:55, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Newcombers don't read archives before they start posting, and that includes me. Loading and reloading pages is unwanted work. It isn't about standards, every page has different local conditions. Unless a page is being rapidly posted to the point of hampering page access, time is an inappropriate measure for when to archive a page. If a page is not being actively discussed it generally shouldn't be messed with – excepting that if it's over 300k, archiving it down to about the 8-10 most recent threads.

I see we are not going to agree on any point, so there's no reason to continue discussing them. Milo 04:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Your last sentence is a bit strong, but otherwise I appreciate your polite explanations. Cirt (talk) 04:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Multi-IP anon editor — conflict of interest?

Hi. Thanks for your supportive comments regarding the dispute I'm currently embroiled in.

I'm curious regarding one thing you said: From an analysis of the multiple-IP-addresses, that editor appears to be a paid employee of an institution engaged in apprehending USA illegal foreign nationals. Could you elaborate on this? I looked up his/her IP addresses, and it appears to me that some of them belong to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, while the rest belong to an ISP (Road Runner) — presumably corresponding to work and home locations, respectively. It isn't immediately clear to me that working for the Air Force in Ohio constitutes a clear COI with respect to illegal immigration issues. Or am I missing something here? Richwales (talk) 16:22, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

First note that I wrote "...may rise to a WP:COI violation", and inclusively it may become consensed that he does not have a COI. If it is consensed that he does have a COI, not all COIs, clear or otherwise, rise to WP:COI (shorthand meaning rising to a violation of that guiderule).

Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#What is a conflict of interest?: "Adding material that appears to promote the interests ... of ... its author's ... employer, associates, or their business or personal interests, places the author in a conflict of interest."

The editor appears to be a WPAFB civilian or ranked employee of the USA military institution and/or the USA Department of Defense. Within that well-known USA "110%" culture, if he did not strongly believe in his military/defense employer's missions, it's unlikely that he could keep his apparent job.

The DoD and all branches of the military have been tasked by the US government with apprehension of some illegal foreign nationals. A major philosophical objection to police-tasking the military this way, is that militaries are trained to defeat 'enemies' by any means short of war crimes, however unfair such tactics might seem in civilian life.

To an increasing degree in asymmetrical warfare, defeat of military enemies relies on psywar, mostly classic propaganda. The best propaganda is true (or seems to be true, see Truthiness), but is an unbalanced version of the whole truth. This propaganda is freely transmitted to ranked military units, and transmitted with more caution to the civilian population through press releases and reporter contacts. An in-between channel is the families of ranked military personnel and civilian employees of DoD, who indirectly spread the propaganda to the civilian population. The latter channel has the advantage of being almost 'no fingerprints' as to source.

Indeed, had this editor not outed himself, Wikipedia might not have discovered his appearance of COI.

His apparent COI seems to be expressed in this case, as a tendentious POV push for article inclusion of neologisms (plus OR), to which supporters of illegal foreign nationals vehemently object. This POV push includes article editing which may rise to WP:COI. While this editor's actions are interpretable as a push to include propaganda, his prospective claim to have not actually done so doesn't matter; he still has the appearance of a COI, and COI guiderules apply to appearances as well as actualities.

Accordingly, the provisions of WP:COI call for an editor with a COI, in this case his employed appearance of non-neutrality toward USA illegal foreign nationals that his employer apprehends, to not edit articles that discuss USA illegal foreign nationals without prior consensus on those articles' talk pages. Milo 19:35, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks for that explanation. I'm not yet 100% sure if I, personally, agree with you on this particular suggestion of COI, but I do agree that it's at least worthy of serious consideration, and I'd like to see the question discussed further. I don't believe I would be the appropriate person, right now, to bring up this issue with the anonymous editor, since (1) his/her accusation against me is still "on the table" and not yet formally resolved in any way, and (2) I'm concerned that my suggesting a possible COI could be viewed as an effort on my part to squelch his/her position via an ad hominem argument. But if you would feel comfortable raising this matter on the "birthright citizenship" talk page (or related talk pages), I'd welcome the ensuing discussion. Richwales (talk) 20:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Concerning (1), CIreland seemed generally unconcerned, and I've given you a complete not-at-fault assessment. I'm uncertain as to what more you want.

The editor in question is also a problem known to others, one of whom wrote to you. So much of a problem that one of the other worst COI editors that I know well, actually conceded and abandoned some articles to his ownership. AGF need not be assumed given evidence to the contrary.

Concerning (2), as you've already experienced, and based on his known history, this editor will tendentiously challenge anything you do to squelch his/her position leading to COI page ownership.

For other than gaming superficial compliance with guiderules, I suspect he considers consensus negotiations to be a form of weakness, to be defeated while overcoming the 'enemy' by installing propaganda against them in articles.

If you don't accept the DoD/military COI explanation, perhaps you have no other coherent theory to understand why he is acting as he is. Without such understanding, you may have tactics in mind (like admin reports), but probably no strategy to defeat what the evidence suggests to be his military-minded progressive conquest of Wikipedia article territory. Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a battleground, but when outsiders infiltrate for non-project editing purposes, then it either becomes one, or project editors abandon that virtual ground.

If you stay, you'll need to organize a campaign of assistance, but that requires a strategy. If you leave, it would helpful to warn a group best equipped to deal with this editor's MO, but since you apparently don't accept the COI theory, I'm not sure what group you could usefully warn (ANI does not deal well with tendentious, stealth COI campaigns). If there is nothing else to consider, that suggests that you should just leave.

If you don't accept my exposition of the editor's plain text violations of WP:COI, then there is no obvious reason why others would either.

This isn't a tendentious teenager. After seeing how he 'made you wrong', I can't imagine waltzing onto that talk page without a strategy and a consensus group backup. Milo 08:31, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't say I was actively dismissing your analysis of the situation, and I wasn't trying to minimize or brush aside your perspective. In any event — whether this editor is in fact a US military propagandist or propaganda tool (an idea I'll confess I hadn't seriously considered before and may still need some more time to digest), or simply an ultraopinionated and hypercombative individual, or possibly a mixture of both — I definitely feel (and have felt for some time) that his style is highly disruptive and needs to be either moderated or contained, but certainly not meekly conceded to. I've jumped back into the "anchor baby" talk page, and I'll probably do the same soon on the "birthright citizenship" page.

As for this editor's allegation that the WP rules demand the indiscriminate acceptance of charged terms without regard for whether some people might find them offensive — he insisted at one point, for instance, that there would be no valid grounds to object to replacing "African-American" with the "N-word" ethnic slur in an article — I "just know" this is an outrageous position that can't possibly hold water, but I wish I knew a specific piece of policy that is generally accepted as dealing with this issue. How would you address this (as a general principle, and not simply in connection with this one particular editor)? Richwales (talk) 16:10, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the editor is a person with multiple motivations. He debates using a rhetorical style that is a sophist stretch beyond his ability. He covers this by using tendentious tactics, such as making you the distractive issue when you called him on his rhetoric. At root he is probably a nationalist ideologue.

Being an ideologue means that one can think normally about other things, but issues of ideology tend to be controlled by sometimes dangerous thought-terminating cliches (e.g., 'my country right or wrong').

Pardon for being blunt, but this issue has a history, and you're headed down the same path on which 11-some other editors collectively lost. (And btw it was reported by a major WP:COI embarrassment to WP, so it's prudent to avoid him in a COI-related case.)

The failure of Wikipedia:Offensive to attain consensus in 2006 means that all such words are politically controlled by contextually-sensitive editing consensus. There is an N-word article, and over 3,000 other contextual uses on en.wikipedia.org. However, as a matter of realpolitik, a non-contextual N-word use would not be consensed. Therefore, it's too extreme to be a valid comparison to that minor charged term, which I've never heard previously – possibly because I get most of my news from TV, as I've heard is typical in the US. Milo 01:06, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that link to the noticeboard archive. So I guess, then — for what it might or might not be worth — that it really has been well established for some time now that this editor is the same person as Psychohistorian (though why he/she apparently chose to abandon this account and edit via IP addresses remains unclear).

I'm sorry that this whole sordid situation has been around for so long and that there doesn't appear to be any effective way to deal with it.

I was a bit confused by one thing you said, though: And btw it was reported by a major WP:COI embarrassment to WP, so it's prudent to avoid him in a COI-related case. Could you clarify what you meant by this? Richwales (talk) 03:40, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

[7] [8]

One more thing. Given the immense potential for confusion on the part of other editors as to whether this is several people sharing IP addresses from a dynamically assigned pool, or one editor using several dynamic IP addresses, or even one editor using multiple addresses as sockpuppets — a sort of confusion which this editor seems to welcome (or at least feels no need to actively dispel) — is there any accepted, reasonable interpretation of the WP rules that could force him to stick to a single, consistent identity? I know that people are allowed to edit WP without getting an account — and Jimbo and others have adamantly insisted on this — but this specific case seems to me (and, I'm sure, to others) to have become a situation where the "no-account-required" rule has been abused and twisted into something that can't possibly bear any relation to what the rule was intended to mean. I don't necessarily care if he revives the Psychohistorian account, or lets that account "vanish" and creates a new account, or decides to disclaim that he ever really was Psychohistorian and agrees to create his "first" account — but I really think that basic respect for WP and its culture really calls for this person to create and use an account if he's going to be doing lots of editing (and lots of arguing on talk pages) over such an extended period of time. Or is this something that is simply, flat-out impossible to do? Or am I simply wrong in proposing this? Richwales (talk) 06:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd say the multi-IP angle has already been pursued, he declared his IP accounts on his user page, and the issue was abandoned. See [9]. Anyway, IP socking is a minor side issue compared to his COI-driven tendentiousness in the immigration articles, or just quibbling conflicts with other editors apparently not driven by COI. For the quibbling conflicts case, see his RFC/U [10]).

I would not draw a premature closure that no effective way to deal with this situation exists; rather, that established ways of dealing with it have been ineffective.

This situation requires political and rhetorical creativity.

I have the impression that you are friendly with a lot of Wikipedians. Who do you know that is good at solving political problems?

In order to persuade such a political person, you need a rhetorically-armored sound byte description of what the editor is doing, that you can diff, that average Wikipedians will consider a compelling problem, that the editor can't easily deny with quibbling, and that will memorably refocus the message after an attempted distraction. Milo 08:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

break

Actually, you just triggered a thought in my mind. Given the appearance of a COI on the part of this editor, it seems to me that it would be reasonable to ask him/her to use an account and explicitly acknowledge any potentially relevant ties (such as the fact and nature of his/her connection with the Air Force) on his/her user page. People shouldn't be forced to do WHOIS'es on someone's IP address(es) in order to intuit such things. Richwales (talk) 18:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

If you have not done so, I suggest reading or re-reading WP:COI.

"Wikipedia gives no advice about whether or how to use its pages to post personal details." For example, the editor could choose to declare a COI without being specific as to why. But they need not declare anything. They are required only to abstain from COI article edits.

There is a balance-of-interests principle weighing pseudonymous editing against COI. Since "anonymous" IP editing is explicitly permitted, presumably COI is balanced against it as well.

While the declared use of "anonymous" multiple IPs at a pseudonymous named account may be rare (unique?), there are possibly technical reasons of convenience or necessity for doing so. You're an off-wiki sysadmin. If you were consulting for DoD, would you recommend that military base computers not be allowed to retain non-business cookies between sessions? (Otherwise, "All your base are belong to us"? Hehe, I always wanted to say that.)

I assume the editor is working from WPAFB during lunch and break times. Perhaps he could easily use the named account at home, but while experienced WP editors take dynamic IPs in stride, it could be that jumping between IPs at work and a named account at home caused even more confusion. Talk page IP block jumping is a rarity to me, but being fair, he showed no signs of trying to hide behind IP socks, even across IP blocks.

The evolution of the IP Wikiscanner was enormously useful in finding out who among corporations and institutions were covertly editing WP to their advantage. (I independently caught the telephone company censoring WP.) I find whois lookups to be much faster than reading a couple of user/user talk pages; besides, this COI probably couldn't have been cracked without it. Milo 21:43, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi again. FWIW, the IP addresses on Psychohistorian's user page were not put there by Psychohistorian, but by Ramsey2006 and Will Beback. Psychohistorian has made no attempt to remove these addresses, but the anonymous IP editor recently mentioned this material in an apparent backhanded disavowal thereof.

I don't really care if this anonymous IP editor is or isn't Psychohistorian (except from the standpoint of being disturbed about whether this person can be depended upon to give straight, consistent answers — take another look at that 2006 WP:ANI archive which seemed to establish pretty clearly that the IP addresses in question were in fact being used by the same person as Psychohistorian). I do care that this editor seems (from my point of view) to be exploiting the rules in such a way as to unbalance, confuse, and mislead other users and arguably advance a non-neutral viewpoint via behaviour which, if not literally in violation of any rules, is nevertheless violating the spirit and intent of the rules.

While I concede that the rules may not explicitly demand using an account and declaring the details of one's potential COI's on one's user page, I hope (or at least wish) that this could be accomplished for this particular user and others who have shown such a long-standing pattern of seeing how close to the line they can operate without actually stepping on or over the line. I suppose that may be a vain hope (someone else would probably have managed to force him to do this already if it were possible at all), but whatever . . . .

Even if he isn't allowed to keep cookies from non-business or non-secure sites between sessions at work, that shouldn't keep him from doing something like set his browser to toss its cookies on exit. Maybe I'd be convinced that he had a valid technical need to operate the way he does if I heard the reasons in more detail, but so far, the most I've seen are some statements to the effect that he has his own private and personal reasons for wanting to remain an outsider.

And yes, I agree that this editor serendipitously allowed those in the know to determine where he works, and thus to be alerted to the possibility of a COI — but users in general should not be required to use "nerd" tools in order to be aware of such issues w/r/t a given editor. And I realize that it may be impossible in general to enforce WP:COI against editors who take pains to hide their backgrounds — and given the outside material you referred me to earlier, I understand it is probably also impossible to fix the holes in the policy. But, again, whatever . . . . Richwales (talk) 05:07, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

"users in general should not be required to use "nerd" tools" I participated in the war on spam, so I had my own set of IP tools when I first started editing WP. After a year or so, WP began to provide them to everyone for use with IP numbers. When anyone can just click "whois" and read the geographic location like any other page, it's not a nerd tool any more.

"that shouldn't keep him from doing something like set his browser to toss its cookies on exit." Isn't that what a WPAFB workstation might enforce between sessions to prevent cookie tracking? Thus he wouldn't be able to keep a WP user login cookie? So he'd be forced to manually login every time? I sure wouldn't like that, so I too would at least think about multi-IP anonymous editing.

Good catch on finding that others posted the IP#s on his user page.

About the latest page link you provided – if you've seen "All the President's Men (film)", the editor seems to be engaging in "non-denial denial". Now, a professional MI desk analyst doesn't need to have the slick operative talents of a Valerie Plame, but this is a bit clumsy. It doesn't seem like how any MI professional would behave, which hints at a wannabe-type game.

He's also sounding like a civilian employee with an education, perhaps in history. That's not a degree which is reputedly useful for getting a job, but maybe he's an archivist, or does some other kind of record-keeping. If he's a glorified clerk, I could see why his job doesn't fulfill his student-of-history or political interests.

"unbalance, confuse, and mislead other users and arguably advance a non-neutral viewpoint via behavior " That seems possible, but perhaps evolved rather than planned. I don't get a sense of military discipline, rather that he wings his way through his interactions at WP. He has some skills at getting away with it, he's mostly gotten away with it, so he keeps doing it.

I gather that you're not comfortable with a political approach to the problem. Milo 09:30, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

You're right; this sort of thing is not something I'm comfortable with. I may possibly be too "diplomatic" for my own good. :-}

I put a feeler about the possibility of a COI in the "illegal immigration" talk page last night, and here is how the other editor responded. I'm inclined to keep waiting for the moment and see what others might decide to say about all this. Richwales (talk) 16:59, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

You have my sympathies. I agree that you were excessively diplomatic, and aggressors often exploit that otherwise desirable personal characteristic.

However, the dialog problems go beyond excess diplomacy. In addition to tactical errors, it's a good example of why it's a mistake to substitute tactics for strategy.

The type of academic neutrality desirable for weighing and balancing content issues is misplaced in behavior cases, because fundamentally one or both sides don't want neutrality – they want to win.

Never publicly propose an editing behavior case that you don't believe in.

Don't argue against your own case unless/until later evidence changes your mind.

In situations where you aren't convinced, or sense that others also won't be, it's often best to save the evidenced charge for use until the other party hangs themself after being given more rope.

Using the 80/20 estimation rule, I'd say there is an 80% chance that you've already lost the COI case because of your own opening statements. Best to not further mention a COI issue you can't effectively argue because you don't believe in it.

Worse still, you lost ground by giving him an excuse to claim a personal attack, partly because you WP:BEANS raised the issue.

Your could focus on defending against the personal attack charge, or, you could just drop the thread because of finding yourself hopelessly outmatched no matter what you do. Good businesspeople cut their losses.

The most common mistake made in charging a personal attack is confusing a report of behavioral action with character claims. Writing that someone "is" something undesirable is typically a WP:NPA. Writing that someone did something, with provided evidence, typically is not a WP:NPA.

WP:NPA#Initial options: "Personal attacks do not include civil language used to describe an editor's actions, and when made without involving their personal character, should not be construed as personal attacks..."

WP:NPA#Personal attacks: "Pointing out an editor's relevant conflict of interest is not a personal attack."

The problem is that you raised the COI issue without being convinced of it, which puts you in an NPA gray zone that he has exploited.

After watching this instructive setback where you posted 2.3k, and he put you in check with only 329 bytes, I suggest that a political solution is the only possibly winning strategy for you – although someone else of adequate admin authority and knowledge might win a direct tactical confrontation.

Since you aren't comfortable with a political strategy, the only remaining options that I can think of are to either accept the editor's POV or depart the page. Milo 21:43, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Warning to multi-IP anon editor

Conspiracy theories are fun! Can I join in?-198.97.67.58 (talk) 20:33, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Don't press your luck; conspiracies at WP are routinely handled by email and IRC. What has been written here has been considered in anticipation of your eventual arrival, since it was obvious you were previously following up contribs.

198.97.67.58, et al^†, consider this a major warning

to cease your tendentious editing (e.g., anti-consensus edit reverts), tendentious debating (e.g., distractions and refusal to respond to or take strong points), POV-pushing, quibbling distractive to the point of disruption, and making trumped-up personal-attack-victim-claims against other editors who criticize or merely question your positions and behavior.

Talk:Birthright citizenship in the United States of America#Anchor Baby
RFC/U: Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Psychohistorian#Continued denials by Psychohistorian

_{† Wikipedia:Administrators noticeboard/IncidentArchive127#User talk:71.74.209.82}

• Psychohistorian (talk • contribs)
• 198.97.67.59 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 198.97.67.58 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
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• 198.97.67.56 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 75.179.159.240 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 71.74.209.82 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
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My position, and that of a reported dozen-some other editors during the last two years, is that you have too frequently been in the wrong; probably because of taking various kinds of extreme positions, like arguing minutiae during your RFC/U.

However, don't mistake me for an ideological opponent on your most likely issue of concern. I fear the laws of large numbers in the population south of the US border, just as do other reasonable people. But pushing polarizing terms of US nationalist propaganda makes it more difficult to reach national consensus on reasonable laws, reasonable enforcement projects, and reasonable foreign policies. As a psychohistorian, you are or should be well-aware of the dangerous social instability that will result if unreasonable polarized factions clash in violent confrontations. "Fighting words" play a big part in igniting such strife, and they include terms such as you have been pushing, which are interpreted as insults. If these terms are notable but offensive, they can always be handled as footnotes with quotes. In-your-face terminology will inevitably be removed by someone, so there is no point in making such edits in the first place.

At the bottom line, I don't think you realize how fragile is your cocksure editing perch at Wikipedia. Literally anyone in the web world whom you offend by a reading of your nationalist POV-pushing, can easily report you to your base commander or your civilian ISP for violating the terms of use of your ISPs and/or this web site. Wikipedia itself does that infrequently, but you have chosen to IP out yourself to the world, though you have been requested to not do so.

Be wise and take WP:Consensus seriously – to avoid being removed from Wikipedia by either internal or external forces. Milo 02:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be having trouble connecting the dots. On one hand you argue that, "This propaganda is freely transmitted to ranked military units, and transmitted with more caution to the civilian population through press releases and reporter contacts. An in-between channel is the families of ranked military personnel and civilian employees of DoD, who indirectly spread the propaganda to the civilian population. The latter channel has the advantage of being almost 'no fingerprints' as to source. Indeed, had this editor not outed himself, Wikipedia might not have discovered his appearance of COI."

On the other hand, you argue that, "I don't think you realize how fragile is your cocksure editing perch at Wikipedia. Literally anyone in the web world whom you offend by a reading of your nationalist POV-pushing, can easily report you to your base commander or your civilian ISP for violating the terms of use of your ISPs and/or this web site." Which is it? Am I covertly engaging in psywar operations against illegal aliens under the auspices of the DOD or am I "violating the terms of use of your ISPs"? Good conspiracy theories don't have such blatant internal consistencies. You're not at the level of Tom Clancy, yet, but keep working at it - you might get there if you try hard enough.-198.97.67.58 (talk) 13:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Both. You missed the "propaganda tool" possibility, which is another example of why I said you are stretching beyond your ability.

I must be doing ok – that you read Clancy tends to confirm my profile's "wannabe" characteristic. Milo 03:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

By the way, you can 'give me a warning' all you want. At the end of the day, the fact is that my edits have been reviewed by a number of third party admins and they've all found that I've been editing in good faith. Your attempts to cower me by threatening me are going to be unsuccessful - because I react badly to being threatened.

Actually, threats piss me off. The core issue is whether or not your politics and those of your cronies are going to be able to control content on Wikipedia - or if, on the other hand, adherence to Wikipedia policy and faith in the Wikipedia ideal is going to win out. I'll stick with the policies. Good luck to you in choosing politics instead, you'll need it.-198.97.67.59 (talk) 14:37, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

198.97.67.58 (13:27): "editing in good faith" All that means is that you aren't a vandal. You are required to meet higher standards if you want to be a Wikipedia editor in good standing.

198.97.67.58 (13:27): "threatening me" Nope. You're at significant risk of losing your job due to your own foolish self-outing, and now you've been appropriately risk-warned. The helpful attitude answer is preferably 'thank you', but at least some form of 'I understand the issue'.

198.97.67.58 (13:27): "The core issue is whether or not your politics and those of your cronies are going to be able to control content on Wikipedia - or if, on the other hand, adherence to Wikipedia policy and faith in the Wikipedia ideal is going to win out. I'll stick with the policies." This statement incorporates straw man, red herring, and false dilemma fallacies. The core issue is your objectionable behavior as warned.

198.97.67.58 (13:27): "you can 'give me a warning' all you want" This is part of the due process for removing you from Wikipedia, if your warned behavior doesn't change. Your uncontrite attitude is noted for the purpose of considering the length of future blocks.

You are in a hole. I suggest that you stop digging. Milo 03:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Cult article

Hello. You reverted out my addition of Dr. Jennifer Larson's books in the Cult article noting that they didn't apply to the broader sense of cult, I presume. Ancient cults were just as much cults as modern ones, if we take the definition literally, with some scholarly wiggle room. You wrote:

"Books: rv scholarly book adds by Wikiklrsc - see disambiguation notice; 'This article does not discuss "cult" in the original sense...'. Thanks for adding them to Cult (religious practice)) ..."

Are you sure ? Have you read them ? I have. And they might have some tangential utility there.

• Larson, Jennifer, Greek Heroine Cults (1995)
• Larson, Jennifer, Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide (2007). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-32448-9

But if you insist that the article has no intellectual threads to the more ancient ones, then I'll honour your opinion. I'd agree that literally they are best in the other articles where I placed them. But literalism has its limits sometimes. Best wishes. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 18:46, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi Bob,

First, I don't know why we're having this dialog. This isn't about anything I decided. I'm just applying the consensus as shown at the top of the article.

"You reverted out my addition of Dr. Jennifer Larson's books in the Cult article noting that they didn't apply to the broader sense of cult, I presume."

No, "does not discuss" in the disambiguation notice does not mean "they didn't apply to the broader sense".

The reversion logic is direct:

1. There is a top tag that says the article may be too large, and you are trying to make it larger by adding details about a homonym subtopic which the disambiguation notice says is not discussed in this article.
2. The disambiguated Cult (religious practice) subtopic has been separate since the earliest version of Cult that is still in the history: Cult version 19:57, 22 September 2004.
3. This is standard encyclopedia practice. The Cult (religious practice) subtopic is detailed in another article entirely for structural reasons.

Milo 02:07, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Dear Milo, I take your points. It's all good. I just had a knee-jerk reaction but it was hasty. I respect your opinion and point of view, and the rules. Many thanks and best wishes. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 14:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)