User talk:Abd

Alternatively, I may not be back at all, more than occasionally, I have no crystal ball, and real life beckons invitingly.

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WELCOME TO Abd TALK

Before reading User talk:Abd

WARNING: Reading the screeds, tomes, or rants of Abd has been known to cause serious damage to mental health. One editor, a long-time Wikipedian, in spite of warnings from a real-life organization dedicated to protecting the planet from the likes of Abd, actually read Abd's comments and thought he understood them.

After reading User talk:Abd

After reading, his behavior became erratic. He proposed WP:PRX and insisted on promoting it. Continuing after he was unblocked, and in spite of his extensive experience, with many thousands of edits,he created a hoax article and actually made a joke in mainspace. When he was unblocked from that, he created a non-notable article on Easter Bunny Hotline, and was finally considered banned. What had really happened? His brain had turned to Dog vomit slime mold (see illustration).

Caution is advised.

Offering you the same as I have WMC

See this discussion for details.

Scibaby Impacts

Since Raul has made Scibaby such a central figure in the current ArbCom case I was thinking that I should document some of the impacts Raul's obsession is creating. Do you think this might be appropriate fair for the current case? If so do you have any pointers to where I can find information on things like the extent and impact of the range blocks Raul has implemented? If one assumes that a puppet master seeks to create disruption of some sort, it occurs to me that Raul may have become an unwitting tool of Scibaby. Thanks to Raul and his ego driven obsession to control this one puppet master Scibaby is creating far more havoc and damage to the project than he otherwise could as a regular editor. Raul has, in effect, made Scibaby an administrator, a checkuser, an oversighter, etc by allowing himself to be manipulated so easily. Do you agree?

If so I can certainly take a crack at pulling some of this information together but I don't even know where to begin to look for the relevant pieces. Do you have any ideas? --GoRight (talk) 20:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

There was a noticeboard discussion or the like recently. I'll look for it. I do agree with your analysis, it is entirely possible that the whole Scibaby affair could have been dealt with much more effectively. The "rock 'em, block 'em" approach leads to "sock 'em" in response. I'm certain we would have less disruption if we dealt more fairly with POV pushers, and we could do it without at all sacrificing article quality, in fact, done properly, article quality would improve.

That's what real consensus does, you know. Ideally, everyone accepts that the article is neutral, and, for a minority POV-pusher, that is a major advance over what they will get if pushing comes to shoving and whoever had the most editors to hit 1RR wins. Hence at least some of those POV-pushers will help maintain the status quo. That's the theory anyway. Give some of the POV-pushers admin tools, the ones who "get it" about site policy, and, when needed, they will block the unruly ones, who refuse to cooperate even with those who agree with them on "truth." But they will go much further to educate these editors than will editors who strongly disagree with them. Think about it. If we have true consensus process running continuously -- with only a few editors participating, but expandable as needed, and kept in order, so that there is "backstory" for the article readily accessible that explains why the article is where it is, and with the backstory also rigorously neutral and sourced, but about Wikipedia history, not the outside world as such, there is a place for new editors to enter. Read the backstory, and if something seems off about it, discuss that on an attached talk page. There, with the backstory, not with the article. And if some consensus appears among the editors following the backstory, then can then bring it to the article itself and make or propose a change. Nobody who wasn't watching the backstory is left out, they simply enter any implementation discussion later, when the positions, if there remains any controversy, are clearer, sourced, etc. etc. All this crap about endless discussion is just that, crap, depending upon a very constricted view of how we can use the wiki without changes in guidelines and policies. Right now, sure, there may be way too much discussion for too little effect. But it does not have to be that way.

Where do we put the backstory? In user space, a user volunteers to serve as "chair." The chair is "unfair?" Another user starts up another backstory page, you get to read both of them if you want. I can tell you what will happen. The "live" backstory pages will be the most neutral ones, and there will be far less dissension there. If you were hosting a backstory page and editors started flaming each other there, what would you do? I can tell you what I'd do! My goal in hosting a page like that would be to find consensus, and editors who are fighting with each other are not likely to find consensus, so I'd tell them to Go Away until they can behave, and it would be my damn user space and I should be able to run some consensus process there and make sure, according to my own lights, that it's fair. And I wouldn't need admin tools to do it. Personally, I'd be faster to do this with someone who agrees with me as to content, but if I was the unfair one, the other editors would just go somewhere else and do it. There is nothing wrong with multiple links to backstory pages in an article talk, where consensus hasn't settled on one as being particularly useful. But when we are documenting why the article is the way it is, in the end, that really shouldn't be controversial; where there are divergent points of view, we simply report all of them and describe how the debate, edit wars, the whole nine yards, went. Backstory in many ways should be easier to write than articles because we have a total, practically perfect, reliable source for it. Our own history. We could debate what things mean, but .... that's OR! So writing backstory might be a good training ground for editors.... Give a new POV-pusher something to do....

With some articles, backstory would key into a broader view of the article topic than one would get in the article itself. In quite a number of topics, there is consensus among experts in mailing lists and other irregular sources, but we can't even mention it in mainspace. Backstory might be popular among students because students are frequently using Wikipedia to find sources, and often what they are writing can use those irregular sources....

Ah! You got me started. Sorry.

GoRight, you might suspect FA/DP principles at work here, and you would be right. --Abd (talk) 21:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I found this from July 2008, but this is not the recent discussion I had in mind. Still, it's worth reading. --Abd (talk) 21:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Off topic: "Assholes on wikipedia are a dime a dozen" --Mary Spicuzza

And, from 2008, Wikipedia Idiots: The Edit Wars of San Francisco. There is some link having to do with Scibaby that links there, haven't found it yet, but here we go with genuine reliable source, published: "Assholes on wikipedia are a dime a dozen." Actually, this should be attributed, "According to Mary Spicuzza, writing in The San Francisco Weekly, February 12, 2008 ...." --Abd (talk) 21:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed before that WMC was edit warring with Scibaby at global warming before blocking. Raul654 was also edit warring on that article before blocking Obedium. See User:Raul654/archive14#Edit_warring_on_Global_warming. --Abd (talk) 22:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Man I had no idea how extensive these range blocks were. I pulled a bunch of data out of Raul's block log, filtered it for just the IP Range blocks (i.e. this is not all of his Scibaby blocks) and put it into a table. Check this out! Whoa momma. --GoRight (talk) 06:40, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Hey, was this the other Scibaby thread you were thinking of? [1] --GoRight (talk) 22:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I see that I commented. That was it. Thanks for finding it. --Abd (talk) 22:12, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

talkback

Hello, Abd. You have new messages at Coppertwig's talk page.
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[NEW] Ikip (talk) 03:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• Just FYI, "collapse bottom" needs to go on a newline. Thanks! –xeno^talk 13:29, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Xeno. This explains why some collapse boxes on RfAr/Abd-William M. Connelly had, for several days, eaten the last part of the Workshop page. There may be some more of those lurking about. Preview looked fine! Nobody ever explained this to me before; I had, yesterday, noticed the collapse problem rummaging through history of the Workshop, but hadn't identified the cause. I'd say that an edit which adds a collapse box and which does not add a close should be detected by the software and fixed, I can't think of a legitimate reason to add just a collapse top and not a collapse bottom (same with any of the templates, such as archive).

--Abd (talk) 13:44, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I love that I got the executive summary, lol. You may wish to request an edit filter for this ^^^ suggestion. –xeno^talk 13:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Please stop soapboxing at Talk:Blacklight Power

I know you are an experienced editor and familiar with the WP:talk page guidelines. Your recent posts to Talk:Blacklight Power contain mild soapboxing and off-topic commentary. The link to the CEJP paper and everything up to By the way in your other comment were both quite useful. If you might refrain from the sort of digression shown in the remaining commentary, I would appreciate it. - 2/0 (cont.) 17:16, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

For reference, [2]I was quite surprised to see this. The "by the way," brief, was added because Cold fusion and hydrino theory have been confused in the past (they are connected in the way that I described, but the Blacklight process is not cold fusion, at all, Mills, in the past, went to great lengths to keep it separate, and he's right. Hydrinos might explain cold fusion, but not the reverse. It's not soapboxing, I have no promotional agenda there, but I did bring it up because there has been recent interest in Cold fusion and a big flap over my editing there. Is there a problem with keeping the distinction clear? Are no related comments allowed in Talk? --Abd (talk) 19:18, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Re this comment by you at the cold fusion mediation: Well researched, well said. Just one thing though: is there any source supporting your statement that hydrino theory could be a non-nuclear explanation? (explanation of excess heat, presumably.) Where would the energy come from? What would the ash be? ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:24, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm with the kids today, can't access the books. However, this is off the top of my head. First you need to understand hydrino theory, which is a redirect to Blacklight Power, see [Power#Blacklight_process|Blacklight process]. The idea is that the presumed ground state of the electron, the smallest possible Bohr orbit, is not actually a barrier, that fractional orbits are possible, and attainable under certain conditions, specifically the presence of a "Mills catalyst," that has an available energy level to absorb the energy released by the collapse of an electron to this lower energy level. This is a chemical reaction based on a new kind of chemistry, it is not a nuclear reaction, but the energy released is predicted to be greater than from other chemical reactions. The reaction product is excited catalyst, which would then typically release that energy as radiation (visible or UV), converted to heat in a reaction vessel, and hydrino, which is a hydrogen atom in the lower-than-ground state. Hydrinos are chemically inert, I think.

If something about the CF cells is generating hydrinos, they could be a non-nuclear explanation for the excess heat. However, this alone would not explain the other major phenomena: helium correlated with the excess heat, nuclear radiation (alpha and energetic neutrons as reported by Mosier-Boss), and nuclear transmutations. However, if hydrinos are present, hydrinos can have electrons that are much closer to the proton than possible ordinarily. (The limit is at the fractional orbit of 1/237, beyond which the orbital velocity would exceed that of light). In this case, it would be a deuterino, a deuteron with an electron in a Mills orbit. It is then possible that the electron can catalyze fusion, similar to muons, through shielding of the Coulomb barrier.

Muons have a negative charge and muonic deuterium (a deuteron and a muon bound similarly to a deuteron and an electon) has a small orbit, because the muon is much heavier than the electron, thus allowing muon-catalyzed fusion. As with the muon in MCF, the electron from electron-catalyzed fusion would be released as prompt radiation. The branching ratio would be a problem, one would expect the same branching ratio as with MCF, which is not observed in cold fusion. However, it's possible that there is some hybrid process, i.e., suppose that the tetrahedral symmetric condensate of Takahashi is actually with deterinos, one or more, which could make the formation more likely; it then, according to Takahashi's math, would fuse, thus explaining the branching ratio of mostly (all?) He-4 generation without neutrons, from the decay of Be-8.

Now, sources. The source I recall is Storms. Storms only reviews a handful of theories, it is, as I recall, Takahashi's Be-8 theory, hydrino theory, and Widom-Larsen theory. Now that you mention it, it is possible that nobody else has reviewed hydrino theory as it relates to cold fusion, I'm not sure about that.

Be-8 has many references, and I'm not sure about Widom-Larsen. Storms is reliable secondary source. Robert Park, author of Voodoo Science, which is, to my knowledge, the most recent book to treat cold fusion as pathological science, 2002, is retired as well, and, to my knowledge, isn't doing research at all. But I would never raise this to impeach Park. My position is that it is the publisher that matters for RS, and that the arguments about kooky authors, etc., are based on a different meaning of "reliable." Can we rely on a single RS for fact? Sometimes, sometimes not. In an emerging field, still very controversial, not. Publication makes it notable, it does not control how we use it, but if we allow arguments of "fringe" to be used to exclude sources entirely, we have a setup for circular exclusion (based on undue weight; if all "fringe authors" are excluded per se, then no favorable weight can be found, hence the field is fringe), and thus we proceed to violation of RfAr/Fringe science.

I have been assuming that when an article passes peer review, and it cites other articles, the article becomes a secondary source showing notability. This is of lower significance than an explicit overall review of a field, which would in itself, establish balance, at least in the opinion of the author. Storms is a secondary source of the second kind, a review of the field. Mosier-Boss, for Be-8 theory, is a secondary source of the first kind, since Mosier-Boss presented, in passing, Takahashi's Be-8 theory as a possibility for the primary reaction, with the low levels of energetic neutrons then being explained by secondary reactions, classical hot fusion.

He Jing-Tang is a secondary source that is an overview of the field. He Jing-Tang is a hot fusion physicist, I believe, I reported some of what I found about him in the discussions in Talk Cold fusion, back when I first found this source. It was attacked before any text based on it was proposed. The usability of a source like that always depends on context, so that sources were roundly attacked before text was even asserted was diagnostic of the situation: entrenched POV-pushing.

I'll check Storms tomorrow to see exactly what he says about hydrino theory. He is pretty thoroughly referenced, so that would also give us some clues. --Abd (talk) 17:43, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Cold fusion is disussed in the article three times (twice in the same context ... I should finish the audit I started the other week) in pretty much the fashion you describe. This also meshes with my reading of the relevant sources. What concerns me is: (1) why you felt it necessary or productive to mention CF at all in that section, which hitherto had been discussing a reported replication by non BLP researchers; and (2) why you felt it necessary or productive to mention your general opinion of the topic when bringing up a new BLP paper. As long as we stay narrowly focused on specific improvements to the article, we should be fine. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:53, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Asking me why I write something assumes there is a "why." I don't require myself to have a point when it comes to a sentence or two, rather the connection is intuitive. However, probably this is the reason: I did come across the source, I didn't see mention of it, so I put it there. Because I've been accused elsewhere, of "promoting" hydrino theory because it is one of the possible explanations for "cold fusion," I wanted to make it clear that these are actually separate topics. I have a strong POV about cold fusion -- it's real, and this is what the weight of reliable sources now show -- but I have no such POV about hydrino theory, which, on the one hand, looks like lunatic fringe, and on the other hand, has some peer-reviewed publication and serious notability, and, if that press release is right, and some difficult-to-imagine traditional explanation doesn't show up, we may have to revise our opinions about what is and what is not "lunatic." I was making a simple, hopefully helpful comment, then I added the other stuff as a form of disclaimer. Clear? --Abd (talk) 14:35, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Abd. You have new messages at Coppertwig's talk page.
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I don't know if this will be required, but.....

I see that there is a possibility that you will be required to find a mentor. Were that possibility to occur, I would be willing to act in such a role for you (assuming, of course, that I am deemed qualified to act in such a role).
Wishing you the best,
--NBahn (talk) 02:02, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

We can explore that. How about right now? Mentorship does not have to be forced, and voluntary mentorship doesn't even require an experienced mentor, sometimes simply an independent view is helpful. Further, even if I have a formal mentor approved by ArbComm, there is nothing that says I can't solicit or receive advice from other editors.

So, have you any advice for me already? You may respond here or by email. (I never noticed your name before, so this is a generic response to anyone so kind as to offer to help.) Thanks. --Abd (talk) 02:09, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

One open question, here that has me puzzled (I am, after all, a a bear of very little brain) is what your mentor is meant to do? Since it is open-ended, maybe you have some thoughts? (please remove if my participation here has become unwanted) Fritzpoll (talk) 11:42, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The details are deliberately left open, I think. The role is a matter of the agreement, and the agreement is a three-party one, that is, myself, the mentor, and ArbComm, which must approve the arrangement, and which can also impose a mentor if I don't directly find one. In my view, the mentor is an advisor, primarily of the mentored editor; however, the mentor may also advise ArbComm as to how the editor is faring. I've seen mentorships peter out where the mentor simply stopped paying attention without a formal release and notice to the affected parties. That's a mentorship failure, one of the forms. I think, especially with a complex situation, that the two mentorship roles should be split: the mentor then is a supportive advisor, much like a personal attorney, who retains a responsibility to the court, i.e., to not advise and support a client in improper activity, but only as to how to properly accomplish legitimate goals, and a good mentor then has rapport with the editor, and a "case manager," who must be an administrator, who monitors performance and who can immediately sanction if needed, with warnings and blocks, and who also reports to ArbComm. The case manager may determine that the mentorship is no longer needed, and may modify the terms, ad hoc, as needed, subject to review by ArbComm.

I'd suggest this for increased efficiency and likelihood of success, because the carrot and stick roles don't go together well. Ideally, the case manager and the mentor, also, have good communication between each other, with mutual trust, and it should go without saying that both the mentor and the case manager should be considered trustworthy by ArbComm. Apparently there are editors who don't trust that ArbComm can handle such a thing.

You are still welcome here, Fritzpoll. Look, if my editorial career is such a disaster as is being claimed, mentorship would not be appropriate. Silk purse, sow's ear. You could decide to take a stand on that. I'd appreciate it.

Meanwhile, about mentorship, are you interested, yourself? It could mean reading some "walls of text," though there are ways to deal with that. (I'd prefer a mentor, however, that I could talk with on the phone, my dime. There is Skype, I suppose.) --Abd (talk) 12:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I will lay my cards on the table and say that the commentary as regards your "usefulness" to Wikipedia in this case and in other venues is riddled with hyperbole. I am convinced that the textual nature of discourse here always means that a) the initial tone of something is lost in the ether, meaning it is easy to misunderstand and b) the lack of tone causes people to exaggerate their point in response in order to make it appear more valuable. That said, I have never shied away from telling you that I think you do yourself a disservice here in the way you handle things - that kernel of truth is exaggerated in recent discourse to imply that it is irredeemable, but I do not believe that to be the case. We all just have to be willing to adapt a little bit.

I can happily read your "walls of text", and almost always do, and would happily be appointed to such a role. There are issues with such an appointment, and because of our past associations I could never feel comfortable using my extra buttons. All I could do in such a role is advise, warn and advocate - but if the Arbcomm motion passes, this is your choice. If I can help, I will help. But whomsoever you choose, remember the words of your own Benjamin Franklin - "He that won't be counseled can't be helped".And I will remember W. Somerset Maugham - "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit" Fritzpoll (talk) 12:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

As to conflict of interest or discomfort pushing buttons, I'll note several points:

• I do not see the role of mentor as being a police officer, and mentors need not be administrators. Durova mentored ScienceApologist, and was no longer an admin at the time. The role of the mentor is to protect the editor from their own errors and misunderstandings, aligned with a responsibility to the project, i.e. to protect the rest of the project from the editor's errors.
• If you saw a situation where it would protect me to block me, I'd hope that a friend would block me. You might note that I've been blocked, beyond the first transient exploration by Tariq, by Iridescent and WMC. No conflict was increased with Iridescent as a result, and, I don't know if you have seen it, but there has been some apparently positive interchange with her recently. She still allergic to walls of text, I think. As to WMC, his blocks were clearly unsympathetic, based on long-term disapproval, and that his conflict of interest is still controversial is, well, a symptom of something. But his blocks weren't the problem for me, and, indeed, they may have been part of the solution. The problem was maintained threat of block, personally maintained, not the actual pushing of the button. If you ever believe that I or the project will benefit by pushing that button to block me, please do it. We can discuss it later. Blocking is merely an enforced Stop!
• As a mentor, you could also, if the matter wasn't completely clear to you, recuse and request review by a more neutral administrator. I've been claiming that recusal should be a very easy and routine step. Only rarely does it cause harm, an example of that would be in an old study, User:Abd/MKR Incident. An admin properly recused; probably the admin should have protected the closed AfD under IAR and then taken the matter to AN/I.
• Damn! They have it both ways. I "wikilawyer" and I rely on IAR. Those are opposites. I suppose it's possible. I could wikilawyer where I believe that the text favors my interpretation, and then suggest violation of the rules where it does not. Except that I am never demanding on strict text, but rather on the apparent intention behind text, so the wikilawyering charge is pure baloney. Ahem. Where were we?
• I can tell you some of my post-arb intentions, though the details depend on the final decision, which is quite unclear at this point, with two opposite streams running.
• If I'm seriously topic banned with respect to all Cold fusion topics, I'm probably history even if not site banned. As a continuation of other bans in the field, it would be a clear sign to me that ArbComm is willing to favor one side in an extended content dispute. I do follow signs, and that would be a very bad one. I wouldn't dramatically retire, but I would move my work off-wiki, where it can proceed without disruption. My project, I think you know, is much larger than Wikipedia. I believe it can benefit Wikipedia, that's why I've been active the past two years.
• I don't seek out admins to harass. Those fears are not based on my history. However, when I become aware of a specific problem, I consider it an obligation to do something about it. We need more editors like this, not fewer. So the question is "how?" And that is where a mentor could help. You were an early example of what was considered harassment by some. I think you gained a wider appreciation of what I was doing, later. How could I have been more effective? Some answers are obvious, but it is a tough problem, in fact, and I can always use help. Is there any way I could have persuaded JzG to recuse? Is there any way I could have persuaded WMC to stop his insistence on use of tools while involved? I was not the original target of his abuse, you know, I was one who was independently warning him. So, should it come to pass that I become aware of administrative abuse, as my mentor, you would be consulted.
• Yes, an inability to respect and consider counsel is a fatal flaw. Off-wiki, most of the counsel I received was that I wasn't being aggressive enough. In fact, what happened with the current case is that I became truly overwhelmed. This happens with many users when confronted with a "mutually supportive set of tribally-affiliated" editors. "Overwhelmed" means that I am presented with far too many juicy opportunities for comment, with each one representing a true danger. The danger is confirmed by some of the current proposals and votes by arbitrators: some of the mud that was tossed stuck. Would that have happened if I had known which tosses to address and had specifically confined my responses to those? Possibly, possibly not. This particular kind of overwhelm, where too much "input," external and internal, causes a loss of function, an ability to prioritize tasks, is very much a symptom of ADHD. In real life, in similar situations, I need help, I need guidance, someone to ask me to do *this* first, please.
• I intend to make process suggestions to ArbComm. After the case is closed, this will clearly not be what is currently claimed about all such suggestions, that they are self-serving. One of the suggestions is going to be that ArbComm modify its procedure, that the proposed decision page become active early on, and that it be far more labile. There was practically no way to know which arguments from the many "tribally affiliated editors" piling in with laundry lists of all my offenses were going to be taken seriously by arbitrators. If arbitrators had indicated support or opposition to proposals, merely as preliminary impressions, not as conclusions, I'd have known. And much debate in the workshop, and much evidence presented, would not have been necessary. And different evidence would have been presented, more on point. Another similar line of approach would have been for arbitrators to ask for specific evidence for unbacked assertions. I'd have responded quickly to such, it would have had priority. I requested such questioning, but there was not, so far, one single example of it.

• I don't make statements before ArbComm that I can't prove, but it might take a lot of text to do it, and that communication is far more effective if it is back and forth, otherwise we get true Walls-o-Text (TM). If I made an apparently provocative statement, I should have been confronted, specifically.

• I'll note that the most provocative thing I did, to claim "cabal," was met with two different responses: one of denial that I had presented any evidence for this at all, and the other that there was some basis (which has now been explicitly stated by Casliber, and which was already apparent in FloNight's proposal about "appearance of collusion." In fact, with the careful definition of "cabal" that I presented, which is well within the traditional meaning of the term, and which is exactly on point for a major Wikipedia problem that far transcends my own situation, by denying the existence of cabals, Wikipedia is blinding itself, cabals are very, very clear to independent observers. Cabals loudly claim that they don't exist, just as highly POV editors loudly claim that they are neutral. To the members of a "natural cabal," the kind that matters here -- mostly, while there have been consciously coordinated cabals, organized off-wiki, these are relatively easily identified and sanctioned -- it is simply a group of right-thinking editors who cooperate, what could be wrong with that? Plenty! But it's not a simple problem to solve. The first step in solving it, though, is to admit that it exists, and to admit that it exists, we have to start to listen to those who tell us that they see it.

• There is a beautiful example this morning in a post by Stephan Schulz on Proposals/Talk for the RfAr. He wrote a description of a fairly long post of mine there, that specifically answered a series of questions by Bilby -- good, cogent questions that deserved an answer from a party -- with an edit summary of "TLDR" but the edit described the post in, shall we say, unflattering terms. If he didn't read it how can he criticize it (other than as too long, which actually wasn't one of the criticisms except in the edit summary)? That's a rhetorical question: he can easily criticize it because his mind is already made up, he has instinctive, preformed concepts of what I am and what I do, and those concepts were formed when I first intervened to frustrate a cabal action, RfC/GoRight, more than a year ago. By the close of RfAr/Abd and JzG, the cabal position on my work was extremely well-formed. This is how natural cabals function: they represent a set of "affiliations" and prejudgments, ready to apply very rapidly. That's why the cabal can dominate a discussion by piling in with comments. The comments already exist, no research or consideration is required. The AN/I community ban discussion for me, filed with no evidence of misbehavior presented, just reference to WMC's ban which, itself, was not accompanied with any evidence of misbehavior. The cabal editors each supply their own reason from their history or from their instinctive affiliation with WMC. And so they comment or vote, with totally predictable comments from prior comments in other contexts, and they can do this much more rapidly than truly neutral editors, who would need time (and motivation) to research the history and figure out what actually happened. Had I allowed the AN/I report to remain open, neutral editors would have started to appear. But finding consensus when that particular cabal is involved, probably impossible. Involved editors almost always comment and respond very rapidly, as long as they are on-line and a reference pops up on a watchlist. It's how tag-team reversion works, tag-team editors have a very clear idea of what the article should be. So why should they check references for an "opposing" edit, and why should they do the work to balance some RS'd "fringe" view with contrary reliably sourced material? "Revert." It's quick, it's easy, and all it takes is two cabal editors paying attention, and no interloper can succeed. And when some support appears for the interloper, there are always admin tools to use to "reduce" the opposition, and with several administrators involved, some of whom don't edit the particular article, it can often happen that the admin is apparently neutral. Yet from overall patterns, we can see otherwise. All of this, in fact, was visible in RfC/GoRight, it might have been possible to raise an arbitration case then, but GoRight didn't want to, he's vulnerable, and he knows it. He's been quite courageous, as it is....

• My kids are demanding atttention, silly things that they are, so I can't edit this down at all. --Abd (talk) 14:07, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to intersperse, just because.... it's my Talk page and I assume you will not mine, so I'm reproducing your signature twice so that you have signed each paragraph... I prefer that style, vastly, to single wall-of-text remarks, it helps me keep each reply more focused. --Abd (talk) 20:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I'd probably tie myself in knots trying to work out if you needed blocking or not, Abd, so I'd probably just ping off a message to a neutral admin - I am self-aware enough to know that I would be second-guessing myself in an iterative fashion. I think part of being a reasonable admin is knowing where one cannot function effectively. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I probably fail - if you look over my admin records, would you find inappropriate actions? I'd hope not, but probably! Fritzpoll (talk) 19:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It's a wiki. Administrators will make mistakes, lots of them, though some more than others. Mistakes aren't the problem, the problem is attachment to not having made mistakes! What's nice about recusal is that it is not necessary to decide that a decision was a mistake. You just let go. "I made my decision based on the best of what I knew, and, since some problem has appeared that might possibly bring into question my decision, and I'm aware of a natural bias to confirm one's own prior decisions, if I was neutral in the first place, I'm not neutral any more, I'm recusing, and you will get a decision from a neutral administrator. Good luck. [followed, maybe by evidence, but the evidence ideally, should have already been presented with a block notice. -- but often there isn't time for presentation of evidence originally and there is some level of value to an entirely new investigation, followed possibly by the new admin asking questions of you.) I do know that if a new admin comes up with the same conclusion, being truly neutral, and at leisure, it's probably quite solid. Regardless, admins who recuse like that will hardly ever see a problem with being dragged before ArbComm. (I do know of an exception, but in that case, it was really blatant that the admin should have recused in the first place, it was not marginal. I argued that the immediate recusal should have been enough, and I lost (though I don't recall if I actually made that argument before ArbComm, I might have been too busy at the time. I do know I made it on the admin's talk page, and talk pages for the period during a controversy get scanned pretty closely). By the way, it was my wikifriend who was blocked..... I really do work for the principles and not tribally.) --Abd (talk) 20:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The best thing for you to do in some ways is to focus on that last sentence. Wikipedia will stay as dysfunctional as it is while you get on in the real world. I'm saying this mostly because of your comments that you felt overwhelmed - much as I did for all kinds of reasons in our first encounter, albeit in a different way and for different reasons. Fritzpoll (talk) 19:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Kids? How could kids be more important than Wikipedia? Have you considered adjusting your medication? (That's become a standing joke with wikifriends who have kids, when they say that they need to pay attention to the kids.) --Abd (talk) 20:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I do have some thoughts for you in terms of how you can best focus your efforts, to make them more effective and efficient, and ultimately meet some of your goals around these parts. I'll defer commentary on those for now, since I am writing one or two scientific papers for journal publication at the moment - one of them debunking an established scrap of science (of no considerable worth) and I think it's best that we talk about my thoguhts only if you want to, and when you feel you have time to respond. I did read all you wrote - I measure time in tea, and this was about 3/4 of a cup! Talk soon. Fritzpoll (talk) 19:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice measure. I hope you enjoyed the tea! May I read any of your papers? Surely I want to. My friends learn that I do, in fact, listen to criticism and suggestions. I don't always follow them, but I always consider them; I even consider suggestions from so-called enemies, some of my best guidance has come from such. I always consider following advice, and will do so unless I have strong reasons not to. With a formal mentorship, I'd have to have a very strong reason, I'd probably have to consider the advice to be outside the scope of mentorship, in addition to thinking that following it was a bad idea.

Meanwhile, I'm, as you know, still embroiled in a big brou-ha-ha at ArbComm, and advice doesn't have to wait for a formal mentorship to be approved. I've started editing case pages again, a little bit at a time, while voting is going on. It may or may not make a difference. --Abd (talk) 20:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I will avoid making an obvious joke which I'm pretty sure would be taken seriously if I make it. Maybe by email. Thanks again. Likewise, if you think your advice to me is better by email, that's always open. --Abd (talk) 20:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Might sketch some thoughts out soon - I'm nearing the completion of the second draft of the first paper, and once I've got a PD go-ahead from the company that own it, I'll happily ping you something resembling a copy. I must warn you though, that it has nothing to do with the glamour of cold fusion, but does suggest that a very low-traffic Wikipedia article we have is now incorrect.... for more, ping my e-mail! Fortunately I don't have to worry about kids just yet, but I am getting married next year, so quite a bit to do! Fritzpoll (talk) 16:15, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I ask people to refactor themselves rather than doing it myself because...

...if I simply remove the comment, it may not be noticed by the user who made it until they come back later and wonder if they forgot to hit the save button. By asking them to remove it, I simultaneously warn them for their actions and reduce the possibility of the edit warring you described on GoRight's talk page, the user undoing my refactoring to replace the problematic post, intentionally or otherwise. If they then refuse to remove the comment, then they're at least aware that I'm going to do it and I have a stronger basis from which to take further action. Warning beforehand also gives them the chance to explain themselves in the event I misread something; if it turns out no action is needed, I'd rather not have to risk edit conflicting someone on the busy case pages when I undo myself. I have reasons why I do what I do, and I think you slightly misunderstand the role of an ArbClerk.

Also, to clarify, I did not block GoRight for inaction as you appear to believe. I blocked GoRight for continuing trolling after a very clear statement not to do so. Had he simply acknowledged the warning and agreed not to continue, as I expected him to do, no block would have been issued. While he did this, he continued to, within the same post, expound upon the same statements that I warned him for in the first place. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It's certainly possible I misunderstand. Absent a review of his contribution, so assuming your account is a fair one, and given that "trolling" is a projection of intention that could be absent, your explanation above is adequate for the block (though the length still seems long). What I'd still suggest is that if a comment is offensive, removing it directly, and with bare notice, is adequate. I'd really suggest avoiding "trolling" as a reason, because it assumes intention. If he is offending, stop the offense; first stop any negative effect by removing the comment and then tell him about it if you are concerned. Given the level of continued incivility in this case, still ongoing, by others, I'm concerned about selective enforcement, but you do have to start somewhere.

For an experienced member of an assembly, being told to sit down and stop talking by a chair, that commenting is out of order, is not a matter of shame, it happens all the time, and is handled quickly and without opprobrium. If a member continued, the chair would order the sergeant-at-arms to remove the offender, and, again, it would be done without blame.

Thanks for your work. --Abd (talk) 11:18, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, Hersfold, I've reviewed the edits of GoRight. You were well within your rights to remove the comment, as I stated originally. However, the "continued trolling" was on GoRight's own Talk page, and was not trolling at all. No, you don't block an editor for arguing a point with you on their talk page. You block them for expectation of repeated offense elsewhere, or in the same place, and in the case of clerking, for an immediate expectation, whereas his comment showed no reason to anticipate further offense, other than a vague one of "failure to admit error." His comment on his own Talk page was well within what is allowed editors in that location. Your block was improper, that's my conclusion, and there is precedent for this. However, it does not appear that a great deal of harm has been done, though it is an important technical point. (Editors being restricted by an administrator are expected to even become angry and uncivil on their own Talk. GoRight did not go that far, he merely defended his original statement. Blocking him is not likely to convince him he was wrong! It can have exactly the opposite effect, all it shows is that you have the power, which he already knew.) That you apparently stepped aside to allow him to be unblocked, readily, is a good point in your favor. --Abd (talk) 12:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

About Crohnie and "accusations"

Abd, I don't know if this will help at this stage, but I think what Crohnie may be concerned about in this edit may include being associated with "prejudgement", "'tribal' affiliation", "cabal", and the passage "your apparent ready assumption of bad faith on my part, and your readiness to ignore offenses by "cabal" members, but seize on whatever seems to be a problem on my part". Remember that accusations tend to seem a lot worse to the person being talked about than they seem to the person writing them. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:32, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure. But consider this, Coppertwig. Crohnie claims to be an editor "minding her own business," but, in fact, she inserted herself into highly contentious process, more than once. Short Brigage Harvester Boris, when I simply listed those who had !voted for my ban at AN/I, notified her that she had been mentioned in an ArbComm case. I think that this may have actually frightened her. She had, however, already commented in the Request. I didn't think I was going to include her in the cabal list, at first, and I think I told her that. But then I looked back, and found clear association with the cabal agenda, i.e., anti-pseudoscience, special support for ScienceApologist, a statement in RfAr/Fringe science, etc. It was, as I've written, just barely enough, but by this time she had become very active in the arbitration. For someone trying to keep out of trouble, she was awfully active! And she was active with assumptions of bad faith. Read her statement in the RfAr, original request:Statement_by_Crohnie

I will make this short but I don't see why this has been taken to arbcom. Well I do and I have been keeping an eye out for this since Abd said he was going to take WMC to arbcom and I knew he would just like he did with JzG.

Remember, she had !voted for my ban at AN/I. That's not exactly a friendly act! Note the connection with JzG. She was aware of that, and she previously referred to it in her AN/I !vote. I'm pretty sure she considered what happened to JzG to be my fault. She went on:

It's posts like these that made me know to look for it at arbcom, the request is coming. [3] [4]I think these post says more about what people are saying about things here. Read it, it's long but I think this post says a lot to anyone who is listening (the second dif). When these issues have been brought up at the boards I think the community did a good job asking the right questions and being patient enough to hear everything prior to doing anything.links changed to permanent or archive--Abd (talk)

That discussion was brief, and included practically no evidence. This was Crohnie's comment in it:

*Support. I've been watching this ongoing dispute since around the arbcom case with Jzg and Abd. I have never edited the article in dispute but I have been watching the developements due to my interest in the WP:REHAB project and doing research for the project. Watching Abd wikilawyering like s/he has been is very sad to watch. I did read all of the threads here including Abd's long response below. I don't understand why Abd keeps bringing Hipocrite into discussions here since he is not disputing the ban. I think from all I've read that Abd has worn out the patience of the editors at this article and pretty much every where else. I find some of what Abd has said to WMC about taking it to arbcom or other places about the ban is crossing WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL. Abd has to stop the WP:TE and WP:Wikilawyering. If this does go to arbcom, I am guessing they aren't going to be too pleased to see another case so soon. So yes I think it's time for Abd to find something else to do and leave this alone for awhile. If not, than maybe a wikibreak maybe in order to think about what everyone is saying. Thanks for listening, --[[User:Crohnie|Crohnie<span

You know the history of Hipocrite, Coppertwig, because you were there. Hipocrite, almost certainly, was on a mission to get me banned from Cold fusion, based probably on his belief that I was responsible for SA being banned, but also due to RfC/JzG 3 and RfAr/Abd and JzG. He began his editing of Cold fusion, I think, during or shortly after the RfAr on JzG. Continuing her comment with the current case filing:

I don't think anything has be done that was too drastic and having a formal case here will only be another method for the lawyer in you to be heard. I think this belongs to the community, I think it should stay with the community until the community itself says they have enough or can't deal with it. I am surprised though to see so many arbitrators who have already accepted this case and without hearing from the community. So let there be a case, it's seems to be what Abd wants, the arbitrators appear to want this. I just wanted to be on record if it matters anymore, that the community should be allowed to deal with these matters first. Well thanks for listening, carry on I guess, I am really disappointed by this, --CrohnieGal^Talk 12:50, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

My conclusion: she had chosen sides, and she then interpreted everything according to the side she had chosen. She had no idea whether my participation in Cold fusion was disruptive or not. Yet she supported a ban of me from Cold fusion. Why? Apparently, "wikilawyering" and her judgment of the reaction of the other editors, i.e., Enric Naval, Verbal, and then WMC, the administrator, and, behind all of it, originating it, JzG.

The only point to claiming her "cabal" involvement is that she was not neutral. She had an agenda, and she was active in the current RfAr and in the community ban. At AN/I, she did not review evidence re cold fusion and come to an independent decision, and her comments before ArbComm were not unbiased. And that's now very, very visible. Sure, there is a basis for her feelings. But look at the balance. Consider my comments -- I understand why she would dislike them, but the problem is not ABF, it is that I am saying that she is human and is exhibiting a very common and quite normal human failing. Lots of people don't like to hear that, but there is no assumption of bad faith in it at all. On the other hand, consider hers. She literally accuses me, on Hersfold Talk of bad faith, and that was simply a continuation.

Her statements, at AN/I and at RfAr/Request show the real origin of the massive attention that came to be focused on me, it was payback for the JzG case. Sure, there are problems with my editing, but do you know anyone around who is active where there are no problems? Don't take on difficult tasks, sure, you can avoid problems. I'm excepting you, of course! --Abd (talk) 00:48, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I have complained about her unfounded accusations of intimidation and prior unsubstantiated accusations of conspiracy on Hersfold's page, asking that her comments either be removed, refactored, or substantiated. Since this is exactly the type of thing Herfold blocked me for let's see how he chooses to handle this situation. --GoRight (talk) 01:34, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Commenting on the rest here, WP:AGF sort of demands that I also assume at least an average level of intelligence. Given that I find it hard to believe that she is some little scared girl who is being intimidated by mean old Abd and the scary ArbCom process. If that were true she wouldn't even be commenting. I think it is clear that she knows what she is doing when she makes these types of unfounded accusations. --GoRight (talk) 01:46, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know. In fact, she seems sincere to me, I think she really believes what she writes, which is quite sad, it must be extraordinarily painful. --Abd (talk) 02:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

GoRight, please drop the Hersfold thing. Our job is not to test Hersfold, who is dealing with a difficult situation, which he may not fully understand, though he seems to understand at least some of it. --Abd (talk) 02:50, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I've left some comments for you on my talk page. GoRight, please don't force yourself into other user's disputes. It's quite enough having two users arguing on my talk page, I don't need additional invective being thrown in. I would remind you of the agreement we made when you were unblocked. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:35, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

A Gift For You

Thought you might find this useful. Seriously. ATren (talk) 02:00, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I will treasure it forever and use it often, and always think of you. Thanks.

Please understand that my purposes and motives may be unknown to you, and that I'm not necessarily attached to any particular outcome. I make no assumptions about what is good, in the end, for me, nor for the wiki. Again, thanks, your good will is a treasure. --Abd (talk) 02:43, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
NOW THAT'S FUNNY!
:-)
--NBahn (talk) 05:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, what is your motive? Editing restrictions? Wiki-martyrdom? Reasonable people on the arb case talk page are discussing forcibly limiting your text because you have posted 8 times the text of the next highest volume contributor. There is currently a statement in that case that specifically mentions the negative effects of your voluminous posts, and several respected committee members have voted to support that statement. It's reached the point where you are better off saying nothing in your defense, because absolutely cannot edit your thoughts to a reasonable length. So unless a ban is your motive (why?), maybe you should consider spending a little more time editing your thoughts, and if you can't do that, then say nothing at all. This unsolicited free advice brought to you by ATren (talk) 16:52, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Atren, thanks. This is long. It's for you, if you want to read it, or it is for anyone who wants to understand what I've been doing. By the way, I knew and understood your advice, and accepted it as sincere and intended to be helpful. Suppose this case were between two principal parties. How, then, would the balance of text look? Further, to make scurrilous charges can take a few words, to respond to them many; that is the original of the old saying (Lenin?) that if you throw enough mud, some will stick. I've faced with a relatively solid coalistion of editors, that's the whole point of the cabal thing, Without breaking a sweat, they can collectively assert a great deal, to respond to it takes, in turn, a great deal. Had more editors appeared to support me, I'd have remained more absent. For whatever reason, that has not happened; I did not canvass, I did not contact editors whom I knew would be supportive.

(added at the end of writing this before saving). I never know fully what my motive is, I depend on intuition. Perhaps my motive is to discover if I should spend, or waste, more time working on how Wikipedia resolves disputes, how we ensure that articles are truly NPOV, how we efficiently obtain stable text. Our process clearly not working with any tolerable level of efficiency, when controversy comes up, but if the problems are too deeply entrenched, at some point triage suggests working on something else where success is more likely. So my goal: a decision. I do not prejudge what decision is best for me or the wiki, but, I will say this: if I'm topic banned from cold fusion entirely, as distinct from focused restrictions that still allow me to work on it in ways that are minimally disruptive, I will likely conclude that I've been wasting my time, not because cold fusion was my goal here, it wasn't, but because it would be a sign to me of how deeply the problems are rooted. That might change if I can find another leverage point; however that point may be off-wiki. Pcarbonn, when banned, started working elsewhere, and I understand that he's currently working as a researcher in the field. I'm sure he's happier there! Wikipedia can be extraordinarily frustrating when one knows more about a topic than the average editor. I know how to solve the problems, but that takes time and is, long-term, too difficult when the toxicity of the environment becomes too high.

I'm facing a difficult problem. Indeed, I may be better off saying nothing, and that's been true for some time. I can edit my "thoughts" to a reasonable length, but ... it takes a lot of time, and just a bare expression of my thoughts takes more time than I really have. I do understand what happened, what I did wrong, what the community problems are, even how to resolve them. It's very possible that if I had filed the case, maybe put up several principles -- such as the one about consensus and NPOV, which is a fundamental issue never fully faced -- and then went on extended wikibreak, it would have been better.

(But, leaving it at that, WMC's very clear intention to act in ways that violate recusal policy would not have become sufficiently visible; it wasn't my writing that did that, though, it was a single bold action, highly efficient, in fact.)

With time, I could resolve all the problems with my own behavior. Remedies have been proposed that would work. Bainer was the original drafting admin, and, setting aside Carcharoth, who hasn't voted yet and appears to be taking a lot of time with study, bainer was at maybe 90% of what I'd have suggested. But I'm faced with a cabal, and not just any cabal, a Majority POV-pushing cabal. That is what would, from general organizational system theory, expected to be the most powerful, and, for a project aiming for NPOV, the most dangerous, because minority POV-pushing is easily resisted. It could almost be ignored, with only some simple measures, and be practically harmless. It causes a problem only when confronted by a majority POV-pushing faction, as distinct from editors who simply insist on RS standards and neutral presentation of fact.

Almost by definition, an MPOV-pushing cabal will be usually "right," that is the majority point of view is typically close to what a neutral examination would conclude. However, the problem is that MPOV is a POV. It is not NPOV, not without some shift to accommodate and fairly express and incorporate notable dissent. The MPOV cabal I'm facing can appear to be reasonable; I think it's best understood by examining the situation with Cold fusion, but the arguments are general.

Cold fusion was heavily rejected by the "scientific community" in 1989-1990. It came to the point, and there is RS on this, that major journals, which published some of the early research, such as [[Science (journal}|Science]], stopped even considering submitted papers, they would not be submitted to peer review.]] However, unlike the situation with Polywater or N rays, there never was an actual publication that showed the error, the artifact that caused the appearance of a new phenomenon. The sociologist Simon has examined what happened in serious detail, with Undead Science," Rutgers University Press, 2002. It was a battle of science-by-press release, and the nuclear physicists won, and it became extremely difficult to do cold fusion research, and no matter what was done in spite of the obstacles, papers could not get published in the major journals, for years. It was never true that publication stopped, though, it continued, in a few mainstream journals, particularly those concerned with electrochemistry. But the impression, especially among most physicists, was that the whole idea was thoroughly refuted, bogus, bad science, junk science, pathological science, and, even fraud was occasionally charged (but never proven with respect to the basic research, there have been con artists who tried to take advantage of the possibilities).

On the other side, hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into attempts to develop a commercial application, and these projects ended, creating an impression of even deeper bogosity. After all, if hundreds of millions of dollars couldn't show that cold fusion was real, isn't that a kind of proof?

However, the money was not spent on basic science, for the most part. Muon-catalyzed fusion is a low energy nuclear reactions catalyzed by muons. It's accepted, considered proven. But it is not considered commercially viable, because the catalysis isn't efficient enough, and the muons are gradually captured or decay and become incapable of further catalysis. Fleischmann, who was doing basic science -- not an attempt to solve the world's energy problems -- said that it would probably take a Manhattan project-scale effort to develop commercial applications. That has not been done. The Pons-Fleischmann effect is fragile, and still very poorly understood, though it is much better understood than it was in 1989.

Is the anomalous heat effect real or is it experimental artifact? This is the core science question, and the commercial research was aimed at trying to make the effect reliable and scalable, not simply provable. Much smaller research efforts have, indeed, found out how to make it reliable on a very small scale, there is peer-reviewed secondary source now that reports 100% success by 2007, "over the last year," every cell generates excess heat. But that does not at all translate to commercial viability. For example, the simplest technique that is reliable is co-deposition, which immediately creates, in a thin layer, the palladium lattice, loaded to maximum capacity, that is a necessary precondition for the effect to show. This is so simple that it could be mass-produced, and would be cheap, per cell. But useless for energy generation, probably, only useful for demonstrating the effect! It's generally of low interest for commercial application, and is not the technique being pursued by Energetics Techologies in Isreal.

Nobody knows, yet, how to create what Storms calls the Nuclear Active Environment on a scale large enough to be practical for energy generation, stable, able to be maintained, etc. It's also dangerous if scaled up. Fleischmann's early work was with bulk palladium, not the thin rods he later used. At one point, a block of palladium melted down, destroyed the experimental apparatus, melted through the lab bench and into the concrete floor. This kind of "heat after death" phenomenon -- seen, but only rarely, when the electrolysis current is turned off -- is unpredictable, so far, but other experimenters have seen similar things happen. The potential energy release if the unstable nuclear active environment unexpectedly expands more than normal is great. While it probably self-quenches should the palladium melt, that is very, very hot indeed! With a significant weight of palladium, well, if I had a home cold fusion water heater, and it used a certain amount of power for electrolysis, releasing additional energy as heat, more than the electrolysis power (which would also generate heat), and the power failed and it melted down, wouldn't that be a tad inconvenient?

I could go on with details, but the real point is that the excess heat effect was never shown to be artifact. Fleischmann made errors in his work, his report of neutron radiation was artifact, experimental error, never replicated except for a report from Texas A&M, issued by press release, retracted several days later when the detector was found to be malfunctioning. Fleischmann retracted fairly quickly on the neutron findings. Later work shows that whatever reaction is taking place, it does not emit significant neutrons. If fusion is taking place, though, a certain amount of neutrons would be expected from secondary reactions, and that was long reported at very low levels, just above background, in very careful work. It was not until 2008 (conference paper), published 2009 in Naturwissenschaften, that the SPAWAR group reported very strong evidence of energetic neutrons, at about ten times background, consistently. I'd say the report is conclusive, but it's too new to be covered that way, there is only media secondary source, so far.

What is the view of experts on cold fusion today? We don't know, all we know is two things: publication of secondary sources in peer reviewed journals (which has, for a long time, completely favored cold fusion) -- note that there is a kind of expert ratification involved in a peer-review process, peer-review should reject analysis of other work that is improper -- and the result of expert review panels.) "Expert" opinion is not the same as "the opinion of scientists," because most scientists, unless they are following the literature in a specialized field, only know about that field what they learned in school or read in media, and general media do not cover this topic in sufficient detail, the crucial facts one would need to know to come to a revised opinion on cold fusion have never been published in general media, to my knowledge, and much of what is still being published is regurgitation of what was mostly accepted as true almost twenty years ago, for example, claims that "nobody could reproduce Fleischmann's work," which wasn't true even in 1989, and which is preposterous now, there are 153 peer-reviewed paper confirming excess heat alone. That, by the way, is not a proof that it is real, to come to that conclusion one would have to rule out publication bias and other problems.

(There have been major media reports recently providing a clue as to the shift, such as the recent report by CBS Sixty Minutes where CBS retained a skeptical physicist, Robert Duncan (physicist) to evaluate the field; he caused a big flap when he came back with a conclusion that this was real. But that report did not provide sufficient detail to convince a random physicist, because the physicist may easily imagine a dozen apparently cogent reasons to reject the report, and, too often, will not investigate to see if those objections stand. I could list them. I won't.)

There was, in fact, an expert review panel convened in 2004 to re-examine the issue, by the U.S. Department of Energy. To understand the review, the purpose of it must be understood: it was not to determine the basic scientific facts, but rather to determine if funding for the work should be increased. That review panel came to, on its basic charge, "much the same conclusion" as the 1989 panel, which was no increased funding, funding under existing programs, and an encouragement of publication in peer-reviewed journals. However, that fact, reported in the final summary conclusion, has been used to claim that cold fusion was still totally rejected, because that was the general impression from 1989, where it was more true. That's not true if we look at the details.

In 1989, there were only two members of the review panel who were friendly to cold fusion: one of the co-chairs, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and one unidentified panel member. The rest of the panel followed and agreed with the chair, Huizenga, who became a dedicated opponent of cold fusion, calling it the "scientific fiasco of the twentieth century." (That alone is a clue that our article is impoverished.) The 1989 report conclusion noted that it wasn't categorically rejecting cold fusion, but we have reliable reports that this result came from the threat of the co-chair to resign if that wasn't stated, and, given his prestige, that would have been quite embarrassing. Basically, the panel had an almost-consensus that there was no reason to think there was any new science here, and there was agreement on not increasing funding.

In 2004, however, we have a more thorough, from the horses-mouth, coverage of the panel's work. We have, available, the reports of the 18 individual reviewers, and we have an analysis by the summarizing bureaucrat of these comments, and the overall report was based on a "review document" written by a number of researchers, led by an MIT physicist who was one of the early theoreticians in the field. The panel agreed, and was unanimous, that special funding wasn't needed. But that's not a science issue, that's an allocation of funds issue. What did the experts think about the science, having spent a relatively short period of time reviewing the literature, and having met for a one-day seminar? (The kind of meeting that would be necessary to greatly expand consensus on this, most researchers in the field would agree, would be quite a bit deeper than can be done in one day. To a physicist whose understanding of what is possible and what is not in terms of nuclear reactions, "extraordinary conclusions require extraordinary evidence," But this does give us a snapshot of opinion among those at least reasonably informed as to the more recent work.)

On the crucial experimental issue, claimed anomalous heat, unexplained by known chemical process, the panel was evenly split, half thinking that evidence for this was not conclusive, and half considering that the evidence was convincing. I've pointed out that how you ask a question or frame a fact can be crucial. If the panel were asked the question, for example, "Is the excess heat clearly an experimental artifact," less than half, almost certainly, would say "Yes." If that is not true, then we would have a very deep division between two sets of experts! Otherwise, it's just a question of where one puts the balance point of "conclusive," and that is sensitive to the consequences of such a finding.

Then, it is reported that one-third of the panel considered the evidence for the original of the heat being nuclear as "somewhat convincing." Again, how facts are presented is important. If you think there is no evidence for excess heat, you certainly aren't going to think that evidence for it being nuclear is convincing! So another way to frame this result, same data, would be that "Of those who considered the excess heat to be real, two-thirds considered the original to be nuclear." What did the others think, the one-third that considered it to be real but not nuclear? There are other possibilities. One is that the excess heat is real, but due to an unknown cause. This would be a group that considers the evidence for nuclear origin to be weak. That position has become far less tenable today, but this is an example of where depth of investigation becomes important.

(One non-nuclear explanation has been proposed, hydrino theory, which is definitely fringe at this time, but which also may possibly be resolved over the next year or so, because the company working on it is claiming independent replication of their process, which is not cold fusion. The replication is not entirely independent yet, the whole thing is, in my view, up in the air. Theoretically, impossible. In reality, well, we have no right to claim that we completely understand reality. Things may be possible that we think are impossible. hydrino theory is notable, that's why we have an article on it. I've been accused of promoting fringe ideas because I barely touched that article, and because I added a section to the cold fusion article on hydrino theory as a "proposed explanation." Which it is, we have reliable secondary source on it, and media source covering it. That section was apparently accepted by consensus until it was taken out by WMC in his revert under protection. My POV? I don't really have one yet. Too little data.)

The bottom line: the 2004 panel did not treat cold fusion as fringe science, it treated it, its conclusions show, that the field is emerging science, still very controversial. The smoking gun might be found, some researcher might discover what causes the anomalous observations, explains them using no new physics, and with a non-nuclear explanation. But that work hasn't been done, I've seen no reports at all that reach to this level. Caltech had some cells show excess heat that disappeared when the electrolyte was stirred, so they speculated that this might be the cause of other reports. However, that's been conclusively ruled out by many reports, and some excess heat is reported from experiments where there is no input power and no electrolysis at all, such as the gas-loading work of Arata and others. Further, an artifact like this would not explain the observed nuclear phenomena that are correlated with excess heat, and that's a huge topic.

(The Caltech report, though, together with the erroneous neutron findings by Fleischmann, was conflated into the idea that, when more careful work was done, the effect was reduced or disappeared, still stated in some sources. That was true for the early findings of Caltech and for neutrons, but not for the overall excess heat findings, nor for other radiation findings, most notably findings of ionizing radiation, probably alpha, low-penetrating (i.e., harmless and also more difficult to detect, it doesn't escape the cell to any significant degree, and was only conclusively detected by putting CR-39 radiation detectors inside the cells), and, recently, low but significant levels of energetic neutrons. Solid work, in fact, and increasing accuracy produced increasing certainty.)

Here is the point: there is a pervasive opinion that cold fusion is pseudoscience, error, a field populated by cranks and die-hards. That's a popular opinion. Media sources reflect this to some degree, but there is opposite media source as well. On the other hand, the research literature, which, the first year, ran about 2:1 against cold fusion, ran about 1:1 the next year, and every year after that the balance was toward cold fusion. There have been thousands of papers written on this; publication declined (which is characteristic of pathological science), but has gone on longer than with any clear pathological science. And then publication started to increase again, with the publication being in increasingly mainstream journals. Naturwissenschaften is probably the most reputable journal to have recently published in the field. (Springer's "flagship multidisciplinary journal," impact factor, when I looked, number 50, just behind Scientific American. I have three papers in mind, and I understand from an editor working with peer-review there -- he reports it's the toughest he's seen, the reviewers are highly informed, and ask the important questions -- that there are more in preparation. The American Chemical Society, 2008, published the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, a peer-reviewed collection of original papers, except for one conference paper from Fleischmann considered to be of seminal significance, including some on original research, and others as reviews of aspects of the field. And I'm told by one of the editors that another volume is in preparation. The book is published by Oxford University Press.

This is mainstream. Yet the current draft RfAr decision clearly is being driven by arbitrators convinced that a fringe POV is being pushed. It's an error in this case. I've been "pushing" for following our guidelines, and RfAr/Fringe science, and encountering a resistance from the same group of editors who opposed that RfAr's conclusions. They are pushing "majority POV," and using consistent revert warring to do it.

When one has a POV on a topic, or some general impression about it, that the topic is fringe, bogus, rejected pathological science, then, if there is a shift that isn't yet visible to you, and if you don't investigate the sources, moving the article toward NPOV is going to look very much like POV-pushing, and the only way to tell the difference is to seek consensus by carefully investigating the sources and arguments. It cannot be done simply based on first impressions. For ArbComm to conclude that I was POV-pushing, as distinct from NPOV-pushing, i.e., attempting to bring the article into compliance with guidelines, ArbComm must make a content judgment.

I have my POV, but where did it come from? January, I was on the skeptical side! I worked for balance at Global warming, and I remain on the majority side there. I worked for balance in the lead at Cold reading, on an issue which is ultimately a stand on Psychic, and I'm very skeptical of any ordinary understanding of "psychic powers," my opinion being that we simply have a shallow understanding of what is "ordinary," and "cold reading" can be based on depth of perception that is far beyond what most people recognized in their own experience. As an example, there are claims that some people can read subvocalization, where, when people think, their vocal musculature moves in ways below speech, but sometimes readable. This would seem to be "mind-reading," but not really, it would simply be perceptiveness and attentiveness to subtle signs more common than usual. (Milton H. Erickson is reported, one time, to have fooled a psychic by subvocalizing a bogus name of a relative.)

So, basically, a skeptical editor arrived at Cold fusion, read the sources, read sources connected with the sources, bought the books (half skeptical, which includes some very, very useful sources), discussed the topic for six months, established communication with experts off-wiki, and came to the conclusion that the effect is real. No known accepted explanation, but some possible ones. And, believing in our policies regarding reliable source and balance, started to try to improve the article, which was, and remains, a mess, seen from the vantage point of one who has become familiar with the literature (on all sides). To someone with a fixed opinion that cold fusion is pathological science, this is going to look like POV-pushing. But if we follow our processes designed to resolve content issues -- content issues are not resolved at AN/I and even at ArbComm -- we can find NPOV.

My POV, such as it is, was formed by a relatively deep review of the sources.

If I'm topic banned, this represents a major victory for those who do not believe in finding consensus, they believe in simple power: if a majority of editors, supported by some administrators, think that an idea is fringe, well, it's fringe, and get over it. That works for majority rule, that is majority rule, but it will never find stability, and it will be continually faced with interlopers who will see the article as biased, and, even where the article is "true," it can be biased in such a way as to repress notable dissent, to submerge it and make it invisible. In the case of cold fusion, it's remarkable to see the opinions expressed in the RfAr. Raul654 sees the article as being full of pseudoscientific nonsense, and he blames me for it. Yet I have had no power to insist on anything being in the article. I've been outnumbered, and some of the editors on the other side don't go away if I put up walls of text on Talk, they ignore them, and that is quite a proper response!

The idea that experts have been driven away by walls of text on a talk page is preposterous. Expert editors are driven away by being reverted by ignorant editors, and especially when those reversions stand and the expert is banned. And that is the reality of what has happened at Cold fusion. Experts have been banned, those less qualified to understand the field remain and push their own POV. It affects both sides. ScienceApologist is highly skeptical about cold fusion. This is no surprise at all, he appears to be a particle physicist, and cold fusion is largely a turf battle between the electrochemists and the nuclear physicists. If cold fusion is real, a huge number of nuclear physicists might be out of a job! Major programs, involving hundreds of millions of dollars a year, may be cancelled. Cold fusion, if a commercial technique is found, wouldn't need many nuclear physicists, it would need materials scientists, chemists, and the like. Does this affect how a scientist would view things? Maybe, maybe not. We consider that when someone's occupation depends on it, in some way, an editor is COI, but COI should not prevent participation on Talk pages, and, indeed, COI expertise should be highly desirable there. SA was not banned from Talk, but, because of how Wikipedia works, the most efficient way to propose an edit is to make it, not to describe it on talk, often discussion just goes around and around, and telling SA that he should propose spelling corrections on Talk was preposterous, WMC was correct to call that "stupid." Self-reverted edits would work, and are very easy, and it's sad that SA was banned, without better guidance as to how he could remain an active participant, valued for his expertise in physics.

Experts have POVs, typically strong ones. There are, however, with cold fusion, few experts on the topic, i.e., those who know the literature, who think it's a totally bogus field. (I can only think of one, in fact, Dieter Britz, who maintains a database of articles on the topic, a good one, he cooperates extensively with our "banned" Jed Rothwell.) That's natural and could be true even for any fringe science, because mainstream experts may not bother to become familiar with the narrow field. That's why I cite the 2004 DOE review, because, there, we get an impression of what happens when one takes a convened panel of general experts, takes steps to see that they are at least partially informed, and then assesses the resulting opinions. If we exclude anyone who "pushes a POV," we will almost by necessity, exclude experts. Instead, we should channel and use expert opinion, and, with fringe fields, we should make sure that experts from the fringe side are represented in discussion, and that discussion goes deep enough to find expanded consensus. Fringe theorists are quite aware that their theories are fringe, they often put a lot of energy into decrying that.

Jimbo was right: with proper attribution and neutral framing, we can present fringe opinion without losing balance, and fringe editors will sign onto it, the reasonable ones. The process will expose the unreasonable ones; my experience has been that most initially unreasonable people will give up before that point, accept consensus, being content with a reasonable accommodation.

The cabal, characteristically, rejects this, and that is why they rejected my proposed principle re consensus and NPOV. They also reject, and one of the characteristics I used to tag editors as "cabal" was this, RfAr/Fringe science. ArbComm passed that, but, in fact, some arbitrators currently seem to not understand the implications. That is such a serious problem that I may suspend my participation on-wiki entirely, because, until that changes -- I know that a shift had been occurring, but I didn't know how far it had gone, and I still don't know, because of the incompleteness of voting at this point -- I'd be wasting my time here, and I'm dying, I have only so much time left, and much to do.

This post took three hours to write. To edit it down would take another three or more. I have kids to take care of, very little time before I have to take that up again.

Here is what I ask of those who read this far, and who can recognize the problem. Pick it up and use it. Summarize it. Restate what is important about it, leaving out what doesn't seem important to you, and take it to the attention of ArbComm. Cite me as a source, i.e. As I read what was written by Abd at .... but make sure that you are presenting your own understanding, not necessarily mine.

If I'm site banned, it's obvious. But if I'm crudely topic banned, the result may be, at least on the surface, quite similar; this is not a threat, but a psychological assessment. After having worked so hard to understand a topic, buying the books at very high cost, given my subsistence on social security income that is already inadequate for ordinary expenses, after having worked very carefully to implement the decision at RfAr/Fringe science, i.e., fair representation of fringe views according to the balance of reliable sources, and all the other guidelines, having worked so consistently to expand consensus, I am topic banned, I will quite likely give up. Mentorship, fine. I truly can use help, the finding that some editors have a problem with my work or style is undeniable. Some sort of focused restriction that allays fears of endless walls of text, fine, I don't need to do that on-wiki or outside my user space, where it is certainly allowed.

If you think my early retirement would be a loss, tell ArbComm that. If you want me gone, by all means, you can tell them that as well, but I think that this view has already been amply expressed to them. Voting is almost over on some aspects of the case, but not others, and arbitrators can and do sometimes change their votes. --Abd (talk) 20:08, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Warm greetings to you, Abd.

From my perspective, it seems to me that you're running an experiment with the wrong parameters, so that any results won't tell you anything of interest. By analogy with cold fusion: if someone runs a cold fusion experiment using palladium which contains the wrong impurities, doesn't load it with the recommended concentration of deuterium, etc., and doesn't measure any excess heat, then that proves nothing. Similarly, if you edit Wikipedia while continuing to post long messages (etc.) after having been asked not to and you are topic-banned, it doesn't prove that there's anything fundamentally wrong with Wikipedia nor that Wikipedia has a bias against a pro-CF POV. I suggest running the experiment again, if you have time: following accepted standards of behaviour while attempting to make the article NPOV, and seeing what happens in that case. At least, I suggest not claiming unwarranted conclusions if you're topic-banned.

I realize that it's impossible, difficult or unfeasible for you to shorten many of your posts. However, you do have options. People with ADHD can learn new habits (so I've read) provided the behaviours are within what's feasible for the condition. I think you can get in the habit of clicking "preview" instead of "save page", and if you notice your post is long, you can copy-paste it to elsewhere (your userspace perhaps, or off-wiki) and post only a link to it in the discussion forum, as I've done a few times on the workshop page where I said "I've replied here". Other alternatives include posting fewer messages in total, or posting only the first couple of hundred words and perhaps posting another part the next day, or posting it elsewhere with a link, or only posting the rest if asked for it. It would be nice if the software would make things easy, automatically collapsing all long posts or something. See also my essay section Responding to requests.

Whether you're topic-banned yourself or not probably seems a lot more important to you than it does to anyone else, but actually (although I think it would be a great loss for the CF articles, given all the research you've done) I don't think it proves anything in particular about Wikipedia any more than many other decisions to ban or not to ban that occur about other people from time to time. I encourage you not to exaggerate its importance in terms of conclusions about Wikipedia in general.

You're a special person with great talents and I think you can contribute a lot to Wikipedia. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:26, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Coppertwig. My position, and it applies to everyone, not just to me, is that long posts, per se, are not offensive. Anyone can (1) not read them, (2) collapse them as distracting to others, (3) fast-archive them, or (4) delete them. Sure, I've gotten a lot of flack for long posts, but .... the judgment that posts are too long largely depends on a number of factors, some of which are quite problematic. I did greatly restrict my post lengths, and used collapse extensively. When editors counted up length, they lumped in collapse with the rest, and I don't know how they treated subpages, I think some counted those as well. The situation as it stands is that a great deal of claim has been made about me that I have not answered, and some arbitrators are making decisions based on an apparent acceptance, in some cases, of false claims.

I have not had a problem with appropriate sanctions based on post length; the most flexible solution was mentorship, yet mentorship was largely rejected based on a belief that mentorship always fails. Coppertwig, you know me. Do you think I would continue to post with excessive length if restricted, and specifically if I had a mentor whose advice I would follow even where I disagreed?

The conclusions I have been reaching -- the book is open because of incomplete voting by arbitrators -- are not based solely on my experience. NYScholar was banned largely because of long Talk posts, and a serious mentorship, voluntarily assumed, wasn't tried. (NYScholar had two previous mentors, one mentorship failed because of serious problems of the mentor, the other, Shell, failed apparently because Shell abandoned NYScholar.

Pcarbonn was banned because of his POV. Because he was happy that he had been able to bring the article into closer compliance with guidelines, and he wrote about that off-wiki, in a very good article in which he explained how Wikipedia works, which was accurate as to what happens when Wikipedia works, he was essentially assassinated by JzG, who framed that article as showing a battlefield approach to Wikipedia, trying to right real-world wrongs, because Pcarbonn had mentioned "media bias."

Media bias existed, and still exists, similar to general editor bias on Wikipedia, particularly among "scientists," but our guidelines for science articles handle that easily, if followed. Pcarbonn, while he may not have been perfect, was generally attempting to "push" for following our own guidelines.

Some arbitrators are finding for POV-pushing on my part, which is dependent on a complex content behavioral judgment re POV vs NPOV. As you know, I was skeptical in January and only developed the opinion that cold fusion was real after deep reading of the sources. I understand thoroughly why people would be skeptical. Media sources are now mixed. However, as you know, there have been editors active with the article, and will continue to be, who have removed reliably sourced material on the argument that it is "fringe," when RfAr/Fringe science requires using RS balance to handle that. The issue of relative reliability (i.e., impact factor and the like), only arises when there is conflict of sources, and there was no conflict of sources involved, unless you think that, for example, a reliable source from 1989 saying there is "no evidence" is considered to contradict later sources which show evidence! If those edits are reviewed by someone not familiar with the field and the arguments, it is very, very easy for it to look like POV-pushing. I did not organize and coherently put up evidence showing this problem, and I did not with many assertions. (I answered them in the Responses part of my evidence, but to prove this with diffs is very difficult if the assertions are vague, and, in fact, I think that there may be some specific assertions, and I may not have responded to all of them. From my point of view, Coppertwig, I was overwhelmed, and much of my excess verbiage represented a true inability to cope with all that was going on.)

It is extremely difficult to respond to dozens of highly critical editors, and remain brief. It can be hard for me, as you know, to do it with one editor! Further, the case raised a whole series of very important issues, and, I'm disappointed to see, the most important have been neglected, misunderstood, or set aside by ArbComm, guaranteeing, I can say, that there will be further disruption that has nothing to do with me. Consensus and NPOV is a crucial issue; it was an unstated assumption behind the early wiki vision, and, because of the difficulties of negotiating consensus on a large scale, the problem was never faced. This was an opportunity to at least begin to address it.

Likewise the problem of cabals was completely misrepresented and understood, except by a few arbitrators -- maybe -- and others who did see at least part of what I've been asserting. The finding is that I did not prove that there was reprehensible collusion. But I did not claim that there was reprehensible collusion, I was completely explicit about that! Therefore turning this into a finding that I made claims attacking editors without evidence is an utter perversion of what happened. I presented evidence re patterns of behavior, focused interest, and I only presented a fraction of what could be presented and, remember, I'm faulted for writing too much. "Cabal" was shorthand, and effective shorthand, for "routine bias," and bias is not an offense, it's natural.

Psychologically, it was impossible for me to handle this in the best way. However, under routine conditions, those deficiencies are remediable, and easily. The edit I made during the case to Talk:Cold fusion, was brief and inoffensive, and the attack on it, and the edit warring to keep it out, should have been a clear sign to ArbComm; it was behavior, during the case, which was just as offensive as mine and WMC's. If Enric Naval had had buttons, he'd have used them, but he used the tool available to him: revert.

Some of the edits I made to the mediation were judged by Cryptic as being too long. He simply removed them, but he allowed refactored comments. Simple, very simple. I never edit warred over the removal of my long comments or collapse of them; rather, I responded with compromise, such as return of a link, collapse, or refactored collapse as was the case with that problem with Hipocrite's massive collapse (utterly inappropriate).

Had cold fusion been under discretionary sanctions in January, I believe that all this would have been easy to handle.

In other words, the original proposals from arbitrators, mentorship as to me, with the mentor having rapid access to ArbComm if needed, and with a non-admin mentor having access to Arbitration Enforcement, with support for blocks in required, plus discretionary sanctions WRT the article, allowing any admin to intervene; i.e., to ban if the admin sees fit, would have resolved every other issue, quickly, or would have forced dispute resolution process.

Given this, if ArbComm site-bans or blocks, it is punitive. The idea that I could continue to "POV-push" with both an active mentor and discretionary sanctions is preposterous, or, more accurately, if I did, I'd be toast immediately. And if ArbComm participates in such, yes, I conclude that the wiki is in very, very serious trouble, as I knew it was more than two years ago. It cannot realize its mission and the forces that prevent it are too entrenched.

Note that if some miracle happens and the remaining arbitrators prevent a majority finding, it would indicate that the sample of the community that ArbComm represents is divided, and that's true even if there is a majority finding with significant dissent. If there is a failing here, it is not actually ArbComm's failing, it is the community's failing, I think you know that this is my position. It's a "sin of omission." By doing nothing, people permit what is in theory consensus process to be corrupted, and FA/DP is designed to address the root of the problem.

It is very significant, Coppertwig, that my proposed principle that consensus was essential to NPOV was so thoroughly trashed. This was a set of editors trashing the basic concept that would allow the project to be actually NPOV instead of merely MPOV. Democracies learned, long ago, to set up deliberative process so that minorities have the ability to convince the majority through careful consideration of evidence and arguments, through resolution of one small issue at a time, until the accumulation resolves larger issues.

The "cabal" is nothing but what I've called in FA/DP theory a "caucus." It is not illegtimate, and it is only a problem when it is not recognized, because a caucus with a large number of members that can rapidly assemble can appear to be "the community." Because of very natural participation bias, in an open process before the community, RfC/JzG showed, I might expect to be opposed by 2:1. But break that down so that the evidence is considered in detail, as happened with RfAr/Abd and JzG, the balance shifts in the other direction.

The antifringe global warming cabal, we might call it, is not the only cabal. There is a bigger one which also causes damage. The administrative cabal. It's well-known. Until we can recognize the damaging effects of natural bias, we cannot develop a stable NPOV wiki, we will, at best, say with flagged revisions, develop a stable, moderately reliable, biased wiki. Cold fusion is the test case, because it is a situation where "majority POV" is skeptical, matching the predominance of media sources twenty years ago, with the media impression continued to the present, though it has now shifted to something in the middle. But the balance of reliable source is in the other direction, and is only resisted by firm MPOV pushing. Take away the MPOV-pushing, and replace it with a majority interested in finding consensus, valuing broadened consensus, there would be no problem: the article would reflect the widespread skepticism, and what we have in reliable source of its origin and basis, and would also reflect the reliably sourced evidence in the other direction. Wikipedia should not make conclusions; the claim that cold fusion is "rejected by mainstream science," or language similar to that, implies a present state when what can be shown, fairly easily, is that there was a strong majority rejection in 1989, but that cold fusion was in the middle, with no consensus for rejection, in 2004, and it is easy to show significant progress in acceptance since then.

You and GoRight attempted to make the case, but the current ArbComm process is still deeply flawed. I've written that is the best we have, and I still think that is true. But sometimes the best is not good enough. Have you seen what I did with the lenr-canr.org link at Martin Fleischmann? It was a lot of work for one bloody link, but it did work, and that kind of process gets easier, and especially it gets easier if the faciliator is not one of the participants. Arbitrators should actively facilitate a case, working to bring out the evidence, first, making sure that evidence is complete before it even allows the community to extract principles and propose findings of fact and remedies. The process is biased toward conclusion-driven presentation of evidence. Yes, individuals have motives, goals, and those should be disclosed, but .... the process should ensure that evidence is solid and uncontested and complete, and filtered for relevance, before starting to draw conclusions. ArbComm should not allow the incompetence of a party to warp its conclusions; if it does, it is simply favoring competence at wikilawyering, political skill, and the presentation of evidence from history, over actual events, motives, and implications.

I'm not abandoning the cause, Coppertwig. I accept the authority of ArbComm, which is restricted on certain ways. I will not challenge ArbComm through any illegitimate means, I will not cause disruption. I will, instead, move on, using whatever resources remain available to me. I'm dedicated to the purpose of Wikipedia, and on-wiki work is only a piece of that. I've neglected other projects in order to work on Wikipedia, I may turn back to them, and that may be more fruitful. I meant what I said. If support for my on-wiki work does not become more visible, it won't take sanctions to get me to leave. I'm becoming averse to even checking my watchlist, holding one's breath in a toxic environment gets old after a while.

As to ADHD and my posts and your suggestions, sure. However I already routinely check preview. Occasionally, I don't. Or I do and I miss something. This is not helpful, Coppertwig. Understand that this post here, I might or might not reread, but more likely I'll read it later or only as someone asks me about it. I don't have the time for more than that, and there isn't sufficient value generated. But my posts on RfAr Talk pages or evidence or proposal pages have been read and reread, boiled down or collapsed in part, already. Even the "response" posts, which were in some cases pretty raw -- with a request for correction!, and nobody ever made such a request -- were read before being saved. I did, last night, finish the Bilby response, you might look at it.

My position has been that anyone could take the ideas in my posts and refactor it and present it as their own, if they agreed with it. If nobody is reading them, well, that says it, I should not waste my time, unless I want to write polemic only, and I don't. It is not my job to tell others what to do, it gets very boring, and that would presume that I know better than they.

Newyorkbrad commented that my writing on Wikipedia Review was clearer, at least in one post. He didn't say what post there, some of them were very long. But one post, to the Scibaby thread, was long and I acknowledged that at the top and invivted anyone who read it and thought that it was worth repeating, to edit it down, and one editor did. It's quite possible that this is what NYB read. In any case, I think it is significant that a post to WR, where I could be much more free to just say what I like, was considered more disclosing, more explanatory. It is a sign that something has gone awry with our process. (In fact, it hasn't "gone awry," it is that our process works with small groups sharing a common goal, and breaks down when the scale is larger and the common goal has become elusive.)

By the way, Fritzpoll seemed to have been offering himself as a mentor. He is not allergic to long text, but he also is (1) a scientist, and (2) an administrator, and (3) not easily categorized as my meat puppet, since he put up quite a bit of negative analysis and comment about my actions. Fritzpoll could be an excellent choice. What I see, instead, is a move toward punishment, toward fixed conclusion that a person's behavior is so heavily disruptive that exclusion or severe restriction is appropriate. And that is self-fulfilling, because with severe restrictions, beyond what are necessary to prevent recurrence of disruption, any sane editor would simply leave, it is, after all, only a wiki. So if the editor stays, it would be a symptom of a kind of insanity, which will break out in other ways. The concept that mentorship must be an imposed thing, that the editor should have no say, is a fundamentally wrong-headed concept, a punitive model, the mentor, for those pushing this, is a probation officer, not a guide and helper.

Look, I've suggested that even with a site ban, if I were (1) allowed to edit my user space freely, within normal restrictions, and (2) required to self-revert elsewhere, but otherwise strictly banned, I could do my work with practically no hindrance, because my work depends on consensus. That's what is so ironic about all this.....

My conclusion: there are powerful forces -- which need not be consciously organized -- which do not want consensus, because, it is believed and unquestioned, editors think that they know better than the great unwashed masses. It is the old fear of ochlocracy, mob rule. But that's a drastic misunderstanding of what I'm trying to do, practically the opposite of it, but the fear is generally not conscious and does not know itself, it manifests in certainty of being right, with no room for negotiation and expansion of agreement, as has been so clearly shown in the RfAr by a certain highly privileged administrator, whose conduct before ArbComm has been so embarrassing that continued tolerance of it, all by itself, forget about me and my case, shows a deep systemic problem that must be addressed before substantial improvement can come about.

Nobody mentioned it, but how did the Wikipedia Review "incivility" come here? It was cherry-picked by this administrator and presented as another piece of mud tossed at me, while, I believe, a neutral review of the thread there, and considering the context of Wikipedia Review, would show much more "personal attack," i.e., attempts to attack the very person, not merely the behavior, than on my part. It was correct to toss this out, but what was remarkable to me was that this charge even made it to the proposed decision page. NYB properly pointed out the limits of consideration of off-wiki behavior. What he may not have noticed was that there were attempts, by the other editor, to "out" me by giving my legal name (though it's not concealed), and my location (lots of IP evidence exists, it's easy to figure out roughly where I live), and by referring to plenty of personal details. But I wasn't complaining about this, and, in fact, it should be up to me to claim harassment, not for someone else to assert it, just as it would have been up to the other editor to make a claim of incivility, an offense that does not exist if the affected editor is not offended (there is, here, an addition question of decorum which does not exist on WR.) -Abd (talk) 16:11, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, Abd. RAE. Sorry for unhelpful remarks. I did notice many short, concise messages you posted. Ne swik thu naver nu.[5] 22:43, 23 August 2009 (UTC) By that Middle English exhortation, I mean: I hope you won't retire from Wikipedia if you're topic-banned, but more importantly: I hope you'll continue your good work whether on Wikipedia or elsewhere; may you live forever; and may the ideas you've described in various places on how to find and express the common will continue to inspire people through the centuries to come. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 13:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Discussion with MastCell

Could I play devil's advocate here, or at least offer a somewhat different perspective? I'll say upfront that I'm posting here in the interest of continuing an interesting and thought-provoking discussion, and I don't wish to cause distress or inflame the situation. Abd, if you find anything in the post objectionable, please feel free to remove it without further comment, and I won't trouble you on your talk page any further.

• The "cabal" thing. If your goal was to identify and constructively address a natural if counterproductive social phenomenon, then I think you shot yourself in the foot with your choice of words. The connotations of the word "cabal" in general, and on Wikipedia specifically, are clear, and your earlier writings (more so on Wikipedia Review than here) suggest that you are aware of those connotations and perhaps even chose the word advisedly, because of those connotations. Be that as it may, for better or worse, "cabal" is a fightin' word. It produces acrimony, not constructive, rational debate. For the same reasons, I wouldn't label you a "POV-pusher" (though I know others have, repeatedly) - because sticking someone with an inflammatory label is a good way to ensure they won't listen to any valid, rational points you might make later on. I'm not convinced that "cabal" is the only feasible shorthand for the phenomenon you describe - in fact, you yourself produced several better phrasings just in the one post above.
• I know it's hard to resist the urge to respond to every accusation against oneself. I fall victim to this urge myself at times. But particularly at the level of ArbCom, I've found that it's not necessary to rebut unreasonable accusations at length, if at all. Their irrationality and lack of substance is usually self-evident. It's probably worth identifying the concerns (or attacks, if you like) that you think might actually contain a grain of substance - surely we can agree there is at least some grounds for concern that a reasonable editor might have? - and respond to those. This particular ArbCom case, even more than most, has been a contest where "victory" will go to the person who shoots himself in the foot the least. Most of the damage, on all sides, has been self-inflicted. I know it's too late for this particular process, probably, but in general I'd urge you to be selective about responding to criticism or attacks, if possible. It's not easy - I fail all the time - but it's worth it for your own enjoyment if nothing else. It's just not a good use of free time to spend it constantly typing up self-justifications.
• Let's take as given that "MPOV pushing" is a problem. There will always be zealots on both sides of a controversy. The trick is, as always, to appeal to the reasonable middle. There exists on Wikipedia, as in any political environment, a middle ground of reasonable people who will listen to solid, rational argument. They tend to decide most issues of importance on Wikipedia, though this is not always evident. Create an environment that appeals to them - calm, concise, and policy/source-based posts - and you'll convince them. Create (or contribute to) an environment that pits one "side" against another with no breathing room and no middel ground, and they'll probably pick sides. Most often, they'll pick the "majority" side, because if one has to choose, it seems better supported by reliable sources and expert opinion. Right now, cold fusion is in the latter state. It's a battlefield. I don't know whether you consider me among the zealots or the reasonable middle, but I can tell you that as someone without a strong opinion on the subject, and with general scientific literacy but a lack of expertise in physics, you've lost me. Consider distilling your argument down to its essence - specific content points, specific sources, and links between the two - and dropping anything extraneous. I understand that a topic ban looks likely to pass, but consider this general advice which I find useful across the board, and feel free to take it or leave it.

Anyhow, thanks for the thought-provoking post. MastCell ^Talk 18:26, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks from me, MastCell, for an excellent post. I agree with much or all of what you say here and I think you've said it very well and raised some important points I might not have thought of. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:23, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Summary of the comment by Abd which follows; some unchanged passages are in quotation marks.

"Thanks, MastCell. Even though you have sometimes expressed opinions with which I have strongly disagreed, I have also been very aware that you aren't just a knee-jerk "affiliated" editor, you do take neutral positions, or unpredictable ones."

When I said "cabal", I was referring to partiality, not conspiracy. I've been struggling to find the optimal choice of words. The term has been hijacked to include the meaning "conspiracy", which I didn't allege; what I really mean is "a relatively exclusive group which has a power differential, some ability to control." "Cabal" had to be said, and saying it may turn out to be the most useful thing I've done on Wikipedia. Saying some other phrase just wouldn't have had the effect. I'm now calling it a "Cab", which removes the negative part of the meaning that I didn't intend to include.

A Cab is both positive and negative: cooperation among editors is positive, and the only negative part is when we fail to recognize that being in a Cab can make one effectively "involved" in a situation, due to social relationships, just as much as having previously edited an article can do so; it was on that basis that I claim that WMC was "involved" when banning me. "I was simply asking ArbComm to review the issue of WMC's involvement in continuing to assert the ban." But the Cab piled in with complaints against me.

I know how to do efficient dispute resolution. Suppose there's a rough consensus that cold fusion is fringe science only believed by fanatics and nut cases. What can someone who disagrees with this do? Suppose the majority thinks it's a waste of time to discuss it. Someone who raises a point can be shown an in-depth FAQ, maintained by all the editors, (not just by the Cab), which describes the previously-established consensus. A fully-developed FAQ could be much longer than the article, arranged in hypertext, representing strong consensus in WP space developed on a set of associated talk pages. It's a mistake to restrict discussion of the subject as much as we do; such discussion can inform article editing.

Banning editors for prolixity is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I've found that self-reverted edits foster cooperation between the banned editor and the very editors who supported the ban. Self-reverted edits can probably simplify ban enforcement and still allow useful participation.

If we don't respect the opinions and feelings of banned editors, we get Scibabies. Instead, my vision is that such editors would be allowed to participate, but restrained by other editors who also hold the same minority opinions, in whose interests it is to avoid irritating the majority. This arrangement is very important for reducing the battleground aspect.

"I'm quite gratified to see a very good discussion going on at WT:BAN about "proxying" for banned users". There, and on the RfAr, members of the Cab are starting to take differing positions. Minority editors can first come to agreement among themselves, then incorporate middle-ground editors, then Cab outliers, etc.; meanwhile the position is modified to include legitimate parts of the majority position.

I believe I can successfully make the case that cold fusion is not fringe science, but emerging science. The Wikipedian majority POV is equivalent to the old scientific consensus in 1989-90, not to what the 2004 DOE review says about the science as opposed to its conclusions about funding.

In evidence in a point that currently has Arb majority support, Enric Naval stated that I refused to accept consensus that cold fusion is "pathological science"; but he extrapolated from what I said. What we have are sources that might support a statement in the article that the majority of scientists in 1989-90 considered it pathological science; not evidence of a current scientific consensus. This opinion that it's "pathological science" may be strongest among SPOV editors and particle physicists.

People point out that no commercial applications have been developed, but Fleischmann was working on pure science. Quantum mechanics is normally done with two-body problems, which greatly simplifies the math; he was exploring what happens in more complex situations, and was surprised by the results.

When I first started editing, I was only just starting to lose my skeptical opinion, but I saw that the 2004 DOE report was misrepresented and edited in what the report says about the science. I later learned that this same edit had been previously done and was contentious.

I was criticized as a POV-pusher for removing "life science journal" as a qualification for Naturwissenschaften, but later consensus upheld this removal. Abd as summarized by Coppertwig 00:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Thanks, MastCell. Even though you have sometimes expressed opinions with which I have strongly disagreed, I have also been very aware that you aren't just a knee-jerk "affiliated" editor, you do take neutral positions, or unpredictable ones. If your intention in posting here is to be inflammatory, well, you have successfully fooled me. Unfortunately, you raise issues on which I have a lot to say, and, practically speaking, there is no way for me to say it without first writing an uncensored response, which I can show to you, thus fulfilling all the wall-o-text claims, or I could wait until I have time to edit it down, in which case you probably would never see a response. It would take time that I don't have and, while, theoretically, I could come back to it later, in practice whatever is in front of my face will take priority, that's ADHD. So I'm putting up the complete response. It's quite long. If Coopertwig has time -- often not -- CT might be able to extract some important points; but this is written as a personal response to you, and you can scan it in far less time that it would take me to edit it down. Feel free to ignore it, and, in fact, if it doesn't interest you, please ignore it, it will only irritate you.

So, to your points:

• You wrote: I'm not convinced that "cabal" is the only feasible shorthand for the phenomenon you describe - in fact, you yourself produced several better phrasings just in the one post above. Yes, I'm aware of the negative connotations of "cabal." I've spent some serious effort trying to come up with a word that has the positive utility of the term, without the unintended connotations. Part of the problem is that the term was hijacked. I don't know much of the history, but it is obvious to me that serious damage has been done by firm definition of the term as "conspiracy." When outsiders see the situation at Wikipedia, they have been known to use the term "cabal." That should be a sign to us that there is the appearance of a cabal. When Jimbo was establishing the administrative community as a privileged group of editors, he called it the "cabal." Sure, it was jocular, but it was also real: it refers to a relatively exclusive group which has a power differential, some ability to control. While there were checks and balances built into the system, it was all done pretty haphazardly, jerry-built, the "house" grew like Topsy. The social formation that I described in the RfAr cabal evidence exists, and if the objection were only to the term, rather than to the assertion of a reality, the social phenomenon, then the response to it was highly dysfunctional. Instead of rejecting the claim as preposterous, why didn't editors read the explicit definition and the caveats I added, and respond to the reality, instead of the straw many of a conspiracy allegation? The current FoF states that I didn't present evidence to show a conspiracy, and that's correct! I didn't present such evidence because I don't believe there is one, to any significant degree. There is a problem, and it takes place and operates openly, but often invisibly; like many things, it's visible only to those who have sufficient information and a lack of strong denial. Open secret.

• It may be that my direct usage of "cabal" turns out to be the most useful thing I've done on Wikipedia, when we look back. It had to be said, and it had to be said directly. I could have written "habitually mutually-confirming and mutually-supporting polarized faction, with sufficient membership and power (tools) to bias decisions contrary to policy" a hundred times with less effect than using the term "cabal." I'm now calling it a Cab. It's a cabal, all right, but with part of the word, and part of the possible meaing, excised. A neologism (horrors!). What's taken out is the secret conspiracy part.

• As you know, AGF is policy, it's been downgraded at times because of the difficulty of enforcement, but that was an error. Failure to assume good faith is probably the number one most common behavioral policy violation; it's quite predictable with on-line communities, because of the impoverishment of bandwidth. In any case, at one point on talk:Proposed decision, my special definition of cabal was noted by an editor, who then claimed that, nevertheless, my intention was to imply a secret conspiracy, that is what, this editor claimed, was my real intention. AGF failure, blatant. Perhaps when I used the word, I meant what I said the word meant?
• Yes, it has a negative connotation, but the negativity is actually over the effect. Cabs are not entirely negative, the positive aspect is simple cooperation, and the negative part is only when we fail to recognize and consider social involvement in addition to special article involvement. When I claimed that WMC was "involved" and therefore should not block or threaten to block me (and an administrative page ban is a threat to block), I wasn't referring to a history of specific article involvement; as far as I knew, he had never edited the article before. I was referring to two things: a history of unresolved conflict between us, ironically, disagreement over recusal policy, and a "general" anti-fringe content position. Because WMC gave no basis for this ban, it was an intuitive action, I'd suspect, his intuition would likely be contaminated by his opinion, previously expressed, that the project would be better off without me, hence the article would be better off without me, and I'm sure it was helped along by the very easy assumption that I was fringe POV-pushing.

• To return to this: I'm not convinced that "cabal" is the only feasible shorthand for the phenomenon you describe. What's needed is awareness of and discussion of and development of community response to the phenomenon. The language used must facilitate that. In the future, when someone cries "cabal," we must be able to reframe this without losing meaning. Reframing as "secret melevolent conspiracy" is a very bad reframe that loses meaning and adds meaning that may not be there. But, remember, to a newcomer or even to some old-timers, what the editor actually experiences and is responding to can appear to be such a conspiracy. A successful reframe will leave in place and foster discussion of the real problem, which is a cab. This is not a problem which is addressible through blame, blocks, and bans for either "cabal membership" or for crying "cabal." It is addressible through dispute resolution process, if that process becomes efficient enough and good enough. What I'd hope for is that when someone cries "cabal," we have a well-understood and honed process for resolving the underlying dispute. And I mean "resolving," not merely "deciding." ArbComm has an unfortunate penchant, sometimes, for becoming a court of judgment, and for making, as part of that, findings of fact that would never survive long on an article page, because of insufficient source and consensus. A finding of fact should be solidly based in evidence, and should be a judgment that will withstand scrutiny. "Preponderance of the evidence" is the standard in civil law, because some decision must be made; basically, majority rule applies. However, a legislature may decide that pi equals 22/7, perhaps for even a good reason. But it still is not a "fact." It's a decision, a "determination." It's very dangerous to consider such a thing closed, but it is also dangerous to consider it open! The resolution of this paradox is really the same resolution as for all "fact" (read "content") decisions: process must be provided to challenge consensus or majority decisions that is non-disruptive. I know very well how to do this, but to explain it will take a lot more words, it's easier to demonstrate it, if I'm allowed. But the summary is in the concept of breaking down community decisions into one-to-one discussions, directly or facilitated (third editor involved whose agenda is agreement between the first two), between willing participants. And I'll try to lay this out.

• Suppose there is some rough consensus (majority POV) that Cold fusion is Fringe science (with a general vague opinion that it's really pathological die-hardism, only believed by fanatics and nut cases, and equivalent to N-rays and Polywater). What can someone who disagrees with this do? It is obvious that editing the article to remove, say, cat:Fringe science, isn't appropriate, not yet. The process would start with discussion on Talk:Cold fusion. And this is what I did. It's one of the claims made against me, and it is cited in the proposed decision with reference to Enric Naval's evidence, as "tendentious editing." However, none of the points I raised on Talk were actually discussed to a consensus; rather, they were, by some editors, accepted, and by others, rejected out of hand. The ones who rejected it out of hand are persistent editors of the article, the ones who accepted it, by and large, if they edit the article, do so with some sense of despair. This is a sign of Majority POV-pushing. But, remember, I believe that the majority does have the right of decision. The majority doesn't want to discuss the issue, to them, it's clear and it's a waste of time to go over and over it. Remember, all of what I'm saying is actually generic, and the majority may be "right." It doesn't matter! ("Right," to me, must be glossed as "what would be consensus if the entire community could become informed on this issue and discuss it until consensus is found." I do not push for positions that I do not beleive would be sustained under those conditions. And I also believe, that while a literal fulfillment of those conditions isn't possible, an equivalent is.)

• So, suppose, I'm allowed to discuss this to my heart's content. If I wax prolix, and it gunks up the Talk page, anyone can object, effectively, by any of various means. If one believes that a discussion is inappropriate, that the matter is closed, it is quite disruptive, in fact, to respond with counterargument, because that merely encourages more response and debate. If a negative response is to be made to an "against consensus" talk comment, it should be on the user's talk page, and should be an explanation, not an argument; ideally, it would point to a FAQ that explains the consensus, and how it was obtained, and what the arguments and positions were, and what editors supported it (and what editors continued to dissent after discussion.) And then the task of an "interloper" would be to identify the exact problem with the FAQ, if there is one, and discussion would be with the FAQ, over it.

• We don't do that very often. There is a global warming FAQ, but it is maintained by the Cab, not by all the editors.

• We need the FAQ for all sides. In the RfAr, there was comment calling Cold fusion "pseudoscience." There is consensus that it is not, but it's not documented to be easily found. A fully developed FAQ will be a deep exploration of the topic, which includes all common assertions about Cold fusion, approaches that a new editor might take, and it would be an excellent resource, in itself, for someone who wants to research the topic more deeply. I call this the "backstory," and it could grow, wherever there is any controversy, to be much larger than the articles involved, and would be organized as hypertext. It should probably be in WP space, not Talk space (because the project pages would represent high consensus, often unanimity, there is therefore needed discussion, which would be on the attached talk page.) Developing the backstory is where, with developed articles and some level of settled consensus, most of new editorial participation might move.

• My long posts considered contentious or circular or whatever would be (1) deleted if truly off-topic or uncivil or clearly disruptive, with possible sanctions for incivility, clear disruption, or repeated and blatantly off-topic); however, when discussion is deleted, and other than unanswered posts by banned editors, there should be a link placed to what was deleted, (2) collapsed, (3) fast-archived, or (4) closed with archive template. In standard deliberative process, there is a motion, "Objection to consideration of the question." Deletion of a comment is such an objection. That motion is subject to summary decision; it's voted on immediately, no debate, for debate would defeat the purpose of the motion. We don't vote, but we can and should understand a revert of talk page discussion as such a motion. What's required, then, is that someone else who does want to discuss the issue "second" the original comment by bringing it back, undeleting, uncollapsing, bringing back from archive, etc. We now have two editors considering the discussion as worthy. Okay, if that is all there is, the discussion really should take place in user space, perhaps, assuming that there are more editors than this who don't want it on the talk page. In making the decision, editors on the "sides" may be identified. There is now a dispute that can be subject to dispute resolution, which doesn't mean some complicated bureaucratic system, rather that a path to resolution can become clear. If the "sides" are polarized, i.e., they don't really talk to each other well and one side doesn't want to discuss it (that's almost always the "majority" side), neutral editors can be brought in. If the minority can't identify such neutral editors, either directly or by solicitation at a wikiproject or the like, the minority cause is probably either lost or premature.

• It's essential that I be able to make my case on the article Talk page. It is not essential that this "brief" (hah!) stay there as anything more than a subject header and a note as to where it or the discussion can be found.

• The article talk template that prohibits discussion of the topic is probably a bad idea, or at least one that is overapplied. The issue is the ultimate purpose of the discussion, if it is background for editing the article, it may belong, or it may be appropriate for user space or a subpage, linked from article talk. I would hope that Wikipedia editors who edit articles on a topic would want to become informed about it, so, as an example, a notice that a documentary is about to appear on CBS Sixty minutes on Cold fusion (this happened in March, and then discussion of the documentary and what was found in reliable source about it ensued), is quite appropriate, because it will possibly -- or should, possibly -- inform the editing of the article.

• I believe that I can make the case, successfully given the opportunity, that Cold fusion is no longer fringe science, but has moved up to "emerging science," it's actually not difficult, if editors will read the 2004 DoE panel report and the 18 individual reviewer comments (which are available on the web). The treatment is clearly that of an emerging science, still controversial, but without any rejecting consensus, but evenly split on the original discovery (half:real, half:not proven) and a two-thirds majority that considers nuclear origin not yet proven. But unanimous opinion is that more research, consideration of funding for specific projects, and consideration of the results for peer-reviewed publication, was needed, which would not be the case with true rejected fringe (according to the summary, from the individual reviewer reports, I read one of the eighteen reviews that matches what most of our editors seem to consider the scientific consensus: rejected properly in 1989, what is this nonsense? In other words, it seems that a majority of our active editors are holding on to a broad scientific consensus from 1989-1990 that obviously no longer exists among experts.) Now, when I've said this on Talk, I've been dinged for Original Research. Yup. Guilty. But we can present original research on a talk page, where the results and reasoning are clear and verifiable. I wasn't claiming we should put in the article, "The 2004 DoE panel concluded Cold fusion is real science, not fringe." We'd need a secondary source for that! I'm not aware of one.

• All this affects, though, how we present the 2004 review. And this has been the subject of much discussion, the majority view being that we should emphasize, in the lede, that the 2004 conclusions were "much the same as with the 1989 panel." We have an actual quote from the report summary to that effect.

• In context, though, this conveys a very misleading impression. The 1989 panel was highly negative. The report didn't give "votes" but we do have lots of reliable source on it, and it appears that only one panel member, plus the Nobel Prize-winning co-chair, were favorable to cold fusion. It was close to a consensus that the whole field was bogus, a mistake, poor experimentation, but, nevertheless, due to the threat of the supporting chair to noisily resign, the report language recommended almost *exactly the same* as the 2004 report: further research needed, narrow funding. When the 2004 report concludes "much the same," it must be referring to the actual funding and research recommendation. Because the content of the reviews is radically different, we can see, in the strong divergence of opinion from the reviewers, that there is a live scientific debate going on among the experts.

• What I "pushed" for at one point (not with edit warring) was that the lede report a little more about the 2004 DoE report, without synthesis, to avoid setting up what is easily seen, given the massive rejection of cold fusion in 1989-1990, much of which was based on that report, as a confirmation by the 2004 panel of this rejection.

• As to selectivity of response. I hope you never have to face a significant cab, MastCell. In RfAr/Abd and JzG, I wasn't personally "on trial," and I did, in fact, sit back for the most part, since the evidence was so clear and the case was so simple. I tried to do that with this case; I was not asking for a review of the ban, i.e., for ArbComm to lift the ban, because I firmly believed that the ban had expired (and I had accepted it precisely to get that expiration date, as well as to avoid unnecessary disruption). I was simply asking ArbComm to review the issue of WMC's involvement in continuing to assert the ban. For that purpose, it was not necessary to adjudicate a claim that I should be banned, for I could easily be worthy of ban and still WMC would have made the situation worse by doing it personally instead of doing what most admins would do when they have formed an opinion that a ban is useful, taking it to a noticeboard. (I think that response actually isn't the best, but it's better than unilaterally declaring a strict ban; prohibiting specific disruptive behavior by warning about it, of course, is not a problem, the problem is when an admin blocks to enforce his own strict ban, for a nondisruptive edit, and that problem, itself, is rather easily resolved once the block has come down. "I blocked him for tendentious editing, see [diff][diff][diff]" is much more likely to stand than "I blocked him because I told him not to edit the article, and he did [diff to spelling correction]."

• What happened, however, was that the Cab piled in, with laundry lists of complaints about me. They had mostly not done this with the JzG arbitration. I knew how damaging it can be when many editors apparently neutral pile in endorsing some position. As I later wrote, if what ArbComm is finding about there being no "cabal," or even no evidence for a cab, is true, then I should be banned, and not just topic banned, site banned, because if I'm upsetting so many neutral editors, I'm obviously disruptive and the only hope for my continued participation would be that I recognize this can change my disruptive ways. Unfortunately, an FoF, not based on evidence and clear argument, but only result-oriented, has practically no force as to changing my opinion, and once I'm in a situation where it is prohibited to express my opinion, it's impossible to maintain. I'll blow it.

• However, I was prepared to accept a site-wide ban, provided I had freedom in my user space, and can make self-reverted edits anywhere, and, further -- I didn't state this part -- that no "topic ban" is involved, and that my edits aren't considered *inherently* disruptive, which means that any editor can, taking responsibility for their appropriateness, revert them back in.

• If you have followed my discussion of process above, you'd see that this is a special restriction that requires anything I do outside my user space to be "seconded" by a responsible editor. I could do stuff like this: discussion taking place at AN on a matter where I have something to say. I write an essay on the topic in my user space, which might start out being long. I then go to AN, write a brief summary with a link to my user essay, and self-revert. There is no way for this to disrupt or "dominate the discussion." If there is something valuable there, other editors can pick up on it. They can repeat the ideas. They can link to the essay. They can restore my comment, effectively endorsing or seconding it. The essay itself might be further developed with participation by other editors, and might see other usage. Or not. Depends, eh? But the work that is wasted, if there is nothing there, is only my own, an editor who thinks that I write nothing of value has no obligation to read it at all, and would properly be enjoined, if necessary, against disruptive argument against it. (Reverting my AN post back just to refute it, or to attack me for it, when nobody had seconded it, would be pure useless and disruptive argument, and very visible as that.)

• MastCell, this kind of procedure and remedy, I would accept, because it is, in itself, of value as a process to test for use with other editors. Prolixity should never be a reason for banning an editor: rather, very specific remedies can be designed that don't dump the baby with the bathwater, that address the real problem. What I saw with self-reverted edits, in the few examples that were tried, (myself and PJHaseldine) were that it worked, and it fostered cooperation between a banned editor and the very editors who had supported the ban.

• I wouldn't drop a tome on AN because that would reduce the utility, I'd be wasting my time. Rather, I'd follow my normal writing procedure: write freely, in my user space, pulling up what I know and think that is related, then I would write a brief summary and drop that, with the link. Without the ban, I've started doing something more or less like this, such as writing a long post, saving it, giving it a subhead of its own, and then deleting it and replacing it with a summary and reference to history. The only difference is that I'm not necessarily self-reverting (I actually did self-revert on Proposed decision talk the other day, but that's not the norm, it was special conditions). The self reversion would be necessary to satisfy a ban that was considered necessary because of alleged pov-pushing or disruptive prolixity. And given that the community position on harmless edits (not self reverted) by the topic-banned ScienceApologist was to ignore them, I've concluded that all the later fuss about "a ban is a ban is a ban, no editing, period, no exceptions, IAR be damned," was, shall we say, a tad editor-specific. Self-reverted edits don't complicate ban enforcement; indeed, they will probably make it easier, because if the editor is allowed self-reverted edits, socking is probably much less likely. Indeed, I claim that self-reversion might conserve enough value for editors that some that we currently ban could be on voluntary bans that still allow useful participation. I'm sure that NYScholar would have accepted this. I know that it made his community ban more acceptable to User:PJHaseldine.

• There has been an attitude that the opinions and feelings of banned editors don't count. They count. When we unnecessarily fail to consider them, we get Scibabies. My guess is that if we put a small effort into it, we could rehabilitate Scibaby by rehabilitating the community response to him. I'm sure that GoRight, for example, would help keep Scibaby in line were Scibaby allowed to return. This is part of my vision, to recruit minority editors to restrain minority editors, because if minority editors are not restrained, carefully negotiated consensus, maximized consensus, thus maximally NPOV, can be upset, and, by the conditions, if push comes to shove, the majority wins and the minmority loses. The tradeoff is that minority POV is fully respected, according to guidelines. And opinion that is even below sufficient notability to make it into articles would be fairly covered in the backstory.

• This concept of the restraint of POV-pushing by editors with similar POV is very important for functional social structure. It is how we will be able to reduce the battleground aspect of Wikipedia. I wrote in one place that this is how prison gangs function, the gang-based prison riots that we hear about are examples of breakdown, not of normal function. (I was a prison chaplain, San Quentin State Prison, MastCell.)

• I'm quite gratified to see a very good discussion going on at WT:BAN about "proxying" for banned users, and that has been stimulated by the RfAr. One of the charges against me was "proxying" for JedRothwell, because (twice?) I reverted back in Talk discussion from him as worthy of consideration (in one case, there was some gratuitous comment about biased editors or something like that, and I did not restore that part). This was the subject of warnings from Enric Naval on my Talk page, and my insistence that it was proper (not backed by edit warring on Talk, though there was revert warring on the other side, as there was a few days ago over my own recent edit), together with a few other matters like this, is what led to his opinion that I didn't "listen to good faith feedback." And then his opinion has been picked up by some arbitrators. Yet I was apparently anticipating a consensus (and which I had thought was established already).

• Nice thing about that discussion. It's the first time I've seen some Cab editors making sense, in a while. The lines are no longer clearly drawn. The difference, on the very issue under discussion, is striking, compared to previous discussions. Cab editors, previously, may have remained silent when they disagreed with their fellow Cab editors.... Or, just maybe, some are reconsidering positions, I haven't analyzed it in detail. My general belief is that when we can narrow down discussions to very specific issues, in an environment where the payoff is agreement rather than victory for one side, Cab solidarity can become irrelevant. In a number of ways, during the RfAr, the Cab began to disintegrate, at least for moments. From a point where no Cab editor would criticize any decision of WMC's, suddently, when WMC actually blocked me during the RfAr, several prominent Cab editors, while perhaps excusing WMC's action as having been "provoked," acknowledged for the first time that I'd seen, that it was "wrong."

• On dealing with an MPOV-pushing cab, you are right, there is always a middle, which is one place where consensus-building can begin. It can start by the minority finding unity among its own editors, then expanding into the middle, and then to the outliers in the cab, the ones most willing to listen to something that might revise their opinion. What happens, in practice, when a change is going to happen, is that the cab solidarity is eroded, until the outliers are the extreme cab members. Along the way, the new consensus has evolved so that it is no longer -- usually -- exactly what the minority was originally proposing. In order to overcome a majority, the minority must incorporate whatever is legitimate about the majority position.

• One of the problems is that sometimes a majority doesn't recognize what a minority editor is proposing. Example here would be that Enric Naval, in evidence accepted by and cited by ArbComm in a proposal that currently has a majority, claimed that I refused to accept consensus about cold fusion being "pathological science." When we look closely at this, Enric synthesized my supposed claim from what I'd written. Cold fusion was called pathological science in a number of reliable sources in 1989-1990 and later. So we can reliable source that so-and-so, or maybe "many scientists," thought that cold fusion was pathological science. We might even be able to justify "most scientists concluded in 1989-1990, that cold fusion was pathological science," though that may be synthetic. But to make that as text that implies a present scientific consensus -- which is subtly different from "most scientists" at some earlier time -- that cold fusion is pathological science, is POV, reflecting what may be a majority POV among Wikipedia editors who are aware of the topic.

As it happens, this opinion about cold fusion may, in fact, be strongest among the SPOV editors, just as opinion against cold fusion is apparently strongest among the hot-fusion nuclear or particle physicists. Who actually, when we look at it, have only theoretical expertise in the field, i.e., they have learned theory, going way back, that implied cold fusion was impossible. When we look more closely, it was never "impossible," rather, conditions that allowed it weren't known; and an early erosion of this position would be with muon-catalyzed fusion, which is certainly cold fusion linguistically, and which was originally called that. What Fleischmann discovered was something else, and he certainly didn't know what it was, nor is there any any certainty about it to this day. It is an edge, developing science, highly controversial, and very complicated. The math is ridiculous, applying quantum mechanics to the condensed matter environment is one possible as an approximation.

• Much fuss has been made about commercial practicality, and, since there may have been spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find a way to scale up cold fusion, with failure (so far), it's easy to assume that therefore it's bogus. However, Fleischmann wasn't searching for "free energy" or the like. He was doing basic science. I hope you can understand this, MastCell, you could ask if you don't. Quantum mechanics was developed from the study of two-body problems, from what happens with two particles encountering each other in an environment where we can neglect everything else. This keeps the math simple. When more bodies are involved, the math becomes seriously difficult; however, nuclear behavior, because of the very small size of the nucleus compared to the size of atoms as a whole, was considered to be well-approximated by two-body quantum mechanics, and the approximation that this involves, when we are dealing with a condensed matter environment, was considered to be reasonably accurate. The question that Fleischmann asked and attempted to answer was "how accurate"? He's written extensively about this, and one of the papers I got whitelisted from lenr-canr.org was a conference paper that he wrote about it, plus that paper was recently republished by the American Chemical Society. So he set up conditions that might test the limits; he packed deuterium into palladium lattice, which creates very high deuterium concentrations, for palladium absorbs hydrogen or deuterium to the point that there is one hydrogen atom for each palladium atom, it's effectively an alloy, "palladium deuteride." His expectation was that there would be a difference in nuclear behavior, but that it would be below what could be detected, so his research was apparently aimed at setting an upper bound for the difference between the predictions of quantum mechanics and those of the more complex quantum field theory, or quantum electrodynamics. His results violated his expectations, and he worked on this for five years before it was announced. It was basic science, not some wild-eyed "free energy" invention.

• What Enric did was confuse my discussion of the situation with cold fusion for what I'd propose as edits, or, where an edit was involved, what I meant by the edit. When I began editing the cold fusion article, with a few exploratory edits (reverted promptly by JzG!) I was only beginning to lose my general skeptical opinion on cold fusion, but I had already moved to a position where I understood that there was a present scientific dispute, one of the first things I had done was to read the 2004 DoE report, and I saw that it was being misrepresented in our article. When I added more of the core of the report, instead of just the bare and easily misleading conclusion, it was called "cherry-picking." I was, in fact, duplicating what had happened many times in the article, without knowing all that history. What I'd put in was practically direct quote from the report, and fundamental to it, just not the funding conclusion in isolation, it was what the report had to say about the science. This omission had been, I later learned, the largest concern of Pcarbonn about our article. I also found that JzG's involvement with cold fusion had begun over this exact bit of text; he'd reverted Pcarbonn (in 2006?) claiming that Pcarbonn had contradicted the source, and was skewered over it (he'd been sarcastic and basically deserved it), and I suspect he never forgot it; he may have held on to the idea that a fringe POV was being pushed by distorting the sources.) (This was covered in my full evidence about JzG involvement in cold fusion).

• When the mediation started, one editor, LeadSongDog, gave, as an example of the ridiculous lengths that this POV-pusher Abd would go to, that I'd removed the text "life science journal" as a qualification of Naturwissenschaften when the journal was mentioned as having published the recent (and very significant) finding of energetic neutrons coming from cold fusion cells. The reason for putting that text in was obvious: to discredit the source as being a journal that would not have proper peer-review resources, and this was explicitly stated in discussion. Since you can go to the home page of Naturwissenschaften, and see that Springer classifies it as a Life Sciences journal, it would seem quite solid, eh? Until you look deeper. And when this was discussed in the mediation, the resulting consensus was to keep the "life sciences journal" comment out. The reason is that Naturwissenschaften is, according to Springer, their "flagship multidisciplinary journal," it's editorially supervised by the Max Planck Institute, which would have all the expertise needed; Nw is rated, by impact factor, number 50 in the multidisciplinary category; for comparison Scientific American is number 49. Why is the journal in Springer's "Life Sciences" category? Well, the journal prefers articles which cross disciplines, and most articles do involve the life sciences, and they had to classify it somewhere, for publishing efficiency, they didn't want to set up journal staff to cover just one journal! It's a nice little example of how majority POV-pushing could warp our content and imagine that it was simply reporting, neutrally, what is in sources. In fact, "life sciences journal" and especially the implied claim that Nw wouldn't be able to adequately review the article, was synthesis, pure imagination and, if I can trust what Jed Rothwell claims (I've never caught him in a lie), very wrong. Rothwell is editing more papers for publication in Nw, and has said that the peer review there was very strong, that the reviewers clearly were very familiar with the literature and the issues, and they were asking tough questions. --Abd (talk) 16:56, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Response of Atren

Original response is at [6], the following is interspersed, I have italicised Atren's original comment where quoted below (It is entirely quoted).

Original response:

Thanks. Sure, I can see that, and, in fact, I did. I'm writing at length here because, and only because, it is my Talk page, and if we were to sit down at my kitchen table and have a conversation about the wiki, this is it. Yes, here, it is stream of consciousness. That's how I write. That is not how I edit. Editing is, for me, a separate process, applied after writing, and to the extent that I censor my writing, it gets incapable of finding depth. In a real conversation, face to face, there would be high-bandwidth feedback, even if you did not say a word, I'd be able to tell, more or less, if I'm paying attention, what you are thinking, at least roughly. Cold reading is based, often, on that kind of attention.

Communication through text is primitive and highly prone to misunderstanding, that's been clear to me -- and to practically everyone else -- since I started working with on-line conferencing with the WELL in the 1980s. However, as to on-line forms, the quotation-response style used often on mailing lists is the best. It's often not used here, people complain about chopping up their posts but this, then, requires response to be written all at once, in one stream, to many ideas. But, here, I'm going to use comment-response. I will refactor this to remove ATren's comment above and cite it from history so it can be read intact, and then replace it here as quotation and response, one piece or section at a time. This makes it more like a conversation. (Response continued after the above comment is archived with reference to page history.) --Abd (talk) 19:34, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Extended response, interspersed, by Abd unless otherwise shown:

Abd, I've read a good portion of this so far (not all), and I'd like to make a few comments:

Thanks for reading it, what you did. Skimming is fine, and even not reading all, especially if you tell me nicely, as you did. When I write at length, I have no right to demand that anyone read it. If I really want you to read it, personally, and now, I'll put what I want you to see at the top. I may also bold it, which you'll see scanning down quickly. Top and bold, if I'm really determined!

• Not everything needs to be said. At one point in this long response you say you have no time to edit, and not even enough time to say everything you need to say - well, maybe you are trying to say too much in the first place. Your writing is basically an unfiltered stream of consciousness, and it's almost impossible for others to follow without devoting an incredible amount of energy and time.

For some, not for all. The response above was not stream of consciousness, if the seas were ink and the trees were pens, it would not suffice, but it was largely unedited, except that I did read it over at least once. To actually boil it down would take even more. Atren, I write what I think in response to what you wrote and the situation present. To then go over it and figure out what is most significant and what I should cut, not to mention actually finding more concise explanation, would take me far more time.

In fact, if you are finding that it takes an "incredible amount of time," this could mean a number of things. Years ago, I found, certain classical texts in tasawwuf were so dense that I could only read a paragraph at a time, if that. So it might be diffcult to read my writing because of density of that kind. It might be difficult to read because of lack of development of certain concepts that are referred to. Length, however, also results from the very attempts to explain those concepts. In a face-to-face conversation, especially a lively one, I'd be interrupted a lot, both by you when you don't get something right away, and by myself when I can perceive that you don't get it. I'd ask you questions, for example.

Understand that while it may take you an "incredible amount of time" to read it carefully with a presumption that there is some meaing there that you must extract or you will miss it, to just read it over and then respond with comments and questions would be far more efficient. Instead of trying to puzzle out something that is not clear, you can just say, "I don't get this." This is why I like quote/response writing, because, if you use it in your response, you can comment on what you understand and question what you don't, and you don't have to hold it all in your mind at once.

So basically, when you say "I don't have time to edit", the implication is "so you readers better find the time to decode my stream of consciousness".

But I'm not saying that, this is an assumption. Rather, I'm giving you, personally -- this is a response to you -- a glimpse of my thought process, which brings up what experience and understanding I have of the topic. If I believe that you should know something specific, that you don't understand and you must or some harm will befall you or others, it is then incumbent on me to craft my text to effectively communicate that, and I can and do. But, imagine we were sitting down together. If I were required to craft my communication to match some language of yours that I understand only poorly, I would be paralyzed. We might get through it, with snippets that gradually expand understanding, but it would take a long time, and trying to do that with written communication on a wiki, so inefficient that we might never reach understanding.

Sure. It can be done, but it's a special skill. I see an editor who can do it, very well, but what I don't see is how long that editor takes to write the short and highly insightful comments that I recognize. And, I suspect, there is much, much more that this person has to say that is not being said because of the "strong editing" requirement.

In person, it is often my experience that the equivalent of a book, an entire understanding of an important concept, can be apparently transmitted in a glance. In fact, that's an illusion, probably, what happened is that there was a complex transfer through the preceding conversation, including all the high-bandwidth channels.

I do know that when people simply allow themselves to read what I write, without demanding that it make sense, after a period it does start to make sense, increasing sense, until practically all of it becomes clear. Some people are incapable of tolerating that process, which is why there is the dog vomit slime mold warning at the top of the page, though part of that warning is about people who read what I write, only understand part of it, and rush off to change the world based on that incomplete understanding.

It's a selfish position on your part, and I think that is part of the reason for the hostility toward you.

This assumes (does it not?), that the other people will benefit from what I have to say, and that I am depriving them of benefit, and keeping the benefit to myself, by not saying it clearly. The assumption behind this would be that there is some way for me to communicate what I have to say, that I know what needs to be said to you (let's make it specific), and that I'm simply being lazy. I'm not. I could spend three times as much time on this response and it would not be any more effective than if I simply leave this alone and let you filter it. You can filter it far more rapidly than I, you should be able to read this whole thing over once and respond much more quickly than for me to try to perfect it.

Can you imagine how rude it would be if in a conversation between peers, in a kitchen, where either can interrupt the other if they don't get something, if one were to listen for a long time and then tell the other, "I didn't understand what you were saying the last ten minutes, you are being selfish by not saying it more concisely so I can understand"?

Yet this is what is demanded by this "selfish" position. Yes, it is a common and understandable response, to which I reply, "What I'm writing is not yet for you. You are welcome to read it over and to question it, to ask for clarification, or if it all seems stupid and meandering and pointless to you, perhaps you are right, but, please, don't try to prevent others from reading it who will not react that way.

Communication takes rapport, which assumes a certain level of shared experience. Atren, you have raised an extraordinarily difficult issue, and if it seems simple to you, I'd say, you've never tried to communicate complex and out-of-the-box visions, or even simple but extraordinary insights, or you haven't tried enough!

I've been through this myself. I used to say too much, because I thought that everything needed to be said, but once I discovered the negative effects of long rambling comments, I forced myself to limit my comments to only the key points.

Sure. Rational response; however, by doing this, you start to confine yourself to what you already believe to be key points. Absolutely, when I write a book, this has to be done, and usually it will be done with the aid of an editor. An independent editor. But I'm not writing a book here, I'm discussing, which is a process used to discover consensus. I can extract key points, but it can take so much longer, compared to allowing the other person to extract them by picking up on them, that I often don't do it. And when my own coping systems have been overwhelmed, I may be reduced to blathering, because that is, simply, all I can do, and I'm in an environment so complex that I can't figure out where to go first.

Another way to frame this is that, when what I think is important to say becomes so complex, beyond a certain point, I become incapable in real-time of determining which point to address first, so practically all I can do is dump. Sure, perhaps I should go away, stop, at that point, do something else entirely. But that leads to a different problem. What if this is in the middle of a time-bound process? I suggested that ArbComm partition cases. Whether I'm a useless editor or a highly disruptive one is a completely different question from whether WMC violated recusal policy and would be likely to do so again. ArbComm should have selected the more urgent one to handle first, which might develop evidence relevant to the second question.

When someone comes to ArbComm with a complaint, the complaint should be addressed, and admin recusal is highly damaging. If WMC did not violate recusal policy, then my complaint itself can be seen as disruptive, or at least that should be considered. But if he did, to allow claims of my disruptiveness to interrupt a relatively urgent process is quite foolish, and chilling.

You call 911, because a police officer, who believes you are having an affair with his wife, is trying to break into your house. "Are you sure, Sir, that he doesn't have a warrant?" BANG! BANG! "He hung up. Well, there was already an officer there, I'm sure he's handling it."

It is arguable that an admin accused reasonably -- ArbComm takes the case! -- of violating recusal policy should be suspended, or, at least, restricted as how where and how tools could be used. It is also arguable that an editor accused of disruption, ArbComm takes the case, should be suspended, i.e., perhaps even site-banned, but allowed to edit under specific restrictions, which would vary with the nature of the case. (as is done, editors are unblocked so that they may edit arbitration pages, and they would be blocked again if they violate this restriction).

I should then have had all the time I need to prepare my defense, and my defense would have been entirely separate from the WMC case. Process. Don't leave home without it.

Then, with a more limited focal point, you can spend a little more time delivering that point in a concise way, i.e. "editing". The "other" points which you filtered out are not lost; you can store them away, either mentally or in a private document, and retrieve them if needed.

You have no idea, Atren. I'm 65 years old. Twenty years ago, sure, I could just remember it. Maybe. In fact, probably, a lot was lost. Private document? Again, you have no idea how much material I have. No, if I don't say it now, it is probably lost. So if it is important, I'll say it. Lately, I've started to write a piece, say a Response in the RfAr evidence, then collapse most of it, thus layering it into what was considered important, being inclusive, to the major points, which are at the top level. I did this a lot in the case. And guess what? It's likely that important points were lost in the reduced-significance hypertext.

(And the hidden text was still counted in all that evidence about how voluminously I wrote.)

No, I know what I need. I need communication and cooperation with others, people who will read what I write (and there are some who actually enjoy it and value it) and then pass it on, and through this process, what is important for now is extracted, and sometimes what is important for later is disovered later. I not infrequently review stuff I wrote years ago and I'm often surprised by how much I knew back then. I think to myself, "I didn't think that I'd figured that aspect out until much later, but there it is, all laid out, and clearly, too." But, typically, not as clearly as what I'd write later. I learn by writing, Atren, and especially I learn how to communicate an idea. I'm not alone in that.

Maybe you won't even need all the other points - the original thrust, presented concisely, might be sufficient.

Presuming specific purpose. What was my purpose in the RfAr? Was it to get WMC desysopped? No. Was it to get the cabal editors blocked, banned, or otherwise sanctioned? Definitely not! Was it to ask ArbComm to lift a community ban? No. That ban had expired. Was it to prove that a cabal existed? No: any editor who doesn't realize that there are cabals, as I defined them, which is a highly useful definition, isn't looking, has their eyes, so to speak, closed, they are reacting to something else, something I did not write.

It was simple: to raise community consciousness about the existence of certain unresolved problems, so that the community can begin to solve them. In the presence of a cabal, that is extremely difficult unless the existence of the cabal is recognized. It is not that the cabal is the problem, it isn't. The problem is with the community, and that the community process doesn't encourage the community to wake up, it is as if the community is dreaming, with only low-level mental process, practically automatic, taking place. What it would mean for the community to wake up is something that it could take a year of conversation to communicate, Atren, it will, in fact, be easier to demonstrate it.

I went beyond mere text in the RfAr, Atren, did you notice? I knew, with certainty, that WMC had been using tools where he was involved for a long time, it was blatant, and common knowledge. How is it that he hadn't been sanctioned? Well, he had been reprimanded for one incident at RfAr, where he wheel-warred with an admin. Who wheel-warred back. That "wheel-warring back" was, in fact, about the only way that the community would pay attention. Otherwise it would be dropped, as the cabal would intercede, all without reprehensible collusion, to prevent a consensus to censure.

WMC had been threatening to block me for two months, as I'd been claiming that his right to ban only allowed him to block me for actually disruptive edits. His first block was possible to cover under the community ban, though, if you read his comments carefully, he considered the community ban moot. We were in an extended dispute, there was no doubt about that, could anyone claim that there was not, at least, the appearance of a dispute? Yet he continued to claim that his ban was "real" and that he could prove it. That was pure ego, pure "I'm in charge and you must do as I say or I'll block you." This is what he had been doing for years, I did not create his position by provoking him.

Now, I act through intuition. What I saw was that I was enabling WMC by voluntarily complying with his ban. So, as I had before, I announced that I would no longer voluntarily comply with the ban. Nobody said or did anything about that. And then, when a question presented itself that I had a more thorough answer for, I answered it, on Talk:Cold fusion.

I was naturally accused of disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. In fact, I was doing something quite different. I was allowing WMC to demonstrate his position in a way that would not be missed. It was the very opposite of disruption. What was harmed by the demonstration? I was blocked, and, obviously, I was willing to accept that. No editors were harmed by the making of this movie. Even more good could have come from this, if the community and ArbComm were paying attention. Enric Naval edit warred over that comment, showing exactly what he'd been doing before. Verbal didn't edit war, just promised that he would if needed. It made the situation crystal clear, but.... who is watching? It really took a block to get their attention!

One picture is worth a thousand words, right. Suddenly the opposition to the very idea that there was anything wrong with WMC's actions vanished, momentarily. That was possibly the most effective action I ever took on Wikipedia, a harmless edit, not disruptive in itself, that allowed WMC to demonstrate what he was made of. ArbComm could not miss it. But they are still, largely, in denial. "Well, this one incident....."

That there are arbitrators who will take that kind of position points out to me that there is another cabal. A bigger one and possibly even more dangerous. We could do something about it, easily, and yet, I won't be surprised to find that we do nothing. It is, again, common knowledge, but who says it on-wiki that doesn't get banned?

Tell you what. I won't say it here, though I've said it elsewhere. What is this cabal? What defines it, what drives it, why is it partially a good thing and partially the reverse? Why is it a necessary consequence of our structure and only harmful if we don't recognize it?

And then you will have saved yourself a lot of typing. :-)

No. It does not work that way for me, period. To write more concisely takes me much more time. I can write very quickly. Lots of keystrokes, yes, but to write more concisely, well, I can only do it when I am so familiar with a particular issue that I have, already, highly fixed conclusions and I have a lot of experience expressing them. I can become very concise under those conditions. They don't usually obtain.

The problem I have is a classic ADHD problem, in fact, and ADHD symptoms are frequently expressed by others as moral condemnation, it has been a major advance to start to consider ADHD has a result of different forms of brain function. Basically, things that are easy for others may be very difficult for me, and difficult for others easy for me. I do understand the Wikipedia problem, very, very well. That understanding is not enough, because it will take a community to solve the problem, I can't do it by myself; if you think about it, the very idea that I could is preposterous. Jimbo might be able to do something, but I wouldn't bet on it; it's an untested possibility and I've never seen the necessary changes take place in a community the size of Wikipedia. As I said, I know how to to it, but it's theory, untested. The pieces are all known to work, but they have never been all put together in one place.

And the concepts contradict a whole series of common assumptions. It is very difficult, Atren. I worked on developing the concepts for over twenty years, and only began seriously attempting to communicate them in about 2002-2003. It took me about two years of intense writing, on mailing lists, to find one person who understood, but once he did, he could actually write about it better than I. He got it. How did he get it? He watched my writing for about a year and finally decided to ask me some questions. I answered the questions, he created a FAQ, and it went from there. There are now a handful of people who more or less understand it. My friend is about fifteen years younger than I, an excellent writer, very succinct. But he also tells me that it takes him three times as much time to write a piece on a topic as it takes me. And, yes, he has ADHD.

At the very least, even if you need to present those other points later, you will have more time to formulate the arguments in a more concise form.

But to continue in your present stream-of-consciousness mode is selfish and possibly even abusive - I don't know how I can put it in stronger terms than that. It must stop, and you are intelligent enough to do so.

A proposed remedy by bainer, mentorship, would actually work. But that's being largely rejected!

• There is no hurry. You just finished a case with JzG, and you followed up immediately with a case against WMC.

Actually, not. You want the real history? Before the case with JzG was finished, cabal harassment began. I could prove that, but ... won't. I did not go looking for WMC, he came after me. ArbComm had asked me to escalate when it was apparent that lower-level attempts to resolve a dispute aren't working. (That part of the decision isn't quoted!). So I did. Once it became apparent that the community, per se, would not be able to actually resolve the dispute, but, under the best of conditions, to merely stop much damage (i.e., had I left the AN/I report open, enough support might have appeared that a neutral admin would close with no consensus, or there would be no close. But, remember, during RfC/JzG 3, which was open for weeks, two-thirds of commenting editors took that position that JzG was just fine, the problem was Abd, so he should be banned. With that kind of majority, many admins would close with a ban. It would have been iffy.

That is a hell of a task, two major cases in succession.

Yes, I was aware. However, I did not believe I had much of a choice. I'd done six months of work to prepare to edit Cold fusion, and when I started in earnest, being able to put together reliably-sourced text to start to address the article imbalance, I was, in fairly short order, banned by an admin famous for blocking based on his POV, whether or not he had a specific POV there. (I think he did, but it was a general anti-fringe POV.)

In this latest case, you made allegations of a cabal, which is an incredibly difficult assertion to prove.

That it is so difficult shows the nature of the problem. "Cabal" means nothing more or less than a faction, a group of editors, who may not be in specific collusion but whose actions are similar in effect, sometimes, to coordinated actions, who collectively frustrate the intention of guidelines and policy. I believe that, in fact, I presented sufficient evidence to prove that.

The problem was that the cabal was able to frame the assertion as being one of individual misconduct, of reprehensible collusion, which, very explicitly, I denied from the beginning. ArbComm is rejecting a charge that I did not level. How did that happen? Was it that I wrote too much?

Perhaps. But I'd say that it happened for different reasons:

• The cabal over and over repeated the false claim about my claim. Many editors saying it, instinctively, it must be true. And even if Abd didn't say it, we know that he must mean it, since that is what we would mean, and do mean, when we charge "meat puppetry."
• ArbComm is distracted, and only a few arbitrators do deep investigation on their own. If one does not investigate on one's own, one will be very vulnerable to noise. ArbComm findings of fact should be rigorous, because, after all, the history is all there.
• There have been many outside charges of a cabal, including media mention of this speciric cabal. We have defended against those charges with an argument which is true but highly misleading; that argument makes us feel good about ourselves, but does not address the actual problem, which is "natural cabals." Communities of affiliation that become biased against outsiders, people who think differently.
• "incredibly difficult to prove?" Only if one doesn't read the actual claim, but instead projects on it assumptions about it. "Cabal" is a very negative term on-wiki, is what has been said. Sure. I could say, deliberately so! A remarkable number of the cabal administrators have the Cabal Rouge flag.... on the talk pages, there is lots of joking about the cabal and those stupid editors who claim that there is one and we are part of it .... they just don't understand that they are wrong and we are just trying to correct them. This, Atren, is how a cabal thinks. A collection of editors who simply happen to agree would not respond like this, they would, instead, say, "They think there is a cabal? Why would they think that? Let's ask them!"

It is very difficult for biased POV to see itself; typically it takes some outside force to make our own biases visible. That's why we need consensus process, not merely majority rule or the application of power. It was only recently that the concept of "tag-team" edit warring was even accepted. Cabals tag-team, they do it naturally. We cannot possibly begin to address the real level of tag teaming with controversial articles, where a group of editors massed, figuratively, through watchlists, can keep an article how they like it, or make it how they like, and any interloper who tries to change it, they can defeat, and even more so if the group includes administrators. WMC talks about this, in the last bit of evidence I added about him. It's blatant, in fact, once you know what to look for. "Us" vs. "them." That's practically the core of "cabal." If we have that, we will see the negative effects, which then justify the usages of a negative term.

But membership in a cabal is normal, we all belong to cabals, unless we are very, very unusual, and I'm not sure I know anyone who fits that. Maybe I do, I can think of one candidate among Wikipedia editors. Maybe more than one, hard to say, not enough evidence.....

In the middle of it all you are trying to fight the overly-skeptical POV on CF and trying to mediate GW.

Trying to mediate GW? Don't know what you mean. I wasn't trying to "fight" the overly-skeptical POV with Cold fusion, but rather was patiently negotiating with it, one piece at a time, until Hipocrite arrived, who, with Verbal, was a strong cabal editor. Enric Naval was, without them, much more reasonable, but reactive, a different problem. In any case, since I was banned by WMC, I wasn't working on cold fusion beyond the mediation, which is slow, not taking much time. By banning me, my energy was channeled into dealing with the ban and the issues it raised, which ArbComm is acknowledging are important issues.

You'd think they'd be happy that someone is raising important issues! but it doesn't necessarily work that way. Squeaky wheels get grease, maybe, or they get pulled off and junked.

How could anyone find the time to do all that, especially someone like you who immerses himself in every task fully?

I couldn't, bottom line. Insufficient support appeared from the community, from history I expected more. Don't know why. Perhaps the cold fusion red herring?

You took on too much here, and I think the last straw was trying to prove a cabal.

That may turn out to be the most important thing I did. Atren, there is a cabal, or at least it's easy to show that lots of knowledgeable people think so, and, as was quite correctly noticed in the workship, proclaiming that there isn't one, or even that it hasn't been proven, has no ultimate effect except to expose a committee so deciding, when seen from the future, as obtuse. "I can't believe that they couldn't see it!" (And I do believe that they don't see it, I have no reason to think that they are being dishonest.) What ArbComm has largely rejected is not what I "tried to prove." I tried to prove that the assemblies of editors in various places, as I documented, were not "uninvolved."

Being involved is not an offense, but someone making a judgment about a decision, as ArbComm may be deciding thtat "the community supported the ban," or "the community had no problem with the ban," needs to know about involvements that are based on editor affiliation, not just a specific article content.

Tell me, I'm not involved in any content dispute with Raul654. Does this mean that he is a neutral administrator and could block me? What if he had, as he has before, remained silent during this RfAr, so we didn't have the blatant bias? If we look back, we can find many examples of "mutual support," between him and WMC. There are other administrators who are similarly involved with each other, and sensible administrators routinely recuse when a good friend is involved. Cabal admins don't. When that starts to change, the cabal will have, in its negative effects, been largely broken.

You should have focused purely on WMC and the specifics of his administrator transgressions (there is plenty of evidence of that).

I started that way, and perhaps I should have left it at that. But you do realize what the result would have been? The "cabal" evidence was initially about the massive pour-in of cabal editors to the RfAr. Had my goal been to pin down the cabal, there would have been a different set of editors named; I might even have focused only on administrators and arguable cabal adminstrative abuse, there is plenty on that, starting with a crackerjack case, Scibaby. Admin abuse from start to the present, and it's not over.

For some reason, the cabal only showed up in numbers in RfC/JzG 3, but not in the ensuing RfAr. This may have been because that case was so open and shut, and there wasn't at that point, much of a way that they could credibly impeach me, only minor efforts were made. This time, they had much more to run with. And they did.

The cabal is not nearly as smart as a truly organized cabal would be. One could negotiate with an organized cabal, assuming that they did have as their goal the benefit of the wiki. Before RfAr/Abd and JzG, I think they really believed their own propaganda: that I was a dead-horse-beating loser. That RfAr woke them up a little. I was actually a danger.

But hindsight is 20/20 and what's done is done, so cut your losses and move on. Even though this case has not turned out the way you liked, it's done a great deal of good by shining the light on abuses that occur regularly on these articles.

That would, indeed, have been my goal, and "turned out the way" I "liked" presumes that I have a fixed goal. I don't. Sure. I can get a bit obsessed when people I trust turn against me, and I did trust ArbComm. (And now I'm responding to an impression that based on incomplete evidence, it could be that the trust is still warranted). But I have no opinion that Wikipedia benefits more, and that I benefit more, if I still edit here. I have some reasons to think that it might even be better if I'm site banned, because that might divert my activities into what could be more effective. While I edit here, I get involved with all kinds of article issues, mediating disputes, and, yes, editing articles, such as bringing in the lyrikline.org material. It is entirely possible that I'm more useful in other ways,.

• Things are better than they used to be. You think it's bad now, imagine when the committee was the cabal, with Raul crafting proposed decisions without fully reading the case pages (he admitted he didn't even look at the Workshop), and the rest rubber-stamping his words.

Uh, Atren, did I just notice you treating the cabal as a reality? I'd better watch your Talk page for warnings....

Look, it is blatantly obvious. Yes, it may be better now; in fact, were it not for a confidence that it was better, I wouldn't have bothered, and I probably would have abandoned Wikipedia before now. I could do the needed demonstrations of the concepts elsewhere, it might be more effective. "The concepts," by the way, are how Wikipedia could solve the problem of scale while retaining the system of distributed responsibility that is the core of how we work.

It was a mess. Now we have a much better committee with people such as NYB, CHL and bainer, who actually take pains to make the right decision. Do they make mistakes? Yes, of course - the allegation that you are pushing a POV is proof of that - but it's much better than it was. If this case came up 2 years ago, you'd already be banned.

Yes. Now, you know this. What makes you special?

• Cold Fusion - I cannot stress how much I agree with your position on this. I could probably take your block of text above and post it as my own view on CF: I'm somewhat skeptical but I want to know what's happening in those beakers before I make a final decision.

Right. I am not conclusion-driven. I do not conclude that cold fusion is real and then try to craft text to show this in the article. Thanks. I'm glad someone sees this. Now, why is this not being said, and said clearly, in the RfAr?

What CF proves is that there are too many dogmatists in the scientific world - scientists who confuse close-mindedness with skepticism. To many scientists, anyone outside of the mainstream is a crackpot. It's really no different than fundamentalists calling non-believers "blasphemers". The point when scientists stop searching for answers and resort to hurling insults, is the point when science becomes no different than theology.

Unfortunately, Abd, you pushed too hard on CF, and with the wrong audience.

Perhaps. But what I was pushing for was always, not CF, but RS guidelines. Nevertheless, having been a skeptic who was "converted" by reading the sources, including the skeptical ones, I do disclose my POV, and the main point I've been "pushing" is that there is no longer a clear basis for asserting that cold fusion is "rejected by mainstream science," and that assumptions behind this are not based in reliable sources and balance of sources. I've pushed the idea that this is complex, not obvious, and that we can only address this through editorial consensus, not an imposed position.

In fact, discretionary sanctions, implemented by neutral administrators (even if they have some skeptical bias ,that is natural, as I'm sure you understand), should be enough. In December, ArbComm basically concluded that Pcarbonn was the problem, and topic banned him. Pcarbonn was not the problem. The problem, in fact, was the cabal, imposing a majority POV without allowing room for expanded consensus. Pcarboon, by patient reliance on guidelines, was able to expand the article, but only to a very limited degree. The result is an article that is, at best, impoverished. I could write ten articles with the material I have, this is a very complex topic, with the history and the known science and the techniques used, etc.

Trying to promote an open-minded view to those on the CF page who have already made their decision, lack of evidence be damned, would be like reading Darwin to a fundamentalist Christian group - no matter what you say or how reasonably you say it, you will be labelled a heretic.

That's right. However, an "open-minded view" is essential to Wikipedia. Editors who do not allow that view are violating fundamental, non-negotiable policy, on neutrality. The answer to fundamentalism was science, and deliberative process, i.e., democracy, as well as protections against the tyranny of the majority. Those protections can only go so far, but, as society recognizes that consensus is truly powerful, that united we stand and divided we fall, the protections get stronger and more widely understood.

What CF demanded was more patience and secondary input, but even then, the "pro-science" power structure is aligned against you - again, think of the Darwin to the fundamentalists analogy: you could make an appeal to the local police and appear before the local judge, but in all cases, you'd be appearing before people who are Christian themselves and basically sympathetic to their position.

Yes, that is why it took time, and reliance on higher-level processes where process was more careful. Even then, it took lots of time.

Even a reasonable judge who doesn't share the extremist views of the fundamentalists themselves, might be swayed to making a poor decision based on greater affinity with the locals. You can call this a "cabal", but it's really just human nature to align oneself with people who appear to share the same values, even if it's just a surface alignment.

One more thing about CF: the article is not that bad.

"Cabals" are human nature. In FA/DP theory I call them "caucuses," and FA/DP empowers them by making them explicit, which gives them energetic advantages, they become more efficient; but because this is done with a neutral structure, all cabals become more efficient, including the biggest cabal, the one that has had no way of expressing itself coherently, the EC. The Editor Cabal. The one that has, too often, been getting the short end of the stick.

But it's not a matter of giving everyone a vote. That wouldn't work, except for certain very narrow purposes. It's much more sophisticated than that, it's about networking and collective intelligence, so that smarter decisions are made, so that advice is reliable because it is made with the assistance of a structure that is designed specifically for trustworthiness (and practically with no other purpose, as I said, the structure is neutral).

I read it a while back and it seemed OK -- maybe swaying a little too much to the skeptical, but not significantly enough to be overly concerned. Certainly there could be more balance there, but I don't necessarily believe it's worth all the effort you've expended in this. Maybe I'm wrong - can you point out the specifics of the article which you consider wrong so I can evaluate for myself?

With time, yes. I'll write you off-wiki, but you might take a look, for starters, at the situation with "proposed explanations." Very simple: look at what is in the article, look at what was accepted on May 21, and look at what was put in by me that started the edit war of June 1, after having been discussed. You can even find the diffs in my poll, which is now archived, it was live in the beginning of June.

I still haven't read your entire response, but that's my take so far. I may add more later. I truly hope you don't leave - you've had a tremendous impact on this project in the short time you've been here, despite Raul's insults. In fact, I think Raul insulting you is the best indication that you are making a real difference here. :-) Good luck with the case. ATren (talk) 15:11, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. To proceed, though, I'm going to need a lot more open support. I listen to people, I did understand your backspace button, but that's not enough. If there had been more active and coherent support, from others besides the overworked GoRight and Coppertwig, I'd have been far more able to sit back.

Here is a somewhat challenging way to put it. No cabal, eh? That means that what all these editors did is just fine, so the rest of us can do it too, right?

Believe me, if it were up to me, I would still not do anything like what the cabal has done. My goal is to include, not exclude, and that means including the cabal and respecting the cabal positions, but what is going to be necessary that the true "inclusionists," -- those who want to include as many people as possible, cooperating in this project -- start to become active, to stand up for consensus and neutrality, real consensus and real neutrality. Thanks again for the time you took to respond.

If the time comes when I can't write long responses on my Talk page, I'll take up something else, for sure. I'd be quite willing to accept a site-ban, if (1) I can make self-reverted edits anywhere, as long as they are not intrinsically disruptive, but merely proposals for edits to articles or to discussions, null edits, in effect, unless brought in by someone who will take responsibility for their usefulnes, and (2) they are not considered "ban violations," and therefore there is no idea that someone bringing them back in is assisting with ban violation; a person bringing such an edit back in would be responsible only for actual disruptiveness in the edit, and, as well (3), I have normal freedom in my user space, to work on pages or process there, subject to normal limitations.

That should, in fact, address every arguably legitimate objection that has been raised to my "style." But I'm not holding my breath. --Abd (talk) 19:34, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I do plan to respond on this thread (I too prefer this threaded style of conversation) but it'll probably have to wait until the weekend as I am very busy this week. ATren (talk) 14:03, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Have you seen this?

Interesting stuff.
--NBahn (talk) 05:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. Not sure what the significance is, though. That experienced editors edits would survive longer may be totally natural, which seems most likely to me, or it may represent some kind of bias. The truth is probably a combination, with the weight toward "natural." It's only in certain narrow and highly controversial areas that some serious problems start to appear. --Abd (talk) 05:55, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking that it seemed to describe your thesis of A cabal (please note the lower-case "c") pretty well. So, if I understand you correctly, you feel that it does not lend itself very well to a description of a cabal of the type that you've been dealing with. To what degree -- if any -- is this characterization of mine accurate?
--NBahn (talk) 06:31, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

That could be a symptom of an "experienced editor cabal" or not. "Cabal" implies something negative. In writing about cabals I am asserting that they do damage, but not that they are composed of nasty evil plotters. The most dangerous cabal is always one that I belong to. I.e., it is dangerous to my own neutrality, and it is the most dangerous if I'm not aware of my "membership," and danger reaches a peak if I attack anyone to tries to tell me about my bias! If we, as established editors, are prejudiced against newcomers, we would be acting as an EE cabal. While that may exist to some degree, I don't see it as on the front burner, so to speak. The cabals that I'm aware of would be inclusionist/deletionist, and that is so well known with many editors self-identifying, that it also isn't quite such a problem. And there is the administrative cabal, composed of administrators who reject the idea of non-administrators "meddling" in policy, or who otherwise treat administrators with more deference and allowance for incivility and other misbehavior than an ordinary editor. There are editors who, during the current RfAr, did things that would have resulted in an immediate block if they had been non-administrators.

I'm leaving the above in place, but I realized that it's wrong. Not about the I and D cabals or the A cabal, but about the EE cabal. The block example shows it. There is a bias against blocking EEs, it's shaky, and it is probably dying out, but Thatcher wrote yesterday about getting dinged for not taking an EE block to a noticeboard. Nobody expects a block of an editor with a dozen edits to be taken to a noticeboard, even with exactly the same offense.

Cabals serve legitimate purposes, there is no bright line between cabal and "cooperative community," except that a cabal is in some way exclusive, sometimes by stringent admission qualifications, you can't just (without being blocked!) rack up 30,000 edits in a few days!, or sometimes by a POV.

When I started being active at Wikipedia, I brought extensive experience with voluntary organizations, some of which operated by consensus. I'd been working on the theory of what could be called "anarchist structure" for many years. I saw Wikipedia as an example; such structures, in the real world, are always hybrids, some of this and some of that. (There is a quite good book, The Starfish and the Spider, that addresses this. My own work is beyond what the authors describe, in some ways, but they also address other important aspects that I have not, so much.) I had anticipated hypertext structures like that of Wikipedia, when I was active on the [WELL]] in the 1980s. So when I read the policies and guidelines, I recognized nearly all of it. It made perfect sense. But I also expected, from prior work, that there would be certain problems. And, indeed, there were. I was bringing in outside understanding. It was not welcome. That's tribal bias. How could an outsider, with only a few hundred edits, possibly understand Wikipedia? That continues, though I now have, what, 12,000 edits?

In the current RfAr, there is a lot of discussion of conflict and bad feelings I supposedly cause. I have to take some responsibility for at least part of this; it is always a product of unskillful means. But knowing that does not automatically create skillful means! However, there is almost no discussion of what I have accomplished, and if I disappear today, I can still be happy about quite a bit. There will be continued benefit to the project from actions I took; I'm a member of the Article Rescue Squadron, but it might be better for me to join the Editor Rescue Squadron, because one article is one article, one editor is many articles. Best-known example: Wilhelmina Will. But quite a few other minor examples, where editors headed for blocks and bans didn't go there. I don't do extensive article work, ordinarily, Cold fusion has been an exception, and I'd only begun, really. There should be a family of articles, actually, there is plenty of RS, plenty of history covered in reputable books from independent publishers. Huizenga, the chair of the 1989 U.S. Department of Energy panel that was considered the authoritative rejection of cold fusion (incorrectly, but that was certainly personally true of Huizenga), called cold fusion the "scientific fiasco of the twentieth century." Really? I think he was right. Why do we have such a shallow article on it? According to Simon, Undead Science, a large fraction of the U.S. research budget was diverted, for a short time, into cold fusion research, as groups which thought they would be capable of replicating (or negatively replicating) the effect tried to do so. What happened? We have told the story in the most shallow and superficial way. It was possible to frame the field in such a way as to make it match various qualities of pseudoscience. However, what happened then was that various qualities of pseudoscience came to be projected onto the field and reported as fact. For example, I have seen, recently, in physics blogs, the old claim that the more careful and accurate the measurements, the less the effect appears. It's blatantly false. The effect was fragile and difficult to set up, 100% success did not start to appear until around 2006 or 2007. Probably the myth got started with the original neutron findings. It was true that sloppy measurements showed significant neutron flux, and more careful work later limited that flux to very low levels, close to background. More careful work showed neutron bursts, and serious attempts to eliminate cosmic ray background left, still, mysteries but no clear proof. It wasn't until 2008 that the SPAWAR group, using a different technique, integrated detection of energetic neutron signatures, showed such neutron levels at about ten times background, consistently, over many experiments, thus confirming all earlier work as it had come to be understood. (I.e., Fleischmann's report of neutrons and the Texas A&M report of neutrons were identified as artifact and retracted -- Texas within days of their press conference, Fleischmann within months, I think.) There shouldn't be any energetic neutrons coming from a cold fusion cell, it's diagnostic of fusion.

But the problem was that such a low level of neutrons shows a very low level of neutron-generating fusion. Those neutrons must be coming from a secondary reaction, rare. The lack of neutrons was considered proof that it wasn't plain deuterium fusion, and that is probably correct! It is something else. There are theories, but nobody knows for sure. This is definitely emerging science at this point, and it is easy to prove from source that has been considered reliable by the skeptics. But I have not proposed that we put such conclusions in the article! Not unless there is reliable secondary source to show it, and even if there is such source (there is), there is plenty of media source in the contrary direction, so we can't report that the controversy is over. It isn't over. Plenty of "scientists" still believe that the whole thing is bogus. It's just that they are not, almost without exception, experts in the field. There are hot fusion physicists who are, and who accept that the effect is real. But take your random particle physicist, and quite likely, you will meet someone who thinks it was all proven false twenty years ago, and please don't bother me with this nonsense. Convene a panel of experts, you will find that, if they have to come up with something evidence-based, and they have a short time (some reading in preparation and a one-day seminar), they will be divided in opinion, with no clear consensus either way (50% on excess heat, 33% on nuclear origin). That was the 2004 DoE panel, and that, by itself, shows that the field is active, contrversial science. There is a steady flow, increasing, of peer-reviewed papers published in the field.

The tribal bias here? He's a "POV-pusher," an outsider, not one of the "us" that WMC referred to at one point, trying to cram fringe science down our throats. One of the charges against me has been that I've been "pushing" to recognize Cold fusion as "emerging science." Well? Is it or isn't it? That's not necessarily a formal category, but, I'd say, Cold fusion has moved out -- or is moving out -- of the fringe science category. It was fringe science -- or worse, there is plenty of ordinary (not peer-reviewed) reliable source calling it "pathological science," or "junk science." We will always have this in the article, but not as fact, as what was notably said. There has been plenty of junk science reported in the field, including quite a bit on the negative side. Two of the major negative replications, where the evidence was re-analyzed, showed anomalous heat, but it was considered to be, probably, at too low a level, everyone was looking for more significant effects, but those higher levels of heat required palladium that was very clean in microstructure (unusual) and very high loading levels with deuterium (taking weeks or months of electrolysis) and other conditions poorly-understood at the time and not satisfied in those experiments. A later study (2008), unfortunately only a conference paper, but well-done, an analysis of the excess heat literature, used Bayesian analysis to show 100% correlation between four fairly simple characteristics of research reports and whether the study was "successful" or not, i.e., whether or not excess heat was reported. In other work (also not usable yet, unfortunately, though it's widely known), one of the major negative reports, apparently, MIT, presented their data in a fudged inaccurate chart, where the baseline had been shifted to conceal (intentionally or not) a low level of excess heat. That was junk science (in the error) but even more was the conclusion, represented in editorials and other comments, that negative replications proved that the positive replications were junk. Instead, it simply proved that the researchers hadn't created the necessary conditions (assuming that some conditions did show the effect.) The 1989 DOE report correctly noted that it is very difficult to prove a negative. But many scientists assumed that it had been done. What would have iced it would have been a review of the field that showed an identifiable cause for bogus results, a Bayesian study like the 2008 one, or the like. That's what happened with polywater and with N-rays. Never happened. But many still consider cold fusion to have been disproven. That was my conclusion (and I was highly informed in 1989) until January of this year, when I started reading the more recent work.

Ah, I got started.... gotta go do some RL stuff. --Abd (talk) 15:29, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I was skimming this, but... are you seriously using this venue to charge an easily identifiable group of scientists at MIT with research fraud, on the basis of a "unusable" but "widely known" source which you fail to name? Do you think that comports with the expectations set forth in WP:BLP? MastCell ^Talk 18:11, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It's complicated. There are people in the field who do make that charge, quite publicly. I don't, because the error may have been an error by someone assigned to prepare the chart, and overlooked. The matter has been raised with MIT, I think even formally, and, to my knowledge, there never was a response. It would not be, in my view, "research fraud," because the raw data was available (that makes it possible to see the error!), it would be, rather, an error in analysis, which is much less serious than "research fraud." My, MastCell, you are jumping to conclusions quickly! BLP? Who? *Somebody* made a mistake in drawing a chart, I don't know who and I'm not sure that anyone knows. I wasn't proposing to put this in the article! Wasn't I explicit about that? (If not, I should have been!) But if we can't even talk about something that is all over the internet, we've gone down the tubes.

It is not really important, and here is why: Many of the early studies failed to find excess heat. They were looking for excess heat of a certain magnitude, particularly heat that was so great that chemical explanations could be immediately ruled out. Some of the negative replications, examined more closely, turn out to show excess heat, but at a level much lower. So these were considered negative replications, even though the lower excess heat was unexplained. There are always unexplained phenomena, etc., etc.

Whether an experiment showed no excess heat or only a small amount is, in the end, unimportant, based on what we now know. The basic point of the mention here on my Talk page is that some of the "negative replications" were not entirely negative, and that is, in fact, a kind of replication. If there were no such marginal results, something would be quite suspicious (though it would still be possible, an effect can be truly all or nothing). An approach that was later used was to do three things: measure excess heat, measure helium, and measure ionizing radiation. The CR-39 technique was found to be quite useful, because it turns out that the copious radiation emitted from these reactions is alpha radiation, which is low penetration, not escaping the experimental cell, not even penetrating the electrolyte more than a very small distance, so external detectors, which is what had been used at first found nothing or almost nothing. (Except for one research group in China in 1990 that used CR-39 which found significant radiation, but, you know, those Chinese... nobody in the U.S. paid any attention to it except the skeptic, Hoffman, writing in 1994, who reported it. Hoffman is a great source, and RS.)

If you measure all three things, then a "negative" replication becomes a control experiment! And, indeed, that is what was done. This, or something like it, should be in the article, it's reliably sourced, secondary source, and, here, I attribute it, so that any doubts about the author's supposed bias are moot. (I don't have the book in front of me, so there may be errors here, this is from memory.)

According to Edmund Storms (The science of low energy nuclear reaction, World Scientific, 2007), reporting work in the 1990s, by Miles of the U.S. Naval Weapons Center at China Lake, California, in the 1990s, and recently (2003) reviewed by Miles, in a series of 33 cold fusion experiments, calorimetric calculations inferred excess heat in 21 cells, and not in 12 cells. Helium was measured by an independent laboratory, and no helium was found in the 12 cells with no inferred heat. In the 21 cells showing excess heat, helium was found at in 18, at levels commensurate with the excess energy.

There is also substantial published work doing similar correlations with radiation. No excess heat, no radiation, excess heat, radiation.

I am not here writing the article, and whatever appears in the article should be a matter of consensus. We typically discuss more than what actually goes in the article, and it is quite possible that with diligent search, we could find RS on the issue of the MIT re-analysis. There is also later analysis of the Caltech results showing that they, contrary to announcement, also found low levels of excess heat, but no presentation error has been identified, to my knowledge, rather, only a conclusion that was not precisely correct. It's not so, if the sources I have read are correct, that Caltech found "no" excess heat, only that they found so much less than expected that they may have considered it not significant, since the originally claimed excess heat was much greater. However, even with Pons and Fleischmann's work, most cells produced no measured excess heat, and, when P and F ran out of the original batch of palladium and obtained more, they also were unable to replicate their own work for a time. I think there is RS on that, by the way. Here on my Talk, I'm writing from memory, not with open books or precise citations, and I don't necessarily remember where I read something. I do know where to look, though. Writing a sentence in an article, two hours of research and verification. Knowing where to look and what to look for, six months of reading. --Abd (talk) 20:14, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I actually find this response more troubling than the original comment. I am absolutely not interested in a discussion of the merits of specific cold-fusion research. You wrote the following:

In other work (also not usable yet, unfortunately, though it's widely known), one of the major negative reports, apparently, MIT, presented their data in a fudged chart, where the baseline had been shifted to conceal (intentionally or not) a low level of excess heat.

You use words like "fudged chart", and claim that the authors "shifted" their baseline to "conceal" a finding, words which convey intent. You also explicitly acknowledge that you believe this may have been intentional. If I were the researcher in question, or even a disinterested party reading your words, I would conclude that you were charging at least a strong possibility of research fraud, not an "error in analysis".

If other reliable sources have made such an accusation, then fine - just cite them, which I notice you've not done in the lengthy response above. If you are unwilling to produce a reliable source, then please don't use Wikipedia to accuse presumably reputable scientists of research fraud based solely on your say-so. That seems like a basic and unarguable application of WP:BLP to me, hence my note. It is of no interest to me whether you propose to include such an accusation in the article; as I'm sure you know, BLP applies across all namespaces, including User Talk. MastCell ^Talk 20:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I have explicitly stated that I do not believe there was fraud. There was, if the reports are correct, an error. If you seriously imagine or consider that this is a BLP violation, when I think that is preposterous, can you suggest how we can resolve this dispute? What are you asking me to do? Not only do I not have the names of the "scientists" involved in that report, though that could be found, I also don't know if any of them are alive, though some may be. To claim that an error was made in the preparation of a chart is not at all a claim of research fraud, and how you derive that from it is way unclear to me.

I can cite sources for the claim, but they are only sources for the fact that the charges exist. I might be able to find reliable source for this, showing notability, in which case this could go into the article. If you want me to, I will, eventually, make the atttempt. Do you think this that important?

If you are a researcher and you think that anyone who claims you made a mistake is charging you with fraud, you should take up something less emotionally demanding.

It's true, I think, that there are those who think the report is fraudulent, and I, specifically, am not supporting that here, nor do I believe it. WTF are you saying, MastCell? Are you warning me? What action, if I repeat it, would be an offense? Specifically, please. What text is BLP violation? Otherwise, please go away. I've got far more important stuff to do than argue with you on my Talk page.

However, rereading what you quoted, the word "fudged," even though modified by the later stated possibility that the result was not intentional, could be read negatively. Accordingly, I am redacting that in my copy. Leaving it in your quotation. --Abd (talk) 21:21, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how to explain more clearly than I have. I understand the difference between an error and fraud. To my reading, your text alleged the latter. I'm not sure how to read your request that I provide specifics. I did, in my previous post. I will repeat myself. When you say that a researcher has "shifted" their data to "conceal" a finding, you are implying intent to deceive, not an honest scientific error. From my perspective, it is less important that you strike any previous comments, and more important that you understand why such assertions are problematic. Further, I wish you would see the need to provide adequate sources for such accusations as a editorial responsibility, rather than as a sop to throw a tiresome editor who kicks up a fuss on your talk page.

This is not a "warning", and I have no intention of seeking any sort of action against you (although the above reaffirms my personal belief that a topic ban from cold fusion is a good idea). It's a request that you consider the implications of your language when dealing with the reputations of living people. Take it under advisement or ignore it. Up to you. MastCell ^Talk 22:00, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, MastCell. The data was shifted. How is unclear. Motivation is unclear. The alleged shift concealed a possible minor finding. This is, quite definitely and clearly, not an allegation of fraud. It is an allegation of error, and it isn't my allegation, I'm reporting what has been stated in what would have to be called fringe sources, and I don't know if this has been found in reliable source.

Okay, I was wrong. I have reliable source. Bart Simon, Undead science: science studies and the afterlife of cold fusion, Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp. 133-135. This book is routinely considered reliable source for the cold fusion article. Simon is a sociologist, his concern is science process. He is arguing neither for nor against cold fusion, he is interested in "closure," the process by which an issue is considered closed, beyond debate, but he calls Cold fusion "undead science," because, in spite of being declared dead in 1990, it still walks.

---

Another important aspect of resistance identification in CF is the revisiting and reanalysis of prominent negative replications from 1989, accompanied by the articulations of differences between the competence of early attempts at replication and post-1990 work. CF researchers have employed two different strategies for engaging with negative replications. One is to reconfigure old negative replications as null results (or incompetent experiments). Referring to the negative replications reported by scientists at Caltech, MIT and Harwell, one CF researcher writes the following in his literature review of the field: "In some cases, the conditions those studies used are now known to prevent the cold fusion effect. MIT researchers, for example, used an experimental apparatus that was open to the humid Massachusetts air and therefore subject to contamination by ordinary water, which has since been found to inhibit the cold fusion effect. Also, early experimenters used commercially available palladium without regard for its condition; it is now known that off-the-shelf palladium does not meet the special conditions required for cold fusion" (Storms, 1994, 20)

At the same time, other CF researchers have reanalyzed the data presented in negative replications and argue that there were real anomalous effects that the replicators had neglected or dismissed as experimental error. This kind of reanalysis attempts to turn negative into positive replications. As one CF researcher told me,

The most compelling positive experiments, the most convincing, in a perverse way, are these three from 1989: MIT, Caltech and Harwell. As you probably know, all three were claimed to be negative. Perhaps a better choice of words would be "proclaimed" or "advertised" as negative. Also, without a doubt, all three used terribly sloppy, third rate procedures, the wrong kind of equipment. All three declared their results before they finished the experiment. But, as it turned out, MIT was positive, but fraudulently misrepresented it as negative, Caltech was positive, but they made a dumb mistake in algebra and overlooked it.... when the three most powerful enemies of cold fusion run deliberately sloppy, half-assed experiments and still get positive results, that -- by golly -- is the best possible proof that the effect isreal! [Simon's note: email interview with a cold fusion researcher, 1993].

...Martin Fleischmann, who has spent much of the past few years reanalyzing old data, takes a similar view. In a recent interview for the cold fusion magazine, Infinite Energy, he states, "If you take the Harwell data sets, you cannot say that this experiment worked perfectly and that there is no excess heat. You could only say that the experiment worked perfectly and there is excess heat or the experiment didn't. As regards MIT, all one can do is shake one's head in disbelief really. I mean, again, if you fiddle about with baselines then you have to consign those experiments to the dustbin and start again. The one in Caltech, was clearly very strange because there was a redefinition of the heat transfer coefficient" [Simon's note: Tinsley, 1997, Infinite Energy, 3:13-14] ...

In this post-closure period, however, the scientists at Caltech, MIT, and Harwell do not seem to care or see a need to disagree with this new interpretation of their experiments. The attempts to reanalyze old negative data have been met largely with silence. CF researchers make sense, and take advantage, of this silence by arguing that the critics from 1989 now irrationally refuse to even consider the new data: "I've gone over, I've talked to [an MIT physicist] about my ideas about the field. [The MIT physicist] doesn't have to see any of the papers, doesn't have to see any of the experimental results; he doesn't have to see anything. He stops after the first two sentences -- gosh, you think you can get something nuclear with electrochemistry -- I'm sorry, but I know the answer to that, there's no effect." [Simon's note: Interview with a theoretical physicist, 1996].

---

Simon is generally not a source for the science, as such, he is a source for the history and for conclusions about the sociology. Anything used in the article from the above would require attribution, but Simon is a reliable secondary source, published by an academic press. His citation of the Infinite Energy interview, for example, establishes notability. When we start telling the full story -- which includes the history, where we don't rely on peer-reviewed sources -- we will include material like that above, properly abstracted, of course. I may have other source confirming this affair, I only looked in Storms (nothing in the book, the quote above was from something not directly usable) and Simon. I have other books that contain reviews and history of the field, including books by skeptics, that may have some reference.

Thanks for calling attention to this, MastCell. I hope you appreciate this. By the way, do not imagine that I'm "arguing truth" here. I am not, in discussing this affair, trying to prove that MIT screwed up. I don't know if they screwed up or not, I just know what is in some sources, and what is in Simon shows that some researchers have claimed that MIT screwed up, and two of them are named, one because it was in a published interview with Fleischmann. It's notable all on its own, because Fleischmann's opinions about cold fusion are notable. When someone is the originator of the "Scientific fiasco of the twentieth century" (Huizenga), they get certain notability privileges, don't you think?

There are, on the internet, detailed analyses of the MIT data, in particular. So we can see what they are talking about. The claims about fraud I don't support at all, and do not think that the data I have seen supports a fraud conclusion; in the words of somebody I don't know, "never assign to malice what may be a result of mere incompetence." Or something like that. The MIT baseline problem looks cogent. Reality? Wow! What a question! --Abd (talk) 23:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

OK. That's fine and satisfies my BLP concern, at least insofar as talk space is concerned. Am I reading correctly: an anonymous cold-fusion researcher emailed the author of Undead Science to say that negative results from MIT, Cal Tech, and AERE were due to the "sloppy, third-rate" scientific practices at those institutions; that MIT's negative results were "fraudulent"; and that Cal Tech's negative results were the result of rudimentary algebraic errors? I ask only to confirm that I'm reading your post correctly - the identation mixed me up a bit. MastCell ^Talk 23:52, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I checked, the indentation was correct. Simon indents a quotation in one place, so I also indented it further. The quote from Simon is continuous, I will add a line above it and below it so that it is even more clear. MastCell, you may not be interested in this, but I know that some read my Talk page who will be, so whether you read this or not is up to you. You are not obligated. I'm grateful that you raised the issue.

The author of Undead Science, Bart Simon, conducted extensive interviews with scientists, both skeptical and otherwise. Some of these interviews were by email. The MIT incident is widely discussed. There are 4 sources cited by him. Only one is an email, and it is so described above. I didn't give the full note, I have now added the word "interview" to this. In other words, this wasn't some unsolicited email sent to Simon, he was conducting an interview for his research. The other three sources are published in some way or other.

• Storms (1994) is "Warming up to Cold Fusion." Technology Review, June, pp. 19-20. Well, waddaya know. Technology Review is published by MIT, apparently. This might be reliable source as well. Unfortunately, the online archives only go back to 1997. Maybe someone can find the article. I had assumed that this was one of many unpublished but available papers by Storms.
• Tinsdale, 1997. It's on-line in a compilation from Infinite Energy, at [7], page 40. Wow! I had not read this interview before. There are more recent papers, such as one that I got whitelisted, where Fleischmann recollects what he was looking for when he found the excess heat effect. We use a earlier version at Martin Fleischmann, but when I attempted to put something from this in the Cold fusion article, it was opposed because it might be an old man trying to justify his earlier mistakes. However, this 1997 interview is maybe seven years closer to the events, and he says the same thing. He was not searching for a cheap energy source. He was doing pure science, investigating the boundary between quantum mechanics (highly accepted and known, relatively simple math, but simplified to the two-body problem) and quantum field theory which is also accepted, presumably more accurate, addressing multibody problems, but the math is insanely difficult. He knew that there would be a difference between the predictions of QM and QFT, but he says that he expected the difference to be below his ability to measure. Worth quoting part of this:

F: We arrived at this topic from various inputs to the subject and, in the end, we could pose a very simple question, namely would the fusion cross-section of deuterons compressed in a palladium lattice be different to the cross-section which you see in the vacuum. Now, I think that was a very simple question—either yes or no. The answer turned out to be different. . .I should explain that what we said was, “Yes, it would be different, but we would still see nothing.” That was the starting point in 1983 or whatever, yes 1982-83. Of course, it would be different, but we will see nothing. But it turned out to be radically different to that. Now, of course you have to say, “What do we do with such an observation?” Many people—as was shown subsequently—even though they were told what had happened, couldn’t believe this and ignored their own experimental evidence. But that is not for us. . .

mmm... the interviewer refers to a Miles paper that "largely refuted the Caltech experiment and showed there had been excess heat." He says it appeared in the Journal of Physical Chemistry. I'll look that up. That would be, I believe, peer-reviewed reliable source, and as a study of another study, a secondary source, I'd guess. Of some kind, at least!

• And then there is an "interview with a theoretical physicist." Wherever Simon uses private interviews or private communication, like e-mail, he does not give names.

So, two of the sources are anonymous, but reliable sources, like newspapers, often don't name sources. "E-mail" and "interview" -- presumably in person -- is almost identical. The credibility of the evidence depends on the credibility of the publisher (Rutgers), would Rutgers publish nonsense, made-up interviews, etc.? None of this is actually controversial, as Simon presents it. That is, the claims have been made about MIT, in particular. And MIT has apparently stonewalled it, but I'd love to find some response somewhere. --Abd (talk) 01:19, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm probably not your target audience on cold fusion, because I lack the expertise and, more importantly, the interest in the subject to care deeply about the more intricate details. That said, credibility is an interesting thing. Sure, newspapers use anonymous sources, but most critical readers (myself included) are perhaps more skeptical of an anonymous than a named source. Particularly in a case like this, which is ostensibly a scientific disagreement, the anonymity is odd. You've got someone calling out MIT for research fraud and Cal Tech for a lack of basic mathematical know-how. Those are pretty major accusations, and they'd be much more convincing to me if the person making them believed in them strongly enough to put his or her name behind them. That's just me. What would your opinion be if a source quoted an "anonymous physicist" trashing Pons, Fleischmann, and cold fusion research in general? How much credibility would you extend them? (I don't mean these questions to be goading - I'm honestly curious). MastCell ^Talk 04:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I would extend exactly the credibility due. Simon is a serious sociologist published by a serious publisher. If Simon says that there is a theoretical physicist, say, that said something: this is what I can trust: a theoretical physicist, known to Simon to have competency in that field, said it. This is the same kind of credibility that we assign to media reports. If a report says that "a governmental official, requesting anonymity, stated such and such," the reporter is certifying that a government official said it, or any other details reported. It is what it is, and the reader decides how much credibility to assign it. These passages would not be cited to show that MIT committed research fraud. Quite simply, they don't show that. They do show that charges like that exist. That's all. You might notice, though, that there are non-anonymous charges in the mix.

You have to understand that Simon is not writing about what we would consider scientific fact, but about the process. Notice that he's talking about how the cold fusion researchers survived through various devices where by they were able to frame the rejection such as to not be impossibly discouraging. Good thing, I'd say, because otherwise everyone would have given up. Simon's interest is not whether MIT made a mistake with a chart or not. It's about how the cold fusion researchers thought about it. For this kind of work, he needed candid opinions from researchers, in a field where even revealing that you are interested in cold fusion, for a time -- and maybe still in some places -- was fatal to one's career. I think you have previously expressed doubt about that, if I recall correctly. Reliable source, MastCell. One Wikipedian, a scientist, by email with me, a skeptic, nevertheless was very careful about his anonymity because, he claimed, if he admitted to even discussing cold fusion, that would be his career. True or not, I think he imagined, at least, this to be so. And there are real examples reported reliably of, say, a grad student who had to repeat his whole doctoral research and dissertation because the first research was on cold fusion. Good work, too, with a famous scientist.... It got pretty bad.

An "anonymous physicist trashes cold fusion"? I'd assign about as much credibility to that as "an anonymous Catholic trashes abortion." I.e., no big surprise. The controversy is largely a turf battle between chemistry and physics, and especially between electrochemistry and particle or nuclear physics, especially plasma physics, the kind of people who work on hot fusion. The dispute can be summarized as: The chemists say that this is not chemistry and the nuclear physicists say that this is not nuclear physics. In 1989 the nuclear physicists carried the day. After all, if it's "fusion," wouldn't they be the experts?

Actually, no. If it is fusion, it is a kind of fusion never before seen by anyone, not even suspected to exist, except by Fleischmann (and a few others, he was not the first to look for fusion in palladium deuteride, there was Paneth long ago), who thought it might exist, but probably at such a low rate that it would be undedectable. Nobody was really expert on this. The electrochemists were experts at calorimetry -- they found excess heat. They were not experts at detecting neutrons, and they screwed up. The physicists were experts at detecting neutrons, found none, and said, hah! no fusion here. The excess heat? They found none, but ... they were not experts at that kind of measurement and analysis. That's where the reanalysis comes in, the electrochemists taking the physicists' data and examining it more carefully, just like the physicists took Fleischmann's neutron data and pointed out an inconsistency.

There are various theories as to why the reaction doesn't produce significant neutrons. It does produce neutrons, but at very low levels, not shown conclusively until 2008. My favorite theory is the multibody fusion theory of Takahashi, we have referred to it as the Be-8 theory. Four deuterons, i.e., two deuterium molecules, entering the confinement of the metal lattice, form a tetrahedral symmetric condensate state, which I think is a Bose-Einstein condensate, where matter becomes much more dense than normal, as a rough explanation (normally this only happens at very cold temperatures, but temperature has a different meaning when we are only talking about a small number of atoms). Takahashi predicts, from quantum field theory, that if the tetrahedral condensate forms, it fuses immediately to Beryllium-8 which then immediately decays into two helium nuclei, with the same energy each as if two deuterons had fused into one helium nucleus. No neutrons, no branching ratio problem, no conservation of momentum problem, basically a clean reaction. And it could do other weird stuff. While it's still around, very brief time, the TSC, which is charge neutral, could fuse with practically anything, just like slow neutrons, so some level of elemental transmutation would be expected, bumping mass number by eight, and those are reported, much to the disbelief of many.

Unproven, though with substantial explanatory power, but found in reliable secondary source (multiple sources) and notable. And not in the article. That's what was put in June 1, Hipocrite revert warred against two other editors, removing it, hit 3RR, then reverted himself, left it and used his time waiting for protection to come down to drastically warp the lead.... --Abd (talk) 05:44, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Truce?

Hi Abd, things got out of hand by both of us and I am apologizing for my part of esculating. I am more sensitive lately due to stress and not feeling well but that isn't an excuse to behave like I did. I usually back off and sign off when I am stressed out about something but I didn't this time. I just wanted you to know this. I am sorry for not backing off and signing off earlier than I did. Truce? --CrohnieGal^Talk 12:53, 20 August 2009 (UTC) Ps, ignore any typos please as I am too lazy to check anything on talk lately and the lack of feelings in my hands make typing at times very painful. Thanks.

You are welcome, thanks. Good luck with your health issues. --Abd (talk) 14:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, if I can be of assistance in any way, please don't hesitate to ask. --Abd (talk) 01:21, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

An edit

Help! I'm turning into an anti-fringe POV pusher! [8] (just kidding – I'm OK with it) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:52, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Article has regressed where

You say that the article has regressed since before the edit wars of June 1st. However, looking at the differences since right before 1st June I see that the only significant differences are (by order):

• a) moving the alternative names from the first sentence of the lead to the second one
• b) adding that the existance of mossbauer effect and superconductivity influenced the receival of CF
• c) adding the caveats found in DOE 2004 to the excess heat observations
• d) adding the caveats to the Mosier-Boss paper
• e) adding "patents" section
• f) adding the basic schema of a cold fusion cell
• g) tweaking the wording of the "three miracles" thing
• h) removing the thing about stirring the electrolyte
• i) removing hydrino theory.

The only parts that I could consider a regression would be the last two ones. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:42, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

In addition, that the field is called "low energy nuclear reactions" is not only to "avoid negative connotations," since it is entirely possible (some experts claim this) that the effect is a LENR but is not fusion, and it definitely isn't the kind of fusion that was assumed it would be. Plus in the general field there are other effects that aren't ordinary fusion. That is a POV insertion. What is true, however, is that there is some avoidance of negative connotations by the term, but, note, the 2004 DOE review did not call the field "cold fusion." Really, the study is of the possibility and evidence for the existence of nuclear reactions in the condensed matter environment, which intrinsically means "low energy" or "cold," and the field is formally called "Condensed matter nuclear science," that's the name of the association and the specialized peer-reviewed journal.

"With a smaller majority," is an improvement over May 31, but not compared to various earlier versions. It's a drastic understatment. I have found no source for the size of the 1989 panel, but I did go over this at one point, and it must have been more than a dozen experts. Only two panel members (the co-chair and one other) were at all supportive of cold fusion. In 2004, the panel was evenly divided on the crucial excess heat issue, which is a huge change from 1989. "Smaller majority" on that issue is false. No majority in 2004. Only on the nuclear origin does the issue become one of majority: one-third of the 2004 panel considered evidence for a nuclear origin to be "somewhat convincing." As I've pointed out, if you don't find the evidence for excess heat convincing, you aren't going to consider a nuclear origin for an unestablished effect to be convincing! Conversely, if you were convinced that there was other evidence for a nuclear phenomenon taking place (and there was in 2004 and there is even more now), you would likely accept the excess heat evidence as confirming this.

So the way I personally frame the 2004 panel is differently: "Of the half of the panel that found the evidence for excess heat convincing, two-thirds found the evidence for nuclear origin "somewhat convincing." And I'll add, what about the other third? Did they have any other explanation? Note that the "experimental error" which is about the only hypothesis our article presently allows as "proposed explanation," would not be an explanation for excess heat other than nuclear origin, those who believed that would have been on the unconvinced side, not the ones convinced that anomalous heat was real. The other third, pretty clearly -- I'd want to review the individual comments -- simply considered that nuclear origin evidence wasn't strong enough yet. I think that Mosier-Boss might have nailed that for them, and it certainly answered the major objection from the skeptical side, together with the helium correlation/excess heat that was, indeed, covered in the review paper by Hagelstein but that somehow got misinterpreted by one of the reviewers and then even worse by the summarizing bureaucrat. A more thorough review would have gone repeatedly over each issue, instead of just tallying individual expressed opinions.... the helium error would not have ended up remaining at the end, and, I strongly suspect, the overall result would have shifted. That's what discussion does.

Electrolyte stirring is a major issue, the Caltech report impeached Fleischmann's work on a claim that, since they had noticed an apparent excess heat effect from failure to stir, perhaps P. and F. had made that error. However, the Caltech researchers were not experts at calorimetry, and P&F were, and P&F were using smaller cells, with vigorous evolution of deuterium gas, so the cells were self-stirred, and they also did dye diffusion study to show stirring.)

The article currently cites Shanahan for fact but that is primary source, and quite shaky. Sure, unexpected recombination can affect heat distribution and thus cause a calibration constant shift, but this is highly dependent on the form of calorimetry used and many other experimental details too complex to go into here. Shanahan's theory has not been accepted as being of general application. Some forms of these experiments use techniques that would be unaffected by unexpected recombination. They cause all the evolved gases to be recombined, thus simplifying the situation, and exactly where the recombination takes place is not relevant, the heat generation is not measured close to either the recombiner or the electrodes. Bottom line, very complex issue and we should not be synthesizing some conclusion, but reporting what is in secondary source. A claim like Shanahan's may be allowable, but should be attributed and that it has not been accepted noted.

More details of the early rejection are in the article, but these are unconfirmed analyses. Overall, maybe two-thirds of attempts to replication the work failed, early on. The article implies that Caltech tried all kinds of variations. But they didn't try the most important: running the cells for much longer, and using high-quality palladium (in terms of how it was formed and the presence of microcracks), and keeping ambient air out of the cells, and other factors later recognized as being important. To some extent this was not their fault, because many of the experimental details had not been revealed: bottom line, though, the replications were rushed, trying to disprove in a very short time what had taken P&F five years to reach. And P&F didn't understand what they had found thoroughly, for example, they thought it was a bulk phenomenon, when later work has shown that it is almost certainly a surface phenomenon. And on and on.

There is quite a bit of new material added that is good, and quite a bit that is not good, poorly written, and contradictory to other parts of the article, or poorly sourced. Reviewing this in detail would be quite a task; had normal editorial process been followed without administrative intervention, we'd have had the good without the bad, and more.

Given that the article has a section on proposed explanations, that the hydrino theory is missing is a serious loss; that the other notable theories are absent is a continuing loss. It appears to confirm the belief that there are no explanations using existing physics. (Be-8 theory uses existing physics, simply applying known physics to an unexpected phenomenon. Whether there is sufficient evidence for that is another story, there is no agreement within the field (and I specifically asked about this on the Vo list, to get a sense), but the theory is notable and covered in secondary source. Hydrino theory uses a very controversial extension to existing physics, fractional electronic energy levels.)

I'll stick with regression, but it is not an unmixed bag. There has been some progress as well. Enric, if you think the loss of the hydrino material was regression, why did you not restore it? You had worked on the Be-8 theory section, why did you not continue that?

On hydrino, the topic is still open at a discussion at the mediation page. I'll have to go other day (today is too late) and put up a draft text.

I'm not going to reply to every point, specially since we already discussed some of those in detail. I'll just say that that the "proposed explanations" section should probably renamed to "lack of accepted explanations" or something, and the hydrino and other should go under some other section name. Just throwing the idea here because I have to go right now. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:13, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Enric, the mediation does not prevent editing the article, as you know, you did a lot of editing of the patent material while the mediation was covering that. "Lack of accepted explanations." What is the source for that? And what does "accepted" mean? A proposed explanation is proposed whether it is accepted or not. Who does the accepting? There are only two sources I know of for this claim. (1) Old sources that state this as of a long time ago, so to be accurate, you would have to say "lack of accepted explanations in [year]." (2) then there is Storms, 2007, recent enough, which, for some strange reason, you and Hipocrite didn't want to use, though what he wrote wasn't controversial. His statement is much more precise, and the lack of general acceptance (even within the cold fusion field) of any specific explanation is a clear fact, supported by reliable secondary source, Storms, and if it's attributed, and not contradicted, that should be the end of it. It wasn't. Why not?

I find it strange to have a section called the "lack of accepted explanations" -- which is the content of the present proposed explanations section -- when it's a negative and can be covered with a sentence. That is, if there is a proposed explanations section, it can be stated that none of these explanations have been generally accepted, and that is pretty much what I had, introducing the proposed explanations. Problem is, some of the explanations didn't exist as of the time of the earlier sources being used for the claim that there are no accepted explanations. There is, in fact, a level of acceptance for some of the explanations. When an explanation makes it through peer review, as several have, that's a level of acceptance. When it is cited in a peer-reviewed paper in a reputable journal, as a possible explanation for reported experimental results (i.e., Mosier-Boss re Takahashi's Be-8 theory), that is a level of acceptance. When it is covered in Storms (2007), that's a level of acceptance (as being some kind of possibility).

What I see, Enric, is that it is all being framed within a conception that cold fusion remains a rejected field, when we have quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, beginning, most notably, with the 2004 DoE review. Scientific consensus isn't about majority opinion, it is about general agreement among the knowledgeable, otherwise it is ordinary opinion, like political opinion, among scientists, who put their pants on one leg at a time and get their news from the media, outside their field, like everyone else. The DOE panel is unusual because it's opinion expressed by scientists who became at least somewhat informed. A one day seminar isn't adequate, but it was, at least, a start! And then we have many other signs: the American Chemical Society lengthened seminar, the ACS publication of the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook with Oxford University Press, the Naturwissenschaften publications, the CBS documentary and Robert Duncan's very public "conversion." These are clear signs of mainstream acceptance, Enric. The ACS is the largest scientific society in the world, Oxford University Press is highly reputable, media reports in this year indicated that scientists were giving cold fusion a new look, and on and on. Sure, the old ideas are not gone, and our article should reflect what the sources show, and what was notable in 1989 (serious rejection!) remains notable, notability does not expire. We should report it all, neutrally balanced, per the weight of reliable sources, creating subarticles where detail would unbalance the overall one.

You have supported me being banned. Given all the opportunities that you have had to see what I'm saying and trying to do, that's hard to reconcile with AGF. I'm not likely to waste much more time discussing cold fusion with you, or, it may be, with anyone on Wikipedia. I see you pretty well, I think, and what I see others will see as well. Maybe, someday, you will see it yourself. Now, I asked you not to post on this page, multiple times. Please go away; if you want me to discuss something with you, you may drop a brief note here and we can discuss it on your Talk, with your permission. Otherwise I may have wasted way too much time with this, here, interrupting other crucial tasks, on and off-wiki. You either want to discuss with me -- which involves depth -- or you don't. You can't have it both ways. --Abd (talk) 18:40, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Abd/Open Source notability

Is User:Abd/Open Source notability still an active proposal, or can it be tagged as historical? Just trying to clean up Category:Wikipedia proposals a little. Hiding T 09:33, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I will ask the other editors. Thanks. I'm now on wikibreak, it may take some time. --Abd (talk) 12:03, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar from PHG

		The Barnstar of Integrity
		For your thoughtful and highly sophisticated contributions to Wikipedia. Brillance may not always be acknowledged by all, but who cares? PHG Per Honor et Gloria 05:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Well-deserved. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you, your support and encouragement has been appreciated. Your thoughtful criticism, likewise. --Abd (talk) 02:53, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

good one

[9] made me laugh :-) SPLETTE :] ^{How's my driving?} 00:51, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

LOL!

Wiki, you've been on my mind

You've been on my mind, but the call comes to move on, whether we are ready or not, accept or resist, detesting it or with relief.

We come to the crossroads and find one open. From time beyond time, we see. What do we regret? What brings us peace?

Inna maa al-balaagh. My old friend, have I served? Or did I forget? --Abd (talk) 14:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley

This arbitration case has been closed, and the final decision is available in full at the link above.

As a result of this case:

1. The cold fusion article, and parts of any other articles substantially about cold fusion, are placed under discretionary sanctions.
2. Abd (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is banned for a period of three months from Wikipedia, and for a period of one year from the cold fusion article. These bans are to run concurrently. Additionally, Abd is prohibited from participating in discussions about disputes in which he is not one of the originating parties, including but not limited to article talk pages, user talk pages, administrator noticeboards, and any formal or informal dispute resolution, however not including votes or comments at polls. Abd is also admonished for edit-warring on Arbitration case pages, engaging in personal attacks, and failing to support allegations of misconduct.
3. William M. Connolley (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)'s administrator rights are revoked. He may apply for their reinstatement at any time via Requests for Adminship or appeal to the Committee. William M. Connolley is also admonished for edit warring on Arbitration case pages.
4. Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is reminded not to edit war and to avoid personal attacks.
5. The community is urged to engage in a policy discussion and clarify under what circumstances, if any, an administrator may issue topic or page bans without seeking consensus for them, and how such bans may be appealed. This discussion should come to a consensus within one month of this notice.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee,

Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:58, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your service to the community, Hersfold. --Abd (talk) 02:42, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I wish to notify you of this request for clarification. 99.27.133.215 (talk) 08:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Enjoy your reprieve :-)

Don't know if you can respond on your talk, but just wanted to wish you well. I very much admire how you handled yourself as this decision came down hard on you. Your dignity stands in stark contrast to the abhorrent behavior of some of the other editors on those pages.

Note also, I do plan to respond to your points further up on this talk page, I just haven't had the energy to tackle it. ATren (talk) 01:04, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I, too, wish you well, Abd. --Wfaxon (talk) 01:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, they haven't shut down talk and I doubt that they will, unless I somehow abuse it. Thanks for your thoughts. I thought of asking for the right to edit my user space (i.e., ban without actual block, which is pretty much what Carcharoth had suggested until a mentor was established), but then asked myself, "Why?"

ATren, be at ease, if you care to respond to anything, you may, but if you want to make sure I see it, please email me. I may not be checking regularly. Email is also welcome, in general. --Abd (talk) 02:50, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Echoing ATren above, I hope you enjoy your reprieve and sorry to hear about your ban. I have not studied the debacle but I was very taken aback to read of your temporary ban - for 3 months. Given my level of cynicism and lack of trust in the authorities in this project, I am pre-disposed to viewing the arbcom outcome very dubiously -- nonetheless I will abstain from getting involved in casting my opinion on the matter (there's little point any way). Needless to say, from the outset I share others' admiration of your integrity and character. I hope for your own sake that you share your talents more in the real world where they may be better put to use (and appreciated) instead of on this funny playground - it seems like such a waste of your immense energies and talents. Rfwoolf (talk) 22:55, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

MfD nomination of User:Abd/Cabal

User:Abd/Cabal, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Abd/Cabal and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:Abd/Cabal during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Guy (Help!) 09:09, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Pants on fire. "Free to edit"? Hello? Did you unblock me? Talk about waste of time.... --Abd (talk) 13:18, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

If you propose changes here, or comments to the MfD, I'm sure someone will decide what to do with your comments. Verbal chat 13:26, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Talk about waste of time.... Thanks, Verbal, I knew that. The community seems to be doing just fine without me. --Abd (talk) 13:30, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence pages in userspace

You have one or more pages in your userspace that were used as evidence in the Abd-William M. Connolley arbitration case. All 23 of these pages are listed here. I'm proposing to move these pages to subpages of the case pages, and courtesy blank them (as has been done with the other pages in this case). Could you let me know if you object to this? I won't be doing this myself, but I will pass on any replies to whoever does deal with this. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 00:49, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection to moving them. I consider blanking evidence pages unwise, but that isn't my decision to make. I was concerned to see a highly involved editor editing one of the pages.... but moving them to case subpages makes sense to me, providing that redirects are left in place and any double redirects are fixed, and may in some sense protect them. I'd do it myself if I could.... Thanks for asking. It is probably more reliable to ping me by email, but, you got me. --Abd (talk) 01:35, 17 September 2009 (UTC)