User talk:David Tornheim

Welcome!

Hello, David Tornheim! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! -- Levine2112 discuss 02:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC) Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Pages needing attention • Peer review Miscellaneous User name • User pages • Talk pages Clean up: General - Spam - Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Surprise, surprise, surprise

Since, as Binksternet rightly pointed out, this was getting a bit OT, I wanted to reply here.

I think your basic argument is sound in the abstract. It's difficult to know positively when secrecy, let alone the passage of time, is involved. However, we can't ignore the personalities of the people in charge. Decisions are never made in a vacuum; they're driven by beliefs & values as much as aims.

That being true, you impugn the reputation of George Marshall, at least, if not FDR himself, by suggesting Marshall would knowingly go along with this. Marshall's integrity was unimpeachable & uncompromising. He would never stand for a conspiracy. And that means FDR would have had to be astonishingly careless, cavalier, or stupid to risk it (given you accept he did, & I don't). Marshall was supremely well placed to discover the putative conspiracy, & there can be no question he'd have exposed it if he had discovered one. Neither was FDR so stupid as he'd have had to be; whatever else he was, his grasp of political calculus was masterful. He cannot have failed to understand it would have ruined him to be caught in a fiddle like that, even presuming he wasn't impeached (& the anti-FDR climate in '40-41 wasn't unlike that around Clinton & Whitewater/Lewinsky, AFAIK).

Furthermore, the actions FDR did take belie the conspiracy theory. He tried everything he could to move Congress & public opinion to active support of Britain. He took measures to provoke Germany into declaring war (Lend-Lease, the Neutrality Patrol, reporting U-boats to RN, the "shoot on sight" order, none the actions of a true neutral). The conspiracy loons conveniently ignore all of this.

Beyond that, the benefit of a war with Japan would unquestionably fall on Germany, not Britain, & Hitler knew it. So did McCollum, author of that notorious memo the conspiracy loons use to try & defend their POV. McCollum wrote another memo (which the conspiracy loons conveniently ignore) in which he cogently & accurately points out what will happen if there's a war with Japan, hitting the exact points Hitler does in his own conference discussing the issue how it would benefit him; Hitler effectively says, "I wish." Then Japan gives him his wish. Unless FDR is a Nazi agent, unless everybody with access to ULTRA is a Nazi agent ('cause any one of them could have exposed the conspiracy)...it was legitimate strategic surprise.

One other reason? There were plenty of reasons to disbelieve an attack would fall there, or Japan would/could attack there, & even more reasons the Hawaii command was unprepared, all listed on the Attack page. Conspiracy is more fashionable, but plain stupidity is more common. So is luck. And so is the enemy being better prepared & taking an unprepared opponent by surprise. At bottom, the conspiracy loons aren't prepared to believe the Japanese could do it without help.

Or have I completely missed your point? Objectivity, to me, demands consideration of the credibility of the source. I don't, won't, give equal weight to a conspiracy loon as to a serious historiographer. They aren't functionally equivalent. If there's serious evidence it wasn't a genuine strategic surprise (which needs to take account of the above points), I'd favor including mention of it. I'm unaware of any. Absent any, the objective view is, it was a surprise. Absent any, saying it wasn't a surprise isn't objective, it's promoting a view contradicted by the overwhelming weight of evidence, & that's a small step from fiction. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 23:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

If you do want a pvt reply, you can email me. (I think you can access it through the sidebar.) TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 14:13, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm still new to Wikipedia. Which sidebar on which web-site/page would have your e-mail address? Also, if we do exchange e-mails, can we agree not to post anything said in the e-mails? It allows me to be more open and honest rather than a forum here where I have to be more careful not to say something that anyone and everyone would be able to read for the rest of time... Also, I'm sorry if I was a bit tough on you in the other page. I think there is more possibility for common ground or at least a better understanding of opposing views with what you said above, especially regarding the "impugning" of reputations... If we can come to some understanding then maybe there will be a way to present some of that on the public site for all to see...

--David Tornheim (talk) 20:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

You should be getting a side or top bar with a variety of link options (Main Page, Contents, your Watchlist & such) that will give you my email. We can sure agree not to share. If you can't find the sidebar, try changing your skin. Your account signup should let you access it. To clarify, after you sign in, you should get a sidebar with options, & "My preferences" lets you change the skin. The top bar is the default, & maybe it doesn't have this, so you may have to change preferences to get to it. I've never tried using somebody else's...but I know it's there somewhere, 'cause I've gotten email. If you still can't find it, let me know & I'll try contacting somebody who found mine to talk you through it.

I just remeembered 1 other thing... I may not be able to reply to an email right away; I just switched to a Mac, & I'm having trouble getting into my email account.... I will get back to you, tho. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 20:44, 21:48, & 21:59, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

For now I've decided to stay clear of e-mail. I think my responses on the discussion page, especially the end, cover a lot what I feel the most strongly about at the moment, which in short is, I can't really follow either side's primary argument in total, except your side's claim to "expert" knowledge. That argument is completely unconvincing at this point because no list of historians was provided, and because of Howard Zinn, a reputable historian who argues towards the "not surprise" side. In fact, he is the only person I know of in the debate who I know for certain is a historian. I know you have a couple of tomes of information on your side, but I think the other side does too. I'm not sure why you expect me to trust your people more than theirs without more evidence giving their credentials. Again, since I don't know the CV's for each of the people referenced of either side, without it, I'm sticking with Zinn, who I know I can trust. I would like to point out that I imagine Zinn draws a lot of criticism for challenging the official story of the American government and popular cultural and nationalistic beliefs that encourage the masses to have more faith in the government (and history) and certain leaders than is deserved. That's why your claim that FDR and Marshall are really stand up guys is not too persuasive. I'm not saying that either knew for certain there would be an attack or would let it happen, but I don't trust they were looking out for those at the bottom, but rather like most most Presidents and leaders throughout this country and others, they protect THEIR PEOPLE at the top, while SAYING they are protecting everyone at the bottom. People who really want to look out for those at the bottom have little chance of getting elected. The people at the top do their best to make sure of that. I can not think of a SINGLE president of the U.S. that was an exception.

--David Tornheim (talk) 22:02, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

A colleague of mine made another point I forgot to mention: History is written by the winners. Imagine what the story of Pearl Harbor would have been if the Japanese and/or the Germans had won the war. It is my understanding that since the Greeks beat the Persians, the only history we have is of the "evil" Persians and valiant Greeks--no history by the Persians. And it can be subtle: The people with money and power establish universities and help determine standards that make a scholar, and determine what projects get funding. The government does not fund educational research equally. Look at the FDA and FCC how they are corrupted by the businesses they are supposed to oversee. The "official" story frequently has far more resources and funds available to support their work, even if it is not true. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

<--The problem with relying on a single "trusted" source is, what POV is he coming from? "sticking with Zinn, who I know I can trust"? What makes you think you can? Morison & Prange, 2 of the most respected historians in this area (Prange formerly on MacArthur's staff, Morison responsible for the 14v USN official history) don't credit conspiracy; Prange's Verdict refutes in detail most of the revisionist claims. And we get into "duelling sources"; who's got more isn't really an indication of the quality of the information. (I can only say the overwhelming majority of historiographers refuse to take the conspiracy claims seriously.)

Re your outlne, suggest you look at PHAND. It covers most of the points objectively (if you can get past the conspiracy mania).

I won't suggest FDR or Marshall were necessarily staunch defenders of Joe Average, nor Pvt Average. I do think you can't baldly dismiss character or judgment. I don't argue Marshall's reputation alone is defense; I do argue his behavior is a product of who he is, & that doesn't change for being Chief of Staff, so on balance, I simply can't believe he'd go along. If you accept there's a conspiracy, you're also compelled to accept he & FDR, among others, would act contrary to their natures, & that strikes me as contrary to everyday experience.

You also have to accept they'd act contrary to U.S. interests (because loss of those BBs was no minikin) &, more important, contrary to their express objectives (& the objectives the conspiracy theorists ascribe to them), namely aid to Britain.

You also have to ask yourself why a devestating attack was a necessary condition. Wouldn't the discovery of the Kido Butai a couple of hundred miles from Hawaii be enough? Wouldn't intercepting an inbound attack have done the job? It's perfectly possible to imagine a clear, unambiguous warning from DC to Kimmel & Short, on the order of, "We have unimpeachable information Japan planning air attack. Take precautions accordingly." This would have led, arguably, to the destruction of the inbound strike force. Instead, the USG continued business as usual, building up in the Phillipines, which was seen as the station at most risk, while keeping Hawaii on a training status, 4000nm from Japan, safely out of harm's way, because, surely, IJN couldn't carry out two major naval operations (Kra Isthmus & Hawaii) at once.... Ooops. And we are back at stupidity & underestimating the enemy being more common than conspiracy. What I don't understand is, why that is so hard for some people to grasp. I guess Damon Knight was right. Or Sawyer was. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 01:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Lennar Corporation

Hi there, I have warned the user regarding this, if he/she continues I will report them to WP:AIV. Unexplained blanking of article content, especially entire sections constitutes vandalism. You did fine on my talk page, the only thing you didn't do was create a header for the subject. You do this by clicking the 'new section' tab (up at the top) and entering a subject, or you can put two equal signs on either side of the discussion topic and it will generate a header for you. The archive box on my talk page is for archiving outdated discussions that are no longer relevant. Rather than deleting the discussions most editors archive them for easy access, and so other editors can view old discussions without having to dig through the page history. I'll keep an eye out for the editor removing the controversy section, he gets one more warning then he can be reported. If you see them delete the section again feel free to revert, the WP:3RR rule does not apply to vandalism. Is there anything else I can help you with? Cheers, Landon1980 (talk) 00:17, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I see they did it again, but maybe a separate person. Should we do Wikiscan? I haven't tried that yet. This is correct to reply here instead of your talk page?--David Tornheim (talk) 17:48, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

It dosen't matter where you reply, but just make sure that the user knows that you replied to them on your talk page--leave a message on their talk page saying something like "I replied to your message on my talk page". Good day! the_ed17 01:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

It's usual to reply on the poster's talk, unless you want to limit it to your own talk; if so, custom (as I've seen it) is to place a notice prominently on your talk saying "I'll reply here" & advise 'em to watch your talk. (Don't sweat how, unless you want an explanation....) Personally, I prefer to reply on usertalk so they'll know I've added, but it's your call. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 08:23, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help!!--David Tornheim (talk) 17:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if they do it one more time they will be blocked from editing. If you see that same user make that edit again report them to WP:AIV, there is a level 4 warning on their talk page. Anytime a user vandalizes after a level 4 warning their blocked. IP's are not usually blocked indefinitely, but where this is a registered user they will most likely be blocked indefinitely for using a 'vandalism only' account. Have a good day, Landon1980 (talk) 17:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Indenting

To indent something, just put it like this:

:blah, blah, blah

It will appear as so:

blah, blah, blah

To bullet/number something, it goes like this:

*The Shannara series is written by Terry Brooks.

1. </nowiki>The Shannara series is written by Terry Brooks. </nowiki>

It will appear like this:

• The Shannara series is written by Terry Brooks.

1. The Shannara series is written by Terry Brooks.

(The bolding was for emphasis, by the way. =]) Hope that helped some! If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask. Cheers! the_ed17 01:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help!!--David Tornheim (talk) 17:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Anytime...and here's another thing. =) When you reply to someone else's comment, indent your reply, like I did just now to your comment--it just makes conversations a lot easier to follow. Two more quick thoughts: don't get frustrated if you are not doing stuff right...Rome wasn't built in a day, and you won't learn everything about Wikipedia anytime soon, if you even could. I've been here since March of 2006, (my first edit!) and I'm still learning a lot every day I am on here. Good day! the_ed17 20:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, here's something that isn't required, but can help other users out:

When editing an article on Wikipedia there is a small field labeled "Edit summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:

The text written here will appear on the Recent changes page, in the page revision history, on the diff page, and in the watchlists of users who are watching that article. See m:Help:Edit summary for full information on this feature.

Filling in the edit summary field greatly helps your fellow contributors in understanding what you changed, so please always fill in the edit summary field. If you are adding a section, please do not just keep the previous section's header in the Edit summary field – please fill in your new section's name instead. For the record, though, you are one of the most amicable newcomers I have ever met! Thanks you for that! the_ed17 20:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the further tips. Yeah, I knew about indenting, not immediately, but caught on--forgot about it for the outline. Sometimes it's unclear when it is best to indent. For example, on the "conspiracy thing", I was really really responding to just the most recent jab back & forth, I was responding to the ENTIRE DISCUSSION (that to me seemed to be leading nowhere in a hurry) and I was hoping to draw attention to the bigger picture--that's why I didn't indent there and at another place.

I was also aware of the revision comments section. Except in my first edit, I pretty much always use it when revising an ARTICLE, except for reverts of deleted sourced material (on Lennar). I haven't been doing it for the discussion page, since I'm just adding to an existing conversation, and it seems redundant--what else are people doing other than continuing the discussion. What's the protocol on that? Any guidelines on comments in the discussion section. I have experience with revisions from programming & understand the concept for being able to see the history of changes to a product or program, etc., but it doesn't exactly make sense to have a revision history of a conversation--instead, I would think you just watch the conversation which is basically sequential anyway, right?--David Tornheim (talk) 04:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC) [Actually I submitted this an hour or so ago, along with the continuation of the next topic...]

Just put 'reply' or 'reply to ____' in the edit summary box...it helps others who happen to wonder what x person did...I dunno, its not a huge deal when on discussion pages. the_ed17 01:38, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

It's useful for those watching an article talkpage to know what you're commenting about, tho "reply" or "cmt" are often enough; I prefer to clip a bit of my comment & quote it in the summary, so if you're looking for a particular comment, you can search the page without having to read it all. It's a matter of choice (like so much on WP). Only thing not to do is leave it blank.

And I don't know if there's a guideline on it, but when you start a new section, ideally, edit summary like this: "/* Indenting */ new section" (just leave off " & "). I think the system will do it for you (I've never opened a blank page & tried it), but in case it doesn't... TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 05:33, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Respect

For the record, though, you are one of the most amicable newcomers I have ever met! Thanks you for that! the_ed17 20:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. I've been doing political stuff for years and used to be as argumentative as so many people here and on newsgroups are and have been. I have learned how futile it is to argue like this (although it can be fun, I guess)--when someone is invested in another side emotionally, which is often the case in these heated discussions, bashing your opponent over the head with your superior facts is generally not going to work: they will not want to feel beaten & humiliated, so they will simply do the same back, even if they have inferior facts. It's a matter of pride. The more aggressive or condescending you are, the more they will dig in their heals and fight fire with fire.

Instead, if you really want the other side to listen, you have to start with respect, listening, and striving for common ground, and seeing the other side as an equal. In fact, if you see them as not the ENEMY, but a potential supporter of your viewpoint, you'll have a much better chance of convincing them. If you think they are an idiot and other condescending things about them, they'll pick up on that FIRST and FOREMOST and instinctively want to fight and disagree with you, even when they know you are right and no matter how solid your position. (As a good example, I met this one guy and he would come at people like a steamroller or tank, aggressively arguing his position. When I first met him, he did the same for me, implying I was totally wrong to think certain things. Unfortunately, he didn't know that either I didn't know or didn't think any of those things he seemed to be attributing to me, and I ALREADY agreed with his position before I met him. But because he was so nasty in his style of argumentation and towards me and those the disagreed with, I instinctively felt the need to defend the people I disagreed with and then disagree with the position he was taking, despite the fact that I originally agreed with it before he opened his mouth. What he really wanted was to argue, not to convince me. He had a chip on his shoulder. Fortunately, I didn't take the bait. I steered clear of his negative energy.)

Back to the people being attacked--they'll simply hear the negativity you feel about them and vigorously insist you have no right to say such negative things, or think so badly of them and they'll throw in everything but the kitchen sink to protect their dignity and defend facts they know are sketchy--the argument on the surface appears to be about facts, but in reality, the desire to have one's opinions and viewpoints respected and heard is really what's going on. And both sides vigorously insist their viewpoint is not being heard for any number of reasons.

On the other hand, when the person you disagree with has room to be mistaken gracefully, and the person doing the convincing does not thereby claim victory and say "See I was right; he's an idiot", if their acceptance of the contrary view is safe and they will not lose face by agreeing, then you will have a chance to bring them to your point of view. If agreeing with your opponent invites further ridicule and harsh treatment, they simply are probably not going to concede if they have any pride. It becomes more a game than an investigation into the truth.

And last, and most important: My experience with politics is that you really waste your time, if you expend all your energy arguing with those who disagree with you, because as I said before, those who strongly disagree are unlikely to change their position, no matter what the issue and no matter how much energy you put into trying to convince them. Probably the best you'll get is that they will understand WHY you think what you think, may even be able to cogently make your argument to someone else, but will continue to disagree with you, but hopefully will leave with more respect for you than you started--that's probably your best case.

It is also as big a waste of time to try to convince those who don't care about the subject at all. When you say to them, "You SHOULD CARE MORE about the environment", (or, say, Pearl Harbor), for example, they will immediately get defensive, just like the person who disagrees with you about whether drilling for oil in Alaska will have a negative impact on the environment. The person who does not care will resent your trying to drag them into a discussion about something they are not interested in, and will shut down, disagree to be annoying, pretend to be listening, nod their head in agreement when they actually disagree, etc. Either way, you are wasting your time and theirs, they are not listening and likely no substance is going to get in, they don't care. If they had any viewpoint on the subject before, it will be unchanged by whatever you said, which will be like the noise of a fly they would prefer to swat. If anything they will think, "People arguing for X are really annoying and pushy--I'm not sure I want to be associated with people arguing for X; they're jerks." Basically, they too feel disrespected for your trying to convince them of something they don't want to be convinced about; so you lose their respect as well. If you want their respect, which again is the most important, you let them continue not to care, go on their merry way and worry about whatever they do care about. If they later start listening, and this often happens when they get bored with whatever stuff is happening their lives and they see how excited you get about what you are doing, they start showing interest and asking questions, THEN you talk about that subject, but until then, you let them not care, and accept that, just like accepting those who disagree. It can be hard to bite your tongue when that's what you really want to talk about. In the meantime, maybe you can find another subject that both you and he or she DO want to talk about. You'll have a much better chance on the subject that does interest them.

So in politics, to make something happen, instead of arguing ad nauseum with those who vehemently disagree or don't care, you first energize those who DO agree with you and support you. They are easy to convince--they are instinctively on your side anyway. Next, you convince those who are on the fence and have not made a decision, but are open to listening (unlike the people who don't care). They are going to listen to you AND to the other side, then come to a decision. If you're being mean to those who disagree, you're going to lose respect in their eyes and they may listen more attentively to the other side. If you are respectful, then they are more likely to think you are confident enough in your position to not get so defensive. And if you can accept that other people have different opinions (and even argue them WITHOUT resentment), they're also more likely to listen to you: They'll think, hey that person is reasonable and level-headed, not narrow-minded with an inflexible and emotionally invested based agenda; that person looked at ALL THE EVIDENCE and then came to a conclusion--they are not biased and have blinders on. That's my 2 cents...

--David Tornheim (talk) 04:15, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Nice novel! Fun to read. I'll try to reply in depth later, I have to go for now. the_ed17 01:38, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Ever think of being a crisis negotiator? (That's my in-depth reply =]) Wow. the_ed17 02:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Glad you liked it. I put a lot of work into revising it, probably spent 2 hours on that. But I think it was worth it, even if you are the only one read it. I wrote something similar to an activist a few weeks ago, having put just as much work into it (don't know how much she actually read). I probably should have just cut and pasted that and revised accordingly. Of course, when I started, I had no idea I was going to say so much. Happens a lot to me. Sometimes drives me crazy... I'm saving this one, maybe I'll make a book out of essays like this... --David Tornheim (talk) 02:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

That would be a good idea...I think that many people would buy something like that! (like, um, crisis negotiators.... =]) Don't forget the section above too.the_ed17 02:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

After reading your [User:David Tornheim|user page]], I agree that, no, you are not neutral on some subjects. On the flip side, who is? People can be completely biased and still want a neutral article, right? Ugh. Disgusting, how people can just attack someone else because they think that they know them, and "know" what they are going to do. the_ed17 23:36, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Outlining

Two minor things. New topics start at the bottom, & use a new header, like so: ==Outlining== which gives you the effect you see, & the "edit" link for the section. You missed the bottom of the page here & left off the header, so I moved & added (which is within guidelines if somebody goofs; just be sure you put it back in...)

If you want to get tricky you can add * to get more indent,

• indent
  • indent
    • indent

or use #

1. indent

If you want to get really fancy, you can [[User talk:Trekphiler|hide out]]... Cheers. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 08:37, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help!!--David Tornheim (talk) 17:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Misusing Vandalism Warnings

Hi, I am an administrator. You just left me a vandalism warning [1] for an edit I made to Lennar Corporation in a good faith effort to improve the article. Wikipedia has an assume good faith policy. Attempts to improve an article, even if misguided, are not vandalism. You need to immediately stop misusing vandalism warnings in editorial disputes. Instead, discuss concerns with other editors and then go to dispute resolution, if needed. Jehochman ^Talk 21:31, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Conspiracy?

I've no problem with it, but it will need sourcing (& I don't have access to paper copies of the said reports, or I'd do it), so it's going to get promptly taken out again. I can only suggest, if it bugs you a lot, post a complaint on the PHAND talk page. Trust me, there are people with access to the docs who will address the issue. If not, try here; you might be surprised, & I know there are serious, interested people that will see it there, & act on it, if they realize there are uninformed people getting lost in the crossfire of esoterica. Hope that helps. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 04:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

TIND

See this essay on deadlines. If you have a concern about the article, you can start a request for comments on the get more editors involved, or you could try third opinion. Happy editing. Jehochman ^Talk 20:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I can't disagree with that. It takes as long as it takes. Best you can do is watch the page, hope there are people as interested as you (& there probably are, check the talk page), & if it doesn't move at all, message the talk of somebody who's posted to the talk often. Or who created the page (click "page history" on the article page) & ask for comment. Give it at least a couple of weeks on a contentious issue with lo traffic on the talk page. (Something like PHAND, you'll tend to see it in a couple of days, 'cause it attracts a lot of attention; this has gone weeks with only 3 of us seeming to notice it, & that was after a msg to the WP Autos talk page.) You could also try a msg to the project talk page. (The article will fall under a project; follow the link, & beware posting on the project page instead of the project talk, 'cause it's all to easy to do. I learned the hard way. ;) ) And yeah, sometimes the application seems a little capricious. All I can say is, don't let it bug you too much, 'cause there really isn't much you can do about it. Post the messages, prod people if you can, & above all, keep your temper, 'cause frustration will only bite you when it comes to getting results. (That's the hardest thing for me.) Hope it's some help. I'll have a look at the page, too.

I gotta tell you, I don't see the beef, either. I'd say both sites are outside NPOV (neither is neutral on it), but beyond that, you got me beat. Might ask here for more info. Calling it vandalism was over the top; bad call, maybe, but clearly not bad faith. And you overreacted in the tone of your edit summary; all caps is SHOUTING. (Yeh, there's all kinds of wikiquette to learn...) Better to post a comment to the talk page with detailed concerns or questions, & your reasons for including, reverting, re-adding, whatever, after it's taken out, especially when you're getting somebody citing guidelines. That's obviously somebody who knows his way around.

And when it comes to what's OK for EL sources, I'm not the best one to ask, 'cause I took out ELs & had the original poster complain about it & win. I thought I understood the standards... TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 20:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I moved our discussion to the talk page of the Lennar article, and replied to your last post there. Landon1980 (talk) 21:42, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Day code: style section

"what's the best way to add emphasis?" Not having read it, I can't say if this addresses it. I find it's more a matter of personal taste. I prefer bolding ('cause I find ital doesn't show up well on my monitor), but I've gotten ragged a bit for it; some wikipeople consider it shouting. It's really your call; you're not gonna get warned off for much past a lot of ALL CAPS, which is over the top, especially in edit summaries. (Why that's treated diff, I'm not really sure, but it is; deal with it. ;) ) Oh, & style questions like that, really, are better posted to a usertalk page, rather than an article page, since they don't deal with the article content/format. (Unless you mean emphasis within the article...) No, that's not a rule, just a convention, a bit like the diff between a party line & a private one. Hope this helps. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 04:53, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

SF Emergency Drill Simulates WMD Attack

Check it out! I was on TV!

http://cbs5.com/video/?id=37954@kpix.dayport.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN-HlDoUMyY

BillyTFried (talk) 22:46, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

No comment? Do you think I came off like a wise ass calling them "Heros"? BillyTFried (talk) 03:44, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Terrence Park School

Hi there. You might consider keeping the title the way it is. "High Schools" are pretty much protected against deletion like garlic stops vampires, whereas "Elementary Schools" are pretty much assured of being deleted or merged pronto. Calling it "School" may well work okay now that it's through the New Articles gauntlet (I "patrolled" it through last night) as long as you emphasize that it included grade 9-12 kids at some point in its history. If you want to write about the elementary school, you'll need to either do that on the school district's page or on the regular Terrence Park School page, because, like I say, elementary school pages are slated for quick annihilation about 99% of the time... To change the name of the page, just click the MOVE THIS PAGE link and follow the easy instructions.

Thanks for adding the stuff and welcome to Wikipedia! Don't hesitate to drop me a line on my talk page if you ever have any questions about this or that. The page WP:OUTCOMES might be useful reading helping to get you up to speed.

It looks like you had problems with a photograph on that page also. Can I help with that? Carrite (talk) 15:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, crap, I see you've been here since 2008. My bad. Nevertheless, my mailbox is open if you ever have a question or a problem. Carrite (talk) 15:35, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Yeah, I've been on Wikipedia since 2008, but I have done almost no editing for 2-3 years. So I've forgotten some of the key things I learned when I was active. I'm a pretty focused person and very interested in specific topics, like that school (and now as an extension Terrace Park history, partly because I lived there), so many of the specific things that are common on Wikipedia I might not know. As I state in my main page, I never claim to be 100% objective, try to be fair and balanced. I only recently found out about the demolition plans, and that's why I thought it valuable for people to know about the school and what has and is happening to it. I have always considered it a historically significant building worthy of a wiki page, but had not until now been interested enough to actually put up a page on it. Now that it is about to be lost, the Wiki page will be one of the few things that explains it as it was before it was partially destroyed.

I'll keep in mind your suggestions about the name.

As to the picture, I would indeed like help with that. My friend took the pictures so that we could show what the building looks like for educational purposes and sent the authorization for that, but the bot killed it and I didn't understand what I need to do to keep the bot from killing it. I have asked him to give me the GPLv3 or Wiki Commons authorization, but he has been too busy to respond and may not understand what it means to do so--it's pretty complicated even for me who now sort of understands it. I noticed user Dianna responded about the picture. I'll look into that and see if that helps.

Also, I had some problems with material I added on the Terrace Park, Ohio page. Some user Nyquist deleted the information I added about Native Americans, saying it had no reliable sources while retaining material about Europeans based on the same sources! In fact the Native American stuff was better documented. I think that shows bias, and I undid it, but Nyquist went and deleted it again. I just put up a post explaining my thoughts on what has been done. If you know how best to deal with this, I welcome your advise. David Tornheim (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC).

David Tornheim (talk)

Terrace Park

I don't know why Nyttend is acting this way, frankly they seem to have decided they own the article. It's a disgrace and I have warned them to stop, however I must warn you as well that edit warring is not tolerated on Wikipedia and could lead to this account being blocked. Nyttend has become a somewhat problematic administrator and as you know has been extremely pushy before at this same article, but edit warring is not going to change any of that. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

How long to wait before calling in other admins to do dispute resolution? David Tornheim (talk) 02:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, despite what dealing with a user like Nyttend might lead you to believe, admins have no special authority in a content dispute. Since he is apparently unwilling to discuss these matters I would suggest that now is as good a time as any to seek WP:DR. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:23, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the advise and the assistance in this. I'm about to take a break today on the Nytend issue--maybe tomorrow. I left you a long note about the images regarding the school. Since writing it, I found more images on Flickr and am soliciting permission from those people too. David Tornheim (talk) 04:23, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

GMO stuff

Hi David. I watch Groupuscule's Talk page, and I have seen what you are writing there. What they haven't told you, is that after she challenged the language about the scientific consensus on GMOs, we held what is called a "request for comment" (RfC) to get the community to weigh in, on whether the language was appropriate or not. The community did weigh in, and the clear consensus was that the language and sourcing is good.

Before you go much further, I recommend that you read about RfCs here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment so that you understand what they are, and how they are used.

Please also see the RfC on this question, which you can read here: Talk:Genetically_modified_food_controversies/Archive_6#Request_for_comment_on_.22broad_scientific_consensus.22.

The thing you are questioning has been discussed many, many, many times on the Talk pages of the relevant articles. No new science has been published since the RfC that would provide any basis for overturning the RfC. The scientific consensus remains the same. (please note that scientific consensus is not the same as unanimity. And please also note that the statement of the scientific consensus in the article is if written carefully and precisely. Some people don't read it carefully, and think it is saying more than it is.

Happy to discuss further, if you like. Jytdog (talk) 02:18, 14 February 2015 (UTC) (note - corrections made per markup Jytdog (talk) 22:31, 14 February 2015 (UTC))(striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Hi Jytdog: Thanks for your response. I have looked at the RfC and will continue to look at other Wikipedia articles, cited articles, research and sources. I disagree with the claim "No new science has been published since the RfC that would provide any basis for overturning the RfC." Firstly, there was and is no scientific consensus as is claimed. There may have been a majority of respondents to the RfC that believed that was the case, especially given the widespread dissemination by pro-GMO advocates starting with quotes by Pamela Ronald and promulgated by groups with ties to industry like the Genetic Literacy Project, which have carefully cherry-picked quotes to make it look like there is a consensus when there is not. (I don't deny cherry-picking by those with concerns about GMO's, and I have seen widespread distribution of at least one study on rats getting cancer, which was not good science.) I have 2-3 articles, published a year AFTER the RfC was closed that carefully examine the quotes of leading science organizations and regulatory agencies provided by the GMO proponents. Those articles show how misleading and unrepresentative many of these quotes are and all of the qualifications that come with them. I looked for the quotes myself in the source documents provided by the GMO proponents and found the exact same misrepresentations and cherry-picking described. Secondly, because the GMO products are heavily studied and published, how can you be sure nothing published lately could possibly be relevant to any claims of a consensus? Are you an expert in the field and paid to keep up on all the journals? The three articles I am referring to that dispute the "scientific consensus" claim are here:

• Short Summary article
• Full Article mentioned above in PDF
• Another short article

That is all for now. I am considering moving this discussion to the talk page and/or pointing to it from there. David Tornheim (talk) 04:51, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for talking with me. I'll respond in points:

• Your first two sources are the same; the first is just an excerpt of the second. That you refer to the set as "three" articles is a bad sign. If you intend to go forward with this, and you continue to say things that are as blatantly untrue as that, your efforts are going to go no where. (I am not accusing you of lying or anything - my guess is that you don't understand how Wikipedia works nor how we handle evidence here).
• Moving to the two sources themselves - the first is an advocacy piece, published in an advocacy journal; the second is by the very well known anti-GMO advocate Claire Robinson, again published on an advocacy website. Neither of those are the kind of independent, reliable sources that we look for, especially in controversial articles. (You will find tons and tons of writings by Robinson and her colleague Jeremy Lantham on anti-GMO websites. The two of them work out of a small nonprofit in Ithaca NY and they have launched many small organizations and publications to put their views out there - they are very clear dissenters from the scientific consensus)
• You ask me how I know that no science has been published since then that overturns the scientific consensus. Answers:
  • If new studies had been done that actually overturn the scientific consensus, this would be HUGE news - there would be reports about them on the front page of the New York Times and every major media outlet.
  • I watch the GM articles in WP, and nobody has brought any sources describing new science that even pretends to overturn the consensus
  • i read some of the scientific literature (including general ones like Science and Nature, which report on major findings in all fields), and have seen nothing myself.
• Moving to higher level stuff. You write: "there was and is no scientific consensus as is claimed." I understand that you believe that to be true. However, the description of the scientific consensus in our articles is supported by an enormous pile of sources that are very, very solid. The sources and statement went through an RfC and withstood it. You will see that Groupuscule presented their list of objections during that RfC and others did not find groupuscule's arguments to be persuasive. If you are going to challenge the content and sourcing, you are going to have bring new and very strong sources. As I said, such sources don't exist as far as i know, and you have not brought any in this discussion.
• Lastly, and this may be the most important thing. You start out writing "I disagree with the claim "No new science has been published since the RfC that would provide any basis for overturning the RfC." and you appear to begin making arguments to support that claim (the next sentence starts. "Firstly....") Please review what you wrote above. In all that text, you did not present a single - not one - piece of evidence that new science has been published since the RfC that overturns the scientific consensus. If you disagree with a statement of fact, you need to actually bring evidence. Again, if you decide to actually start trying to change the content of WP articles you are going to need actual evidence presented in very very good sources.
• Let me say finally, that the scientific consensus on this issue may one day change. Science is continually moving forward, and new things are figured out that change how we view things. It happens. Someone, or some agency, may do the kind of very good experimentation that shows
  • a) some previously unknown mechanism by which currently marketed GM food could harm some people (right now, the biggest hole in the arguments of people opposed to, or concerned about, GM food, is that there is no known mechanism by which currently marketed GM food could be harming people due to the genetic modification);
  • b) that exposure to currently marketed GM food is actually harmful over the long term. For example, there is a group in Europe that is basically doing the long-term Seralini experiments again, but trying to do them right this time so that valid conclusions can be drawn from them. The group is called "Grace" and here is their website: http://www.grace-fp7.eu/ I'm interested to see what they produce.
  • and in both cases, (a or b), the work is described in reliable, relevant, secondary sources as being valid science that changes the consensus.

Looking forward to your response. Jytdog (talk) 12:23, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

oh, by the way, the actual source for your first reference is here. The brief text there makes reference to "portraying GMO critics as akin to climate change deniers, out of step with science." I don't know if you have read the Keith Kloor article that is being referred to there, but I encourage you to read it. It is here. Jytdog (talk) 12:51, 14 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Jytdog: You start out by saying, "Your first two sources are the same; the first is just an excerpt of the second. That you refer to the set as 'three' articles is a bad sign." I am well aware they are the same. If you look more closely at what I wrote, I said "2-3" articles! And in my list I clearly show that one was just a summary of the other--I provide both to give the reader the option of reading something short or something longer. Honestly, I am not that stupid and am not playing any games as you accuse me of here. Your accusation is a bad sign. LOL.

I looked at the Keith Kloor article you mentioned. I'm not sure why you wanted me to read it. It has many of the oft-repeated arguments the pro-GMO people typically make, including a claim that is untrue: "people should know that GMOs are tightly regulated." That of course, is not the case in the U.S., where unlike many counties (such as the EU and I believe China, Japan and Australia), no additional testing of GMO's was ever required, because of the policy of "substantial equivalence" (I believe Canada uses a similar standard), despite objections by scientists within the FDA that GMO products should require additional study and testing. Kloor ridicules the rat study for good reason--it was a bad study. That's one study. That doesn't invalidate every study that was every done that has demonstrated unique problems and concerns with *particular* GMO products. The Monarch Butterfly study published in Nature talking about the negative impact of GMO Bt-corn was good science, despite claims I have read that it was not. Further study was made of the negative effects of Bt-corn on caterpillars and toxicity issues were duplicated in the further study as you can read on the USDA Q&A about this. The USDA Q&A starts out by saying it is not a *current* problem, but from reading other answers that it *was* a problem that was unique to this GMO product discovered *after* release and hence that variety of Bt-corn has been phased out...I will continue comment on the article later...David Tornheim (talk) 14:47, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I really mean what I wrote about "three sources" thing. If you come to the actual Talk page talking about "three" (and you say "three" at times) you will be treated as either ignorant or someone who lies. I wrote that, trying to help you. You can do with that, as you will. Jytdog (talk) 14:49, 14 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

You say that GMOs are not tightly regulated in the US. That is not true and you have presented no basis for saying that. Many anti-GMO people think that the scientific examination conducted with regard to the effect of GM food on health as part of the regulatory process is very different in the US and EU; this is not true. What is true, is that the EU has been much more cautious with regard to environmental consequences of GM crops. See here for one explanation of that. The butterfly matter you write about is also about the environment. The scientific consensus statement you have an issue with, is limited to health.

There are a lot of strong emotions about GMOs; one of the things we run into frequently is that people don't read carefully. If you decide to come to the Talk page to challenge the scientific consensus statement, I would appreciate it if you be very clear about what exactly you are seeking to change, and to be very clear about the grounds on which you are seeking to change it. Doing so, would save a lot of drama. So far it looks like you are misreading our article, as you are talking about this environmental stuff which has nothing to do with the scientific consensus statement. Jytdog (talk) 14:49, 14 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

2, not 3: Ok, thanks for the warning that I should be careful not to say "3" even if I list the other summary link (perhaps putting it on the same line would be the better way to go).

Kloor article: Yes, I am well aware the RfC statement does not talk about affects on animals or the environment, and I never intended the Monarch Butterfly studies to be a challenge to that. I was responding to the Kloor article you asked me to read. I mentioned the Monarch Butterfly study for two reasons: (1) I saw it wrongly dismissed by a GMO proponent as "bad science" here, when it should not have been dismissed, even though I agree with Parrott here and Kloor the rat study was "bad science" and "bad statistics". (2) Although it is true, the RfC statement does not talk about animals or the environment, GMO proponents, including the author of the article you asked me to read, often quote Pamela Ronald to justify a consensus statement, using this quote that is in the article: "There is broad scientific consensus that genetically engineered crops currently on the market are safe to eat. After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative total of 2 billion acres planted, no adverse health or environmental effects have resulted from commercialization of genetically engineered crops." Obviously untrue. Since her position and quote *does* make the claim to extend to the environment, I'm showing you the flaws in this article and similar incorrect claims made by GMO proponents distorting the science and the facts. I had the impression you asked me to read it because you thought it was a sound article. Do we can agree it is biased and inaccurate for numerous reasons? I have two more things to say about it later. Incidentally, it sounds like the reputation of Ms. Ronald has been challenged and I believe 1 or 2 of her published works have been retracted: See this article that came up when I Googled her.

On US vs. EU regulation: "You say that GMOs are not tightly regulated in the US. That is not true and you have presented no basis for saying that. Many anti-GMO people think that the scientific examination conducted with regard to the effect of GM food on health as part of the regulatory process is very different in the US and EU; this is not true." Huh? The article you provided me to prove your point says exactly the opposite of what you said, that the two are indeed quite different. It begins by saying the US has cozzied up with industry and loosened its regulations and the EU has done the opposite! Please give me a quote from the article confirming your claims.David Tornheim (talk) 15:44, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Glad we are on the same page with regard to "three". There is no need to bring both - people who work on the GM articles are scientifically literate.

With regard to the rest... I am starting to think that you don't understand how WP works. We read the relevant literature and summarize it. That is how we generate content here. The overwhelming consensus expressed in the literature is that currently marketed foods from GM sources are as safe as food from conventional sources. We don't cite the Kloor article as a source for the consensus statement - I pointed you to it only because that article was specifically cited as a motivation by the people who produced one of the sources you brought, so you would have that context in case you didn't.

I am 'disgusted that you bring upI object to your bringing up Ronald's retraction as though that says something about her scientific reputation. She discovered that her lab had used bad reagents; she disclosed that, and she retracted her paper. That is how science is supposed to work when things go wrong. See here and here and here. I am done talking with you. Jytdog (talk) 16:20, 14 February 2015 (UTC) (striking "disgusting" comment. Not helpful. My apologies. Jytdog (talk) 04:42, 17 February 2015 (UTC))

If you strike the statements about Ronald I will be happy to continue to talk to you further. (and by the way, "Independent Science News" is a product of Claire Robinson and Jeremy Lantham, whom I mentioned above. It is not "independent", it is a vehicle for their anti-GMO views and they hit below the belt, all the time.) You appear to be charging full steam into things that you don't know much about. If you don't move more carefully, this is going to be much uglier than it needs to be - it doesn't have to be ugly at all. Jytdog (talk) 19:38, 14 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

To be fair, he may not have known that retractions in science are not admissions or implications of foul play, and (given how many papers are never retracted despite being known to be wrong) are often interpreted as a sign of integrity.

David: FWIW, I also think the final sentence of the above comment here could be interpreted poorly. The idea, I think, is that repeating the same path that was followed before will probably lead to either a large amount of stressful argumentation that goes nowhere, or editors considering your comments unproductive and ceasing to respond as a result. Sunrise (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Sunrise. Yes, I am well aware that retractions of science papers are rare. And I agree that it is more honorable to admit and take responsibility for one's mistake and to retract a paper that has serious problems than to leave it up to others to fight a difficult battle to force it. It's very similar to people who resign under pressure from political office (or have big press conferences for damage control when they have been caught doing something the public would not approve of) and agreements in lawsuits both civil and criminal where an admission of a mistake, wrongdoing or apology is part of the agreement and demanded by the other side to avoid further litigation. Even if it is the honorable thing to do and shows integrity, it does look to me like an admission that one has produced and/or engaged in shoddy work that should have been caught before publication. As was the case with the rat study, except that author did not retract the article--the journal did. I see no reason I should take the reference down to a well written article. Jytdog gives the unsupported allegation (just as much of an "ad hominem" I would say) that the authors of the article have an agenda, as if Ronald does not. I agree Jydog's last statement has the sound of a veiled threat and intimidation. My interpretation in this context was that the evil monsters who wrote that article blemishing pro-GMO "hero" Ronald will be viciously attacked, showed to be the evil charlatans that they must be, and rid from the face of the earth for questioning Ronald's integrity. How dare they! LOL. Obviously, I couldn't possibly know what I am talking about if I share their dastardly work and I too should see a similar fate of infinite obscurity for taking anything they say seriously or worse letting others know about it. Anyway, if Jytdog wants to impugn the integrity of the authors of that article, that's fine by me. I'm all ears to valid criticism. I'm not affiliated to them and won't feel any "ugly" sting from finding out how absolutely horrible these seemingly innocent and "nice" people really are. LOL. To be honest, I noticed Jytdog's ire concurrently to my response:

On US vs. EU regulation: "You say that GMOs are not tightly regulated in the US. That is not true and you have presented no basis for saying that. Many anti-GMO people think that the scientific examination conducted with regard to the effect of GM food on health as part of the regulatory process is very different in the US and EU; this is not true." Huh? The article you provided me to prove your point says exactly the opposite of what you said, that the two are indeed quite different. It begins by saying the US has cozzied up with industry and loosened its regulations and the EU has done the opposite! Please give me a quote from the article confirming your claims.

I am thinking Jytdog saw that I called the bluff, that the article did not support the claim that the US and EU have similar GMO standards. Rather than admitting error (as noble GMO-"hero" Ronald did), Jtydog created a distraction, and used that as an excuse to dodge it, to use ad hominems on me "you don't know what you are talking about" (obviously I do, or Jytdog would not be so upset!), and throw in a little intimidation of things getting "ugly" to try and scare me off. Unfortunately, I don't fall for those tactics. Took too much Philosophy not to notice them immediately. Sorry  :-) Now let's carry on with civil discussion of the facts! Okay?David Tornheim (talk) 00:22, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

we assume good faith here. Your post drips with sarcasm, and that is not what we do here. I came here originally to try to help you - to save you time. I have zero interest in "jousting" with you or anybody. I don't "bluff". I'll see you on the article Talk page. Jytdog (talk) 00:43, 15 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Sarcasm, really? Unbelievable! Sorry y'all lack humor. Humor is good for the soul. LOL. Yes, I assumed good faith until your statements started to go down hill as Sunrise also noticed. Hopefully, you will be more civil and avoid these tactics on the talk page.David Tornheim (talk) 01:12, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'd rather not go through the rhetoric/social positioning process right now. :-) I'll just comment in response to the issue at hand that it's not at all similar to people who resign under pressure from political office - that is in fact the point I was making. Sunrise (talk) 02:09, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

quick note. Sunrise, thanks for pointing out that my comment about things getting uglier than they need to be, being misconstrued. Your interpretation is along the lines of what I meant. It can be difficult to work on controversial content and we need high quality discussion based on good sources; ad hominem arguments based on poor sources are not productive, per the of-cited Graham's hierarchy. I also note that WP:BLP applies everywhere, including Talk pages. Its better on many levels just to not go there. David I did not mean that as any kind of threat and I am sorry if you took it that way. Jytdog (talk) 21:23, 15 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Warning

It appears that you have been canvassing—leaving messages on a biased choice of users' talk pages to notify them of an ongoing community decision, debate, or vote—in order to influence Genetically modified food controversies. While friendly notices are allowed, they should be limited and nonpartisan in distribution and should reflect a neutral point of view. Please do not post notices which are indiscriminately cross-posted, which espouse a certain point of view or side of a debate, or which are selectively sent only to those who are believed to hold the same opinion as you. Remember to respect Wikipedia's principle of consensus-building by allowing decisions to reflect the prevailing opinion among the community at large. Thank you.

difs:

• 08:51, 13 February 2015 dif
• 08:54, 13 February 2015 dif
• 09:02, 13 February 2015 dif
• 09:08, 13 February 2015 dif

Please stop canvassing. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 14:34, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

• As a canvassed party, whose response thus far has been only to supply information, and who furthermore watches the pages in question anyway, groupuscule must suggest that this "Warning" comes across as unnecessary and unduly threatening. David Tornheim posted on the pages of four users, all of whom are already deeply involved in the exact discussion at hand. On a related note: If the talk pages for articles about genetically engineered food weren't Archived so often, there might be better continuity of discussion on those pages, themselves, and the decentralized communication on people's talk pages might not seem as necessary. ☮ groupuscule (talk) 15:33, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I would be happy to discuss archiving on any of the relevant aticle's Talk pages. With regard to canvassing, it is a breach of WP's norms. None of the users who were canvassed have been involved in the articles for quite some time now; groupuscule's (you are really going third person now! :)) description of them as "deeply involved in the exact discussion at hand" has not been true for a long time now, and the canvassing is a clear effort to revive old disputes that were settled a long time ago by contacting people who argued for the kinds of changes that David wants to make now. My response carefully follows the recommendations in the guideline:

"The most effective response to quite recent, clearly disruptive canvassing is to politely request that the user(s) responsible for the canvassing stop posting notices, possibly using {{subst:Uw-canvass}} on their talk page. If they continue, they may be reported to the administrators' noticeboard, which may result in their being blocked from editing. Users with a prior history of disruptive canvassing, which they have previously been asked to discontinue, may be blocked immediately without further warning, if such an action is deemed to be necessary."

That is what I have done. And if David continues, I will take the next steps, as described in the guideline. Jytdog (talk) 16:21, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Reminder

There's a certain unnamed bully who tends to be very uncivil and drives editors away from topics. You may or may not have run into him. Strangely, he's never been blocked, which shows that some editors are very good at manipulating and gaming the Wikipedia system to get what they want, mostly by kissing up to the right people and spreading false rumours about others they dislike. Unfortunately, you may have become the latest target of this bully. If this is true, then you must be very careful to be calm and civil in your replies, because this bully will attempt to game the system to get you blocked. Take care. Viriditas (talk) 02:02, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

hmmm] Jytdog (talk) 03:17, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

although with the spooky conspiratorial tone, this is more appropriate. Jytdog (talk) 03:20, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

about your note on gandy's page

It is strange that you are disappointed that no one walked you through the history. Nobody gets a personal escort through WP.

I read the rest of what you wrote, and again, it was strange. I have no idea who you are and it is none of my business - thinking about who you are is profoundly against the spirt of Wikipedia - we assume good faith about one another as a baseline and we focus on the work we do together. And I don't care what you think of me. Please stop thinking about me. I don't want to read about your speculations about what motivates me or doesn't motivate me, and you shouldn't write it Really. We don't go there in WP. If you haven't actually read WP:AGF please do.

Think about all the drama on the GMOC talk page about substantial equivalence - as you wrote on Gandy's page, that was driven by your distrust of me (which has no place here). I will also add, that the drama was driven by your ignorance with regard to the subject matter. (ignorance is not bad - i have oceans of it, and try to learn more every day) Making strong statements based on ignorance is kind of bad, however. Anyway, once you finally read the sources and let them speak to you, the issue went away. Which is great, and was a relief to me. And the article ended up with better sourcing. We could have gotten there much quicker and more pleasantly had you not wasted time being suspicious of me, and had just thought about the content, and what reliable sources say about it, before you started making strong claims. But we got there.

I am happy to reboot our working relationship. Please just deal with the content and the sources. Once you do, you will find that the articles are mostly accurate and NPOV, per reliable sources. They have been tested by fire, many many times. (they are not perfect and they can never be finished; nothing in WP ever is) But there is a lot of misinformation out there about GMOs and a lot of unreliable sources; please think carefully about the sources you bring.

Best regards Jytdog (talk) 02:58, 22 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Additional note - about BP. Your effort to throw my own words at me is really glib and ugly - you don't know the story. if you had read the history of the BP article (which would take you another week at least), you would have seen that once I was able to push back the real ick that was going on there (and it was icky and is not what I do) you would have seen that Petra in particular started to push way way too far the other way and as I tried to hold the middle, she started to demonize me so much, that it got so ugly that I just walked away. That all happened before the March against Monsanto article, where she tried to do the same thing, in the same way, and then came after me again on the GMO stuff. It was really dark and ugly. I believe she has burned out and mostly left the project now. I feel bad for her; carrying that kind of hateful poison around, hurts you. As for me, I aim for the reasonable, messy middle, always. I just try to make the articles I work on, as well sourced and NPOV as I can. But that is all a big fucking waste of time; I just responded because your effort to throw my words at me - done in ignorance of the whole story - was icky.

Please just concentrate on the work. And please work carefully; be on reasonably firm ground when you make claims, and be ready to hear that you are missing information. You will find that is how i behave here. Jytdog (talk) 03:18, 22 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Thank you for your response. I have many thoughts on all of the things you wrote above and spent two hours working on this response. However, I don't want to spend a lot of text explaining myself and where I feel misunderstood, so I cut much of it down. I want to focus on some points of agreement, forward movement and explain one place where we disagree.

(1) "I am happy to reboot our working relationship." Good! Let's keep it positive!

(2) I read the [[WP:AGF]. It's good policy. It seems to me you were the first to start accusing me of not having "good faith". You snapped at me first, using harsh language and ad hominems. It was clear to me at that point you did not think I had "good faith". Let's please go back to (1) and not start accusing either of the "good faith" thing unless it is truly warranted. Accusations tend to cause distrust, lack of harmony. It is mentioned in WP:AGF and I agree.

(3) I did not expect an escort. I wanted to avoid stepping on well-known landmines and reigniting old disputes and people forming battle lines and get caught in the cross-fire or relegated to one side. This is a constant problem on Wikipedia. I have seen in on many pages. I don't know how to fix it--but I am aware of it.

(4) "Please just concentrate on the work." Yes, let's do that. However, if there is corporate malfeasance going on in regards to Wikipedia on ANY article, it should be addressed. If you can point me to a place where these problems are addressed, it would be much appreciated.

(5) I did not "use your words against you". Please assume the "good faith" you say I lack. Your words prove you are a stand up person and are interested in Wikipedia not being subverted by corporate malfeasance. That is good! That is why my distrust from the list I wrote was changed into trust. Trust is good. Let's build trust. Now we may agree there is a problem with corporate PR people, but it appears you strongly disagree with Gandydancer and others about HOW to address it. I honestly don't know what is best--I'm all ears on that subject. It is a somewhat tangential issue from the NPOV but may be a problem and a number of people have said they think it is a problem. Wikipedia's policies of anonymity make it quite difficult to ascertain, unfortunately. Doc James noted that. And I saw that you helped him identify "sock-puppets". Again good work. This builds more trust.

(6) I can see you have strong emotions about this, especially the sentence where you said, "fucking waste of time". I know you don't believe that or you would have left just as Petra did. I think you have a short fuse now and that's something you'll have to work on. I can see there are relationships that have developed and many strong unhealthy negative distrustful emotions have come into this. I hope we can repair the burned bridges. I don't want you to project these problems on to me and assume I am going to behave similarly as those who you have had problems with you in the past on GMO's or MAM. My goal again is to avoid repeating past mistakes.

(7) "Think about all the drama on the GMOC talk page about substantial equivalence - as you wrote on Gandy's page, that was driven by your distrust of me (which has no place here)."

No. No. No. That was not because of distrust. You are not assuming "good faith" by saying that. Please look again at the talk page of GMOC. Both of us focused on content, not trust. There was no "drama" there that I detected. The drama was on my talk page and you started it, when you got all pissy that I posted the article that was negative on Pamela Ronald (whose page is anything but "objective" and I believe the sources violate numerous RS rules. Of course, the Pro-GMO would never care about that, right?). I honestly was quite shocked at how upset you got and that certainly damaged the "good faith" assumption. Anyway, I made the edit on the "Substantial Evidence" to see what would happen. Because I truly believed that statement was incorrect. I would not have done that if you had been better at explaining it on my talk page and had not stormed off, saying, "I'm done talking to you." That would have looked terrible if you did that on the talk page, right?! If you look at where I challenged your claims about the "substantial equivalence" ON MY TALK PAGE, you didn't response about where in the article it said it was UNIVERSAL. I noted that the article clearly said the US has been shifted by corporate lobbying more so that the EU, and it was at that time you had gotten mad and stopped talking, instead of just showing me the content that proved your point as you did on the GMOC talk page in a mature way. I hope our work on the GMOC talk pages is *that* productive in the future!

(8) I would appreciate it if you read the first section of my user page written (it's shorter than this response) when I first joined Wikipedia about NPOV, bias, objectivity, etc. I think it applies as much today about my concerns on the GMO pages as it did about other subjects I had seen with controversy.

Maybe that wasn't so abbreviated. LOL!!  :-) Yours truly,David Tornheim (talk) 06:04, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your remarks. I will see you on the Talk page. Jytdog (talk) 08:08, 22 February 2015 (UTC)(striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Conflict of interest in WP

OK, you keep referring to corporate interests working to pervert WP and the like, and above you asked me to tell you about how "corporate malfeasance" is addressed here.

I work a lot in this area - this is something that is very important to me and I spent a significant chunk of my time on Wikipedia dealing with it. So I can tell you about it. This is quite long, for which I apologize, but I want to give you an intro and then a careful description.

pre-intro... before I do, I want to say something again. While I understand your concern about corporate corruption of WP and share it, your approach to this issue is wrong. We do not begin by distrusting anybody, and we do not write boatloads about how we feel about other editors in Wikipedia. You will understand that better ( I hope) after reading the following.

Intro: The whole complex of policies and ideas about anonymity and outing is very important to this project. We assume good faith and we do not try to WP:OUT anybody. Let me put this in bold - if you try to out another editor, you will be banned. Wikipedia takes anonymity very very seriously. Editors who have been publicly identified have been threatened with physical violence, hounded, and otherwise fucked with both professionally and personally, by crazy and bad people. I know editors to whom this happened. The Outing policy is strictly enforced, and very important to how this place operates.

Related to that -- deep in the guts of Wikipedia - part of the beautiful and well-thought-out heart of this place - is the notion that we are all equals, working respectfully side by side, looking at and focused on creating and improving article content according to Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines, and behaving according to WP's behavioral policies, guidelines, and norms. WP is all about content, not contributors; it doesn't matter who you are in the real world - Randy from Boise or a nobel laureate. We don't know who you are in the real world, and we don't care. What matters is the content you create and how you conduct yourself. It is beautiful.

If we have problems with the behavior of another editor - if another editor's behavior leads us to pull our eyes from content and direct them at another editor - we address that directly and respectfully with the other editor on his or her Talk page, and if that fails, we take it to one of the boards and let the community handle the matter. It should never get personal here. This place falls away from its ideal and becomes really ugly when editors turn their eyes from article content and start looking at and discussing one another's good or bad intentions, or start talking about how qualified they are and how we should accept their contributions based on their authority instead of what reliable sources say. These are all typical newbie mistakes. When you combine those newbie mistake with some passion... you can see that things get even uglier, faster.

I hope you reflect on that, and incorporate that into the way you operate here.

OK, intro is over.

The key documents regarding "corporate malfeasance" are WP:NOT (specifically WP:PROMO), WP:NPOV, WP:COI, and WP:ADVOCACY. You should notice right away, that NOT is pillar and policy, NPOV is policy, COI is a guideline, not a policy, and ADVOCACY is just an essay, not a guideline and not a policy. ("policy", "guideline", and "essay" are technical terms in WP) I'll discuss these in there order of centrality to the heart of WP and community consensus about them.

• WP:NOT is a pillar and a policy. This is all about the mission - what we are doing here, defined largely by what we are not. This document is really important to orient editors to our mission, which is to crowdsource a free and reliable source of information that captures the sum of human knowledge. Beautiful. But people arrive here who don't get that, and try to make WP into all kinds of things it is not, and some abuse it (sometimes not understanding that what they are doing wrong, sometimes knowingly). One of the most common abuses, is using wikipedia to promote some thing, organization, person, cause, or idea. Promotional editing is profoundly un-Wikipedian (pillar) and is against policy, be it done by a company or someone committed to opposing a company's activities.

• NPOV is policy, because everybody agrees that NPOV content is absolutely central to Wikipedia's mission. Everybody agrees on that. Also, NPOV is something that you can discuss objectively - editors can find sources, discuss them and (try to) come to agreement on what they say, and what ideas in them are central and should get the most WEIGHT, and which are more peripheral and should get less WEIGHT. It is about content, and is based on publicly available information. I want to note here, that there is a noticeboard for NPOV issues, WP:NPOVN. That board is pretty much defunct, which is unfortunate. We can have a separate discussion about why that is, but issues about POV are most often addressed at ANI.

• COI is only a guideline. There have been many many MANY efforts to raise COI to policy but those efforts have never succeeded, primarily because any given editor's conflict of interest is personal - it is about contributor, not content. Do you see how issues about COI immediately come into conflict with our policies about anonymity and outing, that I described above? (that is a real question - if you don't understand that, the rest of this will make no sense to you).

• • Those who oppose raising it to policy, make the very good points that:
    • a) it is about contributor, not content;
    • b) the information that would make it clear if someone has a COI is private, and getting it would involve violating OUTING;
    • c) what matters at the end of the day is whether the content is NPOV and well sourced - if someone adds that for pay or as a volunteer, doesn't matter;
    • d) we already have the NPOV policy and if editors add biased content, we already deal with them under that policy. we don't need a COI policy
    • e) ADVOCACY is as big, if not a much bigger, problem (but see note below) and all this fuss about COI does nothing to deal with advocacy;
    • f) (less good point) those who are obsessed with COI are most often anti-corporate advocates themselves, trying to shove their bias down everyone else's throats.
  • Those who want to elevate COI to policy, make the very good points that:
    • a) every responsible organization has a COI policy, and WP as a widely used repository of information, has a special responsibility to manage COI of our editors, to earn and retain the public's trust;
    • b) editors with a COI cannot help but be biased - it takes superhumans to write truly NPOV content with a COI, and we cannot give them free rein:
    • c) WP is a volunteer project and everybody has limited real time and real jobs, and there is an endless supply of COI editors and we cannot keep up with them:
      • (i) companies have money to pay people to push biased content into WP:
      • (ii) there are tons of freelancers looking to get paid for editing WP;
      • (iii) there are companies that exist as brokers between companies and freelancers - their whole business model is pushing biased content into WP;
    • d) (weak argument) Wikipedia has legal liability under advertising laws to disclose any content that is actually a paid advertisement, and if we cannot get COI disclosed we cannot comply.
    • e) (weak argument) it is actually in the interest of conflicted editors to have controls; most often they end up embarrassing themselves and their clients or employers

• ADVOCACY is just an essay and is really an adjunct to WP:NPOV and WP:NOT. Advocacy is more focused on the editor's behavior (and passion underlying biased editing, rather than financial interests underlying biased editing), while NPOV focuses on content, and COI is about the editor him- or-herself. Looking at someone's behavior, it is often hard to sort out if the bias they are adding is due to COI or passion. The result is the same, though - biased content. It is important to know that the community distinguishes between COI (something essential to the editor) and Advocacy (behavior of the editor generally, but especially concerned with passion-driven bias), and NPOV (content). The essay WP:TENDENTIOUS is useful for identifying editors who have a pattern of advocacy behavior. (It really is useful - you should check it out. And I invite you to apply that checklist to me. I check myself against it.)

I have argued for raising COI to policy. I also want to note, that with regard to the interesting question of what perverts WP more - bias due to financial or other conflict of interest, or bias due to passion (say someone who is ardent practictioner of yoga wants to add glow-y content to an article about the health-benefits of yoga; or a fan of a football team adding glowy content about that team and adding negative content to other teams; or a vegetarian adding loads of content to the Meat article about how evil meat and the livestock industry are... etc etc you see what I mean)... with regard to which damages Wikipedia more - there is actually no data on that. Nobody knows. It is clear to me, that both are big problems.

Anyway, within the realm of COI, there are 2 broad classes of "conflict", in the way Wikipedia considers the issues:

• What we call "paid editing", which is (as it sounds) editing for pay. You might be freelancer, or a PR agent, or an employee of a company or a university... but if you are getting paid to edit WP to promote something, you are a "paid editor" (I note that there is a class of paid editors that are different and are not considered to have a conflict of interest- see WP:GLAM for example)
• Other COI editing - maybe you are suing someone and want to add negative content about them, or maybe you are an academic who thinks you are great and wants the world to know that through WP, etc etc. (as I mentioned above and as WP:ADVOCACY explicitly discussed, it is often impossible to figure out if someone has this second kind of COI especially, or is editing from passion - they are closely related)

There are lots of famous examples of Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia - there is even an article about it. One of the most recent and painful examples, was a nest of sockpuppets that was uncovered in 2012 - see Wiki-PR editing of Wikipedia. This was driven by one of the "broker" companies I mentioned above, so the issue was paid editing. Literally hundreds of sock accounts; huge huge effort by volunteers to uncover them all, close them down, and reverse the damage they did. This led to another massive effort to get a policy to explicitly ban "paid editing" in Wikipedia - there were no less than 5 competing proposals running at the same time. Huge turmoil. None of them succeeded. After the WP-en community failed to come to agreement on how to manage this problem, the WMF (our parent) took over and did two things. It sent Wiki-PR a cease-and-desist letter regarding use of the WP name, and claimed (very weakly) that Wiki-PR itself violated our Terms of Use. They subsequently amended the Terms of Use (which it, as the owner of this site, issues) to make it obligatory for paid editors to clearly disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation" and to follow project policies and guidelines with regard to conflict of interest. You will see the results of their actions in the WP:COI guideline, in the first section.

It is important to note that the WMF did 'not ban paid editing. This made the wing of the community that wanted to ban it, very unhappy. But per the WMF, paid editors can be part of the community, if they disclose their COI and follow the COI guideline (namely, if they don't directly articles (outside of making purely factual, uncontroversial (broadly defined) changes) and instead suggest content on the relevant Talk page). It is also important to note that the WMF left the anonymity and outing policies of WP intact. The change to the Terms of Use is not a license to hound or OUT anyone.

Anyway, WP:COI describes very clearly, what a COI is, what someone with a COI should do, and how to handle concerns any editor may have, with another editor's possible COI - for the latter, see Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#How_to_handle_conflicts_of_interest. It follows the general principles I mentioned above about how we handle it, if we ever have a concern with another editor's behavior. Raise the issue directly and politely with the editor-of-concern on their Talk page, and if you are not able to resolve your concerns, take it to the relevant noticeboard, which in this case is WP:COIN. Do not hound, do not pound it on it relentlessly on the talk page, do not make it personal, and do not attempt to OUT the person. Let the community handle it. I do a lot of work responding to notices posted at COIN. I think it is an important issue.

You can learn more on your own about all this and the various perspectives voiced by the community, by carefully reading WP:COI and its talk page and their archives, as well as the archived failed discussions about creating a policy banning paid editing, that are linked in the "further reading" section at the bottom of the Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia article (which I put there)

there you go. Happy to discuss any part of that or answer any questions you may have. Jytdog (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Wow!! Thank you so much for a very interesting read and much good information! I had no idea! I will do the reading you recommended. I started working on response last night, but the power went out, so I might get back to you later on some of my initial reaction, and also some of the confusion I have long had, which I think is a problem for other new and even experienced users as well. I'm really happy you have such strong feelings on this matter and you have such a strong commitment to addressing these problems. I agree with nearly every thing you say in one way or another, and understand the potential corruption from "passion" or Ideology or Cultural myopia (such as Patriotism or Nationalist views), where one particular POV is so strongly held that there is simply no room for any other view, no matter how reasonable. And honestly, when I first heard about Wikipedia, I thought Ideology and cultural myopia would ruin all the articles, since ANYONE could edit and had an equal voice in what looked like "democracy-knowledge." I saw almost immediately that I was wrong about that, and that exceptionally well written articles started popping up and often included positions that the average American might cringe at, but which were in fact true.

And I was even more impressed how many article were far more NPOV than the mainstream media's incredible superficial treatment of nearly every subject they address. Nonetheless, I can't say I totally understand WHY it works. I'm glad it does and glad to be a part of it. But obviously it doesn't always work and I do tend to jump in when I see an article that lacks NPOV and try to balance the one-sided voices. I typical example is when I looked at the page for my hometown Terrace_Park,_Ohio. The page had a very Euro-centric view and I tried to fix it but was met with heavy opposition from an admin. who I believe threatened to use his/her admin. powers to block me if I put in the Native American portion. The editor just reverted everything I did and another admin. Beeblebrox saw the problem and definitely agreed that the other admin. was out of line. But I didn't feel like going into contentious Wiki-litigation with DR, so instead, I just waited until the other editor who had been a problem stopped watching and corrected the content, and fortunately it stuck! I have considered trying DR, in cases like that but was afraid to. I don't understand the Wiki-court proceedings, and do not want to make a fool of myself in front of a large number of established users, and I don't want to be perceived as a "vexation litigant". Unfortunately, there is no free Wiki-legal advice for this unusual pseudo-judicial system of DR, ArbCon, etc. LOL. I actually did a search on that on-line and might have paid someone to give me Wiki-legal advice before I started trying to edit on the page! LOL. David Tornheim (talk) 03:52, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

glad you found this useful. "why" it works, is people. there are enough people who are committed to the ideals of WP and who have really digested not only the letter but the spirit of PAG, that they are able to keep the ship on even-enough keel. i spend another chunk of my time here trying to teach newish editors how this place works and what those ideals are. some get it, some don't. some get it, with time. people have built some structures to help improve and maintain quality. I do a lot of work in heath-related articles and follow/participate in the WT:WikiProject Medicine and together that group minds many important articles here. It is super helpful to have a community Jytdog (talk) 04:38, 23 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

GMO Controversy -- Talk discussion Jokes

fwiw, i would appreciate it, if you would not engage in sarcasm and other rhetorical flourishes in the Talk page discussion, as you did in your 2nd paragraph here. Let's try to have a simple, serious discussion - dealing with the actual issues is hard enough, without distractions. You are free to do as you wish; I'm just telling you what I think would be most productive. You will find that I will just not respond to stuff like that. I think other editors may do, and if they do, it will probably be something in similar vein directed at you, and soon we are in an ugly place. Best just not to go there, in my view. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 15:01, 23 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

I was afraid you would say that. Sometimes a good laugh is good for the soul to release tension from being too serious all the time, no? Besides, humor sometimes has a truth of its own--A Modest Proposal was an outstanding example of that, I think. Nietzsche's sarcasm is amazing. I know I have been to many scientific and engineering conferences where the speaker starts off with a joke. Besides, I thought Lfstevens's joke was funny too. Did you scold him as well? David Tornheim (talk) 15:11, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

"I think other editors may do, and if they do, it will probably be something in similar vein directed at you, and soon we are in an ugly place." I don't think it would go to an "ugly" place. If they lack a sense of humor and bring it there, they look like fools in front of everyone. They are wise not to take it personally and laugh at it too, as I am sure Lfstevens will do! David Tornheim (talk) 15:16, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

i don't know if you have worked on controversial articles before, but i have done so a lot and in my experience, sarcasm/rhetoric is really unhelpful and does lead the discussion astray when others respond without self-restraint. you will do as you will, of course. btw i am watching your talk page so no need to leave talkbacks at mine. Jytdog (talk) 15:25, 23 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

this wasn't meant as a scold, but as advice. you can do with it as you will. i didn't see a joke by lfstevens. can you point me to what you are talking about? thx Jytdog (talk) 15:31, 23 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

You asked him about it [here] Where he added the comment:

When will the anti-GMO folks produce an unimpeachable study that supports their fears? Lfstevens (talk) 09:30, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Did you not see it? Please tell you understood he was joking. David Tornheim (talk) 15:54, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

He was being serious. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 16:02, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

LOL!! David Tornheim (talk) 16:47, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

User:Roxy the dog: Welcome to the discussion. What brings you here?David Tornheim (talk) 16:50, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I found that comment/set of comments confusingly formatted and so i wrote him a note on his talk page about it, yes. it was so fragmented/strange that i hesitated to react to it at all and still have not. Jytdog (talk) 16:31, 23 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Okay, I noticed those various fragments too, and considered replying, but I am trying to keep focus there. I think we are making progress, and I think you are beginning to see where I am coming from on the sentence in question. The jokes I just saw as light-hearted distraction before me get back to the heavy work of looking at WP:RS. I so wished you thought it was funny. Oh well. I do have another thing I wanted to say about sarcasm, but I'll get back to that later. I'm going to make a new section for discussion, because of your question asking me if I had been to or worked on a controversial page. Yes, absolutely. And I want to share my experience and the confusion I had about how Wikipedia there, and my concerns that other users get confused in the same way I did. David Tornheim (talk) 16:57, 23 February 2015 (UTC

this is more elaborate than i what to get into. i've told you that i think it is unwise to add rhetorical flourishes and sarcasm to discussion of controversial topics, and i believe you have heard that. you asked whether i was being unfair, and I responded to that. you will do as you see fit. good luck! Jytdog (talk) 17:40, 23 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Perhaps you are right. The man could tell a joke, but not take one of the same nature. I do think you should have scolded him too, if you knew this was his personality. It does seem like a double-standard, otherwise. I indeed found his response to my joke both annoying and needlessly distracting from what we were talking about. I think I am also annoyed at how much time you and I had to waste talking about it on top of it. If all of us just laughed there wouldn't have been a problem. Oh well--advice noted. David Tornheim (talk) 22:04, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

as i told you above, i did not take it as a joke. i took it as too fragmentary to interpret. hence there was no double standard; i experienced only one "joke". also you have said that I "scolded" you. Parents scold their children. teachers scold their students. I have no authority over you. I told you I would prefer you not be sarcastic, and explained why. You will do as you wish. Jytdog (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Attack on Pearl Harbor article experience

Jytdog: In answer to your question about whether I have been on contentious pages. Yes, definitely. As I may have told you already, I was very impressed early on with the quality of Wikipedia articles, but I didn't understand how differing perspectives were handled and settled, and why the content didn't just change every day if people disagreed. Around the time I created an account, I picked a topic I knew something about that I knew would definitely be contentious and controversial to the average Patriotic, nationalist American: I knew from college level history studies the very un-Patrioriotic facts that about Attack on Pearl Harbor: FDR and the military were aware the Japanese Navy was out and was likely to strike--they just didn't know where--and, in fact, Pearl Harbor was on alert at the time of the attack. Also, the U.S. had backed Japan into a corner with foreign policy having to do with I believe trade barriers and naval power. so, it wasn't entirely a surprise Japan was going to do something about it. The only surprise was that it was not the Philippines. And, worse, FDR was itching to get into WWII, but popular sentiment was against it, so this was a convenient way to get in the war, a bit like Remember the Maine. These are all well established and documented facts (and I believe you can find them all cited in Wikipedia, but not in that article where they belong!). So, to some degree the "unprovoked" "surprise" attack wasn't quite as big of a suprise as the average Patriotic American believes it is, and I think it is easy to argue that FDR used it to get into the war--something President are quite adept at doing (I can name a few if you don't know of any. :-)).

Anyway, I went to the page to see how these controversial facts were handled: Not very well at ALL. Any attempt to put any of that on the page was absolute heresy to the people who controlled the article at the time, and probably still is to this day. (Incidentally, despite the absence of this material, the page is a work of art otherwise--lots of good pics, and narrative, etc.) Anything negative like this--even if it was factual--was just a "conspiracy theory" and had to go on this page Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory, which was NOWHERE referenced on the pristine attack on pearl harbor article, because after all since it is a "conspiracy theory", it's not true, it's just b.s. in their minds, and held by lunatics. (I see that it is mentioned fairly early in the article now, but is still a "conspiracy theory").

I quickly saw it was hopeless to get anything like that in because I didn't understand the system. The take home message for me then (I view it differently now, especially after discussion with you) was this: if those with your perspective don't have a majority of the editors on your side (especially admins who can threaten to block you -or- experienced users who can twist the meaning of WP:RS to get their source in and yours rejected, and who know all the horrors of DR and the other threatened administrative actions and are probably friends with the decision makers who would be the judges and rule on their side even when any neutral observer would surely disagree), you will be bullied and you are sure to lose and they know it and are happy to flaunt it. It was pretty humbling--a bunch of thugs running the page making up and bending the rules to suit their agenda. (I suspected then this was not the plan, but I hadn't a clue what was to be done about.)

Shortly after that experience, I ran into one of the few people who had a paid position at Wikipedia Foundation at Cafe Abir in San Francisco and told him about this experience. He said he was pretty disappointed to hear about it, and that that was not supposed to happen. I don't know if I got his contact info. and if I did I doubt I could find it. He was a great guy regardless and I really enjoyed conversing with him.

I share this experience with you, because I know this is *not* how Wikipedia is supposed to work, but I think many new users get the feeling that this is how it works, and even long time editors seem to hold this opinion too, and that is a problem. Speaking with you--and again thank you for the long COI--I feel a little more optimistic that the system is designed to address these problem and with the right amount of patience perseverance, and attention to proper procedure, the kind of thing that I saw on the Attack on Pearl Harbor page will be rectified. David Tornheim (talk) 17:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

thanks for sharing that. Jytdog (talk) 21:26, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

You are welcome. The page is vastly improved on this issue as some of this is right in the lede, and it looks like its first appearance was only a few months after the time I was watching it. I would love to find out how the "conspiracy theorists" were able to get it in. (Possibly the process really did work. I really thought it was hopeless. Maybe I will put some time into researching that. I wish it didn't take so much work to figure out how something got in--although WikiBlame helps.) Nonetheless, the language there is still a little slanted. I doubt FDR deliberately provoked the Japanese to attack or even let it happen in order to get the U.S. into the war (I don't the evidence supports this theory), just as I doubt GW Bush tried to make 9/11 happen or let it happen (same). But both presidents unquestionably used the attacks to justify getting the U.S. into wars they wanted to get in to that the U.S. was opposed to with propaganda that played fast and loose with the facts. The Remember the Maine article is much more honest about how the propaganda works. I hope you can see how this is relevant to the issues I am raising on GMO's. David Tornheim (talk) 04:02, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

You are comparing the anti-GMO stance with a conspiracy theory rejected by the mainstream, Are you saying they are parallel? That is a real question, not sarcastic. Jytdog (talk) 10:55, 24 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

No, I wasn't comparing them directly--obviously the mainstream is concerned about GMO's!---but please hear me out. When you had asked if I had experience with controversial issues in Wikipedia, I wanted to share that particular experience and how it shaped my feelings about how Wikipedia functions in practice (far different than the ideals stated in all the policies, guidelines, etc.), and what seemed to be the typical way contested decisions are handled. My belief at that time, and for a long time after that, was this state of affairs was the result of a combination of vague, confusing, overwhelmingly complicated and seemingly contradictory rules, many of which were more like suggestions, all of which could be arbitrarily broken ("ignore the rules" WP:ignore), that could and were interpreted to suit a POV-pusher's agenda. Also included was my impression of a bizarre pseudo-judicial system of dispute resolution that appeared to be based more on friendships and loyalties than an objective and somewhat predicable decision-making system overseen by vetted judges who fully understood the rules, had pledged to obey them objectively, and had to put aside their personal opinions of the dispute's subject matter and any feelings about the parties (which is how law is at least supposed to be practiced in the United States). Instead, it seemed those particularly versed in all the confusion and ambiguity of the rules were at a huge advantage to get their way, even when it was transparent to the new user they were playing fast and loose with the rules to get what they wanted in the article. And lastly, that people with admin. power were especially to be feared, because they would not hesitate to use it to get their way, and if you challenged them, they would retaliate and get you blocked or banned.

It wasn't until you sent me that wonderful long essay about COI, "passion", anonymity, [WP:Policy], etc., that I began to understand how things are supposed to work, which was inspiring. I want to believe it can work and that a reasonable NPOV will result, instead of the horrible things that at least seemed to be happening with Attack on Pearl Harbor.

(Sorry if I am repeating myself. My reason for repeating it is, that I want to articulate concisely that experience, which I think may be typical for new users (and even experienced or long term users like myself who still feel overwhelmed and confused by the rules), and bring it to the attention of a bigger audience of more experience users (in some noticeboard) who may have forgotten that feeling but may have the power and wisdom of the process to address it, with hopes of both rectifying new user confusion like this, but also with aims to find ways that new users and users like me can find ways of obtaining, what I would call Wiki-Legal advice on: (1) if rule abuse really is going on, or it is just a misunderstanding of how the rules work -and- (2) how to challenge abuse if it is truly going on without how having to fear retaliation by advanced users and admins. Even better would be to have experienced users who act like attorneys assisting client users, who clearly have been wronged by users who have gamed the system, and who will stand by their client until the issue is resolved. (I work in law, so it's easy for me to see it this way)).

That said, I have seen on the talk pages, comments that GMO critics are WP:Fringe and that part does indeed remind me of my experience of Attack on Pearl Harbor, where legitimate verifiable perspectives are scrubbed from the page like a nasty blemish to the "truth" that concerns raised by GMO critics are just paranoid fantasies of people who "don't know what they are talking about". The discussion about the "contamination" vs. "mixed" is a good example. I really feel the people who changed "contamination" to "mixed" in that discussion are not playing by the rules. Is it deliberate? I hope not. Perhaps, they are blind to the obvious violation of the rules, because they are surrounded by a number of people who back them up and can't see the violation either? And perhaps, deliberate or not, they feel emboldened to continue scrubbing GMO critics' concerns, because they have gotten away with it before, many times over, and it feels like the natural order of things, because after all, GMO critics are nothing but a bunch of fools (like people who believe in space aliens) and everyone with any common sense knows this, except the GMO critics. It's this patronizing attitude towards GMO critics that is a big problem. That part to me is indeed just as unfair as what happened with the Attack on Pearl Harbor article.

Does that answer your question? I tried not to exaggerate too much--the first draft I'm sure you would have disapproved of!  :-) David Tornheim (talk) 14:18, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I wanted to know what you meant - if you meant that the anti-GMO position itself, is like some aspects of the pearl harbor conspiracy theories themselves. I get it, that you described your experience at the Pearl Harbor article so I could see what it was like for you and what issues you saw there. I am asking a different question, to understand you better. I took a quick look (not complete, and somewhat cursory!) of some of the history of the pearl harbor article and I see that you argued to give more weight and credence to some of the ideas held by conspiracy theories about pearl harbor and that others opposed you on the grounds of NPOV, specifically UNDUE. In your view, is that provisional description, a somewhat accurate description of what you were doing and the opposition you encountered? You are free to not continue this conversation, if you like. Jytdog (talk) 14:40, 24 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

No, I did not give any support for any conspiracy theory or WP:Fringe theory. I supported having an article that reflected the current scholarship on the subject by expert historians using Wikipedia's standards for RS and NPOV and any other RS that was appropriate as I still would now. I looked again at the talk pages of that time, and am reminded how uncivil and rude those who controlled the page were, using ad hominems like "loon" and "stupid" to people they disagreed with. I was saddened to see Wikipedia discussion was not at a higher level of civility. I did stand up for those who were being mistreated by those who were all bluster and no substance. I think I was more interested in trying to get the two sides to be civil and reasonable to each other and see eye-to-eye than anything else. (Not likely, right?) I see that I put a lot of time creating an outline so both sides could insert their claims and evidence to back up their claims. When I saw it again today, I had to laugh that I actually thought either side would cooperate! They were more interested in arguing with each other, for sure. Thanks for having me take a look at it again. From rereading it now, I do see that most of the discussion on those talk pages did not sufficiently focus on RS and a bunch of it was speculation and personal opinions rather than direct references to material in RS. I would definitely approach all of it quite differently now if I saw that discussion. But I was just learning back then, observing, and it was fun to see how it worked about be part of it. I was basically "getting my feet wet" and watching what was going on more than anything else and some times jumping in. David Tornheim (talk) 18:11, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

yes it is really important to remain focused on sources and proposed content, and how to use them per PAG, and to discuss things as simply and directly - there are many strong temptations to go wrong, in many ways. takes a lot of self-restraint. anyway, thanks for talking! Jytdog (talk) 18:58, 24 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Thank you for talking too! Last questions on this topic: In regard to my paragraph above starting with "(Sorry if I am repeating myself..." and explanations for the purpose : (1) Do you think the most experienced users are well aware that new users may often think this is how Wikipedia actually works and why they might lose confidence in it? (2) What forum is appropriate for discussion this general Wikipedia issue? (3) Are you aware that it has already been thoroughly discussed and efforts are in process to address it, and if so where I might look at those discussions? I wouldn't know where to begin searching for any of that. As a very involved and invested Wikipedian, I would think you might know. David Tornheim (talk) 00:10, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

when i witness new users getting all involved in hot conflicts (especially if i am not involved too) i try to jump into the new user's talk page and try to calm them down, and get them to understand that a) this place actually has a "rule of law" and is not a wild west, mad max place where people can just do whatever they want' b) they don't know anything about those "rules"; c) it is really unwise to get offended and even get in arguments when you don't understand what is going on... and I try to get them to let go of the argument and go edit elsewhere, on stuff they don't care so much about, while they learn what is going on. it works sometimes.

but there is very little one can do, when a new editor comes here with an ax to grind, and will not listen, and will not compromise, and will not learn.

Wikipedia, through the operations of NPOV, is very committed to being mainstream, to showing the world as it is, not as activists on any side of any issue wish it to be. In articles where there are very strong .... counter-currents to the mainstream, and activists/advocates of various stripes are constantly trying to drive fringe-y perspectives in, you will generally find a cadre of committed editors holding down the fort. (above, i told you it comes down to people. it really does).

In the field of health, I call these editors "quack fighters". We get all kinds of alt med POV-pushers, big fans of this or that fad diet, people convinced that some drug harmed them (lots of those), and less often, company/PR people, all trying to push bullshit into WP. The quack fighters do really important (and difficult work) every day. Some of them are a bit too battle hardened, but you have to respect them for hanging in there and not quitting, especially with all the abuse that gets heaped on them by the tinfoil hat crowd that keeps flowing through WP (some of whom stick around and become like zits on your butt that just will not go away and keep hurting and making things ugly). I respect the quack fighters and their commitment to WP's ideals, a great deal.

if you are a newish editor, and come to one of those articles wanting more representation of a minority or fringe view, you are going to have a very, very hard time getting your content to "stick". And probably an emotionally hard time as well; especially if you make typical newbie mistakes of personalizing things, instead of dealing with sources and PAG. Especially if you don't come in ready to do (ideally already having done) a lot of work to actually understand the mainstream view. I've gotten alternative views added to highly contested articles, but it was only by being very respectful of, and knowledgeable about, the mainstream position and showing, with really unimpeachable, nonpartisan sources, that the ideas I wanted to get into articles were very solidly part of the mainstream - just not in the center of it. And by being respectful and focused on content, not contributors.

so... that is about the best answer i can give you.

i think a lot of malarky (cliques and bad power game behavior) happens at lot here in "fuzzy" topics like video games, software... other stuff where there are not serious, scholarly/scientific institutions that produce a serious body of literature that in turn provides a great foundation of reliable sources to work with. I avoid those topics in WP (I actually don't care about them much); but i see really ugly battles about them at various drama boards - and it usually comes down to shitty source A says X and shitty source B says Y... nightmare stuff for me. It doesn't happen so much in topics I work in (mostly ag and health) because there is a great body of solid scientific literature to work with.

don't know if that is helpful or not. Jytdog (talk) 02:06, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I didn't answer your question fully, about helping new editors. I know there are all kinds of tools to help new editors - the various welcome templates, everything in the Template:Help_navigation help navigation template, the invitations to the Wikipedia:Teahouse (meant to be a welcoming place to help new editors get adjusted), the WIkipedia Adventure training modules.. there is also a community working on this, Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention. I don't know if, or if so how, they try to help new editors who really want to work on contentious articles. Like I said, i do my best to advise new editors not to try - its like trying to climb mount everest when you have just started learning how to climb; or skiing a black diamond trail when you are just starting to ski. WP:COMPETENCE really is required sometimes here, as it is in real life. Jytdog (talk) 14:23, 25 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

science

hi david. you seem pretty committed to working on the GMO stuff, so I want to ask you... how much of the underlying science do you understand? if you don't understand it much, that is fine, but i would appreciate the opportunity to tell you about it. i find that the work goes much better when everybody is starting with a baseline understanding. thx Jytdog (talk) 03:47, 26 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Far more than the average U.S. citizen and many of the reporters who write articles about it for the mainstream and just repeat stuff from press releases they got from one side or the other and couple of short interviews with the originators of the press release. I know a little bit about how journalists work on "breaking stories". But I know far less than GMO critics like Jeffrey Smith, Michael Pollun or advocates like Pamela Ronald or John Entine, and far far less than scientists who are experts who work in toxicology like Seralini and specialize in the science of food safety (I'm not talking about the regulation which is a very different matter). I also understand the politicization of science within scientific institutions and at universities. My parents are both professors emeritus from a major University and one actually did studies in drug testing and is familiar from first hand experience with the heavy handed ways drug companies will manipulate studies to try to make it so they can sell their drug, and how using the wrong statistics is part of it. I could tell you more about one particular story on that, but I would need to make sure it doesn't violate and ethical issues to talk about it. I have a B.S. Electrical Engineering and a Masters in E.E. as well, but I don't consider myself a scientist, but I know quite a lot about physics and chemistry, but took no additional courses in biology, organic chemistry, biochemistry. My science study in college was all with dead stuff!  :-) Thanks for the response on your page--I'll get back to that. I thought I would give you this report. One reason that I more than the average American besides my knowledge of science and info. from my parents is that I have spent a fair amount of time reading about food and watching documentaries like Jeffrey Smith's GMO Roulette--which exaggerates about the actual impact on health (I know that from reading some studies)--many things he does say I have checked out and have found nothing that refutes them at all. I did see a John Entine article (or maybe it was someone else) going point by point trying to discredit everything thing in the film--and some of the things they did question like cause-effect of leaky gut (which MAY be related to GMO's or equally well might not) I thought were fair criticisms. But the existence of something like Bt corn is pretty horrifying to me to be honest, and I think that most Americans feel the same way--regardless of how many studies so far have not observed any effect at all on human health, and this is the big value of the film--to tell people things that they don't know and have good reason to be concerned about (IMHO). I hope that answers your question. I have tried reading the various studies and because I am not an expert it in toxicology it can be challenging to know if many of the things Seralini said defending his behavior are reasonable or not, especially for example, his claim that Monsanto used the same # and kind of rats in their 90 day feeding trials, but then critics said that he needed to use more because of the mortality of the rats--I don't know if that is a fair criticism of his work or not. And if it is, I want to understand why he would use the wrong # of rats for a 2 YEAR STUDY if he knew in advance the # of rats was too few. It could be because of pressure from Greenpeace. I really don't know. So something like that, I wish I could talk to a specialist in toxicology who does studies like that but has not done them on GMO's to see what makes the most sense. Again I hope that answers your question. David Tornheim (talk) 04:25, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

One thing I meant to point out that I should point out, which I have been holding off on saying, is that the relevant fields, I believe for questions about the safety of GMO foods are: Food Safety, Toxicology and Epidemiology, possibly a couple of others not Biogenetics. One of the big problems with the "scientific consensus" statement I have been challenging is that it originates with biogeneticist scientists who can make enormous profits from minimum regulation and study and findings of potential or actual negative health impacts. Being out of their specialty, I do not believe they are qualified to make such wide sweeping claims about the safety of the applications they create (any more than you and me are), or any more than engineers who design integrated circuits are qualified to make consumer safety claims about their designs, unless they have special training in the correct field and are not tied financially to selling their products.) I have not raised this issue yet in that subject and maybe I should just copy and paste this portion or rewrite something similar. David Tornheim (talk) 05:05, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

thanks for answering. what you write opens more questions for me, but i will just ask a few.

when i asked you if you understand the science, i wanted to know if you understand genetic engineering. sorry for not being more precise. i am not asking if you could do it if you standing in a lab - i am asking if you understand what goes on, in making a genetically engineered bacteria, plant or mouse (or gene therapy, for that matter). I din't ask what you understand about subsequent steps in bringing a GM crop to market and am considering how and whether to address that with you off the article talk page (we already started addressing this with the "substantial equivalence" discussion at the article Talk page)

i can explain to you what is wrong with Seralini's reasoning defending his study design (and more importantly, his rhetoric) if you like. i can give you my best guess as to why the study design was set up the way it was, if you like.

please tell me if you like, why the existence of something like Bt corn is pretty horrifying to you. i would be interested to hear. thanks. Jytdog (talk) 13:27, 26 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

No, I don't know much about how biogenetics is done. I understand from this article that there are at least two major ways of doing it: (1) gene gun (which is mentioned in "Genetic Roulette" documentary (2) using bacteria to replicate either DNA or proteins or something like that. Observing the DNA I understand can be done with electron scanning microscopes. How one is able to take a strand from one gene (these are pretty small, right?) and force that small strand into another organism's gene--that a bit harder for me to envision. Like a operation to try to take a collection of molecules from someone's brain--what tools are able to cut and dice at submicroscopic levels? Despite how impossible it seems to be able to drill around and do construction at these submicroscopic levels, I know some sleep study experiments involved putting probes into INDIVIDUAL neurons. Those I would think are about as small as a DNA strand--so that's hard for me to believe too, but I know that can be done--I just can't imagine HOW that is possible. Having worked in VLSI design, I do understand how chips are created at these levels--they use a very finely calibrated laser, masks are photographically reduced to do etching.

Seralini: I am creating a new topic for that.

Bt Corn "please tell me if you like, why the existence of something like Bt corn is pretty horrifying to you." I don't think food (even if it is just for animals) should have pesticide (or herbicide) added to it. We was are instructed to wash off our conventional fresh fruits, for example, to rid of pesticide residues, because of undesirable toxic effects of pesticides and herbicides to humans (even though clearly not all pesticides have negative human health impacts). Pesticides and herbicides (the suffix gives the indication) are designed to kill living beings, so adding them to the various parts of the food supply, especially in widespread quantities with very little long-term study, to me is very risky. Unintended consequences could be pretty bad--consider DDT.

One might say that pesticides and herbicides exist in nature. I do know that honey, for example, doesn't spoil because it has an anti-bacterial layer or emulsion, which is probably not unlike a pesticide. That is not so troubling to me because it has developed from evolution and has been around for many centuries (or probably far far longer), and there is no evidence I know of even from paranoid and delusion people much less highly trained scientists that eating honey in ordinary quantities has negative health impacts, except for those who might be allergic to it. Evolution is a very slow process, but biogenetics is not.

Question back for you: Do you understand toxicology (and epidemiology) and if so, on what level of expertise do you have and how did you obtain that knowledge?David Tornheim (talk) 15:30, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for answering.

I understand toxicology and epidemiology enough to discuss them soundly and confidently. I have a high level understanding of statistics. I am not discussing personal details.

if you want me to explain genetic engineering to you, let me know. if you want me to explain Bt to you, let me know (the comparison with DDT or any other small molecule is not apt). Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 15:48, 26 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

"The Mutational Consequences of Plant Transformation" by Jonathan R. Latham, Allison K. Wilson, and Ricarda A. Steinbrecher (J Biomed Biotechnol. 2006) is informative and concise. It complements an aforecited law review in showing that the consequences of genetic engineering procedures are, in fact, unpredictable and not well understood. Also see: User:Groupuscule/GMO#Engineering Creates Unpredictable Changes to DNA. "Explanations" of genetic engineering, propounded by the likes of Henry I. Miller, oversimplified the process in a way which no longer stands up to scientific scrutiny (if indeed it ever did). groupuscule (talk) 16:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Séralini

Jtydog said "i can explain to you what is wrong with Séralini's reasoning defending his study design (and more importantly, his rhetoric) if you like." Jytdog (talk) 13:27, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I would like to hear that. FYI, when I first talked with you I had zero respect for the study, and thought Séralini did not apply statistics correctly either out of intention or ignorance. That conclusion came shortly after the prodding one of my parents (who is very Pro-GMO) for A SINGLE study like the one Lfstevens was asking for. When I saw the various memes about the Séralini study, I briefly looked at the study, which I didn't really spend enough time to fully understand and showed it to my Pro-GMO parent. My Pro-GMO parent attacked the study, criticizing it for statistical insignificance and use of the Sprague-Dawley rat designed to get cancer. I trust that parent's judgement about reading a study, but now I wonder if that parent, instead of reading it just Googled it to find the criticisms. I see that parent often uses all the Pro-GMO rhetoric like "feeding the world" or "GM has been going on for centuries with traditional breeding", rather than coming to that conclusion independently as I had formerly believed.

The criticism of too few rats (I was told 10 in the control and 10 in the study group, but I see it was 10 per group, with maybe 10 gruops) were too few to obtain significantly different results. From my knowledge of statistics, I agree, and wondered my anyone would use so few rats. But then later I discovered that Monsanto used the SAME # of rats and no one was criticizing them for doing inadequate study of statistical significance! When I heard that, I knew there was far more to the story and so I read up a bunch more on Séralini and think he is probably an upstanding guy and was unfairly attacked--except I think the PR methods to announce the study are a bit questionable and I don't approve from what I have read (and if Greenpeace was the major funder of the study that I can see how that compromises the communication at a minimum, and possibly also the choice of methods an # of rats). But Pamela Ronald I think does the same kind of things on the other side and has COI herself, so it not just one side's PR voice that is a problem.

The fact that the study was done with Sprague-Dawley rats made the finding of tumors not as remarkable as I originally thought when I showed the Pro-GMO parent--and hence the pictures in the memes of rats with tumors was DELIBERATELY misleading and designed to scare. But I suspect that miscommunication is not necessarily Séralini's fault, and may be the media--which loves sensationalism--and very likely also Greenpeace's PR communication strategies. And since he was taking money from Greenpeace, he might have been compromised in giving them the pictures or letting them take the pictures, possibly not realizing that those pics were going to be used to send a misleading message to the public (but I have trouble believing he could be so easily mislead by Greenpeace!). I suspect something like that was going on so Séralini may have been compromised by the funders--which happens all the time with drug companies on the industry side as I had mentioned before.

I did understand that the Sprague-Dawley rat was standard in toxicology so one can't fault the study or experimenter for using them. From everything I have been reading more recently, I think Séralini is probably not any worse of a scientist than say Pamela Ronald. And both that both have some COI issues that have compromised their messages to the public. David Tornheim (talk) 16:07, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

The problem with the study design was the whole thing - the choice of rat, the numbers of rats, and the length of time (lifetime of the rat). That rat develops high numbers of tumors over its lifetime, all by itself. Same rat, way more rats (60 per arm per OECD), same length of time, the results would have been interpretable. (this what the Grace Project says they are doing) Same rat, same number of rats, less time (which is the current standard tox study design), the results are interpretable. Seralini's design - not interpretable. Just noise. I don't speculate about motives. I just know what Seralini did and said. And I know what Ronald did - when her lab discovered the contaminated reagents, she self-retracted. That is what good scientists do.

I just wrote a long response to your bringing Ronald into this again, and deleted it. If you think what happened with Ronald and what happened with Seralini are in any way parallel, I don't know what to say to you. I really don't. Jytdog (talk) 18:02, 26 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Hi David, just as an FYI your comment caught my eye: "But then later I discovered that Monsanto used the SAME # of rats and no one was criticizing them . . ." That's actually a common half truth in this topic that comes up often and part of the reason why the nuance and understanding needed on the controversies for GMOs (or any science topic) makes editing the articles so difficult. Monsanto did a very different study than Seralini in that it was for a shorter period of time (90 days I believe). The number of rats in the Monsanto study was actually appropriate for the length of the study, but Seralini's went way beyond that length and would require more rats because of it. That detail often gets glossed over whenever the "Monsanto used the same number of rats" comments pop up. Just curious if you were aware of that. It actually could be something worth mentioning in the article, but I'd have to go back and find the sources that briefly mention that if it's even worth including at all. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:17, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

yep - sprague rat, 10 rats per arm, 90 days, is the current standard tox test. Jytdog (talk) 18:39, 26 February 2015 (UTC) (striking, this discussion is not something I should have done Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC))

Yes, I knew about the 90 day vs. 2 years was mentioned in some of the criticisms. I am not sufficiently an expert to know the basis of the conclusion that he should have used 65 rats. Is there an international standard in toxicology that 10 rats is fine for 90 days and 65 rats are required for 2 years. That would be more compelling that he was not doing "good science." David Tornheim (talk) 21:13, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Bingo. The OECD puts out guidelines exactly for this (one example [2]). [This source] that we also currently cite explains the difference between the two studies pretty well in the last few paragraphs. We don't flesh that out too much right now in the article, but that's a conversation for the talk page there if anyone wants to start looking into that. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:39, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Done

In light of your comment on my Talk page, I believe it is best if we stop talking off the article Talk page. I am unwilling to risk being perceived as canvassing (no canvassing is an important WP policy, and important to me) and you are clearly taking it that way, and I also don't want you to feel intimidated. See you on the article talk page. Jytdog (talk) 21:29, 26 February 2015 (UTC)